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banzaitaka · 3 years ago

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I Hate How I Love

Chapter 1: Dotted Scarf

Introduction

Chapter 2: Replay

The rain might be important to the whole planet earth, the rain might help thousands of people relax and even fall asleep when they usually are not able too.

But right on that day, rain might've been the worst that could've happened.

(Y/N) was heading home from an art collaboration with Nao, a fellow youtuber. He was so relieved when they were finally done filming, since he didn't want his face to be public and thus spent all the recording time wearing a face mask and hood. Torture during summer, indeed. They had been doing several little painting challenges for both their channels, maybe enough to make it into 2 parts each.

That's actually what (Y/N) was wondering about as he exited Nao's art studio in the middle of town. He already had pulled down the mask, leaving it tugged under his chin, and once he stepped into the burning sun, he freed the top of his head from the nearly unbearable heat as well. Not that it helped much, but it still did a bit.

If someone were to ask why he was wearing an oversized hoodie in the middle of summer, he'd reply with a simple "I dunno". When actually he just didn't like his skin to be exposed.

"Hot! Hot!", Zazu, his African Grey Parrot exclaimed, as if he was complaining. (Y/N) was sure he was just acknowledging the temperature. He adjusted his bird's harness to hopefully make it fit more comfortably.

The initial plan was to keep Zazu at home, but seeing as (Y/N) was gone often for longer periods of time the last few days, he didn't want to leave him all alone again.

Besides, going outside did the parrot good, as well as being able to see Nao again. She really grew on Zazu, kind of, well it was enough for him to land on her shoulder like he did with his owner. Something he surely was reluctant about when it came to most people.

In fact, the only ones were (Y/N), Nao and the siblings living next door.

The young man quietly cursed to himself, speeding up his step to go where he thought was the direction to the bus stop. Shame he forgot his headphones at home, he could really use some music to fill the silence. It wasn't crowded that day, surprisingly, and thus pretty quiet. It made (Y/N) wonder if there was something he missed out on, some news, some weather forecast, anything.

The silence unsettled him just slightly, still more than he'd like to admit. He was never a fan of silence, it seemed to be always there right before something bad happened.

If it weren't for Zazu to speak up every few minutes, he might've gone mad by now.

It only leaves the young man to suffer in the silence for a little while until his parrot decides to sound out some words to communicate with him. Like he did then, "We're going home?"

(Y/N) chuckled to himself, "Yeah, we're going home, that's why we said 'bye bye' to Nao.", he explained, scratching the bird's head.

"Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch."

Oh how the (Y/HC)-haired loved his bird.

They continued having a little chat as they made their way to the bus stop. They weren't planning on getting home by bus, (Y/N)'s neighbor was waiting there to pick them up. Bus driving was way to stressful for the both of them. They were real lucky to get offered a ride.

//Okay, there is that arts 'n' crafts store thing...So I gotta do a right turn here.//

And so he turned right, into a side passage. He noted some scribbled on posters on the dirty walls and trash littering the equally dirty ground.

Having Zazu hop around his shoulder, repeating "That's ew.", "Very filthy.", and, "So much dirt.", at everything that caught his attention ceased all tension that was building up.

Up until, "Rain!", "Huh!?", (Y/N) didn't mean to react so loudly, but this was not the right moment for whatever god there was to try and turn this city into another Atlantis, as (Y/N) liked to say.

The male followed his buddy's gaze, looking up in the sky. Right in that moment, a rather big, at least it felt like it, raindrop landed right on (Y/N)'s nose. The male grimaced, quick to lower his head again, wiping the sky water from his face.

It took quite a bit of self control not to curse, looking at the dark spots appearing all around them as more drops followed.

Within literal seconds, it was pouring down on them like there was no tomorrow.

"Fuck!"

"Zazu!"

There wasn't much time to scold his bird for something he taught him on accident, he had to run. Find something to hide from the rain.

The bos stop was still quite far away, so there was no way he'd just bolt for it.

He had a bird with him, nuh uh, he wasn't going to make him go through that.

So, plan was:

1. Find shelter

2. Call neighbor and hope she can get the car to where they hopefully find shelter

Brilliant.

The bird was quick to be scooped into the young man's arms, secure, and as safe from the raging raindrops as possible. Obviously it had to rain on the only day he brought the bird along.

//So it was the weather forecast.//, (Y/N) had a sour expression on his face, any remaining happy feels gone, washed away.

He was quick to be completely drenched, his hair, his face, his clothes. He was sure he looked absolutely ravishing.

Lucky he didn't put any makeup on, that would've been a total disaster.

A heavy sigh escaped his aching lungs, there was a porch in the distance, finally!

Being in such a big town, you'd think there'd be more buildings with a roof in the front, and maybe there was and he just didn't see them.

But that didn't matter. What mattered was getting out of the rain quickly. (Y/N) felt like his legs were going to give in once he finally arrived at his destination. They were burning. He panted, "You...You okay, buddy?"

The man loosened his grip around the bird. Slowly, Zazu climbed up one of (Y/N)'s arms and ruffled his feathers, "Ew! Ew!" He was dry for the most part, his head and wings got pretty wet though. And he certainly didn't like it.

"Someone doesn't like the rain."

The strange voice made (Y/N) jump. He didn't even notice there was another person.

The stranger chuckled at his reaction, coming out from behind a post.

He had green hair, tied together in a rat tail at the back, paired with jade eyes. He was wearing a black suit with a white dress shirt and a red tie.

And ontop of it all, a dotted scarf in orange-y hues, wrapped around his neck.

Despite having a friendly smile on his face, he unsettled (Y/N) in a way. But maybe it was still the shock of somebody making themselves present so suddenly. Or the fact the (Y/HC)-haired's social battery was close to running out.

Or because (Y/N) could immediately feel his gay heart pounding at the sight of such a handsome man.

Still, (Y/N) put a smile on his own face to not seem rude, "Yeah, rain ain't our thing."

"I look stupid!", Zazu complained, "I'm cold."

The bird climbed back down the arm and made his owner envelope his arms around him again to try and warm up.

"You think you look stupid? Have you seen me?", he wished he could really joke around like that, but he actually felt very self conscious being drenched like that. More so with that handsome stranger looking at him so closely.

Wait, why was he staring like that?

Heat rose to (Y/N)'s cheeks, he was sure he looked like a wet poodle.

He looked at the other through his eyelashes with an embarrassed look on his face.

The green-haired let out a laugh, not minding how he got caught staring, "Why, you look rather stunning in my eyes.", he stepped towards them as he unwrapped his scraf from around his neck, "But you're right, it is cold. Here, I'll lend you this." He didn't even give (Y/N) time to react to the compliment, other than having him widen his eyes.

The stranger offered the cloth to the duo. "Oh, are you sure?", (Y/N) tried to act natural, eyed the scarf nervously, while being completely overwhelmed on the inside, //Did he just call me 'stunning'??//

The man took another step forward and laid the scarf over the other's arms and Zazu's back, "Yes, I'm sure."

They were standing so close to each other at this point. And (Y/N) didn't know what to do, except for staring into the stranger's strangely dull eyes.

There was a certain spark missing in them.

Maybe that's why he was unsettled after all?

"Of course, I'd like to get it back, so...How about we meet up in 2 days? Here?", he motioned to the front door of the shop they were staying infront of.

Upon closer inspection, it seemed like a cafe. It was closed at that time.

"Around 2, I'd suggest."

(Y/N) was too baffled from the whole situation, he could just nod in agreement.

It was almost like this was planned.

"Alright. See you then."

"See you..."

"Gay panic?", Zazu looked up at his ower.

"What!? No-!"

The green-haired stopped in his tracks to look back at the other male. He sent him a quick wink and went away, to a black car it seemed.

(Y/N) wasn't exactly paying attention to that part. He was too caught up in simping for someone he talked to for about 3 minutes, at most.

This all happened way too fast, way too perfectly. As if this was rehearsed.

But more about that later, (Y/N) had to get home.

#yttd #yttd x reader #yttd x male reader #your turn to die #your turn to die x reader #your turn to die x male reader #x reader #x male reader #sou hiyori #sou hiyori x reader #sou hiyori x male reader #yttd midori #yttd midori x reader #yttd midori x male reader #real sou hiyori #yttd fic #i hate how i love

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happybirthday-unusannus · 3 years ago

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It wouldn’t let me send this so I’ll try here (hopefully you see this soon :P) here’s all the ideas written down :P

Parkour, Claustrophobic , Blacklight , Watching Ethan Sleep, 5 Senses, Guessing Each Other's Wills, William Osman How Many Licks, What’s Something You’ve Always wanted to do Before you Die, Nipple Piercing, Tattoo, Making Weapons for Each Other, 500v2 Paintball, Stunt Car Driving, Sky Diving Bungee Jumping, Performing in a Burlesques Show, Bullet Ant, How Much Criticism Can Ninja Take, How Many Copies of Fortnite can a Bullet Take (Or Elmo), Pressuring David Dobrik to Buy us a Car, Susan Wojcicki Lie Detector, Learn Braille, Driving Drunk in Go Karts, Forcing Shane Dawson to do a Conspiracy Video on us, Cage Diving, Trivia Phone Drop, Covered in Bees, Find Each Other’s Kink with a Thermal Dick Cam, Micheal Reeves does Something Fucked Up, Craigslist Stylist , Being Each Other’s Personal Assistants , Lemonade Stand, Head2Head, Using As Seen on TV Products, Trying to Trigger the ADpocalypse , Buying Everything My Dog Touches (Slavery?), Building a House of Cards on Chica, Blood Drive, Getting an Enema/Super Soaker Enema, Going to Couples Therapy , Going to Area 51, Going to Area 52, Fuck Machine Thanksgiving, Props Pop-Up Shop, Painting the Office with Our Bodies, The Shining Challenge, Youtuber Prom, Youtuber Speed Collabs, Trying to Make Each Other Fall Asleep, Staying Awake As Long As Possible, One Hour Movie Challenge , Eating Like the Rock for a Day, Parasailing, Who Can Do it First (Back Tuck V Back Full), Yoga On Paddleboards, Jiu Jitsu, Learning to Ride a Tandem Bike , Mattress Rafting, Tap Dancing Classes, Doubles Ice Skating, Interviewing a Porn Star, How Many Rubs?, Making Each Other’s Fursona, Going to Mark’s Storage Unit, Rent the Most Expensive AirBND, Living Like Team10 for a Day, Youtuber Sleepover Party, Waterboarding or Tickle Torture, Volcano, How Far Can we Get on Birds, Youtuber Graduation, ASMR Slime Making, Building GoKarts (The Downhill Kind?), Getting a Couples Massage, Surfing Lessons, Racoon Cafe, Cuddling Workshop, Chainsaw Carving, Trapeze, Curling Lessons, Becoming an EMT, Clown Class, Parkour Class, Meditation Speed Dating, Becoming an EMT, Learning Accents from a Linguistics Coach, Haunted House Blood Drive, Fire House?, Saving Each Other From Drowning, Pizza Delivery to Fans, Quicksand, Darkness for 24 Hours, Geocaching, Hello Darkness my Old Friend, Camp Annus- Kernville, Mud Wrestling, Trying to Give Ethan a Beard, Quicksand, Making Realistic Things, (Arm Chair/ Bean Bag), Dog Cone, Glory Hole, Burying Ethan in Sand, The Perfect Disguise, Smelliest Smells, Gamble All the Adsense, Cooking Roadkill (mentioned in Funhaus Podcast), Laxative Olympics (mentioned in Funhaus Podcast, The Florida Man Game (mentioned in Funhaus Podcast), Netti Pot Enema, Fix the Barrel then blow it up, Asparagus Pee Sauna

God…. I honestly wish they would do some of these activities just on their normal channel

#unus annus #ask reply #not happy birthday #toiletluigi

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bitty-bits · 3 years ago

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Back In Action

DALL-E 2 Background (Prompt: Dreamy background painting with a checkered pattern grass and blue mountains in the distance), Emojis made for the SineTri Discord. Join us!

After a few months, I'm finally back doing this thing.

I'm back here probably cuz I do have a lot more to say than last time. Tumblr's embeds of posts don't seem to be very good, I've noticed. Oh well. Again you'll likely see me on that dreaded hellsite a lot more than here, but I'll still try to write here to maintain a tradition, and hopefully I won't be gone for too long again. Anyways here's what I've been doing lately.

New Computer

Yeah!

Without giving away too much details as for how this happened, I indeed have a new computer (notebook, specifically, as I've been used to the form factor my whole life, probably) and probably the first time it is almost on par with the latest high end specs, and, no memes, it has an RTX graphics card. What else can I say about it... well, using it so far has been a positive experience for the most part, my only complaint would be how "not good" the trackpad is. Cuz you know, I actually got used to drawing with the trackpad (believe it or not) on my previous notebook, which is still a pretty good notebook that still works and can still do a lot (I was able to play and beat Super Mario 3D World emulated on it at almost full speed, so I think that says something) so I hope whoever uses it next makes a good use out of it. I'd say outside of being "mid" (that's the Funny Word Them Kid's These Dayz R Usein' Right) its only problem is its battery doesn't really work anymore so it'll only work while plugged in, which is probably completely my fault, so I'm hoping to avoid this issue on the new computer. (Tip: There's an useful VBScript you can get and put it on Windows' "startup programs" folder that will show a message whenever your battery is close to 100% charge. Google it!)

Trackpad issues aside, I still have a standard optical mouse to use, but even then, It's still gonna take getting used to... using one again. I'm weird.

Cut it Out, Ninjin! - Preservation Efforts (Post-Warner Bros. Discovery Fiasco Update)

With all the clownery going down lately with the Warner Bros. + Discovery merger, the Ninjin cartoon series (my biggest "brainrot" of the year pretty much) unfortunately also fell victim to the "great cartoon purge" that happened as a result of WBD's terrible (and inefficient) cost cutting decisions. Fortunately, the timing for me to get into this series couldn't have been better, and at least the show staff got to finish a season right before the shitstorm, so finished material didn't go unreleased. That said we can only hope the series somehow makes a comeback or is revived in some form, as at least Warner doesn't own the Ninjin IP (as far as I'm aware).

With the series gone from HBO Max, YouTube and all of Cartoon Network itself (though not without a few exceptions still left here and there), it's important to remember that preservation is a must, and something to keep in mind from start to end in any project. Here's what a staff member at Birdo studio had to say on the matter (Portuguese):

for those who work on animated shows, for the love of god, don't forget to always keep a copy of the final versions of your scenes/episodes downloaded (and if you're the director, back up the entire series) cuz if we just rely on the son of a bitch companies and channels everything will be gone then we won't even be able to assemble an animation reel / portfolio afterwards

As I have shared in the first blog post, I have made an archive of pretty much all the CN Ninjin content that I could find, on a MEGA folder, which I've recently updated in light of the unfortunate news - Every episode is now available as MKV (Matroska Video) files with multiple audio channels (Original Portuguese, as well as the Spanish and English dubs!) which I plan to later still update to have English fansubs done by yours truly (So you don't have to stick to the... not very amazing English dub), you will also find the shorts (which I've already given subtitles!) and some comics too, which I still gotta translate.

I'll also make extra links for easier sharing soon.

We can't let the big corporations win again as they usually do.

You can buy Ninjin: Clash of Carrots (the game the series was based on!) on Steam here, and Pocket Trap's latest game, Dodgeball Academia, here!

Let's try to keep Ninjin alive. Please.

Do it for her.

