#lets see how long it takes sober Jeremy to remove this post

[yahoo-the-dagger-blog]

Why neither NBA teams nor top European clubs are likely to want LiAngelo Ball

LaVar Ball pulled middle son LiAngelo out of UCLA on Monday less than three weeks into his suspension for shoplifting. (AP)

One day after he abruptly removed his middle son from UCLA, LaVar Ball began his quest to prepare LiAngelo for next year’s NBA draft.

Within hours came a sobering reminder that plan is probably just a pie-in-the-sky fantasy.

Among the overseas professional clubs that a representative for the Ball family approached about signing 19-year-old LiAngelo and his 16-year-old brother LaMelo is Lietkabelis of the Lithuanian Basketball League, general manager Mantas Ignatavičius confirmed Tuesday to Yahoo Sports. Lietkabelis coach Arturs Stalbergs subsequently scoffed at the idea in a since-deleted tweet that poked fun at LiAngelo’s shoplifting arrest in China last month.

“We have an opening at the security staff since they have an experience in this field,” Stalbergs wrote.

The tweet from Stalbergs reflects the discrepancy between how LaVar touts LiAngelo and how scouts actually see him. LaVar has repeatedly described LiAngelo as a one-and-done talent and a future NBA player, but evaluators familiar with his game are skeptical that he’ll even be able to latch on with a first-division team in Europe, let alone join older brother Lonzo with the Los Angeles Lakers.

A Division I coach who scouted LiAngelo in high school said Tuesday that he projected him as a small-ball power forward at a mid-major program had UCLA not taken him as part of a package deal with his brothers. An NBA scout familiar with LiAngelo’s game echoed that, pegging him as “a mid-major type player” ill-prepared for professional basketball.

“No young players, with the exception of the occasional DeAndre Ayton or Luka Doncic, are good enough to succeed in the top division overseas or in the G League at 18 or 19 years old,” the NBA scout said. “LiAngelo could probably play third division in Spain, France or Germany. I doubt that’s what he has in mind.”

While LiAngelo averaged an eye-popping 33.3 points as a senior at Chino Hills High School and helped lead the team to a 30-win season last year, he doesn’t have Lonzo’s long, athletic frame or impeccable court vision, nor can he score as many ways as LaMelo. The 6-foot-5 swingman is a dangerous spot-up shooter, but he hasn’t shown the quickness or athleticism to attack off the dribble, nor has he learned to take advantage of his strength in the post.

Whether there’s a position LiAngelo can effectively defend is an even bigger concern.

Neither LiAngelo’s high school team nor the AAU program his dad coached ever emphasized defense, preferring instead to outscore opponents. Lonzo overcame that because he has the length, quickness and ball-hawking instincts to bother many opposing point guards, but LiAngelo isn’t blessed with such imposing physical tools. He lacks the lateral quickness to stay in front of wings off the dribble, yet he is a few inches shorter than most power forwards.

“It’s very difficult for me to see him having a longterm pathway to success where he could make more money in basketball than he could have as a UCLA graduate,” said Sam Vecenie, who has covered the NBA draft for The Athletic, Sporting News and CBSSports.com.

“He was going to struggle with the explosiveness and athleticism college basketball brings compared to high school. I’m not going to say I know for a fact he couldn’t defend at that level, but he has never had to do it before and his overall athletic profile doesn’t bode well in the future.”

LiAngelo likely would have come off the bench at UCLA as a freshmen were it not for the shoplifting arrest that derailed his career. He and fellow freshmen Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were detained eight days in China for stealing items from three high-end stores days before the Bruins were scheduled to open their season against Georgia Tech in Shanghai.

The morning after Chinese authorities dropped the charges against the three players and gave them permission to return home, UCLA announced it was indefinitely suspending the trio while the school’s office of student conduct assessed what punishment  to hand down. LiAngelo had already sat out eight games when his dad grew frustrated his son still wasn’t allowed to practice or play and pulled him out of UCLA on Monday.

