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leblancc · 3 years

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akira with an s/o who’s in a band

characters : akira kurusu

— themes : spoiler-free, gender neutral reader, fluff

— notes : i don’t know how to play the guitar and i’m praying that it doesn’t show.

If you and your bandmates don’t mind, he would love to sit in while you all practice. He’s so quiet the entire time so you don’t have to worry about him being disruptive or anything of the sort. His eyes are on you the entire time, but his gaze wanders to the instruments being played by the others there. The song itself is unfamiliar to him, but he likes it all the same and sways and bobs his head to it and thinks that you work in such an impressive harmony with one another. For a moment, he feels a bit more charming when he realizes he can use that to his advantage with his team in the Metaverse. Akira figures your life as a musician is important to you and so it’s important to him that he meets the people that spur your dreams into a reality. And as the leader of the infamous Phantom Thieves of Heart, it’s twice as important so he can make sure that you’re not being affected negatively in someway and that your bandmates aren’t being controlled by their distorted desires. He doesn’t want to see anyone causing people to suffer because of that as it is, but those feelings are heightened tenfold when it comes to you. If they are, then he’ll swiftly handle that as fast as he can with a determined promise. If not, then he’s as cool as a cucumber and happy to meet them, even if he’s someone of very few words and doesn’t speak much.

Akira is literally your number one fan. He may not be as vocal and upfront about it like Mishima is for the Phantom Thief, but his appreciation and support is seen through actions more often than not. He adores your music not just because you like it, but because he genuinely likes it and separates his personal bias from that to come to that conclusion. He’ll show up wherever you’re performing regardless of the distance between there and Yongen-Jaya (within reason) and try to sit as close to the front as he can so he can get a better view of you. He’s sometimes accompanied by one of the others, but at the very least he’s there to show his support in any way that he can. If your band has merch, you bet Akira’s going to buy it. He has so much money from interrogations and victorious battles with Shadows that he’s not hurting his wallet to spend some on you and he’s not subtle about it either. He hangs up any posters that he can, cleared his shelves for any smaller objects, and carries around one of your picks that you gave him and considers it his lucky charm. He would bring it with him into the Metaverse, but he’s worried about it slipping out of his pocket with all of the twists and turns he does and losing it without realizing it because it’s so light.

He enjoys attending your practices and concerts, but he also has the life of a Phantom Thief to attend to and he can’t neglect that. He’s transparent about what days he can’t make it and are important to him for school, a mission to Mementos or a Palace, or strengthening his bonds to a confidant. Sometimes there are just days that are poorly timed, unexpected, and unrelated to missions, like horrid weather or personal situations that come up and he’s not bothered by that. Things come up and there are times where there’s nothing you can do about it but persevere through it. There’s always another day, after all, but he does miss you so much and is apologetic that he can’t show up. Whatever the case is, he tries his hardest to find a middle-ground between his busy schedule and your own so he can be there for you. It’s important to Akira that you know he’s there for you through thick and thin and nothing will change that. When he can attend, he’s still off to the side and focused on all of you. There aren’t many reasons why he wouldn’t get along with your bandmates and he frequents practice so much that he’s been basically integrated into the group and considered one of them. He’s still quiet, but a lot more casual than a stranger in unfamiliar territory. He’ll give them a simple greeting, wave of his hand, and a grin, but his smiles are reserved for you.

Akira is a man of many talents, but the electric guitar isn’t one of them. Not yet, anyways. He never invested himself in music before meeting you and so he’s a novice when it comes to handling an electric guitar, or instruments in general. If you ever bring it over to Leblanc when the shop is closed or it’s just the two of you, his eyes watch your fingers move along the fretboard and pluck at the strings. He’s so fascinated by how this is so easy for you and your passion for music is beautiful to him that it raises a silly smile to his lips without him realizing it. He may hold it in his hands and try to replicate the motions you did, but struggles to create the same sound you did. You’ll have to adjust his form and it’s only a matter of time until he asks you to teach him the basics: the names of the notes and the placement of each of them, how to tune it, and so on. He’s a bit flustered that he can’t be as good as he thought he would be in front of you, but at least he’s not terrible or somehow accidentally snapped the strings. Sometimes dates involve you teaching him how to play or ending the night with a quick song that he affectionately refers to his own personal concert and he’s slowly getting better at it.

Shujin’s resident delinquent believes with his whole heart that you and your band deserve more recognition and constantly drops a compliment or two when given the chance. Again, he’s not very musically-inclined but he can notice a good song and team chemistry when he hears and sees it. If you’re totally content with the lack of widespread popularity, he can understand that. It’s certainly nice to have less eyes on you and to have a bit more freedom without feeling the suffocating grip of public opinion wrapped around you. The recognition would be well-deserved, though. You’re so talented—you and your bandmates combined are—hardworking, and passionate and deserve all of the praise you get. I think some of the Thieves would have heard of you and not just through him, but as genuine fans or in passing. Ryuji would know about you and your band one hundred percent and he begs for Akira to introduce him to all of you, and if you’re down for that then he will. Before he finalizes anything, he makes sure it’s okay with you first before going through with it.

#☆ — your order has been served! :: completed requests #persona 5 x reader #persona 5 royal x reader #akira kurusu x reader #akira kurusu #persona 5 #persona 5 royal #persona 5 joker #p5 joker #p5 #p5r #gender neutral reader

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kosakashuntaro · 3 years

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the oresama teacher art book arrived! more pictures below the cut.

the art book is about 100+ pages long, same size as a standard japanese manga volume (so slightly smaller than english volumes, and smaller than A5). it’s full color with a glossy finish and heavier paper weight than usual. because of the small size and paper, it’s quite difficult to take good photos of it. but the artwork inside is awesome, so if anyone has a scanner and would be willing to buy an extra copy, you could share so much cool art...

it’s included on the special edition of oresama teacher #29. i highly recommend buying it!!! it’s super amazing to see all of tsubaki’s colorful art together!

unfortunately, i can’t take many photos, so if you want to see specific characters/artwork/notes, then please message me and i’ll try to deliver.

the book first begins with an intro by miss tsubaki herself!

