#i hate spending money but apparently when a cool artist is playing I’m just like yeah ok ill buy that

[digitaldaizy]

a cool Thing i want to buy:

impulse buying concert tickets:

[aimasup]

So I saw a bunch of Human AU Sanders Sides and thought I could make my own version

Backstories under the cut for anyone who’s interested

(Tw warnings such as mentions of abuse, homophobia and car accidents but it’s angst with a happy ending don’t worry)

-Long post-

-Patton:

Toddler to child: Parents love me and I love them! Lots of friends in kindergarten! Met Logan one day! He’s so smart!

Grade school: More friends! Logan’s opening up! Everything’s perfect!

Highschool: My parents are arguing more and I’m tired Meeting Roman and Remus! Roman’s so cool! Meeting Virgil! Virgil needs a hug! I feel sad and stressed sometimes and I don’t think I want to worry anyone with it.- Virgil’s with us now yay!

College: My best buds are here! I got into an accident halfway through my studies Virgil please don’t feel responsible. It’s not your fault. I’m so sorry Logan I should have understood your situation better. Roman please get mad I deserve your anger and I feel awful and empty but I shouldn’t show it because some people have it worse than I do I know it why do I feel this way? I’m fine honestly this is fine everything’s fine I’m just the problem -

Adulthood: So. I’m not the problem. I just need to work on my attitude and my flaws. I love my friends and family so much because they let me know that expressing my feelings is ok! My parents are fine now! I’m getting professional help! I work in an animal care center with Virgil! Roman is successful and pursuing his dreams! Met this guy named Dean and he works with Logan in the bookstore next to our center! He’s fun but he might need to stop lying so much, but other than that I’m happy with where I am now!

-Virgil:

Toddler to child: Parents love me and I love them. Bullies can go suck it. I feel bad that my parents always spend their time comforting me but they’re my whole world and I feel safe with them.

Grade school: Bullies are getting worse. Dad’s dead. Mom is stressed and busy so I don’t want to trouble her further. She still spends time with me for some reason. I don’t think I deserve friends. MCR is great. I met Dean and Remus. They’re. Interesting. I hate Roman.

High school: Oh my god everything is stressful and oppressive and everyone is scared of me. That’s good. Maybe. Met Patton, Logan and Roman. They’re only somewhat scared? Hm. Dean and Remus are getting into even more trouble than usual and pulling me into them. Maybe they aren’t good for me with how they’ve been acting lately. I’ll go be with Patton. - Maybe they don’t really accept me they’re just waiting to kick me out like everyone else why would they even like me-

College: Mom I love you so much I swear I’ll get a good job and make this college money worth it you’ll see. And things are surprisingly less stressful? I really like my friends? Patton why the hell did you save me from that car. Logan you have some explaining to do. Roman you shut the fuck up. - Everything is my fault I should have never said anything why am I always like this everyone was right about me- 

 Adulthood: Mom!! You can now retire!! Roommates with Patton, Logan and Roman now and I love being with them so much. And. Dean and Remus are still around. Well then. Whatever. I work a nice job at an animal care center with Patton and I have my friends and I’m learning to be more open and things are going well for now. Not bad for a life.

-Logan:

Toddler to child: Parents go to work most of the time and I see them every other weekend. Who cares about everyone else in kindergarten I have my books and Crofters. Oh hello Patton.

Grade school: I’m smarter than everyone else and I know it. Patton is a wonderful companion. I’m doing well for my age. 

High school: Virgil and Roman are interesting. Remus needs to chill. Virgil no let me lay some facts down for you because you are valid you hear me. Oh! Oh my gosh! I met this amazing student and he makes me feel special and happy! I think I love him! - It hurts but that’s fine- 

College: I’m coming for those degrees! Patton needs to stop asking me to leave my boyfriend. He doesn’t understand how important this man is to me! I can stand a little pain! Wait what happened to Patton. Virgil? Roman? Ok. Wait. Shit. I’m an idiot. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out - I’m such an idiot it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable I am I’m still a gullible moron when it comes to relationships and everything my ex has ever done and said to me is all my fault because I fell for his manipulations-

Adulthood: Ok. I trust my therapist and my friends when they say it’s not my fault and that it’s alright. What I felt with my ex wasn’t love and I’m not a moron for falling for him. I can always start over. Like with the bookstore I now own with my receptionist Dean. Apparently he knows Virgil huh. They frequently bicker whenever Dean goes to their animal care center to buy snake feed so that’s interesting. My parents have retired and are now trying to make up for lost time with me? I appreciate it I suppose. Now I live with my companions and contact my family and things are alright.

-Roman:

Toddler to child: Parents love me and I love them! They buy me anything I want! They support my dreams! But Remus keeps bullying me and I’m not sure how to feel about him. He’s still my brother

Grade school: I have so many friends! Extra-curricular activities because I’m really talented! Remus has new friends to cause trouble with oh boy. More people to bully me the better for him ugh. Virgil especially creeps me out. I’m getting a little concerned as to how my parents are treating Remus but I’m sure he’s fine 

High school: Ok. So. Apparently telling my parents that I like guys is a bad idea. - That’s going to scar on my back for sure- They treat me completely differently from when I was a kid? And I met Patton and Logan and I think I might be a tad spoiled by my family. Also Virgil’s here but he’s getting more and more ok. I’ll hang out with him now. - I’m ungrateful and a disgrace and I’m not as creative as I ever thought I was- 

College: Welp. I’m moving out. I wish Remus the best of luck because I think he’s coming too. My parents officially suck as much as Logan’s current boyfriend. He needs to dump him. Wait I’m a YouTuber now! Yay! - I’m getting more and more stressed and overwhelmed from debt and I fear rejection from my fans and friends the moment I say something out of line and the moment I run out of good ideas for them- Oh shit Patton what happened!! Logan what did you do!! Virgil you shut the fuck up!! Remus you’re not helping!! - I could have prevented this why didn’t I realize this earlier am I that self absorbed-

Adulthood: Yes I’m a full time YouTuber and actor and singer now!! Patton, Logan and Virgil live with me now and they even work close together! Remus is now a comic book artist and novel author, hope he doesn’t traumatize people too much. Logan’s receptionist Dean sure is a character.  I still fear rejection- but I know things will be good for now!

-Deceit:

Toddler to child: Where are my parents. Why is the orphanage so small and why do people look at me weird when I talk. I’m never getting adopted.

Grade school: Well, I’m adopted now I guess. No way in hell am I telling them everything that happens daily in my life. Why do my new parents think my bedroom door needs to be removed. They took my little garden snake because it wasn’t a ‘normal’ pet? Hm. Why hello there Virgil and Remus. Hello Roman. 

High school: That’s it. I’m getting piercings, I’m getting a huge tattoo, I’m kissing snakes. Screw my parents. I don’t need to let anyone know anything about me. My opinion doesn’t matter anyways and everything about me is going to be bad no matter what so why bother So they fear us, Virgil? Good. Wait. Where are you going?

College: I’m moving out officially. Remus is in a different college. -Don’t miss him at all. I shall play along to society’s whims for now and get a degree and never use it. Got rid of the tracker under my car. I don’t think I’ll ever contact my parents again.

Adulthood: I think I’m doing rather well as a citizen. Remus is my new apartment mate oh god. But he is now a comic book artist and novel author so at least he has a job. Perks of working in a bookstore with Logan. That nerd’s one of Virgil’s new friends? And emo boy now works in the animal care center next to us? Whatever. I’ll leave them be unless I need some new snake feed. Things are peaceful now for me at least.

-Remus:

Toddler to child: I want my parents to look me in the eye and tell them they care more than just throwing fancy stuff into my arms dangit. Whatever I’ll just take it out on Roman and the kids in the playground.

Grade school: -If you can’t say anything nice don’t open your ugly mouth ever at all- So I’m disturbed? So my thoughts aren’t normal? Fine! Not like I can control what comes into my head! Let me bully Roman some more with my new buds Virgil and Dean! - freaking star child has everything I hate him so much what will it take for my parents to have their attention on me I’ve caused so much trouble in school why won’t they care-

High school: Roman what the hell happened?? I was planning your murder but now I’m not sure how to feel?? Damn you?? Uh?? We’ll move out?? And where the hell is Virgil going again?? Dean?? He’s leaving us? Alright. That’s it. That’s it - my grades and reputation are shit and my parents always assume the worst of me anyways so I’ll just sleep around with a bunch of guys every other week for quick cash and drag my family’s name through the mud and have fun because I don’t hate myself completely but my ideas are bad and I’m bad and- 

College: Fuck you mom and dad! Roman and I are moving out!! I’m gonna become a comic artist and write terrifying stories that’ll make Satan cry!! - Ugh Dean’s in another college dammit I miss him- Roman what is it this time someone get run over or something? What happened with that nerd Logan?  Is Virgil alright- What the fuck happened? - the star child is crying why are you crying why am I crying why do I feel like this I don’t care I shouldn’t care I hate you I hate me-

Adulthood: My ideas are selling! I’m a comic book artist and a novel author! Dean is my new apartment buddy! My brother is still some fancy theater geek but who cares! And the store Dean works at sells my books! And Virgil’s in the animal care center next door! I met his new friends officially and they’re boring lol. I really like where my life’s heading!

[iwillhaveamoonbase]

Replay ch. 3

Chapter is rated M

------------------------------------

Rayla got up at seven, eyes heavy from the lack of sleep last night.  “Noooo.  UGH.” She turned to angrily glare at her alarm that had interrupted her rain noises.  Aberdeen wasn’t the rainiest place in the world, but the sound of a rain storm always helped put her to sleep.  Her mum and da always joked she was named ‘Rayla’ because she was born right when the moon shone through a stormy night.  

Rayla went through her emails quickly, making a note in her phone to call both sets of her parents this weekend.  She missed the days in Scotland when Runaan would speak French with her and talk cheese or helping Ethari in his jewelry business.  Runaan ran the books while Ethari ran the artistic side, his work with metal and jewel placement both tasteful and modern while taking classic elements from Celtic art.  

Her parents had yet to retire from being bodyguards, but they regaled her with stories of Africa and Asia and Australia, how kind people were, the different foods and cultures. Sometimes, she wished she could have grown up going with them.  Other times, she knew they had made the right choice leaving her with Runaan and Ethari. They wouldn’t have had much time for her anyways.

Sighing, she rolled out of bed.  She had a breakfast date with Corvus before she had to be at the office.  God.  She hated those pricks sometimes; a lot of old money lived in that office.  She had thought she was leaving classism behind when she did her study abroad in the States for her law degree.  Apparently, America just hid their classism really well instead of openly displaying it like they did back in the UK.  

She lived well, was paid well, did better than anyone had expected her to do, probably.  She had been more focused on athletics as a kid, leading Runaan to force her into ballet (‘you already know some French. It’s perfect!’), Ethari insisting on Irish step dance (‘Lain’s mother was Irish.  It’s a world wide sensation, Rayla!’), and her own parents signing her up for kickboxing when she was in high school during their vacation from work. Her teachers had been frustrated that she was smart but didn’t ‘apply herself’ whatever that meant.  She got good grades, did better in college, got into law school in another country, and passed the bar.  She could apply herself just fine.  She just liked to be active.

Rayla sighed as she stepped into the hot water of her shower.  She had made a good choice buying this shower head.  Slowly, she felt the burn that had started last night begin to build back up again.  Green eyes entered her mind again, as well as a voice that she would love to hear calling her name out while she rode him.  ‘Calm down, Rayla.’  She couldn’t meet Corvus horny.  Rayla sighed, putting her forehead against the shower wall before starting to massage her breast.  She tried to imagine it was Callum’s hand stroking her, dipping down to touch between her thighs where she ached.

Would his hands be soft or rough?  There hadn’t been any obvious calluses when she had shaken his hand at the cheese shop. She moaned, dipping her fingers into her wet heat.  Her thighs rubbed together as she tried to chase that elusive release.  She didn’t have time for this.  The more she tried to speed up, the more it just wasn’t happening. Growling in frustration, she tried to play with her clit, breathing deeply as she finally found a rhythm that was working.  Rayla bit her bottom lip and sighed as she came, inwardly crowing with satisfaction. There was no worse start to a day than being unable to cum after a wet dream or being too horny to function.  

She washed and dried off, stretching her muscles before dressing.  The green pantsuit and black top showed off her toned figure without drawing too much attention to any one place.  Her heels made her even taller and, hopefully, a little intimidating to jerky clients or coworkers.  She grabbed her purse and went out the door.  When she finally made it to her car, she leaned her head on the steering wheel. Had she really started her day off by masturbating to a guy she met YESERDAY?  

She shook her head, driving off until she made it to the little café she and Corvus frequented. Corvus also worked in the same building, but for a different law office, specifically divorce.  Rayla had no idea how he did it, but someone had to.  She saw Corvus at their usual table, smiling at something on his phone.  “Your boyfriend sent you a naughty text?”

Corvus smirked back up at her.  “Nope. Just something about one of my latest clients.  Well, their soon-to-be-ex.”

“Good news or bad news?”

“Well, considering it’s a custody case, it’s good for my client.”

“Abuse?” Rayla frowned.

“I would not be smirking if that was the case.  No.  Apparently, the ex has been mismanaging the children’s money.  Lying about putting it in a back account for them and spending it on gambling debts.”

“You don’t call that abuse?” Rayla smiled up at the waiter who came over, ordering an earl grey, a coffee to go, and an omelet.

“Thank you,” Corvus nodded to the waiter.  “I do, personally, but everyone views that differently.  The children were never struck, no record of emotional, mental, or oral abuse.  It seemed like it was going to go 50-50 custody, which tends to be the ideal situation, but my client was concerned about the gambling problem.”

“So best case scenario, gambler’s anonymous and supervised visits eventually leading to 50-50 custody?”

“Best case scenario. Probably won’t happen, but we can all hope.”

Rayla shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.  I didn’t do criminal law or divorce law because I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing evidence of child abuse all day.”

“It’s a lot.  We try to spread those cases around as much as we can, because it gets to be too much when it’s all you see.  When police reports come into play, it’s even worse.” Rayla nodded.  “While you work for old money.  Tell me, how’s Kasef doing?”

“Hitting on me, again. Got upset when I told him off for glaring at a guy in a cheese shop for asking me a question.”

“He comes down to our office on his breaks and hits on half the women there.”

“Believe me, I know.  His father gets really upset about it.”

“How is Mr. Ahling?”

“Still insisting we call him ‘Mr. Ahling’ and not the proper ‘Mr. Patel.’  His health is starting to go downhill, so we’re hoping his daughter graduates soon and can start to learn how to take over the office.”

Corvus shook his head, smiling at the waiter with her when they brought their food.  “Thank you.  I’m telling you, join our office.  You could be really good at gathering information.”

“Thank you, but, no thanks. I grew up believing in true love with both sets of my parents.  I’d like to continue believing in it.”

“You still believe in love. I love my boyfriend so much we’re moving in together.”

“Well, congratulations to you both.  You moving in to his apartment or is he moving into your’s?”

“Mine’s bigger and closer to both our jobs.”

They talked work for a few more minutes, keeping an eye on the time.  Rayla sighed as she looked at Corvus.  “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“My hairdresser would love to do your hair.  Those layers are cute, but maybe you need a new look.”

“Ha ha.  My hair’s fine, thanks.  You remember me mentioning a guy in the cheese shop?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he asked to draw me. He said it’s cool that I brought a friend and I would like to bring you.  I don’t really have any other friends in the city.”  She finished her tea, opening the lid of her coffee to put some cream in.

“He seem legit?”

“I saw his art.  He also runs a YouTube channel with his friends and little brother?”

“What’s his name?”

“Callum Evans.”

“Katolis Squad!”  Corvus smiled, clapping his hands together.

“You know them?”

“Of course.  They do a lot of food stuff.  I found this café because of one of their videos.  Also, my boyfriend’s a baker, remember?  Ezran and Claudia do a series on baking and sweets and he likes to watch them.  Callum Evans is also kind of known in the art scene in town and I’ve met his aunt a few times.  Lovely lady, so’s her wife.”

“Huh.  Apparently, I’m out of it.”

“You just arrived in Katolis last year.  I grew up here.  You remember my boyfriend’s beignets you liked so much?”

“Those were delicious.”

“Ezran’s recipe.  His grandmother’s friend was from Louisiana and she taught him how to make them like it’s done in the French-Quarter.”

“Huh.  So, you’ll come with me?”

“Sure.  Callum Evans seems harmless, but since he already approved it, might as well take advantage.”

“Agreed.  I can take care of myself, but, you never know.”

“Where’s it going to be?”

“At his house.  He said he has an art studio there.  At least, that’s what he implied.  I’m waiting for a text from him to iron out the details.”

“Maybe he’ll ask to draw you nude?”  Rayla flushed red at that, looking down at her almost finished breakfast.  “Oh?  Something you want to share with the class?  A reason you were distracted during kickboxing last night, perhaps?”

Rayla glared up at him, taking a few harsh bites of her omelet.  She swallowed, keeping eye contact with him.  “He’s cute, I’m single, that’s it.”

“He’s single.”  Rayla paused.  “He broke-up with his last girlfriend months ago.  She made a big Instagram post about it, saying they wanted to focus on their careers.  Which was weird because no one even knew they were in a relationship.”

“So, he’s probably used to people trying to use him for fame.”

“Most likely.  He keeps to himself.”

“I saw that when I went digging online.  His step-father’s the governor and his mother was in the military for a few years, rising through the ranks very quickly.”

“Yeah.  They try to keep their channel separate from all that, though.  People are always asking them questions about it and they’ll either ignore it or say they aren’t a mouthpiece for Harrow Williams.”

“Fair.  I’ll text you the details.  I’ve got my coffee, gotta go.”  Rayla put a $20 on the table and waved good-bye to Corvus, leaving to head to the office.  Well, this just got even more interesting, didn’t it?

---------------------------------------------

Callum rubbed his eyes as he looked up at the ceiling.  All night, he had dreamed of Rayla.  Her white hair down and around bare shoulders, purple eyes starting deep into his. ‘Come on, Callum.  Make me feel good.’  He tossed and turned in his bed, suddenly thankful for the fact he lived alone.  His cock was at attention and it was not going to be going down any time soon.  Rolling out of bed, he took his sleep clothes off as he made his was to his shower.  He winced at the cold water, but sighing in relief as his erection went down. He had no time to rub one out.  He was already running late for his meeting with Ezran, Soren, and Claudia.  They had to go over whether or not to actually hire a crew now that their channel had six million subscribers.  

It would be a smart move. Claudia’s home-made beauty series was getting a lot of attention, as were her and Ez’s baking series.  Soren and Ezran’s sub channel and Twitch channel was getting a lot of attention in the video game community for their let’s plays and commentary.  Even Callum’s art sub channel was getting more and more attention.  He was just worried about going bigger because, if they did, what if drama followed?  It had been a PR nightmare when his ex-girlfriend had posted on Instagram about going their separate ways for their careers.  Callum had asked her to keep it between them because he wanted to keep his personal life and his YouTube life separate.  She had apparently felt that, after they broke-up, what he wanted didn’t matter.

