#can't believe a sport thing got me to sketch something

[annlar]

was not expecting this

[skyrimfuckery]

Oh hey guess what you wouldn't believe it but it's true! A new outfit made within a year? No way!

Yes way. I had the concept sketch lying around since last summer. Originally, the design was intended for Fadiyyeh, the redguard showcasing my Dragonstar armor. I wanted it to be a more Indian inspired witchy dress with more colours, decorative stitching, and jewelry everywhere. But her story was told and the Dragonstar armor project kinda drained me. So I decided to turn it into somewhat of an elegant gothic dress with coarse medieval armor parts! You know I can't resist adding historical armor to everything I make.

So here it is. A black brocade dress with a mix of 14th and 15th century armor (I did my research) and modern(ish) jewelry and boots. The gauntlets sport fake nails for extra goth. All in all, a pretty good mid-late game dress for a mage up to no good!

In hindsight, I should have added more lace pretty much everywhere, as the design is pretty simple at this point. Then again, that allows for more customization with accessories from other mods, in a similar vein to the Brigandine set. Texture wise, though, the dress is a bit boring. It's just the single fabric texture. But it works, I guess, and all the other parts look amazing so it evens out. This outfit was also my first venue into baking normal maps from high poly models instead of manually painting them. I think it turned out especially nicely on the boots and the gauntlets. I hope you think so too.

The armor is female only. It has no quest. As much as I want to give my items a place in the world, it seemed like an effort spent in vain. Plus, I had no ideas I liked for this dress. It's just something people wear now, I guess. The skirt on the dress will be physics enabled. I'm also experimenting with that now, spooky stuff.

This dress will be released on the Nexus somewhere next week. I have the weight painting and BHUNP sliders done, so all that's left is the inventory models, the crafting recipes, and tweaking the physics.

Oh yeah. I moved to SE because of data loss somewhere last May. This means this outfit will be SE only. I still have the mesh without physics, so technically I could make an LE conversion. Will that be worth it? If literally one person asks me in DMs I will do it, bet.

I already got plenty ideas for my next project. I'll have to focus on other things after this, but I'll make sure to keep you guys updated. I'm kinda thinking of remaking the Squire's plate...

Till the next one!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Chortle headlines.

Some of these are interesting. I don't know if it bodes well if Paddy Young is the absolute best rookie comedians in all of Britain, but he definitely had a good show last year (that got streamed on NextUp from Edinburgh). I have trouble believing anyone wrote a show that's better than both Paul Foot's Dissolve and Ahir Shah's Ends, but to be fair, I haven't seen John Kearns' show and he is very fucking good at these things, makes me hope even more that he'll be doing something in Edinburgh while I'm there. Alex Horne got an award for Taskmaster being an outstanding achievement, not quite sure what that means but I think it's accurate. I think if you look up the definition of "breakthrough act" you'll just find a note that says "see Sam Campbell's career throughout 2023", so that couldn't really have gone any other way. I've heard Kiri Pritchard-McLean compere a bunch on NextUp things, she is in fact very good at clubs. I haven't seen any of the other nominees but I'm still sure that James Acaster deserved to win that best tour one. I couldn't stomach the amount of Celebrity Glamour in Joe Lycett's new show but he is a great comedian and he is definitely made to be a TV comedian, which in some ways could be an insult but I really mean it as a compliment, he's great at that, good for him. Munya Chawawa posts highly amusing song parodies on YouTube. Fern Brady's is one of the best comedian books I've read. Three Bean Salad I was unable to get into, but maybe I'll give it another shot sometimes, after I finish with the winners of that radio award, John and Elis - well done to them for getting over ten years and not completely falling apart. I usually find it hard to get into sketch comedy (or anything that isn't straight stand-up) but Lorna Rose Treen made me laugh with character things last summer, so she probably deserves that one.

Those are my unsolicited opinions on that. The existence of Taskmaster is definitely an outstanding achievement for all involved.

This a special feature that happens every once in a while, called "Chortle publishes the contents of Daniel Kitson's mailing list". I find it gets funnier the less it sounds like Steve Bennett knows about the news items beyond the contents of the mailing list email, and in this case, that is clearly fuck all. But anyway, it's a great show and exciting announcement, anyone who has the opportunity should go see this tour. He said in the email that he might try to get something going in NYC later this year, which would be incredibly logistically difficult for me to get to (8.5-hour drive each way if I can borrow a car from someone, which would be tough, 14 hours on the bus otherwise, I've been told I can't take any more vacation days in 2024 because I used them on the London/Edinburgh trip), but still, I have found myself wondering how I might be able to make that work if he actually announces it.

Fucking hell. I can't believe this. My local comedian Facebook group is going pretty wild in response to this news. That's fucking huge, a massive amount of stuff is centred around this. To be honest I'm still not clear on the scope of this news so I won't go into it too much, I'll just say, fucking hell. Truly shocking. That's like a sport just canceling its national championships halfway through the season.

Excellent. Everyone should read this. His 2023 show (which I think he's still touring) is one of my favourite comedy shows ever. And the one before that, which inspired this book, is also very fucking funny, though not as good as his latest one.

Also, I am up for a trend of one comedian per year writing a book about their relatively recent autism diagnosis. Who do we think it'll be in 2025? I have approximately four to five suggestions.

[tamelee]

What do you think of Kishimoto as a writer?

Oh. Well.. allow me.

I'm not a writer myself so I feel like I am in no position to say anything regarding him as a writer specifically. But I'm studying to become a storyteller partly because of Kishimoto. As a writer your tools are limited no matter the amount of creativity you have. Imagine a blank page and a pencil. How do you get from an idea to the story that is 'Naruto'? A Manga where he for the most part had to be his own director, storyteller, storyboard-artist, artist, plotter, scriptwriter, character designer, researcher, special effects artist, tone worker- you name it.

But of course, that's not to discredit Kazisa, Takahashi, Yahagi and Ikemoto who assisted him. Or the editors at Weekly Shonen Jump who helped Kishimoto outline his story to what it is today.

Outlines often get rejected and many of Kishimoto's ideas/original plans did too.

I'm glad as well because some of them I don't think were as strong. Neither were some ideas for example a sketch of Sasuke's original introduction compared to what we have in Chapter 3 now. This fits his character way better and even though I'm often complaining about Naruto's ending (as we all should tbh,) the editors of SJ know their target audience best. That doesn't mean that every story or decision succeeds.. but it does mean there is a structure that generally works. A golden way for Shonen Manga. (Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu). One that Kishimoto often struggled with not just 'Naruto' but in general I think because he explained that no matter how many ideas he had for an adventurous story, he never got any green lights. He decided to go for a sports theme and sketched out a baseball Manga.

And it's very apparent in many excerpts when he says that the editors were pushing him a lot towards entertainment, that Kishimoto himself embraced elements of realism and more serious topics himself that weren't necessarily suited for Shonen.

(Side-note: Shonen is not really a 'genre'. Also, the difference between Shonen en Seinen depends on the way it's written. Rating or themes does not classify a story as either one by itself although Shonen is targeted at a younger audience and therefore its plot should generally be more easy to understand within a wider audience group. Often the stories are focussed on external conflicts while Seinen expands a lot on psychological struggles. Even if you were to tell the same story separately it can still be the same story- just executed differently, therefore it's not really a "genre" but a demographic. That's what I mean when I say "I wish 'Naruto' would've gotten a Seinen sequel." It's not about the story being more "mature" as some believe.)

But... even though that all is true for 'Naruto' and its world focusses a lot on external struggles of being a Ninja in it's incredibly adventurous Shinobi-world, Kishimoto didn't shy away from making it a very character-driven story as well. A story where partly, Naruto and Sasuke as our main-act, with their internal conflicts till this day, are somewhat hidden away from that very same demographic even though their feelings are in plain sight. Why? Because it isn't suited for them and certainly not that easy to understand. If you've come across posts here that say "omigod how can you not understand this simple thing? 🙄" regarding something in the story then I'm here to tell you that they probably also didn't the first time they read it, unless they have some media/literacy-experience or something similar. In which case I admire them, but also, don't worry- you're not alone and it's pretty normal.

There's a reason Kishimoto had to fight his own staff so hard to get certain scenes through. (For example his reverse Harem no Jutsu.) And seeing him say that he felt pressured a lot makes me sad but it's understandable because I think what mattered to him at some points through storytelling would've become too complicated for SJ's audience. I can't imagine his own internal battle having fought solitude and rejection himself but then hunching over a desk for 15+ years, immersed in doing what he loves only for him to most likely not be satisfied with the ending. In fact, I'm pretty sure as that last Chapter felt painful. Like a bucket of icy water slapped in your face on your way out.