Calimero Subtitles Project Returns

After staying stagnant for at least 2 years, interest in subtitling Calimero's 1992 anime by Toei Animation (easily my favorite Calimero-related media) ressurged. Likely due to me... having figured out what an MKV file even is and what it can have, as well as coming across what is now my favorite software for subtitle making in general, SubtitleEdit (Not very creative, I know), and learning about the more advanced, fancy subtitle formats a good chunk of anime (fan)subs use. Also the project expanded a little; it's gonna be more than just the subtitles over a single specific dub of the anime, actually it'll have most of the dubs ever made of the show that can be found. A lot of audio tracks in still considerably small files! I sure do love me some Matroska files. The current plan is for me to subtitle the first half of the series (26 episodes, "season 1", if you will) all by myself, while the second half is a bit tricky, as only the German, Italian and Arabic dubs have the entire series found. But I already have a German friend willing to help with those, and there are also a couple episodes from the second half in the original Japanese version found, so if you're fluent in any of these languages and are interested in helping out, feel free to tell me! Once the project is finished we will finally have one convenient place to watch this series, in a variety of language dubs, and English subs, and hopefully more people in the West will acquire interest for it.

My Channel for posting Video Game Music, CalimeroVGM on YouTube

Not "high quality rips" in the SiivaGunner sense, but actual VGM that either can't be found on YouTube elsewhere, or if it can be, the quality kinda sucks, or it's in a video with other tracks. I may have done a lot for SiivaGunner, and continue to do "high quality ripping" over on my music channel (ples suscribe), but I also have been contributing a lot to actual ripping and video game music preservation in general, and decided to make a channel dedicated to it (here), so I don't have to pollute my channel of miscellaneous whatevers, Lu9.2, which is already kind of polluted. So whenever I have any new rips, or even a few "experiments" with VGM, I'll put it on this relatively new channel. I encourage you to subscribe to it at least so I can get to 100 and get a custom URL, because I just am the weird kinda guy who likes neat looking URLs.

What I've Been Playing / Watching

Just in case people would want to know, I'd probably talk about it on Twitter anyways, but let's go:

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series

I love Klonoa. Babe, GIVE me Klonoa. Played the first game (original PS1 version) back in either 2015 or 2016, though I was already a fan for longer, but loved it. The remastered version is very charming and combines the best of both the original colorful PS1 version and the Wii remake. And with this I was finally able to experience the sequel for the first time, and again, a masterpiece. Wish they kept some of the classic UI for the first game and other minor details, but that aside, this collection needs to succeed. This franchise needs to succeed.

Lucky Star

After giving up on watching it in 2015 (I was watching the English dub and didn't know what type of anime I was even expecting, Oops) I decide to give this another shot, this time subbed. What I can say is - I enjoy. It's fun. I guess my tastes have changed over the years too.

More Stuff

Moving (Again)

Seems like I do that a lot, but hopefully it'll actually stick now. Some unexpected problems rose in the current apartment I'm in. Nothing too serious (though it's only a matter of time) but the new place will be pretty big I think. I just hope I don't lose anything during the moving process again.

Fonts For Fun

Sometimes I also try my hand at typography, mostly recreating stuff I see, and this year I've made a few (and posted some older ones I had) fonts just for the fun of it (though they probably are useful)

You can check them out here.

Where's Part 3 Of Closing Logos Extended By Jukebox AI?

Not too long ago after releasing Part 2 of my intriguing Jukebox AI series, already some of the more "peculiar" logo-obsessed (presumably) children started to "predict" Part 3, some eben by just posting what will be on Part 3, conjuring up facts, classic Greeny Phatom style. Told that guy to wait until August.

...and I really wish I could keep such promises but I really just don't find the time and energy to put into those videos, not to mention the upsampling process that I still have to put some of the samples through. Though it's less time consuming now, there's still the entire editing and visuals part. I'm doing these videos completely for free, you know. Unless you're fine with something half-baked, be patient.

Also there will be more Jukebox AI videos in general, not just the logo ones, I hope you look forward to those too.

Donald Alves' Original Flash Website Is Now A Progressive Web App

Yeah. Did this just for fun. And to see what kind of stuff I can do with PWA features in general. It's still not a full "installable" web app, but it should work as its own thing on your phone no problem. Don't know who Donald Alves is? Well, this is one of those things that you just had to be there at the time, dude.

Conclusion

That was a big one! Hopefully next post will come before Christmas. Maybe before Brazil's presidential elections too... oh god I'm scared

Bitty's Message of the Day

I do not like beans.

#newsletter #preservation #personal

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tvitr · 4 years ago

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uwu I don’t make the ruwules

(Okay fine, reasons/opinions below the cut but be warned! I won’t be holding back on game or book spoilers. Or rambling. This got longer than I anticipated lol)

BETTER IN THE BOOK

Eis “Fireman Sam” Glover: I don’t know what the game was trying to do with this one. I guess he gets overwhelmed by the fire and loses his composure or gets scared or... something? Also why did he not bring a hose. Or a mask. This is why so many reviewers thought Wonderworld was a metaphor for purgatory and all the inhabitants are dead I swear. Who cares, the book handled it a lot better. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but there’s definitely a good idea here with some interesting themes. The gist is that he feels ashamed following his captain’s orders to retreat during a serious blaze, which his colleagues disobeyed, and his colleagues are later hailed as heroes by the press. Is Balan the Book trying to take on toxic masculinity...? How brave. Tl;dr, the book conveyed the story a Hell of lot better than the game. Honestly I’m surprised this is the only one.

BETTER IN THE GAME

Haoyu “Airplane Boi” Chang: So the book tried waaaay too hard to draw a parallel between Haoyu and Fiona (aka, Dolphin Girl) to the point that they both share a similar backstory, in that they had a hobby which led to a near-fatal accident and now they’re too traumatised to resume said hobby. And that’s not a bad thing per se but... “near fatal accident” was already Fiona’s backstory. We didn’t need a duplicate. And this is more personal preference, but I kinda liked Haoyu’s story in the game anyway. His failure at building a functioning aeroplane out of crap he found in his garage is endearingly funny in the game, and the resolution of him taking time out to sit down and study before building anything is a nice spin on the whole “if at first you don’t succeed” theme the chapter wanted.

Sana “Bird Lady” Hudson: So the book decided they didn’t want to make Cal an angry sore loser so guess what? They made Sana an angry misanthrope. Wonderful. Okay maybe that’s harsh, but she definitely came off as very bitter and unsympathetic in the book. Like there’s a scene at the end where she harasses a firefighter and tries to steal a fire engine because they’re working on a building fire and not supervising her park. That’s not a character you wanna root for. That’s a Karen. The game had a better plot thread and resolution to her story rather than a boring cookie-cutter “humans vs. nature grrrr humans are so evil” story, like the game story here had a bit more depth to it and approached the topic more maturely than the book did. Which is ironic considering how hilariously edgy the book gets sometimes, but I guess throwing a few smashed eggs and frozen bird skeletons into your story doesn’t mean anything if you’re still going to paint such a black-and-white narrative.

Iben “Frozen Elsa” Bia: This story didn’t need dialogue. Like... we don’t need her to justify why she’s upset her parents are dead because we’d already assume that. They’re her parents! Of course we’d assume she’d be upset! They died! Simultaneously! That’s horrible! WE DON’T NEED HER TO EXPLAIN THIS! Also her dialogue in the book was... pretty terrible, not gonna lie. Like if you’re gonna insist on dialogue at least make it gOOD. I’m actually planning on just reviewing her book scene so I can fully articulate just how bad it is anyway, so stay tuned for that mess lol.

FINE IN BOTH

I mean there’s not really too much to say here but anyways:

Jose/”The Farmer” having a family in the book gives him a bit more depth, even if we never hear from them again after his backstory dump.

Fiona/”Dolphin Girl” almost drowns in a slightly different way, with a dolphin straight up pulling her mask off rather than knocking it out of her mouth, and the book also goes more into detail about her love for diving and dolphins. Also the book ships her and Haoyu like. So hard. Like they never shut up about how similar they are or what they other’s doing or if the other’s okay or not. By the end of it I was expecting them to just start making out in front of everyone, they’re that obsessed with each other. And it would be funny if they didn’t use this to wreck Haoyu’s backstory like I mentioned earlier.

Yuri/”Bug Kid”/”Is that a Pokémon reference?” is now being kinda bullied for liking bugs, which yeah gives her more depth and reason to be upset but I also kinda related to her just being that One Kid with interests that nobody else had. But it’s not as bad as some of the other changes, so I can let it slide.

Atillio/Clown and Bruce/Old Man are the same, nothing to say here.

Lucy/”The Artist” is a total drama queen but then again so are Art People so I can let it slide. I did like them changing her problem from “artist’s block” (seriously?) to her feeling too under pressure to create masterpieces, unless that’s what the game was aiming for? Oh who cares.

JUST A BIG MESS

Cass “Dead Cat Girl” Milligan: This is a weird one because the story is the same between the game and book (though the book mentions she witnessed a more severe car accident rather than a speeding car which she assumes kills the cat, and the cat isn’t even her cat, it’s a stray) but the story itself is... flawed. According to the book, they wanted to convey the idea that running away from the accident was irresponsible, and she just needed to look back and she’d see her cat is okay, but the game kind of makes it look more like Balan turned back time to save her cat, and the book mentions a serious car crash which I don’t think anyone would willingly return to. I feel there’s a better way to convey this idea of being responsible for your pets, like say her cat escapes from the house and gets lost, and her resolution is going out and properly looking for it. That’s a more effective (and natural) way to relay that message, especially as they weren’t going to commit to the idea of grieving a lost pet.

I’M CONFLICTED

Cal “Chess Daddy” Suresh: God this was a tough call. On one hand Cal’s game backstory is one of the ones most YouTube players single out as the weakest backstory in the game. He’s just “that guy who lost one game of chess”. Being right before Iben’s level certainly doesn’t help. I could honestly write a separate post about how bad the story placements are in this game but that’s too long for here. On the other hand, I still... kinda like it? Like I like this idea of him being a sore loser with a bad temper who needs to learn some humility, sure it’s not as serious as “I almost drowned” or “my parents are dead” but one of the few good things about the game is that it balanced “serious” stories with “benign” ones, if that makes sense. HOWEVER His book scene is... probably one of the best written in the whole book. Which isn’t saying much, but it felt like it hit the intended degree of darkness that the rest of the book was trying to hit. One of my main issues with the book is how much it edged up everyone’s backstory, which doesn’t sound bad but when you have 12 characters with edgy backstories to sit through, it starts to feel like a 14 year old's first attempt at writing an angsty fanfiction very quickly. And yes, Cal’s story is dark and angsty but it felt like the perfect balance of dark and angsty. Or as perfect as the book can get. Like even Balan’s annoying rhyming dialogue sounded good for the tone of the scene. Man maybe I should just do a review of both his backstories in a bigger post. Obviously I could be biased because I’m a sucker for chess aesthetics and dark skinned men with long permed hair so I’m just putting more thought into him but still.

#at the end of the say i'm just some schmuck who talks too much lmao #balan wonderworld

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snookersneek · 5 years ago

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This is a long post. Buckle up.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about how the dark academia aesthetic, whilst rich in aspects such as literature, music, and material beauty, is lacking in things such as activities.

So I've compiled a list of activities that I would personally deem as befitting the dark academia aesthetic (please do add to this list, as it's far from complete).

Sports:

Rowing (it's in literally every dark academic approved movie.)

Fencing

Tennis

Cricket

Croquet

Rugby (contrary to popular belief, women, men, and everyone in between can play this sport. It's not just for the boys.)

Polo

Equestrian sports

+ Figure/ice skating

+ Running (sprinting is handy for catching your lover when they fling themselves from a tower or something, and long distance is great for running alongside carriages that you want to rob.)

+ Boxing

+ Javelin, discus, wrestling covered in oil, think ancient Grecian Olympics.

+ Archery (how could I have forgotten.)

+ Ballet, ballroom dancing, traditional dances

+ Climbing

+ Snooker/Pool (either professionally or just for fun.)

Or, if you prefer the Oscar Wilde approach, no sports at all. That's cool too.

Games:

Chess (of course)

Backgammon

Cards (rummy, poker, blackjack, speed, whist, any game really, maybe with the exception of snap.)

Cluedo (I think it's 'Clue' in America. Don't argue with me, it counts as dark academia. It's got murder in it.)

+ Scrabble

Crafts:

Knitting (I knit socks, scarves, and am attempting a jumper. I find that it's far easier to knit your own jumper, scarf, socks, or whatever than hunting for one suitably 'aesthetically pleasing'.)

Embroidery (monogrammed handkerchiefs and shirts are so in.)

Weaving (sweet mother, I cannot-)

Making lace

Gardening

Cooking (not sure if this counts as a craft, but I'll throw it in just in case.)

Sewing (making clothes for yourself through sewing is a great way to make sure that your clothes fit perfectly, and are styled the way you want them to be. With practise, it becomes easier, and is definitely a useful skill to have.)

+ Calligraphy

+ Painting, of course. (release your inner Basil.

Outings:

Museums

Art galleries

Places of historical interests (in the UK, this might be more easily accessible with things like the National Trust. If you visit often, it might be useful to invest in a membership card with English Heritage (England), Cadw (Wales), or a National Trust card. I have a Cadw card, and I've found that it's accepted all over the UK, in the same way an entrance card specific to whichever country you're in would be too. I hope that makes sense.)

Public executions

Pubs

+ Go to a Café and sketch the people around you (I hear that charcoal or graphite is preferable here.)

Parks

Gardens

Churches, quaker meeting houses, graveyards, synagogues (sometimes the only places that are quiet are places of worship, and a lot of the time, they will be very welcoming in letting people in just to sit and think. Just remember to be respectful: don't insult people for their faith; don't scorn the place of worship; respect people buried in graveyards; don't take pictures, tempting as it may be, just to be on the safe side.)

The theatre

The opera

Concerts (classical music or otherwise)

Social events (memorial services, tours of your local university, open days, anything. It's an opportunity to learn, and spark intrigue because of your darkly mysterious and alluring demeanour.)

Things to do when you're bored.

Writing essays (it's really nerdy, but I find writing essays really interesting if they're on a topic I'm passionate about. It doesn't have to be an intellectual masterpiece, it could be 'The Top Ten Sexiest Classical Writers' for all I care. Just make it fun. Plus it's always an added bonus to that pile of messy papers that aesthetify your desk.)

Research (as above.)

Daydream about how you could have prevented the burning of the Library of Alexandria

Plan a murder / heist. Thoroughly.

Read something light (Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Wilkie Collins or Colin Dexter novels are really good for relaxing. Murder mysteries are always good for winding down a little, whilst still keeping an active mind, so I would recommend those, but really, read whatever you want.)

Dress up

Read aloud

Perform a play alone (or to a pet, if you have one)

If you play an instrument, play through all of the pieces in your repertoire

More daydreaming

Take baths

Fake your death (by murder, of course)

Draw or paint something (no, it doesn't have to be good. Just do it to relax. See what kind of things you can create, like designing Frankenstein's monster)

Write a narrative piece

Watch a movie. A whole movie. Just sit down and watch a movie, no getting up and walking around, no flicking back and forth, no checking your phone. Just enjoy a movie without distractions.

Watch every single 'Greek Gods as vines' video on YouTube and count it as studying.

+ Listen to some classical music! I have a post on getting into classicl here:

Congratulations! You made it through!

Please, add to this list. I really want this to be expanded on, as I'm interested to see whether or not I've missed things, and if people agree.

#dark aesthetic #dark academia #light academia #chaotic academia #academia gothic #academia #the secret history #donna tartt #academia aesthetic #academic

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junicai · 4 years ago

Text

peaches.

| summary | aria’s hiding something. lucas figures out what it is. (partly)

| word count | 4.1k

| warnings | mentions of physical abuse (not real)

| era | November 2019, SuperM World Tour

6. “Isn’t that, like. Illegal?” “Potentially.”

15. “Sh. Stop fussing. I’m just braiding your hair.”