next, there’s a couple of pages of older artwork from pre-2009. it’s all stuff you’ve seen before so i won’t bother sharing (actually, i won’t share in general unless it’s art i haven’t seen on the internet before). the amount of individual pictures on each page really varies; for some, there are single-page illustrations or even double spreads, but for others, they’ll stuff four or five illustrations on the same page. each illustration has a little note stating what year it was drawn and the source of the image. some pictures have an even bigger note beside them explaining things.

interspersed throughout the book are “item collection” pages that detail merchandise created for oresama teacher. most oresama teacher merch isn’t sold in stores or anything; they’re included in the monthly issues of hana to yume. i think the rubber straps and can badges were the only exception.

this was a bag included in a 2008 issue of hana to yume! tsubaki even included it on a chapter cover spread. i saw this bag on surugaya a while back and wanted to get it tbh... btw, you can also tell how old oresama teacher is by the fact that it had flip phone straps...

then, it’s all chapter cover pages (including that one one-shot tsubaki did). i don’t know what shueisha and square enix got going on, also, but there’s a ton of gekkan shojo crossover art as well. like, does no one ever question how tsubaki’s allowed to do so many crossovers when her characters belong to separate publishers!? or have i got my info wrong...

more merch! this one here was a collectible card created for the 35th anniversary of hana to yume. other hana to yume series should have something similar as well~

next is new year greeting cards. all of these are on her twitter so i won’t post them here, but it’s basically crossover pictures between oresama and gekkan shojo characters.

just some random okegawa and maizono pic i haven’t seen before. it’s from the first drama CD.

a whole page dedicated to those little rubber straps and the initial artwork for them!

i feel like i’ve seen this mafuyu a lot, but never the okegawa side.

it then has artwork from her blog! she doesn’t really use it anymore, though you can still see all the artwork there. and... it even includes the oyayubi kara romance (the magic touch) illustrations as well! she’s not totally ignoring it after all.

after this is drama CD and twitter drawings; just scroll through her twitter to see those. it then goes on to textless, full page hana to yume covers... and volume covers!

sorry, i can only take one photo for example. i don’t want to ruin the book by flattening out the page. but, this is why i’m saying it’s totally a good idea to get an extra copy if you have a scanner, it’s just way too cool to have so much clear and textless oresama teacher art.

after that is artwork done for calendars (including the sexy santa maizono picture). they also show off the new years shikishi and paper bonuses. i’m not really sure what the paper bonuses are, maybe included with the volume editions or something? they put like 10 on the same page so it’s impossible to see them well, though. my favorite is the one where okegawa is daydreaming about mafuyu being his prince, but the picture is really too small to show.

then, there’s some more color chapter covers, and finally, the character profiles! i think this is the same as the one on volume 16 but with less characters. for some reason it includes yamashita but not miyabi, so i truly have no idea where tsubaki’s priorities lie.

that’s the end! i ended up just sharing super old artwork, huh... most of the book is newer art too, oops. once again, i apologize for not being able to post many photos, and if you want to see specific characters/artwork/notes then please tell me.

i really really suggest you buy this book if you’re an oresama teacher fan, there’s just so much amazing artwork and it’s totally worth it!

#oresama teacher #official art #mafuyu kurosaki #reito ayabe #kohei kangawa #yuto maizono #text

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facets-and-rainbows · 4 years

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Blue Exorcist 10th anniversary book Q&A session

The 10th anniversary book has a section where Katoh answers 100 questions submitted by fans on Twitter, so here they are translated/paraphrased! May contain manga spoilers up to the recent flashback arc, so be warned.

(Note that I’m playing it very fast and loose here because there are A HUNDRED OF THEM, so not exact wordings, but it should capture the gist. Lemme know if there are any you want elaborated on)

1. Katoh likes the feel of traditional drawing more than digital but is impressed with how far digital has come

2. Meph THOROUGHLY ABUSES spacetime to watch all his shows and ensure that he gets all the merch he wants

3. Did the girls take all of Yukio’s school uniform buttons in middle school? Yes, they did (apparently it’s like A Thing for girls to ask for a button from their crush at middle school graduation, based on some sad movie from the 60s where a guy who got drafted as a kamikaze pilot gave a girl one of his uniform buttons to remember him by)

4. Rin's tail is about a meter long

5. There are tons of servants working at Mephisto's mansion. Belial is in charge of them

6. Katoh borrows from all sorts of neat real locations when making settings

7. Katoh identifies with pretty much all the characters the most! Except Lucifer.

8. Demon designs she's proud of include the impure king and hachirou, pretty much anything that was the main one in an arc

9. Katoh lists a bunch of her favorite musical artists/music she’s listening to recently: King Gnu, Official Hige Dandism, Kenshi Yonezu, BAD HOP, Sakanaction, Keyakizaka 46, Hypnosis Mic, Aimer, B’Z, Queen Bee.

10. Awww the rabbit manga that characters are often reading isn't just Robo to Usakichi, it's an even older one that she drew as a little kid

11. She likes industrial style interior designs

12. Rin and Yukio alternated who got the top bunk growing up, because they couldn't agree on it lol

13. Katoh cares a whole lot about panel layouts and speech bubble positions, might even be her favorite part of the process (it shows!)

4. Katoh does NOT have a mashou, lol

15. Rin has probably been practicing in secret so he can learn to carry stuff with his tail

16. Izumo probably got into shojo manga around 1st grade, her mom had some around the house

17. Specialty dishes: Rin - lots of stuff but especially nabe Yuri - stuff you can throw together quickly Shiro - stuff he learned from Yuri and/or cookbooks, alongside teaching Rin Yukio - Does. Not. Cook.