Hehe. Well, he did.

As him being a Mangaka and creator of stories, I genuinely respect Kishimoto so much. There's a reason why people in the industry call him Kishimoto-sensei. A teacher and master of his craft. It shows in his work and most of all his art.

I mean.. how can you not respect that?? Honestly I could go on and on but I'd be writing entire essays. The writing process itself is complicated, people are involved, editors, but I think he was able to show very well why 'Naruto' at least meant a lot to him and why he wanted to create it. I'm glad he was able to push his ideas through.. despite SJ's demographics in his own way and I can only hope that one day he would have it in him to create a satisfying resolution regardless of anything else. He and the fandom deserve it. But I can only hope. Oh! I love his other stories too actually but, I'm not sure if you're asking about that.

[4aloysius-porteu]

i really wish i hated you || tsukishima kei

masterlist | chapter 1 | 2 | 3

pairing: tsukishima kei x f! reader

sypnosis: It was an accident that (Y/N) met a certain tall, blonde male; a memory she isn't fond of remembering, but it is where it all started. And ever since, she magically makes her to his path. The image of the bespectacled man dwelled in her mind more than she thought. Tsukishima pushed away his softer emotions and denied their existence, or at least that's what he told himself. But then, he couldn't believe that this girl he labeled as a clumsy, unlucky creature who smashed his glasses is slowly bringing these strange emotions back to him. She might be irritating and dumb sometimes, but he couldn't get himself to completely hate her. Either that destiny was stupid, or he was blessed or cursed. 

genre: fanfic, fluff

wc: 1039

warnings: mentions of injuries such as being hit with a ball in the face

It was the graduation day of the 3rd years in Kitagawa Daiichi, which marks (Y/N)'s last day of being a junior high student. The ceremonies ended well and she bade goodbye to the few people who accompanied and treated her nicely for some times.

Since it's still early, she went back to her apartment, changed her school uniform to casual clothes and went to the park. The fresh spring air blew gently as people went by while the kids play different kinds of sports. The nearby gyms must be filled with scary adults, huh? She settled down on an unoccupied bench and brought out her pencil and sketch pad. And there, she started to sketch everything that her eyes can see. She continued doing do for several minutes, until a soccer ball rolled to her foot and a bunch of children came near her. She kicked the ball lightly to them to avoid unnecessary interaction and go back to her drawing, but they won't get the message.

"Nee-chan, come play with us! It must be boring to be stuck with that assignment." A girl with pigtails said.

"It's not an assignment. It's my hobby." She corrected.

"Yet you look so gloomy while doing it." A boy commented. "Why don't you play soccer with us? Bet it's more fun than that!"

She sighed. Can you please just leave me alone?

She stared at them with dead eyes in an attempt to get away from their request, only to be stared back with those large puppy eyes that annoyed the hell out of her. She hate kids and they are asking the wrong person.

"Please, nee-chan! Let's play, let's play!" They came closer and pulled her sleeves.

"I-I'm sorry kids, but I don't know how to play soccer so can you let me go—"

"You don't know how to play soccer? Uncool."

"Huh, now you think you're good at it? Did you know that you suck at passing? You can't even score!"

"What did you say?! Take it back!"

They started their little childish fight. They got louder and the commotion they attracted people's attention, which is another thing she hates. "Fine, fine! I'll play with you, so stop quarreling!"

They immediately stopped as if everything was an act to make her agree, "Really?"

"You heard me."

"Yay! Let's go to the goalpost over there, onee-san!"

She took her sketch pad with her before she let them drag her to a small soccer court steps away from where she was seated. I hope the basics I know can help me.

They kicked the ball towards her, waiting for her next move. She's actually embarrassed because kids can be very unforgiving if they see someone mess up.

"Alright, let me clear things first. Onee-san isn't an expert to this sport, so don't go hard on me when I fuck up, okay?"

"What's fuck up?"

"I'm sorry, it's only a word I made. I meant messed up."

"It's okay, as long as you play with us!"

"So... here I go."

(Y/N) lifted the ball up with her foot, let it bounce twice on her right then left knee, once on her right and left elbow, and thrice over her head before dropping it to the ground. She was surprised that she managed to do it perfectly until she met eyes staring at her in awe.

The boys gasped, "That's so cool, nee-chan! How do you that?"

"Please teach me too, onee-san!" The girls jumped.

She smirked a little. Don't tell me they suck at this more compared to me that they think this basic move is already cool? I might have fun.

And so they played for the next minute and she taught them the proper basics. There were times that she'll trip and they'll laugh at her first before helping her up and did the same to them. She was thankful that they weren't the demon kids she thought. But they would step on her shoes that will test her patience.

They were kicking at random directions that (Y/N) had to chase the ball everywhere. Very tiring, but she had to keep up since their stamina won't run out any soon.

"Protect the goal!" The other kid shouted.

It was her turn to score. "Get ready!" She warned and aimed to the goal.

But a mistake happened.

"Excuse me! Watch out!"

She kicked the ball way too hard and it didn't go to the direction she aimed at. She internally cursed as I ran to warn the person on the ball's direction, but it was too late. The ball hit him square in the face. She stopped running midway because of sheer embarrassment, but she had to help him.

"I-I'm sorry! I'm very sorry!" She apologized, stammering, "I didn't see you right away, are you okay?"

"Do I look okay to you?!" He replied in an irritated voice. He winced in pain as he covered his face, particularly around his eyes. She just noticed that he was wearing glasses and she realized how painful the impact must be.

"Tsukki! What happened?! Are you okay?" His friend rushed to his side.

"I-I was playing with the kids and accidentally kicked the ball to his direction, please f-forgive me..."

"Accidentally? You looked like you intentionally kicked it in my way! Do you even know how to aim the ball right? If you can't then you should stop playing the damn sport!" He spat.

She was so ashamed and mad at the same time. Everyone was looking at her and she wished that the ground would eat her alive in front of him, yet her feet froze on the spot. She knows she did something wrong, but he doesn't need to diss her like this.

"I'm sorry if I'm bad at soccer sir, but I didn't intentionally send it your way and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience I've caused." She stated and bowed.

She went back to the field without daring to look back at his face to forget what happened. She was about to talk to the kids when...

"Hey." The blonde male called, "You broke my glasses."

The first part might be bad, but a story gets better as it progresses.

©4aloysius.porteu.2021. please do not repost, copy, or edit. plagiarism is punishable by law.

[catzula]

Don’t be late.

Warnings: Cursing, 4.5 k words, fluff in general, Bakugou being a dumbass, reader is always late.

a/n: I genuinely had fun writing this fic and I hope you guys have fun reading it!

Synopsis: you're a student at the support section and since Bakugou literally drove everyone else insane, you were the last person that would help him with his costume. Little did he know that you had a crush on this sparky sparky boom man.

Everybody in the support section just hated that one guy. That guy named Bakugou who would practically harass people until he got what he wanted. Well, okay, almost everyone who knew Bakugou hated him but people in the support section hated him in a whole new level.

He was a nightmare. Nobody could even stand him.

Well, nobody except for you. You thought of him as intriguing, as well as a pain in the ass. But even him being a pain in the ass could be justified in your eyes, you knew he was doing all this simply because he was a perfectionist. Of course he could tone it down a bit, but... That would.be very out of character, wouldn't it?

He thought of himself as the best and it shouldn't be a surprise, for him to want to have a hero costume that was also perfect. You could understand that, but it still didn't change the fact that he was the worst kind of customer anyone would ever have to work with.

He had never worked with you though, he was in class 1/A for gods sake, of course he didn't work with you... Well, that until he ran out of people that would help him willingly.

"You know what? I'm done. Go fuck yourself." Were the words that echoed in the room, suppressing even those deafening machine sounds. Your friend threw Bakugou's costume in his face harshly, still cursing under his breath.

"Tch, whatever! You're just some extra that can't even do what I asked for." You watched Bakugou as his upper lip curled threateningly, reminding you of a wolf, and boy did he look pissed. Like, really pissed. His crimson eyes glaring at the guy in front of him, who was packing his supplies and trying to get away from this angry dude as soon as possible.

