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doshiart · 3 months

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F1 AU // GALLAVICH

Ian Gallagher is a racing driver, a young star of the McLaren team. Mickey is just a car technician, who only recently joined the team as a trainee.

/long read backstory below/

Okay, I've thought about this a lot. So.. Shameless US but.. huh? living in UK?

First of all, because Formula 1 is more popular in Europe. Secondly, because I want to alter the story of Mickey's growing up. Make it a story about a little boy persevering towards his dreams. And how a simple childhood passion can grow into a potential job opportunity.

If briefly, below I talk about Mickey's developmental stages, along with his final emigration from Ukraine to the UK.

I'm not going into Ian's backstory here. But I'll mention this in more detail at the very end of the post, if you get to the end. Ha ha. Have fun reading!!

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Mickey was six, just a little boy, when he first saw a F1 race on TV. And he was amazed by how quickly the cars could go and how quickly the mechanics performed at pit stops. (Are these even mechanics? Well, they turn the wheels, dad does the same thing in the garage and considers himself a mechanic).

When the next year he went to school in his first grade, then to all the teachers' questions or questionnaires with their “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he confidently answered as clearly as his childish language could, that he would definitely become a F1 mechanic. Even though he received only gentle smiles in reaction to his naivety of being a kid, the desire took root in his little head.

---

As he grew older, he continued to enjoy racing, watching every race weekend he could. And while he was a child this did not cause any particular problems. Mom encouraged him in his interests and every New Year gave him tiny branded cars of the teams he loved. But as he gets older, the more often he hears from dad that he is interested in some stupid things. And he didn't want to hear a word about racing at all. As soon as Mickey mentioned it even once, he was cut off mid-sentence.

These are not real cars.

Real mechanics work in a garage with real cars, not kids' toys for show.

Come down to earth. It’s all somewhere far away and you never even get to one of these races in your life.

---

Well, Mickey talks less about racing out loud anymore. Especially after mom's gone.

Tiny model cars disappeared into the closet's darkness.

His dad began to drag him into their garage more often so that he would get used to work and not wander around idle, lost in his stupid dreams. He had to skip live racing broadcasts as a result. It was sort of suicidal acts to turn this on in the garage on a small TV instead of some dumb music channel with hit songs. Mickey had learnt long ago to keep his mouth shut.

Just listen. Bring it. Grab it. Repair simple details. Don't go under the hood. Don't touch this, don't touch that. And especially don't break anything. Blah blah blah.

Jesus, are you even a man? Take your gentle hands away if you're not ready to get dirty.

---

Despite everything, Mickey still had a dream. One day, he hopes to watch a real-life race. Hear the noise of wheels flying over the track, the roar of engines, the screams of a supportive crowd. He prefers to never talk about his own desire to work as a car mechanic or engineer in F1.

---

Mickey was sixteen when he left after ninth grade for a vocational college to applied mechanics specialty.

Because, well, he had good reasons for leaving school two grades early. At the very least, he was already tired of going to school. He didn't even have any friends there. Yes, he communicated with classmates, but that's not it. It's forced. Just so as not to be an outcast and maintain the status of the Milkovich family by playing dirty tricks at school and bullying others. Did he like it? Absolutely not. These guys were idiots with stupid jokes and always picking on chicks.

They kept asking if he liked any of them and talking about how they looked all the time. Mickey never liked anyone. It wasn't that the girls were ugly, he just didn't find them attractive. But he pushed these thoughts away and ignored them. Left it somewhere near to the tiny race cars in the darkness.

Also, classmates called him into fights on regularly. Not that he was against kicking someone's dumb ass, but that he would prefer better reasons than just trying to prove whose class is above.

Another reason is that, in their family, working with their hands and having a real profession are more valued than going to higher education. Because this is a job for real men. Where will all these managers, lawyers, accountants, stupid psychologists be when their car breaks down? Mechanics will always have work and profit.

As well, Mickey is deeply curious about the workings of the engine and wants to fully understand its mechanisms. He will therefore be able to study this in practice with teachers, rather than with a psychotic bastard who screams at the slightest opportunity.

The only thing Mickey truly wanted to learn at school was English. Not because he loved it. This gave him at least some hope of "breaking abroad for the sake of a good life". Perhaps the main reason for his success was that he had a really great teacher who pushed and encouraged him. Sometimes he would stick around after class and stay just to talk with her. Mickey felt parental care, which he hasn't received lately.

“I believe that you can achieve a lot, Mikhailo. Just believe in yourself.” She told him and he believed her, hugging her a little longer so as not to show his wet eyes.

And well, after leaving school, these words sometimes came to mind during the saddest times, when he returned home after a long day of school combined with an exhausting shift in the family garage. Every time he spoke with his dad, he felt terribly devastated. The dream was literally slipping out from Mickey's hands. A pipe dream, is that what they say? Well, at least he'll try to do something.

---

Mickey was twenty when he graduated and by this time he was actively saving money, hiding it in different places. Also, he planned his escape from home, considered the best routes, and looked at what things he should take with him, confused about whether he would ever return home again.

As he approached his twenty-first birthday, he finally decided to do it. With only a spark of hope, he was ready to leave for nowhere. And okay, Mickey was a realist; he was aware that things might not work out at all and that he would have to return back eventually. But he'll do anything, though, to make sure that this doesn't happen, to avoid having to meet his dad's derisive gaze once more as his goal gets mocked.

After all, a dream is a dream, right? He also had skills and language abilities in his pocket. So he's really ready to do anything to attain even the tiniest success.

---

To get to UK, Mickey had to go through a long journey of transfers from bus to train, from train to plane. He's terribly tired, but here he is. He stands and watches as the new country greets him with heavy rain.

He first found it difficult to adjust to other people's smiling faces. There were a few times when he didn't feel at home because everyone was so friendly and lovely. And these people were incredibly talkative. He'll have to get used to this if he plans to stay here.

The first difficulties he encountered occurred at the department while filling out a form for migrants.

“Mik.. Mikai.. Mikaelo?”

“Mikhailo.” Mickey interrupted.

The employee's eyes stared blankly at him.

He sighed. “Ugh.. Mickey? Yeah, Mickey.”

“Okay, Mickey. Here you are.”

---

Mickey got a job as a mechanic for a small business fairly quickly thanks to his abilities. He was so easily and warmly accepted into the friendly team. Here he first felt respect while working. Mickey got assistance from the job department in extending his visa to stay in the country. His job also provided him with a tiny apartment, deducted from his paycheck.

After a while, feeling a little more self-assured, Mickey started saving money for qualifying courses that would help him in the future.

---

Mickey was almost twenty-four when he successfully obtained all the qualifications that were necessary for the job, as well as to be sure of himself and his knowledge. During this time two full racing seasons had passed. He attended only one race at Silverstone. This was his almost full year in the UK. His skin broke out in goosebumps when he saw the track in person. It wasn't quite what he expected. Mickey literally stood in one place and once in a while cars would drive by. On TV they show a larger overview, but still. He was excited. In this grand prix, a new young racer from the McLaren team took third place for the first time. His name seems to be Ian, and he likes to take risks on the track, driving the car while presenting a strong sense of confidence. And his hair perfectly matches with the team's car.

He missed the second race due to a qualifying exam. But he's not upset. Mickey is closer than ever to his dream. If everything works out, he'll see even more racing. If not, well, then he'll continue to work repairing regular cars. Perhaps he'll be able to attend grand prix events in other countries during his holidays?

But now it's the middle of the season and he's standing in the lobby of the McLaren Technology Center. He's trembling a little and his wild eyes are scanning everything in the immediate area.

Mickey can't believe the reality of what's happening. No he didn't become a mechanic. But.. it's still impressive. He was interviewed and tested to become a temporary vehicle technician for the team as an intern. He was told something about a possible career advancement and access to other things once he completed more qualifications, but he's not sure he heard everything correctly.

Later they tested him on team tests on the track. He's surprised that he was able to concentrate on his speed and did everything exactly as needed.

He actually became… exactly the one who changes the wheels and does minor repairs. He joined the technical team and will also work on pit stops during the races. And well, okay, if everything that's happening isn't a dream, he's really happy. Extremely happy. Of course, the longer he studied, the more he wanted to do engineering and development. But that's the tiny step, right? This is already more than anything he could have imagined. He saw the race in real life from the stands, and now he got the opportunity to see everything from the staff. He'll interact directly with the racing car. He might even hear how the team interacts with racers. Unbelievable.

Through the noise in his ears, Mickey hears someone standing beside him talking in a muffled voice.

“Hey! You're a new technician, right?”

The guy had already taken off his helmet when Mickey turned around. He softly smiles while stroking his fiery red hair.

Mickey stared at him. When he was brought to the track, he thought that some tester was sitting in the car, but not their young star.

“Yeah. Hope so…” He twitched his lip and scratched nose. “You're Ian, right?”

Of course this is Ian, what a stupid question. It's too embarrassing.

The redhead smile became even larger.

“Yeah…”

And just as he was about to add something else, one of the staff called Ian to go back and he hurriedly turned to Mickey and said quickly, “Oh, uh, see ya later then, gotta go.”

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

I'm glad I finally wrote and drew this. This idea has literally taken over my head so much that I don't have the energy to write Ian's backstory in the same way. Once again I am convinced that writing is hard work. And I want to say again about my love for writers. YOU ARE INCREDIBLE. For my brain, drawing is easier than writing. But it was fun!

!!!AND!!! THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! If someone suddenly wants to write a big multi-chap slowburn fic or little drabble or do anything, I'll be happy so much with absolutely anything!!

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Let's talk about Ian now. I was actually going to write a backstory for him too. Maybe at least some minor notes, but I'm not quite sure how best to connect his bipolar with racing. Usually because racers drive go-karts from childhood, get into the junior league and generally build a racing career for years. Maybe he had a breakdown somewhere between seasons and it was quickly noticed?? I don’t know… And I think about how the team constantly checks him, which at times upsets him and forces him to prove to everyone that he is fine and able to drive the car.

Most likely, in this AU, Gallaghers are either rich, or Ian has a sponsor, if you know what I mean… From this fact, a whole lot can change in story. And the second thing seems more likely to me.

I was thinking about how Ian joined the McLaren team at the age of 21, and by the time he first met Mickey he was 22. He had been stable for a long time on medication.

So I'm also considering the possibility that somewhere between his 17-19 years he disappeared from the radar and came back when he found a sponsor who could pay for everything he needed and help him get into the F1 league. At first it was the weakest team, until his potential was noticed and he was offered to move to another team. This fact with the sponsor will probably put a lot of spokes in the wheels (ha).

Racer's body is undergoing an enormous physical strain, so they spend a lot of time in the gym. And Ian really enjoys working out with his team.

Another interesting fact: racers have a super-strong neck to be able to cope with gravitational forces during the race. Therefore, special attention is paid to neck in training. (It seems from the moment I found out this my little fixation began…)

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

I think there's a lot of pining here or something. They seem to be nearby, but due to different job responsibilities, at completely distinct levels. And I really want to read something like this with so slow burning.

So, I guess you can consider this as a big prompt for writing, if it inspires you.