38. “Where did all those bruises come from?”

a/n: i was not intending on including this plot point so soon, but it really fit with the request and the next thing i knew it was written? so ill just leave this here to stew. first person to guess what’s going on, 10 points to ur house

Aria loved her job.

Aria loved her job, but not when she was sore and aching, and the only thing that was on her mind was burrowing beneath her blankets and sleeping for sixteen hours. The bone deep exhaustion was not something new to be experienced, but she wasn’t sure if it ever got easier to endure.

It was only two weeks into their official world tour and Aria had forgotten just exactly how taxing it all was on the body. Just yesterday, she’d taken a small spill across the stage - having not seen the protruding wire that was coming from the lighting at the front of the stage. Half asleep, her mind was elsewhere right up until the moment the world tilted and the floor came rushing up to meet her.

Aria had caught herself with her left hand, stopping her face from taking the brunt of the fall but her wrist had twisted beneath her body as her elbow gave out under the abrupt pressure.

Her cry had reverberated around the stadium and it wasn’t long before seven boys were coming around the stage curtains, making their way over with wide eyes.

Ten had wrapped an arm around her shoulder to hoist her up from the ground as her wrist was bandaged - Aria had insisted that it wasn’t necessary, but the red ring marking the skin left no room for arguments - and turned her head away from the darkening face of Baekhyun as he crouched down to ask what happened.

Glancing down at the now purple ring of bruises around her wrist, Aria sighed before reaching out to snag the roll of bandages from the countertop where she had put it after carefully unwrapping it from her wrist. She hadn’t wanted to get the wrappings wet under the shower head, but after struggling for a moment to put it back on, she realized that she probably needed a second pair of hands.

Aria winced slightly, already anticipating the admonishing look she was going to get from Taemin for taking off the support so soon.

She pulled at the towel wrapped around her body making sure everything was covered before bending over and tossing her hair over her shoulders. She caught the hair in an old t-shirt, wrapping it around once before standing upright and twisting the material onto the top of her head.

Having flicked her had up so quickly, Aria shot out a hand to steady herself as the world spun slightly. She stayed stationary until the world came level again.

As Aria sleepily shuffled out of the bathroom into her bedroom, she could have cried in relief when she saw Lucas sitting on the adjacent bed.

Aria loved her members, that went without saying. But Lucas here meant she didn’t have to shuffle out into the main living area to find someone to help her rebandage her wrist. Lucas would do it for her, and he could never scold her - no matter how hard he tried.

“Heyo,” Aria greeted, nodding her head at the lanky boy from across the room. “You mind giving me a hand?”

Lucas looked up, before quickly looking down with a pained look. “You mind putting on some clothes?”

Aria laughed at his face, eyes shut tightly closed and facing the wall. She told him to wait a moment or two, before pulling the folded pajamas and hoodie (she was pretty sure it was Ten’s but at this point it could have been anyone’s) off the duvet cover and quickly pulling them on. The wet t-shirt that had wrapped her hair on top of her head fell to the floor, and Aria picked it up before throwing it into the small basket in the corner.

“You can look now,” she teased, running her good hand through her damp hair.

Lucas turned back around with a scowl. “We talked about the towel thing, Riri.”

“Correction: you talked about the towel thing. I laughed at your misery.”

He glared at her from across the bed. The effect of his hardened stare though, was greatly reduced by the large yellow sweater that covered most of his body, and the way he had tucked himself in to a small ball shape on the end of the bed. “There was a good two and a half minutes of conversation, and I distinctly remember you saying that you’d be more careful.”

“And I distinctly remember you saying that you’d be staying in the living room to watch Iron Man with Mark, yet here you are.” Aria countered, moving to sit beside him on the bed.

“Yeah, like two hours ago!”

“Well how was I supposed to know the movie had ended?”

“Time perception?”

Aria snorted. “You know I’m bad at that.”

“Well get better at it?”

“But Lucas,” Aria whined now, throwing herself to lie flat on the bed, “I’m in pain and that means I’m not focused. I’m injured doesn’t that automatically mean you have to be nicer to me now?”

“You’re in pain?” Lucas’ voice dropped a tone.

Aria sat up rapidly, her head spinning slightly at the speed. “No,” She denied.

Lucas levelled her with a look before extending his hand out, turning to fully face her on the bed. His legs folded beneath him couldn’t have been comfortable, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Show me how bad the bruising is again.”

She looked into his eyes and saw nothing but concern. Perhaps a tinge of the humor remained from their previous course of conversation, but it was quickly swept away with a blink. Relenting, Aria held out her left hand and looked away when Lucas inhaled slightly at the purpling skin. His hands were gentle, but Aria still hissed slightly at the contact.

“You took off the bandages?” his voice was softer now, as were his fingers as her carefully cradled her wrists. Aria shook her head lightly.

“Nah, I just needed them off so I could shower. I wasn’t sure how they’d fair against a ton of deep-treatment conditioner, and I didn’t want them to go soggy or something.” Aria explained, still allowing her wrist to be held gingerly by Lucas. “It doesn’t actually hurt though, I was just teasing.”

“Where are they now?” Lucas questioned, dropping Aria’s wrist back to her own lap. “The bandages I mean.”

She gestured to the other bed in the room, where the beige-coloured roll sat on the pillow at the top of the bed.

“I tried to put it back on in the bathroom, but..” Aria trailed off, waving her hands around to try and articulate herself without the words. She wasn’t sure if she had made much sense, but Lucas nodded all the same.

Without a word he pushed himself off the bed, socked feet padding across the floor to the other bed. He snagged the tail end of the roll, pulling it towards him before flailing slightly and just grabbing the body of the roll itself when it began to unravel.

He heard a muffled laugh from behind him, and turned to look at Aria over his shoulder. The girl was grinning behind her hand, facing away into the corner of the room.

“Careful, or I’ll leave you to go tell Taemin-hyung why your wrist is un-supported right now.”

Aria promptly shut her mouth, pout naturally forming.

Coming back over, Lucas nudged her over with his knee to make room for himself against the headboard. The clean bedsheets folded underneath him, and he settled himself comfortably with his legs spread slightly. Lucas pat in between his legs, motioning for Aria to come closer.

“C’mere I’ll fix it. I wouldn’t leave you to hyung’s wrath,” he promised, a wide grin on his face.

Aria was still slightly untrusting of his smile, but her exhaustion won over her skepticism quickly and she shuffled up the bed to sit cross-legged in between Lucas’ extended legs.

His hands were more careful this time - having learnt from the first experience handling her tender wrist - but he made quick work of wrapping back up the bruised area. Aria could see that he was concentrated on getting it right, only muttering a hold that or a is that too tight? once or twice before folding the tail ends into the precisely wrapped material.

“Where’d you put the safety pin?” he questioned, looking back over at the pillow on the other bed incase he missed it.

Aria left her injured wrist in Lucas’ lap, using her good hand to fish out the metal clip from the front pocket of the hoodie she was wearing. She handed it to Lucas with a small smile, thanking him with a light punch to his arm once he pinned the strapping in place.

“Oh my god I’m tired.” Lucas leant back onto the bed, letting his head bang against the wall with a resounding thud. Aria winced slightly at the sound, but Lucas didn’t seem to mind the minor brain trauma so she refrained from commenting.

“Same. So so much same. Really just want to go to sleep right now, but if I don’t do something with my hair it’ll be horrendous in the morning, and I can’t deal with another scolding from the make-up noonas. Not twice in a week,” Aria complained, falling forward so her still wet hair fanned out over the duvet.

“Want me to braid it?”

“You know how to plait hair?” Aria stayed lying down, eyes trailing over the cracks in the ceiling paint.

“Yeah,” Lucas laughed slightly. “Kunhang wanted to see what he’d look like with little plaits, so I watched a few youtube videos on it.”

Aria bent her neck at an angle to look at Lucas’ face with squinted eyes. “Promise you won’t make a bird’s nest of my hair?”

Lucas looked at her with comically wide, sincere eyes and held up three fingers pressed together. “Scouts honor,” he nodded solemnly.

Aria coughed out a laugh, kicking at him with her feet. “Oh my god how do you even know that, you’re spending too much time with Mark.”

Lucas laughed with her, shoving her attacking legs away with ease. “Hey hey do you want me to braid your hair or not? I can’t do that if you break a rib.”

Despite his words, the broad grin never left his face, and he never waited for an answer before Lucas was wrapping an arm around Aria’s waist and tugging her around to face the opposite wall, sitting in between his legs again but this time with her back to his chest.

“Do you have a hair brush and a few hair ties?”

Aria nodded, reaching over the bed with a hand on Lucas’ knee to grab the aforementioned items off her bedside locker. She handed them back to him, before settling herself comfortably on the bedspread.

True to his word, Lucas was actually quite good at braiding - Aria was nearly sure he was lying but the three even strands of hair didn’t slowly become a tangled ball of mess as he worked his way down her hair. In all honestly, it was quite relaxing, letting someone else brush out her hair as she sank deeper into the duvet cover as he braided the strands together with ease.

Even despite Lucas’ hands calmingly carding through her hair though, Aria still shuffled back and forth, rolling her shoulders every now and again. At first, Lucas’ had deigned to ignore her small twitching, but after the seventh time she rolled her shoulders and nearly knocked the strands out of his hand, he stopped.

“Sh. Stop fussing. I’m just braiding your hair.”

“Hm?”

“You’re wriggling and it’s throwing me off.”

“Oh.” Aria looked at her hands. “Sorry, its just the hood - the tag is scratchy and its annoying.”

“Ah,” Lucas nodded. “It kinda looks like someone tried to cut it off not gonna lie.”

“It’s not mine, so I don’t care but it’s just annoying.”

“You want to take it off?”

Aria froze a little, before deliberately untensing her muscles. Now would be the worst time to work herself back up, especially right after relaxing so much. But she wasn’t sure if she could take off her hoodie, the top she was wearing didn’t cover enough of her back, the scooping backline stretched out after years of wear.

“Riri?” Lucas’ voice prompted her out of her thoughts.

“Hm? Oh- oh no it’s ok,” she fumbled, rubbing at the irritated skin on the back of her neck with a hand. “You’re almost done anyway, right?”

“I still have the other braid to do.” Lucas’ voice was confused now, hands resting on her shoulders. True to his word, only one of the two braids were completed, half of Aria’s hair pulled back neatly with the other half splayed across her shoulder.

“Oh.”

Reluctantly, Aria pulled herself out of Lucas’ hold slightly, turning to face him. “Yeah no that’s fine. I’ll just, grab a towel to cover my shoulders? So I don’t get my clothes wet.”

Aria let out a breath of relief when Lucas’ nodded at her, seeming unsuspicious of her quick shift in mood. She slid off the bed gently, only letting her feet touch the floor briefly before she was reaching forward and snatching the towel from the adjacent bed.

Sneaking a short glance towards Lucas and seeing him distracted, she pulled the hoodie quickly over her head. Aria wrapped the towel over her shoulders before he had time to look over at her, and held the two ends closely together as she shuffled back into the space Lucas had created again for her.

He hummed at her, before resuming his methodic braiding process, fingers gentle and hands pushing her head to the side. Unlike before however, Aria couldn’t find it in herself to relax, fingers gripping the towel’s ends closely together in an iron grip. She was so concentrated on ensuring the towel hadn’t flipped up to expose her back, Aria missed the short double pat Lucas gave the top of her head to tell her she was done.

In fact, she was so concentrated on making sure the towel didn’t slip from her grasp, Aria jerked away from Lucas when she felt him tug gently on the now soaked material.

Lucas instantly moved away, hands held up. “Woah, chill. I just don’t want you to get sick, the towel is wet.”

Aria nodded, not really listening and moving to shuffle away from Lucas but he had mistaken her nod as an affirmative, hands pulling more insistently on the soaked material.

This time, the towel slipped from Aria’s grasp, the same moment a gasp left Lucas’ mouth.

Time seemed to slow for a moment, ice trickling down Aria’s back, almost mocking her. She could feel the air around them drop several degrees, the happy, content atmosphere replaced with something else - something cold, something that seeped beneath your skin and stayed there. The air-conditioning didn’t help, goosebumps raising along the newly exposed skin, partially tanned but for the most part covered in purple and blue and green mottled colours.

Bruises.

Everywhere.

Aria heard more than felt Lucas’ hands clench, an audible crack coming from his knuckles. His hands had retracted from Aria’s sides where they were before, bringing them to his sides in fists.

“Aria.” Cold.

No response.

“Aria.” A little more insistent this time.

Still, no response.

“Aria. Where did all those bruises come from?”

Aria inhaled sharply for what felt like the first time in hours. With a single intake of breath, time sped up to meet her, and she scrambled out from between Lucas’ legs, giggling nervously.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she denied, shaking her head. Her hands were already reaching for the discarded hoodie - itchy tag be damned - but Lucas had longer limbs and was a good deal faster.

He snatched the hoodie from the end of the bed, standing up as Aria shifted her weight onto her back foot. Her eyes were looking over his shoulder, no matter how much he stared at her.

“Aria. What happened?”

She was wringing her hands in front of her, shuffling back and forth. “I - I can’t, it’s fine - it’s fine Lucas, don’t - don’t worry okay?”

Aria made towards the door, hoping that maybe she could crash in Taeyong’s room for the night, but Lucas’ hand on the doorknob dashed that idea into smithereens. His face was dark, darker than she’d ever seen it and when he turned to look at her his eyes were filled with a type of anger she hadn’t known he’d been capable of feeling.

“Miyazu Akari you tell me right now, what’s going on.” His voice was firm, body tense. “Is someone - Is someone hurting you?”

Aria froze for the nth time of the night. A disbelieving laugh broke its way out of her lips. “Oh, oh god no Lucas - that’s not what this is, I- I promise.”

Lucas only dropped his hand from the doorknob, coming to crouch in front of Aria on the floor.

When had she sat on the floor?

His face was stony, and Aria wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. Was he angry at her? She wasn’t lying, he was just assuming things that weren’t true. She knew it looked like that, that’s why she hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about it - she knew that this reaction was unavoidable without someone else there to back her up - oh god why did this have to happen right now, Aria was tired and she wanted to go to sleep but Lucas was still looking at her - his face was less stony now but Aria was too panicked to figure out what that meant - yes he’s definitely angry at her, please don’t let him get the hyungs, she’ll never talk her way out of it then, oh god oh god-

“Riri,” his voice was quiet now, the fire in his eyes poorly masked by worry. “Riri, it’s okay. It’s okay, but I need you to breath. Can you do that for me? Can you breath?”

When had she stopped?

Aria’s lungs expanded with a gasp, and she coughed on the first intake of air. Lucas only rubbed her back, tucking her face into his neck as she coughed her way through several more breaths - not letting go until he was sure her breathing had evened out again.

Pulling back, Lucas’ eyes bored into hers, both hands on either side of her face to make sure she couldn’t look away. His legs were bent uncomfortably underneath himself, but he payed no mind to the ache in his knees.

“Riri, it’s okay. If something’s happening it’s okay but I need you to tell me what’s happening so I can help. Or so I can get someone else to help. Who’s doing this?”

“No - no one,” Aria choked out, throat tight. Her hand banged against her chest as if to kickstart her lungs again. “It’s no one, it’s not that.”

Lucas looked at her like she was lying. He definitely thought she was.

God damn it, this was not how she wanted it to come out.

“Aria you can trust me, I’m not going to hurt you. But I need you to -” Lucas began, being cut off by Aria.

“No, no I’m not. I’m not being hit by anyone, I promise, Lucas.” she looked him in the eye. “I promise.”

“Then what is going on?”

Aria looked down again. “I just bruise easily, you know that.”

Lucas scoffed slightly, “I know you bruise easily Aria, but you literally look like you were body slammed into a wall.”