"That's the thing, Bakugou! What you want doesn't exist! I don't have these miraculous powers that when I snap my fingers your costume just turns into something else. You have to give me details of what you're asking and you have to ask something that makes sense! Not just some dumb idea that popped into your mind!" Everybody knew that was a lie. Bakugou always had the most amazing ideas, so creative and so... Logical. It's just that they were too... Much. To much to execute, they were brilliant but not doable.

"First of all, it does make sense, it's you who can't understand! Second of-"

"Whatever, Bakugou. I'm done with this shit. Go find someone else to help you with your costume."

"Who the fuck are you to not let me fucking talk? I will fucking kill you-"

"That's enough Bakugou." A monotone voice that came from the door made Bakugou freeze. You knew this black haired guy, he was the Eraserhead! You saw him around the campus but never from up this close!

Bakugou looked at his teacher, never losing that wolfish expression on his face, and he exited the room without saying anything, which was a first for everyone in this room. Eraserhead also exited, looking like he was about to go in a coma.

The room was still silent, until it wasn't.

"Oh my God, what a fucking jerk."

"I can't even believe how you managed to put up with him that long."

"He's not even that good."

Lie. That was a big fat lie because Bakugou may not be a lot of things but he was that good. Still, you chose to stay silent, your eyes still glued to the door he just exited from.

He amazed you, really. You noticed him the first time he came to the support section, his aura screaming confidence. He started to come there frequently, making everyone else go crazy, but you just kept noticing small details about him every time he came there. He was an asshole, no one could deny that, but he was also amazing.

It was amazing how determined he was, even though it was a pain, his perfectionism also left you in awe, how smart he was, how confident he was, how strong he was...

You realized your big crush on him the day you saw him on that sport festival. The other people thought it was so unheroic of him to go that hard on Uraraka, which was so stupid. Didn't she also want to be a hero? Wasn't she going to the same school as him, going through the same trainings? It was only normal for him to beat her, because if he didn't, she would have beaten him. Would people tell her it was so rude of her to go that hard on him too? No, you thought he was astonishing to act the way he did.

Him being so proud, not accepting the first rank made your heart beat faster. He was just so strong, so proud, so vulnerable it made you want to hug him tightly and tell him that he was your hero.

Not that you would ever have the chance though, or so you thought.

He came back not even after a few days, making everyone groan in frustration. He went straight to the table that displayed the recent projects that were done. The table existed to give an idea of what anyone could do so they could choose along shit what they had in mind. So that meant, who's item he chose would have to work with him. All of you eyed him, waiting to see who was the very unlucky person.

He picked one invention of the table, looking somewhat intrigued, and looked around the room trying to guess who it belonged to. When he couldn't guess he went to the nearest person and shoved the invention in their face. "Who does this belong to?!"

The person he was holding eyed the object he was holding suspiciously, relief written on his face when he saw it didn't belong to him. "I think that's Y/N's."

You could hear the sighs of relief around the room. So did he, but he didn't seem to care. Instead he walked towards you, he was so close you could smell-

Why on earth did he smell like... Caramel?!

"Is this yours?" You felt the tingling sensation of excitement all over your body, giving you goosebumps. "It is." You answered, which made him narrow his eyes, looking at you suspiciously.

"Is it really yours? You did this?" Now that was straight up rude. "Yes, it's really mine, asshole. What kind of a question even is that?!"

He shrugged shit a smug grin on his face. His eyes wandered over you, looking at your (e/c) eyes, your face, your figure, and his grin grew wider.

"I haven't seen you around here before." Ah, the angry boy was back. His upper lip curled ever so slightly, looking at you like you were some lowly human. "Oh yeah? Well I have seen you quite a lot here. You know, while you were making everyone else go crazy."

Your answer turned his face red with anger but -a miracle- he was holding back! You could see it was really hard for him not to scream insults in your face but he was aware that you were his last chance. Oh didn't that just boost your ego. Now it was your turn to look at him with a smug grin on your face.

"Whatever." He mumbled pulling you to the nearest table. "What are you-" Before he even let you finish he shushed you and lay down the papers he was holding on the table. You looked at what's on the paper, it was a costume drawing, a really detailed one at that. As you got closer to the paper, inspecting it, he was watching your every move with narrowed eyes.

After you memorised everything on the paper you bir your lip, trying to hide your admiration. "Did you draw this? Are these all... Your ideas?"

The drawing wasn't amazing but it was neat, everything was calculated to the very core, the ideas were so clear on the paper, making you feel like you only had to follow these instructions and do nothing else. "Yes, of course I drew them! Everything you see there is mine." He said angrily but you could see he wasn't actually angry, just proud.

"Well, they're pretty good, if I'm going to be honest." You said trying to hide your excitement. You traced the drawing with your finger.

"I know they are. But can you do it?" His smug grin was back and you couldn't help but roll your eyes at him. Could you do it?

You smiled sweetly and surely enough he smiled back, already knowing your answer.

"Nope."

His smile dropped, leaving it's place to a furious look in his eyes. "You dumbass, then why the fuck are you wasting my fucking time?!" He screamed, people around you shot you a knowing look. He pulled the paper of the table harshly, about to leave when you held his wrist and made him stop.

"Can you stop for a fucking minute and listen?" His eyes widened when he heard you cursing, a big contrast to your sweet tone and face. "I can't do this, but neither can anyone else."

"What the fuck does that mean?" He screamed making you winch. "Can you just- shut up for a second? This is not possible, get that in your bigass head. But-" you stopped thinking for a second. You shuffled around the drawers in search of a pen. "But, I can do this instead. This would be much more possible, and it would give you what you were aiming for. Of course it wouldn't be the same but the end product will be helpful."

You said quickly sketching your idea on the paper, as quick as possible before you forget what you were thinking about.

When he saw what you drew his burrows furrowed and for a second you thought he was mad at you but instead he huffed. "Tch, not bad I guess." He said, but internally he was so impressed that you actually came up with this alternative in a few seconds of so.

"Wait, does that mean you'll work with me?" You said eyes open wide. Well the question was more as, would you work with him, but he didn't say that. "If you can do it, I will."

"That's amazing, now I finally have a worthy client!" You said excitedly and on of his burrows went up, sending you an questioning look. "Worthy of... You?"

You shot him a killing glare but stayed quiet. "Let's work on this idea a little more, what do you say?"

He shrugged. "It's too noisy in here. Lets go to the library." He said ready to pull you out of the room but you shot a glance at your phone, pouting. "Can't, I gotta finish this side project today. Meet me at the library tomorrow? How is 4pm?"

He wasn't really happy since you couldn't work on it immediately but he had to be a little nice to you, not just because you were the last person that would actually help him, but your idea was also pretty good. "Tch, whatever. Don't be late."

You smiled sweetly, making his heart beat a little faster. Why did his heart beat this fast? Was this your quirk or something?

"Bye Bakugou." You waved as you started to sketch something on a sheet of paper.

***

Bakugou was sitting in the library, shooting angry glances at the clock. When he saw you coming towards him with a big smile on your face, your hands full of papers, books and stuff, he felt his heart jump. This had to be your quirk.

"Hey! So I worked on this idea we talked about yesterday and-" Before you even sat next to him you started to talk without even stopping to breath. "You're late." He murmured with and angry look in his eyes, you looked at your watch and smiled apologetically. "Oops, sorry, I was with Shinsou about- well that's not important is it? It's 5 minutes anyway."

Bakugou had always been an angry individual but today he could practically feel his explosions itching for him to release them. You saw the look in his eyes and laughed, "Hey, chill out. I'm sorry, alright? I'll make it up to you with a coffee, how does that sound?"

Bakugou didn't even like coffee but he couldn't refuse this offer either. "If you get there in time."

You laughed once again, a sweet sound that made Bakugou feel proud, even though he didn't even know why he was proud. "Yes, yes, I'll be there on time. But let's discuss this now." You lay the papers down, showing a few new sketches.

You both worked on it for a long time, even though it felt like a few minutes at most. You sometimes felt his gaze on you, instead of the paper in front of you, which made your cheeks flush red.

"So um-" you said, not really sure what to even say. "This was nice."

He had never heard anyone from the support section say that working with him was nice, but he still took the compliment. "Meet me at the coffee place tomorrow? Since it's weekend we can meet a little earlier too."

His eyes narrowed as he looked at you. It was weird having someone who actually wanted to work with him and it felt odd. A good type of odd, if he had to confess.

"Don't be late." He said.

You laughed. "I won't."

***

You were late.