Thanks for reading! <3

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gallifreyanhotfive · 2 months

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Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 41

Adric missed K9 and would write him letters. (Short story: A Boy's Tale)

Tegan missed Nyssa a lot and felt as though Turlough had a bond with the Doctor that she wasn't company to. (Short story: Qualia)

Early Gallifreyans worshipped one of their two moons (Pazithi Gallifreya) as a virgin goddess. (Novel: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)

After Inquisitor Darkel dismissed the Sixth Doctor's charges from The Trial of a Time Lord, she had to go lie down in a dark room for a while because he and the Valeyard were too much for her. (Short story: The Inquisitor)

There are roughly one million versions of Clara Oswald according to the Encyclopaedia Gallifreya. (Short story: Citation Needed)

The Master tried to interfere with the Fifth Doctor’s regeneration into his Sixth, but the Doctor had psychically called out to his former companions (Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, etc etc), who convinced him to ignore the Master and helped him regenerate. (Audio: Winter; Television: The Caves of Androzani)

The Doctor keeps a copy of Every Gallifreyan Child's Pop-Up Book of Nasty Creatures From Other Dimensions in the TARDIS library. It pops up in four dimensions. (Novel: All-Consuming Fire)

The Fifth Doctor talked so much about River Song after meeting and becoming absolutely enamored with her that Tegan pushed him against the wall and demanded that he stop. (Audio: Expiry Dating)

The Seventh Doctor met Katarina as a young girl. He gave her family enough gold to feed them for a year. (Short story: An Unfulfilled Dream)

In 1969, a journalist named Chrissie Allen did an article on Amelia Williams. Amy told her she wanted to write a story about a young girl lost in New York City, who is scared but will use her magic powers to take on the world. She was very confident when she said the girl was really out there in New York. (Short story: The Girl Who Never Grew Up)

The Eye of Harmony located in the TARDIS is only symbolic of the real Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey. (Novel: The Eight Doctors)

If someone accesses the Eye of Harmony without the Rod, Sash, or Great Key of Rassilon, they will be turned inside out and killed. (Audio: Insurgency)

A young Magnus, who would one day become the War Chief, once tried to drain Artron energy out of a sphere retrieved from the time vortex. He was opposed by the First Doctor, referred to as "Thete," who set the energy free after discovering it was alive. This was considered to be their "falling out" moment. (Comic: Flashback)

The Fifth Doctor has tried to sacrifice himself so often that Nyssa can recognize his blank face as an I'm-about-to-sacrifice-myself face. (Audio: The Darkening Eye)

Each incarnation of the Doctor thinks that they make their own identity, but in reality, the TARDIS knows that their travels are never "accidental." For example, she could have easily returned to 1960s London when the First Doctor was trying to drop off Barbara and Ian, but she said she thought it was more important that he have fun and learn from his human companions who the Doctor actually was. (Short story: What the TARDIS thought of "Time Lord Victorious")

The Doctor's TARDIS bedroom (at least at the time of his Fifth incarnation) had an original Jackson Pollock on the door. It had a four poster bed with awnings, silk sheets, and a toy rabbit. The Fifth Doctor would hang his coat up with a Mickey Mouse hanger and sleep in question mark patterned pajamas. (Novel: Divided Loyalties)

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novelmonger · 3 months

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Some highlights from the Director/Writer Commentary of The Return of the King with Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh:

As they mentioned in TTT, they were originally going to put the Smeagol vs. Deagol fight as a flashback during the Dead Marshes. Before they decided to use it to open RotK, their placeholder idea for a scene to open RotK was to do a sped-up helicopter shot from the Paths of the Dead, across the plains of Edoras, to the Golden Hall where Aragorn wakes up from a nightmare (and then goes and talks to Eowyn). Very glad they went the direction they did!

In the final shot they used when Smeagol takes the Ring out of Deagol's hand, the actor playing Deagol actually blinked, but they liked Andy Serkis' performance so much, they had Weta go in and freeze Deagol's eyes so they could use the shot XD

You know, I forget sometimes that they didn't even have Saruman in the theatrical cut at all. Boggles the mind.

In the scene where Aragorn comes out of the Golden Hall and goes to stand next to Legolas, who's looking out at the night...Viggo and Orlando weren't in the country at the same time, so they shot them separately and then put them together @_@

You know, I never thought about this before, but when Gandalf touches Pippin's face, they had to make sure his hands looked extra big! So they used an actor called Big Paul, who had the biggest hands they could find, and Ian McKellen directed him for how to move his hands in the shot XD And Big Paul is the Rohan guard who gets shoved aside when Merry and Aragorn rush up to the top of the wall to watch Gandalf and Pippin leave!

THEY SHOT A SCENE OF LEGOLAS TALKING TO TREEBEARD ABOUT THE ELVES LEAVING MIDDLE-EARTH?!?!?!?!?!?! :O Originally, it was going to link the Isengard scenes to the scene of Arwen and the other Rivendell Elves going through the forest, but then because of all the Edoras stuff in between, the connection was lost. They also said something about Legolas reciting a poem! And joked again about putting it into the 25th anniversary edition. THAT TIME IS COMING UP, PETER JACKSON!!!! I WANNA SEE THIS SCENE!!!!!!

a;lkdsjs;kdfljds;fjl NOW THEY'RE JUST TEASING US. They talked about a "library scene" during the whole sequence where Arwen goes back to Rivendell and confronts Elrond about how he saw her son, etc. They wouldn't say what happened in the "library scene," but talked about how they should include that in the 25th anniversary edition too. a;ldkfjs;dkfljsd;kfljdslfk

The people on set who had a crush on Sean Bean were called "Beanstalkers"! XD That's the best; every fan to this day ought to call themselves that!

Similarly to the scene with Legolas and Aragorn, the little bit with Legolas and Gimli as everyone's getting ready to leave Edoras was filmed separately because Orlando and John weren't in the country at the same time. So they filmed Legolas' shots with Brett, John's scale double, then filmed John's shots later, filming both of them against greenscreen. Then they took some unused footage from the Edoras set and put it in the background. It just boggles my mind how many of these cobbled-together scenes there are, because it feels so much like all the characters are together in the real location!

RED ALERT RED ALERT THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!! They mentioned Beregond!!!! 8D When talking about why they put in the scene where Pippin and Faramir talk (when Faramir says the uniform Pippin's wearing was made for him when he was a child), in order to forge the connection between them that will ultimately lead to Pippin saving Faramir's life, they talked briefly about Beregond! They describe him taking Pippin under his wing, showing him about the city, and called the relationship between them "quite sweet" :3

Another little connection between Pippin and Faramir I don't think I've ever thought about before, that apparently Billy Boyd thought about when doing these scenes, is that Pippin is the only son of the Thain of the Shire, so there may have been a certain amount of pressure and expectation on him. Obviously, he's so young and probably didn't spend too much time worrying about that while scampering about the Shire, but maybe that's something he thinks about while watching the way Faramir and Denethor interact. Maybe a contrast to the way he would interact with his own father, maybe a reminder of the way he would be scolded? Hard to say, but it's interesting to think about.

Uuuuuuughghghg, so frustrating to listen to them talking about the scene on the steps where Frodo sends Sam away DX No matter how many times and how many different ways they explain why they did it, the explanations never quite make sense to me. "We needed there to be more tension." WHY WAS IT NOT TENSE ENOUGH THAT THEY WERE GOING INTO THE LAIR OF A HUGE EVIL SPIDER?! "There wasn't really anything happening on the steps otherwise." YEAH, BECAUSE YOU PUT THE WHOLE CONVERSATION ABOUT STORIES IN THE PREVIOUS MOVIE! Also, why not just cut from one or two shots of them climbing this awful staircase to a shot of them entering the cave? "There needed to be a payoff for Gollum's scheming." WHY WAS GOLLUM BETRAYING THEM TO SHELOB NOT ENOUGH OF A PAYOFF?! "We knew InStInCtIvElY that Frodo needed to enter the cave alone." WHY? WHY?! I've never understood that. They get separated eventually in the book, so why not just ramp up the tension of that in the movie, instead of making the characters so OOC? "We knew it would shock readers of the book, and if we'd changed that, what else might we have changed?" You know...I really, really love these movies, and I appreciate what these three were able to accomplish so much...but sometimes I kind of hate them too -_-

The horses didn't want to walk down the hill on the cobbled streets of Minas Tirith, because their steel shoes were so slippery on the stones. So they all had to be re-shod with rubber shoes. What were horseshoes made of back in ye olden days, though? Iron? Did people run into the same problems back then?

I never really noticed this before, but Aragorn never wears Anduril on his belt! He straps it to his horse, and every time you see him with it, he's just holding the naked blade. This is because they made Anduril so long it was really hard for him to wear it from his belt or to pull it out of the scabbard in a natural way XD

The aerial shot of all the Rohirrim leaving Dunharrow was originally shot to show Gandalf's cart heading into the Shire, but since they didn't use it for that, they repurposed it for RotK!

To get Elijah Wood to foam at the mouth when he's stung by Shelob, they gave him two Alka-Seltzer tablets to put in his mouth and work up some foam with his saliva. I've always wondered how they do that sort of thing in movies, but no one's bothered to explain until now....

Sean Astin's audition scene was holding Frodo after Shelob ;A; Apparently, they (or at least Philippa Boyens) were a little skeptical that an American actor would be able to do Sam's character right, but actually a lot of the English actors who auditioned for the role had a hard time with the Shelob aftermath scene, but Sean nailed it :')

Other than the close-ups, they used a dummy for Faramir on the pyre most of the time. Now I'm just imagining John Noble crouching on top of the pyre, cradling a dummy XD

The first Orc that Aragorn kills on Pelennor fields is played by his son Henry! XD

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME. They actually filmed Sam pushing past the sort of psychic barrier of the Watchers at the gate of Cirith Ungol, but they didn't put it into the extended edition! I love that part. Like...I'm not even sure why, but I've always thought that was such a cool little detail, and I've always been a bit bummed it wasn't in the movie, though I was thrilled to see the actual Watchers at least there as a sort of homage. And all along, they'd actually filmed something for that after all and I never knew! :O

You know, I never thought about it before, but it makes sense that they had to replace the sky digitally in a lot of scenes in Mordor, because of course when they filmed it, the sky wasn't always completely cloudy, but Mordor needs to have a complete cloud cover at all times.

When Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens first saw the footage of Sam carrying Frodo up Mt. Doom, they sent a fax (lolol 1999/2000 technology) to Sean and Elijah. They made the first page look all formal and official, and then on the second page it just said, "You made us cry." :')

Andy Serkis refused to have Gollum stand on two feet until the scene in the Crack of Doom. There were a few times that PJ directed him to lurch onto his feet or something, but Andy wouldn't do it. He wanted to show the difference in Gollum physically when he has the Ring again. What a cool detail!

Originally, the whole part where Frodo's hanging off the ledge and Sam is begging him to reach for him happens after the Ring is destroyed. It's really interesting to consider the slight nuances of how different that would be. The final version makes it almost seem like the Ring is still calling to Frodo, like he wants to fall into the lava and join it, whereas originally it was more like "I've lost the Ring and now I have nothing left to live for."

PJ made a sweet comment in the scene where everyone bows to the four hobbits: "This is a moment where there's always a huge sniffle in the audience when the movie's going, and it's usually me." XD

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! They shot scenes of what happens to the other characters when the hobbits return to the Shire! There is footage out there somewhere of what Legolas and Gimli do, what happens with Faramir and Eowyn!!!! ;aldkfjsd;fkldslfkjd 25th anniversary edition LET'S GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

#lord of the rings #lotr

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iheartchv · 9 months

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Sunny Day Jack x Reader:

I Never Forgot

What if you were one of the few people who remembered vividly about Sunny Day Jack... even after the whole show seemed to have been forgotten?

☀️Rating: Fluffy

🌈 Part 2 | 🌈 Part 3

❤💛💙❤💛💙❤💛💙❤💛💙❤💛💙❤

As a child growing up, you watched The SunnyTime Crew Show. You were 3 or 4 years old then, and you would watch every episode whenever they came out. Sure, there were plenty of interesting characters, but one that stood out to you was Sunny Day Jack. The blue haired clown was your favorite, the best friend you always wanted, and you wanted to meet him in person. At the time, money was tight, so that was one crushed childhood dream. The other was when there were no more episodes of The SunnyTime Crew Show being released. You had asked but no answers were given. You cried that one night (a few days after the incident); you felt like you had lost a best friend, and all the drawings and paintings you did hurt your little heart that you put them away in a box of memories. Jack was gone, but not forgotten...

❤💛💙❤💛💙❤💛💙❤💛💙❤💛💙

❤💛💙PRESENT DAY ❤💛💙

You're now at a threft shop, looking for clothes that wouldn't remind you of your ex, Ian. As you picked up some random stuff that fell over, you didn't notice a VCR tape that fell in your basket. As you were checking out, you were about to object to buying it, but decided that it wasn't worth 25 cents over. What could've been on the tape?On it was written '84- Incident'. Bells went off in your head seeing the year... A memory or something was trying to resurface... Borrowing a VCR player, you popped in the tape.

The static on the TV continued for a moment until you heard... a voice... saying,"Hello?" Bells went off in your head again as you stared at the static screen. That voice... it sounded familiar. Just then a shape formed through the jagged lines of the TV screen. It looked... human... And it was coming closer.

"Who... are you?" The voice said. Your heart started to beat faster. You felt like you were in a horror movie. You wanted to back up and run away, but you were frozen with fear. Your chest tightened as your flight or fight response kicked in. "You seem nice... Do you want to be my friend?"

The figure then... came through the screen as if it was climbing through a window. You wanted to scream but it was stuck in your throat. You choked on it. The figure then stood... they were tall. The scream then finally made its way out of your lungs as you bumped into the coffee table.

"Oh, gosh. Are you okay? I didn't mean to scare you, Sunspot." the figure said in a concerned tone.

Sunspot? You remembered... him always calling you Sunspot... As your eyes adjusted to the dimness of your living room, you could see that he (you assumed) had... blue hair? You also caught glimpses of his primary colored clothes... A memory was triggered. Everything was put together like a puzzle. No... this couldn't be?

"Jack... Sunny Day Jack?"

"You... know me?" He looked surprised.