As he quickly ate breakfast, he couldn’t get the idea of Rayla from his dreams or of her in a forest out of his head.  Those eyes haunted his every though.  ‘She’s a freaking fae.  That must be it.’  Callum rubbed his eyes again, sighing.  He sent a quick text to Rayla asking if she would be alright with her modeling for him in the woods outside of town.  She would probably say ‘no’, but Callum needed to get this image out of his head and out of his system.  He had just met her and she was distracting him already.  Still, Callum wasn’t so sure he could ever get someone like her out of his system.  Even if they had sex a week straight, he would probably still crave her.  ‘Stop getting ahead of yourself, Callum.  She’s probably in a relationship, you just want to draw her, and you have other things to focus on right now.’  

All day, as the group discussed the benefits to do YouTube full-time, barring Ezran because he was still in college, a Scottish accent and a pair of soft eyes stayed in the back of his mind.  Beckoning him to find her and take her under a waterfall in the forest.  Would she scratch and like it rough or did she like to go soft and slow, like a wave?  

Ezran snapped his fingers in his face.  “Callum, focus.”

“Right.  So, I think taking a step forward is a good idea….” He didn’t have time to be thinking about faeries in suits from Scotland.  

[zankivich]

The Arrangement: CEO’s Son/Dom!Shawn x Black Sub Reader Chapter 13

Merry Chrismukkah or whatever you celebrate, or just happy Saturday if that’s what floats your boat. Shawn is still dumb. Perhaps dumber. But these are my babies and they deserve the best. Just keep that in mind okay? K bye.

*Shawn’s point of view*

The New Year was a wonderful way for very rich people to throw very elaborate parties to tell people how rich they were. In his early twenties, he’s been roped in by the booze and the women and the occasional party drug or two. Something about twenty-four made him crave the serenity of naps, staying in, and home cooked meals. It could have been the maturity of growing up, sure, but he wasn’t exactly that naive. All he had to do was wake up wrapped around her to know that the only thrill he was going to get was by being with her. Y/n was the least industry, industry person he’d ever met. So, when she told him she had no plans to attend not one even one of the many she’d been invited to, he wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. He was happy to stay in. Or so he thought.

They were going to see a movie at this theatre in Manhattan that always showed the upcoming independent films of the year before they ever made it to the indie film festival. He really liked indie films, so y/n bought them tickets for a matinee showing. While y/n was in the shower getting ready his phone began to buzz and he was left without a choice but to answer it for one specific reason. It was his father. Or the Devil. Semantics.

“Yes, dad?” He sighed.

“Your mother is flying in for our annual New Years Eve party. I need you to get her here on time, and make sure she takes the uppers and not the downers this time.”

“Dad, Mom hasn’t been on pills since 2014. Remember the whole rehab thing?” He huffed. “And I’m absolutely not coming to that thing this year.”

“You absolutely the fuck are. The entire senior management team will be here, and I won’t have you make me look bad because you insist on being a child. You’re coming and you’re bringing your mother.”

His hands turned to fists  and he pulled the phone away from his mouth just long enough to curse his father back to hell for once.

“I already have plans, dad!”

“Cancel them! The party starts at nine, I expect you and your mother here by ten at the latest. Put on a suit for Christ’s sake too, none of that skinny jean bullshit.”

His dad hangs up without another world and he collapsed back onto the bed to question how he had managed to be conceived by one of the worst people ever. Really, what were the chances?

“Baby do you wanna do chinese for dinner after the movies?” y/n called from the bathroom.

And that’s when he began to cry.

“Boy, what in the hell is the matter with you now?”

He uncovered his arm from his face to see her standing at the entryway to the bathroom wrapped in a towel and looking as soft as cocoa butter. He really wanted to cry.

“You know the crime shows where the kids kill the parents and you’re like, holy shit that’s fucked up? Well I’m starting to sympathize with ‘em.”

“Sorry, that’s a little too close to white nonsense for me. Why, what happened?”

She stepped over to where he was on the bed and he sat up to fall a little pathetically into her arms. She smelled like flowers and that whole cocoa butter business he was thinking of earlier. Jesus, life was so unfair.

“My dad is making me pick up my mother and go to this stupid fucking new year’s eve party so he can pretend that they haven’t not lived together since before I graduated high school. No options. I’m going.” He reported glumly.

Her fingers were cool from having dried after the shower and she ran them soothingly through his scalp. He nestled himself more firmly against her and tried not to purr too loudly.

“Hmm, well that sucks. I guess there go our plans huh?”

He peered up at her, chin resting against her chest.

“Absolutely not. We’re gonna go see our movie and then we’ll...just go drink my dad’s booze and maybe find a janitor’s closet to fool around in.” He shrugged.

She snorted. “How romantic. I told you I’m not taking my underwear off in a janitor’s closet ever again, Shawn.”

“Who said you had to? I can get creative, baby.” He grinned.

“Of course you can. I think you’re forgetting the part where your dad doesn’t know we’re together.”

“Oh hell, who cares y/n. I’m not going without you. Why would I spend new year’s without my girlfriend?”

“Because...Manny is Satan and would try to ruin my career?”

“Hey, he wouldn’t. Y/n, I swear he wouldn’t do that to you.”

She smiled down at him sadly and scratched at his scalp again.

“I don’t really think you could make that promise, sweetheart. It’s okay. I’m not mad about it. I understand.”

“But I don’t! I want to spend the day with you, not at some dumb party! I had a whole plan about us making love in my bed with the curtains open while the fireworks went on, dammit. I hate him!”

Her chest began to shake and he realized that she was indeed laughing at him. There’s no love in this world.

“This isn’t funny.” He whined.

“It’s a little funny.”

No. Love.

***

“Hmm you look good enough to eat.” She murmured from behind him.

Her arms came to wrap around his waist and she reached up on the tips of her toes to rest her chin on his shoulder as he adjusted his suit. He could not have been less excited.

“Good enough to eat, not good enough to keep me home, aye?”

She rolled her eyes. “You are about as dramatic as they come you know that? I’m trying to keep the peace. Now you just make sure nobody touches what’s mine and you bring your ass home right after that ball drops.”

He turned in her grasp, pulling her more tightly against him. She was in nothing but his sweatshirt and a pair of underwear that surely would make him drool if he stared long enough. He loved her.

“What was it again that’s yours? I just wanna make sure I have all my bases covered when I inevitably get hit on.” He smirked.

She reached quickly for his jaw and tugged him forward so she could kiss him with dominance and love. Why in the entire hell was he going to this party?

“All of it.” She whispered eyes lifting up and down to drink him in. “You call me if you need a reminder.”

He nodded dumbly, lips parted and ready to drool.

“Yea. Okay.”

Leaving her is nearly impossible, especially knowing that he won’t have an ounce of fun the rest of the night. His mum is half way to sloppy drunk by the time he arrives to pick her up and the party's at stifling capacity by the time they arrive. But as long as his dad is happy that’s apparently all that matters. It’s all that ever matters.

“Look you just stand against this wall and I’ll go get you something with bubbles in it.”

His mum only giggled and leaned harder against the wall.

“Okay!”

He goes to the bar and gets her some cranberry juice mixed with soda water. She was drunk enough that it wouldn’t matter, and he was hopeful that by the end of the night she might sober enough for him to get her back to her hotel without incident. By the time he returns from the bar, he sees his dad wrapping his arm possessively around his mother. He starts talking to some old guy in a hat that isn’t doing enough to cover his balding head, and it’s about as sickening as can be. The worst part is that his mum completely plays into it. Her head rests on his shoulder. Her fingers play with his hair. They play the happy couple so well, it almost has him fooled. Almost.

There used to be a day when he would have tried to defend her honor, a day when he thought he was strong enough to fight his dad. He’d gotten knocked on his ass enough times to know that was simply not the case. And that’s how he ended up hiding in a corner with a double scotch texting his girlfriend while everyone around him looked like complete and total jackasses.

Shawn: I miss you. This is dumb. My dad is literally the worst.

y/n: You are so cute when you complain like a sixteen year old.

Shawn: I am delicate, y/n. You cannot be mean to me in my current state.

y/n: You poor, poor thing. What can I do to make it better?

Shawn: Rescue me?

y/n: We’ll see. Go place nice with the fragile men who never lived up their father’s visions for them.

Shawn: I think I’d rather die.

The party really is dead. It’s all the people who kiss his dad’s ass on a daily basis. Most of them were in their fifties or older. It wasn’t even the artists themselves, just the people who made money off of them. If he didn’t know any better he’d say it was his dad’s way of fundraising for investors. And he definitely knew better.

He’s sitting at the bar counting down the minutes until he gets to go home. It’s maybe thirty minutes until the ball drops, and everyone around him is hammered to pieces. He hasn’t seen his dad since he got there, and his mum was probably being dragged around by that asshole as nothing more than a trophy piece. God he wanted to go home. And then the elevator doors opened.

She’s wearing the dress that he bought her after he accidently ripped the other one. It’s black and sleek with a thigh slit that has his lips parting even now. Her hair is tied sleekly up in a bun and the second she steps into the room the entire atmosphere shifts. She’s gorgeous. Every inch of her. They lock eyes from across the room and he just knows that he’s beaming, couldn’t stop it even if he wanted. She’s here for him and no one else, and that means the world to him. She means the world to him.

He orders her her go-to drink and goes to find his girlfriend only to find that she’s already been stopped. It’s one of the guys from his dad’s team. He’s on the younger side, maybe in his early thirties, probably drives an eco friendly car or something. He’s dumb is the point. Dumb. And ugly. And stupid. And talking to his girlfriend.

“You look beautiful tonight. I didn’t expect to see you here. You and Manny don’t really get along.”

She giggled. Why was she giggling?

“That’s certainly one way to put it. But a good old-fashioned rivalry never hurt anyone, did it? Especially not when I win.” She grinned.

“You know…I find that kind of confidence in a woman to be incredibly sexy.”

Her eyes widened and he leaned in to place a hand on her waist. He made sure to step between them before it got that far.

“Vodka cran right?” He interjected pulling her not so subtly against him.

She rolled her eyes but smiled up at him.

“Yes, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Who are you chatting with?”

“Shawn it’s Mike. We--We work together?”

He placed his hand on her lower back barely sparing him a glance as he led her away.

“Oh yea. Enjoy the party Mike!”

“You are not subtle in the slightest you know that?” She laughed.

“Yea, whatever. Only person who get’s to call my baby sexy is me, dammit.”

“I find your possessiveness to be both sexist and oddly stimulating. I will combat my feminist guide and get back to you.”

He snorted. “While you’re at it can you ask the feminist guide what it has to say about your whole, ‘it’s all mine’, shtick?”

“Hmm...you may have a point.”

He leads her onto the dance floor. Dancing is innocent. It can mean anything, and isn’t inherently tied to being in a relationship, so it acts as a safe space for the two of them. The party was too large for him to place eyes on his dad, so he had to just believe that they could occupy space together and be okay. No kissing. No waist touching. Certainly no ass touching. He really had to just hold onto his drink and soak her in. The good news is that soaking her in is better than not having her there at all. So he holds tight to the idea that he could have her there with him.

“You came here for me.” He murmured in her ear. “Why?”

She shrugs her shoulders and shimmies her hips to the beat of a Khalid song, ironically.

“You asked me to.”

“I know but...what about my dad?”

“Your dad is...always going to exist. No matter how long we’re together. If I let him stop me from enjoying New Year’s with you than I’m giving him power over our relationship. He doesn’t get to have that. Only we have that.”

It’s another one of those moments where if he looked back on his life, he could have identified it as a shift in their dynamic. This was y/n pulling down the final brick in the wall. She had chosen him fully and irrevocably in such a way that she was willing to go all in. His dad no longer matter mattered. Nothing really seemed to matter. Because they loved each other, and as long as they loved each other everything else would work out at some point. He had always been hers, but now he got to be her’s in broad daylight. Well, kind of.

They find a corner to shove themselves into away from the crowd. She crosses her legs and shows off more thigh than anyone has the right too, which reminds him that he hasn’t kissed her in hours. And so he sneaks a kiss on her cheek and hides his face in her neck, because he just wants to go home. He really wants to go home.

“I can’t touch you here.” He mumbled. “This is basically my own version of hell.”

She sighed. “Yea, I know. Usually your horniness is excessive, but this party is drier than Milania Trump’s pussy. Sheesh.”

He laughs because she’s funny and it makes him feel lighter, happier. He still doesn’t know how she does it.

“My dad is somewhere showing my mum off like she’s a thing and not a person. To him everything is a commodity, something for him to own and do with what he pleases.” He mumbled reaching for her hand. “I just want you to know that you could never be that for me. I would never, ever treat you like that.”

She smiled softly at him.

“I know. You’ve never treated me with anything but kindness, Shawn. You’re not your dad.”

He nodded. “See I know that, and yet still it feels good to be reminded sometimes.”

“You just let me know whenever you need reminding then.”

“Mkay. I will.”

“Shawn.”

The two of them looked up as his father ascended with his mother hanging onto him, eyes barely open. Y/n moved as far away from him as physically possible. He had to hide his face to pretend it didn’t hurt. It did hurt.

“What now?” He grumbled.

“Your mother is incompacitated. Take her home. Now.”

He stands up immediately, y/n remaining seated in her chair. She played coy incredibly well, bringing her drink to her lips and settling back deeper into her chair.

“Y/n,” Manny dipped his head. “So glad you could make it to our little suarey. Are you enjoying yourself?”

She smiled. “You know I was. I think I enjoyed myself so much that I’m gonna have to take a very long nap to deal with all the excitement.”

He catches the thinly veiled anger on his father’s face at Y/n taking the piss out of him as he reaches for his mum. She was in worse condition than he left her in, her eyes barely remaining open.

“Jesus, dad what did you do to her?” He hissed.

“She’s a grown ass woman fully capable of making her own decisions. Now get her out of here before she embarasses me further.”

“I do really enjoy the playful family banter. It’s sweet.” Y/n interjected. “And not incredibly cliche at all.”

He looked at her with pleading eyes to not make his father any angrier than he already was. If the look on his face was anything to go off though, his father wasn’t ever going to be happy when y/n was present. Manny sent y/n a scathing look before grumbling off to be with the rest of the crowd. His mum on the other hand was practically snoring on his shoulder. He hated the holidays.

“Looks like I’m gonna miss the ball drop. I gotta get her home.” He sighed.

“It’s okay. We can ring in the new year when you get back, okay?”

“Promise?”

She smiled up at him. “Promise.”

“K. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Neither of them noticed Manny watching them from the bar. Nor had they noticed the way he had watched them the entire night. In fact as Shawn was pulling his mother towards the elevator, Manny was calling for the party planner for the event that night.

“Can you look up a name on the guest list for me?” He asked.

“Of course, sir.”

“y/f/n y/l/n. She on there?”

The party planner flicked through the list twice before shaking her head at Manny.

“No sir, I never sent any invitation to a y/f/n y/l/n.”

Manny looked back over at the couch where y/n and Shawn had been sitting. She was already gone.

“Yea, that’s what I thought.”

***

*y/n’s point of view*

The fact that Shawn becomes a regular at Lenny’s Tavern is only a testament to his love for music. He went every Friday it seemed, to the point where he turned out to be a celebrity of the pub. It was his place of joy. You never saw him smile harder then when he was up there with a guitar in his hands. It was a blend of covers and originals, and when he’s up there getting the entire crowd to scream sing “Hit Me Baby One More Time”, you know that there’s something special there. He knows how to command a room, at first with his presence, but now with his talent. Something that could take years to teach an artist, Shawn was sitting there with it by the boatload. And so every night is a little bittersweet, because you know Manny and you know if he has his way Shawn will never get anything more. But, the smile on his face every time he asks you to go is enough to have you taking the forty minute drive out the city on Fridays.

He jumps down from the stage to ravenous applause. The smile and the light in his eye is exceptional. You watch him get stopped by a few women, an increasing occurrence at Lenny’s Tavern, who asked to take a selfie with him. The smile that he puts on for them is more calculated, more mass sex appeal. Honestly, he was a music exec’s wet dream. And not because he’s good at it, but because he does it with this sort of authentic happiness that no amount of money can buy. He’s just got it.

“Did you like it babe? I tried the falsetto on the ‘suit and tie’ cover just like you said.” He beamed at you.

You wrapped your arms around his waist and kissed his nose.

“You sounded amazing. Just like you always do. My baby’s kind of a star.” You grinned.

“Yea, only because of you. Can you imagine my life if you’d been my manager instead of my dick of a dad?”

“You’d be wildly sucessful for sure...But I don’t fuck my clients so…”

He frowned. “Then let’s just stick with this reality, aye?”

“Sounds good to me. Let’s go get me a drink.”

He trailed you to the bar, his hands playfully on your ass and hips. His unwillingness to quit touching you was much appreciated in just about every instance of your lives together. Why go through life not being touched by your significant other? It just didn’t make sense.

“Hey Shawn!” Ronnie, the owner of the bar, called.

“Hey Ronnie, man, what’d you think of the set?”

“It was amazing! You’re always amazing, you pretty bastard, and you know it.”

You peered up at your boyfriend as you took a sip of your drink. His cheekbones were more sculpted than yours and perfectly flushed. His curls were like the swirl of an ice cream cone off pinterest. The fucker really was pretty. Rude.

“Hey, it’s just an honor to get up there man.”

“Really? Cause see I had one of my buddies from Atlantic come see your set and he asked me to give you his card, but if it’s all about the honor then…”

“What?!” Shawn and you screeched in unison.

Ronnie stared at the two of you with a big grin on his face.

“Yea! Same way I got our little Niall to where he’s at. When the sets are good, they come to check out the talent man. And you’re better than good. Here.”

Shawn took the card and stared down at it. You could see the fear, but also the light in his eyes. It was about as tragic as can be.

“No man, I--I can’t take this.” He mumbled handing the card back to Ronnie.

Ronnie refused it.

“Keep it. You deserve it man!” He exclaimed before walking away.

Shawn turned to you with wide eyes and a terrified look on his face that had you reaching to wrap his giant frame up in your arms.

“It’s okay. Hey, don’t stress yourself out. Just don’t call the number.”

“But my dad does so much work with Atlantic. Like five of his artists are co-signed through them. What if he finds out somehow?”

You shook your head. “He won’t cause you’re not going to call...unless that’s what you want.”

“Huh?”

You ran your hands up his arms and over his shoulders trying to quell some of the tension.

“Look I’m just saying that, yea you signed with your dad when you were fifteen but that contract expired the moment you became an adult. That’s probably why he asked you to work for the company the moment you turned eighteen, so that he could retain this hold he has over you.”

He frowned at you. “But...but my music.”

“I know baby. You made a lot of music that means a lot to you, and I want nothing more than for you to have ownice of it. All I’m saying is that if you can’t get the music back, that doesn’t mean you can never create again. It doesn’t even mean you can’t make music for a living. Any label would kill to sign you. I know because I’d be right there fighting with ‘em.”

He released this big breath, face twitching with anxiety. You could tell it was getting to him, that the moment was becoming too much. You didn’t really know how to ease him into it anymore than you already had.

“I don’t wanna talk about this anymore. I wanna go home.”  He mumbled, face red.

“Okay, I can be okay with that. Let’s go home.”

“Can we go to your place?” He asked head dipping down closer to yours.

You smiled. “Of course.”

***

*Shawn’s point of view*

Everything makes sense when they’re making love. It’s something about the way she tastes, or maybe is the vibrations of her moans against his mouth when he kisses her throat. His head is never more clear than when she’s in his arms. He loves her. God does he love her. He wants her to have everything, all of him, infinitely. So that’s what she gets.