Bakugou was about to go crazy waiting at the coffee shop. He felt so stupid for waiting for you but felt even worse for not being able to leave. His mind kept making you excuses, every time the door opened he felt his heart jump and that made him so angry at himself.

He was about to leave when the door opened once again, this time it was actually you entering. His eyes widened when he saw you, you looked incredibly pretty without any dust smeared on your face, your (h/c) hair in a cute style that enhanced your beautiful face and was that... Make up? He wasn't sure, hell, he never even realized any of these things before. But he couldn't take his eyes off of you and felt his anger die inside him.

You saw him and your eyes shined in a way that made him want to smile too, a cute smile was on your face when you came to his table.

"You're late!"

"That can't be I'm actually-" you checked the time and pouted. "Oh, I'm late."

His eyebrows furrowed, so he wasn't even important enough for you to actually show up on time? He was about to say something mean but held his tongue when you giggled. "I actually left the dorm an hour early to be here before you..." You shrugged. "Apparently I'm incapable of actually arriving anywhere at the time we agreed on. I hear this all the time, I just can't get anywhere on time!"

He felt a little better knowing it wasn't only him, but still. He was Bakugou Katsuki for Gods sake! He wasn't just someone, he was the future number one hero. Still, he couldn't help but feel good knowing you intended to be here early.

"Whatever." He said not looking at you. "No, I'm actually sorry!" You said biting your lip.

"It's whatever. Let's just get some coffee and get this shit done with." You felt a sharp pain in your chest, he wasn't wrong, but it felt bad hearing that from your crush. You should have known he wasn't actually interested in you, he wouldn't have chosen you if you weren't his last chance.

You still didn't let that spoil your mood, at the very end you were here, drinking coffee with him, weren't you?

"Well, what would you like to drink?" You asked, taking your wallet out of your handbag. His eyes shined with anger when he saw what you were doing.

"Like hell I'll let you pay for it!" He said, stopping you.

"But this is for making you wait yesterday!" Feeling his hand holding you made your heart jump. "And well... Today too." You added.

"I don't care, I said I won't let you pay, and I won't."

"But-"

"Stop arguing for fucks sake!" You closed your mouth at that. "O-okay. Well I'll have (your favorite beverage)." You saw him smile at your answer and stood up.

You were trying to calm yourself while he was buying you coffee, didn't even realize someone was calling your name. "Y/N!"

A hand touched your shoulder, making you jump in surprise. It was a certain indigo haired boy who looked very much sleep deprived. "Oh, Shinsou!" You smiled sweetly. You have helped him a lot before, which ended with you guys being close friends.

"What are you doing here?" You asked, even though it was a stupid question, he was addicted to coffee. "Well, duh." He said, shaking the carton of coffee on his hand. You smiled at that. "But what are you doing here?" He looked around to see anyone familiar that you could be waiting for. He saw Bakugou ordering coffee, but it was such an impossible thing for both of you to be together so he didn't even think about it.

"Well I uh..." You didn't even have time to answer when an angry boy came close to your table. "What the fuck are you doing here?!"

Shinsou's eyes widened ever so slightly looking at the angry boy, and then back at you. "You're here with him?"

"You got a problem with that?" Bakugou asked, taking his seat right across you.

"Well, we're working on his costume." You said sensing the tension.

Bakugou scoffed, apparently not happy with your answer. "Well, okay. I'll see you around?" Said Shinsou, you could understand why he was walking away, since his motto was stay out of drama. "Yeah, sure!" You smiled sweetly, feeling a little bad because you felt like you were dusting him away.

"Are we gonna start working or not?!" You flinched when you heard him scream, a sinking feeling reminding you once again, he wanted nothing to do with you other than working on his costume.

"Sorry." You mumbled. "So I um, worked on this a little more after you left and I think it would be much better if we changed this to this. Because otherwise it would be too heavy."

Bakugou scoffed. "Hah, I can handle heavy." You glanced at him, surprised by his unnecessary narcissism. "Yeah, I know. But still, wouldn't it be better if it were lighter?" He stayed still for a while then shrugged.

"Tch, whatever." Oh, you were starting to see a pattern here. Maybe it wasn't just unnecessary narcissism, but more like... Trying to impress you?

"Are you training today too?" You asked, just testing the waters. "Of course I am! If I'm going to be the number 1 hero, I gotta train every fucking day."

You tapped your chin with your finger. "That's true. Although I've seen you train before and it looked pretty intense." And that was true. He was training so hard it made you shudder just thinking about it.

"Oh, you were watching me?" Oh, shit. You tried to ignore the heat rushing to your cheeks. "Well I wasn't watching you specifically, but it was so... Extra so I may have looked your way once or twice." You tried to cover. But the smug grin on his face told you he didn't believe it a bit.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say."

"So, what do you think? Should I change this part? Oh and I thought it would be better if we did this too-" You stopped talking when you felt his eyes lingering on you, instead of the paper. "Bakugou?" You said smiling. "Why are you staring at me?"

"I'm not staring at you!" He shouted, your smile dropping almost instantly. "Why the fuck would I even stare at you?!" His hands were tight fists on the table, his red eyes reminding you of flames. Your eyes widened at his response and you forced a laugh.

"Well, ouch." You said with the same forceful laugh. "I- I wasn't implying anything, you know..." You mumbled.

"I- I..." This was the first time you have seen Bakugou in a loss of words. You shrugged. "Yeah, I know, you want to get this over with as soon as possible."

That was far from what he wanted to say but he accepted it nonetheless.

You both worked on it for hours, once again the time passed quickly, felt like it was a blink of an eye. "That was intense." You said while stretching a bit.

"Well, that was it. We finished the whole design and idea process and I'll take it from here."

His brows furrowed. "What do you mean by I'll take it from here?"

You shrugged. "I just have to actually do this now, so we don't really have to meet like this." Why did Bakugou feel that sting in his chest? For Gods sake, what the fuck was your quirk?

"Y/N." He said that made you stop stretching. Hearing your name from him made your heart beat faster. "What the hell is your quirk?"

"My quirk?" You asked, a little surprised at the sudden question.

"Yes!"

"Well it's not a big quirk. I can manipulate shadows." You shrugged. Your quirk had never came off as handy but it was fun to change the shapes of people's shadows and seeing their reactions.

Bakugou desperately tried to find a relation with your quirk and this weird sensation he felt every time you smiled but he couldn't find any.

"That's a dumb quirk." He said instead. You giggled, surprising him. "It is, but I don't really need a quirk to be special, I can work without it just fine."

His brow quirked up at your response. "If you say so."

***

Everyday for the next week, Bakugou had visited you in your workspace. "I want to see if you're doing a good fucking job." He said when you asked him why.

He stayed with you as long as he could, telling you about his day, about those damn extras in his class, with the exception of "Deku." He was talking about Deku like he wasn't even a part of the class. You knew he was talking about Izuku Midoriya, that green haired shy guy who broke a limb every time he used his quirk. Oh, Bakugou talked about him a lot, with great hatred too.

But even though he was just rambling, you loved to listen to him. And even though he never even implied it, you knew he liked watching you work too. It was probably because he was interested in how his costume was coming up but you still enjoyed it very much.

But the truth was that he had almost completely forgotten about his costume. He was coming to see you every day, every chance because you... You just understood him. But Bakugou was so foreign to these feelings, it made him feel scared and vulnerable.

You weren't aware of any of this, of the internal crisis he was having, so you were surprised when he suddenly stopped showing up.

You couldn't really work too, since your eyes were practically glued to the door, waiting to see a glimpse of the spiky blonde hair, but you never did.

The day you were done with the costume, you texted him. You tried to look as good as you could, cleaned the dust off of your face and your uniform, wore your best perfume only to see someone else who came instead of him to pick the costume up.

It was Kirishima, you had chatted with him before, he was a pretty cute guy, and you knew from your daily chats from Bakugou he liked him too. So just seeing him reminded you of Bakugou which made your mood even worse.

"Is... Is Bakugou okay?" You asked.

You saw the uncomfortable look on his face and you knew Bakugou was avoiding you. "He- he- he is okay... He's just-" You sighed but smiled nonetheless. "It's okay, I understand." His eyes widened. "You do?!"

You shrugged. "He's done with me, I see that. I had the same treatment from some other students too, although it's not very nice, is it? Still, say hi to him for me please."

"It's- it's not like that, he's just-" Kirishima looked a little embarrassed but mostly panicked and you couldn't help but giggle. "It's okay, I'm just happy I could help him."