"Yeah... I used to watch your show all the time as a kid. But... how... why...?" You had so many questions that you wanted answered. You were a ball of wound up emotions right now. You didn't know what to feel right now.

Jack cleared his throat, trying to change the subject to something simpler. "I'm sorry for bring rude, but I didn't get your name..." he said with a small chuckle and a smile.

"It's... y/n."

"Y/n. That's a nice name. Do you want to be my new best friend, Sunspot?"

He reached his hand out toward you for a handshake. At this moment, you strangely felt like a kid again. You were meeting Sunny Day Jack... in person (or the closest thing, at least). His cheery voice drew you in, like it did those many years ago. You took his hand in a firm handshake. "Sure." That was the last thing you remember before blacking out.

Been working on this idea for a couple of days, and I plan on writing a few more parts to this c: I also don't know if anything like this has already been written, but here it is nonetheless. I really hope you all in the SDJ fandom enjoys~☁️🌈☀️

#sdj jack #somethings wrong with sunny day jack #sdj #sunny day jack #sunny day jack x reader #sdjxreader #somethings wrong with sunny day jack fandom #sdj fandom #i cant wait for the full game #this is basically based on what lore i know

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juztscrollingthrough · 4 months

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Seven by Taylor Swift

I always interpreted this song as someone looking back at their childhood nostalgic memories and remembering that one troubled friend who left a deep mark in their psyche but for whatever circumstances they lost touch with one another. This edit kind of depicts the time during the “between years" where they thought of one another but never reached out. This one’s especially from Ian’s POV and all those flashback of memories that compelled him to finally reach out and arrange the meet up with Anthony after a nudge from Dianne. Ian wonders if Anthony still thinks of him, if he still reminisces about their past as fondly as Ian does.

Below are the lyrics with explanation/interpretation in Ian and Anthony's context:

[POV IAN] :

Please picture me In the trees I hit my peak at seven feet In the swing Over the creek I was too scared to jump in

Ian wants his friend to remember him by the fun escapades they shared together. He reminisces about their first 6th grade science project, all their sleepovers, the trips, their first experience with alcohol near the riverside in Sacramento. In their big group of friends how these two became closer due to the fact that he didn’t know how to drive and Anthony was the one who drove him home after school, how after graduation when everyone left for college, these two remained in the suburbs, unsure about their future.

But I, I was high in the sky With Pennsylvania under me Are there still beautiful things?

Ian once said "I'm not exactly the poster child for following your dreams, because I never had any”. He never had exact dreams about career or whatever the future had in store for him. Smosh became a place where Ian and Anthony expressed themselves, an outlet to make each other laugh and with smosh blowing up he finally found his dream: to keep making fun stuff with his best friend which for some reason random strangers over the internet connected with. They were riding the high that came with smosh’s success unaware of the fact that this newfound business relationship would tower over their years of close friendship.

Sweet tea in the summer Cross your heart, won't tell no other And though I can't recall your face I still got love for you Your braids like a pattern Love you to the moon and to Saturn Passed down like folk songs The love lasts so long

Their genuine love and adoration for one another, how they shared every secret with each other, how Ian lied to Anthony about his first kiss in hopes to impress his new friend in 7th grade and in later years opening up about the lie as he finally got his actual first kiss…. in his friend’s bedroom. Slowly these tender moments fizzled out as they grew up, as their channel grew, and so did their stress and workload. Though, they aren't the people they once were, but their mutual love and respect for each other remained deeply ingrained in their hearts.

And I've been meaning to tell you I think your house is haunted Your dad is always mad and that must be why And I think you should come live with Me and we can be pirates Then you won't have to cry Or hide in the closet And just like a folk song Our love will be passed on

Ian knew that Anthony came from a broken home, and how he lost an authoritative figure, his step dad, who abandoned Anthony’s mother and his step-brothers when he was merely a 12 year old, and due to his tumultuous situation at home, Anthony got this heavy responsibility on his shoulders of his family. Anthony feared that his mothers agoraphobia would somehow find a way towards him too and he would stay stuck in this haunted situation which he desperately wanted to break away from. When Anthony fell sick due to his autoimmune disease, Ian’s mom urged his son to visit his friend. The get well soon card he got signed by everyone in their class and gave to Anthony. After their graduation Ian’s parents invited Anthony for a trip to Hawaii and that was the first time when Anthony got to experience something away from his haunted house back in Sacramento. He got to experience what a complete family felt like vicariously through Ian.

Passed down like folk songs Our love lasts so long

No matter how many obstacles there were, the power of friendship conquered it all. They not only got their company back but also rekindled their friendship. They said everything had to happen the way it happened for them to eventually reunite. They might be complete opposites but there is this red string of fate that lingers between them. Their creative partnership is too strong and in the end they proved that “Friendship always wins”.

#smosh #ian hecox #anthony padilla #ianthony #besties #platonic soulmates??#I got too emo while making this lol #sorry for the bad quality T-T #☀️🔍#a friendship like THIS #taylor swift #seven

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quindriepress · 1 year

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This week's spotlight is on Beth Fuller and her comic Witching Hour. Beth is an illustrator and concept artist from Dublin, Ireland. She’s considering putting down the stylus pen and heading off into the wilderness to live as a hermit, but likes hot showers and horror films just enough to keep her in civilisation. For now, anyway. (@bethfuller | website | instagram | twitter)

"Witching Hour is about a young girl sent on a mysterious journey by her father. Two pale trees with intertwined branches form a strange gate at the edge of 12-year-old Esio’s town, and beyond it lies an old, ruined land. Over their pints, as dusk falls, the villagers say it’s where lost things - and people - eventually end up. She’s got sandwiches, an apple, plasters, a bottle of Tipperary Kidz water and a Horrible Histories book in her rucksack and she’s heading off into the unknown, with only a talisman to guide her. There’s no telling who she might meet along the way."

Read the spotlight below the cut!

"That’s the initial rundown, anyway. Speaking more subjectively, I wanted to create a setting where two totally different characters - as different from each other as you can get - are forced to work together and end up changing each other’s lives. I really do think you can get on and find common ground with almost anyone, in the right circumstances."

Witching Hour took several years to incubate. "I’d been working on a comic slowly and haltingly since I was 18. There are pages kept deep, deep in my computer with old, badly drawn versions of Esio in a radically different setting, but it never really made sense as a story. I don’t think I made it past page three! Still, the fantasy atmosphere and character of Esio stuck with me over the years. Plus I really like to mix the dull, routine and mundane aspects of everyday life with things that are otherworldly and strange."

"Eventually we had a visual narrative module as part of my degree, and while recalling my old comic pages (I was mulling over it in the shower, which is where I think many of us do our most important thinking) an idea came to me that would form the basis of Witching Hour. Adding this to the embers of my previous project gave me more than enough fuel to sit down and start drawing.

"I have plenty of ideas for what I want to get up to next. I’ll work on a tarot set, keep working on freelance concept art and illustrations, design some tattoos, maybe try my hand at another comic at some stage. As always, feel free to get in touch and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see from me!"

Beth draws inspiration from many sources: "The landscapes of south-west Ireland. Horror films, foreign language films, fantasy films, anything animated. The writing of Michelle Paver, Neil Gaiman and Ursula LeGuin.

"For me, though, it’s primarily the work of other illustrators that has inspired me the most, and it’s often only through seeing and evaluating lots of different brilliant styles that you can start to discern your own tastes. As a child, the obligatory Ghibli film catalogue. Then the work of Chris Riddell, Max Prentis and Ian McQue were enough inspiration to foster an interest in art school. I went, studied Illustration at DJCAD, and discovered Jake Wyatt, Celia Lowenthal, Juliette Brocal, Linnea Sterte, Jack T. Cole, Evan Cagle, Alphonse Mucha and (of course) Moebius. Seeing their work is like taking the creative spark and making it into a deodorant flamethrower."

Beth's work often centres around fantastical worlds and sweeping landscapes. "I think somehow you always come back to what you know. Sometimes you don’t even notice you have a fascination with something until you start to create and it keeps returning.

"My family and I spent a lot of time around Irish coastlines growing up, especially during the warmer months. Kerry, in the south-west, has mountains that turn brown in winter, then when summer comes are carpeted with a haze of purple heather, not unlike the hills of Scotland. There are crumbling ringforts and monastic ruins on isolated hilltops. I could be in the most beautiful place in the world but still miss the coconut scent of Kerry gorse. The fantasy aspect is fun to play with, and it adds a nice sense of mystery, but fundamentally I think the landscapes I draw are an attempt to capture, and return to, the shores I kicked about on as a kid."

For aspiring comic creators, Beth has this advice: "This is a common one, but I think it’s still worth saying: if you have a story, get it down. You don’t need to consider yourself a comic artist to make a comic. You also don’t need to wait around for the right time, or enough expertise - nobody is going to give you a nametag with ‘comic artist’ on it. If you can draw, and you need to say something, just start drawing boxes and see where it goes. Also, ‘Necropolis’ by Jake Wyatt is really good."

You can pick up Witching Hour, alongside the other three comics in our 2023 collection, right here on Kickstarter!

#witching hour #2023 collection #beth fuller #bethfuller

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mother-of-houseplants-2 · 11 months

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thoughts on the gallagher siblings’ relationships with fiona

and what specific and nuanced role she takes on in their lives—mother, sister, or something in between.

special thanks to @aceyanaheim for not only listening to me ramble on and on about my silly little gallagher siblings thoughts, but also for sharing so many insightful and poignant ideas themselves on the matter. thanks so much for the brain worms! <3

lip

lip’s relationship with his sister is complicated. they’re only four years apart in age, so he’s a little more conscious of fiona’s situation than the other kids.

he doesn’t see it all—fi keeps her struggles a little too under wraps for that—but he knows what she’s had to sacrifice to take care of them all (“i stole so fiona didn’t have to work a third job to cover the bills” s11). he knows how alone she feels (“you’re not supermom; you don’t have to do it all yourself” s3). he knows she struggles (seeing her cry over the sticks and skates job in s1). he knows what she’s lost in the process (“you called her mom” s1). he knows that the kids aren't fair to her a lot of the time ("we've taken you for granted. i know i have" s4).

but as much as lip sees what fiona goes through, as much as he picks up jobs to help out with the bills, as much as he takes care of the little ones, he’s still a kid in need of a mother figure. he still leans on fiona, hard.

all of s2, lip struggles with seeing fiona as a sister vs. a mother. he wants independence, he wants to follow his own plans in life, and he doesn’t want anyone to stop him—in his mind, who’s fiona to tell him what to do? he can drop out if he wants to. he’s done one more year than her! she can’t make him go. she can’t. she’s not his mom.

but, well, isn’t she? he’s still a kid who messed up and needs help. he’s still a boy who can’t go it all alone. he’s still a sixteen year old child who finally comes home and gives his big sister a hug because, despite all his big talk, he needs her. he does. and fiona loves him more than anything. she just wants what’s best for him, even if she struggles to express it in a manner that doesn’t push him away.

lip doesn’t want to call fiona “mom” (s3) but he’s okay with her taking guardianship. and why wouldn’t he be? she’s done the job his whole life. and he sees that.

the problem is that lip, as much as he wants to be independent of fiona, as much as he wants to see her as a sister and not a mom, he can’t help but to idealize her. he still craves for the perfect mom in his head that never messes up and always takes care of them, and since monica for sure was never going to be that mom, he’s superimposed that desire over fiona. but that version of her doesn’t exist. that version of any mother doesn’t exist. mothers are human. they mess up. they make mistakes. even if no one wants them to.

so when fiona messes up (s3 with the club money, s4 with liam, s8 with the apartment, s9 with the drinking) it’s unthinkable to him. he’s furious with her—rightfully so, she did mess up—but he’s disproportionately angry because she was supposed to be their mom! she was supposed to be good and never fuck up and always take care of them! so when she breaks that image of perfection in his head, it shatters his trust in her, somewhat unfairly so.

fiona’s not allowed to mess up. she can’t. she’s not supposed to. she’s supposed to be the one taking care of everyone, not in need of care herself. lip is understanding and gentle and supportive when it’s ian or debbie or carl, and fiona’s the same with him, but when fiona’s spiraling into addiction and her life is falling apart, he’s all tough love. maybe it terrifies him.

when she leaves, it’s obviously sad. but he’s grown by then to know that she’s her own person, not just a mother figure to them all. it’s hard. but he’s at that point that everyone comes to in life when they realize their parents are individuals with their own lives and hopes and dreams. and he lets her go.

at the end of the day, a huge part of lip’s relationships with fiona is his eternal struggle between wanting independence and wanting a mom—and not just any mom, but a mom he can trust and love and depend on. that mom is fiona, even when she fucks up.

