#totally original paint chip idea

[truebluemeandyou]

Make Thoughtful Cards Out of Paint Chips Using Paint Names

I have been making cards, booklets, and posters out of paint chips for years. What is original about my idea (and I’ve never seen it done by anyone else), is that I pay attention to the paint name on the chip. 

All you need is a hole punch, scissors (if you want to cut the names into hearts for a card), and fasteners.

For 231 pages of DIY Valentine’s go here: truebluemeandyou.com/search/hearts

I have made cards with wine names, vacation themes, movie themes, and the list goes on and on. As I was picking up paint, I noticed that Home Depot had some great paint color names for Valentine’s Day and Galantine’s Day. All you need are free paint chips and cheap fasteners for the booklet. You can write on every page if you’d like, like the DIY Playing Card Valentine’s Day gift “52 Reasons I Love You” here.

And how perfect is “As You Wish” from The Princess Bride?

These are the cards I used for my booklet:

Heart Breaker

BFF

Heart to Heart

Epiphany

Stolen Kiss

XOXO

Joie de Vivre

I Heart Potion

Lover’s Knot

Night Music

Love Poem

Lovebirds

I Pink I Can

Love at First Sight

Infatuation

Diva Glam

Kiss Goodnight

Magic Scent

Romantic Poetry

Secret Scent

[thatone-brightstar]

Paint stained kisses -Carmy Berzatto x Fem!Reader-

a/n: Everyone say thank you to the sweet @beebslebobs for the idea on this oneshot that was originally just an insta post from my TB & TF universe!

Here's a little sweetness to alleviate the chest pains that chapter 10 may have caused on some of you. It's part of the same story, but it can totally be read separately if you'd like

BUT if you haven't read it and you wanna… here’s the link to that:

The Bear & The Fox -Carmy Berzatto x Fem! Reader-

Word count: 3.4k

Summary: Your and Carmy's day off.

WARNINGS: Smut ahead, oral sex (female receiving), p in v, dirty talk if you squint, reader is on birth control but isn't mentioned (wrap it up IRL tho), minors DNI but you'll do what you want so don't say I didn't warn you.

“That was the worst french toast I’ve had, like, ever…” You groan, kicking your soaked sneakers to the side as soon as Carmy throws the door open.

“My eggs Benedict were pretty good.” He answers from behind. 

You roll your eyes with your back to him and scoff. “Obviously, sis wouldn’t dare serve you something awful.” You turn to your boyfriend, a mocking smile curled on your lips. “‘Anything else I can get you, chef? I can also offer you something that isn’t on the menu…’ wink, wink.” 

The exaggerated kissing noises you make towards him pull a chuckle from his chest as he combs his fingers through the wet strands of hair. You roll your eyes again and pad to his speaker, soon filling the room with the soft notes of an instrumental song. The warmth of his hands brush over the sides of your waist and rest delicately over your navel as his chest presses to your back, causing the moisture of his sweater to transfer onto yours.

“So, what I understand is you’re jealous someone was hitting on me?” Carmen whispers between soft kisses on the valley of your shoulder.

“No, I’m jealous your food was better than mine-” You answer, swatting his hands away and earning another soft laugh that fills your ears with joy as you walk into his room.

You’ve grown used to the lovely sound, more common the longer you spent by his side, as if the walls he held up were slowly chipping away with your constant presence. You softly hum to the music from his stereo while you rummage through the drawer that holds a few shirts you’ve hauled to his place in the past couple weeks. 

He had emptied it out after finding your things bunched up and wrinkled inside your backpack by the sofa. You found it completely adorable when, in search of a shirt of his to sleep in, instead you found your own clothes - neatly folded in perfect squares- occupying the first drawer in his closet. He didn’t mention it and neither did you. Knowing Carmy and his silent acts of love, mentioning it would only shy him back into his shell and the progress you had made over the months of going out was something you weren’t willing to lose.

You pull out a blue washed out ‘The Original Beef of Chicagoland’ shirt that still smells like his body wash and pull it over your chest, then a pair of shorts and some socks to pad around his cold floor while taking out your supplies from the waisted tote bag inside your backpack. You only have a month or two until the showing and even though it might seem like enough time, to you it wasn’t. Every time you tried to concentrate on an idea for your set, your mind would go blank, thoughtless and frustratingly empty. You could blame it on the prospect of a deadline, maybe painter’s block, but you knew it was more than that.

You’ve used painting as an outlet all your life. Most of your favorite works came from a place of hurt, anger and most times sadness. But now they had all been shoved into a corner and replaced by a sense of calm and overall happiness and while you’re glad most of the dark thoughts have left, now it was harder to conjure up any idea that seemed good enough to be presented in front of hundreds of people.

You rub your face in frustration and pull your hair out of your eyes into a bun, then drop criss-crossed by the window of Carmy’s room, acrylics, brushes and sketchbooks flooding the floor. The gentle lull of the chords mix with the shuffling from the kitchen and a smile forms on your face as the source of your lack of inspiration walks into the room, shirtless and cradling a bowl of diced fruit in his hand.

“Here.” Carmy mumbles softly, passing the bowl to you and leaning down to place a gentle kiss over your hair.

You take it, mumbling a quiet ‘Thanks’ through your smile and pop a piece of the tangy peach in your mouth before setting it on his nightstand.

“How’s the brainstorming coming along?” He takes a seat in front of you, back leaning against his bed and lighting a cigarette.

Without answering, you stretch your arm to him, sketchbook in hand and stare mesmerized as he flips through the pages, lit tube dangling from rosy lips. You keep taking bites off the savory fruit to avoid biting your lip instead because the view in front of you is just that fucking good. Baby blues flicker towards you without bothering to lift his head and the way your legs twitch trying to close has a smirk forming over the cig.

“What?” You say defensively.

“Nothin’.” He accentuates with a raise of his brows. “What’s wrong with these?” He asks, giving you the book back turned to a page harboring a few sketches of the sea, shore and shells.

“They’re not good enough…” You admit, tracing your finger over the print his thumb left when it smudged the charcoal. “They don’t make me feel anything- art’s supposed to make you feel something. How can I call myself an artist if it doesn’t stir anything in me!?”

“Hey-” He puts out the smoke on the ashtray over his night stand and scoots to you, making a space for you between his arms. The heat of his naked chest and compression of his arms do wonders to dull out the rising pounding inside. “You’re overthinking it. Maybe take some time off… what do you do when you’re frustrated?”

“...paint.”

Carmy gives you a small snort, genuine and lighthearted, that blows a few wild strands of hair and has you looking up to his glowing face with a tiny grin. You suck the corner of your lip in concentration, the angle in which he has you cradled can only be described as holy. Strong jaw and nose angle perfectly into your line of vision and you have to refrain yourself from kissing the soft tip of it multiple times.

“How ‘bout you make one of those abstract paintings? Let the brush guide you- or whatever-”

“I could paint you…” The words escape your lips the second they materialize in your head.

He pulls his head back slightly, brows drawn up in confusion. “What, like one of your french girls?” 

“No!” You manage to answer through a fit of giggles that you’d be ashamed to let out if you hadn’t gotten so comfortable with him already. “Paint on you, as in over you.”

You strain your neck up to catch his lips in yours, the stubble that covers his chin scratching over your tender skin. He smiles into the kiss, very well feeling your intentions of trying to distract him with what you know he likes the most: you.

“It’ll help…” Sultry breath fans his lips and clouds his thoughts with the taste of peaches, fresh and sweet. “Yeah?”

Carmy can only nod, still hooked on the taste of your lips and the stretch of your smile when you get your way. He groans when you pull away, goosebumps rising over the exposed flesh of his chest as you move to take his pillow and sheet from the bed and place it over the ground, beside his legs. He sighs, but obliges anyway, unhooking his stiff thighs and laying belly flat over the hard ground.

“Can’t we do this on the bed?” He speaks over the soft material of the silk pillow sheets you had bought solely for him.

“I don’t wanna get paint on the bed.” You shrug. “Don’t move, it’s gonna tickle a bit…”

The first stroke of the brush gives him chills as the cold paint glides over uncharted territory. He finds it strange, but not uncomfortable and once he gets used to it, it even feels calming. Your soft hums to the tune of the music, the rain pattering outside and the rhythmic strokes have him slowly lulling away into an almost relaxed state, at least what he considered relaxation. 

You smile gently down at his long and slow breaths, tracing with your brush over the small beauty marks that map his pearly skin like constellations on an explorer’s map. While one hand holds the brush, you use the pads of your fingers to press down gently over the strained muscles that don’t seem all that relaxed, pulling a groan or two every so often and enjoying all the little sounds he makes.

You spend the time just admiring him. The way his shoulder blades flex when he wraps his arms under the pillow, to the two very pretty dimples that peek just above the waistband of his sweatpants. 

“You’re not doin’ much painting…” He mumbles, voice thick and groggy from sleep, while your nails rake rhythmically along his ribs.

“I got distracted…” You bite your lip and pull your phone from under the brushes to snap a picture of your wonderful view, then you lean down and place a sultry kiss where his shoulder blades meet.

“Fox…” He warns through your kisses, the pet name sounding at home between rosy soft lips.

“Bear…” You tease back with a smile, you knowing how much he liked you calling  him that.

In a second, you sink down your teeth over the plush skin and he visibly shudders under you. You barely hear him mumble something to himself, before he’s turning to his side and using one strong arm to pull you down to him. Your vision spins and a squeal comes out, only to be shoved back into your throat with the force of his kiss. You’re caged between his arms, torso pressing you to the ground and mouth roaming wet and mercilessly over your own. 

The few seconds of air you fill your lungs with when he separates to pull the thin shirt over your head can only do so much to alleviate the burning in your core caused by his strong stare. You raise to your forearms and his lips latch immediately to your exposed collarbone, starving and pleased with every whimper he pulls from you. 

“You wanna play chef, let’s play-“ He teases and without wasting time, pushes himself off you into a seating position, thighs spread out just enough for you to sit over them after pulling you to him again.

His enthusiasm is evident in the growing bulge that begins to rub on the inside of your thighs and with the help of your toes on the floor, you rock your hips forward enough to feel his fingers twitch over your waist, digging deeper into the flesh. A soft and shaky moan caresses your lips, motivating your movements as your fingers scrape up his neck and get lost in the messy strands. 

His smile stretches over your joined lips. “Anything for you… chef.”

You can feel his Adam’s apple bob with a chuckle as you kiss down his neck, sucking and nibbling hard just under a thin tan line where you assumed his shirt would cover it up, hopefully. His hips jerk upwards with strength, ripping a gasp from your chest, then another squeal when he wraps a secure arm around your waist and hoists you up and off the floor. Your knees squeeze over his hips and your arms wrap around his shoulders in surprise only for a moment, before feeling the soft sheets and the mattress underneath.

Carmy’s lips brush down the exposed skin of your chest, his wet tongue lapping over the hardened nipple of each breast has your knees separating and making room to fit his hips perfectly. He lets go of your tender skin too soon, peppering saliva stained kisses down the middle of your abdomen. As his knees fall to the ground, dexterous fingers pull at the hem of your shorts in a torturously slow fashion, making you lift your upper body on your elbows and direct an impatient glare. Your hair has fallen off its bun somewhere between the floor and the bed, glowing like a dark halo with the few rays of sunshine filtering through the open window and it’s gripping at Carmy’s chest.

“Baby, please…” You moan eager and annoyed, trying to shimmy your hips to quicken the process.

The cold air hits the bare flesh of your cunt and ignites goosebumps that Carmy kisses away as he finishes sliding the fabric over your feet.

“Fuck, so wet already. Just for me, huh?” He mumbles to himself, breath blowing over the exposed skin and causing a jolt of need to travel deep inside.

You swallow down the thick pool of saliva that drowns your mouth at the sight of his beautiful face between your legs. “Bear, please I need you to-” The phrase is cut short by your gasp.

Long digits rub tauntingly over your slit, coating in the arousal caused only by him. He’s too eager to continue teasing you, too entranced with the way your pussy glistens with the bare idea of him that all he can do is look up at you through his brows and lap at the wetness with a firm tongue. With just the first taste of you, he’s hooked, like a starving man afraid they’ll take away his only source of life. 

Your groan throws your head back with force and makes your eyes lose focus. Strong hands grip at your hips, rooting you to the mattress while your feet fall over his shoulders. Your hands try to find anything to hold on to- hair, sheets, pillow and even your own thighs- but the constant assault of his skillful mouth makes your fingers lose their grip on anything in your reach.

“Fuck baby-you’re doing so, so good-” Your praise makes his cock twitch inside his pants and he uses one of his hands to frantically pull the waistband down, stroking himself with a similar speed to his mouth.

Whimpers cascade from your lips and pool over your chest with every slurp and lick that echoes in the small room. You force your blurry eyes to focus down, only to be met by piercing black and a thin ring of deep blue staring up at you. His hand spreads over the sweet spot where your thigh meets your hip bone, digits concave the flesh in a way that reminds you of the ancient marble sculptures. There’s a predatory air about the way his jaw tenses in concentration while eating you out, hard muscle digging deep into you and curving your back off the sheets. 

Your nails dig into his scalp with every stroke of his tongue and the scorching sensation crawling over your thighs only grows with the bump of his nose over your swollen clit. A hard yelp scratches its way out through your exhausted lungs, motivating him to speed up his movements and add a finger into your dripping cunt. His groans and moans vibrate into your overstimulated area, causing the orgasm to hit you out of nowhere.

A chorus of ‘fuck’s that vary in volume ring inside Carmy’s ears -along with the pulsing walls compressing his finger and tongue- but he refuses to budge. Instead he continues to rub your clit with the bridge of his nose until your breaths have settled long enough for moans to turn into words and not the unintelligible mumbling that makes his chest swell with pride. He pulls his own hand from around his cock afraid he’ll burst before his favorite part, distracting himself by placing gentle kisses over your spasming thighs and rubbing along the lengths of them as he crawls over you.

There’s a blissful smile over your face that only grows with the sweet pecks of his lips making their way up your skin. You open your eyes when the mattress dips under his weight beside you and you prop your head up on your elbow, mimicking his stance. Your eyes are glossy with post-orgasm bliss as your hand lifts to his face and your middle finger traces over the prominent line of the nose you love so much. His skin is smooth with your slick and you can’t help but pull your finger back and pop the tip into your mouth, never losing his stare. 

His neck loses grip of his head, messy curls falling in frustration because, how is it that the smallest thing you do can rile him up so fucking quickly? A death between your legs, he thought, would be the happiest demise.