LaVar has said he will spend the next six months personally preparing LiAngelo for the NBA draft. If LiAngelo goes unselected as expected and fails to earn a training camp invite, then the family would likely have to explore other options.

There’s little incentive for EuroLeague clubs or other first-division European teams to offer LiAngelo a contract because history suggests players his age will struggle.

Elite prospects like Brandon Jennings and Jeremy Tyler had a hard time transitioning from high school basketball to playing against grown men in Italy and Israel and adapting to an unfamiliar language and culture. A three-star recruit like LiAngelo probably wouldn’t fare any better, especially considering his first experience in a foreign country didn’t exactly go smoothly.

“Twenty-five years ago, any college star could go to Europe and be the leading scorer on their team,” ESPN international draft expert Fran Fraschilla said. “After the Dream Team in Barcelona, the level of play in Europe skyrocketed. Now if you’re a really good player in the ACC, the likelihood of you playing in the EuroLeague as a rookie is slim. You have to go somewhere else, establish yourself and work your way up from there. To expect an 18-year-old teenager to do it is nearly impossible unless your name is Luka Doncic or Ricky Rubio or someone like that.”

Playing somewhere like Iceland or Sweden might be a possibility for LiAngelo, but Fraschilla said the starting salary in leagues in those countries is as little as $1,800 a month. LiAngelo would face the same issue in other far-flung leagues in South America, Australia or the Middle East.

Could China be an option for LiAngelo? Only if the terms of his release last month allow him to return to the country.

What about the NBA Developmental League? Only if he can beat out older, more accomplished players for a roster spot, something NBA talent evaluators believe is unlikely.

“I always thought LiAngelo would be a 3-4 year guy, likely a 4-year college player at UCLA,” a front-office source said. “We never really viewed him as NBA prospect this upcoming season or somebody we need to watch.”

In short, the best option for LiAngelo would be to transfer to a mid-major college and try to prove himself over the next few years while working toward a degree, but his father has already nixed that idea. Now he’ll have to take a more obstacle-laden path instead.

“It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for a lower-level club who wanted some publicity to do this, but I just can’t imagine who it would be,” Fraschilla said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible for him to end up somewhere but given the father’s track record and the fact that he was considered basically a mid-major prospect out of high school, I just don’t know how many options he’ll have.”

– – – – – – –

Jeff Eisenberg is a college basketball writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @JeffEisenberg

More from Yahoo Sports: • High school girls basketball team wins 102-0 • Arrest made in cold-case killing of NBA star • Beyonce makes surprise appearance, presents Kaepernick with SI award • Transgender weightlifter medals after social media abuse

[amorremanet]

Sebastian

“ten facts about my characters” meme


1. The background on his phone is currently El Greco’s 1585 Pieta. He wanted to have a picture of one of his dogs, but then he felt like he was being mean to the other five, so he set it to the late Chewie but that just made him feel terrible because she just passed away in March, so he and Pete tried to get all six of the dogs on Seb’s couch at once but they wouldn’t cooperate, so Seb gave up and picked a painting that he likes.


(and while Seb and Pete were trying to corral six dogs onto the couch for a family portrait, Margot just kinda sat aside in one of the chairs, reading and casually telling her boys, “This isn’t going to work” and then she got to go, “I told you so” when it didn’t)



2. Seb loves nicknames, both giving and receiving, but probably his favorite nickname is the one that Pete gave him back in high school, 
“Princess.”

He earned that nickname because he was babbling about how princesses are actually pretty cool, and they can get shit done, and Pete was torn between enjoying this and being frustrated because he had to finish writing an essay for class, so he went, “Okay, if you stop talking about it right now, you can be MY princess. Would that make you happy?”

Long story short, yes. It made Seb very happy.

That said, Pete is the only one who’s allowed to call him, “Princess.” Partly, this is because Pete gets possessive of the nickname because he likes having special nickname privileges and Seb likes making his best friend happy.