A moment of silence. A flicker of horror.

“Were you body slammed into a wall?”

“NO!” Aria near shouted, hands coming to cover her mouth in a gasp immediately afterwards. Both of them stilled, carefully listening out for any stirring of the other members.

After a few seconds, hearing nothing, Aria allowed herself to relax minutely. Downside of hotel rooms meant thin walls, so it was truly a miracle that Aria’s shout hadn’t woken the others.

“I can promise you, no one is listening to us right now. So I need you to be honest with me, Riri.” Lucas’ voice had lost the cold edge to it, now filled with warmth and worry, like sickly sweet honey.

Aria wanted to gag. She knew she couldn’t lie to him, not directly to his face.

“Can you please- I’ll explain in the morning. I’m tired, I’ll explain in the morning,” she tried.

“We have schedules all day tomorrow, I know full well you’ll avoid me all day and then room with someone else,” he countered.

Aria could pick up the hurt radiating from his body. He thinks you don’t trust him.

She bit her lip, not letting go until the pink skin ripped beneath her teeth and the taste of iron filled her mouth. Damn, that was going to take forever to close.

“Lucas, I’m fine. I swear to you, I’m fine.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m fine.”

“And I’m not buying it. Not when your back looks like that.”

Ok. Half truths.

“Remember the last practice I had with Dream before we left on tour?” Aria’s voice was unintentionally smaller, but she thought it might work in her favour - something proved correct when Lucas leant forwards on his knees.

He said nothing, only nodded to assure her she was listening.

“Well. Okay you have to promise you won’t get mad at anyone.”

“I promise.”

That was absolutely too quick, he was so going to get mad.

“Jeno and I, were. Messing, right? And- and he picked me up, like the way you guys do all the time, except this time he knew I was kinda down about leaving - just because I was going to miss them, yaknow? - and so when he picked me up, he was real careful about it don’t get me wrong but he picked me up and I don’t really remember what happened because it all happened so fast but-”

“Breathe.”

Aria took in a gulp of air. “Sorry.”

Lucas nodded at her. It was rare to see him so serious. Aria hated it.

“Jeno, like, flipped me? Over his shoulder, the fireman carry thingy. But he lost his grip and I think I slid or he tried to catch me and flipped me over fully but. I just kinda remember looking up at the practice room ceiling with my back really hurting.”

Silence.

It hung in the air like something tangible, like you could take a knife to it.

Aria wanted to.

“So. You’re telling, me, that you look like you got the life kicked out of you, because Jeno flipped you over his shoulder?”

Aria winced. “Yes.”

“That happened nearly two weeks ago, Riri. The bruises should have faded by now.” His voice was torn, like he wanted to believe her but there were too many questions left unanswered.

“Well I-”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Lucas whipped his head over to her.

Aria couldn’t meet his gaze, pulling at the hangnail on her right hand. “I knew it would land Jeno in trouble, and it wasn’t that big of a deal-”

“Aria your back is black and blue-”

“I knew people were going to overreact and-”

“I’m not overreacting I’m just worried-”

Aria held up her hand, halting the conversation in its tracks.

“Lucas.” the boy nodded slowly, giving her his full attention.

“Lucas, I swear to you. I swear, you know I’d come to you if something was wrong. You know I would.” Aria began, voice soft. Her good hand crept forwards to hold Lucas’.

“I bruise easily, you know this. You once threw a cushion at me and nearly gave me a black eye.” Aria reminded him ruefully. “My back, is because I fell; which is Not Jeno’s Fault. We were both clumsy, and we both should have been more careful, but it was a mistake, and I’m fine.”

“But still, why didn’t you tell us?” Lucas cut in.

“You know exactly what Taemin-oppa is like when it comes to worrying. I think he would have made me sit the entire two weeks out. And you reacted like this, how would I have explained this to Baekhyun and Jongin-oppa? They would have taken the entire staff team hostage to interrogate them as to what happened.”

“Isn’t that, like. Illegal?”

“Potentially.”

Lucas laughed. It was a nice sound, a sound that rang out through the stale-atmosphere in the room. It brushed away the tension, only leaving that in Lucas’ shoulders and the worry creased into his eyebrows.

Aria shuffled closer to Lucas, both still sitting cross-legged on the floor. She tucked herself into his arms, knowing that it was both for her comfort and for his.

“I’m right here, Xuxi. No one’s done anything to me. I’m right here.”

Lucas exhaled quietly, arms tightening around Aria’s body minutely. She could tell he was being mindful of her back now - the presence of the bruises still fresh in his mind. A few words were muttered into her hair, muffled.

Aria hummed, pulling away slightly.

“You trust me right?” Lucas’ voice was wavering slightly.

“110%.”

“Okay. Okay, okay. That’s okay. You’re okay.” Lucas seemed more like he was talking to himself moreso than anything else.

“We’re okay.”

“Ari-ah?”

“Yes?”

Aria padded into the kitchen, seeing Taeyong standing there with a small white box in his hands. He turned, and upon seeing her - held out the box for her to take.

Aria nodded in understanding, hands moving to take the box of medication from her leader’s grip. She turned it over in her hand, eyes scanning the blue label before she looked back up to Taeyong’s eyes.

They were kind, but around the edges there was a small colouring of pity.

Aria hated that he gave her the same look each month.

Nodding in thanks, she spun on her heel, going to put the box in the far corner of her chest of drawers.

On the box, the letters:

DDAVP, vWF

#*aria.writings #cassia: i hate eyes #also cassia: EYESEYESEYESEYES #this was not meant to be this long #nct 22nd member #nct 24th member #nct additional member #nct dream 8th member #nct #kpop!oc #kpop addition #kpop additions #nct additions #nct addition #nct extra member #nct female member #nct female member au #nct female oc #nct 2020

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dani-of-the-cosmos · 5 years ago

Text

*how the signs are acting during quarantine*

~with a touch of unsolicited advice: my venus in cancer’s specialty~

<3 pick your sun, moon, rising, mars, mercury, venus, or dominant sign <3

aries

overall, restless. the day seems to drag on and on, and they cope with it by playing video games and snapchatting someone every 20 seconds. self-hatred lingers in the back of their mind, because of all the time they have to analyze themselves. at random times (usually at night), they may be hit with big waves of profound emotions, where they just need to cry it out and acknowledge how lost they feel. may wonder what their purpose is, or where they fit in in the big scheme of the world. gets philosophical, but not in that condescendingly vague, optimistic way--they truly want answers, because the nothingness is just getting to be too much.

taurus

is actually doing pretty okay. is reading a lot about how they can improve themselves, and probably have a few google docs open with plans on how to upgrade their life. they’ve probably started a garden of some sort, or bought some plants to take care of. the day may seem to pass by quickly for them. they fill their time with watching movies and discovering new recipes to cook. has started getting more sleep, which makes their alluring eyes even more beautiful. the downside is that they may feel a bit groggy, or their head feels heavy, because even the most security-loving, routine-oriented zodiac sign needs some variety.

gemini

getting really excited about all these new methods for self-improvement: exercise, mental health, new projects, clearing their skin, etc. is consistent with these newfound activities for a few days, then gets annoyed when they don’t have 45 inch hips, a 22 inch waist and graceful, 11-shaped abs after less than a week of the chloe ting hourglass program. talks on the phone as they sit on the toilet. watches youtube videos about how to achieve the glow-up that they crave, but can never commit to a single video’s advice. wants something exciting to happen in their life, so they lean into their big emotions and taboo curiosities to compensate for the lack of stimulation. on their phone a LOT.

cancer

has gotten even more beautiful since the quarantine started. loves the simplicity they’re getting accustomed to, but also constantly worries if they’re “making the most” of all this free time. probably will scold themselves after all this is over for not being more disciplined during self-isolation. goes on walks outside a lot, and finds that connecting with nature significantly boosts their mood. observes the quiet beauty around them as a way to cope with the universal chaos of our world. since cancer tends to be a very empathetic sign, they may feel like a sponge for fatigue and suffering whenever they read the news. being aware of the world is great and necessary, but take care of yourself, cancer. know when to take a break from the news.

leo

is really excited about reinventing themselves--they want it all! new clothes, improved mindset, cleaner room, a kinder social circle, new hair--the works. they want to bust out of quarantine looking even more striking than before, with a wardrobe reflecting their new style. probably has either already done something drastic to their hair (like dying it, or the dreaded 2 am impulsive bangs cut), or is at least seriously considering it. really wants to get out of their house and camp out on the beach or something--they miss seeing their friends face-to-face, and try to make up for it by calling them to hear their voices. is irritated that they happened to be born at a time where the pivotal years of their life are being wasted by such an awful series of world events.

virgo

has upgraded their bedroom to look as aesthetically pleasing and soothing as possible. their social life has most likely downsized to 2-3 super close and genuine friends that they call, text, and/or facetime with daily. since virgo is a mutable sign, they’ve probably done a great job adjusting to their surroundings and are helping their family with domestic tasks. however, they may feel anxious, and unsatisfied with their current mindset and resources, so they feel the urge to expand their horizons and feed their genius mind as much as possible! it may be hard to find motivation, virgo, but the world needs a physical manifestation of your potential right now. if you have an idea you want to pursue but are too scared to, take the plunge. this sounds cheesy and cliche but, this is your sign to start!

libra

reminisces a lot about the past. thinks about how they would have handled past situations differently, and mentally shames themselves for it. is probably doing a lot of self-reflection, which is good for their sweet hearts and furthers the progress of their mental health, but also depresses them, as libra energy tends to be highly critical of itself. sleeping in too late and talking aloud to themselves at ungodly hours of the night. finds their mind going on the philosophical route more often than usual. might be posting passive-aggressive mood quotes on instagram

scorpio

is actually exercising pretty consistently like they said they would. their body has been getting curvalicious and toned, and to that i say WOOHOO GO SCORPIO! however, they’ve probably completely messed up their entire sleep schedule, and may be practically nocturnal some days. probably feels really emotional at the moment, and is overwhelmed with the amount of pain in the world that they wish they could singlehandedly stop. may be pretty loner-ish at the moment, and is probably not very active on their social media, because they’re realizing who their truest friends are. scorpio does well with transformation (they’re ruled by pluto, the planet of regeneration) so rest assured, they will emerge from quarantine new and improved!

sagittarius

is eating too much junk food. sagittarius, if you’re reading this right now, PUT DOWN THE CHIPS BUDDY BOY. is probably finding ways to hang out with their friends in person, like yelling across the sidewalk to them while wearing a mask. has been super active on social media regarding current social justice issues. feels enormous compassion for the oppressed and has been signing petitions at the speed of light. probably getting in fights with their family and being a little feistier than usual. i can’t blame them though...sagittarius is a sign that needs entertainment, so they’re gonna be a little punchy in this stagnant yet catastrophic time.

capricorn

has established a daily routine that keeps them feeling grounded and stable. they may realize how little they’ve actually prioritized their own joy in the past, and they’re using quarantine as a way to get to know themselves again. purchases luxury pajamas and is most likely drinking a hot beverage in a mug right now. probably on a health kick. is getting even closer with their closest friends, and basically forgets about acquaintances. cuddling their pets a lot (or fantasizing about adopting a pet if they don’t have one). misses putting on mascara and stepping into that cute skirt, because that sPeCiAL pErSoN isn’t there to see it lol

aquarius

thinking about ways they can make money. getting bursts of hyper inspiration to flip their life around and start working super hard for their dream life. is masking hopelessness, and finds themselves pondering the fragility of human life. may experience thoughts of nihilism that they don’t act on, and is increasingly worried about the state of their environment. is stuck between feeling motivated and believing in their ability to positively transform, and getting depressed and detached from their earthly obligations.

pisces

probably painting their nails a lot. is finding ways to put a little spice of excitement in their life--like making a nice breakfast (at 4 pm, which is like an hour after they wake up lately), giving their pet a concert of them, naked, singing ski mask the slump god songs into a hairbrush they’re pretending is a microphone. stares at themselves in the mirror for too long, letting their insecurities get the best of them. has probably gotten in touch with their grandparents (or any other relatives they usually don’t keep in close touch with) over the phone. may be dealing with worsened anxiety and feelings of depression at this time, and sleeps a lot to try to escape it. their room might be pretty messy at the moment as well, which they’re overly hard on themselves for. pisces: you are such a uniquely sweet and tender soul. take it one day at a time and never underestimate the power of reaching out to someone <3

#aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces #the signs during quarantine #covid-19 #quarantine #unsolicited advice #i'm psychic i know #astrology #astrologytrash05

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neechees · 4 years ago

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hi!! i was legit just wondering how long you’ve been doing digital art. i’ve been doing digital art for ~1.5yrs now but the longer i’ve worked at it the more frustrated i’ve become. i mainly do painting so i’ve been TRYING to translate that into my digital art but i just. cannot. did you have any similar frustrations by chance, or just any in general w digital art, and how did you get past them? im finally trying to dedicate some time to practicing over the summer. v frustrating tho 😔

Oh god, I got my first actual drawing tablet back in high school, I thiiiink in grade 10 or 11? So that would've been 2012-2013ish. But i had attempted (very badly) to do digital art on MS paint and Deviantart since Junior High. I was pretty new to the internet and most of my time was spent searching up digital art and printing them out to hang in my room, and I remember wanting to, but feeling like I'd never be as good as the digital artists I saw. But even when I got my first drawing tablet it took me a long time to even get used to! I know the feeling you're talking about. Its taken me multiple attempts at different things to realize what I like in digital art before I got better at it.

I still sometimes have doubts I'm even improving digitally now, but believe me when I say that even if it doesn't feel like it, you're always improving! I think for me, learning to draw better digitally can be improved by a number of things, namely by your tablet, the program you use, the brushes you use, the techniques you use to draw digitally, and then working at it to find what best works for you & keep working towards improving. My first tablet was a $50 one from amazon & I drew using FireAlpaca, and now I use a 5 year old Wacom tablet on Photoshop 2018. For your tablet, I think you just gotta get comfortable with the works of how to sit with it, hold it, finetune it, etc and it should be good! A more expensive tablet doesn't necessarily mean it'll perform better. Even my coloring/drawing style is different! I found that the way I do it now is better and easier for me, whereas before my art would take DAYS and HOURS for some unfinished, simple looking pieces, whereas now I can do much more detailed stuff more quickly. So I guess here's a few tips of what I personally did that made things easier for me:

Watch other digital artists do speedpaints, look at different tutorials, and try copy their process. You might find something that unexpectedly works for you, makes things less frustrating, and speeds things up while simultaneously making you a better artist! And experimenting with different techniques is just always a good idea

Find different brushes you like, download them, and experiment with them. You might find a brush that's supposed to be used one way, and is useful for another. Additionally, testing the brushes with lowered opacity or flow & different things could help! I used to take FOREVER shading things, lowering the opacity, etc, and then I started trying different brushes. Instead of using the hard round brush with lowered opacity, now I use a cloud brush, a pencil brush, a charcoal brush, a chalk brush, and the soft round brush for blending and shading almost seamlessly. I discovered they work well together by testing them out and watching how OTHER artists used them. There's actually some brush packs that are meant to mimic oil/watercolor/acrylic/etc painting strokes/brushes or palette knives, maybe trying these out could help!