“Fuck! Oh my god!” She sobbed.

“You gonna cum for me?” He asks reaching to stroke her clit with his thumb.

She nodded recklessly her stomach tensing, thighs trembling.

“Please. Shawn, I need it so bad.”

He flips her onto her back, hand wrapping around the top of her head for leverage as he lays into her. Her body shakes for him and she claws at his back so hard there will be welts later. But it’s her pleasure. It’s the only thing in the world that matters to him when they’re in this space together. So he keeps moving, keeps moaning, keeps holding on for every second that he can if it means she’ll stare at him like he just blew her mind. He always wants to blow her mind. And she bursts for him like an overripe fruit in the summer heat, and he makes sure that he’s right there to slurp it up for her.

“I love you.” He groaned into her ear. “I love you so much.”

The doorbell ringing is literally the last thing in the world that he wants to hear. She’s still panting against his neck and he’s just supposed to get out of bed?

“Let it ring.” She mumbled lips tracing his nipple.

“Oh. My. God, woman.”

She giggled and the result was something so cute and soft on her face that he could feel his exhausted body peak in interest. The line between whether to dominate and whether to cuddle  deeply into the sheets got more blurred by the second with her.

The doorbell rings again.

“Jesus Christ.” He muttered.

“Fuck...look just go answer it. I have to get ready for work soon anyway.”

He immediately began to pout.

“But baby...I didn’t finish my moves.” He whined.

She snorted. “You finished just fine for me, dear. Go get the door.”

He does what she asks. But not without whining the entire time dammit. She puts on his Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and walks off to his kitchen without underwear or a bra. Whoever was at the door probably deserved to die. He didn’t make the rules.

“This better be good!”

He yanked open the door to see his dad standing there with two starbucks cups in his hands and the grin of Satan.

“Dad.” He mumbled. “What--what the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s time to talk to son.” He smiled making his way past him to get into his apartment.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

“Look now really isn’t the time!”

“On the contrary, I don’t think there could be a better time. Ah! Good morning y/n!”

Sure enough there she stood in the middle of the room where the living room met the kitchen with a pan in her hand and the fear of god in her eyes.

“Y/n my...dad is here.” He stated glumly.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’d managed to catch on, Shawn.”

“As much as I do enjoy watching the two of you prance around with no pants on, I think it’s time to get dressed. Shawn and I have some things to discuss. Take your time. I’ll wait.”

The room is dead silent. Y/n is looking at him like she’s contemplating hitting his dad over the head with the pan. Honestly, it’s not the worst visual he could come up with. Instead they walk side by side back to his bedroom. His hands are shaking and he tugs anxiously at his hair as he watches her get dressed. It’s impossible for him to wrap his head around this moment. Ten minutes ago they were making love, and now his dad knows about them. Just like that.

She tugs her shoes on and reaches for her keys and his heart spasms painfully in his chest. He’s got no choice but to reach for her.

“Hey,” He whispered hands still shaking as he gripped her waist. “I--I don’t know what’s going on right now. I’m freaking out y/n.”

She nodded. “Me too. It’s gonna be okay though. Just come to my place when it’s over. Whatever it is, we can work through it, y’know? That’s what we do.”

“I love you. More than anything. You know that right?”

She smiled at him sadly and ran her fingers through his hair to scratch at his scalp. It was the most calming gesture he could think of.

“I know. And I love you too. It’ll be okay. I wish I could be here with you in this, I do. But we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

He nodded solemnly letting his shoulders drop as she released him.

“Yea, okay.”

The last image he gets of her is when she walks through his front door without looking back. Her head was high, shoulders back, a lot like the first night he met her. Only now he knew better. Now he knew it was a part of her no doubt, but a constructed one too. With the presence of his dad, she suddenly needed to be a version of herself that no one could touch. Not even him. And so the last good image he gets of her is a version of her that’s not his, not hers. It exists outside of everything that they’ve become together in the months of their love. It’s a protective shell put up to hide. That’s the last image he gets.

***

*y/n’s point of view*

He doesn’t come over. And he doesn’t call. At first you thought maybe something happened. Maybe Manny shipped him off to Novasokia or some shit. But a woman left to sit in her apartment for hours can only come up with so much. By the time it was dark out, you got the feeling that he wasn’t coming over. All your text messages and calls had gone unanswered. You worried sick, and sad as all hell. You skipped work to wait around for him, and then couldn’t bring yourself to do anything but lie there all day. So when he doesn’t show up it’s a day wasted. And when you wake up the next morning to nothing? Not a facetime, an emoji, not even a fuck off? Your heart just sort of breaks.

“Hi, uh. I don’t really know what’s going on. And I don’t know what he could have said to you to make you not come over but...I’m scared, Shawn. I--I miss you. And I just want to know that you’re okay. Please call me. Bye.”

You showed up to work an absolute nervous wreck. It had taken you all morning to convince yourself not to go over to Shawns’ apartment. If he really didn't want to see you, then you probably owed that to him. The rational part of you was trying to come up with a solution. So, you convinced yourself that Shawn must’ve gotten into a really terrible fight with his dad and he had gone off somewhere to play music and blow off steam. It wasn’t the craziest scenario. In the time that you’d known him, Shawn had definitely fled the world to hide in a room somewhere with his guitar. This was just the first time, he’d shut you out too.

You walked onto the floor of your office and Tiana was waiting there with a hot tea for you and a very sad, anxious look on her face. It just so happened that you didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with anyone else at the moment.

“Hey Ti,” You mumbled. “I just need the day okay? I’m gonna go work on some stuff, but I really don’t want to be bothered.”

“I know sis but… you’ve got a visitor.”

Your eyes widened and quickly moved to get to your office.

“Is it Shawn? Did he say anything to you?”

“Y/n it’s not Shawn!” She called after you. “It’s Manny.”

You froze where you stood peering at your office door with confusion.

“What?”

“He was already here when I got here. He said that he had something to tell you, and that you’d be interested in hearing from him.” She explained. “But, I can kick him out if you want. I--I didn’t know!”

You swallowed and turned back to your friend.

“No uh, it’s okay. I’ll just...I’ll go in there.”

There’s a moment where you stood outside your office and took a huge breath. The truth of the matter was Manny had scared you for years. In the midst of your come up in the industry there were plenty of men who didn’t like you. Didn’t like your ideas, didn’t like your success, didn’t like your unwillingness to bow down to them. That you’d grown used to. But Manny seemed to feel all of those things at a level that no one else did. And while plenty of men would be happy to see your down fall not too many of them would actively participate in making it happen. You had known from the day you met him that Manny was the guy who would.

Falling for Shawn hadn’t gotten rid of the fear, but what it had done was shift your priorities. Whatever was on the other side of that door needed to happen, because you needed Shawn in your life. You loved him too much to be without him, and he loved you too much too. You knew that. You had to believe those two facts or none of it mattered. So you schooled your face into the mask that you’d created long before that day, and you walked into your office to meet it head on. Because there were no other options.

“Manny, I wasn’t sure if you knew where our office was located.” You smiled upon entering the room. “I always figured it was too urban of a space for you, not enough upper east side, ya know.”

He sat on the edge of your desk a lot like Shawn had the first time he’d been there. If there was anything to be said about the resemblance of the too, it was that Shawn did look a lot like his father.

“Well you’re right about that, y/n. I don’t exactly slum it unless I have too. I figured today was a good enough occasion.”

And subtle racist remarks all before ten am. This ought to be a treat.

“What do you want, Manny?”

You sat down at your desk and of course he immediately stood up so that he could tower over you. Men. So incredibly predictable.

“It’s over y/n.”

You rolled your eyes at the dramatics.

“And do tell, what exactly is over Manny?”

“Whatever hold you had on my son. It’s done with.”

“Ahhh. That’s what this is about. You’re upset that he started thinking for himself, and that his hands were no longer glued to your ass. I’m sorry but that has nothing to do with me. He’s a grown man; he thinks for himself.”

Manny stuffed his hands in his pockets and began to walk around the room. In retrospect Shawn was just about as dramatic as his father, just less evil.

“I should’ve known when it first started that you’d dig your claws into him. His rush to get me to introduce you two. The sudden trips to Rome on my jet, of course. The push back at work. His disappearing all the time.” He sighed. “I just thought angry pussy was better pussy or something.”

Your anger gets the best of you and a break appears in the mask.

“Excuse me?”

“Well you two really just weren’t subtle at all now were you? Which was fine at first. I’m sure you’re perfectly fine in the sack y/n, but it’s not like he’d ever marry you into the family. But then you started putting your nose where it didn’t fucking belong. That stint at the pub where we found Niall. Did you really think I wasn’t going to hear about that?”

You were absolutely rattled inside, varying on disgust and rage alongside a kind of fear you hadn’t experienced in years. But you couldn’t let it show. You’d rather die than let it show.

“He’s talented. He’s the best I’ve seen in years and I’ve got three of this years top artists under my belt. To block that? To keep him hidden because of your own inadequacies? That’s pathetic and you know it.”

Manny chuckled. “Your generation is so incredibly naive. That’s business, honey. Shawn can do more for me outside of the spotlight than he can inside it. It’s as simple as that.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake. You old wrinkly white men and your archaic understanding of the world. That’s not business, that’s greed. That relentless, self-indulging, disgusting greed you sad, sad little man.”

The smile on Manny’s face dropped as well as the temperature in the room. You were without a doubt one of the only people in his life to challenge him. He didn’t like it at all.

“And what about what he wants? Doesn’t that matter at all?” You asked. “Doesn’t anything but your own self-interest matter to you at all?”

“Not even in the slightest. But it’s okay now. I’ve shifted my narrative in part because of you. So I thank you for that.”

“Jesus Christ you know you sound like a villain straight out of a Spy Kids movie, like at all times? Will you just get to the fucking point?”

“I’m gonna give Shawn his masters back.”

You paused. “What?”

“Yep. All two hundred songs. There his. He can do with them what he pleases. He’ll resign a contract with me of course, and I’ll give him the career he always wanted. He’ll realize that he’s nothing without me. And everyone lives happily ever after.”

“I’m just supposed to believe that a plan you cooked up when he was fifteen years old is over now? Just like that? What’s the catch here?”

Manny snapped his fingers and moved closer to you.

“Oh that’s right. My apologies. The catch is that he has to break up with you.”

At this your stomach and your heart and everything in between just dropped.

“What?”

“You heard me. Shawn can have everything that he’s ever wanted, every song he’s ever written, just as long as you’re not in the picture.” He smiled. “I know my son, y/n. And he will pick correctly and you will be but an unpleasant memory.”

It just ripped you to shreds. It was the culmination of everything that you knew about Shawn, and everything that you loved about him, being exactly the thing to take him from you. And it hurt. You were left utterly defenseless as if he’d ripped your carefully crafted mask right from your face. Your eyes watered, your throated tightened. This was it. This was the end. Manny had banked on your willingness to know Shawn, which meant he knew that you loved him. And perhaps that’s the part that hurts the most. That someone could take the goodness of your heart and use it against you in such a malicious way.

“Why...why would you do this?” You asked.

And he shrugged at you.

“I like to win y/n. And I always win. This time will be no different. And I’ll make sure of it.”

He left the room just as the tears spilled over your cheeks. Because in order for Manny to win, someone would have to lose. He had made sure that only one person would come out of this scathed. You lost.

***

Seeing him on the other side of your door makes the gaping hole where your heart used to be throb. His curls are wilder than ever. There are bags beneath his eyes that are unlike anything you’d ever seen. He looked exhausted and sad and really beautiful even then. When he sees you he pulls up a smile that is so pathetic it hurts. But, it’s honest. It’s him giving all of himself to you, even when there’s damn near nothing left. To look at him now was to be in pain. And so you had to remind yourself that preservation was a Black woman’s armor. It was all you had left.

He smiled sadly as you leaned against your door not inviting him inside.

“Hi.” He whispered waving in his favorite clappy hand like motion that usually made you smile.

Not today.

“Hi.”

“I can explain. And I am so, so sorry that I disappeared but--”

“There’s no need.” You interrupted.

He shook his head. “No, y/n, I swear to you that I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just needed time. I needed to clear my head and my fucking dad he--”

“I know. Shawn I know.” You mumbled. “He came to my office.”

Shawn’s eyes widened.

“He did what? What did he say to you?”

He reached for you and you stepped further behind the door causing Shawn to pause and stare at you. His face began to shift just as the puzzle pieces slid into place. As your lip trembled he raised his hands up in the air in a motion of defenselessness, as if he was waiting for you to spook and disappear at any moment. If only he knew.

“Y/n what’s going on?” He whispered, eyes wide open and scared. “Why won’t you let me touch you? W--Why can’t we go inside?”

You closed your eyes and breathed but it was pointless. The tears came in abundance now. His hand touched your cheek and you wished that it didn’t soothe you. Wouldn’t this all be easier if he didn’t soothe you so well.

“It’s over, Shawn.”

“What?” He mumbled, completely frozen into place. “What?”

You swallowed.

“It has to end. You and me, we’re done.”

“What are you talking about right now? Are you kidding me?” He sputtered. “I--love you. I love you with everything that I am, how could you say that to me?”  

You shake your head to try and dispel some of the sadness with the hopes that you could even get through this whole. The problem was you already felt yourself splintering, and the more room you gave him to fight, the more damaged the both of you would be.

“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t matter right now.”

You can tell by the look on his face that you’re crushing him. This fact only ruins you further, only make the pain sizzle deep in your gut. You’ve got nothing left to give. You’ve gotta give it all to him so that he can go on and be okay.  It’s for the best. It has to be.

“It does matter?! I love you! And you love me. And it doesn’t matter? Why are you doing this?!”

“Because  it...it’s the only way to give you everything you’ve always wanted. And I love you enough to give you that. Goodbye Shawn.”

“Y/n, wait can’t we please just--”

You close the door in his face. Everything is blurry around the edges. You sink down to the floor and cover your ears as if it might cover the sounds of him pounding on your door. The two of you cry and sob for the other. You knows there’s no fixing this. It’s done.

***

Tag List

@simpledomain @liliane106 @thecurlsofgod @xeuphorically-moonstruck @euphoric05 @daijanicole @bruhh-whateven@learning-howto-be-myselfx3@decewill@goldiean@bitchacho25 @bruhh-whateven@justbeingoceana@loveylangdon@iloveshawnieboi@september-lace@valedictorian65 @dimestorebieber22 @MixerMani @lifeoftheparty74@sinplisticshawn @kamahriii@disaster-rose@justbeingoceana@thecurlsofgod 

Arrangement Taglist:

@moonlightmendes22  @cottoncandyshawn @iloveshawnieboi@shawnsblue

@claredolphinbear24@peterbrokenparker@blackharry@shawnwyr @speakingofmari@moniehp@softmendesss@ydolansss @MixerMani @kitykatnumber@chonmnds@cottoncandyshawn @shawnase

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

A Regular Keats and A Regular Mozart

PART TWO OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: plentiful pop culture references, teasing fluff, a slow burn at its core

Word Count: 3K

Summary: Jess and Ella bask in boredom and argue over various authors.

Evening light waned in the Connecticut sky. Ella watched the stars appear slowly, in her usual corner table near the windowed wall at Luke’s. She’d tried to get through her calculus homework three times, but eventually her brain would start frying and she would have to take a break. Lane would have been with her, but she was grounded yet again. So, Ella was flying solo. It didn’t bother her. Most days she wasn’t on shift, she ended up at the small corner table anyway, pouring over her textbooks with occasional interludes for tea and a burger around dinnertime. Luke had long since cleared away her dishes and left her by her lonesome.

After a few unproductive minutes, watching the townspeople walk by, she glanced at her watch and found it was nearly half past eight. The twinkling string lights illuminated the main streets and the town’s gazebo. It was beautiful. No matter how many times she sat and watched the cozy yellowish glow envelope Stars Hollow night, she never got tired of it. She had a decent view of the sky from her bedroom window at home, but Luke’s view of town was far better. It was one of the many reasons she preferred to spend her nights away from the little blue house near the edge of town.

She had just gone back to the nearly illegible problem below her when Jess’s knuckles rapped on her table. A nervous blush crept up on her freckled cheeks though she hadn’t visibly startled. Her heart had still skipped a beat at the noise. He sat down across from her without being invited, a smirk on his face and an apron around his hips.

“What are you doing here? You’re not on shift today,” he asked. The sarcastic twinkle had never left his eyes the entirety of the time they had been working together thus far.

“I like to study here on my days off,” she told him, her pencil still in her head. She debated ignoring him and going back to her notes, but decided to humor him for at least a few minutes. Apparently, it was the first time he hadn’t been out raising hell on an evening shift she wasn’t working. It had been a part of her routine for so long, she found it odd anyone would be surprised to find her there on a free weeknight. “What are you doing sitting down here when you’re supposed to be working?”

Jess chuckled a little. “Thursday nights apparently aren’t too big around here. Luke’s already closing it up. I just clocked out.” He paused to untie his apron and throw it over his shoulder, as if to prove his point. “I knew this town was boring, but damn. Do you really not hang out anywhere else on your days off besides the place you already work?” he asked.

Ella shrugged, looking down at her work again. Just the sight of it made her insides squirm in frustration. “There’s places to go.”

“Well, could you let me in on them?”

Pursing her lips, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Hm?”

“Show me around. Apparently you know of some interesting spots, and I haven’t found any yet.”

She scoffed. “You’ve been here almost a month and no place in Stars Hollow has piqued your interest at all?”

“No,” he told her nonchalantly. Though he didn’t continue, she only stared at him suspiciously. Sighing through his nose, he produced a deck of cards from the pocket of his jeans. He fanned them out in front of her, the deck with wrinkles and scuffed spots on the royal blue designs. “Pick a card.”

Instead of going along with his trick, she rolled her eyes dramatically and shut the textbook in front of her. “Why don’t I just cut this magic show short and give you the world’s fastest tour?”

“Oooo, so impatient.” Jess pretended to be offended. “Homework makes you cruel.”

.   .   .

Arms crossed over her chest, Ella strolled down the dimly lit Stars Hollow sidewalk with her boots tapping pleasantly on the slightly damp cement, Jess alongside her. A November breeze blew past them, cooling her flushed cheeks. For the life of her, she could not figure out why he had asked her to show him around, she hated to admit to herself how antsy she was feeling. She would have regretted it more than she already did if she didn’t trust Luke so much. There was no fear in her heart, only anxiety and confusion. She could smell the autumn in the air. The wind swirled around them, forming a tiny tornado of dead leaves in the center of the street. A frosty bite, a crispness, had arrived about a week before. The snow would follow soon enough.

“That’s the bookstore,” she said, nodding over to Stars Hollow Books on the left as they neared it. “I’m gonna assume you’ve been there.”

Jess smiled proudly. “She’s a regular Sherlock Holmes.”

A little smirk crossed her face, brightening up her hazel eyes. In the light of the streetlamps, Jess could see the golden specks swirled in the pools of her greenish irises. The red glints in her loose blonde braid shone, too. A faded green messenger bag weighed down her right shoulder and an old peacoat was draped around her small frame. She wasn’t the shortest girl, but she was still nearly a head below him. After a moment, he broke his concentration from her form as she pointed out a large, barn-like building on the right.