With the thought present in mind, he circles your waist tightly and drags your body over his into a seating position. You throw your leg over his parted ones in sweet anticipation, knees hovering over the sheets while your arms fall on his shoulders and you pull him up to your mouth. The taste of peaches and tobacco mixing with your arousal have you panting and grinding your folds over the firm head of his cock.

“You want me to fuck you?” He whispers in between kisses, using all his strength to not slam into you already. He just loved to hear you say it, have your pretty lips pout around the word that had been used to taunt him for so long, needy for you to give it another meaning. "I gotta hear it, baby, c'mon-"

“Fuck yes, chef- please fuck me-” Your thighs quiver with want, mouth completely disconnected from your brain as the words tumble down. “Please, chef? Pretty, pretty please?” 

His eyes grow soft and his dick hard at the way you whine your words, hips rocking along his length leaving him delirious and pussy-drunk before he’s even inside you. Carmy plants a firm hand at the base of your spine, using it to guide you down his stiff cock until the last bit of air is pushed out your lungs.

“Fuck-” You groan, throwing your head back then letting it fall over his shoulder as he lifts you up and lets you drop over and over again.

Your hands dig at his back, clawing over undried paint you’ve forgotten is there and smearing careless streaks of blue and pink over his chest. The beautiful sound of smacking skin and his breathy moans growing louder around you go straight to your core, igniting the tingling sensation that runs up and down your thighs once again.

His eyes can’t seem to look away from your face, too bewitched by the way your lips hang parted and the fine layer of sweat covering your skin. While his hand rounds your body and runs circles over your nub, his teeth latch onto the breasts bouncing in his line of vision, pretty bruises flourish and decorate the skin with his own personal mark.

“Bear- baby- fuck-” Fragments of a sentence is all you’re able to utter, pushed out and punctuated by the snap of his hips increasing in speed.

You feel every one of his thrusts too deeply inside you from that angle, along with the constant nibbling over your tender breast and you think you might just go mad from the overstimulation. You roll your hips along with his when the tension in your navel begins to grow. One hand circles his neck and buries inside sweaty locks while the other tries to grip onto the wall for any sense of stability. Your legs tremble, the tension builds and without warning, your grip on his cock pulls the air from his lungs as he feels you spasm around him and come with a gutural gasp.

Carmy digs into the skin of your hips lifting you up for a few more thrusts before the tightness of your walls grows too much. His neck flushes red with the force of his release, the groan vibrating next to your ear makes the thin hairs on your body rise with chills.

The drained energy finally catches up to you both and Carmy lets gravity pull him down to the comfort of the soft bed, holding you tight in his arms and pulling you down with him. You’re too blissed out to warn him about the paint still fresh, now pressing over the white sheets disparaging the bed.

It’s only when he turns to carefully place you beside him- arms secure around you- that you open your eyes and notice the array of smeared paint covering both your chests and around his neck. The laughs rippling from your chest are too contagious for Carmy to stay quiet, joining on once he gets a view of himself and the lilac prints around your face that match with the size of his thumbs.

“See?” He whispers once you’ve both run out of laughter, sapphire eyes dancing around your glowing face and hand traveling up to caress your cheek. “I was right about the abstract painting…”

"Yeah..." You grin back. "And so much for not wanting to get paint on the bed..."

**********

Taglist: @pearlstiare @teteminne, @beebslebobs, @harrysmatcha, @yum-yahgurt, @pussy-f41ry and that’s it lmao

[annakie]

Fixing The House Part Six: You Will Leave Some Paint

Part One: I Do Not, In Fact, Have the Power

Part Two: Let’s Spend Lots of Money!

Part Three: All These Things That I’ve Done

Part Four: I Really Want to Stay At My House

A little interlude.

Part Five: Power Down

Look, if I don't start really working on telling this, I may never finish. So I'm just going to start, and whatever comes out, comes out.

Doing this room by room probably would be smarter, but oh well. There's still NO room that's 100% done. I'd say at this point that there's still a good 5 - 7 full days of work ahead of Arturo and that's probably 2 - 3 actual weeks at this rate.

But things are definitely progressing. So let's go back to where we left off... kind of the end of the power getting fixed.

Uh yeah if I don't put a cut here, someone will cut me.

Part One: Living Color

As you can see in the pic above, and in a pic or two from the last post, a thing that had to happen on any wall on the edges of the house is that they had to cut into the drywall near the ceiling to be able to run the wire down to the outlet to fix it. So naturally that drywall had to be patched when the work was done, and then repainted. Just a part of the process. Cool. Up there is the guest bedroom and down below is the master bedroom with the patching done but not painted.

I had very smartly saved either paint chips or lids or even whole cans of the paints I'd used originally. I was able to figure out exactly who made and the name/tone of every color in the house except for one, which we didn't need anyway.

Remember guys, saving stupid stuff for 21 years sometimes IS helpful!

So Arturo went and got the paint for all the rooms, cool. He said now would be a good time to decide if I wanted to repaint any rooms but I was like nope! I like my colors! He got just quart sizes of most of the colors because that's all we needed.

...so anyway it turns out after 21 years (or even just 11 for a couple of the walls) paint changes colors so the new paint is definitely visible against the old paint.

At that point, we'd need to buy a lot more paint and repaint every room probably. The compromise was to paint just the full wall where the patching happened so the other walls would be slightly different.

There were also things like this:

Where that patching happened was just a very visible drywall line that had bothered me for 21 years. Arturo fixed it.

There were a couple of rooms that, tbh, just really needed new paint, and there were cracks in some walls that needed fixing. It started to just make sense at that point to just... maybe do full repaints of rooms. Arturo gave me a very reasonable price for that. Honestly, I think too little after seeing everything it took and how I made it harder.

I was super annoying at first though, and decided to keep some of the same colors, especially out here in the Office (which, remember, is the room most people would use as their living room) and the dining room, which were technically one big room except for one Thing, which we'll get to later.

So Arturo's crew repainted the office that dusty rose color that I loved. They also repainted the hallway, which really needed it, the same Silver Trophy you see above, which was also on the one wall that connected the office and dining rooms.

Um... hey... did you guys know that if you leave a massive framed Star Wars poster hanging in the same spot for like 21 years you can totally tell once you finally take it down?

Honestly I had no idea that wall was that dirty. It was just normally so damn dark in my house, tbh. Remember, I JUST got lights put in a week or two before this pic!

So yeah, that wall got a repaint, too.

I did decide around that time that the living room needed a repaint, partially because I didn't have a blue room in my house, and I felt like I wanted a room that was blue, and also just wanted my LR to be real damn cozy.

As a comparison... here was the before.

Some notes about this room lol... this is the room I camped out in during The Great Freeze, and starting then I nailed a blanket over the window and never took it down because I liked it dark in the room and also until the fence went up, that window looked right into my neighbors bathroom. Looked bad, but it kept the glare off the TV.

There was a big patch of drywall rubbed through from leaning my chair back and scraping the wall back when this smaller bedroom was the office. There was a big crack in a wall. There was also a recliner in there that turns out was made with the cheapest fake leather known to man that was constantly flaking off, very grossly. It was very crowded in there, and the recliner needed to go but I couldn't get it out myself.

So actually the day I spent working in the LR I asked Arturo to please get the recliner out, and they did.

Arturo ended up with a gallon of paint for the original color of this room (pictured) we didn't use because they mistakenly made that instead of the gallon for the hallway at first, but that was at least their fault.

It was around this time I was just like... fuckit, we're going to repaint the whole house. But at first, I thought, keeping most of my same colors.

My mind began to change, especially after the new color went on the wall in the living room. But I can't show you that yet.

Part Two: Cierra la puerta, por favor

I'd mentioned last post that there was a reason the sliding glass door from bedroom door to the patio got left open a lot.

That's because it was a really old, shitty door, and unless you knew how to close it just right it was likely to come off the track, and then it was really annoying to put back on the track. Also it was really freaking noisy every time you opened it. Like my neighbor on that side had complained about it before noisy.

It wasn't worth it for the workers to keep trying to close it every time they went in and out.

Also, the glass was so old that even with cleaning, it was never actually clear anymore. It was one of many, many things that were original to the house. Built in 1963.

So one of the earliest "Hey Arturo, can we...."s was "replace the sliding glass door?"

The price was reasonable, and the relief at knowing it would get done was surprising to me.

I think Arturo was almost as happy as me to get it replaced.

That's not Arturo, I think it's Antonio, removing the static plate of the door, I didn't catch them fast enough to see them removing the door itself.

And honestly I wish I'd taken a recording of the sound of opening that door before they removed it, though it will live in my brain forever.

The only picture I'll ever have of NO DOOR AT ALL. I was giddy at this point.

The first pic of... NEW DOOR. Oh my GOSH, so beautiful. I wanted to cry. You can see the pane of glass from the old door leaning against the pole out there.

Arturo brought me to see it the first time and was like "OPEN IT!" and I grabbed the handle and pulled, and NOTHING, lol. He was like "Is it stuck?" and then I pulled again and it moved and I said "IT'S SO HEAVY!" Arturo laughed and was like "Yeah, it's got twice as much glass, it's double pane!"

Like, look, I know, double pained (sp?) glass is the norm these days but my brain didn't even conceive that I could have double panes in my house until then. Oh, energy efficient double panes? WTF? In this house?!? Seemed sus.

I quickly got used to the new amount of force it took to open the door and marveled at how quiet it was after I opened and closed it a few times.

All the workers expressed their happiness that it was fixed, too, lol.

And later that night, it was still around 100 degrees outside, I was alone in the house and I just went and stood by the window and realized... it wasn't significantly hotter by the door than a few feet away from it? It was like, the same temperature? Like truly insulating, energy efficient? Is this the real life?

The new door is slightly (like 3") shorter than the old one so they did have to add a little padding at the top, they just don't make doors the same size anymore, but honestly they did such a great job finishing it, I wouldn't have even known if I hadn't seen it go in.

I loved that new door so much, so fast, that it really got me thinking... if I could have a new door, double panes, energy efficient... could it be possible for... other new... energy efficient things? We'll get back to that.

Part Three: Sea Salt

Just realized looking at the above pic that another change was visible...

I had started interacting with what would become my new best friend for the next couple of weeks, the Sherwin-Williams Color palate... what do you call it? Swatch book? My friend is still here with me, and I'm going to be sad when Arturo finally takes him away. We have spent many hours together the last month or so, I am very well familiar with all of his options and can pull up many precise colors in just a few seconds at this point.

A day or two before the door went in, Sherwin and I made our first choice together, the colors of the patio.

The ceiling would be painted Sea Salt, a beautiful, beach-inspired light green. I also decided to have Arturo paint my patio furniture the same color.

So early on, the ceiling got caulked. They also filled in the shitty job bits that Jose had done over where the roof met the house, it looked great, actually. And a day or two later, the ceiling was painted.

Hey, that's the OLD sliding glass door there!

OK so for the first day, NGL, I didn't love it? And I later realized it was because of that green paper you see there that they put up to protect the house. The paper made it look like the ceiling was just... white. I did not want just white.

Arturo said to give it a couple of days to think on it if I really wanted it a different color, he'd have to charge me for the new paint and labor, which is totally fair.

I realized when the paper was gone and you could see it against the white bits of the house, it was gorgeous.

OK even in that bottom pic, it's hard to really see the color, but trust me, you can tell it is not white.

Also, quick note, yes, the patio has looked like that OR WORSE every day since they started. The patio is the main work and stuff storage area. It's just... constantly in disarray, with good reason. Luckily Tuesday is Trash Day so Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning all the trash gets move to the curb and it's less chaotic, for a few days, lol.

A week or so later, the fan went up! Hey, this is a much better way to see the color!

The fan has to be on the same circuit as the other light on the porch, which is slightly annoying, you can't have one without the other, but it's fine! The fan is very pretty, and uh, look, I hadn't ever bought a ceiling fan myself, and especially not recently, and I didn't realize they were mostly remote controlled now? So it's got a remote next to the door to control it with. Neat!

That Ceiling Fan is the thing that started... the rest of this by the way. If it hadn't been for Joel suggesting we put a ceiling fan on the patio.. maybe the rest of this wouldn't have happened. Or maybe it would have, since the fuse box was dying anyway, but still, Arturo and I have joked about the consequences of that ONE FAN.

Anyway! Literally just today the patio furniture got painted! As you can a little bit see in that pic above and others, it was stained redwood stain, because that matched the wood on the old patio. Now...

Pic taken just hours ago!

OK it still doesn't look that green against the greenish color of the drywall it's sitting on, but it looks great, OK? I also bought grey cushions which will look good with them. The patio cement is obviously not painted yet, that'll be probably the very last thing Arturo does for me, for now. The color is picked out. When you see pics of that... it'll be done.

Part Four: I'm a Fan of this Fan

When that fan went up, Arturo and I had been discussing the dining room lighting situation, especially as it is the same room as the office, which had gotten the new recessed lighting.

Arturo was like "You know, the other fans in your house are very old. Especially the ones in your dining room and guest room. We can replace them, when we put in the recessed lights in the dining room. I have a ceiling fan that doesn't have lights that would look good in the dining room, I'll throw that in for free if you also buy a fan for the guest bedroom and we install that."

Friends, I just spent like 30 minutes scrolling through six or seven years worth of pictures and I could not for the life of me find a single picture of my dining room ceiling fan. I don't have many pics taken in my dining room at all but most of those that are, are like, specific things on the table, or in a china cabinet.

I was planning on posting "lol look at these 2003 pictures" when I started discussing individual rooms with big changes, but tbh, I'm just going to post a couple of those pics here.

These were taken in 2003 with a 2003 digital camera, so sorry that they're tiny and ugly.

So that's the best picture I can find of the ceiling fan... see? It is old and ugly and it was there another 21 years!

Oh, um, don't mind that Thing in the foreground of the first pic and background of the second.

We will discuss that Thing. Just not now. Now we're talking about ceiling fans.

I also invite you to scroll all the way back up to the top of this post (sorry) for a pic of the guest room with the ceiling fan mostly visible.

We'll get back to the dining room ceiling fan in another dining room focused post. Amazon Prime days were a key buying weekend for me, and during those I ended up buying this ceiling fan for the guest room. And then I liked it so much that it was still on sale a couple of days later, so I bought two more and put them in my Living Room and Master Bedroom.

Ceiling fans with remotes are amazing. These also have day mode and night mode for the lights so with one button you can go from bright blueish light to dimmer warmer light for night/early morning. Can also program them to shut off after 2 hours, 7 speeds of fan (though 1 is fast enough tyvm) etc. Absolutely love taking the remote to bed to shut off when I want without getting out of bed. It's a small thing, but important to those rooms.