ian

ian was fiona’s first baby. he was the first child she really, truly raised—lip was always her boy, but he was also her second-in-command, blurring the lines between brother and son, working together with her to take care of the others—while ian was the first baby she was all on her own for. the “we were living in a car once…” speech in s3 makes that clear.

in the early seasons, it’s clear that ian defers to fiona quite a bit. he listens to her, seeks her out for comfort, respects her word like that of a mother. fiona calls him sweetface, expresses maternal affection with him, and he is receptive of it all in that long-suffering way older teens tend to be with their moms. their relationship is more mother-son than anything else.

but at the same time, he's still marginally aware of her struggles, too, just like lip; the conversation he has with his brother in s3 when fi tries to get guardianship ("she's only twenty-two!") makes it clear that he worries for her, doesn't want her to take on a terrible burden for them. so it's clear that, though he does see fiona in a maternal light, he isn't blind to her reality.

this all changes, however, when ian starts to grow up and want independence and freedom. fiona tries to give him this in s4 when he joins the army, even though it doesn't work out. and in s5, when he is finally forced to confront his own struggles with mental illness and deal with his bipolar disorder, he starts to bond more with monica.

now, this is understandable, seeing as they share the same mood disorder and he feels connected to her through their similar struggles. at first, he actually resents being compared to her ("i'm not fucking monica" s5), but the more they communicate and bond (s7), the more he comes to care for her.

s8 shows ian genuinely mourning his mother (getting sentimental over her meth, getting a tattoo for her), and the other gallaghers don't really understand it, which upsets him; in his mind, that's their mom! why aren't they upset too? i think it's lost on ian that no one else in the family ever had the same connection with monica that he did. she bonded with him; she didn't do the same for the others before her repeated abandonment.

so ian starts to see monica as "mom." where does that leave fiona?

i think this truly marks the final shift of their relationship from parent-child to siblings. especially when looking at s8, where they're fighting over the church. in 'occupy fiona,' ian is furious with her perceived selfishness, and screams at her when she attempts her typical motherly nagging in the form of asking him if he's taking his meds. which, fair; that must be frustrating to hear. but this makes it clear that they're on two separate pages: fiona still sees him as a son. ian sees him as a sister.

but fiona's seeking independence, too. she's seeking an identity that is distinct from her role as caretaker. it isn't just ian growing apart from his sister that's shifted their relationship so dramatically; both characters seek an escape from their family and a life where they can be independent and all grown-up. and in a typical parent-child relationship, only one side of the equation feels those growing pains. in this situation, it's both.

of course, no matter how much they grow apart and hurt each other, they still adore one another. ian's the one fiona goes to for advice about leaving in s9, after all. he's the one who urges her to go and save herself from another lifetime of gallagher chaos. so really, the change in their relationship doesn't destroy their bond; it just alters it a little.

debbie

debbie had, i think, one of the most tumultuous relationships with her sister. as a little girl, she definitely saw fiona as a mother figure, and was very attached to her, almost subconsciously so. the "i wanna stay with fiona" from s1, the way she sought her out for comfort after monica's suicide attempt in s2, the terror she felt at being separated from her after dcfs got involved in s3—it all makes it very clear that little debbie very much saw fiona as her mom.

she still had some understanding of her sister's struggles—"fiona takes care of everyone, but who takes care of fiona?" (s1)—but she was still a little girl and fiona was still her mom.

and then monica came crashing back into their lives. debbie very reluctantly accepted her in, hugging her at sheila's and allowing her to buy her dolls (even though she didn't play with them anymore!) just to humor her mother's attempts to build a relationship. so, as much as debbie unconsciously saw fiona as a mother figure, she still always had this craving for monica—her real mom.

it makes me think of debbie's assertion to sheila in s1 that if monica ever came back and apologized, she'd "forgive her in a heartbeat. because she's [debbie's] mom." she was still a little girl hanging onto the dream that her mom will come home and love her and take care of her. and she barely realized that she'd found someone else to fill in the gap monica left behind, but it's just not the same. she still wants her real mom.

season 4 marks the shift of debbie's character from seeing fiona as a mom to seeing her as a sister—or, at least, wanting to see her as a sister. like ian, she was desperate for independence. she was being peer pressured by girls at school, she was interested in boys, she didn't want to be seen or treated like a baby anymore. she was fed up with fiona still treating her like she's her daughter because she's not. she doesn't want to be.

and anyway, fiona was busy with her new job at the cup company and her new boyfriend mike. she wasn't around all the time anymore. sheila'd been babysitting more and more. debbie was the one taking liam to and from head start. she felt abandoned, alone, with fiona not around as much as before.

she sought comfort in sammi. she found purpose in her friends, in boys. it's a very knee-jerk teenage-girl reaction: to find connection in others when you're mad at your mom. but for debbie, she wasn't just shifting away from fiona as a daughter growing distant from her mom, she was shifting away from the idea of fiona as her mom in the first place.

and then, of course, franny happened and drove a terrible wedge between them both. debbie grappled with her identity as a mother. she rejected fiona's help and advice in favor of her quest for independence. monica returned, made her feel like debbie's a good mom. frank supported her. and debbie was in a position where she had both her parents on her side—her real parents—while fiona opposed her. this, i think, solidified fiona in her mind as her sister. not her mother figure anymore.

don't get me wrong; fiona was in the right opposing her at this time. debbie's pregnancy was a stupid idea. it really did ruin her life and her character overall, and it was unfair of debbie to expect fiona's support in that situation. fiona was being a good mother by telling her she was making a mistake. she still saw debbie as her little girl. debbie's the one who didn't accept that anymore.

after debbie and fiona made up later in the show, they settled into a true sister-sister relationship. debbie came to see fiona at her worst ("she broke her wrist, she's nonstop ugly crying" s9) and tried to take care of her, while fiona still tried to resist the flipping of their roles ("i'm fine. i'm fine." s9). debbie fucked up ford for her that season. got angry and protective on her behalf.

and when fiona left at the end of the season, she left as debbie's sister. no longer her mom. at least, not from debbie's perspective anymore.

carl

carl's relationship with fiona, i believe, was one of the least complicated and most wholesome ones on the show. carl absolutely saw fiona as a mom in the early seasons, without a doubt. he listened to her even when he didn't want to, like a little boy to his mother ("did you brush your teeth? carl?" "yes, ugh!!!!" s1), reluctantly learned lessons from her ("privacy's important" s2), looked to her for permission for things (glancing at her when monica asked him to pass the salad in s1 and only doing it when fiona nodded yes), and sought her out for comfort after monica's suicide attempt (s3).

carl's the only one i can vividly remember saying he loves his sister ("'night, fiona, love you" s1) or thanking her for what she's done for them all ("thanks for being a great sister" s3). at least when he was little, fiona was without a doubt his mom.

it certainly helps that he never really bonded with monica. she left when he was too little to start seeing her as a mom, and every time she returned, she never really took the time to get to know him or connect with him. but carl did briefly bond with frank (the fake cancer arc in s3, "i'm shaving your head to let the sun rays in"), and was the only one who cared about him potentially dying in season four, tending to him in the hospital when no one else did.

season four is when he, like debbie, starts to rebel against fiona's parenting. he's angry and sad and mean and it all comes out in the form of sharp words and beating up kids at school and getting into all kinds of trouble. he's mad at fiona for not caring about frank, but he's also just mad at the world—understandly so. he's fourteen.

the trouble continues well into season 6. carl gets mixed up with g-doggg, starts selling drugs. frank helps him get into the drug world, but he gets caught. he goes to juvie, comes back a little harder, a little meaner. sells harder stuff, sells guns. the whole time, he's established a sort of distance from fiona, because he's too cool for deep, vulnerable relationships, or so he thinks. and the whole time, fiona continues to love him, tries to connect with him, attempts to open his eyes and make him realize how dangerous what he's doing is, but he's determined to be his own man, to earn the respect of his buddies. he feels like frank's the only one who understands.

but then he gets hurt and scared. he sees someone die. he wants out. and frank—who he hasn't like, loved, per-say, but has at least trusted and established some sort of camaraderie with through their shared misdeeds—betrays him, scares the shit out of him with his anger and disappointment. and who does carl have to fall back on but fiona?

fiona tells him she's proud of him. she and sean help him get out of the drug world. their relationship is finally rekindled. and it's around his time when carl overhears fiona cry to sean about being exhausted and scared about losing the house (s6). and it terrifies him, because here's his strong big sister, the woman who raised him, young and vulnerable and afraid. and he steps up and gives her the money to buy back the house. he's there for her. he's being a good man.

from then on, carl shapes up and his character is on track to make something better of himself. he takes on some form of responsibility, denounces his father, and goes to military school. and fiona's so fucking proud of her boy. because he is her boy—always will be, no matter how much he tries to be a strong, independent, grown-up.

when he comes home in s7, he's grown to be a kind, goodhearted, respectful young man. he doesn't refuse her hugs and kisses. he admits—though with some hesitation—that "you were right, fiona! and we were so fucking wrong!" in s8. and when monica dies, he's... conflicted. but he's okay. because fiona was always his mom, anyway. and that never changed.

liam

liam has never known any parent other than fiona.

sure, lip helped a great deal with taking care of him and raising him, and, much later, he bonded quite a bit with frank. and his relationship with most of his siblings is very parental at its core—he’s the baby, after all, and all of his siblings had a hand in raising him.

but fiona was the one who fed and changed and cared for him his whole life. took him to work with her as a baby (s1). dealt with his hair when he had lice (s6). stood up for him against anyone who dared to hurt him (s9). it was always her, really, in the end. it was only her.

liam was just a baby when monica left. and he was—what, 6?—when she died. there are a few times when she randomly returns when they spent time together, but he doesn’t even really remember her because he was too little. he’s never known a mother other than fi. she’s the only one that matters, really.

i’m still upset that she didn’t take liam with her when she left in s9, and that we didn’t see them stay in contact throughout the remainder of the show. obviously, this was just because emmy rossum left, so it’s just a reflection of the writers working around their situations, but it just felt heartbreakingly unrealistic to me.

they loved each other so much. that was her son, her little boy, her baby bear. she was his mom. no two ways about it.

it wasn't until after fiona distanced herself from the family and then left that liam and frank grew close. frank got him into private school (s8), recruited liam to steal from his rich friends (s8/9), and liam, in turn, made it his mission to take care of frank when his health started declining and his mind started deteriorating to his alcholic dementia (s10/11). part of that connection was absolutely due to liam's bigheartedness; he's such a good, loving kid, with so much forgiveness and love to give to people.

i also wonder if a part of that connection resulted from the desire for parental love and affection. liam's smart enough to know that frank will never care for him the way fiona did, but he seems at peace with his father's shortcomings. he wants a relationship with him anyway.

regardless of the reasoning, liam was so loved by his family and his parental figures—both fiona and frank.

in conclusion

i think, from fiona's perspective, she was always the kids' mom ("my siblings are my kids" s9), even though at times her relationship with them blurred the lines between maternal and sisterly. but from the kids' points of view, she was always a very complicated figure in their lives.

the gallagher siblings' complex relationships with their sister are really at the heart of the show; she is the matriarch, the thing holding everyone together, after all. not all the kids had easy connections to her. many of them grappled with their vision of her as a mother vs. a sister. but that doesn't erase what she did for them.

she still raised them. she still cared for them, mothered them. as messy as their relationships were a great deal of the time, she was the best parent those kids ever fucking had. she was their mother through and through, and that is what made shameless truly, unabashedly, shameless.

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yukidragon · 6 months

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So... what do you think of a concept of Jack's Sunshine who is a Magical Girl?

This ask instantly gave me the image of Alice as a magical girl and OMG the potential of that is delicious. Thank you for sharing this plot bunny with me so I can totally run away with it!

The timing is also fitting since I recently watched the Miraculous Ladybug’s latest season ending and special and, uh… I’ve had… thoughts. (Yes, Miraculous Ladybug counts as a magical girl show.)

Before I begin, I want to plug the SnaccPop Studios patreon since it’s almost certain that I’m going to wind up using the magical girl Jack picture Sauce drew at some point in this ramble, and possibly other SDJ art. Please support the team if you can, and remember don't share anything privately posted on the patreon!

I also want to toss out potential content warnings just in case. This post will contain mention of PTSD, child soldiers, body image issues, cheating, toxic relationships, and the general erotic/horror elements that are part of the Something’s Wrong with Sunny Day Jack package. I’m not sure where I’m going to take this, but chances are there’s going to be some spice involving my OTP and some mention of Jack’s yandere obsession and the extremes he’ll go to keep his sunshine.

Remember, this is an 18+ Adults Only fandom! Minors do not interact!