“That’s Miss Patty’s. I’m sure you’ve done your best to disorder the peace in there, too. Steal a bunch of tutus of something,” she said, though her tone wasn’t angry, just knowing, verging on  a joke.

“I have not,” he assured her dramatically. “I am a stranger to that realm.”

She put her hands up in surrender. “Well, if you decide on the studio as your next target, you leave the piano alone, alright?”

“What’s so special about the piano?” he asked, his hands stuffed deeply into his pockets as the wind whistled once again.

“Nothing in particular. I play it for rehearsals sometimes when Mrs. Rothschild, the regular pianist, is out. The first two weeks you were here, she had a knee replacement and there was a recital, so I had to sub in. I had no time left to work at all. But Miss Patty gave me volunteer hours for school, so it was okay,” she explained. The rogue strands of hair blew away from her face, and Jess could see the frosted roses blooming on her freckled cheeks. Autumn had come with a particularly harsh chill.

“Huh,” he said, looking at her quizzically.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Just spit it out, Mariano,” she pressed, her voice light.

“I just didn’t see you as a piano player,” he told her.

“Well, what’d you see me as? If you say tambourine, we’re never speaking again,” she warned, giggling slightly as she spoke.

Jess chuckled breathily in response. “I don’t know. Guitar, maybe.”

She hummed thoughtfully, nodding as though the assessment meant anything specific. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You should.”

“Well, I’m glad.”

There was a beat of comfortable silence between them, and she let her eyes longer on his shoes. His jeans were frayed at the ends, just a bit too long for him. It made her feel like smiling, though she didn’t quite know why.

“What’s New York like?” she asked out of the blue, passing by a few strangers as they walked. Soon, they would turn right, away from the edge of town and into the outskirts. Jess didn’t know it yet, but he was walking her home. She had a date with her dishwasher set for half past nine.

He tilted a sideways look at her. “You’ve never been?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never really been anywhere.”

The sentence struck a chord within him, deep in his gut. She didn’t look sad, and she didn’t sound it either, but something about the phrase she had uttered felt so devastated. Maybe even hopeless, but he didn’t let it shake his exterior. “Well, it’s loud. It’s flashy. You can buy sex for five dollars on every single street corner.”

Ella snorted a laugh. “Oh, then I’ll definitely have to make it there sometime.”

He smiled; her joviality was growing since she’d gotten her nose out of the calculus textbook. Clearing his throat, he took another shot, his tone more serious. “No, but, it’s really...it’s very alive. There’s always movement.”

“So, it’s the opposite of here?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” he agreed.

“You like it better there, I take it?”

“The understatement of the century.”

“Sorry to hear that,” she said. In the back of her mind, she remembered she was supposed to be giving him a tour, but he didn’t seem to care that the conversation had veered from its original purpose.

Jess shrugged, cavalier. “It’s what it is.”

“How poetic of you,” she mocked. “You’re a regular Keats.”

He groaned, shaking his head. “Don’t tell me you like Keats.”

“You’re on dangerous ground,” she told him gravely. They had turned down a gravel road, lined with quaint houses, which seemed to decrease in quality the farther down one walked.

“I just wish he would make his points a little faster. Time is money, and poets almost never take that universal law into consideration,” he argued, a crooked smirk ever-present.

Sighing in disappointment, Ella began to speak with her hands. “It’s about taking the moment, taking the artwork, for the simple beauty of it. Just letting it wash over you, letting the words radiate out. Haven’t you ever read Portrait of the Artist?”

“I tried. Modernism is just poetry masquerading as fiction.”

Ella gasped dramatically, bringing her hands to her heart as though she were wounded. He could see her feigned grief in the light of the many street lamps which buzzed beside them. Apparently even far-off residential areas were alight in Stars Hollow. “Blasphemy!”

For perhaps the first time since they’d met, Jess laughed. A true, genuine laugh, free from his usual sardonic layering. It made a grin appear on Ella’s face, and she almost felt sorry when they reached the decrepit mailbox which read Stevens in faded black paint.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to take a raincheck on this tour,” she said, opening the box and checking for mail. There were a couple bills, and advertisements from various colleges she knew she wouldn’t be able to afford.

Jess sighed in defeat. “I have to say, you did a subpar job. You didn’t even point out the sock hop where the young men and women fraternize on Friday nights!”

She nodded, accepting his criticism. “Well, next time I’ll show you where to buy a malt for the girl you’re courting.”

“As you should,” he concluded.

Dropping the act, she furrowed her brows. “Can you make it back? Or have I led you too far down the road less traveled by?”

“I think I can manage,” he said.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“It appears that way.”

“I’ll have a Keats for you. Maybe a Dickinson, too,” she said, visions of her crowded bookshelf filling her head. “Though, you might not be ready for her yet.”

“Alright, but in exchange you’ll be receiving a Hemingway,” he warned, preparing to turn on his heel and begin the walk back to Luke’s.

“Hardly an even trade, but I’ll accept the terms.”

.   .   .

Jess sat behind the counter with a Kerouac held open in his right hand, the business rushing around him. The clock ticked rhythmically above the door, and when he looked up he saw it was a quarter to five already. He thought it odd Ella hadn’t arrived yet, but he shrugged it off. Why should he care where she was? Coffee steamed from the pot behind him, and the evening chatter was beginning to rise in volume. Over the past few weeks of living in the diner, he had learned not to make eye contact with any customer whatsoever, and he could usually get through a chapter or two in peace. About ten pages later, the door opened and Ella’s footfalls snapped heavily around, as she hung her coat and bag, then grabbed her apron from the back. He smirked as he watched her bustling around. She always seemed to be in a hurry, with her hair falling from whatever updo she pulled it back into before work. There were holes and runs in her stockings, but it matched the vibe of her plaid dress and combat boots well enough.

Clearing her throat, she took a moment to catch her breath when she reemerged and surveyed the busy diner. She grabbed her pad of paper from the pocket of her white apron, but found she could see no one in need of her assistance at the current moment.

“Something wrong, honey?” Jess piped up, teasing, though he didn’t take his eyes from the words before him.

She raised an eyebrow at him and scoffed. “Don’t call me that. And yes, I’m a very busy woman.”

“Well, color me impressed,” he drawled flatly. Then, after a moment, he put down his reading. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a thin, weathered book and held it out to her wordlessly.

A tired smile crossed her lips, taking her book back and running her thumbs over the familiar cover art. “Ah, my favorite. The formidable Miss Dickinson.”

“That she is,” he agreed, nodding as he cast his Kerouac off to the cabinet beside him. It had only taken him about two days to get through it, though he’d kept forgetting to return it to her. A wide grin blossomed on her face.

“You liked her?” she asked expectantly.

Nodding, Jess began refilling two or three of the customers’ coffee cups on the counter in front of them. “She certainly gets the message across much quicker than some others.”

“Well, at least you have some taste,” she said. “I’ve still got about fifty pages of the Hemingway. Not entirely unreadable, but I can definitely tell he was drunk for eighty percent of his life.”

“But that’s the beauty of it!” Jess urged.

“Man, and you were just starting to acquire an air of refinement. We’ll continue this again when you finish Keats and agree that I’m right,” she quipped, turning her view back to the customers.

“Well, get ready for the disappointment of a lifetime.” Jess could see her getting lost in her own, frazzled head and let his eyes longer on her, biting his lip and hiding a smirk.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, Ella found a blue pen. On the other side, she found a pencil. Eventually, she discovered three more in her messy bun and shoved them in the pocket of her apron. She groaned softly at herself, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Jess chuckled. “What could possibly be giving you a headache on this lovely Friday afternoon in the utopia that is Stars Hollow, Connecticut?”

“Nothing,” she told him evasively, hands on her hips. Luke was chatting up the early birds. No one had come through the front door since she’d arrived, but she kept a trained eye in that direction. Either Babette or Miss Patty would show up soon enough. Likely Miss Patty, to grab some food before the seven o’clock meditation class, which mostly involved the students lying on the floor asleep.

“Oh, so nothing’s what made you forget about your five new pencil accessories?” he asked.

Rolling her eyes at his insistence, she finally turned back to him. “I had to go to New Britain to visit my aunt. She’s getting married and she’s making me play piano for it, for some ungodly reason.”

“Are you any good?”

She scoffed. “Oh, yeah, I’m a regular Mozart. No, I’m terrible.”

“Now, I’m sure that’s an exaggeration.”

“Trust me,” she told him. “When my mom taught me, I think she thought with enough time and energy I’d at least get halfway to her level. But, sadly, no dice.”

Jess was about to continue the conversation, the gears turning in his head for the next giggle-worthy quip, when Luke finally returned from arguing (shouting) with Taylor about Christmas decorations. It was still a whole week until December. And no one in the town save for Taylor was holding out any hope Luke would decorate at all the entire holiday season.

“Hey, Ella, how ya doin’?” Luke greeted her offhandedly, tearing a few tickets and giving them to Caesar in the back.

“She has a headache and is single-handedly ruining the piano as an instrument, apparently,” Jess informed his uncle on her behalf.

She nodded, then her eyes brightened when she saw Patty walk in, right on schedule. “Just this once, your nephew is correct. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

With a sardonic tilt of the head, she left the two of them behind. She pulled out one utensil from her wide writing arsenal and went over to greet Miss Patty, who made her lean down for a kiss on the cheek. Ella obliged, though red as a tomato. It shocked Jess how sweet she could be with the customers. Most of the time all he got was a razor-sharp tongue. She had a goodness within her he already knew he could never live up to. It made his heart do a little twist, though he would never in a million years let her know.

“Jess?” Luke asked, breaking his nephew out of his daze.

“Yes, Uncle Luke?” Jess replied, his usual sarcastic mask back on.

Luke sighed, but ignored Jess’s attempts to irritate him with the formal address. “Less staring, more working, alright?”

[purplesurveys]

698

3 words that describe...

Your personality: (A bit) aloof, sensitive, and shy.

Your friends: Loud, laidback, cheeky.

Your family: Emotionally distant, (mostly) religious. I’m cheating so much on this looooool.

Your life: Right now? Put on hold. Thanks, coronavirus.

Your current mood: Hungry, and irritated eyes.

Your dreams/goals in life: Ok three words will be too short for this so I’ll just enumerate three whole phrases: I’d like to have a job that pays well, get a house that doesn’t have to be huge, but it has to come with features I’ve always wanted like cove lights and a yard for the kids and dog to play in, and get settled.

Your partner/boyfriend/girlfriend (if you have one): Funny, intelligent, courageous.

The person you last talked to: Brave, considerate, responsible.

The room that you are currently in: Comfortable, well-lit, homey.

The world in your perspective: Many stupid humans.

Yes/No questions...

Are you creative? Absolutely not. I like doing the logical/rational side of things... I let others take care of creative aspects, if they have to be present.

Do you like spending a sunny day outdoors? NO, unless I’m at the beach then sunny is the only way to go. Otherwise I’d rather be indoors or somewhere air-conditioned thx.

Do you get upset easily or over the littlest things? I can be. It’s usually when I’m already stressed/antsy enough, or if I’m on my period.

Do you dislike any of the people in charge of you (i.e: teachers, bosses)? I don’t particularly dislike my prof in my Rizal course but he sure teaches like he doesn’t want to be there. I just haven’t been getting the enthusiasm off of him, and that’s really important to me when it comes to being interested in my subjects. Oh but my PE coach this sem is a bitch - one time I forgot to wear the shirt color she demands us to follow and she ignored me for the entire period. Quickest way to make me feel shitty. So yeah. Probably her.

Do you like to read books/magazines/newspapers? I like books only if they’re non-fiction. I...don’t really read magazines anymore, and I kinda have to check into newspapers from time to time because I take up journalism.

Are you family-oriented? Towards my girlfriend’s family, yeah. I don’t really care about being family-oriented for my own.

Have you ever been friends with someone in the past out of sympathy? Yeah, this girl named MJ in Grade 7. She was a new-ish student then and no one was approaching her, so Gab and I tried to befriend her for a time. Didn’t really pan out that well - we just didn’t mesh - so we stopped talking not long after.

Do/did you ever get nervous around people you are/were crushing on? I still do.

Do you believe in global warming? Duh.

Are you happy with the way society/the world in general is? I’m typically pessimistic when it comes to people, so no not really. I just feel like the bad news always overweigh the good these days - and while good news can serve as rays of sunshine sometimes, I’d rather face reality than live in my own bubble and choose to be oblivious to all the shitstorms happening around me.

Do you ever question your own religion/beliefs? I did, as early as when I was 10. The Bible just didn’t make sense to me to my frustration, and I’ve always felt disgusted with my school guilt-tripping us to be good people because a man got crowned with thorns and nailed to a giant cross. I figured I can be good simply because I choose to, so I let go of my Catholic roots quickly after. Having no friends that time surely forced me to think hahahahahahaha jk 1/2

This/That...

Do you prefer today's trends/styles, or ones from the past? Both have awesome stuff, there’s no need to pick. I’m really into the mom jeans of the 90s, but I also like the yellow trend that’s been going on recently.

Being too cold or too hot? I’d rather be shivering but be comforted with a thick blanket, than sweat bullets and have absolutely no way to cool myself down.

Uploading music to your iPod, or buying CDs? Depends. I used to buy the CDs of my favorite artists then just download the other music I’m not as passionate about.

Fruits or vegitables? VEGETABLESSSSSSSSSSSS. I hate fruits.

Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate, for the most part. Vanilla tastes like nothing to me. Baseball or football? I don’t watch either and I probably won’t enjoy either either lmao, but I have a bias towards football because my girlfriend’s sisters play the sport. The mall with a bunch of little stores, or one single, big store? Malls kinda work differently here... they’re all one big building with a bunch of restaurants, clothing shops, sports shops, novelty stores, etc. Rap music or rock and roll? Not a big fan of either but I’d go with rock and roll I guess. I like some rap but none of them make me feel things, which rock can sometimes do for me. Roller skates or roller blades? I owned a pair of roller blades when I was 10 and had fun memories with it even though I never did learn how to do it properly. Horror movies that give you nightmares, or romance that makes you vomit? Horror for sure. I don’t even like romance-only movies; they have to be laced with a lot of comedy in between for me to enjoy them. Making more friends or making more money? Making more money sorry LMAOOOOOO Living it up and being stupid, or being safe and never pay the price? I’d always rather be safe. I hate getting reprimanded or caught doing something bad or being punished. Doing more of the talking, or more of the listening in a conversation? Listening, please. I don’t like having the attention on me for too long. Giving or receiving? Giving I guess? I always have a pretty good sense of what my loved ones need, and it’s always nice to see how good they feel when I give it to them. Cats or dogs? Dogs. Playing on the swingsets or the slides (as a kid)? Swings. I was traumatized by one slide when I was 6 because it was apparently blistering hot when I slid down from it, and it almost burned my butt off lmao.

Would you rather...

Bolding these because I’m lazy.

Live off of just food for 2 days, or just beverage for 2 days?

Tell a lie and be believable, or tell the truth and still be blamed?

Die at 65 with the love of your life, or live to 85 being single?

Fart and be heard from far away or fart and be smelled from far away?

Be tickled for an hour straight or be woken up by a bucket of cold water?

Have a cabel snap while bunjee jumping or have the bar go up on a coaster?

Have a deadly plague or a nuclear bomb hit your country? (Don't get ideas!) < This is a sick question to ask these days lol. I’m not answering.

Lick a frozen telephone pole or stick your hand in dry ice? Be rejected by your favorite celebrity or by someone you secretly admire? Give up your favorite food for eternity or eat a bowl of dead spiders? Make a lot of money at a job you hate or little money at a job you love? Jump off a bridge or from a moving car? < Another sick question.

Favorites...

Color(s): Pink, sky blue, off-white.

Song(s): I don’t have one at the moment. I haven’t listened to any music in a while, save for lo-fi.

Artist(s): Beyoncé if we’re talking solo, Paramore if you mean bands.

Music genre: I don’t have a favorite one; my taste is pretty scattered.

Movie: Two for the Road or Good Will Hunting

TV show: Breaking Bad, Friends, BoJack Horseman, Queer Eye

Actor and actress: Gregory Peck; Audrey Hepburn or Kristen Stewart

Movie/TV genre: Romantic comedy or drama lmao, I’m a sappy bitch. Suspense and psychological horror are also cool.

Restarant: Yabu, Mendokoro Ramenba, or Silantro

Food: Sushi

Dessert: Macarons

Hobby: Going to museums! Or reading about the history of anything.

Activity to do out of boredom: Scroll my social media feeds orrrrrr do surveys, or watch cooking videos on YouTube heh.

Type of weather: Bleak, rainy, and chilly.

Book: I don’t have a favorite.

Subject in school: History

Item that you own: My car hahahaha

Pastime: Eating out and window shopping. Maybe I’m just saying these because I haven’t been to a mall in a while :/

Site: Palawan

Tourist attraction: I’ve always wanted to go to those towers that lets you go to the top floor and the floor is just literal glass. If I’m gonna be a tourist-y tourist, that’s the first place I’d go to haha.

Random questions in your own words...

If you could have any desired superpower, what would it be?

The history nerd in me would take up time travel in an instant. And I won’t even be using it as a superpower lmao, it’d be like a research pastime for me.

What would be your dream job?

If I wasn’t such an introvert and if I were a lot better in handling crowds, I really would have wanted to be a pro wrestler.

Descibe your dream date:

Museum in the day, cute dinner at night.

What was the best day of your life like?

I don’t know if that has happened yet.

What was the worst day of your life like?

So far my worst day was when I wasn’t accepted into my school paper in high school and I spent like 18 hours crying my eyes out. I liked writing and was accepted for my portfolio, but people thought I was too shy to fit the group’s dynamic and ended up getting booted. There are quiet writers too, assholes.

If you ever have kids one day, what you you name them?

Too early for this lol I’ve only had name picked out - Olivia.

What's one thing that will bring you out of your worst mood no matter what?

My dog. FOR SURE.

Who's the most annoying person you've ever encountered?

Jem, someone from my college who thinks she’s close with me but I really do not like her at all.

If you could grow up to be like anybody, who would it be?

I don’t believe in having role models. I just want to be the best version of myself.

If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?

My mental health could be mental healthier.

What's your favorite inspirational/famous quote? I don’t depend on these either. Describe your dream ice cream sundae (unlimited toppings): Meh, I don’t like sundaes. Just scoops would be fine with me. What comes to mind first when you think of your favorite color? I have no idea why this is what I remember, but it was the day I went shopping for school supplies and got myself a pink clipboard, pink pencil case, pink expander, and pink highlighters. I think it’s because it was that day where I had to acknowledge that pink was in fact, unironically, my favorite color HAHAHA What's something in your life that you once hated but came to like? ^ The color pink. And chicken curry. What's something in your life that you once liked but came to hate? Cooked salmon. There was one phase my mom made it almost everyday and I just got sick of it. I refuse to eat salmon to this day unless it’s sashimi or in sushi. If you could stop any chaos/problem in our world today, what would it be? This fucking pandemic. 2020 CAN’T CONTINUE BECAUSE OF YOU. What would be the best way to die, in your opinion? Peacefully, in sleep, with no pain. What would be the worst way to die? Falling off a cliff (or anywhere high) and landing on a boulder EUGH I cringe at it. Also getting impaled. AND plane crashes. If you could give your room a free makeover, what would you do to it? I’d make it look spacier by moving the bed to the wall so there’s a lot of free space in the middle. I’d also add a desk, work chair, and a lamp so I can study there. If you could have an unlimited amount of anything, what would it be? The number of years my dog would live. What's one thing that you like that would probably surprise your friends? They know I like punk rock in general but I haven’t shared any of the music with them. It would definitely surprise them. Out of everything in the world, what holds the most meaning to you? Stability.