Try different art programs if you can, watch youtube speedpaints of artists using them, watch tutorials on how to navigate said programs, and then try it out yourself. There's links hanging around to get photoshop & other programs for f/r/ee, or you can do the free trials, but there's also always free art programs available too! One artist who greatly influenced my art style uses Paint Tool Sai, but I found that this program just wasn't for me when I tried the techniques she employed on the program she used, and discovered photoshop was most to my liking once I knew how to use it

Set up your digital art workspace the way YOU like it. Usually on most programs there's the ability to switch around or resize or even temporarily switch off/disable the different windows of your workspace within the program, so if you don't like something somewhere, change it! I actually don't like having the color palette window visible in photoshop, so instead I shut it off and just use the HUD color picker & color selection tool when needed. Doing this gives you a more cozy space to work in, think of it as setting up your painting area and adjusting your easel to your liking

So once you've been kinda testing the waters with some or maybe all these things, you start to get more comfortable with digital art, and you'll see yourself getting faster, better, and generally just improving. Also, and I know you know this already & its pretty obvious (otherwise you wouldn't be here lol) that digital art is MUCH different than irl painting. I have a hard time thinking of which is harder or takes longer for me because they both come with benefits and downsides! However, if you WANT to try emulating irl painting with brushes and how you use your layers, you can try that too. Experiment!! A lot of improvement and getting comfortable with digital art is testing different things, seeing what you think works for you, and then keeping at it. But also remember you can switch things up at any time, you might need to do things a few times before you realize you're actually pretty good at it or that you like it, and that you don't need to test all these things at once! Things'll get less frustrating and translate from your imagination better once you've set up a space digitally that you can navigate freely, and become more comfortable with how to use the tools & techniques available

And never give up, I promise you're always improving. I hope this is helpful!

#long post #saavik #you can do it!! i truly believe in you i think you'll improve at a MUCH faster rate than I did. but even if im wrong thats not bad!!#im still improving myself

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Pride Month: Queer Duck The Movie or Eh At Least I’m Not Praying For Death This Time (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Hello All You Happy People, and welcome back to my blog’s celebration of Pride Month! And welcome back to my second and thankfully final part of my Queer Duck Duckololgy.

Those of you just joining us, to quote a wonderful irishman who just hit 100 episodes, let’s get yo up to speed: Queer Duck was a crudley made flash web series created by Mike Reiss, former Simpsons writers responsible for the Bleeding Gums Murphy Episodes:

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And co-creating the series “The Critic” with co-creator and writing partner Al Jean. That series ended up getting canceled after a season, moving to fox ,and getting canceled again despite a Simpsons lead in and a crossover episode that’s still one of my faviorite simpsons episodes. Fox proceded to hold up the show to prevent another network picking it up because they were dickkkksss.

So naturally Reiss was a bit fed up with traditional models and wanted to see wha the could do with a smaller team, a lower budget and an internet distrbution, hooking up with early internet outfit Icebox.com, and creating two shows: Hard Drinking LIncoln which sadly isn’t about Teddy Rosevelt traveling back in time to give Abe Lincoln an intervention then fight crimes, and this one Queer Duck.

Now in Modern Day creators have made a great go of it breaking from the usual distribution models and going their own way: MST3K is currently making a go of releasing episodes themselves after a run at Netflix with the Gizmoplex and one of the best animated series of this year in my opinon is Helluva Boss, which is produced independently and released via YouTube, yet has gorgeous animation and an all star cast including such big gets as Richard Steven Horvitz, Cristina Vee, Alex Brightman and Norman Reedus. It also has one of the most iconic scenes in animation history:

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Brandon Rogers may not be a big name but god is he glorious. Anyway point is what Reiss dreamed... is valid and the fact he was able to pull off a hit show with only three minutes of air time, ALSO get pretty big names involved (Ru Paul, whose only gotten BIGGER thanks to Drag Race did the theme, and voice acting legends Kevin Micheal Richardson, Billy West and Maurice LaMarche all did voices for it as did Jim J Bullock), get it on Showtime and get a movie greenlit, DTV or not. All in 2000 with the budget of a piece of string. He also made Queer Duck because he wanted to make a show laughing with Queer People instead of at them, a noble gesture.

Thing was... Queer Duck The Series REALLY sucks. Even by the standards of the time i’ts regressive painting all gay people as promiscious drug loving sterotypes.

It also wasn’t funny even for the standards of the time. Instead of relying on Reiss’ rapid fire humor that made the Simpsons and Critic under his showrunning great he relied on jokes that amounted to

Not really leaning into the format and instead sticking to network standards despite not having one, as well as TRYING to make jokes out of inherently unfunny topics like Parents not accepting their child is gay, Gay Conversion Therapy, and “I don’t want to get married to my partner because I want to keep having sex with other people but am going to marry him anyway after my vows consisted entirely of loop holes to have sex with other people”. Yes that really was an episode. Given the very show Reiss had left , the Simpsons had done a VERY good episode bashing Homophobia featuring John Waters, and still managed to have fun with gay stertoypes without making me pray for death but death won’t come with the gay steelmill scene, Reiss had no excuse for how bad, uninetionally homophobic and trite this series was even for 2000.

You can find the full review HERE. It was a chore to sit through and was comissioned by my finacial backer turned good buddy whose also still comissioning reviews from me, WeirdKev27. If you’d liked to comission reviews from me just hit me up in my inbox, prices are on my blog.

So naturally he wanted me to cover both things and my reaction after wasting 60 minutes of my life on the web series to having to waste 90 MINUTES of my life on the movie was. exactly what your expecting.

But I still had SOME small hope. The series biggest issue was it didn’t have the room for jokes that Reiss other shows had, so maybe with more space and a good 6 years since h’d come up with the concept Reiss would do better. Would he redeem himself or sink further? To find that out join me under the cut for another round of Queer Duck. Will it be better? Eh either way i’m FREEEEEEEEE FREEEEEEE after this so eh.

Production Stuff:

I couldn’t find much on the making of the film. There was a making of feature on the DVD, but I watched this on Crackle instead so yeah. Out of luck there. The most I could find was on Wikipedia: the film was unsuprisingly originaly set for Showtime, which aired the shorts after Queer as Folk. But Showtime later backed out as they stopped producing gay content because the 2000′s were very stupid, and thus Icebox picked up full production. As a result teh Film’s animation is still cheap as all hell.. .but more fluid than the web shorts, if only by a smidge. The movie ended up going straight, pun untineded, to DVD, but did air on Logo soon after. So with that being all I got, I did genuinely try my best there just wasn’t a lot on this movie, shocking I know, let’s get into the movie shall we.

MY EYES:

We open with ... the Queer Duck Opening from the web series.

I thought I was rid of this thing but nope... and if your wondering why this is an issue: 1) They barely change it and don’t even make a super special version of it they just literally use the opening from the series again and 2) I watched 20 episodes of the show in a row. The theme is wedged in my skull it did not need a refresher.

We do get a specail bit introducing Queer Ducks friends as they party: QD, his partner Openly Gator, Paul Linde knockoff Bi-Polar Bear and saving grace of the original show Oscar Wildcat. We also get UTTERLY obnoxious flashing lights during this bit. Like HOLY SHIT...

What was WITH the 2000′s and flashing lights? It wasn’t like Seizures or epilpsy werent known. The Electric Soldier Porygon Incident was a well known thing even back then.

Anyways the next day Queer Duck wakes up with Openly Gator and goes about his what i’m presuming is sunday given he works the next day: he finds two Pandas under the couch, who are gay pandas.. and speak with sterotypically chinese accents.

Theres no excuse for this even back then. I mean its not as bad as the OTHER Icebox show they tried to give a movie, Mr Wong which had a buck toothed sterotypical chinese man as it’s lead. But it’s still just.. no. Chinese people deserve better, Asian people in general deserve better, and you can DO better. I know the simpsons and the critic didn’t escape this, nor did their crossover episode but come the fuck on.

So Queer Duck turns on the tv and finds it centering on Reverend VanGelderling, voiced by Jeff Bennet. Who while i’ve heard him in things genuinely didn’t recognize at first and it took me a bit, as the voice he was using sounded familliar.. and then it hit me....

YUP. Jeff is using his Johnny Bravo voice. Like i’ts SLIGHTLY less Elvis but it’s still noticable. And the show had only ended four years before this: It HAD adult fans along with the kids. Did.. did he think no one would notice? Was he trying to see if anyone would notice? Was he just trying to see if he could use the voice in other contexts?

He is good here though. VanGelderling is naturally our bad guy, talking to a dog he “””””””Cured””””””””. Val Gelderling is a hold over from the shorts, having shown up for one episode to try and convert Queer Duck , as is the dog he “””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””cured””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””Queer Duck responds how you should to a bigot like that: by calling in to troll his ass, playing someone with tourettes and using it as an excuse to call Johnny No Homo what he is: a bigot, a fraud, an asshole etc> It’s not a bad bit honestly and were the series more of this and less spending an entire short talking about how santa claus is gay, maybe I wouldn’t of done this to my eyes.

QD then sees an advertisment for Happy Land, a homophobic amusment park and decides to troll them by declaring it a “Gay Day at Happyland”. First off, as I said the series should’ve been more of THIS: Queer Duck getting into Daffy or Donald type shenanigans against homophobes. It would’ve fit Reiss style of hu mor and been way more intresting than 80 dozen gay jokes.

Second Gay Day is a real event done at Disney every year with tons of LBGTQ+ people showing up every year from 1991 to present day. Seriously the year I was born was awesome: We got sonic that year and now I find out we got Gay Day at Disney Land too. It’s unofficial because as we’ve well established on this blog Disney is either only for gay rights if a creator fights tooth and nail to get them in their show or like most corpos they put on a show for Pride month.. which then gets wholly mocked by one of their most famous creators whose currently in a relationship with said creator that fought to get a queer romance on the air:

It’s been almost a month since he did that and I will NEVER not find that amazing.

But yeah we get a song which is okay., though honestly most of the songs in this movie are REALLY good. And OF COURSE this is a musical, you think Mike would miss that stereotype about gay people: his main character is promscious, has a lisp, loves drinking, drugs, partying, musical theater, and sucks at sports. Why WOULD he start portraying Gay People with Subtley NOW.

The songs do help inject some energy into this though. So after a song about everyone being gay SHOCKINGLY the openly homophobic amusment park that Queer Duck was specifically trolling dosen’t let them in.

So this kicks off Queer Duck’s arc for the movie: he starts to question his sexuality because of all the difficulty that comes with being out and proud. The IDEA isn’t bad: Queer Duck either wanting to present as straight enough so he can be accepted or finding he might be bi instead are not bad plots apart or together. I thought I was straight for most of my life and was in denial for some time. It takes time to figure out who you are and being an adult dosne’t automatically make things easier or mean you stop growing or discovering yourself and being queer IS hard when a good chunk of the world hates you for how you were born and assumes it’s a “choice”. And being bi or pan CAN have issues. I thankfully haven’t run into those, but in media alone the same year Queer Duck debuted, we had the Sex and the City Episode “Boy Girl Boy Girl” where it treated being bisexual as “a stopover on the way to gay town”. An actual line someone wrote and treate dit as some trendy thing kids did instead of you know, my fucking identity. A lot of queer people are assholes who assume just what that show did: that your not REALLY bi your just gay and saying you are or straight and saying you like men. It’d be intresting to explore that.

This movie dosen’t do that though because it dosen’t know bi people exist. As for struggles... Queer Duck tried to go to a theme park he was WARNED was homophobic specifically to make a statment. While being denied service or tossed out for being gay is a good catalyst the way they set it up just.. dosen’t work. They don’t spend enough time on his emotinos over the incident or portray it properly, have him crestfallen that for once he DIDN’T win out in the end like the universe should go and lost simpl ybecause smoene’s homophobic and society favors THEM. The IDEA, Queer Duck gets rejected just for being queer is good: rejection by the world for the crime of being who you are is just the reality the entire LBGTQ+ spectrum faces, a risk you take every time you put yourself out there and tell someone who you are, a risk damn worth fighting for and a truth damn worth living. It’s just the execution dosen’t match: it tries to paint queer duck as someone who dosen’t realize how bad things are or is just TIRED of it.. seconds after he effortlesly trolled a homophobe and the thing that set this off was in itself a plan to get back at homophobes that simply didn’t pan out. Given all the horrors, rejections and shit Queer people face and STILL face this .. just isn’t enough. I’m not asking for it to go in the oppositie direction, for him to be chased by a pack of dogs or to fight the Klan (again), i’m just asking for a bit of realisim, something that even in a work like this isn’t much to ask for: the simpsons and jay sherman both lived in a cartoony as hell, bizzare world.. but they FELT real. It’s not much to ask that Queer Duck also feel like a real person. It really isn’t and what holds this film and held the series back is that Mike just dosen’t seem to get how to elevate him beyond HE’S GAYYYY.

Smile Ya Bastards Smile:

The next day our heroes go to work. And since I forgot to mention their jobs and it frankly would’ve fit more to introduce those jobs in this section of the movie anyway, let’s start with Bi-Polar Bear and Oscar Wildecat, who were introduced at work before the happyland stuff. Bi-Polar Bear works at a perfume counter, is laughed at by his boss for wanting to be on the baseball team, a dream he’s always had since he was a kid, passed over for Little Steven Hawking and Little Stevie Wonder.. who were born 8 years apart but eh, it’s a joke about one being blind and the other being in a wheelchair with a crippling disease. I’m not expecting high art.. or good taste. or anything. Point is Bi-Polar Bear wants to play baseball. He’s not in this movie much and even comments on it. Here are my thoughts on that:

Out of the main 4 he was easily the worst character in the original shorts, he has no personality other than Paul Lynde imperession and the name shows off how Reiss really dosen’t get that Bi People exist. He knows the TERM exists, but he doen’t get it. I’m not sad this character is BARELY in the movie in favor of the two characters with actual plot relevance and comedic timing.

Onto my boy Oscar Wildecat. He’s actually been upgraded as in the shorts his only real personality trait was “wants to commit matricide” which, thanks to being played by Maurice LaMarche, somehow worked. Well apparently he finally killed her and got away with it because it never comes up in the movie, but he not only gets an intresting arc we’ll get to later, but is funny as ever even without his main gimmick, getting some of the best lines and getting a great throaway gag to play him in as he runs a Shirley Temple memrobilia shop> While that itself isn’t funny, the fact he has the ACTUAL Shirely boxed up like a doll is and this exchange brings it over the top

Shirley: Hey mister.. I can’t breathe Oscar: Quiet you.

Back to the present of the movie: Openly Gator works at a TGIFridays type restraunt. God I fucking miss TGIFridays. Not going to lie. It’s still around just not in my area anymore. It was one of my faviorite places and it was still great when I visited it on vacation. But Gator hates it and is rude to customers waiting for his big break. He also meets Conan O’Brien which kicks off a decent enough gag where Conan ends up unluckily being Gator’s customer over and over despite Gator prioritizing his own needs. Gator even calls conan up for help at one point because he has no one else to turn to, and Conan indulges him because while he is on show his guest is carrot top, whose drawn as some sort of monstrosity.. in other words they nailed it, flawless no notes. Conan is played by himself and is clearly game for this, god bless that man. Late Night will not be the same without you my sweet ginger prince.

So finally we get Queer Duck who spends more time as a Male Nurse in this film than the entreity of the web series despite it being in the title, being depressed. It’s here he meets Lola Buzzard, played by Jackie Hoffman, a stage actress i’d never heard of before this, but who does a REALLY good job and a hilarious performance. Lola is an over the hill actress who soon bonds with our hero and the two perform a great number “Smile Ya Bastards Smile” where the two cheer up the ward and Lola cheers up a morose Queer duck and charms him.

Lola is smitten with our hero and asks him to spend the day with her. We meet her driver, butler, chalet and ex husband (Twice over) , Peccary, a pig played by TIM. CURRY.

Mymymymymymy how have we gone over a YEAR on this blog without Tim Curry showing up. The man is a legend in voice acting, acting and ...

The man is a fucking delight and the fact he HASN’T come up more on this blog, let alone at all as a voice actor till now is a fucking tragedy. The man is a genius and he’s no less good here as the poor put upon pig. The man also has the second sexiest voice in the world just behind Keith David. I don’t thirst over the man the way I do keith but lord do I respect the man as much, and when I say I respect someone as much as Keith David what i’m saying is I have the utmost repsect for them as an actor, legend of screen, and person.