18. Can't pick a favorite place she's been on research, but there's no place like Japan

19. Kinzou's band isn't currently meeting because demons, but he's probably still thinking of new songs

20. Hardest characters to draw: anyone with detailed flowing hair. Hardest to write for: Lightning and Gedouin. She had to go read books about serial killers specifically for material for Gedouin, lol

21. Suguro actually gets a dorm room to himself, though allegedly Yukio is technically assigned as his roommate, lol. Didn't end up that way what with Yukio being a teacher and also Rin’s whole...situation

22. Shiemi makes some of her own hair accessories! Cute

23. Katoh doesn't mind if you include stuff with fan letters but check with the editor first

24. Time for making each chapter: Planning/storyboarding: 1-5 days. Sketching: 3-5 days. Drawing/inking: the rest. Just...the rest of the time

25. Neither Suguro nor Izumo have dated before and neither is currently dating. But that's probably just because things were hectic for them! It could happen

26. Yukio breaks 5 or 6 pairs of glasses a year, someone get this kid a strap or something

27. How many spare glasses does Yukio have? Check the fanbook lol it's in there (dang it Katoh)

28. The demon she wants us to pay the most attention to is Lucifer. Because plot.

29. What's under the Order's big meeting table? It's a BOTTOMLESS PIT and if you fall in it you DIE that's what makes it COOL (laughs)

30. What are the job requirements for the angelic legion? Literally just Arthur liking you and inviting you to join

31. She WANTS to do more character profiles but just hasn't gotten to it

32. Rin's tail feels like a cat tail, texture wise

33. The "red Assiah fire" is literally just actual fire nothing special

34. Rin's current hair color is light blue fading to white at the ends

35. Thoughts on Rin's growth: she likes that he stays positive in awful situations and she also thinks it's very main character of him to face the past instead of avoiding it

36. Mephisto didn't purposely surround Rin with stuffed animals when he woke up after going crispy. Mephisto's bed is just Like That

37. Kurikara was based on a cool sword she found in a sword book, but that one was technically just a ceremonial sword. The symbol on it us a Sanskrit letter kaan (sp?) associated with Fudou Myouou

38. Kuro can communicate with normal cats and hangs out with them often

39. Sometimes Shiemi's skirt is extra fancy around the hem what's up with that? Apparently it's an optional accessory that comes with the skirts help I haven't noticed this and don't know any fashion terms in any language

40. When coloring, Katoh always tries to have an overall theme in mind ("emphasis on blue" etc) so it comes together in the end

41. Yes the twins are genetically related to Shiro because of Goro (she says they're like his nephews but I say GENETICALLY at least they'd be indistinguishable from his children)

42. Strongest mom of all the strong moms around here? Yuri! Did you SEE her give birth??

43. Are you careful about your own health Katoh-sensei? Not particularly! Her mom has had to bring her food at work sometimes! Don't do this at home kids

44. At the dating events Shura goes to, does she drink cocktails in moderation? Yeah, she probably downplays her normal drinking habits at these things. But normally she's down for just about any kind of drink

45. Lucifer just really likes oysters okay

46. How many pages of manga does Katoh draw in a day? If she's being good about self-care: three. Maximum number ever: TEN

47. Mephisto is one of those folks who can eat like a garbage compactor and never gain weight. Possibly because his body resists that sort of change the same way it resists aging etc

48. First food Rin cooked: fish burger type patty. Yukio's favorite things Rin cooks: fish simmered in soy sauce, yellowtail with daikon radish. It's fish all the way down

49: Did Rin ever get more monthly allowance from Mephisto? It doubled! He gets TWO 2000 yen bills now (rip) [T/N: That's uh, that's USD $37.26 a month or 33.10 euro]

50. Why isn't Rin more popular with the girls? He gets nervous talking to them, plus he's too oblivious to notice even if he DID have some fans

51. Why change Suguro's hair? She gets bored with keeping everything the same, and she wanted a visual representation that he was getting serious and going into kind of a training arc

52. Things Katoh pays extra attention to when drawing: trying to capture the feel of whatever she's drawing (like "that looks warm and soft" or "I bet that guy stinks" cough Lightning cough)

53: Does Rin take after Yuri more? (He's got her eyes!) Katoh tried to draw Yuri so she looks like both twins. Personality, too - Yukio has her smarts and Rin has her optimism

54: Do you ever wanna be like Mephisto? Well she'd like to be able to get away with just ANYTHING EVER, but no, let's not be like Mephisto

55. Konekomaru not only carries around a cat toy in case he meets any cats, he MAKES cat toys to carry around based on what he thinks the cats would like

56. How'd you come up with Shima? Go read the fan book!

57. Do the kids have Twitter/Instagram accounts? Rin - probably not. Konekomaru might be on some social media. Paku and Izumo are totally on instagram

58. Is there something Rin makes that you wish you could try? All of it! That's the whole idea! He's good at cooking!

59. Will we ever have a (G-rated) reveal of what ALL of Mamushi and her family's tattoos look like? Maybe! She'll think about it

60. Does Arthur have a repertoire of different hairstyles? Not really, he just puts some of it up on the top. Heck he might even have people to do that for him

61. If you wrote a shojo manga what would it be about? She'd have to do a lot of research before even coming up with a story, since there are so many style differences between the genres aside from just the subject

62. The other two of Mephisto's top 3 favorite foods: Cup ramen and....f-fried bubblegum?? Is that a THING???

63. Where do you start when drawing a character? Usually the outline of their face but if it's a complex pose/composition she'll start with whatever's in the foreground (like hands)

64. If Katoh could have a familiar, what demon would she choose? Mephisto. As the all-powerful author, she might actually be able to command him as a familiar!

66. If you swapped Yukio and Rin's relationship around what would change? not much, you'd pretty much have Rin going to the Illuminati and Yukio going to the past

67. Top 3 foods/souvenirs to try in Kyushu? Well she doesn't know what’s good CURRENTLY but when she was there she always used to like burdock tempura udon, hakata torimon (a kind of manju with white bean paste inside), and Chikae style cod roe. today I learned Katoh went to high school in Kyushu

68. Katoh listens to music a lot while she's storyboarding, then when she and the assistants are all drawing and inking they put various videos/movies and stuff on in the background

69. For all his hitting on girls, is Shima actually popular with the ladies at all? He's got enough girls in his life that he probably COULD find a girlfriend if he really wanted, but the double agent thing tends to get in the way. He still wouldn't be as popular as Yukio though (side thought/translator’s note: Shima would be proud of being number 69.)