On the other hand, it’s partly because Seb is used to most folks who aren’t Pete using, “Princess” to refer to him in a more dismissive, if not outright derogatory, way. There are some people whom he’d mostly be okay with using the term, if not for how much Pete likes having exclusive nickname privileges, but most people are not on that list.

But most people will be told, “I’m Pete’s Princess, not yours,” or if they try it in front of Pete, they might get told, “Hey, he’s my Princess, not yours.”

Just…… it’s not your nickname, please don’t use it.



3. In “your OC’s as text post meme” land, one of the ones that I gave him was, “in alcohol’s defense I’ve done some pretty dumb shit while completely sober too” — which is true.

Like, for example, his lower-back tattoo of Oscar Wilde’s line from De Profundis, “Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling” — which he got in the area of the lower back that is usually called something misogynistic that rhymes with, “damp scamp,” and then he was completely shocked when Todd, Margot, and Pete thought it was about sucking dick.

And Margot and Todd at least tried to explain it, while Pete just could not and fell over laughing because this was the funniest thing to happen all week, and Seb was just like, “Oscar Wilde was talking about prayer! And redemption! It’s from his prison letter to Bosie! I can see where you’re coming from but it’s not about sucking dick, oh my god, why is everyone being like this!”

—and right as Pete finally started calming down, Todd started to go, “Well… I mean, were you drinking? Just tell people you were drunk.”

Seb: “………I was completely sober. *blushes scarlet as Pete falls over laughing again**”

Seb doesn’t regret this tattoo, exactly (because if he did, he could and probably would just get it removed). But he does feel exceptionally silly for not even thinking that it was, in Pete’s words, “Like putting ‘nympho’ on the ass of your jeans, but in tattoo form” (though he still maintains that jfc, that’s not what the quote was about, why is everyone like this)



4. Seb can drive a motorcycle, and owns one, but since his cousin Jeremy died, he hasn’t really been able to ride it without getting upset and, sometimes, having panic attacks that he refuses to admit are panic attacks, because those are for people who have, “real problems” (i.e., literally everyone but him).

Anyway, he doesn’t know it yet (because they haven’t met each other yet), but Sara Grace is very interested in learning how to ride a motorcycle, and while Seb isn’t going to full-on teach her himself, he’ll be glad to give her a couple pointers, and once she has her license, he’ll gladly give her Bettie.

He absolutely named his bike after Bettie Page, because he’s a loser nerd.

5. Seb can be incredibly frustrating to deal with about some things, because he’s so open to hearing other people’s perspectives on things, and hearing most kinds of new information, and revising his opinions about most things…… but then there are other things that he just will not listen about until reality kicks him in the ass, and even that isn’t always a guarantee.

A lot of this has to do with his until-recently undiagnosed and thus untreated or improperly treated depression. Other parts of it have to do with the PTSD that he “totally doesn’t have” (i.e., he totally does have PTSD, but he thinks that he can’t possibly have PTSD because that would be an actual problem, and he doesn’t have any actual problems, because reasons).

The biggest underlying theme in the things that he’s stubborn about is that they go back to things like devaluing himself, invalidating himself and his feelings and his problems, hurting himself and/or justifying it, denying the possibility that he deserves nice things or that nice things are happening to him (e.g., “There’s no way that Stephen is flirting with me, he’s just being nice, he’s a nice person” — Seb, to Pete, after Stephen had just tried to make a joke about sleeping with Seb*), denying that anything is wrong with him or his life or anything, etc.