Arturo said that all of the fans in my house were real old but the dining room one was especially old... he said it was one that was like, oil-based and very very heavy, lol.

There it is, sitting on a heap of trash... where it belongs.

Part Five: See a Little Light

Will leave this with one quick other thing.

Both sides of the house were real dark at night. There's a streetlight in the alley that shines right into my yard, which is great, it's otherwise really bright back there. But not the sides.

So I bought a 12-pack of these little solar lights. They got installed.

They work great!

There's something else happening in that last picture, but we'll get to that next time, I think. This is ridiculously long enough.

Annnnd we're just getting started.

[proxi-n]

So, some time ago, I decided to recreate the game Havoc of the tainted throne from the creator Valefisk. I really liked the aspect of the game, even tho it was created by AI (which I absolutely hate using), but the game just looked so fun!

This was a reeeeeeally long project, as I forgot about it for a few months, but two weeks ago, I got a lot of the materials needed for it, so the project finally got off the drawing board.

The whole thing under the cut. Enjoy.

First, I made the character cards. The original had just 10 characters, but I wanted to add a Bard, because why not. So that's why the bard and archer were created.

Their powers were made in the spirit of the game, so the archer can once per game successfully attack any player on the board and the bard if in combat can sing and roll a d6 and if the roll is 1 or 6, they gain +1 attack.

I also ballenced the assassin a bit better to not be able to use their power to strike an opponent before combat, because that was too OP.

The cards were the most fun to do. But then the other cards were next.

The objectives were still easy. Just a dozen cards, plus one that I added for more diversity, which just says have 1 HP when getting on the throne.

And oh boy the event, object and trap cards were PAIN. There were in total 47 of those lil shits that I hate to write AND TRANSLATE. But in the end I did it. The cards were done.

But then the chips came

Those guys were the WORST. I had to cut the board, paint it white, paint the chips... a lot of pain my guys. But I did it. And it didn't take that much time, only like 9 hours.

Yet the board was still the last step. And may I tell you, I did it on my only day off work in a lot of pain, yet I finished it. I cut the board into four 80x20cm pieces, put them together with some tape and painted it white and then blue. Easy.

And then the making of the tiles. I had two options at first: paint it or cut up some paper and glue it to the board. I didn't like the idea of either of them so I searche my drawer. And I found it. Some shiny stick on paper. The perfect thing.

So I cut it up (INTO 53 PIECES, six of which are red) and just peeled the back off and put it on the board. Job done. Later I ordered some colourful game pieces and dice and called it a day. Because I do NOT have the patience to make the figures too.

You will never see me make a board game EVER AGAIN.

It was both fun and a torture. And that keeps in spirit with Mr. Valefisk's videos as it should.

So if anyone wants, you can send it to him. Show him this horrendous thing that I dare call a board game

Or leave it here to rott and be forgotten as it should

Anyway, now I am going to sleep and then I am going to work for the next 8 days and deal with people.

The consequences of my fucking choices are here and I hate it

Goodnight.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Okay, so...unsure if this has been brought up.

I recently finished reading Merrick. And I had a thought.

Assuming for a moment that Louis was present at the end of QOTD and was there for the big explanation of vampiric origins; why is he so despondent in subsequent books?

He got the answers he was looking for in all the previous books, the wheretos and whyfors of vampires, but it seems like those answers weren't enough for him. So he continues his weird vampire ascetic existence.

If he wasn't present at the end of QOTD, it makes sense. But I'm pretty sure I recall him being there. If so, does he just not accept that answer because it doesn't fit his worldview? Is he written that way because Anne wanted to diminish his VC 'screentime' and eventually write him out, until fans pressured her to abandon that idea?

Because the whole book of Merrick seems to be an homage to Louis whole inability to reconcile the truth of vampires and his own worldview, through the literary device of Claudia.

Unless I'm totally off the mark here. Which is why I bring it to one with greater discernment than I.

Hey dear!

Not sure about the last part but I'll try :P

So... personally I think Anne tried to let go of Louis (even write him out as you put it) because she had to. Louis is who she was when she mourned, why she wrote IWTV, and she had to leave him behind at some point to go on and for me that helps with understanding why the Chronicles are structured they way they are.

Louis was there for the answers/end in QotD, yes.

But Anne... had a very specific expectation on a Christian's view on the revelations - she had Marius say the following in TVL:

"No. As I told you, tell part and you will end up telling all. Besides, if these fledglings are children of the Christian god, if they are poisoned as Nicolas was with the Christian notion of Original Sin and guilt, they will only be maddened and disappointed by these old tales. It will all be a horror to them that they cannot accept. Accidents, pagan gods they don't believe in, customs they cannot understand. One has to be ready for this knowledge, meager as it may be.[..]"

Now, Louis was still a pretty young, pretty "human" vampire when QotD happened. And yes, he is "poisoned by the notion of Original Sin". He had also just been reunited with Lestat, to have him ripped away again, had met his mother-in-law/sister, and literally the eldest, and strongest of his kind.

Quite the tour-de-force if you ask me :)

And what had been the answer to the questions? An accident, leading to a mutation. And he got first hand evidence that the vampiric state makes them statues over time, or drives them mad. (The show hints at that already, too.)

And all that on top of a literal genocide on his "species", on his kind, a mass-murder he only escaped because he was deemed a bargaining chip by their "Queen".

So yes... after that "high" of reuniting with Lestat at the end of QotD must have come a rather heavy "drop". Both Louis and Lestat cannot deal with what was revealed, and they are coping in the way they know how to - Louis withdraws, to his books, to his paintings, to his little shed, while Lestat roams (and tries to kill himself, a move which Louis then later echoes in Merrick, for slightly different reasons, granted, but ultimately... the same, for having been brought to his proverbial knees, unable to go on anymore).

Merrick brings them full circle, and the resurrection levels them, in power and understanding, though Louis blames Lestat for a while, after, before he accepts what and who he is eventually.

For me, Merrick closes the guilt arcs, and together with TtotBT these arcs are closed within the story because they both offer up what they have left to give - their lives.

And they "fail" at that. (So does Armand btw, but that just as a note.)

And they need to come to terms with that, too. Especially Louis, I'd argue, because his upbringing would condemn suicide, and I do think he expected to end up in hell, which he knew (or expected) to be true after all, after Lestat's little stunt with Memnoch. Maybe he even hoped for it to be true, because it would have meant that something he believed in held true.

So yes, Louis is still struggling with that, then.

And he is for quite another while after, though Anne did not write it out like that (unfortunately).

It's just implied, with them breaking up in the jungles, and Louis going to Armand at Trinity Gate, and finding peace within himself there.

Merrick is indeed a bit of an homage at Louis‘ inability to reconcile what he knows is the truth with what he believes (or wants to believe) - but it is also the logical repercussion, and also, in a way, a try of Louis finding out the truth - a last ditch effort.

Which is why his tearful breakdown when Lestat asks him what he saw… and he says “nothing“… is so incredibly heart-breaking, because it tells us of the hope that was shattered. The hope to see her… or anything, really.

But there’s nothing.

There are no answers, no relief from the guilt, no reason - just… them.

[bracketsoffear]

HOW is skeevy sheevy not absolutely Sweeping his poll. Palpatine/Sidious is like. The Web Archetype™ and one of the most well known master manipulators in fiction. He basically played 7-D chess with an entire galaxy over several decades in one of the most convoluted yet wildly successful Grand Plans ever enacted. Played such a compelling role as his kindly, "doing what's best for the Republic" senator alter-ego that he convinced the senate to give him increasing amounts of power so much so that his transition into Emperor was met with wild applause. Every plan, no matter how big or small, had contingencies upon contingencies and often actually relied on the initial plan/s failing/being found out to ultimately succeed (see: his wildly convoluted plan to further sow mistrust between Anakin and Obi Wan (and the jedi in general) starting with him "revealing" that there is a Separatist plot to kidnap him, even though the entire thing is his idea).

His main target, and the one most aware of the terrifying amounts of control and puppeteering he has over the galaxy, are the jedi. Due to visions of Sidious's plans of war, Sifo-Dyas, a high ranking jedi, commissioned the clone army to prepare against this threat. However, Palpatine, upon learning about the army, orchestrated Sifo-Dyas's death and took over the project. This included embedding a behavioural modification chip containing 150 contingency orders that would override each clone's free will to enact whichever one was activated, including Order 66: the immediate execution of all jedi. Once the army was ready, Palpatine essentially forced the jedi to lead the army into war. If they had said no, they would have been painted as traitors, abandoning not only the Republic at their time of greatest need at the beginning of the war, but also the clones since for all intents and purposes, it was the jedi who commissioned them. Therefore, the jedi reluctantly took on the responsibility of the army and lead the fight against the Separatists, going entirely against their more pacifist principles. Despite their best efforts to stick to their principles and end the fighting as quickly and justly as possible, many jedi were lost, either Falling to the dark side, leaving the order and/or killed. The jedi in general suffered as a whole, their entire way of life warped by this horrid war, and the public turning against them with help from Palpatine's machinations. Despite knowing that the origins of the clone army and the war in general are incredibly suspect and most likely due to Darth Sidious, the jedi feel trapped in their new role. Even when they do find out who is behind everything and try to do something about it, they play right into Palpatine's hands, cementing themselves as "traitors" to the Republic and ensuring that their total destruction via Order 66 is met with support from the public.

Thus, Palpatine/Sidious is successful in completing a plan 1000 years since its conception, something no other Sith was even close to accomplishing, especially since said plan involves staying several steps ahead of people who can literally see into the future.

If the above doesn't already scream Web to you, then there's also the fact that Palpatine "uses personal attachments and motivations to manipulate people" on the regular, most notably in his grooming of Anakin Skywalker to become his next apprentice. Palpatine is intimately aware of Anakin's strong personal attachments, using them to sow seeds of doubt and mistrust against the jedi, egging Anakin on to prioritise them over his duties while also making Anakin doubt they care about him in return. This ultimately results in Anakin's Fall, when Palpatine implants visions of Padme dying in childbirth, making him desperate to do anything to prevent it, including Falling to the dark side and massacring the jedi in the hopes that Sidious will give him to knowledge to save Padme. However, he even turns against Padme, choking her in a rage when he believes she'd brought Obi Wan with her to kill him. Sidious uses this to his advantage when, upon Anakin/Vader's awakening from surgery, he informs him of his role in Padme's death, "this final loss sent Vader over the edge of pure wrath and anguish, completing his transition into the apprentice Sidious had spent decades grooming".

And to finish off, here's some excerpts from his Wookiepedia page and some quotes from the master web weaver himself:

"Sidious was, in fact, a skilled manipulator and strategist, having orchestrated countless events in the galaxy, from the Invasion of Naboo to the Clone Wars, while deceiving the Jedi, Senate, Republic, and even the Separatists, with the sole aim of increasing his own power. Even when something occurred that he did not initially plan for, the Sith Lord demonstrated that he was as adept at improvisation as he was at plotting, continuing to play his long game—a smart game—for power." "Among Sidious' most effective traits was his deeply manipulative nature, manipulating and deceiving both the Jedi and Separatists, seducing many parties with promises of power, prize, or even salvation to further his agenda. He enjoyed the rush manipulating others to his will gave him. Even so, he was annoyed by when his pawns, such as Nute Gunray, failed to understand the grand scope of his plans." "Sidious saw his allies as pawns that he could use for his grand plan, and was more than willing to dispose them if they no longer served a purpose. He kept his allies as long as they served his purpose, but cut them loose when their purpose was over." "He considered his manipulation to be a sharp knife that, when stabbed into another, took time for that individual to notice, only realizing they had spread what he deemed to be the infection of his manipulation when it was too late. Even if the way his manipulation spread surpised him, it always gave him joy. Manipulation was ultimately his favorite way to grow his power." "There is only one plan—one great design which shall govern the universe—mine." "As a dark apprentice, I sensed that the Galactic Republic was in disarray. Its delegates held no interest in the common good. They would be easy targets for my influence. Serving as a senator, I manipulated their greed in my favor. With each new act of legislation, I rose through their ranks. Total control of the galaxy's governing body drew ever closer." "Orchestrating a conflict on my homeworld of Naboo, I sowed the seeds of civil unrest. Chaos erupted within the Senate—a chaos I controlled on every front."

.

[smallerplaces]

Daphne's tiny cottage

My Fisher Price Little People were craving some form of domicile, and I'm not up for redoing a damaged FP house, since I just did a 1:24 opening house with the Maine Cottage.

Then Michael's put their little house shadowboxes on clearance.

Daphne's cottage is not intended to be realistic -- it's meant to feel more like a box of memories and scraps, with some features being almost two-dimensional like lithography. (Daphne is the blonde woman in blue, and yes, I watched Bridgerton.)

There are details still missing, like curtains, because after almost a month, I can't find the exact scrap I want. This will be improved later.

The kitchen cabinets are meant to indicate the existence of a full kitchen. I made the cupboard doors from leftover ends of the wide popsicle sticks on the roof. The faucet exists because I had little wires from charms bought for other uses, and the shiny card the charms came on forms the backsplash. In the absence of curtains, my wineglass charm from the Napa Wine Train makes a window ornament. The table came with the house kit. The flagstones on the kitchen floor are paint chips from the Maine Cottage project.

I made a point of using the furniture that came with the kit, adding legs to make it a little more normal.

Upstairs, the bathroom cabinet indicates that a bathroom exists. The bed came with the kit. Its bed skirt is ribbon I bought in NYC's Garment District back in 2019. The nightstand is a button from Mom's stash on a bead. The large French bulldog is a reference to the human-sized dog that came with the original Fisher Price Play Family.

I originally had much bigger plans for the exterior, including tiling it with gorgeous "Spanish tile" vinyl sheets. The tile sheets aligned badly and looked totally wrong, though. I will probably come back next year and do some exterior trim. Meanwhile, the cactus clips were a bright idea that was too big for an earlier project, but they seem to suit here.

[cinna-stars]

Worth Waiting For

Uhh, okay, this is my first ever fanfic! I might continue it based on the reception, but it was a few thoughts I had in my head that I wanted down on paper. 

18+! Some sexual themes and content throughout, however for those experienced smut readers, this is some mild sauce, not very much spice.

I have to credit @cyancherub for making me think about Kiri smelling like cinnamon, the thought hasn’t left my brain.