When Kirishima went back to the dorms, only to find Bakugou on the couch looking at his phone, he was pissed.

"Dude you must be the dumbest person alive."

"Who the fuck are you calling dumb, shitty hair?!" Bakugou jumped from the couch, about to end Kirishima once and for all but Kirishima wasn't having it. "You! I'm calling you dumb! I took your costume from YN, the girl you have been avoiding like the plague, and I was embarrassed for you!"

Kirishima saw Bakugou stiffening as he mentioned your name and smiled knowingly. "Bakugou, if you don't go there and talk to her I will kick your ass."

"You can't kick my ass, idiot." Bakugou answered gruffly.

"Oh but I can. Go fucking talk to her dude! She asked about you, you know? What you're doing is so fucking unmanly." Kirishima gave Bakugou the costume he was holding and Bakugou could swear he could smell your scent on it.

"You call me unmanly one more fucking time and you won't have a tongue to call anyone unmanly. I am the definition of manly."

"Not with that attitude you're not."

"Who the fuck are you, my mother or something?" But Bakugou knew Kirishima was telling the truth, and he just couldn't get rid of this stupid feeling in his chest. Yet, he had thought that if he just stopped seeing you, he would never feel this way ever again. He was wrong. Oh, he had thought of you almost every second of the day, his heart feeling heavier with every second he didn't see you and it was more than he could bear.

He knew what he had to do, he just didn't have the courage before.

"I think- I have to go." He said practically running to the door. He passed the now entering Kaminari with such force and speed, Kaminari almost lost his balance. "Woah, where the fuck is he going?" He asked looking at the grinning Kirishima.

"You'll see." Was his answer.

***

You were about to leave the workshop, later than usual but you didn't really mind working a little longer, anything that would take your kind off of him, you accepted gratefully.

All of that until you heard his voice.

"YN!"

You jumped not expecting this at all. Your eyes widened when you saw the face you had longed to see for almost a week, and there he was, cheeks flushed like he had ran all the way here.

And you knew why he was here. You weren't stupid, the look in his eyes just gave it away. So a smile found its way on your lips, the sweetest smile he had ever seen that made him feel like he could die right than and there.

"Bakugou!" You said, walking towards him. "You're late."

[spencers-dria]

Something From a Fairytale

Someone To Stay Ch. 15

Spencer x fem reader

Y/N POV:

It'a Friday and you are prepared for a normal evening in, curled up on the couch watching Harry Potter with Spencer. That is, until you received a text from him stating: "change of plans, I'm picking you up at 7. Formal attire highly encouraged ;)"

The blush on your face fades as quickly as it appears, as you brush it off as him being goofy rather than flirty. Why was he picking you up, though? And dressed for something formal? Was he taking time to dinner? Was this a date? The thoughts flood your brain so quickly you nearly go dizzy. You quickly shake your head, trying to clear it of the chaos like a etch-a-sketch. Okay. Deep breaths. You're certain you are overthinking things. If  you aren't careful, you will allow myself to be accidentally lead on. You and Spencer friends. Nothing had changed. Sure you have seen him a bit differently lately, but you didn't do anything about it. But admitting those things out loud to your friends, his friends, well that made it feel pretty real. Pretty one sided too. Ugh, you're such a mess. Get it together.

You finally pull yourself up off the couch realizing you want to have enough time to shower and fix your hair, and to properly do your makeup. Not to mention the time it would take to no doubt go through multiple outfits before finally settling on one. You had grown so comfortable around him, you usually didn't prepare much for your movie nights. But something about his request had a certain weight to it. You can't place your finger on it, but tonight felt important.

After showering, shaving, and drying your hair, you throw on a robe and walk into your closet, letting your fingers flip through the clothes. Too fancy, too casual, too edgy...none of it felt right until your eyes land on a dark purple, strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline and long flowing skirt that reaches the floor. You start to second guess, shooting a quick text to Spencer: "Sooo how formal are we talking?"

He takes only a few seconds to respond: "That can be up to you. But probably nothing you'd wear to a sports event."

You roll my eyes. Ha ha. Very funny. You decide this will have to do. Besides, he loves purple, and you can't help but wanting to impress him once again. He'd already seen one side of you that night of a bar. You are ready to show him you can look classy, when you wanted to. You have more than just sweat pants and cocktail dresses.

After giving your hair some loose curls, you put on some light, shimmering eye shadow with bold black eyeliner and a darker pink matte liquid lip. You get so distracted by fixing little details in your makeup or hair that you're caught off guard by the knock at the door. You immediately feel a pit sink into the deepest part of my stomach, pure nerves.

You take a deep breathe before opening the door to see Spencer standing there looking far too nervous considering how fantastic he looks. A well fitting black suit jacket, black button down, and black slacks. He's standing with a hand behind his back, nervously staring at the ground. He's eyes shoot up to you as soon as you've opened the door.

This isn't what you were expecting at all, but you're not complaining. You're also still unsure what this is, as you try to push aside any thoughts that jump to premature conclusions. After staring at each other in silence for a few seconds, you finally speak up.

"You look incredible, Spencer. I mean, really handsome, truly."

He shakes his head slightly like he doesn't quite believe you. He looks down at the ground as you can tell he's contemplating his next words carefully. He finally looks up at you with the sweet brown eyes you love so much. He's so quiet that you almost miss it. "You're breathtaking."

You feel your breath hitch in my throat. He's always been sweet but this was different. Before you have a chance to get in your head again, he brings his hand out from behind his back, to reveal a single rose. Naturally, it's purple, which is apparently our theme for the night. You chuckle before taking the lavender flower in your hand and bringing it up to your nose. You close your eyes and inhale the overwhelming fragrance. You can't tell what's sweeter, the aroma of the rose or the moment itself.

You slowly drag your eyes back up to meet his when he finally speaks. "Would you do me the honor of being my date for this evening?" He steps forward and offers me his arm with a smile, slightly more confident. At a complete loss for words, all you can manage to do is nod your head. You're sure there is also a grin across your face so large, that you can't possibly hide how happy you are in this moment.

The girls were clearly very wrong about you needing to make the first move. Spencer had shown up at my door, like something from a fairy tale, ready to sweep you off my feet and whisk you away to an unknown adventure. As you took his arm and descend the stairs to the lobby, you know in that moment you'd follow him anywhere. He lead you to his car and opened the passenger side, allowing you to slip in. Spencer driving was such a rarity; You are impressed once again.

If you had any uncertainty of how you felt before, it was all but a memory now, replaced with an overwhelming gravitational pull to the man who is sitting next to you in the car. You try not to let your gaze linger too long. Part of you wants to take in how handsome he looks, but the other part just wants to take in every inch of the person who had all but just professed feelings for you. He'd asked you on a date. It felt like a whole new side of him and you are still in awe. You want to take in as much of it as possible, before it ever dares to slip away. Before he changes his mind, or you wake up...I mean there's always a twist right. But you bring your mind back to the present to focus in and enjoy every moment while it lasts.

You want to ask where you are going or why he asked you on a date but settle instead for the comforting silence of the ride. Somehow it isn't awkward. You just enjoy being for the moment, taking in one another's presence.

You can't help but admire his jaw line, the way his curls frame his face. He's definitely prettier than you, which isn't fair, but you don't mind seeing as you get  the pleasure of getting to look at him.

You've been staring a little too long when you notice he quickly glances your direction. Normally he would have turned red as a beet, but instead a small smile creeps on to his face. "You're staring." He says matter of factly, still smiling.

Impressed by his new confident demeanor, you decide to muster up the same confidence.

"If you didn't want me staring, you shouldn't have dressed up to look so darn good."

You catch a glimpse of redness on his face at your statement. You laugh to yourself, glad to still have the shy Spencer around when you want him.

"I didn't say I minded."  He states, smiling while keeping his eyes glued on the road.

Confident Spencer has caught you off guard once again, but you don't want to let that show.

"You're kind of a flirt, you know? Where did that come from?"

He just shrugs and laughs. Your eyes meet for a brief moment, bringing your attentions to the electricity filling the space between the two of you. It's a good thing he's driving, because his attention quickly shifts back to the road. After awhile he parks along a dimly lit street and exits the car, rushing over to open your door before you get the chance. He offers you his harm once again, helping you to stand as you try not to step on your dress.

"M'lady" he says with a cheesy smile.

You can't help but laugh. He's so corny, and you love every moment of it. He leads you to the entrance of what appears to be a theater or music hall of some sort.