But, seriously? This is a guy who can, without missing a beat, jump right from complaining about how his big brother Max low-grade hates Margot and Todd, even though Max doesn’t really know them and rejects most information that contradicts his preconceived ideas of who they are and what they mean to Seb…… to insisting that Max probably hates him based more on his own anxiety and self-loathing than on any actual facts evidence of what Max feels about him

Seb is also a guy who can tell you in earnest that he’s a complete idiot, while reading Proust in the original French (and possibly complaining that none of the English translators really get it right), or can tell you that he’s an idiot and follow it up with a completely off-the-cuff lesson on Latin grammar and vocabulary, and just

Trusting Seb’s opinions about himself is a bad idea, because his opinions about himself usually have only a very select relation to reality and some things will end up being magnified while others are ignored, and he’s just not always a reliable narrator



6. Seb is a Hufflepuff, even though he doesn’t appreciate what that means because the HP series isn’t really his thing and he only got Pottermore-Sorted as part of helping Todd apologize to his teenage niece, Bianca. If Seb did understand what this means, he’d probably identify with the stereotype of, “Hufflepuff, ‘taking the lot’ means that they’re the reject House, lol” because that’s how he feels, even if it’s

 not actually accurate.

The Hufflepuff stereotype that he more accurately fits is the, “you have ten fingers? I have ten fingers! Let’s be friends!” one

Granted, it’s a lot harder for him to be like that than it used to be when he was younger, but Seb is still someone who:

decided that he wanted to be Margot’s friend because of how she seemed interesting and cool during the few minutes they spent paired up in a, “get to know the people on your hall” exercise in their freshman year of undergrad

called his Mom after meeting Todd for the first time (and trying to ask him out on a date-date, but botching it a bit and instead getting platonic coffee), because he was just so happy to have made a new friend, even if he’d totally failed to convey any potential romantic interest

and started his first conversation with the guy who would become his sponsor by noticing the CD case for Judy at Carnegie Hall in Nick’s bag and proceeding to kinda geek out at Nick about it, then ask for a bunch of Nick’s opinions

and after having a nice chat with Nick at the after-meeting coffee talk, Seb went home, where Margot was waiting with his dogs, and went, “So, I met someone at group who I really like and I really want him to like me, he’s this nice older guy, he has a cat and a husband and apparently quite a few stories that I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of, he owns an art gallery, his name is Nick, I really like him, omg”

7. Seb is a devout Catholic. It’s pretty easy for people to forget this fact (even his sponsor Nick, and sometimes even his parents), but that’s mostly because:

1. being devout doesn’t mean that he acts like what most people he deals with consider a, “good Catholic boy” (to be fair, he used to act more like that, but he really hasn’t since he was about sixteen, because that was when he had to leave his Catholic school in a pretty Not Good series of events, went to his Dad’s old prep school instead, and in short, went through Some Shit);

and 2. he hasn’t ever seen a contradiction between being gay and non-celibate and totally fine with his sexuality, and being Catholic. If you ask Seb, though, the biggest problems he’s ever had here have had jack squat to do with God or Jesus or his faith, and everything to do with other human beings being homophobic dicks who only liked him as long as they believed hat he was straight.

The latter problem has been slightly relieved by him switching churches, which was pretty much entirely Margot’s doing.

Like, Seb was more or less resigned to sucking it up and going to Mass with a priest who was openly homophobic, and fellow parishioners who had a tendency to be pitying but kinda sorta sympathetic when he showed up looking like shit because he was probably up all night and was likely hungover or still kinda drunk, and might gently mention a second-cousin who had a lot of success with this AA group or that therapist one moment, then say some homophobic bullshit the next because they had no idea they were talking to a gay man

So, Margot found a different parish — one that technically isn’t sanctioned by the Vatican but was started by two gay men who left seminary to be together, and is socially and politically liberal-to-progressive and very pro LGBTQ — and she only didn’t bodily drag Seb to it because he’s 6’3”, she’s 4’11”, and he’s physically stronger than she is besides.