Kirishima x Fem!reader 

A cool breeze whispers through the slightly ajar window of your dorm room. The sun set a little while ago; studying always seems to eat up most of your free time, so this wasn’t exactly a surprise. You lean back in your desk chair, arms up, and stretch your muscles into a big yawn. The sudden contracting muscles have your stomach gurgling. It’s definitely time to take a break, so you close your textbook and stand up from your desk. I wonder if there’s any of those expensive sounding potato chips that Momo bought back from her trip abroad left over? The thought makes you salivate as you begin towards your door. You glance to the mirror in the corner and look at your own reflection: hair pulled into a loose, messy bun, torso swallowed up by an old band shirt Denki gave you (after a conversation initiated by Mineta on what you liked to wear to bed) and bare legs sticking out from the hem. Shouldn’t be a problem, as long as Iida isn’t feeling like a stick in the mud this evening. You open your door and begin creeping your way to the kitchen, hoping to keep noise levels to a minimum as to not disturb anyone who might be sleeping already.

Your ears perk up when you hear conversation coming from the communal area.

“On a scale from 1-10, with ten being the most boring, you have exceeded my expectations and we’ve hit an 11.”

“Shut up dude, it’s an absolute cinematic masterpiece. This is why you don’t have the remote- we’d be watching Care Bears or some shit.”

You approach the seating area to see Bakugou, Kirishima, Sero and Denki. The latter two arguing over what to watch. Bakugou looks like he’s about to blow a fuse, so Kirishima chimes in,

“Hahah, okay guys, why don’t we just watch a horror movie, like Scream or something? It’s an easy watch.”

“Sounds like a good idea as long as Kaminari doesn’t shit himself.” Sero tries to start again, but this is perfect timing for you to interject.

“Sero, I’m sorry, last time I checked, you’re the one who had to ‘leave suddenly’ when we watched Halloween.” A smirk appears on your face from ear to ear as all four boys turn their head your direction. You notice an empty spot next to Kiri and take the opportunity to sit, careful not to flash anyone.

“Hey Y/N don’t be startin’ on me. I have plenty of stories about you that we could share you know? What about the Jaegerbomb incident?” Sero matched your grin, and you feign shock by slapping your hand to your heart.

“You’re breaking my heart, Hanta. Are you the only ones up?”

“Yeah Iida sort of ‘encouraged’ everyone to go to bed early because of the test tomorrow, but” Denki motions in Bakugou’s direction “the angry Pomeranian barked and he gave up with us.” Bakugou snaps his head up from his phone to stare Denki down, but realizing he’s just proving his point, sighs and goes back to scrolling on his phone.

“You okay Baku-babe?” he grunts and flips you off, but you could see the corner of his lip turn up in a weak smile at the affectionate nickname. You knew he meant well, especially after the time you had spent together over the last summer with the guys; he just had a defensive temperament.

“You wanna join us, y/n?” Kiri propositions with a wide grin. His hair was still styled into sharp points from classes today, contrasting with his relaxed clothing choice of a t-shirt, shorts and crocs. He’d also made the addition of a white bandana around his forehead. As usual, he was looking incredible.

After the time spent together as a group over the break, it was great to get to know everyone better. As Sero’s oldest friend, it was always easier to stick by him, which had ended up in your favour by meeting these clowns. You’d slowly got closer to the other three boys too, but there was something about Kirishima you couldn’t shake.

The way you felt when you were left together alone in the same room at a party, or when the other guys ended up flaking so you spent the night together at his place, there was always a feeling of excitement, in more ways than one.

You’ve never been very good at flirting and you just seem to come across as an anxious mess, but Kiri was pretty much just as bad. Meaning neither of you ever made a move. Just awkward giggles and eye contact that lasted just a little bit too long for friends.

“I actually came to steal some of Momo’s fancy chips but yeah, let me get a snack and I’ll be ready. You guys want anything?” You get up off the couch and start your way to the kitchen.

“BEER. BEER. BEER.” Denki chants, making you giggle.

“Oh I’ll come and help you carry them!” Kiri jumps up to follow behind you. You can hear Sero make a ‘wha-PISH’ whipping sound which makes Denki burst out with laughter. In their defense, it was painfully obvious you were both pining for each other.

The kitchen isn’t far but it is out of earshot of the sitting area. You open the cupboard in the corner to find Momo’s chip bag, left sat there completely empty. “Oh come ON” you sigh, picking up the bag and placing it in the trash.

“No chips left? Don’t worry I got you covered.” Kiri stretches to the gap between the top of the cupboard and the ceiling, feeling about with his hand. Your eyes fixate on the skin that is now showing just above the waistband of his shorts. You slowly move your view up the side of his torso, his shirt draping over his body in all the right places, and then to his face, one eye closed and tongue sticking out in concentration. He totally caught you checking him out and now you’re both stood there blushing like idiots. He finally located the bag he was looking for and brings his hands back down, showing off the slightly dusty bag of unopened chips.

“These are your favourites, right?” You stand in bewilderment looking at the bag and nod. “There are many bonuses to being one of the tallest in this dorm” he grins. He even remembered your favourite chips? You can’t help but smile back.

“Thank you so much. Oh let me get the beers!” you walk over to the fridge and open it up, bending over to search for the well hidden cans. You know your ass is on show, and you’re doing everything you can to make it the best view. Arching your back slightly, barely moving your hips from side to side, putting on a full show without being too obvious. “Ah I found them!” You gather them into your arms, the cold metal against your skin sending shivers up your spine and making your nipples protrude from the thin material of your shirt. You stand back up and close the fridge, turning around to a very red in the face Kirishima. You send a sweet smile his way.

“Do you mind taking a couple they’re coldddd” you whine. He composes himself and grabs the first can he can see looking ready to fall. He then proceeds to take another, slowly exposing more of your chest and your hardened nipples. You notice his eyes dart to them and then back on the beers. Are you two really going to carry on like this? Acting like the sexual tension couldn’t be cut with a knife? His wandering eyes now have you blushing and you’re quick to fill the hanging silence. “Should we really be drinking when we have a test tomorrow? I’m no NARC but you know what Denki can get like. He’ll wake up the whole house.”

“It’ll be fine. The only ones that know where the rest of the stash is are you and me. As long as you can keep a secret, we’re Gucci” he winks.

“Did you… really just use the term ‘Gucci’? like completely unironically?” You laugh, nudging his side.

“Shut upppp y/n. Come on let’s get back to them before Bakugo kills Dumb and Dumber.”

 “Hoes and bros we come bearing beverages!” You walk in and pass out the three beers you held to the boys, Kiri slowly following with the chips and the last two drinks.

“Wait, who are the hoes?..... oh.” Kaminari has a moment of self-realization and stares at the beer in his hand.

“Denki don’t listen to her, she is the last one to be calling anyone a hoe” Sero hits you with another of what will be many insults of the night.

“Uhhhh says the guys who has a body count tally on his wall. If you ever get with Mina you’re going to need to take a trip to Home Depot to paint over those you know?” You counter.

“Can we watch the damn film already?! Could’ve watched half the fucking thing by now.” Bakugou finally lets off some of the pent up steam. Both you and Denki lift your arms up to your forehead in a salute. “Yes sir!”

Grabbing a blanket, you and Kiri get back into your original seats next to each other on the sofa furthest away from the TV. Sero is on the chair to Kiri’s right, sprawled over it in the most boyish way possible, legs stretched wide and arms hanging over the back. Denki and Bakugo share the sofa to your left, Bakugou reserved to the spot at the very end, finally turning his phone off, while Denki almost mimics Sero’s positioning, but one hand is wrapped around his beer chugging it a bit too fast. Sero presses play as you sit back into the sofa. Kiri’s arm is already draped over the back of the headrest, and it’s only a matter of time until his arm drapes around your shoulder and you lean into him.

You’re about ten minutes into the movie when he starts to move his fingers in little circles on your upper arm. If anyone saw you right now, they’d assume you two were together. The months you’ve both spent flirting and teasing, the light touches and the lingering cuddles. This is becoming unbearable for you, its overwhelming. How haven’t you kissed yet? You weren’t really a ‘hoe’ as Sero said, but you certainly weren’t inexperienced and have never had this trouble before, so what was stopping you now? If things continued like this, you were going to explode.

You look up at Kiri, admiring the contours of his face against the light of the TV. The way his eyebrows slightly furrow, and the way he’s chewing his bottom lip between his teeth in concentration. You inhale the mild aroma of cinnamon, which is a scent that follows him around everywhere. You’re certain he’s aware you are staring, by the light blush reforming on his cheeks, but he allows you to for just a little longer. Right up until Denki yelps aloud from a minor jump scare in the film, causing you to jolt yourself and grab onto Kiri’s shirt.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared?” he asks, voice low and husky. “Don’t worry, I got you.” He lifts his free arm and tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“I-I wasn’t scared. Denki made me jump” you pout.

“Aww, even worse haha” he chuckles, the vibrations flow through your body, straight to your core, making you instantly wet. If he ever really knew the affect he had, you might just die from embarrassment. You release his shirt and return your head to his shoulder; however, his hand has maneuvered itself away from your upper arm and is now placed on your hip. The large amount of warmth is slowly followed by a very light squeeze of reassurance, and you’ve never been more aware that you aren’t wearing any shorts.

His breathing has now quickened, and his hand feels like it might even be shaking a little bit. He was so nervous, which makes him even more endearing. A wave of adrenaline rushed through you as you lift your hand to rest atop of his, to give him the assurance that it is absolutely okay to have his hand there.

About three quarters of the way into the film, all drinks have been consumed, chips have been eaten, Sero pauses and gets up for a pee break. “Couldn’t your bladder have waited? There isn’t that much longer left Se-bro” Kiri teases

“Ei, I don’t think I know anyone who could wait as long as you have” he leans down and darts his eyes between the two of you. You glare with intent to BURN. You thought too long for a comeback and unfortunately, he’s already happily waltzing off to the bathroom.

Kiri turns to you with a smile and lowers his voice. “Did nobody tell tape face that anything worth having is worth waiting for?” and you swear in that moment an entire flutter of butterflies were trying to escape you. That’s the most direct he’s ever been and it’s not something easy to ignore.

“I know you both have hidden the beer and I take personal offense.” Denki bellows. “I bet it’s on top of the cupboard where Kiri keeps all the good stuff” and he gets up and skips off to the kitchen, fully convinced he’s going to find what he’s looking for.

“I’m going to bed. Gotta be up early and you extras are pissing me off.” Bakugou gets up and stretches. “Love you, Bakubro! Mwah!” both you and Kiri heckle him with air kisses and you are met with yet another middle finger as he strolls off to his dorm room, that small smirk still present.

There’s that feeling coming back again. The way you feel whenever you’re alone with Kirishima. But this is the most compromised you’ve been: you’re basically half naked, he’s got his hand on your hip and he just dropped an absolute bomb of a line thanks to Sero. You can’t help yourself and before you truly think it through,

“Ei, I think I’m done waiting.” You lift your head off his shoulder, faces only a few inches apart. You can feel both your heart rates quicken in sync and your bodies getting hotter. He raises his hand and takes your chin in his hand, urging your lips forward onto his. The anticipated contact sends electricity through your body and the kiss deepens quickly, his tongue licks your lower lip asking for entrance and you accept immediately, releasing a soft moan from the motion.

You twist your body round so that you’re straddling his thigh, his wandering hand had slipped under the fabric of your shirt in the same place, playing with the fabric of your underwear. Your hands find their way to the back of his head, pushing him further into your mouth. You both are getting sloppy as lust takes over and you find your hips involuntarily grinding on his thigh. He breaks away from the kiss, pulling at your lower lip and working his way down your jaw to your neck, nipping and sucking lightly, causing louder moans to escape you.

“So- fucking long- I’ve waited- to touch you like this” he groans out between kisses and bites, sure to leave a mark. “Sound so pretty”

“Ah- me too, I- fuck” the stimulation from his voice and touch is almost overwhelming, but clarity sets in quicker than you’d like it too. “Sero will- ah- be back any second” and you release your grip on his hair. He’s really trying to pout at you, but he can’t help let his goofy smile beam through. You stare at each other for a few seconds, both absolutely beaming with happiness. He lets out an almighty sigh,

“Uggggh, you’re right. Hey, what are you doing after this?” he asks as you settle back down next to him, making you chuckle.

“Well I was planning on going back to my dorm and sleeping. Unless you have a better offer?” you beam.

“Well…” his grin gets wider, “you know there’s a sequel to Scream, yknow? Think you might wanna… what’s it called..”

“Scream 2.”

“I can make you scream, too. Sure”  and you erupt into laughter together, from his disgustingly awful pun.

Sero approaches from the corridor “Well you two sure can clear a room.”

“I’d blame it on Kiri’s terrible puns, but Bakubabe went to bed and Electabuzz is currently trying to find the rest of the beer but- oh there you are” Denki walks in, with a pout on his face, and flops back on the couch in disappointment.

“Denks, how about we throw a little party tomorrow after the test. We’ll let you in on where the secret stash is, too.” You offer, his expression immediately switching to that of delight.

Even though there was only a half hour left of the movie, it felt like hours until the end credits started rolling. Denki had managed to fall asleep and was snoring at full velocity, and the only person left paying full attention was Sero, as you couldn’t stop your brain from wandering from anticipation.

He shut the TV off and you tasked yourself with waking up Denki while Kiri cleaned up the empty beer bottles.

“Kami, come on sweetie, you need to go to bed.” You nudge him slightly causing him to stir. Sero walks over, and gives him a hard slap on the ass

‘WAKE UP ASSHOLE! Iida will kill you if you sleep on the couch”

“…I- sleep- your mom-..” he sits up and rubs his eyes

“Don’t be so rough Sero, he’s so sleepy look at hiiiimm” You say, admiring how cute he looked in such tired state. Kaminari finally gets up and all four of you head to the lift… shit.

You are Denki are on the 3rd floor, Kiri is on the 4th and Sero is on the 5th… how are you going to get to Kiri’s room without being suspicious?

A/N: Thank you if you read this in full! Please let me know what you think and if you’d be wanting to read the next part (which would include a lot more spice!)

[albakore]

At the Salon

Synopsis: you and the boys getting your nails done

Characters: Diluc, Kaeya, Childe (gn!reader)

Warnings: none :D

A/N: ok so I’m just gonna say upfront that none of these are gonna be just flat out “they would never get their nails done” cause that’d be boring but I’m gonna include an ✨in-character reason✨ as to why I think they wouldn’t mind getting their nails painted

also, this is my first original post i guess! It’s nice to meet you all! ive been thinking about writing on and off for a while now but I didn’t know where to start. I kinda wrote this on a whim after getting my nails done. send in any requests or ideas so I can get my acc rolling :D

I was going to do Venti and Xiao too but I got bored so I’ll add them in a separate post if people want

Diluc

Ok so first and foremost is my beloved

If you enjoy getting your nails done he absolutely doesn’t mind taking you every few weeks or so.