"Did you get the times wrong maybe? There's no one else here. Pretty sure it's closed, Spence." You say, brow furrowed as you search for signs of other people.

He gives you a look that you can't quite read, confidence and amusement perhaps, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a set of keys. He unlocks the door and leads you inside. He leads the two of you  through a dark lobby, as if he knows exactly where he's headed. You're grateful, considering you can barely see but a few feet in front of you. You're still unable to determine exactly where he's brought you or why. You can see light crawling out from under a set of ornate wooden doors not too far in front of you.

He pushes to doors open to reveal a beautiful, aged theater. All the lights are on, curtains drawn, string lights draped from the ceiling. It reveals its age and history with every creak of the floor boards, each carving of the railings. The warm glow that fills the room leaves you feeling giddy. You have no idea why he brought you here, but my heart is already racing from excitement. You run your hand along the ornate design carved into the railings as you make your way into the room, taking in every detail.

Your attention is soon drawn to the stage at the front of the room. There, sitting under the spotlight, is a beautiful grand piano. Glossy black with pearly white keys. In front of it sits a piano bench, covered in a deep red velvet. You turn to look at Spencer for the first time since entering the room, curiosity and excitement showing on your features. He's got a mysterious smile that tells you he has a plan.

[lokirupaul]

Lokiru Paul : Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

He got famous playing a certain kind of funny guy on SNL, but when Jason Sudeikis invented Ted Lasso, the sensitive soccer coach with the earnest mustache, the actor found a different gear—and a surprise hit. Now, ahead of the show’s second season, Sudeikis discusses his wild ride of a year and how he’s learning to pay closer attention to what the universe is telling him.

BY ZACH BARON, GQ

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HILL & AUBREY

July 13, 2021

Shirt, $188, and tie (worn at waist), $125, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

On the day that he wrapped shooting on the second season of Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis sat in his trailer in West London and drank a beer and exhaled a little, and then he went to the pitch they film on for the show—Nelson Road Stadium, the characters call it—for one last game of football with his cast and crew. There's this thing called the crossbar challenge, which figures briefly in a midseason Ted Lasso episode: You kick a ball and try to hit not the goal but the crossbar above the goal, which is only four or five inches from top to bottom. And so Sudeikis arrived and, because he can't help himself, started trying to hit the crossbar.



Jason Sudeikis covers the August 2021 issue of GQ. To get a copy, subscribe to GQ.

 Shirt, $228, by Todd Snyder. Shorts, $480, by Bode. Sneakers, his own. Socks, stylist’s own. Watch, $6,300, by Cartier.

Confidence is a funny thing. Sudeikis has been riffing on it, in one way or another, for his whole professional life—particularly the comedy of unearned confidence, which he is well suited, physically, to convey. Sudeikis is acutely aware of “the vessel that my soul is currently, you know, occupying”—six feet one, good hair, strong jaw. He's a former college point guard. On Saturday Night Live, where most of us saw him for the first time, he had a specialty in playing jocular blowhards and loud, self-impressed white men, a specialty he took to Hollywood, in films like Horrible Bosses and Sleeping With Other People. He became so adept at playing those types of characters, Sudeikis said, that at some point he realized he'd have to make an effort to do something different. “It's up to me to not just play an a-hole in every movie,” he said. In conversation he is digressive, occasionally melancholy, prone to long anecdotes and sometimes even actual parables—closer, in other words, to Ted Lasso, the gentle, philosophical football coach he co-created, than any of the preening jerks he used to be known for. But he can definitely kick a soccer ball pretty good.

So he's up there trying to hit the crossbar, and he's got a crowd of actors and crew members gathering around him now, betting on whether he can hit it. And he's getting the ball in the air, mostly, but not quite on the four-to-five-inch strip of metal he needs to hit, and the stakes are escalating (“I bet he can get it in three.” “I bet he can get it in five”), and after he misses the first five tries, Toheeb Jimoh, the actor who plays Sam Obisanya on the show, says, “I think he can get it in 10.” Then Sudeikis proceeds to miss the next four attempts. But, he told me later, “there was no part of me that was like, ‘I'm not gonna hit one of these. I'm not not gonna hit one of these.’ ”

Like I said, confidence is a funny thing. You have to somehow believe that the worst outcome simply won't happen. Sometimes you have to do that while knowing for a fact that the worst outcome is happening, all the time. “It's a very interesting space to live in, where you're living in the questions and the universe is slipping you answers,” Sudeikis said. “And are you—are any of us—open enough, able enough, curious enough to hear them when they arrive?” This sounds oblique, I guess, but I can attest, after spending some time talking to Sudeikis, that everything is a little oblique for him right now. He had the same pandemic year we all had, and in the middle of that, he had Ted Lasso turn into a massive, unexpected hit, and in the middle of that, his split from his partner and the mother of his two children, Olivia Wilde, became public in a way that from a great distance seemed not entirely dissimilar to something that happens to the character he plays on the show that everyone was suddenly watching. “Personal stuff, professional stuff, I mean, it's all…that Venn diagram for me is very”—here he held up two hands to form one circle—“you know?”

Shirt, $195, by Sid Mashburn. T-shirt, $195, by Ralph Lauren. Vintage pants from The Vintage Showroom. Belt, $2,500, by The Row. His own sneakers by Nike x Tom Sachs. Socks, $18 for three pairs, by Nike. Pendant necklaces, $2,100 (tag), and $3,000 (bar), by Tiffany & Co. Jacket (on bench), $498, by Todd Snyder.

Anyway, Sudeikis hit the crossbar on the 10th try. “It's a tremendous sound,” he said of that moment when the ball connects with the frame of the goal. He'd done what he knew he would do. Everyone on the pitch was cheering like they'd won something. It was, for lack of a better way of describing it, a very Ted Lasso moment—a small victory, a crooked poster in a locker room that says Believe. “There's a great Michael J. Fox quote,” Sudeikis told me later, trying to explain the particular brand of wary optimism that he carries around with him, and that he ended up making a show about: “ ‘Don't assume the worst thing's going to happen, because on the off chance it does, you'll have lived through it twice.’ So…why not do the inverse?”

Watch Now:

10 Things Jason Sudeikis Can’t Live Without

Ted Lasso. Man—what an unlikely story. The character was initially dreamed up to serve a very different purpose. Sudeikis first played him in 2013, in a promo for NBC, which had recently acquired the television rights to the Premier League and was trying to inspire American interest in English football. The promo was the length and shape of an SNL sketch and featured a straightforward conceit: A hayseed football (our football) coach is hired as the football (their football) coach of a beloved English club, to teach a game he neither knows nor understands in a place he neither knows nor understands. The joke was simple and boiled down to the central fact that Ted Lasso was an amiable buffoon in short shorts.

But Sudeikis tries to listen to the universe, even in unlikely circumstances, and for whatever reason the character stuck around in his head. So, in time, Sudeikis developed and pitched a series with the same setup—Ted, in England, far from his family, a stranger in a strange land learning a strange game—that Apple eventually bought. But when we next saw Ted Lasso, he had changed. He wasn't loud or obnoxious anymore; he was simply…human. He was a man in the midst of a divorce who missed his son in America. The new version of Ted Lasso was still funny, but now in an earned kind of way, where the jokes he told and the jokes made at his expense spoke to the quality of the man. He had become an encourager, someone who thrills to the talents and dreams of others. He was still ignorant at times, but now he was curious too.

In fact, this is close to something Ted says, by way of Walt Whitman, in one of the first season's most memorable episodes: Be curious, not judgmental. I will confess I get a little emotional every time I watch the scene in which he says this, which uses a game of darts in a pub as an excuse to both stage a philosophical discussion about how to treat other people and to re-create the climactic moment of every sports movie you've ever seen. It's a somewhat strange experience, being moved to tears by a guy with a bushy cartoon mustache and an arsenal of capital-J jokes (“You beating yourself up is like Woody Allen playing the clarinet: I don't want to hear it”), talking about humanity and how we all might get better at it. But that's kind of what the experience of watching the show is. It's about something that almost nothing is about, which is: decency.

In the pilot episode, someone asks Ted if he believes in ghosts, and he says he does, “But more importantly, I think they need to believe in themselves.” That folksy, relentless positivity defines the character and is perhaps one of the reasons Ted Lasso resonated with so many people over the past year. It was late summer, it was fall, it was in the teeth of widespread quarantine and stay-at-home orders. People were inside watching stuff. Here was a guy who confronted hardship, who suffered heartbreak, who couldn't go home. And who, somehow, found his way through all that. Someone not unlike Sudeikis himself.