70. Katoh has the ending planned out in a big-picture way, but there are still a few details here and there that she's fretting over

71. It's cute when the boys put their ties over their shoulders when they're working on something! Where'd that come from? She just figured a tie might get in the way and that seemed like a realistic way to get it out of the way

72. Looks like Yukio is getting some facial hair! What about Rin? They're both about the age for it, but maybe Rin can't grow a beard yet. Maybe a little peach fuzz here and there

73. Katoh's favorite blue exorcist merch? There were some exorcist licenses a while back, and the exorcist pins. Basically it's really cool that these little accessories she drew ACTUALLY EXIST NOW, LIKE YOU CAN HOLD THEM IN YOUR HANDS

74. Okay realtalk how long do we have left, I don't want the series to end yet? We're solidly in the second half by now but it's not, like, ABOUT to end yet

75. Katoh would be a Knight meister, based on what characters she likes to play in games and such

76. How many people in the whole exorcism cram school? More than you think! She doesn't give a number but apparently licensed exorcists also attend classes for new meisters, etc, so there's a wide age range attending

77. How's Arthur feel about, like, studying Taming on the way to becoming Paladin? He's at least mostly accepted that you have to use demons to fight demons effectively

78. Konekomaru started wearing glasses in his first year of middle school, so like 7th grade (more recent than I thought!) He has one spare pair, in contrast to Yukio lol

79. Katoh's current obsessions? Ghost/scary stories! She's even been going to live readings of them recently

80. Media Katoh consumes for inspiration? A wide range of foreign teen drama, horror/suspense, shojo manga, light novels, anime, etc. Special focus on things where two boys are in conflict or there are brothers involved

81. If they weren't exorcists what jobs would they have? Rin - chef. Yukio - doctor. Shiemi - uh, florist?

82. Inspiration for the design of True Cross Town? Katoh and her assistants gathered up a bunch of references, picked out stuff they felt matched the tone, and mashed them all up together

83. Did you use any references etc for the school/exorcist uniforms? She says she probably should have but she just kind of made them up before publication

84. Favorite part of drawing? For color pages, picking out a color scheme. For black and white, drawing in all the little details (though she doesn't always get time to lately)

85. Once again confirms the demon kings' weird hair is a representation of their horns. ADDS THAT PEOPLE WHO CAN'T SEE DEMONS CAN'T SEE THE WEIRD HAIR

86. Now that Yukio's at the Illuminati, where's he gonna get his Jump SQ and spare glasses? Well he probably never planned to stay for long, but hey it's a big ship and they might have an optometrist and/or newsstand there

87. Do you base the demon characters on any references etc? Not really, she just gets a general idea of popular demon designs and then makes up her own in her own style

88. Merchandise Katoh personally wants to have made: stuff that an adult could just use in their day to day life. Also, it's not gonna happen, but if her favorite figure brand made AoEx figures she could die happy

89. If Beelzebub's host body was a beautiful woman, how would Shima react? Would the womanizing win out over the bug phobia? Katoh replies that Shima would probably just faint from being near a girl that pretty, before the bugs even got involved

90. Will the twins ever get to smile and eat dinner together again?? We'll just have to wait and see!

91. What do you check at a "scenario check"? what's a scenario check man I dunno They check for people being out of character or the setting feeling off. They had a lot of these checks for the anime, but they also do them for the drama CD, games, and all that other stuff where multiple authors are involved

92. Why does Shura use baldy as an insult for people who are clearly not bald? She feels like they have some kind of metaphorical, mental kind of "baldness" and she's calling them out on it. Whatever that means

93. After Blue Exorcist ends, what do you want to draw next? She has SO MANY IDEAS, SO MANY

94. Did Katoh make up the Shinto chants that, for example, Izumo used against Gedouin? They're assembled from bits of actual Shinto prayers according to what feels right in the scene

95. Yukio reads the Jump SQ, right, and, just hear me out here, he likes gag manga, right? Does this mean he reads Salaryman Yukio? It's something he would read, but let's say that in the AoEx universe there's just a very similar manga that he finds oddly relatable

96. What do Yukio and Shima do in their free time on the Dominus Liminus? oh my god you guys this ship has so many amenities. Yukio probably spends time reading in the library, which they totally have. There's also, like, a gym, and a movie theater, and a THEATER theater, all of which are free. Shima probably hangs out at the pool (!) and goes to the movies, and hits on illuminati girls, lol

97. Easiest character to draw? The ones with boring simple hair, lol. Lightning gets an honorable mention for ALSO not having eyes in most shots, but Rin wins--he was specifically designed to be easy for Katoh to draw because that's what you want in your main character

98. How do demons understand gender? They just possess whatever feels like the best match to how they feel in Gehenna, whether that's a man, or a woman, or a rat, or whatever

99. Where do you start when you're coming up with a story? She starts with character design and how the characters relate to each other. Currently she's just continuing an existing story, so she works on splitting up the overall plot into episodes and fleshing it out with scenes and information about characters

100. When do you feel most happy? She honestly feels like she lives a very happy life overall. Mentions noticing a lot of little things, like how nice her cats' heads smell when she cuddles them or taking a nice cold refreshing drink of water. There's happiness in everything. aww.

#blue exorcist #interview #Ao no Exorcist #translation

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kimberly-spirits13 · 4 years

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Random Characters with Creative/ Designer S/O HC:

Characters: Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Bart Allen, Conner Kent (RSS), Jamie Reyes

Damian Wayne (Fashion Design):

· You’d started off your career when you were young

· Your father wasn’t super supportive of everything and said that you were too young to start a business or what have you

· So, with approval from your mother, you started one behind his back

· He didn’t know until one day you ended up treading and going viral with a dress you made for a very famous celebrity

· At that point he couldn’t stop you and was just impressed that you made it for months without him knowing

· As long as you were keeping up schooling, it would fly

· You ended up getting to travel the world and go to fashion week

· More specifically NYFW

· New York was the big one

· That’s where you and Damian met

· He was there for a business trip with Bruce and saw you at one of the shows the girls dragged him to

· He was immediately infatuated with you and wanted to meet you

· Thank the heavens he has sisters who wear your clothes to almost every gala

· They got to go back stage and talk to you which led to you two exchanging numbers and the rest is history

· When you started dating it was really hectic

· You had a few kidnapping scares which made him want to break it off especially after you found out about the entire Robin thing

· Heeeellllllllll no

· You didn’t let that happen at all

· Bruce actually commented and said that if you were that stubborn, Damian should probably keep you

· Fashion week becomes more tiring and you also hate not being able to see Damian as much

· He comes and visits though to make sure you don’t throw yourself out a window or something lol

· When it’s over, you guys always take a long vacation to Lake Tahoe in a house Bruce owns on the Nevada side

· He loves seeing your studio since it’s so organized and colorful

· You’ve got walls of mood boards and mannequins with unfinished garments everywhere along with a massive soft couch that one of you is always sprawled out on

· Sometimes he’ll send you pictures of pretty things he thinks you’d might like which ends up being incorporated into something

· You taught him how to drape and make his own suit so that Alfred can have a day off

· If anyone has a wardrobe malfunction and you’re around, you’ve got the needle and thread kit on hand at any given moment

· Some things in the kit come in handy for picking locks too

· He thinks it’s hilarious if you ever critique something or just call it straight ugly

· If you’re at a gala and do it it’s even funnier

· “Omg...”