Instead, she went, “I am your friend, I’m concerned about you, and the only way to make me be less concerned, right now? Is to stop acting like the only way to fulfill your spiritual needs is essentially emotional self-harm. You don’t need to debase yourself by fake smiling and catering to those people, they don’t deserve it”


As far as most people are concerned, Margot intervened and started dragging Seb to a different and technically non-Vatican-sanctioned church out of enlightened self interest. Going to his previous church was fucking him up, which was screwing with her ability to work and their, “business ventures,” and that’s it, because Margot has trouble admitting to most people that she has a heart or ever does nice things for other people.

Anyway, another positive here is that Seb is now on legitimately good terms with the people at church, rather than, “good terms as long as they don’t know he’s gay, or fake good terms where he spends most of their conversations internally screaming,” from the other parishioners to the staff and priests.

The youngest of the priests, Fr. Teddy, is one of the few people out of the huge number of contacts in Seb’s phone who’s saved as a favorite.

They have a standing friendly coffee-date every Sunday after Mass, and although Seb doesn’t entirely know if he’s “allowed” to call Teddy a friend or not (because he has a lot of trouble with that in general), they know each other pretty well, Teddy didn’t exactly save Seb’s life once but did get him to help when he couldn’t exactly do it himself, Teddy was there at Seb’s intervention, and Seb is on a first-name basis with Joel, Teddy’s nice Jewish boyfriend while Teddy is on a first-name basis with Margot and Pete, knows Todd kinda but more knows of him, and will be eager to meet Stephen, once he and Seb get serious.

Teddy isn’t exactly skeptical of this superhero thing that Seb sort of stumbled into, but he’s watched someone else he cares about go into it with good intentions only to end up selling out and doing nothing for anyone but himself anymore, so Teddy’s a bit wary

The person in question was Teddy’s cousin Elliott. He’s a member of the All-Stars team out of Manhattan, and…… well. There are a lot of reasons why Teddy doesn’t talk about their connection, and only one of them is that he cares about protecting Elliott’s secret identity, since he’s only famous as his costumed alter-ego.



8. Seb’s only been going to AA and NA meetings for a year-and-a-half, when the story starts, and he already has more than a few examples of Times When He Showed Up For Group While Wearing Something Unfortunate Or Just Barely Avoided This, including but not limited to:

The time he wasn’t paying attention and put on a t-shirt with the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey label on it, simple because it happened to be clean, and when Pete went, “Uh, Princess? Really?” and offered to run back to Seb’s place so he could change, Seb’s solution was to take the shirt off in the middle of their favorite coffee shop, turn it inside out, and put it back on

The time he wasn’t paying attention and threw on a shirt that Todd had left at his place, which was somewhat oversized on Seb, but was also one of the sexual innuendo shirts that Todd, “only wears ironically” (i.e., he totally thinks they’re funny, because Todd has the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old looking up cuss words in the dictionary and just learned what 69 means, but Todd is also a pretentious hipster fuck who can’t just admit that he thinks his stupid sexual innuendo t-shirts are funny, so he has to misuse the term, “irony” to justify wearing them)

Anyway, Seb went to his Friday night NA wearing this little number (a purple shirt with a cartoon bubble tea and a caption that says, “suck my balls”), and actually, he probably would’ve been okay just wearing that, but Pete took it as a sign that Seb and Todd were having sex again (which they weren’t, at least not right within ten days of that incident), and got exasperated and Dramatic™ about sex that his bestie hadn’t even been having


The time when he wasn’t paying attention and grabbed one of Pete’s shirts (which was: 1. just at Seb’s place, because Pete’s over often enough to justify having some spare clothes around, and Seb hadn’t sorted out the laundry yet; and 2. already small on Pete because he wanted it to be tighter-fitting), and Seb sort of just assumed that he’d screwed something up and shrunk the shirt, and maybe this would’ve gotten cleared up if Pete had been able to meet him for coffee before group

—but Pete couldn’t meet for coffee, so Seb showed up in a hot pink Female Trouble t-shirt that was almost a crop-top on him, and didn’t put everything together until Pete got there and went, “Oh, I wondered where I left that.”