Anyways, the two hang out, enjoy each other’s company, we also get a really fun beauty and the beast bit, and Queer duck is now into Lola.. emotinally at least. He’s still gay as a goose and ready to gander, but he’s conflicted now. He withdraws a bit from Openly Gator and Gator figures things out quickley. Lola however dosen’t notice his anmosity and invites the two to a broadway show, with comments on how Broadway’s gotten really gay, and wishes she coudl go back there but wonders if a bunch of gay men would really listen to an old industry legend spill the tea on b-listers she dealt with. Given one of the best shows this year has been Hacks, which is about a beloved industry vetran kiling it on vegas and getting encouraged to change up her act by her young, dosen’t want to be here in the slightest protege, and stars screne Legend Jean Smart. Yeahhh.

And Queer Duck proves this right as some time later, how much exactly?

Lola has become a hit with her show still ain’t dead, with QD taking his friends to the premiere and we get a decent musical number. Not very memorable but not bad.

A Normal Life:

Lola then drops a bombshell the next night and asks Queer Duck to marry her, knowing he’s gay and not carring. He makes her happy. She does give him a card for a conversion therapy guy which....

Yeah it makes her less sympathetic.... and feels out of character given she dosen’t seem to give a shit her possible husband is gay. So why give him this? It dosen’t make a ton of sense and feels like a lazy way to bring our main antagonist into the plot.

But Queer Duck is conlifcted and Oscar notices the next night at the gay bar. When Queer Duck explains his situation Oscar.. suprisingly relates. Turns out he also had a moment of doubt years ago: back then it being the 50′s gay bars weren’t exactly a thing and had to be kept underground to avoid literal gay bashing. Just ask poor Huckleberry Hound Sr. No seriously i’m not making this up for a gag, theirs an alternate unvierse comic focusing on Snagglepuss as an Oscar Wilde style play right dealing with the mcarthy hearings and featuring a violetnly closted Quickdraw McGraw too. It’s REALLY good.

Point is he was at one of these clubs when he fell for a woman whose part of a trio of singers who sing about loosing a guy because he maasturbates too much.

I have no response to that. They hit it off but the club was raided and Oscar never found her and encourages QD to go for it.

So Queer Duck breaks up with Openly Gator.. by announcing his engagment.

And OG is a trooper here taking it, just wanting him to be happy even if he’s miserable, depsite the fact Queer Duck was a pure uncut ass here abandoning his partner without a proper breakup and basically telling him “So yeah i’m dating a woman now sucks to be you”.

So we then get the most obnoxious scene in the film, as Queer Duck tells his parents and Lebsian Sister he’s getting married to a woman. We do get a nice visual gag as said sister has brought her girlfriend with her whose a beaver. Is it a very clever gag? no. But they don’t bring it up so it ends up landing a bit as a subtle pun... not subtle though is her eating carpet... which is a nod to a certain slur against lebsians.

That’s SUPRISINGLY not what makes it obnoxious. It dosen’t help but no the obnoxious part is his parents CELEBRATING.. to an annoying farty version of the queer duck theme. We just here it AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN until i’m driven mad.. for the second time with this friggin franchise. I’m not bringing the Ash gif back though this dosen’t deserve it.

Queer Duck goes to see the conversion guy who turns out to be the Reverend. Me I prefer my reverends welcoming to all folks and transparently gay like they do up in canada.

youtube

Anyway the Reverend tries takling Queer Duck back in time to see WHEN he started having Gay Thoughts. We get him as a sperm hitting on a bigger sperm that’s techincally his brother because fuck it at this point, and then a repeat of a gag from the series where he hatches saying he’s gay and his parents are in clear denial.

We then get the best song in the movie, a riff on the Major General Song from HMS Pentafore.. and not without reasons as Queer Duck fully realizes he was gay as a young lad seeing those bulges on the sailors, and it’s just a damn fun number, with both Bennet and Bullock just going for it. We also get an alternate version of his coming out, this time at his bar mitsfa. So the Reverend tries a clock work oranging Queer Duck, but it fails utterly as you’d expect. It’s something I LIKE: the Reverend’s methods really DON’T work, at worst they just brow beat into someone gay into living a lie about themselves and feeling what’s natural for them is wrong and evil. Conversion therapy like in real life is just tourture and gaslighting, pure and simple and while the movie dosen’t show it as horrific ENOUGh for my taste, it never paints it as anything BUT that, hence the clockwork orange analogy of using tourture to try and change him via an electroshock chair: it’s really what conversion therapy IS and i’ts an utter travesty it hasn’t been banned. I know i’m preaching to the choir here but it’s not like ti’s not worth saying. But it fails and Queer Duck goes to his wedding anyway. See what I meant about this feeling forced?

Johnny Bronco Does a Kidnappin:

So then it’s time for the wedding,. We get some awkard refrence humor... something tha’ts not sadly new to this series as the Critic would endulge in this from time to time too, though most of it’s jokes were designed to simply be funny on their own. And sometimes you’d get jokes about Woody Allen and Soon-Yi and Roseanne and Tom Arnold, though for the record Woody Allen is a rapist, a pedophile and abuser and deserves to burn the fuck in hell and Roseanne Barr is a racist abrasive trump suporter. They arne’t good people, it’s just the jokes were about Woody dating someone way yougner than him, and Roseanne being obnoxious. It’s not exactly the kind of joke that dates well is what i’m saying. I mean again Roseanne IS OBNOXIOUS but she’s proved to be far WORSE than obnoxious in old age and at the time as we’d find out from Gilmore Girls Creator Amy Sherman Paladino, she used to NUMBER her writers because she didn’t like them getting egos. Yes really. ASP even used it for a bit on Gilmore girls to show that Paris was going mad with power.

Point is jokes about MIcheal Jackson have not aged well nor have jokes about Rosie O Donnel. I just.. I got nothing their as trite and unfunny as you’d expect. So while all this is going on Openly Gator is convinced to go chase after Queer Duck graduate style and Queer Duck himself.. is drugged and kidnapped by the reverend.

Yeah the Reverend kidnaps him.. which begs the question why not just have him kidnap queer duck BEFORE over the phone calls, it not work and kidnap him again out of frustration of his therapy not working? It makes more sense. But this time he tries a potion to turn Queer Duck straight, something that WORKS and.. god i’ts cringe inducing. For one even if it’s temproraary a potion turning a gay person straight is just.. concernated nope. But it dosen’t help their version of straight: is a bro who wants to oggle every woman, acts like an ass and calls OG a homo. It’s just more awful sterotyping and while not as odious as this franchises usual gay sterotyping, it’s still pretty fucking bad and toxic to say all men are like this when we’re not. I’m horny as shit, I own that, but it’s not because I like women. I’m just lonely. Everyone is diffrent and this movie can fuck off with this.

So Straight Duck beds Lola, and we do get some funny bits with there bein ga ton of stairs, an elevator and what not, before they finally do the deed... only for her to die. Yup that happened.

So Queer Duck genuinely mourns over her death and is upset, even more so because he’s trapped as a straight man and miserable about it. Even a huge swerve dosen’t help: he finds out Lola left everything to him.. and dosen’t care. It’s like I siad, in his old self he may not have been attracted to her, but he LOVED her and this hurts.

Pickering comes to the rescue though. Realizing QD wasn’t a gold digging asshat and genuinely loved Lola just like he had once, he helps QD get his Queer back with the power of barbra streisand, who helps him realize he can’t chagne who he is. It’s a nice message: no amount of bullshit or lies can change who you are. And who he is is gay. We then get a song about him wanting to bang every dude around because fuck this series. He TRIES getting openley gator back but OG rightfully rejects him because fuck him.

Fairyland:

Queer Duck is naturally sad again, but Pickering encourages him to enjoy himself: He’s rich now, he can do whatever he wants. So Queer Duck’s first order of buisness.. is to rub it in the Reverend’s face... and bring some cops along since Gelderling naturally rants he’ll “drug and kidnap him as many times as it takes”.

After that we get a riff on the queer eye guys as Queer Duck tries to have them redecorate and after doing it himself iwth PIckering, who he treats way better than Lola ever did and thus earns his loyalty, it’s really sweet, hangs iwth his boys.

He gives both whatever they always wnated to make up for neglecting them. We do get a nice self dig as Bi Polar Bear wants more screentime, and Queer Duck offers him more in the sequel, which naturally did not happen.

But Oscar’s wish does get fufilled: his own antiques roadshow style show where the first person he interviews is the dog the Reverend seemingly ‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘

“‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘CURED”‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘

He’s voiced by Andy Dick who SHOCKINGLY never showed up on the Critic... because it was headlined by John Lovtiz.. who rightfully haded that mop topped bastard as he helped get Phil Hartman’s wife back into drugs, a spiral that eventaully lead to her killing the both of them. Lovitz was a good friend of Phil and after too much shit from Andy beat the everyloving shit out of him. I will ALWAYS treasure that story.

But unsuprisingly the Dog turns out to be the woman Oscar loved, he was a REALLY good drag queen and they have a live sex celebration on air.

Given the baseball setup, Bi-Polar bear gets his own team and a number about how “baseball is gay” that’s suprisingly good.

So with all this joy spread, Queer Duck decides to go back to where it started for one last big fuck you gesture: he buys Happyland (We get a nice gag about the owner not only gladly selling out “family values” for money but hoping his dad is rolling around in his cryo tube) and turns it into Fairyland inviting all Gay, Bi, Trans and others to join him. The ONLY time Trnas people, one of the biggest parts of the queer community, are mentioned in this entire franchise... given how this franchise treats gay people and acts like bi people don’t exist, it’s a blessing in disguise.

This enrages the reverened into escaping his minimum security prison. At the opening..

We get some recycled gags from the Gay Theme Park episode of the shorts and Openly Gator gets a job at the ass pirates place.. I prefer Pirates of the Pancreas myself.

But the Reverend has one last scheme and has hyjacked the dergible QD is on, and plans to use it to spray his straight shit on them. Phrasing.

The rest of the Queer Duck Crew convince Openly Gator to help, which he does because he loves him..

And upon finding out what’s going on heads up and tries resucin ghim. We also get some decent gags with the tiny jesus on the reverend’s cruafix, played by David Duchovney, who bites the guy and generally snarks at the bigot. Our heroes barely escape the burning blimp and reconcile and the reverend is left to get raped by a bull because the series dosen’t get rape is bad even when it’s male on male.

So our main couple gets back together and we get the worst song of the movie: “I’m Glad I’m Gay” the title means well but it’s reptitive, not all that funny, and just.. ugh. The lonely hearts club shoutout is nice, hence why I used it for the page image instead of the lackluster dvd art, but otherwise it’s just whatever. The two get married, this time WILLINGLY, and our movie thankfully ends.

Final Thought:

This was rough in spots as you can tell.. but it’s not HORRIBLE. is it good, even fantastic?

It still has too many of the original series problems to be actually GOOD: The gay casts are caractures of gay people clearly based on terrible sterotypes, not even disscussing Queer Duck might be bi, the conversoin potion somehow working even though it’s undone, the racist pandas, the bull rape... there’s still a lot of ERRRURUUUGHHH stuff baked into the dna of this movie that makes it not fun to watch. Even for it’s time it’s regressive in it’s treatment of gay people , with both Mission Hill and the Simpsons having done loads better.

But... it IS better than the series. that’s not saying a lot, the series was pretty shitty. But more time means we get more rapid fire jokes in the style of The Critic, so I laughed WAY more during this than the series, and it does share the second half of the series tone: it’s more well meaning and Queer Duck is SLIGHTLY more likeable, and the humor isn’t AS dark. There’s still some bad shit as i’ve said... enough to make the film not GOOD, but it’s not nearly as odious as some of the stuff the series did. Were the series this level of quality. I wouldn’t of tried to see if I could gouge my eyes out with one of the goofy’s on my desk watching. Now saying it’s WATCHABLE isn’t high praise and I don’t mean it to be but if your curious the movie IS free on crackle and is only 70 minutes, probably more with commericals but hey, so I can at least say check this out if your curious or like laughing at a piss poor attempt at representation.

So yeah that about does Pride Month for this year. I mean I still have a Della and Penumbra episode this week, but otherwise that’s all folks. It’s been fun. And does that mean i’m done looking at queer media? No. And that includes bad stuff. With Q Force premering soon and ... this still needing adressing at some ponit.

As well as this

So yeah i’m sadly not done with bad faith attempts at representation or good ones. Countering both I have America’s recent mini series at some point and the Iceman solo series. So yeah expect all that at some point and until then, there’s always another rainbow and no matter what the color of yours is.. I support you, I love you and you are not alone.

#queer duck #lbgtq+#gay pride #pride month #pride #happy pride #mike reiss #the critic #the simpsons #tim curry

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shadowhuntertrash · 4 years ago

Text

High Notes

Chapter Nine

I dont own the character they belong to Cassandra Clare

There was a lot of buzz before the concert and Thomas couldn’t help but feel the excitement that was radiating from everyone. They were supposed to start the concert in about an hour and a half, they had split the concert evenly between the three bands, making sure that it was truly a shared concert and not one of them being the opening act.

The Merry Thieves were playing first tonight, then Beautiful Cordelia, and lastly Alastair. He hadn’t seen Alastair or the girls but he was currently sitting in a room with Matthew, Christopher, and James.

They had a tradition from when they started as YouTubers with ten followers, to always have the same face paint in every video, they all had meanings behind them that the fans didn’t know about, though most of them had come up with theories as they became more popular.

Matthew always had a glass of spilled wine that covered his eye and fell down his face in a way that looked like blood. He had a problem with underage drinking since he was about thirteen. His parents weren’t really around and he didn’t have a good reason to stop, his friends had always tried to talk him out of it but it had never worked. The only reason he stopped was after a talk with Will, James’ father. No one knew what Will had said, neither of them would talk about it, but since that day Matthew hadn’t touched alcohol, and Will all but adopted Matthew after the conversation.

Christopher had a broken beaker with bubbling green liquid fizzing over, a testament to his love of chemistry and science. Christopher had always loved science but often blew things up, it wasn’t because he was bad he was actually very smart but he was ahead of his time more often than not. A lot of the kids at school would bully him for it, lock him in the back lockers, tear pages out of his books, mess his experiments up on purpose. It had gotten bad for a while and Christopher had given up science for about two months before Anna had managed to pull him out of his slump. He had chosen the beaker as a way to say he was proud of what set him apart and he wouldn’t allow people to put him down for that anymore.

James had black wings that went sideways over one cheek and ended on the opposite side of his face, black feathers burnt on the edges and some on fire littered his other cheek. He wore it as a symbol of growing up in the shadows of his parents. He had always been the black sheep of his family, though he certainly acted like his parents at times. He also wore it as a proud sign of depression, a battle he had fought for a long time. He would have days where he was so out of it he hardly recognized anyone and it was like he was being dragged down. Eventually, his friends had pulled him out of it, mostly Matthew and Lucie, and he found his footing again. That was when they had started the band.

Thomas had a large compass on the side of his cheek, the hands were vines and a red rose was blooming in the middle of it. It was a symbol for when he lost his way and started getting into trouble. Thomas was a good person at heart but sometimes people come into your life and knock you off track. He had gone to Paris one year and had gotten into a lot of trouble, it had been worse because he didn’t know how to tell his parents so instead he just didn’t come back. After he missed coming home and refused to answer anyone, Barbara found him, when he questioned how she had just glared and said that she had her ‘ways.’ She talked some sense into him and he went back, it taught him that there were always people there, and he should never be afraid to go home. The compass he had chosen to say that he had found his way, the arrow pointing north to his home.