[lovelyirony]

@latinxstark hey....HEY. I LOVE U 

Steve Rogers was many things. An artist. A guy who tried to eat anything new, regardless of whether or not he thought it was going to be good. And, on occasion, a romantic. Well, he thought he could be a romantic. (He was...really bad at it.) 

Here’s the thing. He worked at a studio, putting out new designs for comics. Right now, he was working on a comic about a guy named Leo who was an alien masquerading as human, which was hilarious to work with. 

Every day occasionally, he would sit at a window seat for lunch and look at everyone passing by. There was a woman who always had a pristine white uniform on, and he thought she worked with Natasha, maybe? He wasn’t quite sure. 

There was a man in khakis and a purple shirt who rode to work on a skateboard, and was recently joined by some kids trying to get a video of it. He always rolled his eyes, but played along. He was pretty good at it. 

And then...him. Steve sounded like a cheesy romance book, and that was fine by him. Because this guy was...gorgeous. Curled brown hair, a smile that could probably rival Expensive Dental Work, and his left hand was always holding his own coffee mug. It had a picture of the Statue of Liberty on it. 

Steve would sometimes bring his sketchbook, just to draw him. He’s lucky that the guy hasn’t found him out yet: the windows aren’t tinted by much, and Steve usually edges a potted plant forward to kind of obscure his body. 

Except one day, Hot Guy walks into the building. Apparently, he knows the ever-so-terrifying Maria Hill. 

“I need to speak with you about a certain artist, M,” the Guy says. “Really has captured my interest with how he draws. The lines are always so clean.” 

“That’d be Steve Rogers, Tony,” Maria says. “He’s on his lunch break, should be in the window seat...” (Even his name was cute.) 

Steve has to steel himself for the Cute Guy Interaction. 

He loses all his composure when he sees the cup. “Hey, it’s your cup,” he says. Like an Idiot. 

“So you’re the guy in the window seat,” Tony says with a smile. “You know, you’re a bit bigger than the plant. I can see your shoes.” And Steve burns a bright red. “Hey, no sweat. I like sitting in the sunshine too. But, you’re the special one I’ve come to talk to.” 

“About?” 

“I have something I’d like done, and I can’t do art for shit. Years of practice down the drain. Or money, can’t remember which. Anyway, I would really like you to do a present. If you’re comfortable.” 

“When is the present going to be, um, presented?” Steve asks. He sounds dumb. He’s probably going to die in a week at this rate. Luckily, Tony snorts. 

“Don’t worry cute stuff, it’s gonna be in about three months. I wanted to make sure you had a lot of time.” 

“What do you want me to do?” Tony gets serious, sitting down at a chair. Steve leans back into the window seat. 

“I need a wedding gift. My best friend Rhodey is getting married to literally a ten-out-ten woman. She’s badass. Problem with me is, I don’t do the wedding registries. Well, that’s a lie. I did get Rhodey that reinforced garage, but that was more of a friend thing...regardless. Both Rhodey and Carol are absolute shit at picking out art. I think Carol has a portrait of a cat that she found at a thrift store. I want them to have something that can remind them of their wedding, their life.” 

Steve nods. “Sounds good. Any reference pictures?” Tony pulls a couple from his briefcase. They’re a nice couple; Steve’s eye is drawn to one of Carol and Rhodey at dinner, laughing their asses off about something or other. 

“That one,” he says decisively. “I can have it done.” 

“Great!” Tony says. “Thank god, because my next option was trying to follow along to a Bob Ross painting thing, which has not gone well.” 

“Nonsense,” Steve says with a grin. “I’m sure you did great, the pinnacle of all human genius--” 

“Aw shut up, you artist nerd,” Tony teases. He glances at his watch. “Shit, I’m about to be late for a meeting.” He digs out his phone. “Here is my phone, please input your number. I’ll text you as soon as I get out of the meeting, just you remember that it’s not a creepy number that’s asking if you can wire money to Scotland or something. I don’t know how scams work anymore.” Steve snorts, tapping in his number and texting “this is Steve.” (Auto-corrected to sieve, but damn it, he can’t change it now.) 

Tony winks on his way out. “See you later, handsome.” 

“Um, yeah,” Steve says awkwardly. “See you outside my window.” 

Maria gives Steve an amused look. 

“You really cannot flirt at all, can you?” 

“No,” Steve says miserably. “I’m going to die alone.” 

“No you’re not,” Maria says, ever the no-nonsense type. “Because Tony happens to have a thing for you. Saw it as soon as I came in the door. And he called you ‘cute stuff.’ That’s good, right?” 

“Maybe,” Steve contemplates. “Unless he calls everyone ‘cute stuff.’ That could be a Thing.” 

“It’s not,” Maria says. “But hey! More money from a commission! Does this mean I can scrimp on the paycheck?” she teases. Steve responds by flipping a bird, grinning.  

“We’ll have to wait to see if he even likes it first. 

Steve finishes it in a month and a half. He hates shading, but he thinks it’s pretty good. Done in acrylic paint, and he’s pretty proud of it. Got Rhodey’s eyes right, and even managed to slip in a couple of references Tony had texted him. 

They’d been texting a while now. Mainly because Steve thought he was texting Natasha and sent “kiss my ass, we all know that Prokofiev was a bonafide drama queen,” and then Tony responded back with, “what’s ur impression of Vivaldi then?” 

And then it stopped being so much about the art as what their lives hold, and what kind of dog Tony wants in the future. 

And then Steve would wave at Tony through the window, and sometimes Tony would spend his lunch break with Steve as they talked about anything. Tony was some of the inspiration behind the comic books, not that he would ever know that. 

When Steve gives the painting to Tony, it’s kind of a bitter moment, because what if he sees Tony NEVER again, and then Tony texts him something and he gets his hopes for about four seconds only for “lmao sorry wrong number! who is this lol?” text to shoot forth, and fast-forward twenty-five years give or take and Maria says “I’m sorry you’re fired” and then Steve huddles by Tony’s building and Tony doesn’t even recognize him? 

“Hey, wanna go on a date?” Tony asks. Steve blinks, brought out of his reverie. 

“What?” 

“A date,” Tony repeats. “Like, I’ll pick you up at seven? Or if you don’t wanna go on a date, then that’s cool.” 

“Immediately, yes,” Steve blurts out. “Thank god.” Tony lets out a bark of laughter. 

(Steve proposes to Tony by painting a portrait of Steve proposing with a ring. He hangs it up over the dinner table at their house, thinking Tony will notice it and immediately be overcome with joy. 

It takes Tony two days, and Steve laughs so hard he’s pretty sure he has an ulcer. 

But they still get married.) 

[lord-explosion-baku]

Pairing: Villain!Iida x hero!reader

Warnings: violence, blood, non con

A/n: I got carried away. The reader gets carried away as well. You know how like you just write a little too much sometimes? I did that. Huzzah.

The world knew that Mr. Tenya Iida was a villain. He was corrupt, he was trouble, but he was also impeccably smart. He never left a trail when he did his crimes and even if he had, that trail always lead to someone else. He was also a man of business. He also had money. That always seemed to help him cover up any tricky detail that might help the law show him face. The man was untouchable.

It was August 22nd and that meant there was going to be a giant celebration at his estate. That was a giant opportunity for the hero agency you worked with to send in two individuals to acquire documents/intel/any sort of dirt you could get on the engine villain. Since you were better at hiding from the media, the agency had selected you and your partner, Itona, to attend this party undercover. You had been given an invite; a woman who used to be connected with Iida had sent her own invite to the agency in hopes of helping. Itona was to go disguised as the help.

You made your way up the stone path that lead to the entrance of his mansion, dreading the heels you were wearing. You had to be formal to blend in. You had gotten nervous checking yourself in the mirror. Surely, anywhere else what you were wearing would get the attention of others but apparently at one of Tenya Iida’s celebrations everyone was always looking their best. Itona was already inside probably growling at guests and reluctantly feeding people hors d’oeuvres. You would do anything to switch places with him. Your colleagues had joked around when they say you all dressed up. “Itona is the retriever of this operation and L/N is the legs,” one coworker said, earning a swat to the back of the head from you. Just because you were wearing a dress didn’t mean you couldn’t kick ass if it came down to it.

A large bulky man checked your invitation before allowing you inside. He barely looked at you when he handed it back, making you confident that you could move throughout the party going unnoticed. Once inside, you were offered a glass of champagne from a platter which you gladly took. Something to calm the nerves. You hardly got two steps and a different platter filled with quiche was thrown in your face.

“Here’s some food for thought,” Itona growled, “maybe we don’t drink on the job?”

You eyeballed the quiche. “Would it be so bad if I’m threatened to have a good time?” you asked picking up a quiche bite and plopping it in your mouth. “Besides,” you chewed, “it would be suspicious if I didn’t.” Itona huffed and moved the platter away from you before you could grab another one. You bit out, “good quiche but the service sucks.”

You weaved yourself through a strum of people, telling yourself you were looking out for anything that could point you to something that could you on your mission, telling yourself that you weren’t a little overstimulated by being by so many new faces, telling yourself you wouldn’t rather be staring at the beautiful artwork on the walls. Wait- was that Renoir?

You hurried to the wall. Away from the crowd and carefully inspected a painting in the wall. It was the ‘Lakeside Landscape,’ not one of Renoir’s best work, still you were mesmerized by the fact you were seeing it up close. It was definitely the original work. It was known to be in The National Gallery in London but somehow it made its way into Tenya Iida’s wall. That could be something for you to report back on. You opened your purse to pull out your phone when a voice interrupted your excitement.

“The act of capturing a feeling, rather than portraying accuracy... it’s fairly amusing,” you didn’t turn your head to the voice. You already knew who it was. “Is there a facade to the beauty of the painting? Or is the act of Renoir portraying displaying his emotions more honest than what he actually saw? I can’t help but obsess.”

You took a deep breath. Stay cool, you told yourself. “I don’t think Renoir was trying to trick the viewer. To all we know, this was supposed to be for himself. His paintings were his journals and this was how he was feeling on that day. Though it may be easy to trick oneself, artistic mediums speak louder than words sometimes.”

“Interesting,” he mused. You turned towards the voice. He was... built. Even through his white dress shirt you could tell that he was very muscular, his blue vest fit tightly onto his torso. A suit jacket hung over his brawny shoulder while a black gloves hand was rubbing his chin, deep in thought. Photos didn’t do the man justice, he was handsome. He smiled at your gawking expression. “I’m glad I’m not the only impressionist fan in the building.”

“Surrealism is my favorite genre but Impressionism has a special place is my heart.”

“Well,” he said wrapping an arm around your waste, a large hand fitting right above the curve of your side, “Do I have something to show you.”

For hours you conversed with Tenya Iida about European artwork. How it made the two of you feel, what your favorites were, where you would go or who you would visit if you had the opportunity to go back in time. You would almost actually be enjoying yourself if you weren’t worried that at any moment your cover would be blown. But it wasn’t you who had been discovered.

“Sir, a moment?” a mean looking man interrupted your deep conversation. Iida politely excused himself to took to the man to the side. You could see feet thrashing about in the shadows. Another man held Itona in a tight lock. “We found this server trying to break into the office. He says he was just trying to find the bathroom but we found this on him.” You couldn’t see what he was showing Iida but you were sure it was a flash drive, maybe some lock-picks. “Should we kill him?” Kill him?!

Iida sighed. “Don’t kill him yet,” he said while shaking hands with a new guest that had arrived. Even under the pressure of something like, that he remained calm, cool, and collected. “Take him to the basement. He couldn’t have come here alone. Someone else here is trying to play hero.”

You sipped your champagne and tried not to watch as the two droogs dragged Itona out of the room. You had to stay poised in this room full of power hungry villainous people. When you could get the chance you would request backup.

There was a hand on your shoulder. “My most humble apologies,” you turned and smiled sweetly to the villain that just had your partner dragged away to most likely have information beaten out of him. You wondered how long Itona would last before outing you. “It’s not everyday, I throw a party but when I do there’s always a rapscallion or two that crashes it.” You gulped knowing full well that you were rapscallion number two. “Now where were we?”

“Uh, pointillism, I think.” You knew that wasn’t correct but you could hardly think. You were on edge and now you knew that Even though he kept a calm physique, Iida would be suspicious of anyone in this room. The person he should be most suspicious of, was sweating right in front of him.

He blinked and suddenly the charming look on his face became dark. A sinister smile crawled across his face. “You know, I have an exquisite Paul Signac in my lounge. Do you mind if I show you?”

You avoided his gaze and brushed a hair out of your face, “I actually think that I need to- um...”

He grabbed your wrist, causing you to drop your champagne glass. “I insist.”

His hold was strong as he nearly dragged you down the hall. He pushed the mahogany doors open revealing a couple chatting on a brown leather couch. “Out,” he commanded and the couple hurried away and out the other door. That was plan A: fleeing.

He pulled you in and you lost your footing, falling to the couch. The room spelled like books. You took note of an ice sculpture in the shape of a swan- you could work with that. Not to your surprise, there actually was a Paul Signac piece.

As his back was turned to you, you used your quirk, checking to see how much water had already melted from the sculpture. Just a few milliliters. That’d have to be plan C.

Glasses clinked and then pouring. “All this talk of beauty and the secrets of artists,” he turned to you swirling a glass of scotch in his hand, “and I had this beautiful facade right in front of me.” He held his glass out to you, “did you want some?” You shook your head, slowly standing. “So, tell me, did you plan on... spending the night with me or did this all happen to be fate?”

You weren’t sure you were actually going to be seeing him. It was a big party. You were there to collect information and that was it. “Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man’s hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.”

“On the contrary, Marquis,” he sipped his scotch, “as of right now, I’m far from miserable.” He paced around the ice sculpture and you did the same. “I hate parties.”

“As do I.”

“But business is business. I should have been making deals, growing my empire and whatnot, but then I found you. All alone. Admiring my collection. I wanted to know you, know your mind. Your intellect did not disappoint me, however, the matters of what being you here do. But no, miserable, again, I’m far from it.”

You pushed the swan over to him knocking him back and ran for the door. He was already there. Right, the engine villain. You turned sprinting towards the other door, locked. He pushed you up against the door, his gloved hand on your neck. You grasped at his strong arm, trying to pull him off but it was no use. You snarled at him.

He clicked his tongue. “Testy,” he said, “and here I was thinking you were sweet and shy. But even the most scared little mice don’t like being trapped, do they?”

You relaxed, no longer struggling against his hold. Plan B: seduction. After all, you were the “legs” of the operation. You brought your heel to the back of the door, allowing your dress to ride up your thigh. “So now that you have me all alone, what do you plan on doing with me?” You purred, caressing his arm.

He chuckled, “we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren���t we?” Still, his free hand ran up your thigh and behind your leg. The material on his gloves felt good in your ass.

You pulled him into a kiss, tasting the scotch on his breath. He nearly pulled away until you slipped your tongue in and he was lost. While he was distracted you reached for your foot, where you hid a blade between the heel and the sole. Still kissing him, you brought the knife up to his neck and pressed it in against his jugular. His eyes widened at the realization. “Back off,” you told, using your body to push him away. You held the knife up offensively. “Open the door,” you commanded.

“That’s not happening,” he smiled. You swiped through the air, missing him. Swipe! Swipe! He evaded your attacks too easily. Swipe! Slice! Blood spilled from his face. You had managed to cut him down his forehead to his cheek. He knocked the knife out of your hand and pushed you on to the couch. “I’m no longer amused,” he growled, pinning your wrists down. You struggled against his weight but he was too strong.

Something hard pressed against your pelvic bone. Your eyes widened, realizing what it was. He gave you a knowing cocky smile and kissed you roughly down your neck, no doubt, leaving a trail of his own blood.

You breathed wistfully as he devoured you, eyeing the shattered swan. Plan C: Fight with your quirk.

Tendrils of of water came from the floor. Focusing on manipulating it and not what he was doing to your body, you made a rope, thin, since you didn’t have so much of it, still you got it to wrap around the villain’s neck and force him off of you.

You bolted it up as Iida was fighting off your quirk. You ran to the door that bursted open as soon as you got there, knocking you back. You looked up to see your partner held up in the air by the tentacles that came out of his head.

“We gotta go, L/N. NOW!!!”

Itona picked you up with one of his tentacles -gross- and had you both running through the throng of panicking party guests. You were sure Iida could’ve caught up to you guys if he tried.

As you ran down the stone path, you looked back seeing Iida standing in the doorway, waving politely as you disappeared off of his property.

You and Itona got into his car and sped away. “How’d you get away from the basement?”

“Fought ‘em off with my quirk, dude.” He looked at you and saw the blood on your neck, “L/n, you really do need to having too much fun on these missions.”

“I got him?” You said.

“What?”

“He has so many stolen paintings, Itona! I’ve got pictures!” Your hand shuffled around in your clutch. You were dismayed. “Oh no...”

“...what?”

~

Iida was laying in his lounge chair with ice over his bandaged eye, scrolling through your phone, finding any information he could have on you. “Y/n L/n...” he said to himself. He was looking at a pretty scandalous picture you had taken of yourself. “My pretty pet, you’ve just made a very powerful enemy...”

PART 2

~

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^^^ @thecryingsombra idk why you don’t tag sometimes lol

[tmiquotepage]

I REALLY Need Advice

(LONG post, but I appreciate any feedback you guys can offer me here!)

I currently work as a babysitter for three wonderful children for the summer. They are 7, 10, and 13. I used to watch them before school during the school year, and I watched them for Spring Break as well. The parents got a divorce not long after I started working for them, and so the kids travel back and forth between two apartments five minutes apart. That's the gist of the background.

Now, normally, my fee for babysitting, especially for 3 kids, is $10/hr. The hours I agreed to at the beginning of the summer were 6 am until 3 pm. (I also live 30 minutes away, but my hour of commuting and my gas were never on the table for reimbursement.) Well, the mom asked me on Spring Break if, since I would be watching the kids for 8 weeks, we could do $300 a week, as $450 would get "quite expensive after 8 weeks" (like, yeah. Individualized care for kids is expensive. If you want cheaper, put em in a camp or daycare. Jesus.). I got her to raise that amount to $350, because $300 for 45 hours a week is highway robbery and less than minimum wage. I wouldn’t be able to afford my car and the gas to move this summer. Okay. That was settled.

Summer time rolls around and, at the end of the school year, the mom gets a new boyfriend, who immediately moves in with her. We'll talk about this dude later, because WHEW. Anyway, despite the fact that this dude is constantly hungover and/or day drinking and/or sleeping, the mom decides he is an adequate babysitter for the kids a few days a week. So, my schedule becomes completely confusing (as in, the mom will literally wait until 10 pm the night before to tell me whether or not she needs me the next day, whether she wants me to come in late, etc.). Keep in mind, even though we said "$350 a week," I am really getting paid $70/day. Which is the same thing. Unless you get told at last minute that you aren't needed for the three days of the week the mom has the kids with her boyfriend, in which case, it's only $140. So, I am already having issues with how much I am getting paid BEFORE I get into the shit show that is the family dynamic I have to work with.