And hey, on the second anniversary of his cousin Jeremy’s death, Seb is going to end up going to NA in a pair of scrub pants that belonged to one of Pete’s exes and got left in Pete’s car for over a year, a crop top that belongs to Pete (though, as far as shirt designs go, a black shirt that says, “too cute to be straight” isn’t really that bad), and a pair of sandals that Seb thought he lost but actually they were also in Pete’s car all this time

This is going to happen because Seb still won’t have that much control over his shifts because no one will have worked out what triggers them, exactly, or what La Bête’s deal is.

So, when he and Pete visit Jeremy’s grave, Seb’s emotional upset triggers a shift that he can’t stop, and Pete handles it really well, especially considering that it’s the first time he’s actually seeing Seb turn into a nine-foot-tall wolf-person

……But then, when Pete gets Seb to shift back, Seb is kind of naked. Kind of very naked. And they don’t have enough time to get him home before group, so they make do with whatever clothes Pete can find in his trunk while Seb curls up in the backseat so he can’t get arrested for indecent exposure while stone cold sober



9. 
If you pay attention, what Seb’s wearing on his arms can be a good way to guess how he’s probably doing, emotionally. See, Seb’s arms are kind of a mess:

His tattoos looked fine: on his right, the black outline of a rosary; on his left, the family’s heraldic wolf with its thyrsus staff. His scars, however, were another story. Most were thin and uniform, horizontal and so pale that they almost disappeared against his skin. Just below the wolf was a small circle, left behind by an ex-boyfriend’s lit cigarette. But each arm also had one vertical scar, longer and angrier than the rest. Gnarled like the bark of their Grandfather’s favorite ironwood tree, they cut over the smaller marks and bubbled underneath his ink in a bloodless, silvery shade of pink. Five years after giving them to himself, Seb couldn’t look at them without his insides going cold.

He’d really like to get to the point where he feels more or less secure enough to just wear short sleeves without letting other people’s reactions get to him too much…… but that’s probably a long way off for Seb, not least because he hasn’t actually been working on it that hard so much as wishing for it.

As it stands, Seb has a few usual standbys — long sleeves regardless of the weather; arm warmers (i.e., the long finger-less gloves with different kinds of rivets and lacing or other decor, all of which he got when he was a teenager and having a mall goth Hot Topic phase); different combinations of cuffs and bracelets (many of which are also left over from his Hot Topic phase); and, “nothing, but this should not be seen as a sign of him doing well, just yet”

Arm warmers are usually Seb’s default during the spring, summer, and early autumn, because they can draw attention but they’re also less of a pain than wearing long sleeves during a Baltimore summer. This makes them the hardest one to really get an accurate read on, because he wears them for so many different moods, but they all average out to, “He’s probably not doing great, but then, he’s almost never doing great; he’s about as okay as he ever manages”

Long sleeves tend to mean that Seb is feeling vulnerable and not-that-great, because they might attract attention sure, but it’s usually not as much as he gets while being nearly thirty and wearing his teenage Hot Topic mall goth arm warmers

Unfortunately for Seb, some of the people who love him still associate long sleeves with, “Sebastian is trying to hide something,” especially when he wears them in the middle of summer — which is how we get moments like Max catching his little brother by the wrist and anxiously tugging Seb’s sleeves back to check his arms

Which is just…… Max doesn’t mean for that to be hurtful or anything, but he’s worried about his brother (and not without reason, either) and he’s scared and he really doesn’t get that doing things like this isn’t helpful for myriad reasons, and in his experience, Seb most often wears long sleeves in summer when he’s been hurting himself and/or getting high

Bracelets and the like usually means that consciously, Seb isn’t sure if he wants to talk about something or not, but he probably does want to talk about it and will do so, if someone nudges him or gives him some indication that they’re willing to listen (because he kinda needs to be nudged and invited and otherwise reminded that he’s allowed and encouraged to talk about what he’s feeling with people, it doesn’t make him a burden)