“If you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Sudeikis likes to say, in homage to his background in competitive sports, that there's no defense in the arts. “The only things you're competing against, I believe, are apathy, cynicism, and ego,” he said. This is a philosophy of Sudeikis's that predates Ted Lasso by many years, though you wouldn't necessarily have known it until recently. He grew up outside Kansas City, in Overland Park, Kansas, a “full jock with thespian tendencies,” as he once described himself. His uncle is George Wendt, who played Norm on Cheers. “He made finding a career in the arts, in acting or whatever, seem plausible,” Sudeikis said. But mostly he was drawn to the camaraderie of athletics. When Sudeikis first tried his hand at professional improv, in the mid-'90s, it was through something called ComedySportz, a national chain with a fake competition angle, teams in sports uniforms, and a referee. Brendan Hunt, who co-created and costars on Ted Lasso, initially met Sudeikis in Chicago, he told me. Sudeikis had traveled the eight hours up from Kansas City to do a show: “Suddenly there's a beat-up Volvo station wagon, like an '83, and this is '97, I think, and these two guys get out, all bleary-eyed, and wearily change into their baseball pants. And one of them was Jason.”

Sudeikis had gone to community college on a basketball scholarship but failed to keep up his grades, and he eventually left school to pursue comedy. For a while, he said, his sincere aspiration was to become a member of the Blue Man Group. He got close. “They flew me out to New York,” he said. “That was August of 2001, right before 9/11. And I got to see myself bald and blue.” (In the end, he wasn't a good enough drummer.) By that time, he was living in Las Vegas with his then partner, Kay Cannon, doing sketch comedy at the newly formed Second City chapter there. “Ego,” Sudeikis told me about this time, “that gets beaten out of you, doing eight shows a week.”

Eventually he was invited to audition for Saturday Night Live. “I didn't want to work on SNL,” Sudeikis said—he'd convinced himself that there were purer and less corporate paths to take. “At a certain point in your comedy journey, you have to look at it as like McDonald's,” he said. “You have to be like: ‘No. Never.’ ” Then he got the call. “It was like having a crush on the prettiest girl at school and being like, ‘She seems like a jerk.’ And it's like, ‘Oh, really? 'Cause she said she liked you.’ ‘She what?!’ ”

Suit, $4,860, by Tom Ford. Vintage t-shirt from The Vintage Showroom. Suspenders, stylist’s own. Shoes, $1,535, by John Lobb.

Sudeikis auditioned, of course, and was hired, in 2003—but as a writer: “It was like winning a gold medal in the thing you've never even trained for. You just happen to be good at the triple jump, and you really love the long jump.” He wrote for a couple of seasons, but he was unhappy—Cannon was still in Las Vegas, and Sudeikis missed performing. Finally he went to Lorne Michaels, to ask for a job as a member of the cast. “He had the best line. I go, ‘I had to give up two things I love the most to take this writing job: performing and living with my wife.’ And on a dime, he just goes, ‘Well, if you had to choose one…’ ”

At Saturday Night Live, Sudeikis often channeled the same level of cheerful optimism and forthright morality that he'd later bring to Ted Lasso, but audiences didn't necessarily notice it at the time. One of Sudeikis's most famous and beloved early sketches on SNL as a performer is 2005's “Two A-holes Buying a Christmas Tree”—Kristen Wiig and Sudeikis, chewing gum, oblivious to their surroundings, terrorizing Jack Black at a Christmas tree stand. It's a joke about a very familiar form of contemporary rudeness; it's also a riff on a certain kind of man who speaks for the woman next to him, whether she wants him to or not. And people laughed and moved on to the next bit, but to this day Sudeikis can tell you about all the ideas that were running through his head when he created the sketch with Wiig. “That scene was all about my belief that we were losing touch with manners,” he told me. “And yet it's also about love, because he loves her, and that's why he interprets everything for her—she never talks directly to the person.” But, he said, sighing, “once you start explaining a joke or something like that, it ceases to be funny.”

Sudeikis brought this type of attention and care to the movies he began acting in too, like the workplace comedy Horrible Bosses, even if it was lost on most of those who watched them. “That movie, Horrible Bosses, is riddled with optimism,” he said. “The rhythms of that movie, of what Jason Bateman and Charlie Day and I are doing, are deeply rooted in Ted Lasso too. But people don't want those answers. They want to hear the three of us cut up and joke around.”

So that's what Sudeikis did. He got used to a certain gap between his intention and how it was understood. During his time at SNL, his marriage fell apart. “You're going through something emotionally and personally, or even professionally if that's affecting you personally, and then you're dressed up like George Bush and you're live on television for eight minutes. You feel like a crazy person. You feel absolutely crazy. You're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're just like, ‘Who am I? What is this? Holy hell.’ ”

For a time he became a tabloid fixture. He remembers “navigating my first sort of public relationship, with January Jones, which was like learning by fire. What is the term? Trial by fire.” In a 2010 GQ article, when confronted with a question about rumors that he was dating Jennifer Aniston, he sarcastically responded that she should be so lucky. “And obviously I'm fucking joking, you know?” Sudeikis said. But back then, he treated interviews like improv—Yes, and—and that could create misunderstandings. Asked once on a podcast about what people tended to get wrong about him, Sudeikis responded, “That I was in a fraternity—or maybe that I would be.”

To that point, Hunt told me, “He's much less the assumed fraternity guy than you'd think.” But Hunt said he also understood where the impression came from: “I don't know where he learned it necessarily, whether it was from his parents, or his basketball coaches, but he exudes an easygoing confidence. And it's easy to hang with a guy like that. But some people are also like, ‘Fuck that guy,’ intrinsically.”

Shirt, $188, and ties (worn at waist), $125 each, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Shoes, $782, by Alden. Socks, $15, by Smart Turnout. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

When he won the Golden Globe, Sudeikis gave a dazed speech while wearing a hoodie, sparking glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” he said.

Shortly after Sudeikis and Wilde got together, near the end of his SNL run (he left the show in 2013), Wilde made a joke during a monologue that she read at a cabaret club about the two of them having sex “like Kenyan marathon runners,” and Sudeikis spent years answering questions about the joke. “The frustrating thing about that is that Olivia said that in a performance setting,” Sudeikis said. “It wasn't like she just was saying it glibly in an interview.” He described the experience of growing into celebrity, and confronting other people's misperceptions of him, as a disorienting one. “You're just being tossed into the situation and then trying to figure it out,” he said. The picture of him that was circulating wasn't exactly the one that he had of himself. But he didn't fight it, either. “You come to be thoughtful about it,” he said. “But also try to stay open to it. I don't ever want to be cynical.”

So he tried to stay open. But it wasn't until Ted Lasso that people really saw the side of him that comported with the way he saw himself. Last year, as it became clear that the show was a hit, he found himself answering, over and over, some version of the same question. The question would vary in its specifics, but the gist of it was always: How much do you and this character actually have in common? Sudeikis told me that over time, in response to people wondering about his exact relationship to Ted, he developed a few different evasive explanations. Ted, Sudeikis would say, was a little like Jason Sudeikis, but after two pints on an empty stomach. He was Sudeikis hanging on the side of a buddy's boat. He was Sudeikis, but on mushrooms. Sometimes, in more honest moments, he would say that Ted is the best version of himself. This, after all, is how art works: If it was just you, then it wouldn't really need to be art in the first place. And so Sudeikis learned to separate himself from Ted, to fudge the distance between art and artist.

Except, he said, after a while, every time he tried to wave off Ted, fellow castmates or old friends of his would correct him to say: “No.” They'd say: “No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.” It's not you on mushrooms, it's not you hanging off a boat, it's just…you. One of Sudeikis's friends, Marcus Mumford, who composed the music for the show, told me, “He is quite like Ted in lots of ways. He has a sort of burning optimism, but also a vulnerability, about him that I really admire.”

Hearing people say this, over and over again, Sudeikis said, “brought me to a very emotional space where, you know, a healthy dose of self-love was allowed to expand through my being and made me…” He trailed off for a moment. “When they're like, ‘No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.’ That's a very lovely thing to hear. I wish it on everybody who gets the opportunity to be or do anything in life and have someone have the chance to say, ‘Hey, that's you. That's you.’ ”

And if he's being honest, that's the way he feels about it too. “It's the closest thing I have to a tattoo,” Sudeikis said about Ted Lasso. “It's the most personal thing I've ever made.”