· “What is it beloved?”

· “The drape and hem of that dress is the most preposterous thing I think I have ever seen. The fabric isn’t even the right material or fit for their shape. How rich are these people? And they can’t afford clothes that look decent on them?” You said giving them the famous inspecting side eye, “Also, who wears pearls with double sided sequins and fur?” “They can’t fix everything sweetie.”

· *intense snickering from Damian*

Tim Drake (Software/ Web Designer):

· It’s a match made in heaven

· The two of you meet at a tech conference

· He thought that you were such an interesting person to talk to and you had offers from places like MIT

· You got along so well and then he found that you liked coffee like he did

· Omg

· He asked you out in the nerdiest way by making you decipher code on your own computer

· You were kind of mad since you had been doing some other things for some major companies but after reading the message you determined you were fine with it

· I mean how could you say no

· Anyways the date when off great and eventually the media caught heavy wind of what was happening

· You already knew about the Red Robin thing pretty quickly into the relationship though

· Tim was a genius and you weren’t far behind

· It was scary how similar you two were

· From expressions and shared humor and meme taste, it was everything

· Staying up together was another thing you did

· Although, after some time one of you would pass out and the other would go to bed too

· It was like a competition in sorts of who could stay up the longest but at the same time you needed him to sleep

· The time he felt most betrayed by you was when you replaced his coffee with decaf

· You guys just sometimes hang out in his bed tangled up in the weirdest way watching vines or weird movies

· Totally the couple that would watch the worst rated movies just to laugh at them

· Damian commented on it once and got a tired middle finger from you once

· It wasn’t the classiest move however you couldn’t care less and Tim laughed his ass off

· After that Damian seemed to respect you more

· You guys probably have matching hoodies or something with really funny or obscure culture references

· Clingy couple but nothing too over dramatic

Bart Allen:

· Your designs in architecture went down in text books

· You were famous for some really amazing builds and constructions

· You started off by building these really insane LEGO sets or doll houses based off of designs in your notebook

· Your mother still has the models in the attic which is kind of embarrassing when he sees it but he thinks it’s really cool

· When he came to your time line he knew immediately who you were

· He also totally came to you and complimented your work plus some additional hinting at what was going to happen pretty soon

· Bart was there at the rise of your success

· He basically was your number one fan the entire time

· He’ll stay up with you as long as he can when you’re working

· It’s kind of funny seeing that when you’re designing the things you went down in history for you’ll be stuck on something and he’ll just tiredly recommend what he remembers learning

· You let him look through the designs sometimes but he understands if you don’t really feel comfortable with it

· He also knows that in order to do all of this, you’re wicked smart

· When the cave needed remodeling, you were the first person that they called in

· The League was very glad that you were there and they didn’t have to pull any strings to get anyone different in

· Plus, you knew what was needed since you were there all of the time

Kon Kent:

· You got your start writing

· It was the best thing that you did to relive stress

· Once your parents saw that you were such an imaginative child, they got you in a ton of art related classes but you liked writing the most

· Your writings had won awards before but then you wrote a book and it did amazing

· So now, that’s what you do

· Kon secretly actually really likes your books and met you at a book signing

· Nerd

· He got your number there and then you realized who he was

· It was kind of funny cause you were both in that moment of realization like

· Ohhhhh I know who you are.... kinda thing

· He finds it hilarious that sometimes you’re just all over the place

· When doing research your room isn’t terrible messy, it’s just piles and piles of notes and articles

· You also probably have an expansive collection of literature yourself ranging from all genres

· You don’t really like him to proof the book, however if you have an idea for something he’s all ears

· Coffee dates to strange hole in the wall joints

· Clark really likes you and finds your humor funny in the sense that it’s close to Bruce’s

· Both very sarcastic and dry

· Lex is just glad that his son found someone with an intellect

· You don’t really like Lex though

· That’s because you hear everything that Kon has to say about him

· Although, without giving the man too much credit, the charade that he plays on the daily in quite impressive

· You will never admit it however

· Ma and Pa love you

· So does Lois

· You get along because of the writing

· Sometimes Kon will just take you to some random part of the world if you need inspiration

· “Hey wanna fly to Morocco?”

· “Why not?”

· You make a day trip out of it but if it’s a long one you’ll stay longer

· Short distance he’ll fly you himself but overseas or something, he takes one of Lex’s jets

· He likes to tease you sometimes but will take it easy during the editing phase

· Those aren’t fun at alllll

· You get cranky sometimes during that and he just backs off lol

· He will make you sleep though

· He doesn’t want you turning into Tim or anything for an extended amount of time

· Nope

· Not doing it

Jamie Reyes:

· The team didn’t know anything about your job as an artist

· You were internationally revered

· No one knew of your job but for the boy wonder who saw the paint in your hair

· Once the team did know however, everyone was amazed

· You and Jamie were already dating by then though

· He was always impressed with what you did

· Laughed when you were covered in paint

· He lets you paint or draw on his hand

· You both have matching hoodies or jackets from your clothing line or merch that you painted

· If you have a YouTube channel, he’s in some of the videos

· Scarab notes that you have a more creative personality which Jamie responds to with a sarcastic remark

· Your clothes are partly covered in paint

· He’ll go to every show

· During the Reach thing you still stayed with him

I have more parts of the Damian Wayne x reader story coming and also requests but I’m just getting into school which is my priority so that’s why I’ve been a bit more inactive. Anyways I hope you liked this one and I can’t wait to put out more

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neeterloveschenford · 3 years

Text

Thoughts on RNM 3x09

Ok y’all, here we go. Finally we are an official couple! Malex for the win!! (Other things happened, but ya know. Priorities.) I was very happy overall with the progress our boys have made. And as much as I’ve enjoyed this season, I’m glad we’ve had a bit of a time jump. Even if I think it’s only been a few days. I was pretty sure that Kyle and Max would already be up and about. It would have taken too much of an episode to deal with bringing Max out of the pod and Kyle waking up from his coma. Do I feel a little short changed? Yeah. But I get it. There’s only 13 episodes and there is a lot that we have to get to before the finale. So on that note, I’m gonna dive right in. Care to join me?