Now, let's talk about the family. I'll obviously give codenames, not real names, because I'm not a monster. We'll start with the parents, Popeye (Dad) and Diva (Mom).

Popeye is a good dad. Works hard, doesn't make a ton of money, but always spends what he has on his kids. His apartment has more kids toys than signs of being a bachelor pad. He works hard, hasn't seen anyone since the divorce. His primary focus has ALWAYS been his kids. He cooks dinner for them almost every night (eating out is MAD rare. He's a really good cook.) He is ex-Navy, so he can be a bit strict. He doesn't accept mouthing off or being rude, but he also isn't mean. I have never seen him yell at his children or get angry. He is completely in control of his emotions around them. He's not a huge hardass about censoring his kids either. He'll let them listen to explicit rap music, play war video games with the kids. He's careful, but not overprotective. He is a balanced, comfortable, imperfect but loving parent

And then there's Diva™️. Diva is an Australian transplant who has a master's degree in the art of giving facials. She is all about pristine living, Michael Kors jackets, and acting way more rich and perfect than she is (though she has a LOT more money than Popeye). Acts like she is God's gift to all mankind. She has a boyfriend, who we will call JT, that she puts above all else - including her 3 children. Dinner at her house is almost always take out because, as her 10 year old tells me, she knows how to cook, but badly, and she's just too lazy to do it. She runs her own business, is constantly looking for groupons for the kids to use. Or rather, looks for cheap things "kids their age" would like. I am convinced she knows nothing about her children's likes and dislikes. Their rooms are her house are sterile and clean and don't have much feeling. Whenever things are out of place, she makes them clean it up and chastises them because "they are old enough to know better." She acts the part of the nurturing, caring, all-natural mother, but her eyes and words are always cool and sharp as a blade. She, the small woman I could probably break like a toothpick, scares me more than the buff retired navy father or the ex-con she has living with her and her children. I get the feeling, from the way the kids talk about her, that they have the same fears as I do.

As a tack on the end of the adult descriptions, allow me to tell you the bit I know about JT, the mom's boyfriend. He is significantly younger than her, halfway between the ages of her and her 13 year old daughter. He is a hot head. No job. Sleeps most of the day. Often leave the apartment reeking of booze. Often hungover. Has been in jail before, though I am unsure as to what he was arrested for. From what the kids said, I believe it was some sort of assault, burglary, or armed robbery. He occasionally cooks the meals at the house, which means the kids are at least getting a little bit of non-fast-food when they stay there (or, as the mom puts it, when they “visit.” They apparently don't “live” there. They visit, like you might visit a grandparent.). He has a daughter that is 10 years old, who also lives with him at Diva's house when she isn't with her mom. JT is confrontational with Diva's 10 year old boy, which I'll talk about later. I never feel comfortable when he is around, because he seems misogynistic (he called his daughter a ho for wearing yoga pants out to play) and always looks like he's ready to start a fight. Even though he and the mom are just dating, he already acts like a stepdad to Diva's kid, and he is NOT the good kind. When the kids do something he doesn't like, he will call Diva and tell her to chastise and punish the children. Occasionally, he even gives them punishments like grounding them for three weeks, even though he has ZERO authority to do so. Diva always takes his side in arguments.

On to the kids. Diva and Popeye have three: Uni (13), Pathfinder (10), and Sharknado (7). JT has one daughter, Mellie (10).

Uni is the most mature of the kids. She is a very talented artist who has been dealing really well with the divorce, as she surrounds herself with friends, a positive attitude, and creative outlets, like skateboarding and drawing. She cooks for herself often, and easily adapts to whichever situation she is in. It rarely ever feels like a chore to watch her when we go somewhere. She helps with the boys when I am swamped, occasionally, and knows how to calm the youngest's tantrums. The only real issue I have with her is when she and the middle child get in arguments and she tried to mother him and chastise him. It doesn't go well.

Next up, we have Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a 10 year old boy, the middle child. He plays video games very well, and has a soft heart which he will show when you prove he can trust you. He is, by far, the best dancer and beat spitter in the whole family, and he is proud of the fact. Pathfinder has a few behavioral issues where he will lie, and push boundaries every once in a while. He gets heated when playing video games, and often plays way too roughly and/or doesn't share with his little brother. Pathfinder, however, I understand more than I think I used to. He is a middle child with a sick younger brother and an older sister who wants nothing to do with him. He gets bullied at school and doesn’t make friends easily. He is starting to show early signs of major depression. Perhaps most importantly, Pathfinder is not taking the divorce well. More specifically, he clashes like hell with Diva's boyfriend. JT often picks fights with him and gets in his face. JT constantly feels the need to assert authority over Pathfinder and intimidate him. Pathfinder has shared with me that he never feels comfortable staying with JT. He begs me to take him to his dad's, to get him out of the apartment whenever possible. A few weeks ago, he stood up for himself to the boyfriend. JT gog in his face and yelled at him, then grounded him off all electronics (which, let's be honest, was because he wanted to play Pathfinder's Xbox at Diva's apartment without Pathfinder telling him no, because he's the one that got it for his birthday). When Pathfinder told his dad that he didn't want to go to his mom's anymore, the mother called the kid while we were at the store getting supplies for a craft project to tell him he was grounded for longer and that she was now going to shave his hair that he's been growing out for two years because he isn't respecting her boyfriend. She told me he wasn't allowed to even do our craft or watch TV. He could “sit on the couch and twiddle his thumbs" all day. (I eventually said fuck it and let him do whatever he wanted because we were at Popeye's place, and I could see that this kid was positively distraught.) He is STILL grounded, 3 weeks later. Yesterday, JT came out of his bedroom while the kids were talking, got in Pathfinder's face and started calling him gay because his shorts were sagging a bit. I took Pathfinder to Popeye's because he was shaken at the altercation, and told his mom what happened. Her ONLY response was “[Pathfinder]’s main problem is that he can't take direction or obey adults, and he needs to work on that.” What's worse about this situation is this kid has since told me (since he knows I am gay and proud and accepting) that he feels like he might be bisexual. He doesn't feel like he’d be safe if his mom and JT found out he is interested in a boy in his class. Pathfinder has openly stated that he hates his life, dreads staying at his mom's place, feels completely alone, thinks no one loves him. He barely calls her “mom" anymore. He has said that, if she goes through with shaving his head, he will never call her “mom” again, and will basically disown her as his mother. Keep in mind with all this shit that this child is 10. Ten years old and already a god damned nearly suicide risk, judging by his words and behavior lately. I had a meltdown yesterday when I realized this much because, unless this kid get serious help, he could very easily be just another name on the news in the coming years, and that breaks my heart.

Finally, we have the youngest child of Popeye and Diva, Sharknado. Sharknado is seven. Sharknado is a total trainwreck in the behavioral department. This kid has an adrenal insufficiency that means he is reliant on a steroid the way a diabetic is reliant on insulin. He is a bit more prone to disease than other kids. As a result, the mother babies the ever-loving shit out of him. She lets him get away with absolutely everything, and blames Pathfinder if they are ever in an argument. Tells Pathfinder he has to be gentle with his little brother. As a result of this parenting, Sharknado is a MAJOR tantrum thrower, even at age seven. If we are not playing the game he wants to play, the screaming and stomping starts. If he is losing, the screaming and stomping starts. If we are not actively paying attention to him, he will scream and make a spectacle of himself. Where the mother loves seeing that Pathfinder has an issue taking direction from adults, she is blind to the fact that her youngest is exponentially worse. When we go to the store, he runs off. When we go out to do something, he is instantly bored. When I tell him not to touch things in the store, he thinks it is funny to grab it an run away from me. If he is in any way unhappy, he will drop onto the floor and start screaming. Even in public (bowling alley, the zoo). Rules just do not apply to him, and he is positively dumbfounded when you try to correct this behavior through punishment (like taking away a toy, or banning video games for the day). We played the quiet game one day where all winner would get a dollar when we got back (because I had a headache and it was an hour drive and they just kept arguing). He talked the entire ride home, and the others didn't. They got a dollar each, he didn't. He pitched the biggest fit, pounding on the floor screaming, hiding under the bed, saying he wished he was dead because I was being so mean to him. He is always yelling about “fairness" when you tell him “no.” I don't think he actually knows what the word means. Sharknado is a nightmare who never listens and screams his head off on a daily basis, louder when I tell him to stop. And yet the mom has never threatened to chop his locks off. He is her perfect angel.

Lastly, I'll introduce you to Mellie, JT's daughter. She is 10. She is kind and generally respectful, which I assume comes from her mother's side. She is a daddy's girl, however, and so takes on her father's qualities when it comes to his treatment of Diva's kids. She's best friends with Uni, which is great, because Uni needed a girl friend to hang out with during the summer. She let’s Sharknado win in games and babies him. And, of course, she constantly belittles and picks fights with Pathfinder. This week was the first week I was babysitting her as well, so I don’t know much more than that.

So here's my main problem (yeah, all the above was essentially preface. That's the stuff I am USED to putting up with for barely minimum wage). This week, I watched the kids at Popeye's apartment Monday and Friday, with the rest of the days at Diva's. JT was at Diva's, but he is unable to travel, I guess, and two of the kids had dentist appointments two of the days. So, I went. At Diva's request, I came in later at 10 am on Tuesday and Wednesday, then 7:30 am in Thursday. On Tuesday, the kids were having a pillow fight in the apartment at, like, 1 pm, which apparently woke JT up, so he came lumbering out of the bedroom, snatched up the Xbox controller Pathfinder was using to find a YouTube video, and yelled at everyone – Mellie included – to get dressed and go play outside. I was then (without ever being asked) babysitting a fourth child outside with my three. We ended up going to the pool all three days, too, by the way. Three days with 4 kids in a pool. I stayed an hour late the first day, and an hour and a half late yesterday, too, because I came in late. I drove the kids to their appointments, and also made 4 different trips to and from Popeye's apartment to retrieve things for the children, and I drove the girls around to gather ingredients for their bake sale. Keep in kind, it was nearly 50 miles just with the kids in my car (not counting my commute or anything) that I was not getting reimbursed for. I also went and spent $60 on pool toys for the kids (including Mellie), because I love them and want them to have a great time. I spent personal money, knowing I wouldn't get reimbursed. But here's the kicker. When I contacted Diva to ask about adjusted payment to include the fourth child, she just said (I swear I could literally hear venom dripping from her teeth) “of course I won't short you for those days, even though you came in late. You will get the full $350 we agreed on.” Basically, even though she is already paying me peanuts, she assumes the fourth child is covered by the extra hours in the day I didn't come in. As if I shouldn't be getting paid at least $70/day, regardless of what hours I work, because even that is barely acceptable for the job I do. I should also mention that she and the dad split the childcare costs. So, if she really is saying the rest of that $350 completely covers the cost of a fourth kid, that means Popeye is shelling out childcare costs for his ex-wife's boyfriend's daughter.

So that's my situation right now. I just want advice, you guys. Should I stay, leave, ask for more per week? I mean, the thing is, I know the dad will pay more if I ask, but he's already spread pretty thin with the income. Diva is the one who always asks me to cart the kids places and has me watching extra kids and do extra stuff like crafts with them, and she’s the one who makes so much money, but she's the one who is being stingy and not giving me what I deserve. It bugs me. I just need advice on future steps, guys. I love these kids, and I don't want to just leave and have them think it was something they did wrong, but I am at the end of my mental rope. What do I do here?

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | Q&A WITH DAVID CHUNG (THE CHUNG)

Artist David Chung’s paintings, drawings and sketches are filled with colorful anthropomorphic characters from sword wielding pandas to rainbow spilling landscapes where skeletal heroes battle fuzzy cute creatures. Drawing from his own experiences and psyche, David’s uses his adorable and hilarious creations to help deal with the everyday stresses of life and as a form of catharsis. We’re excited to feature the work of David and talk about his art, his work as an Art Director at Dreamworks TV, and what new projects he’s got in the works! 

Find out more about David Chung by taking the leap below! 

Photography courtesy of the artist. 

Introduce yourself?   My name is David Chung, but a lot of people might know me as The Chung!! I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the past 11 years now, which technically makes California the longest place I’ve ever lived in my entire life. During the day I work in animation, currently as of this interview, I’m an art director at Dreamworks TV, but at night, I’m my own artist, free to do whatever I want!

How did you get into painting and art as a kid? What kinds of things were you influenced by? I’m not really sure how I got into art as a kid. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. Much like all kids, I’ve always just enjoyed drawing and making art. I realized early on that I could be as weird as I wanted to be in my drawings, and that was a really liberating feeling. Earlier in my childhood I was raised in Hong Kong and Taiwan but my highschool years were spent in Upstate New York, where I graduated from. I pulled a lot of my influences from growing up in Asia and having a Chinese background, but the subjects and humor mostly came from living in the States.

How do you describe your work to folks who’ve never seen it before? I might describe it like watching an animated kids’ movie with a lot of jokes your pervy parents would appreciate.

You have various creatures and characters throughout your work that we love. Storytelling and humor are elements in your works as well. Can you tell us a little about how each piece evolves? What is your general artistic process like? I’ve been finding myself creating new characters based off of new ways I need to deal with my life at the moment. The characters that are in my work are compartmentalized parts of my psyche or emotions. Being able to take the everyday stresses of life and make cute characters go through it in a more harsh and humorous way is a really effective form of catharsis for me. About 90% of the subjects in my work are autobiographical. The humor in my work is just another way for me to prevent myself from ever taking myself too seriously. If I can’t laugh at my own work, then what’s the point.  

Do you have a main protagonist in your work? And who or what is it? How did it come about? It really depends on what I’m going through at the time of my life when I paint my characters. For example, my XiongMao (Panda) character was created during some pretty rough times. He represents my persistent side to survive. Grimothy (the little reaper dude) and Xiaguai (his little chinese demon friend) are my two mischievous daydreamer characters that are all about ditching their responsibilities to have fun adventures. Pouty Pig is the side of me that throws silent tantrums anytime he is unhappy about a certain situation, which apparently is a lot. These are just some of the few recurring characters in my work depending on how I’m feeling. I even have a few recurring antagonists such as the Happy who are pink soulless zombie-like creatures who roam the earth seemingly always happy, but they feed off of people’s energy like vampires. If you ever let them get a whiff that you’re not happy, that’s when they attack. I think we all know people like this. Right?? They’re the worst. I hate them.

What was your last adventure that showed up in one of your work, thematically or just visually? I do these sketches in my Instagram feed called “Procrast-O-Sketches” that usually follow my most current adventures. The overall sketches can be interpreted however you like, but for myself, friends and family in my inner circle, the subject matter is pretty esoteric. 

A pretty straight forward Procrast-O-Sketch is from Sept 21, 2018. We just moved into our new house in the beginning of September, and about 2 weeks after moving in, my 2 year old kept crying that there is a monster living in the house. He keeps saying it’s a shadow man that “kind of looks like Daddy” but sometimes it turns into a dog-like creature. He’ll be playing and being super happy, then all of a sudden he’ll see his shadow man, then will let out a terrified scream, scramble over to myself or his mom and cry that “The man is back!!” We’ve been trying to turn it into a game now by going monster hunting together, which seems to be helping. At least helping him... I’m terrified as shit now.

What is your favorite thing to draw or paint? I love drawing or painting creatures and characters in familiar situations that are way worse than my own.

What are your favorite tools?  Currently, I always have my little Pentalic Traveler Pocket Journal, a kneaded eraser and a good clutch pencil with me just in case I need a quick therapy sketch session to take out any frustrations. I feel like brands and mediums change all the time, but a good ol’ fashioned pencil and a sketchbook are always constant.

What’s a medium you have yet to try and would love to take a stab at? Oh man, there are way too many mediums I’d love to try one day. I would really like to try oils again. I haven’t messed around with oils since I was in college. I also really want to try out ceramics and bronze casting.

Not only do you draw and paint, you also work as an art director and designer at DreamWorks by day? What’s that like and how did you find yourself working for such a cool company? Dreamworks is a pretty awesome company to work for, and I’m not just being paid to say that. They’ve made me sign a contract to say that. But you know, overall it’s pretty awesome because of the people. I love being able to collaborate and riff off of other artists every day. All of whom are working toward the same goal of making the best looking product possible. I’ve been working in the animation industry for about 10+ years now, and over the past decade, I’ve met some really great people who I know I’d work with again and again like I have in the past. So when a lot of those people who felt the same about me ended up at Dreamworks, I was brought on over, and I’m super grateful for it.

How do you balance your work life with your artistic life? Or are they sort of one in the same? It’s actually pretty easy and difficult all at the same time. I deliberately try to separate my work-life from my art-life because what I do after work, is mine and mine alone. This keeps me from taking anything too personally when there are ridiculous amounts of notes and revisions to be made at work. Nothing is personal, and I’m totally okay with that. My job is to provide them with the work that they want. It’s a lot easier to make revisions when I know that as soon as I go home, I can start working on my own personal stuff that nobody can say shit about. 

The hard part is finding the time to have an art-life after work-life. It usually  means eliminating good health. Fortunately passion usually wins out over sleep, but unfortunately, “usually” isn’t always. Typical days at work can last 10-14 hours, and when I get home, I still want to be able to hang out with my wife and kid, which means I won’t even be able to get started on my own stuff til around 12-1am. Especially lately, due to the monster keeping my son up all through the night.

What are you constantly inspired by? And who are some of your early and current art influences? I’m constantly inspired by life and all of the little idiosyncratic behaviors we have. Human life is so interesting even at its most mundane moments. There’s always inspiration to be pulled from who we are. When I was in the second grade, I saw Alien for the first time in my life on TV. It fucked me up. I needed to know what this monster was. Then I found out about H.R. Giger when I got a little bit older. It wasn’t necessarily the style that inspired me, but the way the he created. It seemed like an obsession that he turned into a profession. I didn’t even know being an artist for a living was allowed! Lately I’ve been super digging Travis Millard (IG: @theotherfudge), Alex Solis (IG: @Alexmdc) and I was recently introduced to Kamila Mlynarczyk’s (IG: @Woodedwoods) work which is pure insanity and I love it so much.

What do you do when you are not painting or drawing? Lately it’s trying to spend as much time as I can with my family and soak as much of it up as I can before it slips away. While doing that I’ve been messing around with photography and filmmaking as a hobby. Filming my son doing weird shit is super fun. He makes a great subject.

What advice would you offer to an aspiring artist who might wanna follow in your footsteps? You gotta want to do it. And not just because you think it’s a good way to make money. You have to want to do it because you love it. That’s really where it all begins. Next step is to just go fucking do it.

What’s your best Art School tip that you want to share with folks? Could be technical or just advice. This is a continuation of my previous response, but it’s important, after you “just go fucking do it” expect to fail. Don’t even just expect it, LET yourself fail. As long as you learn something from it and never stop trying, you’re totally allowed to fail all the time!

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t an artist or doing anything art-related? This one is difficult, everything I can think of that I’d possibly be doing is art related. I’ve always wanted to be a fiction writer or a filmmaker, but those can be very creative. The other thing is to start my own business producing products for creative enthusiasts.