Sweater, $398, and shirt, $95, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore.

On the first Saturday in June, Sudeikis flew with his children, Otis and Daisy, from London to New York, where he owns a house in Brooklyn. “Brooklyn is home,” he told me simply. While filming the first season of Ted Lasso, he'd had the house renovated—there was black mold to get rid of and other changes to make. “So Olivia and the kids had to rent a lovely apartment in Brooklyn Heights. But it's not home. It's someone else's home.” Saturday was the first time Sudeikis and his children had set foot in their own place in two years. “The kids darted in,” he said. “Last time Daisy was in that house, she slept in a crib. So now she has a new big bed. It was hilarious. I walked up there after like 15 minutes and both rooms were a mess.”

He and Wilde, he said, no longer share the house. They split up, according to Sudeikis, “in November 2020.” The end of their relationship was chronicled in a painful, public way in the tabloids after photos of Wilde holding hands with Harry Styles surfaced in January, setting off a flurry of conflicting timelines and explanations. Sudeikis said that even he didn't have total clarity about the end of the relationship just yet. “I'll have a better understanding of why in a year,” he said, “and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it'll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.” Right now he was just trying to figure out what he was supposed to take away, about himself, from what had happened. “That's an experience that you either learn from or make excuses about,” he said. “You take some responsibility for it, hold yourself accountable for what you do, but then also endeavor to learn something beyond the obvious from it.”

In the first season of Ted Lasso, the comic premise of the show is revealed to be a tragic one: Ted is in England, far from home, doing something he doesn't know how to do and probably shouldn't be doing at all, in order to give his failing marriage space to survive. When the character's wife and son visit, in the show's fifth episode, his wife tells him, “Every day I wake up hoping that I'll feel the way I felt in the beginning. But maybe that's just what marriage is, right?” It's a wrenching moment that also gives new meaning to the show: Ted Lasso's heart is big, but it can also be broken as violently and as easily as anyone else's. By the end of the season, Lasso is divorced and renegotiating his relationships with his now ex-wife and son.

The first season of Ted Lasso had already been written—had already aired—by the time Sudeikis found himself living some aspects of it in real life. “And yet one has nothing to do with the other,” Sudeikis told me. “That's the crazy thing. Everything that happened in season one was based on everything that happened prior to season one. Like, a lot of it three years prior. You know what I mean? The story's bigger than that, I hope. And anything I've gone through, other people have gone through. That's one of the nice things, right? So it's humbling in that way.”

And in fact, the seeds of Ted's heartbreak, Sudeikis said, went all the way back to a dinner he had with Wilde around 2015, during which she first encouraged him to explore whether Ted Lasso could be more than just a bit on NBC. “It was there, the night at dinner, when Olivia was like, ‘You should do it as a show,’ ” he said. They got to talking about it. Sudeikis asked why Ted Lasso would move in the first place, to coach a team he had no real reason to coach: “ ‘Okay, but why would he take this job? Why would a guy at this age take this job to leave? Maybe he's having marital strife. Maybe things aren't good back home, so he needs space.’ And I just riffed it at dinner in 2015 or whenever, late 2014. But it had to be that way. That's what the show is about.”

I said to Sudeikis that I thought that while it was common for artists to put a lot of their lives into their art, it was less common that they end up living aspects of the art in their lives, after the fact.

“I wonder if that's true,” he replied. “I mean, isn't that just a little bit of what Oprah was telling us for years and years? You know, manifestation? Power of thought? That's The Secret in reverse, you know?”

But…if we're being honest, is that a thing you wanted to manifest?

“No. No. But, again, it isn't that. It wasn't that. And again, that's just me knowing the details of it. Like, that's just me knowing where it comes from, where any of it comes from.”

But he acknowledged it had been a hard year. Not necessarily a bad one, but a hard one. “I think it was really neat,” he said. “I think if you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Is that easier said than done? To land like an Avenger?

“I don't know. It's just how I landed. It doesn't mean when you blast back up you're not going to run into a bunch of shit and have to, you know, fight things to get back to the heights that you were at, but I'd take that over 412 bones anytime.”

He paused, then continued: “But there is power in creating 412 bones! Because we all know that a bone, up to a certain age, when it heals, it heals stronger. So, I mean, it's not to knock anybody that doesn't land like an Avenger. Because there's strength in that too.”

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In February, Sudeikis attended the Golden Globes, which were being held remotely on Zoom. He had his misgivings about the event—the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes on the awards, had been in the news for a series of unflattering revelations about its organization, and also the show was taking place in the middle of the night in London. Tom Ford had sent over a suit for Sudeikis to wear, and he tried it on, in his flat in Notting Hill, but he felt ridiculous, there in the middle of the night, and so changed out of it and into a tie-dyed hoodie made by his sister's clothing company. “I wore that hoodie because I didn't wanna fucking wear the fucking top half of a Tom Ford suit,” he said. “I love Tom Ford suits. But it felt weird as shit.”

“With kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’… All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it!”

The rest of this story you know: Sudeikis ended up winning best actor for Ted Lasso and gave a dazed acceptance speech while wearing the hoodie, and this in turn sparked glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. For the record, “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” Sudeikis said. It was just late at night and he didn't want to wear a suit. “So yeah, off it came and it was like, ‘This is how I feel. I believe in moving forward.’ ”

Lately, Sudeikis told me, he had been trying to pay more attention to how he actually felt about any given thing, to all the various signs and omens that present themselves to a person during the course of living their life. Even in his past, he said, there were moments that were obvious in retrospect, in terms of what the universe was trying to tell him, messages he missed entirely at the time. In Vegas, where he was living with Cannon before Saturday Night Live, he developed alopecia and his hair stopped growing, and he didn't know why. And then, at the end of his 30s, “during the nine months before Otis was born and the nine months after he was born,” Sudeikis developed extremely painful sciatica. “I went and got an MRI and was like, ‘Oh, yeah, the jelly doughnut in my L4, L5, is squirting out and touching a nerve.’ ” But why? When he had his second child, this didn't happen at all. So: why?

“I mean, since last November,” Sudeikis said, “the joke that feels more like a parable to me is a guy is sitting at home watching TV and the news breaks in to say flash flood warning. About an hour later he goes outside on his porch and he sees that the whole street is flooded.” You've probably heard the rest of this joke before: While the guy is praying to God for some kind of help, a truck, a boat, and a chopper come by, offering aid, which the guy turns down. God'll provide, he says. Sudeikis finished the joke: “Two hours after that, he's in heaven. He's dead. He says, ‘God, what's up, man? You didn't help me.’ God goes, ‘What do you mean, man? I sent you a pickup truck, I sent you a speedboat, I sent you a helicopter.’ ” So, Sudeikis said, “you can't tell me that hair falling out of my head wasn't—I don't know if it was the speedboat or the pickup truck or the helicopter, but yeah, man, it all comes home to roost. What you resist persists.”

He went on. “That's why I had sciatica,” he said. “That's the speedboat. That was like: ‘Hey, you gotta take a look at your stuff.’ ”

And this is another way that Sudeikis and Ted Lasso are alike, because both are always learning and relearning this lesson, which is: Be curious. Both are philosophical men whose philosophies basically boil down to trying to live as decent a life as is possible. Not just for the sake of it but because to be curious—to find out something new about yourself or someone else—is to be empowered. “I don't know if you remember G.I. Joe growing up,” Sudeikis said, “but they would always end it with a little saying: ‘Oh, now I know.’ ‘Don't put a fork in the outlet.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you could get hurt.’ ‘Oh, now I know.’ And then somebody would say, ‘And knowing is half the battle.’ And I agree with that—with kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. That's the other half. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’ Oh! Well, knowing is half the battle. All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it! Get better at names. Show up five minutes early, make it a point to do it. So, I'm still learning these things. But hopefully I've got plenty of time to do something about it.”

Sudeikis smiled a little wearily: “I mean, at the end of that joke, the guy still got to go to heaven, you know?”

Zach Baron is GQ's senior staff writer.

A version of this story originally appeared in the August 2021 issue with the title "Jason Sudeikis Paints His Masterpiece."

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Photographs by Hill & Aubrey

Styled by Michael Darlington

Grooming by Nicky Austin

Tailoring by Nafisa Tosh

Set design by Hella Keck

Produced by Ragi Dholakia Productions