The “Magic” of Childhood

The magical girl genre is iconic, and it’s also been deconstructed in different ways with certain anime like Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Given Something’s Wrong with Sunny Day Jack is, in a way, deconstructing lost media and clown mascots into an eroge horror game, it feels fitting to go with that sort of spirit with this sort of crossover as well.

In this case, sunshine would have probably been someone who was a magical “girl” in their childhood/teen years, as that is usually the age range of magical girls doing their magical shenanigans while they learn life lessons and mature. Whether or not MC was actually a girl during this time period is, of course, up to the individual to decide for their backstory. After all, who cares if the magical girls in the story are actually girls? There are an increasing number of stories about magical boys in this genre, for example, and we all know non-binary folks can go anywhere they darn well please.

Given the tone of the game and MC’s state, I think it would be perfectly fitting if they are still a disillusioned adult who wants to abandon all things nostalgic. In this case, their past magical shenanigans would be included in the childish things that they want to forget. Heck, it’s more reason to want to forget if they felt like their childhood was taken from them because they had to fight monsters in secret all the time in flashy clothes and transformation sequences, even having to go as far as to save the world from utter destruction.

Then of course add in the complication that Ian and his cheating presents on MC’s mental state. Magical girl shows very often have romance as one of the key aspects of the story, the star-crossed lovers of the lead magical girl hopelessly pining over the prince charming of her dreams~ Only, in this case, “Prince Charming” betrayed their “destined romance” by getting horny and sleeping with someone else. Bonus points if these two were reincarnated destined lovers or the like, ala Usagi and Mamoru from Sailor Moon. I mean, wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth!

In this sort of AU, the romance with Ian and the magical “girl” adventures MC experienced would be heavily tied to their childhood and teenage years. In a sense, they both represent the MC’s youth, for good and for ill. In the present day, MC is dealing with the aftermath of the love of their life cheating on them, being isolated and alone, and carrying the baggage of their fight to save the world, which robbed them of their childhood. They’re probably extra exhausted if they still have to occasionally transform and fight monsters even in the present day. They have to juggle adult responsibilities on top of the fate of a world, working a thankless job that doesn’t pay enough with a duty that pays nothing at all. They’d probably be even more of a penny pincher in this AU.

Jack entering into the picture would be a very interesting wrinkle to their life. Given MC has faced a lot of supernatural and magical shenanigans, I imagine they’d be more inclined to believe that, yes, this clown that suddenly appeared one day and insists on being their best friend is real. Now they have another magical mascot in their life, only this one isn’t some cute little talking animal. I mean, heck, they might even be more inclined to just roll with it after having to live with a magical mascot bossing them around for years.

Not that I imagine MC would necessarily let Jack in on their secret identity, especially if they’re trying to leave the magical girl business in the past.

I can imagine Jack would be stunned to learn of MC’s secret double life, especially if he saw them during their flashy magical transformation sequence. Magical girl anime wasn’t really a thing in the US in the early 80’s, so Jack isn’t going to be familiar with the tropes, even if there were some in-universe TV shows about it. (I mean, in Sailor Moon, the Sailor V show was a thing, so even in the magical girl universe there were magical girl shows, so…)

Of course, I have a feeling that most MCs wouldn’t be interested in watching any TV shows based on the fictional or real life exploits of magical girls after growing up living that life. It’d probably be a bit too real for them.

Man, wouldn’t it be awkward if during MC’s teen years, when in the thick of living the life as secret protector of the world, they had a best friend who was absolutely obsessed with the magical girl genre? They have to deal with all the drama of being a magical “girl” and listen to people ramble about it even when off the clock. I can see Ian totally being all over magical girl anime, especially when there are real life examples around.

This gives me the image of MC, sitting in their childhood bedroom with Ian, having to play dumb and smile innocently while Ian gushes about being saved from a monster by a magical “girl” without ever knowing that the person he’s talking about is sitting right next to him. Talk about awkward!

Though it would also be a potential moment for romance. Ian talks up his savior and gushes over how cool they were, and MC gets to feel butterflies at hearing themselves praised so much… even if Ian thinks he’s talking about a different person.

A pity Ian had to taint those sweet memories by cheating, huh?

Back to the present with Jack. Once he finds out his sunshine is going out there battling monsters, saving the world… well, there’s definitely going to be mixed feelings. On the one hand, that’s amazing! It does go to show just how special his sunshine really is. On the other hand, MC is risking their life and possibly getting injured on a regular basis because of this duty of theirs. That’s not even adding in the more unsettling magical girl deconstructions and how that power might come at a cost…

Jack, in general, wants to try and make things easier for MC, and make sure that he is needed by them. Any sort of occupation or secret life they have makes no difference on this fact. However, I think he would want to make sure to reveal that he knows their secret only when the time is right, when he’s sure it’s not going to chase them away from him

So chances are Jack would nudge MC in the direction of wanting to tell him. He’ll show them that they can trust him with any secret, help them with any problem, especially if it’s important to them. He’ll take care of them, no matter what they want to do. He’s there for them… forever.

Until MC lets Jack in on their secret, he could secretly help them. Maybe he can hunt down evil doers and scare those nasty monsters away, maybe even convince the villains to stop creating monsters that put his sunshine at risk. It’s not exactly in character for Sunny Day Jack to want to hurt anyone, but he’s stopping the bad guys! For his sunshine! So they don’t get hurt! The bad guys too dangerous to be allowed to run around hurting people and trying to take away his sunshine by killing or capturing them…

Any sort of magical mascot MC has might wind up interfering with Jack and his plans, or maybe they too will be suckered in by his silver tongue and sweet words. It all depends, really. I imagine with their power, they would be able to see and hear him like MC has, which adds a whole extra dynamic to the relationship.

Hell, Jack could potentially convince the mascot to give him magical powers too, ala this gorgeous piece of art drawn by Sauce.

Look at Jack, all sparkly and magical, with such beautiful colors and design. He’s going to fight for love and his sunshine and triumph over anyone who would dare try to take his sunshine away.

If Jack becomes a magical “girl” too, well, then his sunshine can for sure share their secret with him without worry! It’ll be just the two of them protecting each other and the world. He’ll keep MC safe for sure with his new powers.

And make sure no one takes his sunshine away, even if that means making his magical clothes a little less colorful and a lot more bloody.

Gotta love how Sauce can create such delicious tonal whiplash with their lovely art. Jack makes for a chilling yandere magical girl, don't you think?

Like any good protagonist with magical girl powers, Jack would make sure to protect his sunshine, and even without powers he would want to keep them safe. It doesn’t matter if they have a secret double life. They can share all their burdens with him. No one has to know about their secret identity except for him. It just means their bond is even more special than it already was.

Of course… if MC is keeping Jack at a distance, or interested in someone else, that would create extra conflict. MC would likely be more aware that Jack is an unknown entity and be more wary of him even as they accept his existence and presence in their life as something real. If they choose someone else to pursue romantically, well… that’s a problem for Jack regardless of the universe.

If Jack does manage to get himself some magical girl powers, he might have a whole new arsenal of tools to get rid of his rivals in a magical and flashy way. Heck, if he learns how the bad guys transform people into monsters, he might have a way to get rid of them in a way that is seen as virtuous. There’s all sorts of twisted paths that could be taken with this sort of AU, especially when giving a yandere even more power.

Really, a lot of this depends on the details about the MC’s powers, the mascot they have, what they’re fighting, and if they’re still fighting even as an adult. With that thought in mind, let’s get a little more specific in the way I would personally tackle the idea of Alice being a magical girl.

Magical Girl Alice

The idea of Alice as a magical girl tickles me greatly, especially given the fact that magical girls are always super skinny. I mean, there’s a running joke about the Sailor Moon art style and how long and skinny their legs are. Magical girls don’t tend to appear in plus size unless it’s as the punchline of a joke. It adds a lot of possibilities, and the potential to tackle public perception to the cute stereotypical magical girl archetype.

Needless to say, someone like Alice would have a difficult time as a magical girl for many reasons. She already had a hard enough time being responsible as the oldest child of the King family and taking care of Ian without adding in her duties as a magical warrior for justice.

I can imagine it happening suddenly one day in the typical way these stories usually start, when an entity appeared in the form of a cute rabbit - Honey Bunny.

Yes, I had to use Honey Bunny for the role of magical girl mascot. I mean, who else would fit that role as Alice’s adorable non-human sidekick? In this case, it was a magical entity that took over her puppet and has a similar personality to her SunnyTime Town counterpart. In a way, Alice's issues with speaking were a blessing, as no one looked twice at Alice conversing with her “puppet.” In fact, people were amazed that she had developed some really impressive ventriloquist skills!

Alice has always gone out of her way to help people, just this took that desire to an extreme. As a kid, she was excited to become a hero for justice, and with magical powers to boot. It was so cool to transform into an identity that no one recognized, beating down the wicked monsters and saving innocent people.

Well… in theory. Naturally, the first time Alice actually had to face down a monster born from someone’s negative emotions, it was a lot harder than she thought. The whole magical girl gig was harder than advertised, but Honey Bunny helped her get through it. Besides, she needed to do it. No one else could, and if no one stepped up, the world would be lost.

Alice would have shared her secret with her family, but Honey Bunny always stressed the importance of keeping things a secret. No one must know - not her family and not her best friend Ian, even if he’s crushing on the mysterious magical girl who saved him from the wicked monster his mother had been transformed into one day. If they knew, then the bad guys could find out the truth from exploiting their loved ones’ negative emotions. If that happened then she and everyone she knew was in danger, and the world could be doomed.

Quite a lot of pressure on a kid, don’t you think?

Alice had to learn how to be independent, a lone warrior of justice, taking down bad guys. Sometimes she managed to get help, but it didn’t last forever. Perhaps she did eventually get a superhero team in her teens, which would’ve been a breath of fresh air. She had someone to lean on who understood this destiny that they were burdened with.

It did create this sort of divide between Alice and anyone not part of this magical girl group. This secret and weight on all of them was so big, too heavy. Others couldn’t understand… for the sake of the world.

I was going to say this caused a divide between Alice and Ian, but then I thought of Ian in his bunny costume and, well… Ian would make a cute magical girl, don’t you think?

If Ian was in on this secret double life, it would add more reason for them to cling to each other, especially if it was only the two of them without anyone else to depend on. It’d be like Ladybug and Chat Noir against the world, a whirlwind romance for the ages…

Well… until Ian let it go to his head so that he could get some head.

In typical magical girl story fashion, it took a while before Alice and Ian managed to get in a relationship. There were plenty of near-misses and misunderstandings due to the double life Alice led until Ian joined it. So many outings together had to be canceled at the last minute or interrupted because Alice had to sneak away to save people.

It was the end of high school when Ian got his powers too in a dramatic incident where the world and Alice’s life were hanging in the balance. This is one of those season finale climax moments where everything is on the line and they came a hair’s breadth from everything going horribly, horribly wrong.

Naturally, this made Ian and Alice’s bond, which had been waning due to her double-life, suddenly a whole lot stronger. Trauma bonding is pretty high for young people who need to cling to each other to survive after all…

Alice used her experience to help Ian get used to his role, though he had a much harder time juggling his double life. His mom was a big problem, constantly wanting to know where he was and what he was doing. In the end, he had to give back the powers Honey Bunny gave him because he didn’t see himself as worthy of them anymore. He also just couldn’t handle the pressure, not like Alice could.

Still, the two of them were close because Ian knew Alice’s secret and could help her make excuses to sneak off to save people.

The college era changed everything. The big bad Alice had been fighting for years was finally defeated at long last. She had thematically graduated from being a magical girl. She could finally live a normal life and figure out a dream of her own beyond saving the world.

But… Alice didn’t know what to do. Sure she thought about her future beyond being a magical girl off and on, but fighting to save the world and juggling her personal life with these secrets and lies took up so much of her mental energy. She was exhausted and wound up bouncing around in college.

In typical magical girl story fashion, the protagonist got together with her love interest in the end. Alice and Ian were a couple, so close and in love. With Alice not knowing what to do with this future that was open to infinite possibilities, she let Ian take the lead in guiding their futures, trying to get into acting alongside him.

Of course, much like in the normal universe, Alice got pushback. Though she’s a magical warrior for justice, she’s still chubby. Her physical abilities are better than the average person even in civilian mode, but bodies have a tendency to want to be a particular shape, and for her, that’s bigger than society wants her to be.

Much like in Miraculous Ladybug, Alice has some influence on how she appears when transformed. Will and subconscious desire strongly affect it, as well as creating that special aura that makes people unable to identify the magical girl with the pigtails as the same person as the girl with the same pigtails and hair color who was standing there only a couple minutes before. When Alice first started out, she was more or less herself, but fluffier, more colorful, covered in frills and glitter. She had the young magical girl flare and charm, just plus sized.