Just because he isn’t exactly one to indulge himself in luxury doesn’t mean he feels like his lover shouldn’t either!

If it’s what you want then he’ll more than happily oblige

shameless self indulgence.. i just want to be spoiled by diluc

on some occasions when he’s able to make it to the salon with you, he’ll also get a manicure

some people might say “diluc would never get a manicure because he doesn’t care about his appearance!”

but i think it’s more like this: he gets manicures because he doesn’t care what other people think about his appearance

he cares more about comfort and practicality than fashion or looks

getting someone else to keep his nails trimmed and clean is more practical than trying to keep up with them himself

and damn is that massage chair comfortable

(whatever you do don’t imagine diluc laid back enjoying his massage chair with his eyes closed as he’s getting his nails filed.. the sigh of relief that would leave this man after weeks of stress have built up and he’s finally able to just relax with his s/o)

and it’s an excuse to spend time with you outside of his busy schedule

probably doesn’t ever get color.. i think he’ll stick to clear polish

maybe if you beg him enough he might get one or two of his nails painted to match whatever you get

but only if he likes whatever color you picked out

i feel like he’s not necessarily ashamed of having them painted or anything

because again, diluc really could not care less what other people think of him

it’s just not practical to have like hot pink nails or something. makes it hard to blend in to the darkness, as is necessary to attend to his nighttime duties

now that I’ve made it a point to say Diluc doesn’t care what people think:

he’d absolutely die if he ever ran into Kaeya or Jean or anyone he knew there

would def try to cover it up with indifference though

“(Y/N) and I come here often to keep our nails from getting damaged. There’s nothing strange about that.”

that won’t stop him from coming back again with you in a few weeks though

Kaeya

ok so Kaeya def gets his nails done on the regular. he probably has a schedule

like he’s going every 4 weeks on the dot with or without you

hates when his nails get long and start chipping or breaking

which is why he’s so uptight about his nail maintenance

so if you wanna go with him you better clear your schedule for whatever time and day he chooses cause he’s not taking any rain checks

also just gets clear polish most of the time

with that being said, I don’t think he’s above trying a new color every so often

the occasional blue, black, other neutrals or maybe even a silver if he’s feeling extra adventurous

keeps his nails short like Diluc, doesn’t get acrylics or anything super fancy

partially because long nails get in the way of his work

also i hc he used to bite his nails as a nervous habit when he was younger totally not projecting

(which is why he’s so serious about his nail salon schedule, having long/broken nails really makes the urge to bite them come back)

def knows his nail techs well. they all adore him

has his one “go to” nail tech who he gossips with

knows like all their life stories too? he’ll tell you afterward like “oh your nail tech is the one whose husband tried to leave her for another girl. she was telling me about how his mom called her and snitched on him-“

kaeya where do you find the brain capacity to store all this random trivia about people’s personal lives

Childe

loves going to the salon with you

he gets matching nail polish colors he’s not ashamed

for the same reason that he’d keep the polish on whenever Tonia or Teucer wanted to paint his nails

his adoration for you outshines whatever embarrassment he might’ve felt otherwise

if people ask him about his nails he’ll excitedly tell them about how he went to the salon with his s/o

and an excuse to tell anyone about his amazing s/o is a win in his book

also, loves the little reminder of you when he can’t be with you

he’s just out taking care of his own business and he catches sight of his nails and thinks of you <3

always pays for both of you of course. i’d expect nothing less from the ginger

it doesn’t matter if you get every service offered and the total ends up being crazy expensive

don’t even worry about it he’s already got his wallet ready 😌

the people at the salon love him because he gives like 40% tips

gets designs sometimes.. just little things he thinks are cool.

imagine him getting a little whale on his ring finger or smth

also probably got googly eyes or something once because he thought it was funny

“Mr. Zhongli, watch!” (shakes his hands so the eyes go all over the place)

most of the time he just sticks to basic colors because adding extra things gets old fast, and makes his gloves uncomfy

his fav colors to get are red and white

red because it reminds him of blood

and white because it reminds him of the snow in Snezhnaya :D

def takes you to fancy salons where they offer you wine and give you massages complimentary with your manicure

gets really upset when his nails chip. godspeed to the poor treasure hoarder he was sparring with who just accidentally knocked Childe’s hand in the wrong way

comes home and is immediately like “(Y/N) we need to make another appointment to get our nails redone! mine got messed up at work :( ”

ignore the blood on his shirt that is totally not related to his nails being chipped

[rotshop]

*slams into your inbox* I just read through mag reader and Deimos headcanons again and I love it. I would def be interested in seeing more! (Also are you sure you don’t wanna hold his hand? Even just a little?) -Echo

gonna do a funney little mix of ideas here ,,,,, lol ,,,,,,,, also yes i am sure <333 i go 'hey check out this funny fish' and then i hold his head underwater.

[ tw brief, light violence, body horror and gore / blood ]

context

auditor + mag s/o ;

-OK OK HEAR ME OUT .

-you weren't originally an aahw project. while they're definitely the biggest company of sorts around there's still a few others that are like them but not exactly them hanging around nevada. you happened to be in some facility they decided to raid due to them having some possibly useful information regarding the anti-aahw . she's definitely a little less than enthused to get a call from her agents that she should come check this out but ,, when she lays her eyes on u that immediately melts away

-he's VERY very curious about you. keeps you close which is kind of nice bc it means you're treated pretty well but also it means a lot of being watched. audi just has like. a habit of unconsciously ''''''''studying'''''''' you. they're always noting little behaviors of yours down mentally and asking you little questions abut how you came to be and what abilities you hold.

-believe it or not he actually DOESN'T want you in fights. she knows you're incredibly capable but the thought of you getting too involved in a bunch of clawing and tearing again makes her get uneasy. she just prefers for you to stay by her side, with the excuse that you're a body guard of sorts for her (you aren't, she's got several other, more disposable mags that serve that role just fine.).

-HOWEVER. there is one time where he doesn't get an option in that. a few contractees and dissenters attempted a raid on the base audi was at, hoping to try and get some sort of bargaining chip to make deal with. before they can even really attempt to try and land some sort of hit on them you're already pouncing on the nearest grunt, blood already spurting and painting the walls red in mere seconds of your arrival. it honest to god shocks her into stillness, her just watching motionlessly the entire time, only really moving once to dodge some limb you'd mindlessly thrown her way after tearing it from its socket. WHILE SHE IS IMPRESSED ,,, she still scolds you a little for being reckless while trying to scrub the blood off of you with a wet rag, huffing that 'you could've gotten seriously hurt' if you were any less careful >:/

-however he does do the thng where he like. cups both sides of your face and then presses his forehead against yours. you have to lean down a lot for him to do so but still. sighs a little while brushing his thumb under your eyes and tells you to be more careful from now on.

-auditor is not immune to favoritism and it shows. someone brings it up (shakily, of course) and she just shrugs and goes 'idk what you're talking abt' while petting you who's got your head on her lap. said person promptly gets 'dismissed' after.

-hates whenever anyone tries to put some kind of muzzle on you, even if its just for the jaw dislocation thingy it still makes him go kind of '>:|' . he'll let them for like. a day at MOST (unless you keep trying to get it off, then chances are he's just gonna take it off for you. nobody really bothers asking / trying to get it back on you bc he just sends them a sharp little glare before they even can. if you REALLY need it that bad then he might try and convince you to keep it on a little longer or otherwise take your mind of it, he still feels really bad about it tho . )

sanford + mag s/o ;

- :)

-you two knew each other before he dissented / you became a mag. worked pretty close together and were just close in general !! you didn't know dei super super well since he worked in a different area but you two met a few times and hit it off pretty well.

-anyway ! he doesn't take your magnification well. at all. the first few times he saw you after it were the worst, mostly because those few times were primarily because you were lashing out at agents for one reason or another (mostly maltreatment from guards / people being shitty in general) . for the first while its so obvious that you're just exhausted from what's happened to your body that was NOT meant to become this, that you're tired and on edge from not being allowed any real rest. it makes him feel fucking terrible to see how awful of a state you're in and know that there's next to nothing he can really do to help.

-it especially hits him when he notices the other little changes. there's some specific moment where he's holding onto you far too tightly, clutching at the back of your jacket while he does his best to keep composed. you always had this habit of giving a half jokey hum of some stupid little joke or even just a 'what's wrong, big guy?' whenever he seemed off or tense, he can't help but make note of the lack of real response from you in the moment other than you wrapping your arms around him as well. another time, maybe he tries to make some little inside joke after something reminded him of it, looking back at you with a little smile. it hits him with a special punch to the gut when he notices your confusion, you just can't recognize it. you don't remember it anymore. you don't remember a lot of your old self or interactions anymore.

-you two end up getting split up at one point or another. orginally, he'd planned to run away with you and deimos buut,,, one way or another, you weren't really able to get out. he goes looking for you a bunch but eventually he has to stop when it gets to be too much and he can't find any real sign of you, he's quiet for a long time after it.

-HOWEVER . he does eventually find you in some abandoned warehouse him and the others had planned to look for supplies in. the entire time he's in there he keeps hearing sounds he thinks are just dei or hank but every time he asks or comments on it they just give him a look of confusion or a little 'what are you talking about?' it puts him really on edge, it's worse when he's in one of the further corners, digging through a few boxes and desperately trying to ignore how much it feels like someones there. anyway umm lol its just you ,,,, ehe . it takes him a solid minute to process that its you but as soon as it clicks he's yelling your name and running up to hug you. doesn't even stop to think that you could totally tear him a new one right then and there he's just too happy to see you. dei and hank both come rushing over after hearing him, dei recognizes you too and is just kinda 'oh hey !! friend !! :D' while hank stands there and just kinda stares.

-is able to take you back to base without too much argument from the others. he does his best to fill you in on everything that's happened in hopes you'll explained what happened on your part too. even if you don't he can't be too upset since he's just too gd happy to see you again ,,,, chances are you stick around him a lot . deimos is nice but u don't remember him super well and hank makes you uneasy lmao . its ok he thinks its funny though, just laughs a little whenever you stand in his doorway in silence until he notices you :)

[jjkpls]

the wishlist (m) - 4

“What does it mean if a guy talks about your nipples?”

> genre : smut, fluff

> pairing : jeon jungkook x reader (f)

> total words : 4.7k

> content/warnings : back at it again w/ the bff2l; one sided love, lot of pining; sextoys talk; explicit language; ambiguous infidelity ; awkwardness

previous - next

The issue is that Jungkook -and you're not a bitch for thinking that- is a little bit of an idiot.

He can be very smart. He can be wise and present unsuspecting resources and knowledge. He can teach you things you don't know anything about, figure out others you struggle to -but not during stressful times like for say an escape game because during those, he turns absolutely, utterly useless. 

But he is an idiot too. An idiot that sometimes shapes situations and conclusions and ideas in a very peculiar way that is very singular to him.

That’s precisely what happens then. He plays his role right, to its full extent, with great dedication and commitment. Except he missed a memo, misread the script and ends up playing a role that's not the one you planned for him. He believes that he’s your new adult toy provider (as if there is such a thing).

When you think he’s coming over to share a meal or play some game or binge-watch a series you promised to wait for him to experience together, he has a box hidden in his pocket or carried under his arm. 

He has the decency to not comment on it the first time around. He just set it down on the coffee table, between the bowl of chips and the one filled with guacamole. You see the logo on top of it. You recognize the design, reffined, minimalist with the pretty pastel matte colour. 

He probably identifies the shame and the annoyance on your face, painting your cheeks and reshaping your eyebrows, and doesn’t say anything. Simply smiles to himself and starts talking about the series’ new episode that’s about to start. 

It takes a lot of efforts, coming from you, to ignore the conspicuous object sitting just in front and in between you. But eventually, probably because more than a decade of friendship with this guy have grown impressive mind muscles on you, you manage to make abstraction of it. 

It just stops existing for a while until he leaves and you’re curious to see what’s inside. And again you have the same old intentions as before. The same ones.

You won’t use it. 

It’s curiosity. And it's fine for you to be curious because he’s the one buying it and gifting it to you. Why should you be blamed?

Freshly hopped in bed, just done reading the notice hanging over your face, you’re yawning and sending your eyebrows high in interest. Again you won’t use it but it sounds very interesting. That’s when you get a text from him.

Guk

So about the toy!

As if you were waiting for his explanation. As if the conversation got cut short and you were expecting him to pick it back up whenever possible.

You won’t entertain him.

You

I said not to buy me this.

Guk

You never said that! You said something about me being crazy but never about buying one again

Because you're mostly made of petty bitch material, you scroll higher quickly, wishing to find something, any text that would corroborate what you’re saying.

You don’t find anything though. Because you never actually told him to not buy you other toys by text, and now that you come to think of it, you probably never did out loud either because you didn’t fucking know that he would even consider doing so.

It’s not even Christmas anymore. It’s not your birthday. There’s even less of a valid reason for him to get you this therefore, of course, you did not explicitly warn him not to, you didn’t think it would be necessary.

You

It’s not even my fucking bday why???

Guk

I told you the lady at the shop

But who the hell is that lady?

Guk

She talked about a lot of products and they all seemed cool and because you liked the other one I thought I’d get you this one too

You

Jungkook

This simple response says a lot, you hope he can read between the pixels of his screen the desperation, the irritation, the frustration, the silent insults. 

Guk

Listen it’s super cool it's supposed to mimic the touch of a finger

Jungkook then proceeds to explain to you how it works. The original idea being a system with a tiny ball rolling under a silicon skin, to place on your clitoris to have the illusion of a finger's touch. And it’s interesting and innovative surely and sounds intriguing as in, you wonder if it’s accurate, but you’re tired and it seems like you’re wading in some sort of swamp you can’t escape from. There’s a fire burning your skin from your cheeks to your chest. You’re both hating this conversation and unwilling to just draw a final period to it. This asshole.

You

I can read

Guk

So you opened it already??

There’s a bunch of excited emojis that follows his last message and fill up the empty space your lack of response leaves. 

Why and how can he be so eager?

Here comes the delusional part of your brain. It’s a very wide, very deep hallway covered in bookshelves filled to the brim with stupid interpretations and beliefs and sometimes even memories you’ve shared with him. Often next to the laters are pinned an article from a teenage magazine or the jacket of a romance movie, specifically there to validate that yes, indeed, it must have meant something. 

The door of that corridor just creaked opened. You can discern the sound, you can feel the particular atmosphere without even having to take a step through. 

Is it really that normal to be so excited about that? For him? As a friend?

It’s the most frustrating part: you are friends. Friends who supposedly can tell each other everything. Friends who can ask each other anything. 