The boys had decided that they would go talk to fans before the concert, there were always fans that got there early and stood outside the doors. Thomas followed Christopher, James was on Matthew’s back, laughing loudly as Matthew took off down the hallway. Christopher turned to him with wide excited eyes and Thomas rolled his eyes in mock annoyance.

“Wait come back.” Thomas called down the hallway, squatting so Christopher could jump on his back. Matthew spun around and jogged back to where Thomas stood, straightening up. Christopher was relatively small so it didn’t take much strength to carry him.

“Race!” James shouted excitedly, Matthew wooted and stood next to Thomas who was laughing. Matthew raised an eyebrow at Thomas, a joyful grin on his face. “You’re going down Lightwood!” Thomas rammed his shoulder into Matthew who stumbled a little, Thomas lagged and Matthew stuck his tongue out. “No cheating!” James said from Matthew’s back, he was grinning lazily at Thomas, a relaxed expression that was very seldom on his face.

Thomas looked forward. “You’re on.” Christopher laughed and started counting down slowly. “Three, Two, One!” Thomas and Matthew took off. Thomas stumbled for a second, not used to the wait and Matthew took it as a chance to get ahead of them. Thomas took off after him, Christopher laughing and clinging to Thomas for dear life.

Thomas pulled to the lead, the advantage of having long legs. Thomas looked behind him to Matthew who was cursing and speeding up, Thomas laughed and looked back in front of him just in time to turn around a corner and run straight into someone.

He fell backward, Christopher shrieking as he went down with him. Thomas turned mid-fall, trying to avoid landing on Christopher. He landed with a large thump and heard Matthew and James laughing hysterically at them. Normally Thomas would have laughed too but he was too busy trying to get air back into his lungs, all of it having been expelled when he landed squarely on his back.

He turned to look at Christopher to make sure he was okay, he heard him laughing and laid back down. Christopher got up and started talking to the person they had run into, Thomas just stayed on the ground willing the air to come back to his lungs. After a second Matthew and Alastair were standing over him.

Matthew was still laughing but Alastair looked rather concerned. Thomas sat up slowly coughing and thanking god he could breathe now. “Are you alright? I would say sorry but I rather fancy that was your fault.” Thomas laughed and Alastair laughed with him.

Thomas was well aware of how red his face was, last he had seen Alastair he was being asked out and left standing there like a fish, opening and closing his mouth dumbly, now he was sat on the ground having run Alastair over in a stupid race.

“This is so embarrassing.” Thomas groaned, his hand rubbing the back of his head where he had hit it on the concrete floor. Alastair laughed and shook his head, his hand coming down to help Thomas up.

“Where were you going so fast anyway?” At this Thomas forgot his embarrassment and turned to look at Matthew who still had James on his back. “This does not mean you win!” Thomas said, pointing his finger at Matthew. “I fell, that does not mean you win. It doesn’t count as a forfeit or whatever thing you were going to say.” Matthew stuck out his lips in a pout. “But Thomas.” He said in a whiny voice, Alastair was watching the exchange with amused eyes and Thomas shook his head firmly.

“Sorry no I win, isn’t that right Alastair.” He said turning to Alastair, faking confidence to shake off the lasting effects of his earlier embarrassment. Alastair nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes, very much so.” Matthew groaned. “That’s not fair, you can’t ask your boyfriend! He’s biased!” Thomas blushed again, his embarrassment renewed, as Alastair laughed. “Not yet. Where are you going?” Alastair asked Matthew, nonchalance rolling off him in waves. Thomas wondered if Alastair was aware he had just given him a heart attack.

James turned his attention to Thomas, a wicked smile spreading across his face. “Not yet?” He mouthed, amusement dancing in his eyes. Thomas just glared in response.

“We’re going to see the fans before the concert.” Matthew said, dropping James back on his feet. Alastair’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s my favorite part! Can I come?” He asked, the question was directed at Thomas but Christopher beat him to it. “More the merrier.” He said, quite literally skipping down the hall towards the big double doors that led outside.

Matthew and James started walking, Matthew gave Thomas a pointed look before grabbing James’ hand and pulling him faster so they were a few paces ahead of Alastair and Thomas. Thomas could feel his palms sweating and took a deep breath before looking at Alastair with a smile on his face.

“You know, you never actually heard if I agreed to go out with you.” Alastair tilted his head, a playful smile resting on his lips. He stopped walking and winked at Thomas. “Oh my dearest Thomas Fabian Lightwood, would you do me the greatest honor of going on a date with me.” Thomas laughed loudly, something told him that he should be embarrassed but the scene in front of him was too funny.

“That is most certainly not my middle name but I think I will.” Thomas said through his laughter, Alastair beamed at him and continued walking to the door considerably closer to Thomas now.

They were greeted by about a hundred screaming fans as they walked out. Thomas turned to Alastair with a disbelieving smile and he just clapped a hand on Thomas’s shoulder with a laugh, something that could be passed off as friendly Thomas noted gratefully.

Alastair turned and went to talk to a girl who looked to be about eighteen with an “I <3 Alastair” poster. Thomas smiled at the way Alastair’s face was lit up, completely comfortable in this environment.

“Thomas! Thomas!” He turned to look at who was screaming his name and saw a woman who was holding hands with a girl who looked to be about five years old. He walked over with a smile and crouched down so he could be more level with the girl. “And what is your name?” He asked with a kind smile, the girl was buzzing with excitement. “I’m Talia!” She said, a large slightly toothless smile plastered on her face. “It’s my birthday.” She said quietly watching him with wide eyes as if the excitement were wearing off and she was getting shy.

He laughed and flashed her a large smile. “I have a question, it’s important so don’t just say something to please me alright?” She nodded enthusiastically and Thomas laughed making eye contact with her mother who was watching the interaction with a fond smile. “Alright, do you like Alastair or The Merry Thieves better?” He asked and watched her face scrunch up in thought.

“I love you but I love Alastair a lot.” She said, her face distressed as if she genuinely couldn’t decide. Thomas laughed and nodded. “I will be right back, okay?” He said winking at her, she nodded furiously and he smiled turning away.

Thomas walked up to Alastair and said hello to the boy he was talking to. “Do you mind if I steal him for just a second?” Thomas asked the boy who looked disappointed but nodded anyway, a starstruck look on his face.

Thomas pulled Alastair gently by the elbow over to the Talia whose eyes had gone triple the normal size. “Oh.” She said quietly as Thomas crouched back down in front of her, Alastair followed his lead shooting a look at Thomas silently asking him to explain. Thomas turned to Alastair with a warm smile, “Well, it’s Talia’s birthday today and she loves you more than me.” He let out an exaggerated sigh and Talia started protesting immediately.

Thomas laughed loudly and patted her head. “It’s alright I’m quite fond of him too.” He said, throwing a secretive smile at Alastair who was watching him fondly. “So Talia, I was thinking we could sing you happy birthday?” Talia squealed loudly and then tried to play it off by clearing her throat, Thomas laughed and ruffled her hair.

Talia’s mom grabbed her phone quickly and started recording while Thomas looked at Alastair before nodding and they started. As they sang the people around them sang along and before they reached the second line the rest of the Merry Thieves and the crowd were singing along. There were tons of cameras on them and Thomas couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up when it suddenly got really quiet when they sang Talia’s name due to only a few people having heard it.

When they were done Alastair smiled widely at her. “How old are you Talia?” She beamed at him. “I’m six.” Thomas smiled, he hadn’t been far off. Alastair smiled at her as he stood up. “Well happy birthday sweetie, I hope you enjoy the concert.” Alastair gave Thomas a look and without question, Thomas took over talking to her as Alastair leaned over to whisper something in Talia’s mother’s ear.

“What do you want for your birthday?” He asked secretively, Talia just watched him with wide eyes. “To meet you.” She said simply, a shy smile resting on her face. Thomas felt warmth blossom in his chest and reached over to hug her gently. “I’m very glad I got to meet you today Talia.” She giggled and held on to him while he rubbed her back.

Alastair crouched next to them with an excited smile. “Talia, since it’s your birthday and you decided to come and spend it with us, would you like to see us again after the concert? We can hang out a bit?” Talia was silent for a minute staring at Alastair as if he had just offered her the moon, she turned to her mom with her mouth open and she laughed. “I’m fine with it Talie.” She said, running a hand through her daughter's hair.

Talia squealed and launched herself into Alastair’s arms nodding. Alastair laughed as he landed on the ground, the force of Talia flinging herself on him knocking him off balance.

They hugged her one more time and gave her backstage passes for after the concert before heading off to say hello to more people before they had to go back

Thomas greeted about ten more fans before Matthew was dragging him back inside. He laughed as he stumbled, trying to keep himself upright at the speed Matthew was going. “I’m coming give me a second!” Thomas said after tripping on the raised bar that separated the inside and outside.

It was a rush of lights and sounds as they all got ready. Cordelia, Lucie, Anna, Alastair, and surprisingly Jesse had all stopped to wish them good luck before they went out on stage. They were currently backstage watching the fans from where they were tucked away in the shadows of the stage.

Matthew was bouncing on the balls of his feet and James was laughing at his excitement while Christopher just stared in wonder at everything. Thomas felt that nervous flutter in his stomach again but was pleasantly surprised when he realized his excitement was winning out.

They were on in two minutes and Matthew turned to them with a big smile. “Huddle.” He said and the boys laughed as they made a circle, their arms over shoulders. Thomas was between Matthew and Christopher, bending down to accommodate for his height.

“I would just like to say gentlemen,” Matthew said in a noticeably quieter voice that informed the other boys it was about to get sappy. “That no matter what happens out there I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone but y’all.” Thomas brought his hand up to Matthew’s hair to ruffle it slightly as Christopher smiled at them and voiced his agreement, James kissed Matthew on the cheek and turned to everyone.

“I love you guys more than anything and I know we’re going to rock it tonight.” He gave Thomas a pointed look as he said the next part. “There’s no reason to be nervous and we’re all right there so just know we’ve got your back.” Matthew nodded and Christopher clapped his shoulder. Thomas beamed at them wondering how he got so lucky to have these three as his best friends.

“I’m proud of all of you. I really am, just look how far we’ve come.” Thomas said in a gentle voice, gesturing with his head at the crowd and stage. Matthew laughed and James looked at all of them. “I’m proud of y’all too. It took a lot to get here.” James said and Thomas couldn’t disagree.

Christopher put his head in the middle and they all put their heads together. “Let’s rock this.” Christopher said and Thomas could hear his smile even if he couldn’t see it. They all shouted their agreement and broke the huddle. Anna was standing there looking at them fondly.

She came up and ruffled his brother’s hair before flinging her arm around Matthew’s shoulders. “Knock ‘em dead boys.” She said and Thomas smiled at the proudness she felt in her voice. It always was the best feeling to have Anna be proud of you.

Thomas grabbed James and Matthew’s hands and James grabbed Christopher’s, they all squeezed their hands and smiled at each other. “Let’s do this.” James said and with that, they all strode onto the stage.

The crowd had already been loud but the screams were deafening when they saw the boys walk on stage. Thomas couldn’t help the giddy excitement building up in his chest. This was real. This was happening.

Matthew adjusted the microphone and waved at the crowd who screamed again in response. “Hello! I’m Matthew Fairchild and we’re the Merry Thieves.” He had to pause as another wave of scream washed over the crowd. Thomas could feel his heart pounding against his ribcage. This was real, this was real, this was real.

“We’re so glad to be here today thank y’all for welcoming us!” Another wave of screams and applause rang out and the boys all shared a disbelieving look. “Okay! I do believe we should get this started don’t y’all agree?” More screams. There were a few girls in the front who were all screaming at Matthew with signs that said ‘Marry me?’ and ‘#1 Fairchild Stan’ which Thomas didn’t actually understand.

Matthew winked at the girls who started freaking out. “Okay, this song is called Bang!” There were cheers from everywhere and Thomas smiled at the crowd before moving to the electric piano that was off to the side. He started the song as James and Christopher started clapping and Matthew smiled at the crowd as he began singing.

I get up, I get down and I'm jumping around

And the rumpus and ruckus are comfortable now

Been a hell of a ride but I'm thinking it's time to grow

Bang! Bang! Bang!

So I got an apartment across from the park

Put quinoa in my fridge, still I'm not feeling grown

Been a hell of a ride but I'm thinking it's time to go

Bang! Bang! Bang!

(Here we go)

James and Christopher start playing their respective instruments and the crowd screams as the drums and guitar filter through.

So put your best face on everybody

Pretend you know this song

Everybody come hang (come hang)

Let's go out with a bang

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I'm way too young to lie here forever

I'm way too old to try so whatever come hang (come hang)

Let's go out with a bang

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Feel like I'm gonna puke 'cause my taxes are due

Does my password begin with a one or a two?

Been a hell of a ride but I'm thinking it's time to grow

Bang! Bang! Bang!

(Metronome)

Man, I'm up to something (up to something)

Ooh de la de do, thank you all for coming (all for coming)

I hope you like the show

'Cause it's on a budget (on a budget)

So ooh de la de do

Yeah, come on, here we go

Yeah, come on

(Here we go)

So put your best face on everybody

Pretend you know this song

Everybody come hang (come hang)

Let's go out with a bang

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I'm way too young to lie here forever

I'm way too old to try so whatever come hang (come hang)

Let's go out with a bang

Bang! Bang! Bang! (Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!)

Bang! Bang! Bang! (Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!)

Been a hell of a ride but I'm thinking it's time to go

So put your best face on everybody

Pretend you know this song

Everybody come hang

Let's go out with a bang

Bang! Bang! Bang!

(Here we go)

So put your best face on everybody

Pretend you know this song

Everybody come hang (come hang)

Let's go out with a bang

Bang! Bang! Bang! (Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!)

I'm way too young to lie here forever

I'm way too old to try so whatever come hang (come hang)

Let's go out with a bang

Bang! Bang! Bang!

(Here we go)

Bang! Bang!

Thomas watched as the crowd screams and claps. Thomas couldn’t really get a good breath in but it’s not like his panic attacks it’s almost a good feeling. Thomas watched as he sat back on James’ drum platform as Matthew starts addressing the crowd again.

James smiled at him and puts his hand over his microphone as he leaned forward to talk to Thomas. “You doing okay?” He asks just loud enough for Thomas to hear, Thomas looks around again and nods turning his head back to James. “God yes, this is magical.” James laughs and nods in agreement as Matthew finishes talking.

James shoos Thomas away and he goes to pick up his guitar. He looks over to the side of the stage and pauses momentarily when he sees Alastair, Cordelia, and Lucie sitting there watching them. Lucie and Cordelia wave with bright smiles on their faces while Alastair meets Thomas’s eyes and wink giving him a thumbs-up gesture.

Thomas laughs lightly and points at him before he looks at Christopher and nods signaling them to start. The notes start filtering in and Thomas can’t help sending one last look towards Alastair.

There once was a bittersweet man and they called him, "Lemon Boy"

He was growing in my garden and I pulled him out by his hair like a weed

And like weeds do he only came and grew back again

So, I figured this time I might as well let him be

Lemon Boy and me started to get along together

I helped him plant his seeds

And we'd mow the lawn in bad weather

It's actually pretty easy being nice to a bitter boy like him

So, I got myself a citrus friend

But soon his bittersweet started to rub off on me

You'd think smelling like lemon zest would be pretty neat

I found out that my friends are more of the savory type

And they weren't too keen on compromising with a nice lemon pie

So Lemon Boy and me, we just gotta get along together

I helped him plant his seeds

And we'll mow the lawn in bad weather

It's actually pretty easy being nice to a bitter boy like him

So, I got myself a citrus friend

But what if I run out of fertilizer?

What if the clouds run out of rain?

What if Lemon Boy won't grow no longer?