You go Nora with your badass self killing all those clones. (I mean harsh, but hopefully they were just vessels and had no consciousness to speak of.) And Jones being his crazy dictator self killing that scientist was super harsh. And can we for the love of God get Lucky away from him!?!?!?! He is the goodest boi! He deserves better.

Go on science Liz. I don’t understand half of what she said, but I believe it. And I love how badass she is when she sciences. And there we get our first glimpse of Malex goodness, “Me and Alex are working on the Lockhart machine.” Because of course they are. Because their brilliance only intensifies when they work together. Loved Isobel’s gross face when Liz talks about Noah’s spores. And here’s where we get the Heath story taking off. Max is not gonna like this one!

Ok, Deep Sky doctor lady. I really dig your hair, but do you know who you’re talking to here? Kyle is the premiere alien doctor on this planet. He probably knows more about weird biology than you’ll ever learn. Listen to my boy! And Kyle honey, you are completely justified in your righteous indignation. And you are correct in that no one is more qualified in top-secret ET shenanigans than you baby. (I really need to figure out how to use that line in real life. It’s like the best thing he’s ever said.) I still don’t know whether or not to trust Eduardo. I want to, but I’m still not sure what he’s all about.

I love how dedicated Isobel is. She’s downright obsessed and I love this side of her. And her cockblocking Delmanes was so funny all episode. I also really love that Greg is fully involved now. The Pod Squad needs all the allies they can get at this point.

That phone call almost made me cry. They look so incredibly happy to just be together. I knew as soon as Alex said he wouldn’t forget their date that it wouldn’t happen, but still. Just the fact that they are both ready for that step is amazing. They have both grown so much. I’m just so happy to see them so happy. It was truly amazing. And I agree with Michael. Alex needs to talk codey more often!

It was totally cute that Max had a get Liz playlist, but does he know what the song The Way is about? It’s not exactly romantic.

Heath, you’re in trouble now!

Delmanes are so cute! Isobel is so adorable when she is flustered by a pretty girl!. I will admit though, that I really wish Anatsa hadn’t slept with Max. I mean these guys tend to be a little too close sometimes. But, you know, that seems to be the way this show is going to roll. Blame it on Carina’s lingering messes from the last two seasons and move on.

Of course Alex would manifest Nora. Despite his growth, he still has a lot of guilt over her death and his father’s role in it. I love that Michael is his focus. Alex’s love for Michael will always be the guiding factor in everything he does. He wants more than anything to make sure that Michael has a good life. And I think he’s finally learned that his presence in Michael’s life is what makes it good. I love these two dumbos! (said lovingly) They make me so happy!!

Come on Max. Tell Liz how you not only kept her tapes, but you would listen to them in the desert while crying and missing her! These two are the real dumbos in this show. (said not so lovingly)

I love how powerful Isobel’s become. And that was way cool the way she pulled that pod out of the lake. I’ve really loved her journey this season. And Maria was right, that camp was really beautiful.

I just don’t know if we can trust Eduardo yet! He says all the right things, but he just seems too good to be true! I hope my misgivings are wrong. I really want Kyle and Alex both to have someone who will be a good father figure. They both deserve it.

You know what would have been an awesome twist? If Jesse had shown up when Alex saw the project shepherd tech in Nora’s machine.

I love how Michael just wants to take care of Alex. Lovingly breaking into his boyfriend’s house. What a romantic.

You know what Maria? Get it girl! I think Delmanes is both sexy and adorable. I am ok with them being together!

I love that Kyle is so determined to do the right thing. He has really grown to care about all the aliens. He just wants to do the right thing and I love him for it. He is proving every day that he is the best member of the Valenti family. I’m so proud of my baby boy!

And now we’re getting down to business with Echo. They both have made mistakes and they both have admitted as such, but it still surprises me that Liz cannot see why Max is so scared of his secrets getting out. (Am I really taking Max’s side in something? What is wrong with this picture?) Also, she is so determined to believe the best of Heath that she doesn’t want to see what’s glaringly obvious. I saw this coming like five episodes ago. Just saying.

If Vlamis doesn’t make that shirt part of his next merch drop, I will scream. I would wear the heck out of that shirt! And Eduardo’s face when Michael is standing in his office was the best! And bragging about how smart his boo is! Michael just adores his brilliant hacker boyfriend!

Admittedly, yoda Maria is getting a little old. But I am glad that Maria and Isobel are friends now. They really compliment each other so well. And I loved how Isobel took drinks out of Greg’s hand all ep.

My sweet Alex! I love him so much. Pushing himself so hard to try to help Michael. It’s all about Michael. His capacity to love is so huge. And then Michaell comes to the rescue. He’s always got him. That’s the kind of grand declaration that we need in our lives. The way that Alex grabbed onto Michael’s shirt was everything. They just bring so much joy to my soul.

Isobel and Anaste are cute, but my Kybel heart still beats strong. Also, I still think she’s an alien or something. I have decided to just not trust anyone new.

Michael listening to Alex, comforting him, and admitting he’s had the same fears was beautiful. I love how strong he is now. He’s really putting himself out there to be there for the people that matter the most. And that Sander’s story was so sweet. Of course that would be the perfect date for these two. And the fact that they worked together perfectly to take out the evil PS part and put the machine back together the way it was meant to be was such a great metaphor for their relationship. I can’t believe we are getting so much goodness right now. We are truly blessed.