What are your favorite style of VANS? Every time I end up buying a new pair of VANS, I always end up getting the Authentic style. You can never go wrong with them!

What’s coming up for you the rest of the year that you’re super excited about? I’m super excited about two new toys that are currently in production with Martian Toys and Wetworks. Also there’s a bunch of new stuff I’m trying to launch on my own that I’ve been pretty excited to work on, I just need to find the time!

FOLLOW DAVID | INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE

[isthisabattleship]

End of the year tag

I was tagged by @thedepartmentofmysteries to do this thing which is very long.

What is the single best thing that happened in the past year?

In August there is an event every year where hundreds of people come to the UK to play super smash brothers melee. Its a tournament but also kinda a festival and it feels like being surrounded by 700 close friends. Its really kinda indescribable.

What is the most challenging thing that happened to you in 2018?

I just like had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or how I would be okay with getting up every day. I’m still not sure I have a long term plan for my life. But at the moment I’m working as a temp at a job that pays very well and has good hours. There is like 0 opportunity for advancement but I’m okay with that. My supervisor wants to make me permanent but is waiting for the bosses to agree. But if it doesnt work out I’ll still have a bunch of cash and I’m quite open to trying new things! woops that was a long rant.

What date from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

17th - 19th of August for the event previously mentioned!

What thing did you learn the most from this year?

That I need to make some decisions about my life but I’m not necessarily equipped to do that.

What is the kindest thing you did this year?

I dont remember doing many kind things but I hope that I did some!

Did you lose any close family members this year?

My great uncle named Reg which I assume is short for Reginald died recently. I didnt know him well but when I was young I delivered newspapers near his house and he would give me sweets!

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope

What did you do in 2018 that you never did before?

I went to Austria and Germany! I lost my passport too! 

Did you keep last year’s resolutions? What were they?

I dont think I made any??

Did you travel to any interesting places in 2018?

Well as I said before I went to Austria and Germany, specifically Vienna and Munich. I also visited a lot of manor houses and gardens because there are a bunch within easy driving distance of my house! My favourite was the Hawk and Owl centre on Exmoor.

Do you believe that 2018 had an occurring theme for you? If so, which theme and why?

Uh I kinda always feel like my life is made of circles. The same kinda stuff happens at the same time every year.

Do you feel like 2018 went by too fast?

Yes and no

Did you fall in love with any new artists during the year 2018? List them.

I started listening to music in German and Italian and also a bit of Latvian because I am learning them. Not all at once though!

My favourite Italian singer is Annalisa, My favourite German one is Christina Stürmer and I dont really have one in Latvian because I havent been spending as much time on that.

What song will always remind you of 2018?

I dont have one! How do people remember things well enough to have songs defining their years?

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

I never remember things like this! So I dont know. I kinda hate these questions a bit.

Brag about your accomplishments in 2018.

Uh my photos of the lake at Stourhead got like 5000 notes. And I have a job now that pays money. Oh and I am much better at understanding German and Italian even though I’m still a bit bad at saying things.

What is the best book you read this past year?

Wyrd Systers by Terry Pratchet. I never liked his books when I was young but now I think they are great and I want to read them all!

What was your favorite movie you watched this year?

Ralph breaks the internet! Partly because I dont remember many of the movies I watched this year.

What was your favourite TV series you watched this year?

Frontier because both Jason Momoa and Katie Mcgrath were in it!

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?

Shirts I like plus jeans that will fit.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Fucking Brexit! Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! If someone doesnt turn this shit around I’m going to go absolutely spare! I have had enough! Its still going on! And its just clearly not a good idea! My money is already worth considerably less and apparently thats not enough of a sign that its fucking stupid! Noone is prepared for it and its just a fucking mess! I really cant stand the politicians in this country.

What was your biggest regret of 2018?

I regret spending so long feeling hopeless. I dont even know how it stopped. It sometimes feels like I could be going back to it.

What was the biggest adventure of last year?

Going to Vienna on my own. I had stayed in a really cool flat and I could do whatever I wanted!

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Reading, studying, seeing friends and enjoying my life.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Nothing. As in like, I wasted so much time. I just want more of my time to be useful and/or enjoyable.

How much did you change this year? What’s different about you?

I dont know! I’m bad at these questions.

If you could go anywhere in the world in 2019, where would you go?

I want to go to Italy because I’m learning Italian but I dont know where I would go specifically.

How will you be spending Christmas?

My family will be at my house most of whom I dont like especially my sister who I cannot stand.

What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?

A plan and dedication and someone who will hug me!

Do you think you’ll be having a better 2019 than 2018?

Signs point to yes!

Fill in the blank: In 2019 I will try to be more alive

I tag: @crazy-pages @newdawnrisingg @gingerinasplit to do this thing if they wanna.

[bogleech]

Ever since I made fun of some of my aunts and uncles I've been asked to go into further detail so here’s the full list:

FATHER’S SIDE:

-One hyper-Christian uncle who married an Indian woman I think he may have converted, or she converted shortly before coming to America. They live in a house full of pet birds and would be cute if they weren’t aggressively anti-LGBT and probably beat the shit out of their kids. I say this because they cried when my mom gave them each one fun-size chocolate bar because they were afraid of their parents finding out. I’ve seen none of them since I was a kid myself but I know they moved out on their own and might be better people than their mom and dad, probably.

-One also hyper-Christian uncle who’s disarmingly smiley and friendly and jokey and “what would JESUS do?” about every possible thing but still agrees with everything his wife tells him to after she spends all day reading breitbart news and Limbaugh. She does not work and is not disabled but feels the poor should “just work harder” and that she’s the one struggling because she “only” lives in a three story townhouse and can “only” take two vacations a year.

-Another hyper-Christian uncle who is just five years older than me, like, we were babysat together at his mom, my grandmom’s house when we were little. Two years ago he blocked me on facebook in an argument about same-sex marriage. Months ago, he came out to his wife and moved out of the house with a boyfriend. The previous two uncles wanted to “kick his ass” for it and it apparently all tore the family apart but I’m glad he’s being true to himself. I’m not including my own parents in all this but my dad was the only one who quickly and easily accepted their littlest brother for this.

-One blood-related aunt who is funny and kind and politically, ethically the polar opposite of the uncles. She plays guitar well enough to have opened for local shows and just has an extensive list of interests and hobbies and is generally fun to listen to. I wish I’d also seen more of her last husband before they separated and I moved, though I hear they are still on good terms and constantly hanging out. He’s a reclusive mathematical genius and looks and acts a lot like how a Hollywood movie would portray exactly that person.

MY MOM’S SIDE:

-The uncle I’ve already talked about who hates cats, hates black people, thinks Dave Chapelle is hilarious because he thinks black people are the butt of the jokes, hoards objects he steals from yards or picks from garbage, stole shit from the rest of his family for decades, lost his (much nicer) wife and kids to the hoarding habit and his sheer obnoxiousness, laughs madly after all of his own sentences and always tried to take my candy when I was little.

-Another uncle, old enough to be my granddad. that lives somewhere in Florida and I have only one memory of from when I was maybe five, which was him speeding up his car while I was in it in order to convince me he was trying to run over a cat.

-Another uncle who works back stage for the Dave Matthews band right now. This whole post is starting to sound fake, isn’t it. Sorry. Anyway this uncle is a  tea party Republican and not allowed to talk about politics at his job anymore. I have nothing else to say about him, not because I don't know any more, but because there isn't anything else that sticks out about him. He is nothing but his highly predictable political views and his love of the music industry.

-An aunt who married purely for money and lived in a gigantic house and avoided us until her son died, not long after she had told him she never wanted him. She never got over the guilt and reinvented herself as a cool fun adventure lover and artist constantly visiting my mom and I to fill the void I guess.

EXTRA LONG story short, my last contact with her was when she had decided she hated us all over an unrelated drama and was trying to frame my mom for a burglary while snail-mailing us threatening cassette tapes. Later she died of a drug overdose and I learned she spent many years murdering neighborhood pets but specifically cats, fuck her.

I don’t know what the flying fuck this family had about cats.

[aphroditeurl]

If I'm doing all the asks then so are you.

>.> fineeee

1. If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?

Play video games, I’m not gonna lie about that. 

2. What’s your favourite piece of clothing you own/owned?

I have a black dress I bought for myself a couple years ago that makes me look like a badass Bond villain. And I look sexy as all hell in it. 

3. What hobby would you get into if time and money weren’t an issue?

I want to make custom dolls idk

4. What would your perfect room look like?

PINK i’m a fucking girly girl

5. How often do you play sports?

Never...I am not into sports. Watching others though is fun

6. What fictional place would you most like to go?

Diagon Alley

7. What job would you be terrible at?

Anything involving math. So I would make an awful accountant.

8. If you could turn any activity into an Olympic sport, what would you have a good chance at winning medal for?

Being sick apparently...nah I’m pretty good at graphic design I think

9. When was the last time you climbed a tree?

I am afraid of heights so never

10. What is the most annoying habit other people have?

loud chewing, I will want to murder you I Promise

11. What job do you think you’d be good at?

Anything with animals, I have a passion for them

12. What skill would you like to master?

A different language. Being bi-lingual would be cool. I hate English. 

13. What would be the most amazing adventure to go on?

Oh fuck I want to travel. Even to places considered “dangerous”. I want to go everywhere, I have A NEED. I’m a sucker for those exploration videos on youtube. 

14. If you had unlimited funds to build a house that you would live in for the rest of your life, what would the finished house look like?

Firstly it would be a beach house because I love water and beaches. Secondly, it’d have at least four bedrooms, maybe six. And a full sized basement. I want it to look Magical As Fuck. For reasons. There will be an aquarium in it.

15. What’s your favourite drink?

Coke. The drink.

16. What state or country do you never want to go back to?

I miss Michigan a lot. I loved it there. 

17. What songs have you completely memorized?

A lot?? too vague

18. What game or movie universe would you most like to live in?

STARDEW VALLEY. Sustainable farming is sexy. 

19. What do you consider to be your best friend?

@sedris-the-meme-king

20. Are you usually early or late?

Early. Like twenty minutes early. Anxiety fuels me.

21. What pets did you have while you were growing up?

A lot of cats, a few dogs, hamsters, and a couple bunnies. I love animals.

22. When people come to you for help, what do they usually want help with?

Relationship advice

23. What takes up too much of your time?

Depression 

24. What do you wish you knew more about?

Space law. Which is weird. The concept of space really scares me but it’s also a little fascinating. 

25. What would be your first question after waking up from being cryogenically frozen for 100 years?

“is my cat ok?”

26. What are some small things that make your day better? 

Getting random texts from ppl. 

27. Who’s your go to band or artist when you cannot decide on something to listen to?

Rihanna or Halsey 

28. What’s the best way to start the day?

By sleeping in a little longer

29. What shows are you into?

Anything that’s paranormal, pretty much anything on TLC, Gordon Ramsey is Good

30. Who has impressed you most with what they’ve accomplished?

@floating-in-the-dark for being a good bean 

31. What age do you wish you could permanently be?

18. That was a fun age dude. 

32. What TV show or movie do you refuse to watch?

13 Reasons Why, Game of Thrones, I’m petty 

33. What would be your ideal way to spent the weekend?

Video games, ice cream, kissing, things of that nature, maybe going to the movies, exploring a haunted abandoned hospital, casual things you know

34. What is something that is considered a luxury, but you don’t think you could live without?

My phone

35. What’s your claim to fame?

Idk what this means???

36. What’s something you like to do the old-fashioned way?

Dating. I’m sort of a cliche geek ok. 

37. What’s your favourite genre of book or movie?

Horror for movie and fantasy for books

38. What have you only recently formed an opinion about?

God phoning. Non-pagans won’t get this. 

39. What’s the best single day on the calendar?

The first of every month because it feels sorta refreshing

40. What are you interested in that most people haven’t heard of?

Sexual education 

that’s a joke but I am also serious

41. How do you relax after a hard day of work?

I watch youtube videos and play some games, or RP

42. What was the best book or series that you’ve ever read?

The Maze Runner. Sorta corny but it was enjoyable. 

43. What’s the farthest you’ve ever been from home?

California. 10/10 would go back. 

44. What is the most heartwarming thing you’ve ever seen?

“I would blink” out of context this makes no sense but it meant a lot to me in context 

45. What is the most annoying question people ask you?

“Are you SURE you’re __ age?” I am small, I sound 12, but yes I promise I AM TWENTY

46. What could you give a 30-minute presentation on with absolutely no preparation?

Harry Potter at any given moment. Esp Draco Malfoy. 

47. What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

Tbh??? Move away to a completely new place that you have no connections in. That sounds crazy stupid but really, it was the best choice I ever made. 

48. Would you rather go hang gliding or whitewater rafting?

Whitewater rafting

49. What’s your dream car?

1967 Thunderbird bitches 

50. What’s worth spending more on to get the best?

Make-up, and bath stuff 

51. What is something that a ton of people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?

Game of Thrones lmao

52. What are you most looking forward to in the next 10 years?

School. I can’t wait to start college in the fall. 

53. Where is the most interesting place you’ve been?

UP Michigan 

54. What’s something you’ve been meaning to try but just haven’t gotten around to it?

There are lot of ways to answer this. 

I want to try a ghost pepper lmao

55. What’s the best thing that happened to you last week?

I started talking to someone really sweet

56. What piece of entertainment do you wish you could erase from your mind so that you could experience for the first time again?

Undertale tbh

57. If all jobs had the same pay and hours, what job would you like to have?

I’d work at a graveyard no joke

58. What amazing thing did you do that no one was around to see?

Absolutely nothing my dudes

59. How different was your life one year ago?

Extremely different and I sorta miss it

60. What quirks do you have?

I wiggle my mouth from side to side when I am in thought, I tend to rub my nose randomly, I walk on the balls of my feet

61. What would you rate 10/10?

@funkypanda

62. What fad or trend do you hope comes back?

I!! Want!! 90s!! Fashion!! Back!!

63. What’s the most interesting piece of art you’ve seen?

anything @floating-in-the-dark has done

64. What kind of art do you enjoy most?

See above answer

65. What do you hope never changes?

Most of my friendships

66. What city would you most like to live in?

Londonnnnn 

67. What movie title best describes your life?

The Boss Baby 

68. What did you decide to do the work you are doing now?

Huh????

69. What’s the best way a person can spend their time?

Being kind to others

70. If you suddenly became a master at woodworking, what would you make?

Some really weird shit dude 

71. Where is the most relaxing place you’ve ever been?

UP Michigan lol

72. What is the luckiest thing that has happened to you?

Meeting my best friend 

73. Where would you rather be from?

Canada 

74. What are some things you’ve had to unlearn?

My temper, some bad habits that were formed from anxiety

75. What are you looking forward to in the coming months?

School, getting a puppy, summer

76. What website do you usually go on when you have time off?

Tumblrr

77. Where would you spend all your time if you could?

Japannnnn or South Korea

78. What is special about the place you grew up?

Everyone was a community. We all supported each other. 

79. What age do you want to live to?

100+ cause I fear death a lot

80. What are you most likely to become famous for?

The Biggest Baby Award

81. What are you absolutely determined to do?

Finish school and become a zoologist cause that’s the dream

82. What is the most impressive thing you know how to do?

I can code and shit????? idk

83. What do you wish you knew more about?

Space law

84. What question would you most like to know the answer to?

“will I ever be successful at anything” 

[swordsandparasols]

A lot of the Strongest Deliveryman commentary is primarily about how Jin Gyu is a tortured sympathetic woobie.  And, I mean, ok, I’m in the minority that prefers Kang Soo to Jin Gyu, but he’s a good character and any problems with him certainly don’t compare to some of the horrors I’ve seen fandom go gaga over.  I do think, however, that there are some interesting things going on with him that’s being lost in that.

 Foremost, and possibly most pertinent to the show, is that Jin Gyu is essentially a study of how there’s no such thing as benign privilege or entitlement.  Jin Gyu, when we meet him, is drowning in both, and only now has lost some of the former, but very little of the latter.  He’s almost devoid of actual malice (we only see some from him in episode 6 when he doesn’t want to free Kang Soo from prison, and even that isn’t near what we’d expect) but is consistently destructive.  The reason for this is that his response to problems is to throw money at them, with disastrous results.  Dan Ah saves his life and he tries to fix it with the promise of money, but because his hubris (and terrible father) catches up with him, he instead leaves her with a debt-mostly caused by his intentions of goodwill-that wipes out the majority of her savings.  

 When he learns that his “entertainment” resulted in a person not being able to receive medical attention in time and ending up in a coma, his reaction isn’t “oh wow I messed up I’m so sorry,” his response is “let me throw money at this so it will go away! My money isn’t making this go away? HOW DARE YOU PERSECUTE ME!”  Had he accepted moral and legal-not simply financial-responsibility when he learned of the result of his actions, things would have gone differently for him.  He would have been disowned by his father either way, but that’s more because his father is a nightmare more than anything else, but if he’d admitted his fault, he most likely would have gotten a slap on the wrist and a fine.  Instead, his refusal to admit fault after his initial exposure leads to a media circus focusing in his rich kid entitlement, he flees arrest, loses the two people who were almost his friends at that point, resists arrest, and ends up penniless, friendless, disowned, disgraced and in jail.  The one time his actions in the first 5 episodes actually had good results was when, instead of throwing his money around, he covered Dan Ah’s job for her when she was hospitalized partly because of him.

 He gets out of jail though someone else exerting a similar privilege and power that is family possesses, but has learned nothing from his experience, still believing himself to be faultless and the true victim of all the events to date.  He knows he wronged Dan Ah but can only see it from a financial standpoint, and truly doesn’t get why her new dislike for him has to do with more than the money she lost because of him, and tries to force her to accept his money, thinking that if she does, he’ll have fixed what he did wrong. Since he isn’t actually a terrible person, he knows he did wrong, but he doesn’t truly understand WHAT he did wrong, so he just assumes that if he throws money at his current problem (having let Dan Ah down) it will fix things and he’ll be redeemed.  It takes two attempts on his life, being confronted by a gang of deliverymen, being hated by literally everyone in his life except maybe the woman who effectively owns him, and a peptalk from a nice old lady for him to actually accept any moral responsibility for his actions and apologize for them.

  The fact that the show doesn’t sugarcoat any of this or play up the sympathy card for him seems to have had a lot of people thinking that he was going to be made a villain, but the idea that he would be a villain never would have occurred to me just from watching the show.  Because he’s also been consistently portrayed as kind and well intentioned, as well as being portrayed sympathetically.  It’s simply that no excuses are made for him.  He isn’t mean, he isn’t malicious, he’s never thrown his family’s wealth or influence around, but he’s also irresponsible and refuses to take responsibility for his actions, relying on money to fix his problems, and believing that he’s been horribly wrong if it doesn’t.  He’s a semi-antagonist who had to hit rockbottom and get a few wakeup calls so that he can redeem himself and slowly work towards redemption.  He’s slowly starting that particular journey, but he still has a long ways to go.  (In particular, that pedestal he keeps trying to put Dan Ah on has got to go.)