What if beaches dry of sugar cane?

Oh well

The whales start to beach themselves

Tortoise shells tear away from their spines

It happens all the time, it happens all the time

Lemon Boy and I, we're gonna live forever

Like Snufkin and little my, we'll get around wherever

Lemon Boy and I, we're gonna live forever

Like Snufkin and little my, we'll get around wherever

It's actually pretty easy being nice to a bitter boy like him

'Cause we're the bitterest boys in town

Yeah, we're the bitterest guys around

And I got myself a citrus friend

Thomas watched as the crowd erupted into cheers again and couldn’t help thinking that this was a dream. He pinched himself and laughed maniacally when he felt a small pain. This was real. He was really here with his friends.

He turned to look back at Alastair who was now clapping and screaming on his feet while Lucie and Cordelia jumped excitedly. Thomas shook his head.

This was real.

#high notes #the last hours #tlh #alastair carstairs #thomas lightwood #tsc fanfiction #thomastair #christopher lightwood #anna lightwood #matthew fairchild #james herondale #lucie herondale #jesse blackthorn #so many tags #i don't have the energy

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phantom-sunset · 4 years ago

Audio

Thank yo so much to @screwunsaidemily for putting this gift exchange together.

This one is for @penguin-writes-books and is inspired by the above song

Titled: Polaroid

Rated: T

Ship: Willex

Alex has been distant recently, It wasn’t anything they had done. It was his family. His parents, to be more specific. He had finally come out to them and well...it didn’t go well. They’d stopped speaking to him completely and when he was home, pretended he wasn’t even there. His mother looked through him and his father never stayed in the same room if he was there. Alex could feel it was only a matter of time until they kicked him out completely.

Julie hadn’t joined in the anxiety party Luke and Reggie were throwing for Alex but instead patiently waited. She had an idea, she always knew when one of her boys wasn’t okay. She never pushed though, and instead waited for them to be ready to come to her.

Ray was waiting as well. Both he and Julie, and maybe Carlos too, had an idea of what was going on. Ray had already gotten their second guest room ready for Alex, for when he was ready to open up to them. When he was ready to live his life completely out in the open. Ray had hung a rainbow flag off of the porch, just a little outward sign that Alex was safe and welcome in his home, that all of them were.

Reggie had come to move in with them when he had come over with cuts and bruises littering his body. That time Julie did not wait. She went to Ray and together they went to Reggie’s house, packed his things and brought him back to his new home. That was four years ago, when Reg was only thirteen.

Luke was a different story all together. When he began to get quiet and his energy seemed to diminish, they all noticed. Reggie and Alex had bothered him until he spilled everything. Julie had waited instead. She sat next to him quietly, worked on music to distract him. Held his hand when he cried on her shoulder. Played big spoon to his little when all he wanted was to feel loved and safe.

When Luke had finally let her in, she walked right up to his parents house the next day after school and refused to leave until they sat down and watched the entire video history of Julie and the Phantoms YouTube page. She sat there for hours until they admitted that their son was full of talent and that instead of forcing him into an engineering degree that would absolutely destroy his spirit, they should support his music major.

They had agreed when Julie sat quietly on their couch and simply stared at them expectantly without blinking. She might only be seventeen but she was scary when she needed to be, Rose had made sure of it.

___________________________

Alex really wants to stay home tonight. He’s not really in the mood to see anyone but none of his friends would allow it. He was pretty sure that the moment he came home today, his parents would kick him out. It was getting pretty blatant. If they didn’t do it, he was going to at least.

Julie hadn’t joined in the anxiety surrounding Alex like the boys had. Instead she convinced him that one night out wouldn’t kill him, adding on that if he got too anxious they’d leave straight away.

Julie knew that Alex definitely wasn’t ok but she knew it was a matter of time before he spilled his soul to her. It’s just how they’d always been, since they were kids.

Carrie is having her annual Valentines Day party tonight. Flynn’s cousin is in town touring UCLA for the week. He’s planning on starting in September. He is super cute and extremely Alex’s type.

So Julie is planning a secret set up. Alex has no idea but she’d let Flynn, Reggie, and Luke in on the plan. She was still shocked no one had told him about it but counted it as a win. One fourth of her best friends deserved a distraction and boy was Willie the perfect one.

“Are you guys ready?” Julie said as she walked into the studio that had somehow unofficially become the boys home. Even though Ray had made sure they all had their own space in his house.

Reggie was pulling a bright red shirt over his head, his black ripped jeans and combat boots already on, his leather jacket hanging lovingly over the back of a chair.

Luke was pulling on a white tee with “My Bloody Valentine” printed across it, a butcher knife dripping blood cut through the print. “Cute” she says to him as she takes in the shirt. She isn’t just talking about the shirt and he knows it but he smirks at her and winks. She rolls her eyes and turns to Alex.

He’s wearing a baby pink t-shirt and light colored blue jeans. His black and pink air maxes complete the look.

“No. But I doubt you’ll let me sit this one out.” Alex answers her question.

“You’re right. Let’s go, the Uber's here.” Julie puts her arm through his, pulls him towards Reggie where she loops her other arm and waits for Reggie to thread his arm through Luke’s. They skip down the driveway, Luke’s humming ‘We’re off to see the Wizard’ as they go.

When they pull up to Carrie’s it’s jam packed. Parents dropping their kids off, Uber’s dropping off their riders, and a lone skateboarder, weaving between bodies like he’s made of air. Julie smiles because she’d recognize that long brown hair anywhere. The guy hasn’t cut his hair since elementary school.

As they walk in, there’s staff dressed in red and white handing out brand new polaroid cameras to each guest as they come in. “To save the memories being made here.” He says to them.

“Obnoxious, isn’t it? All that money and we get outdated cameras” Flynn says from Alex’s side. He jumps up, startled at her sudden appearance.

“Fucking hell, Flynn. Stop doing that!” Alex hisses.

“Why? It’s so much more fun when you react like that.” She answers. Julie, Luke and Reggie snicker from behind him.

“Anyway. This is my cousin Willie. Willie This is Luke, Reggie, and Alex. You already know Julie.” She says, pointing them out individually.

“Nice to meet you.” Luke says as he holds his hand out. Reggie echoes him and Julie smiles and goes in for a hug.

Alex hasn’t moved yet. He’s just standing there, eyes wide and cheeks flushed as he takes in Willie. He’s cute as hell and taller than Alex which was saying something. His cheekbones reach for the sky, and a jawline that should be illegal. He’s smiling at Alex, holding out his hand to shake and oh god, this was embarrassing. How long has he been waiting for Alex to move? How long has Alex been staring at him like a deer in headlights?

“The malfunctioning one is Alex. Give him a minute, he’ll be right with you.” Reggie said as he tears open his Poloroid camera. He turns to Luke who has his arm around Julie and is busy whispering her ear and snaps a picture.

“Shut up, Reg.” Alex clears his throat and offers up his hand, finally. He’s willing the blush on his cheeks to retreat, it doesn’t.

“So, I’m thirsty. Let’s go get some drinks?” Flynn says, grabbing Reggie’s hand and pulling him. He grabs on to Luke’s shirt who grabs onto Julie’s arm and their little chain disappears into the crowd at the speed of light.

“So, they’re not nearly as sneaky as they think they are.” Willie says. A wide smile stretching over his face.

God, he’s teeth are so nice. White and straight. He probably never even needed braces. Alex shakes his head to clear his thoughts and realises Willie is speaking to him.

“Huh?” God, he probably sounds like an idiot. Way to make an impression.

“Your friends, my cousin. They’re setting us up.” Alex chokes on his own spit. Were they?

He turns towards the bar where his friends are standing. All four of them are watching him and he narrows his eyes. Reggie salutes him. Luke gives him a bouncy thumbs up. Julie and Flynn are batting their eyes and drawing little hearts in the air in front of them, their lips puckered in exaggerated kisses.

Alex rolls his eyes and turns back to Willie who had followed his line of sight and promptly burst out laughing.

“Wanna head outside? It’s super noisy in here and something tells me they won’t come back until we’ve gotten to know each other properly.” Willie suggests and Alex nods his agreement.

They end up spending an hour together. Alex lets Willie go first and everything he learns makes him like Willie more. He’s about to start college, UCLA is his first choice and he’s already been accepted. He’s going to be moving in with his uncle Robert (Flynn’s dad). The tour was an excuse to come to LA in order to see his family.

He’s from San Francisco, and is majoring in art. He’s sold his work in different galleries since he was fifteen. His mom calls him a prodigy but he just thinks he sees the beauty in things others don’t. He paints, sculpts, and does photography mostly but otherwise dabbles in everything.

Alex tells him about himself. He’s in a band. All four of them have also applied to UCLA for music majors. They’re going on tour over the summer, down the pacific coast. He tells Willie about the time Reggie and Luke convinced him to eat engine hotdogs and they all ended up in the hospital with food poisoning. Willie found that story hysterical.

It’s as Willie searches up the Julie and the Phantoms YouTube page to watch clips of their performances that he notices something and interrupts Alex’s story about how annoying Julie and Luke are in their mutual stupidity when it comes to their feelings for each other.

“Hey, do you mind if I take a picture of you?” Willie asks as he pulls the camera up to his eye.

“Only if I can take one of you.” Alex answers. It came out faster than his brain could process. Braver and flirtier than he intended but he let the question hang.

“Sure, hotdog! As many as you want.” He winks and smiles at Alex and snaps the picture.

The little rectangle comes out of the side of the camera and Willie is shaking it and still smiling at Alex as he snaps his picture. They're both shaking the film to let it develop and laughing at the thought of people only ever having to do this for their pictures.

“God, how did people survive in the 90s?” Willie asks.

“Right? Like they had to carry around separate things for everything. Music, cameras, phones, planners. The bags must have been huge!” Alex answers and they laugh again.

Willie reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sharpie, he grabs the picture of him from Alex’s hand and writes something on the white border. When he hands it back, Alex’s face turns red yet again.

Willie C. - 2.14.2021 🖤

Alex decides to do the same and grabs his own picture from Willie's hand, writing his own down too before handing it back.

Alex M. - 2.14.2021 🖤

They end up staying outside and completely missing Dirty Candi’s performance along with the rest of the party. Neither one is sure exactly how long it's been but Willie’s phone chimes and he looks down at it, startled.

“It’s Flynn. Wow, it’s midnight already? Looks like we gotta go. This was perfect, thanks for hanging out with me all night.” Willie says and Alex smiles at him.

“Yeah, I had a great time.” Alex answers as they both stand up. Willie turns to walk away but only makes it a few steps before he turns back to Alex.

“Can I kiss you?” Willie asks when he’s in front of Alex again. Alex freezes in response. He can’t do anything but nod because Fuck, he’s wanted to kiss him all night.

Willie laughs softly and puts both of his hands on Alex’s face and pulls him forward. It’s soft and sweet. Willie’s lips feel like cashmere and he smells like pine trees and coconut. The scent makes Alex light headed but he refuses to pull away until Willie makes the move to. Unfortunately it’s way too soon when he does.

“Thanks.” Willie turns and starts walking away again, leaving Alex to try and stop his brain leaking out of his ears since it’s now turned to mush.

“Wait! Can I have your number?” Alex shouts to him as he leaves. Willie turns, walking backwards as he shakes his head. The wide smile is still plastered on his face.

“Nah. It’s more fun this way, hotdog.” Willie answers, holding up the picture he’d taken of Alex.

“I hate that name! It’s how I almost died!” Alex shouts to him. Willie’s loud laugh lingers in the air around Alex long after he’s gone.

“Well well well, if it isn’t Alex C. Mercer. The boy who hasn’t been seen all night.” Reggie says as he throws himself down in the lounger next to him.

“Well, as setups go, I’d call this one a success.” Luke says from his other side.

“I definitely saw some flirting there.” Julie says as she sits down between Luke’s legs.

“How would you know? It’s not like either of you knows what flirting is.” Alex smirks at the two of them.

Reggie’s snickers come from behind Alex and makes it difficult to keep a straight face. Luke rolls his eyes and leans his head back, pulling Julie back with him so that her back rests against his chest. Julie punches Alex in the shoulder and sticks her tongue out at him.

_________________________________

It’s a week before classes start at UCLA and Julie, Luke Alex, and Reggie are enjoying being back. In their own homes, in their own beds (Alex’s happens to be at Julie’s house now). They decide to go to the beach and invite Flynn along.

Alex hasn’t mentioned Willie since valentines day and no ones brought it up. After all, he’s six hours away and had never given Alex his phone number. Sure, Alex had gone full FBI and found his Instagram page but it was private and Alex had never worked up the nerve to request him.

He thinks about him a lot though. Looks at the picture in his wallet more than he’d ever admit. He doesn’t have to come out and say it to anyone though because they’ve all caught him with it. Julie just smiled sweetly and left it alone. Unfortunately, Luke and Reggie are assholes so they bring it up all the time.

So here they are, spread out on the beach and Alex is getting thirsty. They’ve been here for a few hours and whatever supplies they’ve brought have been depleted.

“Hey, I’m gonna go grab some drinks. If you freeloaders want anything you’re going to have to come with.” Alex says as he stands up and slips his flip flops on.

“Rude.” Reggie says and stands up to go with him. Julie goes too and the three of them make it to the cement. Luke stays behind with Flynn to discuss album art concepts.

They stop to make sure someone actually had the money and when Reggie pulls out a soggy twenty that he had accidentally went swimming with, Julie laughs at him. Alex pulls out his own thankfully dry wallet.

“Watch out!” The voice comes from behind Alex but he doesn’t have time to move out of the way before something solid and strong slams into his back sending him sprawling face first into the sand.

“What the fuck?!” He yells as he spits sand out of his mouth and brushes it off of his body where it stuck painfully.

“Oh man, You dinged my board.” The voice comes from behind him again and he turns, fury burning in his veins.

“I dinged your board? You almost killed me!” Alex yells back. He doesn’t look up, examining his skinned knee.

“Yeah, I did pancake you, huh?” he’s laughing now and Alex stands up to give this guy a piece of his mind but his thoughts are cut off abruptly.

He can see Julie and Reggie out of the corner of his eye, smiling widely and snickering to each other. God, he hates them so much.

“Hotdog! Wow, long time.” He says. Alex’s brain has shut off though because wow he looks better than he did on valentines day.

His skin is sunkissed, his hair lightened by the sun, and he’s wearing a crop top that shows off his toned stomach. Alex traces the V as it disappears under his waistband. Someone pinches his elbow and he snaps out of it. Thank you, Julie.

“Willie, hi! How have you been?” When had his voice gotten so squeaky?

“I’ve been good! Starting school next week. Just finished moving in yesterday. How about you?” He answers. Julie and Reggie have walked away to the beach bar.

“Just got back from touring last night. Now we’re here. Relaxing before school starts.” Alex waves his hand out, encompassing the beach and the general area where Flynn and Luke are bent over her phone.

“You know, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that party. Kind of the best kiss I’ve had.” Willie chuckles and bumps his shoulder against Alex’s.

“Tell me about it.” Alex pulls his wallet out as he speaks. Pulling out the picture from his wallet and showing it to Willie.

“No way!” That smile that Alex hasn’t stopped staring at is back as he pulls out his own wallet and shows Alex the picture. The ink is faded, as if he’d been running his fingers over the signed name. The corners are crinkled and Alex beams because his looks just as well loved.

“Wanna join us?” Alex asks and Willie nods and smiles in response.

“Hell yeah!” He takes off his helmet and picks up his skateboard, following Alex back to their spot. The thirst that had been drying his throat moments before is completely forgotten when Willie laces his fingers with Alex’s.

#Julie and the phantoms #jatp fanfic #willex #Alex mercer #jatp willie #Julie molina #luke patterson #reggie peters #jatp flynn

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