You should be able to talk about it. Just ask him. If there’s anything behind this whole mess, if he means to tell you something, if it’s wholly mindless, if there’s no hidden agenda.

It should be fine. There’s only trust and affection in this friendship. 

You are still too scared, you are terrified that he’d start linking dots, ask himself some new questions, potentially answer them himself, and have you all found out.

You'd have your barely well-worn cover thrown completely away. 

You send the blank emoji. The one with even the eyes closed. It summarizes your actual state pretty well, speechless, relatively annoyed. 

Guk

She said you could try it on other parts of your body too

Guk

At first

Guk

Like on your lips or your nipples

You want to die.

Now.

No, better, you wish to have never been born. 

Why is he talking about your nipples? Why?

And through all that, you still feel like something is wrong with you, along with your feelings. 

Turns out you are so overwhelmed by his clueless inadequacy, you need a good half an hour and a random shot of tequila to get through it. When it’s gone and exhaustion of a long day and alcohol have knocked nervousness and panic out, you fall asleep, forgetting about answering his outrageous last texts. 

“What does it mean if a guy talks about your nipples?”

Min's finger stops midair, above the cash register she's been working on. She needs a good minute to get back to her senses and while you wait, anxiety invades you. Maybe you should never have brought it up. 

But this question, the torturous thing is slowly killing you.

Min finally turns her head to you, eyes squinted and eyebrows drawn low. She sucks in her pretty red lips before opening them to start formulating, with it seems a certain struggle, an answer. 

“I don’t think I quite understand.”

It’s a pretty straightforward, relatively easy question. That’s what you'd want to say but you’ve reached the state of bashful regret and decide not to press it. Some things are better just left alone. 

“Who talked about your nipples?” She ends up asking the one thing you wished she wouldn’t because there is no way you’re giving his name. 

“Doesn’t matter.” You mumble, turning around slightly, getting back to the task you were here, paid, to do -wipe the shelves clean and not talk about your “““love””” life. 

“I think it does. You wanna know if it means something? Like the guy's into you?”

“Something like that.” Your cheeks are aflame now. No doubt about it. You silently curse at your manager who refuses that you don’t wear the ugly hat that holds your hair back because having a curtain of hair to hold behind, as a help to keep some of your remained, sparse dignity would have been peachy. 

“What did he say exactly?”

Silence. You’re not elaborating. She sighs, defeated. 

“Well, I suppose... he’s considered the fact that you have boobs. If it’s a straight guy, that’s a good sign, I guess?” She shrugs.

You don’t like the answer. It’s exactly what the wrong, defective part of your brain, the one directly wired to your heart, wanted to hear. 

She doesn’t even have the context, anyway. It doesn’t mean much, doesn’t hold much power in your court of sensibility. 

She stares at the side of your face, clearly attempting to drill holes in your head to try and find some answers. You’re awfully silent, have said too much yet not enough and she’s dying to know the whole story. You won’t give in and she can tell. There’s no way you’re sharing the whole thing. The most, probably, probative point of the whole story: the sex toys. It’d turn her into a devastating tsunami of nonsense and misinterpretation and drown you in its wake and you can’t, when you’re already struggling to stay afloat, allow that.

Tag list: @fangirls94 @realswimshaddy @safi4x @pnkd @somewhereinthestarss @kpopfandomftw @kai-kai-bookshelf @pasteljoonie @ggukkieland

A/N: Don’t forget to click on the next button on top, two parts are being posted simultaneously :)

[poodlejoonas]

Inspired by my BC Fan Week dad!Joonas short: the rest of the guys as uncles

@the-killer-queenie​ just sent me a darling DM with her own ideas of it and now I want to add more: the other members as uncles (and Joonas as a dad). And if you’re cool with it, I included your original DM that inspired it at the end.

Also, perfect timing because there was a discussion of BC dad/uncle headcanons in the Violent Pop server while I was cleaning, so this one’s also for you guys 🥂

Under the read-more for length:

Joonas:

His first reaction when he found out he was going to be a dad was pure fear. He doubted that he would ever be a good one and that he would end up ruining his daughter’s life. While the anxieties lingered (and still do, even with her here), he learned to grow into the idea. He became super protective of his girlfriend, calling every chance he got while he was either in the Netherlands or on tour to make sure that she was comfortable. She got annoyed super fast by how fussy he was, but she understood that he was excited and anxious and only wanted the best for them. He was the one to suggest the name Sohvi and started calling her by it long before she was even born.

Despite finding out about the pregnancy in April, they waited until almost the end of June to make the news public. It was a big all-in-one announcement: a small gender reveal at home with a cake and a letterboard with her birthday and initials (name was kept secret until she arrived). This all conveniently happened before the tour so the crowd went into the show knowing about her. As much as he would have loved to invite his girlfriend to more summer tour shows, he wanted to make sure she wasn’t overexposed to the heat and stress of being in a large crowd. When she does come to one of the shows in Helsinki, he sets her up with an air conditioned room backstage. Every time they were sitting next to each other, he would instinctively hold her belly. Whenever he was at home, he would sing to them so Sohvi could hear his voice. Eventually, she would kick when he started singing, almost like she knew he was there.

Joonas would be a fantastic girl dad! The night before every tour, he lets her paint his nails any color she wants, and he refuses to take it off no matter how messy it is or how chipped it gets. It becomes like a tradition for them, mostly so she can get used to the idea of him being gone for long periods of time. When she can come to local shows, she does the make-up for him and the rest of the guys (the ones who wear it, at least). They play an acoustic version of one of their songs (something like My Heart is a Hurricane) for whenever she can join them on stage; it’s a small break for the ones who aren’t playing and a chance for her to see them perform without noise-cancelling headphones.

He takes super adorable pictures of and with her, and whenever he posts something of her and her mom together, he calls them “his girls.” He would also certainly have her name and her birthday (November 15) in Roman numerals tattooed over his heart. Every year around Christmas time, they take a family weekend vacation to Rovaniemi to visit Santa’s village. In all, he would surprise a lot of people - and himself - by fitting into the role so well and so quickly. He’s not a perfect dad, but he tries his best.

The “responsible” uncles:

Tommi:

Tommi would almost certainly be her favorite uncle. He’s just such a massive teddy bear in general that she loves whenever she can get a hug from him. When they go out as a group, especially to festivals, he carries her around on his shoulders so she can feel tall and see the other bands perform better. I get vibes from him that he’s the best cook out of the group, so whenever he’s on babysitting duty, he makes her the best meals. He likes to wrestle and playfully rough house with her to make her laugh. It’s not uncommon for her to fall asleep while he’s holding her because he’s that comfy to rest on. After the Bass Incident, he became the top candidate for being her godfather.

Olli:

You know, until last week, I thought that Olli would be the best choice for being her godfather, but after the lost bass fiasco I don’t think he can be trusted with a child lol. But he’s still one of the responsible uncles regardless! When she’s super young, sometimes she gets him and her dad confused with each other because their hair and instruments look so similar (see also: this vine). He’s the one who likes to take her out to the park and then get ice cream with her afterwards. He also has zero shame about letting her put a tiara on him and invite him to her tea party, and he plays along with it too. When he’s on babysitting duty, he reads her stories and sometimes narrates them with different voices.

Aleksi:

He’s the chill responsible uncle. He works so often that he rarely ever gets time to hang out with her outside of the studio like the others do, but they spend the most time together while he works. He holds her while he works at his laptop and lets her watch the cool colors and coding scroll across the screen. He’s the first one to volunteer to hold her if Joonas has to go in the other room to record his parts, and typically the first one to volunteer to take care of her last-minute. When she gets a little older, between song editing sessions, he’ll open a fresh file and let her “record” her own songs. Of course, they almost never leave his laptop, but it’s the thought that counts.

The “irresponsible” uncles:

Niko:

Okay, so Niko is one of the “irresponsible” ones but almost certainly a little better than Joel at the job. What puts him in this category is that he swears like a sailor even when she’s in the room because he forgets that kids are sponges and absorb everything they see and hear. He also has no problem throwing some chicken nuggets in the oven and calling it a day, so he needs to be reminded that she has to eat more than that. But he’s still a loving uncle, he just needs someone to help him babysit lol. He lets her play with his hair when they’re hanging out together, and when she gets older, he teaches her how to play the piano. She loves when he sings to her and she’ll request certain songs from him. He’s also the uncle who encourages her to just talk and talk (building up her communication skills) by pretending that they’re gossiping together (“oh really? what did he do next? tell me more!”)

This post is totally Niko, by the way:

Joel:

Joel... love this boy, but he’s without a doubt the least responsible of the uncles. It’s mostly because he can spend maybe an hour and a half maximum with her before he hits a wall of exhaustion and is ready to send her back to her parents. When he’s with others who can help him take care of her, he can hang out with her a little bit longer. He also has no idea how to actually hang out with a child in a kid-friend context. Admittedly, he was the least excited to find out that she was coming because he thought that meant Joonas was going to leave the band. He needed tons of confirmation before he warmed up to the idea of becoming an uncle. But that doesn’t make him a totally bad uncle. He treats her like a member of his own family as well and he’s great at making her laugh. He’s also the first to jump to her or Joonas’ defense on Instagram if tabloids (or someone like That Bitch Archie Cruz) make defamatory comments about them.

The original HC:

[freddiekluger]

I am all ears for your season 3 cap's big gay awakening ideas 👀👀

alright, you asked so sit down and strap in

before we get started- a few details are recycled/repurposed from earlier headcanons/ask answers (characterisation is like that), and i came up with all this a couple weeks back, so any overlap with other peoples suggestions is totally unintentional! i’ve just been finding the energy to properly write them up as originally i riffed them with a friend late at night lmao

the captain: homo evolution

introduction (scroll down if you’re not bothered for the hardcore analysis/logic)

this isn’t necessarily what i think WILL happen as much as how i would do it. over the past two seasons of Ghosts, we’ve seen the captain’s main character arc being centred around him loosening up, from learning to value mike, alison, and the other ghosts more as equals than soldiers/means to an end to the season 2 finale, where cap is not only expressing an interest in flowers and fashion (distinctly un-soldierly pursuits) but joining the party and other men (the direct opposite of About Last Night, in which cap bah humbugs partying/’gay abandon’ and is left speechless by the mere presence of a mostly naked man). that being said, the captain is still the captain: his character is still centred around this need for rules and structure and he still finds his identity in the archetypal WW2 military man- all of his incremental moves towards a more ‘modern’ perspective have ultimately been made possible because, like Ben said on twitter, the captain isn’t CONSCIOUSLY aware that he’s gay. he has the underlying feeling that he’s different, he knows of his tendency to attach himself to specific men and form incredibly close bonds (and, as demonstrated by his attempts to hide them, is at least somewhat aware that that’s not the norm), but in his mind he’s written that off as merely “not being a ladies man”. 

the captain is from the 1940s- it’s one thing for him to see and be supportive of a same-gender wedding in present day England where gay=legal unions, marketed doritos, and homophobia being still present but generally frowned upon, and another thing entirely for him to have to apply it to himself. we’ve already seen that the captain appears to be stuck in the past more than any of the other ghosts (”the war is over!” “is it, alison? is it?”- he also references the past more frequently than most of the others), and in his past sodomite gay=punishable by imprisonment and chemical castration, back alley hookups, and the constant threat of blackmail and violence. obviously, despite all this, there was a vibrant underground queer history taking place in England during this time & not all of the above is accurate, but it’s what cap would have seen, and the England of the early 20th century is denoted as being a particularly brutal period for lgbtq+ folks (the destruction of the first world war exacerbated rage and frustration, and lgbtq+ people weren’t the only gorup to end up on the receiving end of that, but i digress). this is basiclly just a really long way of me saying that the captain compartmentalising to that degree was, and to some extent is, a survival mechanism. confronting his homoseuxality means confronting what it means for a 1940s man to be a dreaded homosexual, and all of that directly conflicts with the image of ‘the Captain’ he’s built in his mind. 

we’ve seen this in Redding Weddy, where the captain is aware that Havers means/meant more to him than was normal for a captain/2ic relationship (he does attempts to hide his affection- “i shall miss you, Havers. by which of course i mean we shall miss you “he left me, i mean he left for the front”), but is never able to fully verbalise WHY, and it only takes a series of increasingly dramatic prompts before he will even mention the idea of Havers, let alone begin to articulate their relationship. 

all this just goes to prove that for the captain to properly ‘come out’, there needs to be an external inciting incident- he could easily have gone on shadowing attractive men whenever they visit and avoiding interrogating those feelings for another seventy years if Button house remained without alison and mike. 

while at least julian, pat, and robin have noticed that the cap is not the most heteroseual of men (they’re the only ghosts who have visibly reacted when cap says gay shit), they all appear to have decided to just not mention it, which makes alison and mike our wildcards. not only has alison’s ability to see and communicate with the ghosts already connected them more to the modern world than they ever have been, alison, and mike by extension, has a personal stake in the wellbeing/general growth of the ghosts. happy ghosts=happy house, and like it or not some of them are even beginning to become friends. [i probably didn’t need to write all this like explaining my decisions, but i think figuring out the motivations behind everyon just develops the flavour and lets us have a sexy and accurate headcanon]

so,

the episode

while the captain might not consciously know he’s a fruit (derogatory), he is well and truly terrible at concealing the thirst (it’s not his fault things just keep slipping out!)- i love the idea of just having a supercut near the beginning of the episode that just shows that the captain has gotten even GAYER since last season, with slip ups becoming almost a daily occurence, but it’s getting to the point where it’s actually becoming a serious hazard. last week, he was supposed to be looking out for alison while attempted to put up blinds, but one of mike’s friends (who was over ‘helping out’, which mostly meant eating chips and covering himself in paint) walked through the room with his shirt off and paint handprints on the seat of his shorts, distracting the captain from realising that alison’s stepladder was about to give way. 

with the increased presence of non elderly men in the house (the previous owner wasn’t exactly the life of the party) the captain is getting gayer and gayer, but he’s also becoming more and more defensive, while his brisk demeanour and need for control regresses to much more of a season 1 state (a subconscious attempt to regain control as things get close to spilling over). it’s not the first time his repression has almost slipped, he spent much of his life surrounded by soldiers after all, but with no war and no corporeal body he’s got almost nothing to distract himself from it. needless to say, between the safety hazards and the almost agressive defensiveness which derails any interaction, something needs to be done about the captain.