 The other front that I think is getting overlooked is also about Ji Yoon, and kdrama character types in general, and the writer of Strongest Deliveryman really likes to go against types. That’s why our male lead is the idealistic  and endlessly nice and forgiving earnest and hardworking poor boy who always forgives his love interest for snapping at him and always rushes forward with god intentions even if he doesn’t have much of a plan, while our female lead is the sarcastic, emotionally closed off and cynical martial artist (who regularly uses her skills, and not in the typical “tee hee isn’t her high kick cute?” way) who is hyper organized and has long term goals and plans.  In the 2000s, the majority of kdramas I watched were sageuks, but when I read about or watched other kdramas, there were certain trends I noticed. So very, very many chaebol sons and heirs as the main and secondary male leads.  If he was responsible and emotionally closed off, he was the lead, if he was less responsible and flirty, he was the secondary lead.  Either way, he was emotionally damaged in some way.  The heroine was often an earnest and hard working poor (or at least, not rich) girl who somehow got entangled with them and healed them with her virtue or some such.  This, IMO, is part of why it’s significant that Dan Ah and Jin Gyu aren’t romantically paired, because their relationship is deliberately antithetical to that trope, and Dan Ah has rightly called him out on trying to force him into it.  Over time, South Korean sentiment changed and it was reflected in kdramas.  Chaebol heir leads faded out a bit.  They’re still around ,but focus shifted from the melodramas of old and in recent years, they’re been more about the working and middle class, lawyers, the media, political corruption, etc.  They’re making a bit of a comeback lately, but recently, the default setting for chaebol sons has been the worthless rich boy who had everything handed to him but is a fairly worthless human being who throws his weight and money around and thinks he’s better than anyone.  Jin Gyu is interesting as a partial combination of the two.  He’s “worthless” in that he has no apparent skills and seems to have been content to spend his life blowing his allowance on cool things but never actual working or making an effort to do something for himself, but he’s also justifiably emotionally damaged.  He throws his money around like it will fix everything and doesn’t think he should be held accountable for his actions, but he lacks the malice the most of his contemporary compatriots have.  He’s partially a deconstruction of one version of the chaebol son, and partially a critique of the other.

 Then there was The Rich Girl.  Hoo boy. While the traditional kdrama love square has never gone away, it’s become considerably more nuanced and varied in recent years.  The love square used to be :#1 probably lower income, virtuous and plucky heroine, #2 most-likely-rich-guy  A WITH ANGST, #3 most-likely-rich-guy B WITH ANGST (but with less money and angst than Rich Guy A), and #4 the bitchy and selfish rich girl.  The bitchy and selfish rich girl usually had A History with Rich Guy A, and would relentlessly chase him throughout the drama no matter how little kindness or attention he paid her, feeling completely entitled to him and convinced that he either loved her and wouldn’t admit it, or WOUld love her if that pesky heroine wasn’t around.  Sometimes she was rich because she was a successful careerwoman, or an athlete or model or some such, but just as often, she was just a spoiled girl who liked being born with a silver spoon in her mouth.  She usually had few, if any, redeeming qualities.  (You might be getting an idea of why it took me a while to widely venture outside of sageuks, given how many popular and easy-to-find-subbed dramas either fell into this formula one way or the other, or ended with everyone dead-and if everyone is dying in my show, there are going to be swords and rebellions and political wars involved.)  If the female lead was a rich girl, she probably needed to be humanized and brought down a few pegs by a less-rich male lead.  There was also frequently what I call, The Gift Bag Scene. In The Gift Bag Scene, the male lead has bought the female lead a gift and it’s on a table or somewhere else very visible.  The rich girl comes in and immediately sees the gift bag and assumes it’s for her for no apparent reason other than that it’s there, so obviously the male lead bought it for her as an apology for his behavior (usually just…not being interested in dating her) and won’t let him get a word in edgewise before she takes off with it.

 Then we have Ji Yoon. The Rich Girl-both protagonist and antagonist-has taken on more varied forms in recent years than the chaebol sons-and otherwise rich guys- and female secondary leads have thankfully become considerably more nuanced and sympathetic in recent years. On the surface, Ji Yoon appears to have many of the qualities of the Rich Girl, but…she isn’t. She’s entitled, hangs all over Kang Soo, has her own version of The Gift Bag Scene, and was obviously pretty spoiled growing up.  However, she’s also kind is determined to go her on way by choice and not by force, and has reasons for the things she does.  Unlike Jin Gyu, Ji Yoon chose to leave her family.  And unlike Jin Gyu, she knows she can go back home if she’s willing to put up with a few “I told you so”-s from her mother.  She set out on her own, failed miserably at it, and is giving it a second go. She hasn’t really learned much about her own entitlement and privilege yet, but she actually chose to go this route herself.  Jin Gyu doesn’t give up because he can’t, Ji Yoon can give up but doesn’t.  She’s aware that her actions seem foolish, but she wants to try to make a living and provide for herself instead of relying on handouts from her parents. She thinks Kang Soo has feelings for her because he’s endlessly nice and tolerant of her antics.  Even when he’s visibly annoyed, he still goes out on a limb for her.  He literally found her starving on the street and gave her food and shelter.  We may find her antics annoying, but we’re given reasons for her actions.  We the audience know that Kang Soo views her as an irritating younger sister, but we don’t have to take illogical leaps to see why she thinks otherwise.  Ji Yoon even has her own version of The Gift Bag Scene, one that seems to be a direct callout to the older version.  In her version, Kang Soo did not actually wrong her, but he was inconsiderate to a degree, and the bag wasn’t a gift to someone else, but a gift given to him as a result of a subplot that’s one of the show’s truly weak points.  Unlike the Rich Girls of the past, Ji Yoon seems to be perfectly aware that the bag isn’t for her, she’s just milking Kang Soo’s guilt for all it’s worth, and even directly calls out the trope, coyly challenging her to tell him that it isn’t really a gift for her.  (Kang Soo’s downfall: strong willed women who are well aware that he’s a sweet pushover.)

 All the above is why the scene in episode 6 where Jin Gyu and Ji Yoon are selling off her designer bags because she has to move to a more expensive apartment and end up making less than half of what she originally expected to make.  The scene is played for laughs because they were both drowning in rich people guilt, but they’ve both come a fair bit from where they started just by having that guilt.  Jin Gyu at the beginning probably would have given the bags away, but not because the sob stories made him realize how much better he still had it, but because he couldn’t be bothered and didn’t need the money or want the annoyance.  Ji Yoon is still a mercenary little thing, but she was a more hardcore mercenary little thing at the beginning, with little concept or interest in money beyond how it benefited her.  This is the girl who, barely having escaped homelessness and starvation, threw her lunch at a guy for annoying her, but also snuck back into her parent’s house to get all her nice things once she had someone else’s roof over her head.  

 As characters, Jin Gyu and Ji Yoon are both headed to roughly the same place.  Ji Yoon is going there a bit faster because she deliberately put herself on the path, even if she hasn’t learned as the moral or realistic economic implications of the path, but she also has the security of going home if she decides to leave it.  Jin Gyu has a slower and harsher journey down that path because he was literally forced on it, but will probably end up more committed to it because he doesn’t have that out.  Both have recognizable roots in the rich leads of the past, but have come a long, long way from those roots.

[recentanimenews]

Carole & Tuesday – 06 – Kicked Up to the Big Stage

Right off the heels of their first sparsely attended gig, Gus has a second one for them, courtesy of Hofner (through Beth). They’ll be backing up Omega—and their notoriously flaky drunk frontman—at Cydonia, one of if not the biggest concert on Mars. They’ll be playing to one hundred thousand fans who wanted to hear Omega. The prospect of all those hostile people “breaks” Tuesday.

Oh yeah, the show’s tomorrow, so they have to spend part of the night and the train ride there writing and practicing a song. Everything about this gig is already ridiculously implausible…and I’m not talking about them being on Mars! Even with the explanation that no other band would bother if there’s a chance Joshua will play, it makes no sense for Hofner to not already have a list of professional bands eager for their shot backing up Omega.

But whatever, Carole and Tuesday are super-lucky! Fine. And the place is pretty cool; we finally get a good look at Mars’ rolling red hills and valleys, and Cydonia looks kinda like a Burning Man-style oasis in that wasteland.

Carole and Tuesday have some time before they go on, so they soak it all in, including, hopefully, some of one of their favorite singer Crystal’s air. Meanwhile Roddy does his job as DJ Ertegun’s AI operator, and Ertegun plays the same track we’ve heard to a delirious crowd.

That crowd’s reaction is somewhat outsized for what sounds like someone hitting a 2003 Casio keyboard’s DEMO key, but again, whatever.

Joshua arrives, and there’s a funny sight gag where he seemingly steps surefootedly out of the car, only to crumple into a human slinky; dude is tossed, which means C&T are most likely on. Panicking in their trailer, they eventually go outside, only to run into Roddy and Ertegun.

They run and hide—because he can’t press charges if he can’t catch them, I guess?—and end up in the smoke-filled trailer of “Skip”, who is very spooky and threatening at first, but gives them the most uninspiring inspirational speech before going on stage and performing what was actually the best piece of music in the episode, but which was still pretty bland, with lyrics that might be forgivable if written by a middle schooler.

When Joshua can’t take the stage due to some kind of “Beetle” problem (or is it “Beatle”?), C&T take the stage for him, with the reception you’d expect from people who paid good money to see Omega, not two amateurs with one official gig under their belts.

If I’m sounding overly harsh about this episode, it’s because this episode was harsh. Also, because the show believes C&T to be some kind of generational world-changing talent. But I’ve reached my limit.

Here’s the thing: the “Dancing Laundry” is vapid trash. I wouldn’t throw trash at them if they played it at a concert I attended—that would be despicable—but I would probably walk away to buy some beer or get in line for the toilets…anything to get away from that.

But here’s another thing: C&T actually are good by the standards of music in this world. Ertegun is a hack, Skip is inskipid, and the less said about Omega, the better. The duo still took the stage, played as hard as they good, and endured the abuse of the crowd until Omega took over.

I just couldn’t feel that bad for Tuesday crying afterwards, because from my ears they did nothing to turn that crowd around, and as unfairly impossible as a feat as that might have been, if C&T are as good as everyone says, then why not have them win that crowd over? They like all the other crap we had to listen to!

The last nail in the coffin of this stinker of an episode is Crystal, who to her credit seems like a nice lady, comforting the duo and giving them kudos for persevering in front of such a hateful crowd. But even the mega pop star can’t help but sing lyrics that sound like they were generated by a computer algorithm…a bad one.

Carole & Tuesday draws you in with its lush and intricate setting, warm, likable protagonists, and game supporting cast. But then somebody starts singing and you have to turn down the volume and hope it stops soon, and all the show’s goodwill is spent. It’s a big problem. In the future, on Mars, music is apparently terrible.

Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo featured good music from real artists, and neither of those Watanabe shows were even about music! How could the ball have been dropped so badly here? MAL doesn’t even list anyone on the staff as responsible for music. Maybe computers really did make it…

By: sesameacrylic

[perhapsthevision]

ok I don’t think there are any security questions in here so why not

Tagged by my sister @prodigaldaughteralice​. Also, tumblr is bizarrely laggy so now I'm typing long posts in a text editor like it's 2005...

1. Coke or Pepsi: I don't actually dislike cola any more, but I also don't drink it enough to have an opinion or be able to tell the difference.  Anyway, I'm white so I can hand anything to a cop and be okay :p

2. Disney or Dreamworks: I can't tell if Dreamworks actually hasn't made anything good lately, or if knocking Dreamworks has just become a meme.  But their old stuff was good.  Disney always makes a few really good things, and then a lot of dreck.  But I kind of resent them from keeping anything from passing into the public domain, as long as their lawyers have money.

3. Coffee or Tea: I probably drink more coffee per day, but tea is the one I have opinions about.  I drink coffee with a lot of milk and am just looking for something that doesn't taste nasty; tea we keep a lot of varieties of and pick based on how we're feeling.

4. Books or Movies:  In the abstract I tend to prefer books, but I enjoy both.  

5. Windows or Mac: I typically prefer Apple stuff and my primary computer will probably always be a Mac.  But it is one of my someday goals to build a PC to act as a media/game center.  

6. DC or Marvel: I'm not that invested but I think there's more Marvel stuff I like.

7. X-box or Playstation: I've always had Playstation consoles but I have nothing in particular against the XBox line that I know of.

8. Dragon Age or Mass Effect: I stopped playing DA:I when I learned Cassandra was straight and I've never had access to the ME line of games.  But I'd still give this to ME since my partner loves them and he's showed me hilarious stuff from them.  

9. Night Owl or Early Riser: I really enjoy being up late, sleeping, and being up early, so I think my chronotype is officially "gets all her sleep in a time machine".  But when I was really little I was a super early riser and I wouldn't be surprised if my body eventually shifts back toward that.

10. Cards or Chess: There's a running joke about me hating chess but I'm not that into card games either.  

11. Chocolate or Vanilla: Chocolate for most purposes but my test of an ice cream brand is whether or not they can make a really good cream or vanilla.

12. Vans or Converse: I haven't really found either to be supportive enough for me to wear.

13. Lavallan, Trevelyan, Cadash, or Adaar: Apparently this is a DA thing?

14. Fluff or Angst:  I don't really like either if it's just that and no plot.  But I guess I'd go with fluff because lately I don't like even very good media that are just All About Pain.    

15. Beach or Forest: Forest, but the beach can be beautiful too.

16. Dogs or Cats: I prefer cats but dogs are pretty great.  If I had a giant house with a big yard I'd give my cat his own personal army of large dogs to ride into battle.

17. Clear Skies or Rain:  I've lived somewhere really rainy for eight years and I loved it, especially since I'm light sensitive and sunburn super easily, but lately I've been really into clear skies for weird psychological reasons.  (OK, not that weird: someone I care about a lot passed away and then we kept having storms and rain.)

18. Cooking or Eating Out: I make the majority of the food we eat, and lately I've been trying to spend more of our food budget on good food to cook and less on going out to eat, but there's a great food scene here so I really do enjoy going to restaurants and food carts.  

19. Spicy Food or Mild:  I like it when the person at the spice store is like "it scares me that you're buying this"

20. Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: Christmas is my favorite holiday.  My family tends to come together and most of us have time off from work to spend together, and then we get to both give and receive presents, and the cookies are good.  Kids don't come by where I live and I was never into Halloween parties, so Halloween kind of fell off after I got too old to trick or treat myself.

21. Little too cold or little too hot: Little too cold -- but lots too hot.

22. Superpower: There are others that would do more good in the world but for myself, flight or time travel.

23. Animation or Live Action: There are a lot more live action things than animated things, so it seems unfair to compare them.

24. Paragon or Renegade: Like I said I haven't played ME so I never had to pick.  In general, I usually want to play evil as amoral/practical, and way too many games instead present save puppies vs kick puppies, which pisses me off.  Also, when it seems like you're picking good for less reward vs evil for more, but you KNOW that good gives you a better reward down the line, it really saps the meaningfullness of the choice.

25. Bath or Showers: On a daily basis showers are way more practical.  I do like a nice bath now and then especially if my muscles are achy, but our tub isn't really deep enough to get comfortable.  Also I get bored in the bath and have to listen to music or something.  

26. Team Cap or Team Ironman: No, you move!  Which is weird because I otherwise find Iron Man a way more interesting character.

27. Fantasy or Sci-Fi: Lately I've been picking up more sci fi but I don't have a hard preference.

28. Fav Quotes: I could make a post at least this long with random quotes I like.  

29. Youtube or Netflix: They fill pretty different roles though I know YouTube is trying to get into the business of movies/tv and original content.  

30. Harry Potter or Percy Jackson: Harry Potter was a generational thing, Percy Jackson came out after I was too old for it.  

31. When I Feel Accomplished: When something works out, particularly if I get praise for something I've been trying very hard to do.  Lately I got praise for my coding style and was told that I'm personable and easy to work with, and both of those made me really happy because I've been putting particular effort into them.  

32. Star Wars or Star Trek: There's a special place in my heart for the original SW trilogy but there's much more of the Star Trek verse that I'm into.  

33. Paperback Books or Hardback: I usually buy paperbacks because they're cheaper and easier to carry around, but really beautiful hardbacks are cool as art objects, and more durable.

34. A world without literature or music: Would probably mean some fundamental change in the psychology of humans.  Even dictatorships tend to have state-produced art to use to control the people.  I don't think it's sustainable to have humans and not have some of them trying to make art.  

35. Who was the last person to make me laugh: My cat being cute.  Are you gonna tell him he's not a person?

36. Sour or Sweet Candy:  Sweet, I've never gotten the point of sour candies.

37. Believe in aliens?: There is probably some form of life somewhere but I have no reason to believe it's interacted with or been exposed to us.

38. Dawn or Dusk: Probably dawn, but I see a lot more of dusk.

39. Piercings or Tattoos:  I see more people with a lot of tattoos that I think look good, than people with a lot of piercings that I think look good, but that is my personal aesthetics and obviously nobody made that choice to appeal to me.  I have pierced ears and want to get a (particular) tattoo on either my wrist or ankle someday but it keeps getting pushed down the priority list.

40. Girls? Hot?: Is this a choice or a song reference or ...?

41. Snow or Fog: I have a thing about snow because snow shut my city down repeatedly over the winter to a downright embarrassing extent and it probably accelerated the wear on my car.  In a city with decent infrastructure I'd dig snow.  Fog is pretty until you have to drive in it.

42. Sleep facing the wall or room: I share a bed so I always sleep facing the outside of the bed, I don't care which side I'm on.

43. TRC of AFTG: All Google tells me is this is some series I've never heard of

44. Horror or Drama: In terms of movie classifications, drama.  But again it's much broader.

45. Orcarina of Time or Majora’s Mask: I haven't played either, the only Nintendo products I ever had were DSes

46. Living in nature or city: I think about this a lot, nature appeals to me but I can't actually handle living in a remote area.  

47. Any addictions: TBH this is a weird question to put on a lighthearted quiz, like it's written only expecting caffeine and "lol this fandom pairing" answers but it's actually very personal information?  

48. Languages:  English natively.  Still pretty good at Japanese though I'm a bit shy about actually using it any more.  I can passively understand some Mandarin but I don't tend to speak it myself because I probably couldn't keep up with a conversation.  (Though I feel like a donk because people speak Mandarin around me a lot and I feel like they should know I understand like 60% of their conversation?)  French and Latin didn't really stick at all.  I can discuss who's making the coffee/tea in Korean and I'm trying to learn more, it's a goal of mine to get in a real class when I'm out of grad school.

49. What music do I listen to: I draw from a bunch of different genres, the core ones are probably indie rock, k-pop, and electronic. Then I tend to be picky about which artists I actually like.  Since I got a streaming account I've been enjoying trying out a lot of new stuff.

50. Fav mythical creature: uh do mindflayers count?

51. Safe zone: My apartment I guess?  That's where I can change into sweatpants and not feel self-conscious so let's go with that.

52. First fandom: I think it was Utena.  That was definitely the first one I was really into and old enough for the internet for.

53. Cartoons or Adult Shows: No matter how you define cartoons there's way more "adult shows" than that, unless maybe you mean "adult" shows, in which case this question gets even odder.

54. Current music: Dishwasher Noises by My Old Tiny Dishwasher.  It's an ambient classic AND gets most of the dishes mostly clean.

55. Favorite starter?: I'd better go with the one in my car so it doesn't get offended and act up.  (Litten though.)

56.  What would your witch’s familiar be? Maybe my cat, or maybe a floating land octopus.  Or a hawk.  But that might eat other people's familiars.