And, at present, unless Seb is at home (either alone or with Pete, Margot, and/or Todd), short sleeves with bare forearms usually mean that Seb is really not in a good state of mind, because he’s probably feeling too tired or sick or hopeless to put on his arm warmers or care how people might react to his scars

10. Once someone gets saved as a favorite in Seb’s phone, they will almost definitely get a special ringtone. About the only exception to this is his sister-in-law, Linda, and that’s mostly because Seb is still scared of her, despite having known her since he was ~16, and thus, he doesn’t know her very well, and he feels like all his ideas just come down to, “I’m scared of you and that feels really mean.” But some of the other ringtones he’s given people are:

Pete: Natasha Richardson’s version of “Mein Herr” from Cabaret (because it’s Pete’s favorite version of his favorite song from his favorite musical)

Margot: “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” from The Great Mouse Detective

Todd: “Friday, I’m In Love” by The Cure (because one of the first things Seb and Todd bonded over was The Cure)

Nick: Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall performance of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”

Marceline, his Mom: Bernadette Peters’ version of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”

Max: “I Don’t Want To Know” by Fleetwood Mac

Unbeknownst to Seb, his ringtone in Max’s phone is Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” which is another of the Stevie Nicks-penned numbers on their Rumours album, and yes, Max and Seb are aware that she wrote the songs about her romantic relationship with Lindsey Buckingham

But both of them suck at actually associating their songs of choice with romance at all, because they first and foremost associate Fleetwood Mac with Marceline

Adelaide: “Be Prepared” from The Lion King (he originally gave her, “This Corrosion” by The Sisters of Mercy, but Addie took exception to that)

Ambrose: “Magic Dance” by David Bowie, from Labyrinth — specifically, the, “you remind me of the babe!” “what babe?” “the babe with the power!” part, because Seb is a dweeb and has happy memories associating his middle brother with Labyrinth

He’s also a dweeb who still calls his middle brother, “Ambrosius,” which he started doing when they were kids and he was having a hardcore Labyrinth Thing

But Ambrose just calls him, “Sir Didymus” back, so it kinda balances out

Abe, his Dad: “The Flying Purple People Eater” (it’s probably better not to ask why this is one of their father-son things, because neither of them can explain it in any kind of succinct fashion that makes sense to anyone but them)

Abe also has a custom ringtone for Seb. He literally only learned how to get custom ringtones (read: asked Adelaide to please do it for him) so he could set Seb’s ringtone as, “Carry On, Wayward Son”

Seb is aware of this, but he really doesn’t know how he feels about it

Fr. Teddy: “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen

Stephen: currently has Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” because he’s mentioned that it’s one of his favorite songs before, but after their eventual relationship upgrade, Seb’s going to change it to Whitney Houston’s, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody Who Loves Me,” which is higher up Stephen’s favorite song list and Seb feels like it’s more fitting for a boyfriend

……except that Pete knows the passcode into Seb’s phone and will amuse himself by periodically changing Stephen’s ringtone to The Divynyls’ “I Touch Myself” or George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex,” then moving Seb’s phone and pretending his is dead or charging so Seb has to ask Stephen to call it

This won’t always work out exactly how Pete wants, but he still tried, okay

Bonus fact (brought to you entirely by his headcanon casting and the, “I thought it was funny, so sue me” foundation): He doesn’t like sand. Or the beach. Especially not the beach. Like, sand is gross and it gets everywhere, and who the Hell decided to make, “sex on the beach” a romantic trope and what the fuck was wrong with them because it is actually terrible, there is sand in places where there ought not be sand, what is wrong with people — but the beach is even worse than the sand.