throughout the week, alison tries to find the opportune time to talk to the captain about what’s going on with him for everyone’s sake, but cap keeps masterfully evading any ‘deep’ talk with willful misunderstanding or just straight up dismissal (which at times gets a bit rude), and alison really doesn’t have the time- her and mike are caught up with managing the first official room redecoration and butting heads with a passive agressive delivery driver. insert general shenangigans, but at some point the captain’s whole “accidentally sabotage something by being distracted and then attack anyone who dares even look at him the wrong way afterwards” act causes alison to exasperatedly blurt out “we all know you’re gay! we get it! you like men! you can drop the act!”. there’s no malice or anything but, as we know, when alison gets run ragged things don’t tend to come out quite right.

everything falls silent (and mike is vaguely confused), and the captain just looks like a deer in headlights. as alison catches her breath, pat pipes up with a “it’s alright, cap, we don’t mind- now we can focus on the task at hand”. the captain sort of regains his composure and once again attempts to brush them all off with a scoff and a “i haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. if any of us is distracted, i-it’s... kitty!” but it’s easy to tell he looks rattled. most of his words don’t come out right, and after trying to blame kitty for their failures (she just had the unfortunate luck of being in his line of sight), he ends up doing an awkward little walk away which quickly turns into a full on sprint. mike, having finished processing alison yelling about gay shit to the air and kind of pieced together what must have happened awkwardly chimes in with “it’s okay to be gay!”- alison just pats him on the back (”yeah no he’s gone, mike.” “gone?” “sprinted away.” “huh”)

the episode continues with the captain flat out avoiding alison and the other ghosts to an almost funny extent as the other plots continue. it takes a bit for alison to realise why the captain reacted so badly (in fact, it’s actually mike who remembers that he’s 1940s ghost- “he’s probably just scared and taking it out on everyone else”). while thomas and julian vote for leaving the captain be so they can have some peace and quiet, fanny/pat/alison/robin decide someone needs to talk to him (fanny surprised everyone but after all, she got murdered because her husband had to live in secrecy- if talking to the captain will avert any further crises, she’s happy to make sure someone else does it for her). kitty’s still upset about being singled out, but she knows better than anyone that sometimes all you need is a friend- cue realisation no. 2.

with the captain avoiding everyone, sending in a regular emissary isn’t going to work. they need to find the least threatening person possible, with no agenda or history other than being there to help (a friend, if you will)- cue everyone looking at mike.

a quick offscreen briefing later, we see mike wandering out to the field where the captain has exiled himself- remember that up until this point, the captain was still in conscious denial about his sexuality, so being forced to confront it head on (and finding out that apparently everyone ‘knew’, which for cap would feel like an intimate invasion of privacy/forced vulnerability) would rattle him to the point of self-exile- he might not be able to run from his sexuality, but he can run from people. the thing is, mike can’t see or hear the ghosts, which means the captain can’t be frightened off by any expectations (mike actually talks to/at cap while facing completely the wrong direction, but consdiering the above point, this works rather well). 

the captain was alternating between pacing, fiddling with his swagger stick, and sitting, but he unconsciously stands to attention as mike wanders over. he’s used to mike not being able to see them, so mike asking to sit down takes him by surprise, disrupting his instinct to flee again.

mike begins a little awkwardly (”mind if i sit?” *silence* “...i’m just gonna assume that’s a no. or is it a yes? yeah anyways i’m just gonna sit. so... heard you’ve been going through a rough patch”), and the captain almost scoffs and wanders off, but something about the clumsy earnestness in mike’s voice, the captain’s vulnerable state, and the fact that it’s been so long since cap has had anyone actually check in on him, that he stays put. he keeps standing and staring away from button house, and mike keeps speaking to the empty air to his left, and alison and the ghosts stay hidden behind their bush a few metres away, but at least the captain is listening. for the first time in weeks, he’s not on the offensive.

“i can’t actually see or hear you, so i’m just gonna talk and assume you’re listening. alison mentioned you have a habit of running away but, um, maybe don’t do that please?”

“my mate daniel's gay. uh, homosexual, you’d probably say- did you have gay when you were alive? did it just mean happy? anyway, he didn’t come out- that means tell people- until he left high school. we all kind of guessed it, the other kids at school gave him a real tough time for it, but he just squashed it down. couldn’t imagine that all the things people were shouting at him were true, so he ignored it. he’s doing good now though. got married to his husband last year, currently runs a bookshop. so that’s nice.”

it goes quiet for a bit. the captain hasn’t moved, and we’re still only seeing shots of him from the back, but there’s a little less tension in his stance than there was before.  mike clears his throat before continuing.

“i’m guessing you’re probably pretty scared right now. i would be- i mean not that you should be, you shouldn’t, but coming from your... situation, i’m guessing it’d be hard. no one’s saying you have to be anything you’re not ready to be, but lots of things that are scary are actually not bad. airplanes, skydiving, clowns- well, not the clown from that movie, but he gives clowns a bad rep- i’m sure there are plenty of lovely clowns out in the world. still give me the creeps though.” the captain makes a captain-y noise of assent about the clown comment- he never liked them either. 

mike glances over to the bush where alison and the ghosts were attempting to listen in (they could only catch every few words- mary got particularly concerned about why mike had referenced clowns), and the captain still hasn’t run away, so alison motions for mike to keep going. he starts telling the captain a story from his uni days. it’s got nothing to do with the captain, or being gay, or self-acceptance, or anything like that- it’s just a standard tale of comedic but inventive problem solving. the captain sits himself down next to mike (to his right, avoiding mike’s gaze, and still staring away from button house), muttering that his legs are getting a bit tired. he sits there for a while, and mike just talks. sometimes he circles back to the gay thing, sometimes he just asks the captain questions, before remembering that he can’t actually hear any answer, but then he keeps asking anyway, thinking that cap might need to talk. he doesn’t at first, but slowly he offers up a word or two. and then a sentence, and then maybe more- mike will accidentally cut the captain off, or leave the silence to long, but the captain doesn’t mind (it’s a nice reminder that nothing he says will actually go on to have consequence). at one point, mike gets out his phone to show the captain photos of his mate daniel and daniel's husband, not just their wedding day but casual photos- couples drinks with him and alison, dinners at each other's places, the bookshop. 

alison and the other ghosts have long gone, and the sun is just about to sink below the horizon by the time the captain stands himself back up with the traditional knee crack and grunt. he looks at mike and nods, giving him a simple thank you before turning to walk (not run) back to button house, head held slightly higher and looking more relaxed than he’s been all episode. the captain has still got a lot to figure out, but at least it’s a start.

[i love the dramatic ending but the implication is that alison has to go and fetch mike bc he has no ideas cap has left and is prepared to keep going lol- also by no means is cap suddenly going to ditch his characterisation and become a yas kween gay right away, i didn’t go into the aftermath bc this is alreayd fucking LONG but let me know if you want follow up????}

EDIT: i've rbed this with the follow up/part 2 attached!

EDIT 2, much later: switched out mike's reference to his 'younger brother' to a school friend, since the christmas special confirmed mike only has sisters and we're all about accuracy here

[missmentelle]

Hello So i'm about to move from my parents house into an aprtment with my best friend and her friend as roomates. Do you've got any tips on how to make sure we won't get into huge fights, learning how to be responisble with the bugdet and getting to know her friend more? I am really stressed out about it but there's no going back now

It can definitely be nerve-wracking to live with people you aren’t related to for the first time, whether you are moving in with friends, your partner, or random roommates off the internet. I’ve lived with many, many people over the years - most of them strangers I found online - and the best advice I can give you to make the experience more pleasant is to set ground rules and boundaries early, and to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Even close friends can have very different expectations when it comes to sharing a living space, and the big things that you’ll probably want to figure out are:

Shared expenses. Are common staples like margarine, ketchup, salt, dish soap, toilet paper and cooking oil going to be shared by the entire household, or does everyone have to buy their own? If you are sharing stuff, can one person decide to just go buy stuff that’s running low and ask for reimbursement, or do you all need to agree in advance? My roommates and I used to keep a communal list on the fridge that one person would use to make our monthly Costco run, and we’d all just pay one-third of whatever the total ended up being. You might prefer a similar approach, or you might just take turns paying - ie “I bought the last pack of toilet paper, now you buy the next one”. It depends on your budget, and how good your housemates are about holding up their end of the bargain. If you are on a smaller budget than others, or if one roommate tends to use more than their fair share, it might be less of a headache if everyone just buys their own stuff. It’s also important to figure out how rent and bills will be paid - whose name are they in? Are you paying rent with three separate cheques, or is one person writing a cheque for the whole rent? If one person is writing a cheque, when do you need to give them your portion of the rent each month?

Shared household items and appliances. If everyone has brought some kitchen items - cups, mugs, plates, etc - into the household, is every item totally up for grabs, or are there any special items (like a favourite mug or expensive blender) that not everyone is allowed to use? How is fridge and pantry space going to be divided? Are everyone’s items just put into the cupboards together, or do you each get a cupboard for the things you individually own? Does anyone have any allergies or dietary restrictions - like Kosher or Halal requirements - that make it important for other people to not use their dishes? My roommates and I always put our kitchen stuff together in a jumble and just went with it, but I have friends with strict Kosher roommates who cannot share any kitchenware at all. Will you all chip in to buy shared items like a couch and coffee table, or will one person buy the item and own it by themselves? 

Chore schedule. Different people have different standards of cleanliness, and it’s important to figure out how often cleaning should be done so that no one feels like they’re living in a hovel. How quickly should people be doing their dishes - as soon as they’ve finished cooking? Within 24 hours? Or will you eat together and take turns washing dishes? How often will non-daily chores - like mopping the floors, cleaning the shower stall, and cleaning the oven - be done, and who will do them? My roommates and I used to block out 2-3 hours every Sunday as “cleaning time” when we would all deep-clean the apartment together, but you might prefer to have assigned individual chores that you can do on your own time. 

Guest policy. Overnight guests and partners are probably one of the biggest sources of tension in a roommate relationship. Namely, how long can you have a guest stay in the apartment with you before they need to start chipping in with the bills? Do you need to give the other roommates advance notice before a guest comes to stay for a while? How many days out of the month can someone’s partner stay over before they effectively become part of the household and need to pitch in with bills and chores? Is it even okay if someone’s partner is staying over constantly, or are you not cool with that at all? Are roommates allowed to give their partners a key to the apartment, or does everyone in the apartment need to be on board before that can happen? My roommates and I had a lot of long-term guests in our tiny Manhattan apartment, but that only went smoothly because everyone was 100% okay with having long-term guests, and we had a hard limit on how many days someone could stay out of the month before they needed to start putting money in our “toilet paper and dish soap” fund. 

Shower schedule. If everyone in the apartment is working on a similar Monday-Friday, 9-5 schedule (which is less likely to be the case these days, but still), it’s important to work out a basic schedule for who gets to shower when in the mornings. There is nothing that will make you want to flip out on your roommate quite like being late for work because they took a 45-minute shower when you needed to get ready. If you don’t each have your own ensuite bathroom, figure out who gets the bathroom when in the mornings, or decide who is going to shower at night to avoid conflict. 

Quiet hours. At what hours of the day is it inconsiderate for a roommate to be making noise or watching TV in common areas while people are trying to sleep? The answer may depend on the layout of the apartment, your individual work schedules, and how sensitive everyone is to noise. If you have roommates that work nights or are working from home during the day and need quiet for their conference calls, that’s something else to keep in mind. 

Breaking the lease. What happens if something comes up, and one person needs to leave before the lease is over? How much notice do they need to give the other roommates? Is it the departing roommate’s responsibility to find someone to take over their bedroom, or would the remaining roommates rather choose who they are living with? If you all pitched in to make a big purchase together - like a couch or a kitchen table - how will that work if one person leaves the lease? And how will the damage deposit be handled? The majority of leases I’ve been on have not had all the original roommates stay until the end, and it was important to plan for that in advance so that no one felt like they’d been tricked into living with someone new that they never agreed to live with. 

Above all, the secret to living with roommates is to communicate, and to try to be as considerate of others as you can. The way that you live and manage your finances directly affects your roommates’ quality of life, and everyone needs to put in some serious effort to make sure that everyone gets to enjoy the living space that they are paying for. The money stuff is especially important - talk to your roommates ahead of time about what costs you will be sharing and what costs you won’t, and make sure that you are setting aside the money you need for shared expenses each month so that no one is left holding the bag. And be sure to speak up if other roommates aren’t respecting your needs either - the occasional dirty coffee cup left in the sink or wine spilled on the rug is just a part of life and probably not worth fighting over, but if someone is consistently neglecting their chores, making huge messes, making lots of noise at night or failing to pay their fair share of household expenses, that’s a situation that you need to speak up about, so that you can all try to find a way to resolve the issue. Living with a friend, roommate or partner is all about finding a balance between accommodating other people and sticking up for yourself, and it’s a balance that will be become easier with time. 

It’s also important to find time to just enjoy hanging out with your roommates. Yes, living with other people can be scary and stressful, and there may be times when you’re ready to scream because someone ate your ice cream without permission and no one remembered to buy more toilet paper, but there will also be good times, especially if you are living with someone you are already friends with. Some of the best memories of my early 20s were just from hanging out with my roommates - like the time that we got drunk on cheap wine and painted some silly paintings because we couldn’t afford to decorate the apartment properly, or the time we got a huge box of breakfast food from the local diner and stayed up all night watching Game of Thrones, or the time we had to spend all day taking all our IKEA furniture apart in the lobby and carrying it up to our walk-up piece by piece because none of us could lift the boxes, and we barely made it up the stairs because we were laughing so hard. Being young and kind of broke and living with your friends can be a very fun time in your life, and it’s important to enjoy it - hang out together, do silly things, enjoy making mistakes because none of you have any real idea what you’re doing. Just because you have financial responsibilities and a chore chart doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun.  Best of luck to you! Miss Mentelle

[reluctant-mandalore]

Break a Nail (Din Djarin x fem!Reader)

Word Count:  2,061

Warnings: Fluffy fluff. Cursing. There are some sexist undertones towards the reader from a bounty. But it’s mostly just Din and the reader being a cute bounty hunter couple. Grammar and spelling warning, because I’m a dummy who can’t English. 

Pairing: Din Djarin x Fem!Reader 

a/n: Thank you so much for the request!! Sorry it took so long. It was really fun to write and I really enjoyed it <3 Honestly it was such a fun idea! I enjoy the whole tough in public but soft in private kind of trope that’s going on here. 

EDITS: Grammar and spelling. - also another edit to make the fic more inclusive. 

The contrast between you on the job and you on the Razor Crest baffled the Mandalorian at times. He didn’t really understand how someone could go from absolutely demolishing men twice their own size, to fretting over their newly painted nails and trying to decide which dress went with what shoes. When out on jobs you dressed and acted like a man, the helmet you wore modulating your voice to sound deeper and more gruff. In public, you were serious and almost stoic. You would radiate confidence in everything you did, whether it be bartering for a better price, shooting a blaster with pinpoint accuracy, or being able to take down men like flies. 