Still making me take Max’s side Liz. You really are letting me down. Oh wait, helping Michael be less Michael. Yep, Max made me remember why I hate him. Never mind.

So Dallas is an alien. (At least somebody new is!) Not who I thought it would be though. And since we saw him in one of the s4 bts pics, then we know he’s probably sticking around. I am intrigued. And now we know what Heath’s been up to. I guess he’s supposed to be a not so bad guy since he’s trying to help his best friend. But you hurt my Kyle dude. There’s really no coming back from that.

I am still pleased with 99% of this season. We’re coming down to the wire now. I just hope for more and more goodness with every episode. Even if we have to have another episode without Alex, I am expecting there to be some mentions of him by Michael. This season has made me so so happy. I can’t believe we are living in a time when Malex is together and building a beautiful relationship that will stand the test of time. We are a blessed people. And I cannot wait for more! Till next time guys!!

#roswell new mexico #roswell new mexico s3 #s3ep9 #s3 spoilers #it's only my opinion

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calypsoff · 3 years

Text

Fifty Nine.

We have been keeping very low-key I mean very low-key, quiet from everything and all social media. At the same time having to take Chris’ mind off the prospect of Jail time, Barry is nowhere to be found now so the paying off scenario isn’t going to work so now we’re left with going to court, which a date has come very quick and I’m actually shocked but I’m sure it’s because Chris isn’t just anyone anymore but anyways, they have given him a date. The lawyer is asking for community service, like we can at least get that for him. It’s just crazy how they got it so quick but then they have the CCTV also which makes it bad, I’m just hoping for a miracle at this moment in time. I’m trying to not worry and enjoying my pregnancy, I thought while Chris is just feeling sad for himself I would help him with his clothing line and off my own back just designed a few things, not sure if he wants it or whatever but I’m trying because he isn’t doing anything, so I am making him do things. Like going to VA, I said to him before I get even bigger we need to go so I think we are going today to VA with more than one bodyguard, I ain’t about to play with fire in that place. Even though I love VA, it’s so peaceful there but I have to be careful, I don’t take threats lightly, not at all. We would like to have stayed with my in-laws, but I don’t feel safe for Chris to be there, we will stay outside of VA and they can visit us but we should be going today, I say should because I’ve not said it again to him. It’s a mess but we can deal with it, I know we can so I’m not trying to stress myself out too much. Chris will be with me; he will be seeing our baby be born. I am putting it into existence, god gave me him back now he can protect him from this evil. My mother said she’s praying for him, I told her what happened and she’s so sad for him. Joyce and Clinton don’t know as of yet, also this time in VA we can spend time together, Mel has gone to Barbados to clear her mind so it’s just us in this home currently. It’s pretty lonely, I’m used to my team being around.

I knew Chris would be in the office, he’s smiling so that is a good sign “I am excited for this actually, I needed some positive energy and seeing the website is what I needed. I cannot wait for this, I really can’t. Which brings me into my wife was helping me, nothing would have happened if it weren’t for Rihanna she inspires me a lot because her work ethic and she’s happily said she will be along with the idea, she will design some exclusive stuff, just limited edition things which will bring my traffic. I wasn’t for it but she’s helping me, so we have that. But she is the one to inspire me, we will need to discuss an opening and maybe some party I don’t know yet” my smile grew hearing him say that I wonder if he knows I am here “I still think we should do the Nobodies business tee, mention that. Fans love merch” TJ is on this, Chris must have kept him “he’s right Chris, personally. If you had Rihanna on a tee I’m buying. I love her so yeah” Chris chuckled “see what she says, but I have to go. We will discuss and have an update, but Cena is making moves, we doing good team. God bless and take care, speak soon” Chris grinned waving, nice to see him happy. He turned his chair to me “speaking nice things about me because you knew I was here huh” Chris grinned and closed his laptop “I suppose, I was like let me get in her good books” walking over to Chris “you are in my good books, sometimes” walking around his desk “you have taken over this, I like it. You all busy now, you been in meetings all that time” sitting on his lap “yes, they sent me pictures of the website. It’s amazing” placing my arm around his neck, Chris pressed a kiss to my side boob “thanks, good. TJ still with us? He’s not going to change next is he?” Chris shook his head “he cut ties with him too, Maybe Mel chose the wrong one, TJ is dumb but he’s good” Chris placed his hand over my bump “as long as he is working then good, so you ready to go to VA yeah? You didn’t really say yes you just shrugged, we go and get your family nice and safe with a new home?” I get such a tingly feeling, my heart flutters when he touches my bump, my whole heart right here “I just thought you might say it to make me feel better but if we are going then yes, let’s go” i cooed out “rules are, we taking my bodyguards and we staying away from your parents, they come to us. Also we can have some time together” pressing a kiss to the top of his head “cool, man. I always wanted to buy my parents a house, a dream come true” least this will make him happy.

I rather he let me pack but no, he is helping and his helping is rushing to pack “your bump is super cute by the way, I admire it. Like our baby just in there baking and shit, just vibing. It’s probably dancing in there, but your bump is cute. We going to do pictures? Like memory type shit” he asked me “wow, Christopher. Baby. You asking me? Putting me to shame now, yes we will. Don’t worry, I am planning on that, we going to have some cute pictures like our wedding ones were super cute, awww god I love you so much” Chris laughed and then got shy “man, I’m in love. I’ll beat a nigga ass for you and do time, you my twin. And my best friend, why do I need others when I got you” he is my whole heart “poppa I love you too” poking my lips out, he pressed a kiss to my lips. I laughed as he moved back, reaching my hand up and wiping my lipgloss from his lips “my bad” hearing the buzzer go off “I’ll get that, just finish off here for me” he makes me laugh because I been doing that, I have been fixing what he’s been doing. I’m so in love with him, I am and it’s sickening but I love him. I’m actually hoping to visit Barbados before I have the baby, I’m just thinking how we can do that. I want to see my family and relax a little bit, get some sun and peace. California just can be so messy at times; I just want that break with him. I’m sure I can fit it in, folding his sweatshirt. Bringing it up to my nose to smell it before placing it in the case, smells like him. This is my drug; his clothes be just turning me on. I don’t think we need to pack heavy, buying the home should be easy, I guess a few days there is nice and then come back. Start some rehearsals for the Grammys, Things are different meaning baby, so I want to make sure my breathing and singing hasn’t changed so I need to start on that.