Unfortunately, as Alice’s body image issues manifested, getting mocked both by her peers and even enemies, she started subconsciously wanting to be smaller. She saw her ideal self as those skinny magical girls on TV, and it reflected in her transformed mode. It wasn’t an instant change, more like a gradual transition as though the creators behind the series got worried about having a plus sized magical girl and made her gradually slimmer until she looked more “on model” for the genre.

By the time Alice was a teenager, her transformed mode was the typical skimpy, but curvy, magical girl archetype. She didn’t look anything like herself, and there was no chance of mistaking the two of them for the same person. She wanted to look this way in reality, so when she had free time she worked out more and ate less. It was very unhealthy, and Honey Bunny had to work hard to keep her from developing an eating disorder. If Alice wouldn’t take care of herself for her own sake, then she had to do it to have the power to save the world.

The relationship between Honey Bunny and Alice is a deep friendship, but it’s a bit complicated. After all, it was Honey Bunny who guided a child to take on the responsibility of protecting the world. Regardless if there was no other option, it’s still not a burden that should be placed on any one person, let alone a child.

Needless to say, Alice has a lot of baggage from her time as a magical girl and some trauma bonding with Honey Bunny as well. When she finally had a normal life, she had come to accept that she could be loved as she was, not as [insert magical girl superhero name here]. I’m not sure what name I’m going to go with for Alice, but it might be a parody of Sailor Moon’s naming convention or some other magical girl anime’s naming style. I mean, I could call her Sailor Sunshine, but that’s a bit too on the nose. ;3 I’ll have to give it some thought…

What didn’t help Alice’s self-confidence and body image issues was Ian having a crush on her transformed self and gushing about her all the time. Although Ian did have a crush on Alice as well, he couldn’t help but geek out over a real life magical girl, and more than once Alice was made to feel jealous of the persona she crafted that always seemed so much better than herself.

When Ian eventually found out her identity, he was stunned, especially due to how different they looked, but at the same time it made sense to him. He insisted that she was the same person, with or without the flashy costume, and she was just as beautiful either way.

So in the “final season” of this magical girl show, Alice’s transformed self looked a bit chubbier than before - not as full figured as her normal self, but no longer a skinny twig. She better accepted herself a bit more, and she felt loved by Ian both in her transformed state and out. By that point she had grown and become happier with herself.

Which made Ian cheating on her later on with a sexy woman with big boobs and a small waist feel like a huge kick in the crotch.

Alice entered college with Ian full of hope, even if she felt lost for a future outside of being a magical girl. She had a partner who loved her and understood her, and she had the rest of her life to choose whatever she wanted in the world she saved.

It’s just unfortunate that all of the constant battles and running off to fight tanked her grades during high school, which made it harder for her to get into college in the first place. At least Alice could get into community college, even if that meant there was no hope of a scholarship. At least she had Ian by her side.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Though Alice had become a strong warrior for justice, she now suffered from PTSD and had traumatic flashbacks of moments that scarred her deeply, especially when it came to people she couldn’t save. She couldn’t exactly talk about it with anyone, and Ian couldn’t handle the burden. After all, he gave up being a magical girl because it was too much for him, and hearing how hard it was on Alice made him feel guilty, which in turn didn’t help her. Fortunately Alice had years worth of experience in holding it in. When you have to keep secrets in order to prevent the end of the world, you learn how to bottle up a lot of things.

Alice is a much better actor in this universe because of this, and it did help her get further in acting classes despite pushback and at least one teacher warning her about how she would be type casted in unflattering roles due to her body size. Still, at some point she wondered if it really was what she wanted to do. She spent years having all these eyes on her, having to be a commanding presence and play a part…

Despite Ian’s encouragement to keep acting with him, Alice dropped out. Though disappointed, he encouraged her to try and find her own dream. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, but in so many ways she was very, very tired.

Alice’s relationship with Ian wasn’t the happily ever after she thought it would be. Much like in the regular universe, things deteriorated between them, with his cheating being the final straw. Those issues were sharper in this world, unfortunately. Ian felt even more insecure having a partner who was this famous magical girl superhero who saved the world many times over. He felt insignificant compared to Alice at times, like he wasn’t worthy of her, and she could do so much better than someone like him who constantly needed saving… At the same time though… he couldn’t let her go.

The person Ian cheated on Alice with was someone more “on his level,” just a normal person living a normal life who made him feel happy and attractive during a time when he was alone. Long distance relationships are so hard, especially when you’re convincing yourself that you’re always letting your partner down.

Alice didn’t take the confession that Ian cheated well, but she didn’t nearly drink herself to death in this universe. The issue in this world is that the enemy can use your crushing negative emotions against you, so Alice had to learn how to combat those feelings. Often it was by transforming and destroying a few dozen trees in a forest miles away from civilization. When she got all of her energy out, she fled the scene of her destruction and collapsed to the floor of their apartment in tears.

Shaun came by in the midst of her grief, as Ian had called him in a panic to check up on Alice when she wouldn’t pick up the phone for a long time. He was a good shoulder to cry on, and kept her company the entire night until she finally cried herself to sleep.

Of course… the breakup isn’t going to be easy when it comes to superhero identities. Ian proved he can’t be trusted after all by betraying Alice, and she can’t be with someone she can’t trust… but at the same time he knows her secret. It created a lot of tangled up feelings and drama. Ian keeps trying to regain her trust and get back together with her, but she can’t, not with how hurt she is and how much responsibility is on her shoulders.

A new threat could appear at any time. Sometimes unrelated big threats appear, small one-off things. Alice technically can never retire from being a magical girl. It’s part of what made figuring out her future at college difficult.

Honey Bunny, being a magical mascot in charge of keeping up secrecy, used magical means to make Ian forget about Alice’s secret identity and the part he played in the magical girl life. After all, if magical girls have a magical field that makes it so no one can identify them and their civilian persona, even when there’s photographs, then it makes sense there could be different magics to ensure people don’t uncover the secret. I mean, we are talking about the fate of the world after all. That’s pretty serious stuff.

Disillusioned by love, exhausted by her duties, and now only with Honey Bunny to confide in again, Alice feels more alone than ever. She struggles to figure out what she wants in life, knowing that she can’t ever truly stop being a magical girl, not when supernatural forces sometimes crop up to cause trouble… to say nothing of the threat of a potential new villain appearing like the one that forced her to become a magical girl in the first place.

It makes it hard for Alice to feel motivated. Her dreams are murky. She coasts through college, graduating with a general engineering degree just to have something to show for the cost of the classes. She gets a job at Yogurtopia because it at least has flexible hours and Barry at least accepted her excuse that sometimes she’ll have emergencies unexpectedly. He has her work extra hours to make up for those times when she has to cancel at the last minute. Even with a job like this, it feels like she’s hanging by a thread, barely holding on because her boss has decided to offer her leniency. Chances are she won’t get that elsewhere.

Supernatural Ghost(?) Jack

Of course, it’s during this period where Alice is feeling more lost and alone than ever that Jack appears. She sensed something strange about the video tape, but not dangerous. It was compelling, touched by magic, and left her feeling like she had to play it. Honey Bunny had a weird feeling about it and cautioned her when messing with it.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that the connection between Jack and Alice was willingly made, at least for the Sunshine in Hell continuity. It’s no different in this AU. Alice, ever the hero, heard the pitiful cry of a soul trapped in hell, and saved him. Thanks to her years of being a magical girl, having her soul put to the test against many magical effects, Alice didn’t pass out after the pact was made, and she fully remembers the terms of their agreement.

In a way, this starts Jack and Alice off on the right foot. Alice feels a sense of purpose in trying to figure out what happened to Jack and how to help him, and she finds he’s actually a really nice friend. It’s also nice to be around someone who makes her feel understood. Honey Bunny is good company, but their complicated relationship isn’t the same as what develops between her and Jack.

Alice doesn’t let Jack know that she’s a magical girl, though he does know about Honey Bunny, if only because Honey Bunny asserted herself to make sure the terms of the magical pact between the two were fair and that there were no loopholes an unsavory character could take advantage of. Honey Bunny, being the guide for magical girls, has experience in setting up contracts, you see, and she does care deeply for Alice even though she also used the poor girl as a child soldier. Even if she didn’t have a lot of options at the time, it was still not a good thing to do to a kid.

Honey Bunny has a lot of guilt for everything she put Alice through, and is extra protective of Alice as a result. The two are very close, and Jack often feels jealous of their bond. He wants to be closer to Alice, his sunshine, his savior… closer than anyone. Their bond is special. He never felt this way about anyone before…

And Jack certainly doesn’t want anything to risk breaking the bond he has with his sunshine and being damned back to hell.

While Jack can sense Alice’s emotions and vice-versa through their connection, the wording of their pact is a bit tighter in this AU, and they can’t read each other’s minds. Still, that connection of empathy goes a long way in the two of them growing closer.

Jack helps Alice get some direction in life, feel more motivated in herself again in a way that Honey Bunny can’t quite manage to help her with due to their complicated history. He becomes an important part of her life, making it shine brighter and she feels happy in a way that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

Alice struggles with burdening Jack with anything, especially since she’s supposed to be the one trying to help him, being the superhero and all, but Jack wants to help her, and it feels so nice to be taken care of for a change.

Alice has carried the weight of the world on her own for so long.

Things get easier with Jack around. Though Alice still works towards helping Jack be human again so he can interact with others, the idea of him one day going off to live his own life is just so sad. But can she really believe him when he says that he wants to be her best friend forever?

Jack understands what Alice is trying to do for him, and he does appreciate it, but he’s not leaving her even if she thinks that’s what’s best for him. He doesn’t want to leave her. Besides, he can see that wouldn’t be best for her. She needs him, and the more time they spend together, the more he’ll do to show her that. It feels so good to have her need him, to feel useful and wanted. She’s such a remarkable person, so strong and brave, but he wants to take care of her. She deserves to be loved and cared for, especially after all she’s done.

Jack, with his supernatural abilities, finds out early on that Alice is a magical girl when she has to run off because of a sudden monster attack. He doesn’t reveal that he knows right away, but subtly encourages Alice to tell him herself. It hurts a little whenever she avoids the opportunities he gives her to open up to him and lies to hide her secret, but he understands that a big secret as this can’t be easy to share, especially after he’s seen what some of these monsters can do to people.

One of the ways Jack tries to encourage Alice to tell him involves talking up the magical girl that appears on the news sometimes, how amazing and courageous she is. Unfortunately, that backfires a bit. Alice is reminded of the way Ian gushed over her alter-ego in the past, and the memory hurts like hell. Jack notices right away that this line of conversation upsets her, even though she tries to hide it. She covers it up by pretending that she can’t see what’s so great about the magical girl except her looks, and Jack, very gently, redirects the conversation in a more positive direction.

After that Jack focuses on not idolizing the magical girl persona, but humanizing her. He says there’s more to “her” and everyone beyond their looks. Everyone is beautiful in their own ways, but Alice doesn’t need the ribbons and sparkles to shine. She doesn’t need to fight monsters to prove how brave she is. She’s the most beautiful, most courageous person he’s ever known.

Alice, flustered by his praise, protests that Jack is just saying that. After all, so many other people are so much more beautiful than she is, including the magical girl who totally isn’t her!

Jack focuses on Alice and her actions, all the things he’s noticed her do day by day that make her shine, the acts of kindness, her bravery and determination. At times his words cross over into things that he does as a magical girl, deliberately so, but vague enough that she wouldn’t immediately realize that he knows. It’s just enough to force her to look at that magical persona in a new light and see that it’s just a sparkling dress on top of the amazing person who invested so much of herself into doing the right thing and sacrificed so much of herself to make the world a better place.

Alice can’t help but feel moved. Jack has a way with words, and she can feel he cares about her. Falling in love with him is a slow burn, but comes as naturally as falling into his arms, and eventually the line is crossed. Although she believed that she would never find true love after everything that happened with Ian, Jack gives her the courage to finally try again.

Naturally this is a love story with a happy ending because I’m a sucker for my OTP. When Alice is forced to reveal her identity through a suitably dramatic moment to save people, Jack gently tells her in the aftermath that he already knew, and he was waiting for her to be ready to tell him. He also tells her it doesn’t change anything - she’s always been the most amazing person in the world in his eyes, with or without the magical wand and frills.

Jack and Alice get together before the reveal, which is a source of anxiety for Alice until everything is out in the open. Fortunately, Jack is so patient with her and helps her deal with her anxious feelings and worries. When the truth is revealed, he helps her avoid people in order to transform safely, gives her ideas for excuses to tell people in order to hide her magical girl persona.

Really, Jack would make for a good magical girl guide. He’s certainly clever and manipulative enough to handle the job. Plus if no one can see him, he can figure out the best hiding spots.