  The first time he met you he was sure you were a man, there was no doubt in his mind about it. The way you acted, talked, and fought just screamed to him that you were a man. Nothing gave away the fact that you were a woman below those layers of clothes. So, when you first removed your helmet in front of him, he was amazed to see your true self, and was surprised to hear your sweet voice speak to him. 

Without the helmet on you instantly changed into another person, your atmosphere turning bubbly and energetic. Gone was the most manly and badass man the Mandalorian had ever met. Instead, a beautiful and kind hearted woman stood in place, looking at him with the biggest smile he’d ever seen. In fairness, both in your get up and out of it, you were still a badass in your own quirky ways. It just so happened that you tended to be more open about your likes and dislikes without your gear on.

  He was in love with you within seconds of discovering this about you. Honestly Din couldn’t have fallen in love with you any faster. He fell for you hard and almost instantly. He adored everything about you, both your public and private self. Every aspect of the person you were was spectacular to him, and nothing could change that in his mind. 

  He loved being around you and would spend most of his time with you. He was happy to see his clan expand with your addition to it. Him, you, and the kid made the perfect little family in his eyes, though he’d never tell you that. Going with you on jobs had turned out to be one of his favourite things. He didn’t know how he had survived doing jobs without you until this point in his life. Every day with you around was interesting and today was no different. 

 Currently, Din watched as you had dragged the bounty up the Razor Crest ramp, plopping him on the hulls floor before his feet. The asset struggled within his binds, spitting curses and insults in both of your directions. He was surprised at first, at seeing you with the bounty, as you had originally left earlier for the market. Last he checked you were just getting supplies, not dragging a whole man back to the ship. 

  On another note, the both of you were supposed to be going after him together later that day, after your little supply run. He was mainly surprised because he knew you enjoyed going on jobs with him. You would even refer to the two of you working together on jobs as your ‘couple bonding’ time. So, it was a bit of a shock to see you having ruined your little bounty hunting date by doing the job on your own. 

“Fuck you dude.” The man on the ground spat at you in a growl, “You think you’re some sort of hero bringing me in? Huh?” 

“No, but I definitely think I’m going to be a hell of a lot richer.” Your reply came, the smirk on your face evident in your voice. 

  At this point you had pressed your foot into the center of the asset's back, holding him in place, as he pitifully squirmed on the metal floor of the ship. The addition of your weight had stilled him for a moment though, as he glared daggers over his shoulder at you. 

  Din watched as you removed your helmet, shaking your head while chuckling in the process. It was one of his favourite sights, something he found attractive anytime you did it. He could not explain why seeing you remove your own helmet was so alluring to him, but he chalked it up to the fact that anything you did he saw through rose tinted lenses. There was nothing you could ever do to convince him that you weren’t perfect. 

“What the fuck you’re a woman?!” The bounty snarled, his expression wrinkling with anger and confusion. “There’s no way a damn woman captured me.”

 Looking down at the man you let out a giggle, “I always love when they realize a woman took them down.” Setting down your helmet, you crouched to level yourself with him, a toothy grin across your cheeks, as you ‘booped’ the man on the nose, beginning to taunt him. This being a normal occurrence that occurred when a bounty was being extra mouthy to you. 

“Quit messing with the asset and put him in the carbon freeze.” Din said, putting a stop to your harassment of the man, as funny as it may have been. 

At his words, you had turned to look at him with an eyebrow raised. “You want me to put him in the carbon freeze?”

“You brought him back, so yes.” 

 Letting out an exaggerated sigh, you shook your head and forced a pout in the Mandalorian’s direction, “It’s a shame, but I actually can’t lift him right now, guess you’ll have to do it.” You had said, now standing next to your companion. 

The Mandalorian’s head turned to look at you next to him, his eyes narrowing underneath the helmet, “I’ve seen you lift a bounty twice the size of this one.” 

“Oh I know. Strength wise I totally can, but I just did my nails earlier you know?” You continued, moving away from him and sitting on one of the crates located in the hull. At this point you had pulled your gloves off to examine your recently done nails, sighing in relief at seeing that they still remained unscathed and painted to perfection. 

“You’re kidding.” Din replied, a little more on the irritated side. He was aware that a few hours, before you had left to go into the market, you had decided to redo your nails. So aware in fact, because you had made him help with picking out a colour. 

“Kidding? Din what if I chip them? Or worse! What if I break a nail?” You exclaimed to him “It’s already bad enough I had to drag him back here!” 

“Is that why it took you so long to get back?”

“Yes!” 

  He had crossed his arms over his chest at this point, staring down at you intensely. It was the look he’d give to someone when trying to shake them down for information, or for a merchant to lower their prices. To many people, it would strike fear through their bodies and make them quiver in their boots. However, you on the other hand, had grown quite immune to the deadly gaze that your Mandalorian partner possessed. At this point in your time together, not even his most fiercest of looks to throw you off balance.  

 Seeing that you weren’t letting up under his gaze, he let out a huff and looked back down the bounty. “Why’d you bother painting your nails in the first place?” He asked, titling his head to look down at your coloured nails. “Why do you bother at all honestly?”

You had given him a look of mock shock, a small gasp leaving your lips, “How could I not bother?” 

“You can’t see it but I’m rolling my eyes.” He muttered with a sigh, as he went to work freezing the bounty, seeing as he knew you wouldn’t be doing it anytime soon. He may have been acting annoyed with the whole thing, but the truth he really didn’t mind. This man would find a way to move a whole galaxy for you if you had asked him to. 

 At his remark you had stuck your tongue out him, before watching as the bounty did his best to escape from your Mandalorian lover. The man had begged and pleaded with Din, even apologized for all the nasty things he had said to you on your way back to Razor Crest. A scoff left you at that, with your own roll of the eyes. Of course he apologizes to Din for how he treated you, rather than even bothering to say it to you, a typical asshole thing. 

  The mandalorian had heard the noise you made in regards to the man's pleas and had paused in thought over it. In truth, he hated how many people would disregard your skill and work as a bounty hunter after learning more about your true self. When he first met you, he didn’t understand why you would parade around as a male bounty hunter. However, the more time he spent working with you, he had begun to understand why you put up such a strong exterior in public. People didn’t take a feminine looking and acting hunter seriously. Instead, they would look down on you for it and would disregard your work almost entirely.  

  Admittedly, he did enjoy seeing the contrast between your badass self in public and bubbly self in private. It was entertaining in a sense and rather endearing. The thought of others treating you poorly for any part of yourself though had boiled his blood. In other words, he could not understand how anyone could ever mistreat you simply over the things you liked, and hated the idea that you may feel like you had to act the way you did to be taken seriously. Whether you actually felt that way, or just thought it was fun to be the way you wanted, was entirely only known to you.   

“Listen I didn’t know she was ya gal! I’m sorry alright?” The man continued his plea, thinking the Mandalorian was starting to reconsider his impending doom, “Listen if I knew she was a woman, your woman, I wouldn’t have messed with her in the first place-” 

“-She’s more than just my girl or my woman.” Din cut the man off in a low voice and picked the bounty up by the front of his shirt. “She’s one of the best hunters in the galaxy and she’s the one who took you down. Remember that.” 

  Those were his last words to the bounty before he had shoved him in the carbon freeze. 

“Look at you, getting all angry over a rude bounty for me,” You teased him, watching as he finished up with his task. “I’m not even really mad about it, I’ve heard worse, you know?”

He let out a grunt in reply, “Doesn’t matter. People shouldn’t treat you or act like that around you. You’re one of the most skilled bounty hunters I know.” 

“More skilled than you?” You playfully said to him, as he had moved closer to you, until the two of you were toe to toe.

“Hmm, I wouldn’t go that far.” He managed to tease back at you, lightly tapping his forehead against yours. 

  After his little forehead tap, he took one of your hands into his larger ones. He brought your hand close to his helmet and began to examine your nails up close, almost as if he was admiring your work. His gloved thumb had rubbed smoothly across the inside of your palm, sending shivers down your spine and causing for a wave of heat to flow through your form.  

“Your nails do look nice.” 

“I know!” A cheeky smile had spread across your cheeks once more, the mischief within its depth drawing him into your words, “You should let me paint yours~” 

 He let out a small chuckle at your teasing remark, a smile etching across his features that you couldn’t see, but knew was there from his posture alone. He let go of your hand so he could remove a glove from his own, holding his bare hand out before you, palm down. 

“What colour do you think would suit me best?”

---

Tags:

@ah-callie​ @readsalot73​ @starrywatermelon​ @karnita-mexicana​

[haylanmakesstuff]

Day 9, 10, & 11 of my 21 day Skeksis Costume Build

DAY 9: OCTOBER 18th

               Face, necklace

1.)    First off today, I secured in the teeth and started making gums. I started with mounds of hot glue in the basic size I wanted.

I added rolls of latex covered tissue to help some.

2.)    Next I took some pictures in the backpack and helmet to sketch an idea of how I was seeing this costume coming together mechanically. I have a tendency to do all this in my head but for this sake and mine, I thought for this rather ambitious project it would be good to have it visual.

3.)    I tidied up the necklace and attached the chain.

4.)    I spent the rest of the day painting the skin on the head. I used regular acrylic paint, the cheapo stuff that usually costs $1 or less. Sometimes I’d water it down depending on the transparency I was looking for. Sometimes I used brushes, other times I used scraps of the upholstery foam as sponges. These pictures show the different colors and layers as time passed this day.

 DAY 10: OCTOBER 19th

               About half way through now! Still have a lot to go. Today I took a break and went to a local pumpkin patch. Afterwards, I worked on the hands, face, and neck.

1.)    I started off by finishing and touching up the paint job on the face I worked on yesterday.

2.)    Today is when I started putting weight on my helmet so I wouldn’t end up with a totally unprepared neck on Halloween night. Super attractive and doesn’t make me look insane at all, rIgHt? 

This is actually breaking one of Jim Henson’s cardinal rules of puppeteering. He said you should never ever ask puppeteer/muppeteers to put anything on their head because of the weight; it is so hard on the neck and can be exhausting and cause damage over time. I purposefully chose to ignore this rule since I will not be wearing this costume 5 days a week for 3 years the way the professional mupeteers do. I will be wearing it for one night for 1 Halloween a year or so. I don’t mind risking myself for a one night costume, but totally agree with him that I would not have made this choice otherwise. I felt this would give me the best and most lifelike control for my human puppet, since I don’t have the option to have three mupeteers controlling my one skeksis costume. 

3.)    I moved on to working on what I call “neck ornaments”. These are spiky jewelry like pieces that adorn Skesko’s collar. These are sets in different sizes, until the middle one (#12)  is a stand alone, so I made all of them but that one together to ensure they were symmetrical.

Here are the materials you are seeing: the base with the number written on it is craft foam. The middle white chunk is foam board for stability. I needed them to stand straight and sturdy outwards away from the collar, but where they meet the collar to be curved where they are secured to the collar, so I didn’t want a rigid skeleton over the whole thing.  The above photo is actually them in several different stages. To the left (9 & 10) are the just fun-foam with nothing on them. The middle, #12, shows the foam board ridge on the back of the ornament created for stability. It’s cut partially through and filled with hot glue to give it a curve. Lastly, #1 and 2 show the fronts covered in hot glue for stability and texture, and with a rim of hot glue on the edge to give it a nice 3D border.

4.)    Once they were all done on the inside, I used plumber’s aluminum tape and covered them entirely. I took the back of a paintbrush and just dotted holes onto it to give it a hammered metal look.

5.)    Lastly today, I painted each spiked ornament black, let it dry for a minute, or fan it for a few seconds, then wiped the black paint away, only leaving it in the indents of the hot glue and the indents we made with the back of the paintbrush black. This gives it a pretty realistic metal, hammered patina look, all while keeping them very light weight. This picture is mid paint job on one:

 DAY 11: OCTOBER 20th

               Hands, pack, face, neck, brooch

1.)    The Crayola Magic on the hands has finally dried, so time to paint them. Skekso (or at least my version) has only 1 finger and 1 thumb’s skin exposed on each hand, so I’m only painting what will be seen in the long run. Same as the face; paint/sponge on a layer of latex first, to give it the same fleshy skin look to match the face/head.

Then do paint; Same as the face; regular acrylic paint, sometimes watered down, put on with a brush and sponges/upholstery foam. That is the Netflix reboot of She-Ra in the background – it’s absolutely endearing and I would recommend watching if you haven’t already. The whole series is out in completion now and it only gets better! 

I noticed while writing this that I seem to have already done the fingernails and this is where I started to glue them on – must have forgot a picture of the fingernails process. To catch you up on that, these are just long, pointed, “witch” fingernails from a Halloween store—the cheaper ones from a regular beauty dept were just not long enough even though I had a ton of them left over from making zombie teeth for another costume. First I distressed them by chopping and slicing them to make them looked chipped and battered. Then I painted them with acrylic paint, then a layer of Sally Hansen’s Invisible Nail Polish for protection.

2.)    Next, I am touching up the paint on the gums to make it look fleshy and gummy and like a the gross bacteria ridden mouth you just know Skeksis have. I also used that same Sally Hansen’s Invisible Nail Polish to coat the teeth some more, and some of the gums to give it a wet look

3.)    Now It was time to bring the pieces of the head and face together that I’ve been working on so far. I attached the snout armor to the face (duh, hot glue), sealed the eye ball in (yarp, hot glue!) into the head giving me my first very over-excited view of what this costume will look like!

4.)    I finished the day working on what I call the brooch. This is NOT part of the original costume from the show, but since I needed to see out of my costume in a crowd of people in the low-light of 6th street in Austin Texas, I had to come up with a window to see out of and make it look like it flawlessly blended into the costume. -The real character doesn’t have anything designed for that. I decided on making a ruffled bib below the collar in front, that would have a nice, pretty, interesting brooch of a giant beetle above it. This served two purposes, 1 – I can look out of the black chiffon ruffles and see what’s happening around me and where I’m walking without people looking at me, able to see me very well if at all. 2 – the beetle distracts people and makes the bib look like it’s just a fancy part of the shirt. It worked and people were often very confused on how the heck I was seeing out of this costume. Here is the beginning base of the Beetle Brooch made of craft foam and some beads I found in a rivers floodwaters. Waist not want not! 

You’ll see the Beetle being made and finished in the next post! 

That’s all for today! Come back for more posts about my journey through the very dangerous Fire Swamp to build this Skeksis costume in 21 days. Happy Halloween All Year!