Seriously, when he and Julian were dating each other for the first time, they very nearly didn’t make it past the hurdle of, “Julian loves the beach and wants to drag Seb to the beach (and make Seb pretty please pay for it because his parents are “old as BALLS” money rich white people and Julian’s are middle-class white people from Minnesota), and ugh why do you want to stay home for spring break, who cares if Pete is in a play, he’ll forgive you for not going to opening night, I wanna go to the beach and you’re just trying to get out of going to the beach because you’re being difficult, you’re being obstinate, and you’re being difficult, and if we go to Pete’s play and don’t leave ‘til after his opening night, can we please please pleeeeease go to the beach”

Except that, rather than dealing with the fact that Julian was pushing him around (despite also being the one more open to compromise, for once), Seb just went, “No, my only objection is that I irrationally dislike the beach”


His aversion to going to the beach has only gotten worse since then, and only partially because he and Julian went to the beach for that spring break and Julian went, “Please, please, can we, please, please, please” about sex on the beach until Seb agreed to try it.

(They did not succeed in this effort, because Julian was confronted with the reality of having sex on the beach and went, “This is significantly less romantic and fun than I’ve been led to believe. ……Take me back to the hotel, I have sand in places where I don’t want for there to be sand :(” — but they still tried)


The other big part has to do with how much of a mess Seb’s arms are, and how many scars he has elsewhere, and how he wouldn’t even mind the fact that he burns super-easily (which he used to mind quite a bit), but he doesn’t want to deal with the questions that he can attract based on his scars, or with the way that people are super-unsubtle about trying not to look at his scars but still looking at them and giving him sad, pitying looks, or with wearing long sleeves and/or “leftover from when he had a Hot Topic mall goth phase” arm warmers at the beach and attracting attention because he’s doing that



—and in closing, this meme was hard because I felt torn between, “oh yeah, I have a lot of things to say about the little shit who started this whole series,” “oh, but do I talk about him too much already,” “oh, but what parts have I shared enough that I don’t need to anymore,” “oh, but which ones do I need to share for context,” “oh, but how much linking to things I’ve shared before can I get away with and not look conceited,” and the impulse to just go, “okay, you guys, look, I know he’s a mess, but he’s MY mess”

He’s kind of a disaster but he’s trying his best, okay

*: And here is the conversation in question, as evidence of how totally not subtle Stephen was being:

“Nothing, [Todd] didn’t… His and Pete’s friendship is founded on hating the same things and picking on each other.” Seb shook his head. “Pete doesn’t know what he’s talking about, though, okay?” he said. “I wasn’t with Todd last night. Or anybody. Except my dogs. I only had a, ‘baking ’til I felt tired, then spacing out to Catching All-Stars reruns until I finally nodded off’-style long night.”

“I know how that goes. Where it’s like…” Stephen smirked, and snickered. “Like, you’re trying to knock yourself out…” He failed to stifle a chuckle. “I mean, like…” He snorted, and ducked his head as he giggled. “Like, the kind of night when you need intellectual Novocaine instead of lullabies?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Seb laughed into his hand. “Being with somebody probably would’ve been better for me. Or worked sooner. I lost track of how long it took to get to sleep.”

“Yeah, well, if you wanted to have somebody, then I bet I could…” He was definitely leaning in, now. He bit his lip, glancing around like he felt guilty about something. “If you wanted, I could get you in bed by, I don’t know, eleven-thirty? Or like, whenever you want?”

“What, is that, like… an invitation?”

A glimmer sparked up behind Stephen’s eyes. His smile twinkled. Seb was the one leaning in, now, and Stephen’s mouth was right there, and—

“Well, I guess I’m inviting myself to get my own goddamn beverage, since you two are busy flirting.” Pete glowered and, elbowing between them, he said, “Stephen, you’re adorable, but if you’re gonna distract my Princess, then can you please just kiss him already.”

So, yeah. Like…… yes, Stephen botched the delivery because he isn’t that great at actually telling jokes, but he’s not being subtle about flirting with Seb right now and it’s completely fair for Pete to be exasperated as fuck with his Princess when Seb tries to go, “I bet Stephen’s just being nice, because he’s a nice person, not like he’s actually interested in me”