Alice helps Jack become human again, or as close as he can be. When he’s able to be seen by others, a part of her fears that he’ll find someone else, someone he wants more than her. Still, unlike with Ian, she finds herself able to be more open with Jack than she can with anyone else. She eventually learns to unburden herself with him, to show parts of herself that she feels are ugly and would let everyone else down if they saw them. She learns to release worries she held back from even Honey Bunny because of the weight of obligation she had to not let anyone down.

Jack accepts it all. He’s patient and listens to everything. It troubles him when Alice finally tells him all the horrors she faced as a magical girl, all the trauma and awful things that she had to experience for the sake of the world. It feels so unfair to him that such a kind soul has to suffer alone like this. He’s even more determined to be her shelter and give her a place she can feel at home.

Alice feels freer with Jack than she ever felt in her life. Even though Ian knew her secret, he couldn’t handle all the horrors. He couldn’t stand by her side, placing her above him on a pedestal. Even though Honey Bunny was there the whole time, Alice didn’t want to let her down and was looking to her for guidance. Jack, however, isn’t someone with expectations that she has to live up to or a victim to shield from the ugliness of the world. He feels like someone who is there for her, standing right next to her on her level. The weight on her heart feels just a little lighter after she finally accepts that sharing her burdens with Jack didn’t crush him under that weight.

Of course Ian has tried to get back together with Alice in this AU, but he’s had far less luck. His phone got blocked right after the breakup, as did all his social media pages. Their breakup wasn’t “for now” but “for good,” in this AU, much to his dismay. With all the responsibilities Alice has to carry, she has to think of the world before herself. She can’t be with someone who she can’t trust, and he proved that she can’t trust him. It’s lucky that he didn’t blab her secret identity in a moment of weakness before Honey Bunny made him forget!

Ian still reaches out in any way he can though, mostly to Alice’s family and any mutual friends. He stalks her socials through secret alt accounts and tries desperately in his regular life to become the man worthy of her. He constantly tries to figure out ways to make up what he did to her even while constantly putting himself down.

Because Ian forgot about Alice’s secret identity, he forgot that she’s also the mysterious magical girl that sometimes appears in the news for saving people. He can’t help but crush so hard on this mystery girl, and it fills him with so much guilt. He already cheated on Alice once without this silly crush making his heart flutter! He can’t let his heart be shaken up again! He needs to be loyal this time.

At the same time though, it’s over… Ian should move on. Yet, he can’t move on. He needs Alice. He knows he does. He can’t handle life without her. They’ve meant so much to each other for so long. His life feels empty without her.

Also a part of Ian subconsciously remembers the things they experienced when he knew her secret, and it deepens his longing to make things right. He betrayed Alice so deeply when she had such a burden to carry. The guilt is eating him alive and won’t abade until they’re together again.

Alice avoids Ian and is distant when talking with him. She’s able to mask her hurt with a frosty mask, but it’s so very, very painful. She can’t handle being near him or thinking about him for long.

Fortunately, the closer Alice gets with Jack, the less painful it gets to think about Ian. Her heart starts to heal thanks to Jack.

Unfortunately, Jack does not take too kindly to Ian’s attempts at getting back together with Alice Fortunately, he’s not the only one with this sentiment, as Honey Bunny doesn’t want Alice to get back together with Ian either.

Really, Honey Bunny was leery about the idea of Jack being with Alice the second she picked up on something developing between them. She was worried about Alice getting her heart broken again, but Jack is constantly proving her fears wrong. He makes Alice so happy. Maybe this strange and suspicious clown was what Alice needed all along…

Jack takes advantage of Honey Bunny not wanting Ian around to team up and thwart any attempts Ian might make to get back together with Alice. Honey Bunny is a bit of a mischief maker when left to her own devices, and Jack is very good at talking her into playing a few harmless magical pranks on Ian. Naturally, they do this without letting Alice know. No need to upset her by forcing her to think about Ian after all.

So, yes, Honey Bunny, in a way, is assisting Jack’s relationship with Alice in this world too, even if she’s more than a little hesitant about trusting him with Alice’s heart. She would be even more hesitant if she knew just how thirsty Jack is for Alice. His constant attempts to seduce Alice once the two are in a relationship is a point of annoyance for Honey Bunny, and she serves as a cock block more than once.

Still, it’s not going to stop Jack from showing his sunshine lots and lots of love, or experimenting with magical girl powers in a kinky way. Just the skimpy outfit alone is begging to be used for sexy times, maybe in a bit of roleplay as well. Sometimes pretending to be in a position of vulnerability can help someone take back power they lost, and Alice can discover that being tied up isn’t so bad when the person doing it loves her dearly and will undo the bindings the moment that she feels overwhelmed.

Jack might be playing the role of wholesome kids show host, but he’s still an actor at heart. He can have a lot of fun pretending to be a villainous evildoer who has captured the virtuous magical girl and has her at his mercy. He’s also open for it to be reversed, to be the dastardly villain finally captured by the champion of justice. After all, Alice has a lot of experience teaching the bad guys how to place nice, and maybe she can have a lot more fun with it when Jack is the one she’s teaching a “lesson” with the power of love~

I can imagine Jack would also try to encourage Honey Bunny to give him magical girl powers like she did temporarily to Ian. It’d lessen Alice’s burden and help them both out. He already has supernatural abilities of his own and is bonded to Alice. He can handle the burden fighting evil for the sake of his sunshine and the world. He won’t crumble under the weight of this heavy responsibility like Ian did.

Naturally, it would take a lot of convincing after how far south things went with Ian, but Jack is patient and clever. He’s patient enough to encourage Alice to come to him despite her many fears and scars. He’s patient to encourage them both to trust him, and we all know he has a way with words. Eventually, magical girl Jack will enter the stage and fight for the sake of his sunshine. He’ll use the power of his love to help her shine even brighter than the sun.

Besides the bonus of magical girl powers, Jack would naturally take advantage of the magic that prevents people from connecting a magical girl’s identity with their civilian form. I mean, if no one knows who you are, you can have anonymous sex in public with no one the wiser. Of course, the biggest obstacle is convincing Alice to give it a try, but they’ll no doubt come up with a compromise that satisfies them both.

I think I’m going to wrap up things up there for now. This ramble has gone on way longer than I intended it to - close to 8000 words! And that’s without going into detail with the smut or inserting a snippet of writing this time. I hope you all enjoyed this blend of magical girl shenanigans and Sunny Day Jack. Maybe I’ll get more ideas and touch on this AU again sometime in the future.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #sdj #swwsdj #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask #Sauce-y Art

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icanreadthisbutnotbooks · 2 months

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Okay so I have a theory on what Kaydens backstory might be.I think I might be over analysing and nitpicking, but you guys can be the judge.

So my theory is that Kayden may come from some sort of military/government family.

Point one: His meeting with Jiwoo.

When he first finds out Jiwoo doesn't know what an Awakener is, his reaction is "oh right there are some kids like you". This could mean Kayden already had knowledge of the awakener world. There are two scenarios where this is plausible; he was born into an awakener family, but the fact that not even one organisation knows what his last name is goes against this. Another scenario is that he could be from a military/government family, it's been stated that the government knows that awakeners exist. Upon getting his powers he could have just been told by his family about the awakener world.

Second point: Kayden seems to know a lot of details about many organisations, along with being very knowledgeable about awakener world politics.

At first this can just be pushed off as Kayden learning details about people he wants to fight. One thing that's off here is the fact that he seems to also know about the children of the organisations. Case and point he already seems to know about Duke and about the talents of other groups. He could have started researching for Jiwoo, but that doesn't seem to be in line with Kayden's way of teaching. He also already knew of Jiyoung's talent even though she managed to hide it from most of the awakened society. Another thing to consider is the fact that he can predict the behaviour of the other top ten, and knows their personality well. He knows that Schneider would most likely kill Duke if he lost, and he was right he was going to kill Duke. From the interaction they have with each other, it's clear that this is the first time Schneider has met Kayden face to face. Yet Kayden already seems to know the nuances of his personality. He was right about Supri wanting to take their side over Andrei's. Even when the Korean awakeners where on the fence on what Astras would do to them, Kayden already knew for a fact that Astra would move with a 100% certainty. He also knew the location of those three top 10 that attacked him. There is no mention of a gathering of those three by anyone in Korea, despite the fact that would be a huge deal since it was either happening near or in Korea. Yet they clearly know of Kayden's entry, which could mean that the other 3 were meeting in secret. Yet Kayden ended up finding them.

Point 3: Somehow a young Kayden didn't pop up on any organisation's radar.

Somehow a child/teenage Kayden didn't get forced to join any organisation. From Sucheons grandfather we can see that teens with potential could be forced into joining organisations. They could also be forced to join criminal organisations. Kayden made his debut fighting people, and he was at a level that he couldn't be forced into joining any group. Kayden from the get go clearly decides he doesn't want to be in an organisation despite it's benefits. If he came from a military/government family it would make sense that they would have; the power to hide him, knowledge of the operations of the awakener world, plus a safe space for him to train while hidden.

Point 4: His mannerisms.

Whenever we see glimpses of Kayden walking he always holds an upright straight posture, this can also be seen in the way he sits;he sits upright with his legs crossed. Another thing to note is that unless Kayden is fighting, his personality is more on the cordial side. When Kayden first meets Jiwoo he's annoyed but he doesn't just abandon Jiwoo, many of the powerful awakners shown wouldn't even entertain the cat catching shenanigans in the first few chapters. He also doesn't really seem to find the act of teasing Iseul for her crush amusing, his reactions show that he thinks such things are just unnecessary or maybe rude. Kayden also in a couple chapters, not only in Ian's gives criticism on manners. Kayden doesn't slouch unless he's trying to aggravate or annoy someone and his personality becomes more volatile when aggravated. Kayden also shows formal manners when meeting Jiwoo's mom, he doesn't necessarily have to introduce himself in such a manner; it is his own choice to present himself in such a manner towards his mom. From Kartiens reaction we know that Kayden didn't really need to present himself in such a way. The other top ten save for Supri and Veremonte wouldn't have even bothered to give a shrivel of politeness, and even in the case of Supri and Veremonte they wouldn't have been as polite. If Kayden is from a military/government family it would make sense that manners would be something that he was forced to learn.

As for why his family would let him do the things he does? I have no clue. Maybe he's a runaway, maybe he's an illegitimate child. Maybe his Family hid him away and didn't let the public know of his existence. Since powers show up when young, maybe his showed up early and his family decided to hide him.Maybe once he was discovered to have powers his family trained him to be a weapon. This theory makes a full on Rabbit hole of other theories.

I think I'm just overanalyzing things. Again this is just a theory I randomly thought of no one needs to take it seriously. Even the evidence is kind of happenstance. This is just an idea I thought was fun. If anyone has any theories of what Kaydens life may have been I would love to hear it.

#eleceed #this is just a theory

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denimbex1986 · 6 months

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'David Tennant and Cush Jumbo walk into the Donmar Warehouse’s offices, above the theatre’s rehearsal rooms in Covent Garden, and sit down on a sofa, side by side. Tennant has that look his many fans will instantly be able to call to mind of being at once stressed – with a desperado gleam in his eye – yet mischievously engaged, which has to do with the intelligence he applies to everything, the niceness he directs at everyone. He is wearing a mustard-coloured jersey and could be mistaken for someone who has been swotting in a library (actually, he has been rehearsing a fight scene). If I am right in supposing him to be tense at this mid-rehearsals moment, I know – from having interviewed him before – that it is not his way to put himself first, that he will crack on and probably, while he’s at it, crack a joke or two to keep us all in good spirits. But some degree of tension is understandable for he and Jumbo are about to perform in a play that explores stress like no other – Macbeth – and must unriddle one of the most dramatic marriages in all of Shakespeare’s plays.

This is star billing of the starriest kind. Tennant, at 52, has more triumphs under his belt than you’d think possible in a single career (including Doctor Who, Broadchurch’s detective, the serial killer Dennis Nilsen in Des, and the father in There She Goes). Jumbo has been seen on US prime time in The Good Wife and The Good Fight and in ITV’s Vera. But what counts is that each is a Shakespeare virtuoso. Jumbo, who is now 38, won an Ian Charleson award in 2012 for her Rosalind in As You Like It and, in 2013, was nominated for an Olivier for her Mark Antony in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Julius Caesar. More recently, she starred as a yearningly embattled Hamlet at the Young Vic. A dynamo of an actor, she is described by the former New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley as radiating “that unquantifiable force of hunger, drive, talent usually called star power”. Tennant, meanwhile, who has played Romeo, Lysander and Benedick for the RSC, went on to embody Hamlet and Richard II in performances that have become the stuff of legend.

Jumbo settles herself cross-legged on the sofa, relaxed in her own body, wearing a white T-shirt, dusky pink tracksuit bottoms, and modestly-sized gold hoop earrings. She looks as if she has come from an exercise class – and she has in one sense – no need to ask whether rehearsals, at this stage, are full-on. As we shake hello, she apologises for a hot hand and I for a cold one, having just come in from a sharp November morning. She is chirpy, friendly, waiting expectantly for questions – but what strikes me as I look at her is how her face in repose, at once dramatic and pensive, gives almost nothing away, like a page waiting to be written on.

Max Webster, the director, is setting the play in the modern day and Macbeth, a taut and ageless thriller, is especially friendly to this approach. I want to plunge straight in to cross-question the Macbeths. Supposing I were a marriage counsellor, what might they tell me – in confidence – about their alliance? Tennant is a step ahead: “There are two versions of the marriage, aren’t there? The one at the beginning and the fractured marriage later.” And he then makes me laugh by asking intently: “Are they sharing the murder with their therapist?”

He suggests Macbeth’s “reliance” on his wife is unusual and “not necessarily to be expected in medieval Scotland” (another excuse for the contemporary production): “I look to my wife for guidance: I don’t make a decision without her,” he explains. “We’ve been through some trauma which has induced an even stronger bond.” Jumbo agrees about the bond and spells out the trauma, reminding us the Macbeths have lost a child, but hesitates to play the game (I have suggested she talk about Lady Macbeth in the first person): “I want to get it right. I don’t want to get it wrong. I don’t know what to say… If I improv Lady Macbeth, it will feel disrespectful because you don’t know if what you’re saying on her behalf is true. And then you’re going to write what I say down and she [Lady Macbeth] is going to be: ‘Thanks, Cush, for f-ing talking about me that way.’” She emphasises that, as an actor, you must never judge your character, whatever crime they might have committed. And perhaps her resistance to straying from the text is partly as a writer herself (it was her play, Josephine and I, about the entertainer and activist Josephine Baker, that put her career into fast forward, opening off Broadway in 2015).

She stresses that the great problem with Lady Macbeth is that she has become a known quantity: “She is deeply ingrained in our culture. Everyone thinks they know who she is. Most people studied the play at school. I did – I hated it. It was so boring but that’s because Shakespeare’s plays aren’t meant to be read, they’re meant to be acted. People think they know Lady Macbeth as a type – the strong, controlling woman who pushed him to do it. She does things women shouldn’t do. The greatest misconception is that we have stopped seeing Lady Macbeth as a human being.”

For Tennant, too, keeping an open mind is essential: “What I’m finding most difficult is the variety of options. I thought I knew this play very well and that it was, unlike any other Shakespeare I can remember rehearsing, straightforward. But each time I come to a scene, it goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting.” He suggests that momentum is the play’s great asset: “It has such muscle to it, it powers along. Plot-wise, it’s more front-footed than any Shakespeare play I’ve done.” And is it ever difficult for him as Macbeth to subdue his instinctive comic talent? “Well, yes, that’s right, there are no gags! But actually, there are a couple of funny bits though I’d never intentionally inflict comedy on something that can’t take it. I hope I’m creating a rounded human being with moments of lightness, even in the bleakest times.” Jumbo adds: “Bleakness is funny at times”, and Tennant, quick as a flash, tops this: “Look at our government!” (He is an outspoken Labour supporter.) Later, when I ask what makes them angriest, he says: “Well, she [Suella Braverman]’s just been sacked so… I’m now slightly less angry than I was.” Jumbo nods agreement, adding that what makes her angriest is “unkindness”.

It is Tennant who then produces, with a flourish, the key question about the Macbeths: “Why do they decide to commit a crime? What is the fatal flaw that allows them to think that’s OK? I don’t know that they, as characters, would even know. Has the loss of a child destabilised their morality?” In preparation, Tennant and Jumbo have been researching post-traumatic stress disorder. “PTSD is a modern way of understanding something that’s always been there,” suggests Tennant – and the Macbeths are traumatised three times over by battle, bereavement and murder. “We’ve looked at postpartum psychosis as well,” Jumbo adds. They have been amazed at how the findings of modern experts “track within the play”. Tennant marvels aloud: “What can Shakespeare’s own research process have been?” Jumbo reminds him that Shakespeare, like the Macbeths, lost a child. She relishes the play’s “contemporary vibe which means it’s something my 14-year-old niece will want to see. Even though you know the ending, you don’t want it to go there. It’s exciting to play that as well as to watch it.”

A further exciting challenge is the show’s use of binaural technology (Gareth Fry, who worked on Complicité’s The Encounter, is sound designer). Each audience member will be given a set of headphones and be able to eavesdrop on the Macbeths. “The technology will mess with your neurons in a did-somebody-just-breathe-on-me way,” Jumbo explains. “You’ll feel as if you’re in a conversation with us, like listening to a podcast you love where you feel you’re sat with them having coffee.” Tennant adds: “What’s thrilling is that it makes things more naturalistic – we’re able to speak conversationally.”

Fast forward to opening night: how do they manage their time just before going on stage? Tennant says: “I dearly wish I had a set of failsafe strategies. I don’t find it straightforward. I’ve never been able to banish anxiety. It can be very problematic and part of the job is dealing with it. I squirrel myself away and tend to get quite quiet.” But at the Donmar, this will be tricky as backstage space is shared. Jumbo encourages him: “When I’ve played here before, I found the group dynamic helpful,” she says, but explains that her pre-show routine has changed since her career took off and she became a mother: “These days, I no longer have the luxury of saying: I’m going to do five hours of yoga before I go on. When I leave home at four in the afternoon, I might be thinking about whether I’ll hit traffic or, whether my kid’s stuff is ready for the next day. You get better at this, the more you do it. The main thing – which doesn’t sound that sexy – is to make sure to eat at the right time, something light, like soup, because when I’m nervous I get loads of acid and that does not make me feel good on stage. I have a cut-off point for eating and that timing has become a superstition in its own way.”

In 2020, Tennant and Jumbo co-starred in the compulsively watchable and disturbing Scottish mini-series Deadwater Fell for C4. How helpful is it to have worked together before? Tennant says it is “hugely” valuable when tackling something “intense and difficult” to be with someone you are “comfortable taking chances with”. Although actors cannot depend on this luxury: “Sometimes, you have to turn up the first day and go: ‘Ah, hello, nice to meet you, we’re going to be playing psychopathic Mr and Mrs Macbeth.’” And Jumbo adds: “I’ve been asked to do this play before and said no. You have to do it with the right person. I knew this would be fun because David is a laugh as well as being very hard-working.” He responds brightly with a non sequitur: “Wait till you see my knees in a kilt…” Are you seriously going to wear a kilt, I ask. “You’ll have to wait and see,” he laughs.

It is perhaps the kilt that triggers his next observation: “We’re an entirely Scottish company, apart from Cush,” he volunteers, suggesting that Macbeth’s choice of a non-Scottish wife brings new energy to the drama. He grew up in Paisley, the son of a Presbyterian minister, and remembers how, in his childhood, “whenever an English person arrived, you’d go “Oooh… from another worrrrld!”, and he reflects: “Someone from somewhere else gives you different energy.” And while on the Scottish theme, it is worth adding that Macbeth is the part that seems patiently to have been waiting for Tennant: “People keep saying: you must have done this play before? I don’t know if Italian Shakespeareans keep being asked if they have played Romeo…”

I tell them I remember puzzling, as a schoolgirl, over Macbeth’s line about “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other” – the gymnastic detail beyond me. Tennant suggests that what Macbeth has, more even than ambition, is hubris. But on ambition, he and Jumbo reveal themselves to be two of a kind. Tennant says: “Ambition is not a word I’d have understood as a child but I had an ambition to become an actor from tiny – from pre-school. I did not veer off from it, I was very focused. When I look at it now, that was wildly ambitious because there were no precedents or reasons for me to believe I could.”

“For me, same,” says Jumbo, “I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything else.” She grew up in south London, second of six children. Her father is Nigerian and was a stay-at-home dad, her mother is British and worked as a psychiatric nurse. “At four, I was an avid reader and mimicker. I got into lots of trouble at school for mimicking. My ambition was similar to David’s although, as a girl, the word ‘ambition’ has always been a bit dirty…” Tennant: “It certainly is to a Scottish Presbyterian.” “Yes,” she laughs, “perhaps I should have said Celts and Blacks… Girls grow up thinking they should be modest, right? But I had so much ambition. I knew there was more for me to do and that I could be good at doing it.”

And what were they like as teenagers – as, say, 14-year-olds? Tennant says: “Uncomfortable, plooky…” What’s plooky, Jumbo and I exclaim in unison. “A Scottish word for covered in spots.” “That’s great!” laughs Jumbo. “Unstylish,” Tennant concludes. Her turn: “At 14, I was sassy, a bit mouthy, trying to get into a lot of clubs and not succeeding because I looked way too young for my age. And desperate for a snog.”

And now, as grownups, Tennant and Jumbo are, above all, keenly aware of what it means to be a parent. Jumbo has a son, Maximilian (born 2018); Tennant five children between the ages of four and 21. Parenthood, they believe, helps shape the work they do. “Being a parent magnifies the job of being an actor,” says Jumbo, “because what we’re being asked to do [as actors] is to stay playful and in the present – be big children. As a parent, you get to relive your childhood and see the world through your child’s eyes as if for the first time and more intensely. We don’t do that much as adults.”

Tennant reckons being a parent has given him “empathy, patience – or the requirement for patience – and tiredness. It gives you a big open wound you carry around, a vulnerability that is not a bad thing for this job because it means you have an emotional accessibility that can be very trying but which we need.” But the work-life balance remains, for Tennant, an ongoing struggle: “Just when you think you’ve figured it out, something happens,” he says, “and you have to recalibrate it because your children need different things at different times.” Jumbo sometimes looks to other actors/parents for advice: “To try to see what they are doing – but you never quite get it right.”

And would they agree there is a work-life balance involved in acting itself? Is acting an escape from self or a way of going deeper into themselves? Tennant says: “I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive though they sound as though they should be – I think it is both.” Jumbo agrees: “On the surface, you’re consciously stepping away from yourself but, actually, subconsciously, you have to do things instinctually so you find out more about yourself without meaning to.”

And when they go deeper, what is it that they find? Fear is another of the motors in Macbeth – what is fear for them? “Something being wrong with one of my kids,” Tennant says and Jumbo concurs. And what about fear for our planet? Tennant says: “There is so much to feel fearful and pessimistic about it can be…” Jumbo finishes his sentence: “Overwhelming.” He picks it up again: “So overwhelming that you don’t do anything.” Jumbo worries about this, tries to remind herself that doing something is better than doing nothing: “If everybody did something small in their corner of the world, the knock-on effect would be bigger.” Tennant admits to feeling “anxiety” and distinguishes it from fear. Jumbo volunteers: “I recognise fear in myself but don’t see it as a helpful emotion. It’s underactive, a place to stand still.”

As actors who have hit the jackpot, what would they say, aside from talent, has been essential to their success? Tennant says: “Luck – to be in the right place at the right time, having one job that leads to another.” Jumbo remembers: “Early in my career, I had a slow start. You have to fill your soul with creative things, which is not always easy if you can’t afford to go out. You have to find things that are free, get together with people who are creative and give you good vibes and not people who are bitter and jealous or have lots of bad things to say about the world. This tends to bring more creative things to you.” Tennant observes: “As the creative arts go, acting is a difficult one to do on your own – if you’re a painter, you can paint – even if no one is buying your paintings.” Jumbo chips in: “Because of that, it can be quite lonely when it’s not happening.” “Tennant concludes: “It’s bloody unfair – there are far too many good actors, too many of us.”

And are they in any way like the Macbeths in being partly governed by magical thinking – or do they see themselves as rationalists? (I neglect to ask whether they call Macbeth “the Scottish play”, as many actors superstitiously do.) “I am a rationalist. I’m almost aggressively anti-nonsense,” Tennant says. Jumbo, unfazed by this manifestation of reason, speaks up brightly: “I’m a magical thinker, I’m half Nigerian and that’s all about magical realism and belief in energy. If something goes my way, I think: God, I felt that energy. And the thing that drew me to theatre as a kid was its magic.” And now Tennant, alerted by the word “magic”, starts to clamber on board to agree with her – and Jumbo laughs as they acknowledge the power of what she has just said.'

#David Tennant #Hamlet #Richard II #Cush Jumbo #Deadwater Fell #Macbeth #Donmar Warehouse #There She Goes #Broadchurch #Dennis Nilson #Des #Doctor Who #As You Like It #Julius Caesar #Max Webster #Josephine & I #Gareth Fry

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