Chris came upstairs with a box “oh what is that?” I think I know what it is, he asked for some freebies as a joke with Puma well I got that for him “I don’t know, it says my name. Actually it says Christopher Fenty-Brown is this a joke?” I sniggered “you my bitch, shut up” he looks so offended “but I’m not Fenty” he’s so annoying “look just stop and open it” Chris looked up at me from the floor “you know what it is?” I shrugged “no, I told you that people think you’re my bitch, look at you on the floor on your knees too” Chris shook his head laughing “my birthday isn’t yet, but this is exciting” he is so adorable, it’s like Christmas for him right now, he is so very appreciative too “what does this say” he grabbed the little note card in the box “To Chris, please try our new releases from the Puma team. Oh shit, really!?” I grinned at him “yes, you got some free stuff poppa, now you play with that while I pack” that will keep him entertained “thank you so much Robyn, oh god. You did this for me!” Waving him off “don’t be, it’s just the start” making my way to the bathroom, I adore him so much with everything he does for me. He is so supportive of me too.

So we have three bodyguards now, I didn’t want them to stay at the place we are renting there but I rather they do stay, you never know but I have Rich, Frank and Ben now with us. I guess they both can go out and come back at night or maybe I should ask “Rich, so what do you think to one of you staying with us and the rest go like to a hotel, look I sound dramatic, and he is in jail but you never know and I want to be safe so what to do you think?” let’s see what he says about it, if he thinks only one of them needs to stay then so be it, I feel like three of them is a but much “one will be ok, shall I stay with you?” nodding my head “and besides, no offence but Chris knows Rich more then you both” I said, I thought I would mention that he stays because Chris does get along with him, Chris is just sat here in Puma. He is loving the fact that he had these freebies, I love that he is so appreciative about it too, he is cute “so did you pack all of your Puma things?” I had to ask “kind of, I tod my mom an dad where we are staying, I just want to see them” nodding my head, not like I mind “it has been a while since I last seen my second mother so why not, is she staying over?” Chris shrugged, so he doesn’t know so I guess I will ask them to stay over.

I snorted laughing and so did Chris “are we on a plantation?” Chris said the same thing I thought “I feel like it is, Tina is racist. That bitch” I laughed shaking my head, the home is nice and it’s like in the middle of nowhere, but I swear it looks like a plantation “well I guess we going to be some hillbillies, I think you will be a cute one too actually” reaching over and stroking the side of his face “no way, oh shit. The owners are white too, my god. Tina set us up?” Chris cackled; the car came to a halt “if this is a set up I am cutting” Rich said before getting out of the car “you going to do the extra cotton picking for me? I am with child so I can’t” Chris side eyed me, the door opened, and I got out. The owners looks kind but creepy kind of people, I sighed out as the white guy made his way over to me “welcome Robyn, so good to meet you” oh no, I think they are fans, well the way his daughter his staring at me is not good “pleasure is all mine, I love your home” shaking his hand “well I hope you enjoy it, as advised. The keys” he held the keys up to me, taking the keys from him “is there anything we need to do?” I questioned, you never know what I can or can’t do at the home “not at all, the home is yours to use and have fun. Thank you for choosing us” this guy is sweet after being judgemental about him.

Joyce and Clinton are both here, I have a back pain again so I needed to sit down but let me go to see the in-laws, making my way to the door “my baby, Robyn!” Joyce spat, making my way to Joyce “oh my god” Joyce placed her hands over her mouth staring at me in shock, all emotional “Robyn, oh my gosh. You look so beautiful, come here” hugging Joyce close “oh momma, it is so good to see you. Honestly” closing my eyes smiling, it’s so good to have a motherly hug like this “I am over the moon that you are pregnant, my second grandchild” moving back from the hug “I can’t wait to meet her or him, whatever it may be. You see the scan photos? The little wave” Joyce gasped “yes, Clinton loves that picture so much” looking over at Chris, I didn’t expect him to be emotional, but my poppa is crying “awww baby, we missed you so much. Welcome home Chris” Joyce rushed over to her son “wow, you are pregnant” Clinton pointed out the obvious “yes, do I look that big?” I am questioning it now “no, not at all just it’s different. How are you?” Clinton asked “erm, ok thank you. Chris is emotional” I pointed out “yeah, he just needed a hug from the big man” clearly he did need that “he misses you both so much” my baby is so sad.

#fanfic #fanfiction #chrianna fanfiction #chriannaff #chrianna ff #chrianna

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loftec · 4 years

Note

Hi i don't know if anyone haven't ask you about it or i'm the only one who wants to read it but CAN YOU PLEASE SHARE YOUR NOTES (ch.44) i don't know if you were serious about that but i really would love to read them cause i'm obsessed with everything what is ntw related 🖤 hope ur well

Hi friend! It’s possibly just you (or one other person, in case of separate anons) but that is enough! I was absolutely serious.

Note on the notes! This is not all of it, because my notes for this chapter were often repetitive and very messy, and some older notes were from four years ago when I didn’t bother writing things out properly, so they barely make sense even to me. But! I’ve done my best to sort everything in some kind of linear order, and removed most of the repetition. And, well, you asked for it... sorry! 🖤

Ian shows up in the morning, Mickey digs out the magazine Iggy stole from Amelia’s dentist’s office the other day and confronts Ian about the big-ass article in Rolling Stone about IAN’S BAND, says he’s listened to some of their songs, takes out a paper where he’s written down some lyrics that sound strangely familiar.

You’re famous!

I’m in a band, people know about us right now, tomorrow they might not. I’m not famous.

You’re kinda famous.

Ian talks about Mickey recognizing him because of Frank. Hints that there might be several songs inspired by Mickey. It’s awkward as fuck, didn’t want you to know.

Were you ever gonna tell me?

Oh yeah, I had a plan. 3 dates, dinner and a movie, day out with Yev, dinner at my place turned vigorous love-making. Second prong; cohabitation, engagement, marriage, then on our wedding night I tell you about crushing on Justin Timberlake when I was 12,

then I tell you I’m semi-famous, if it still applies.

Mickey thinks his face might be on fire.

What the?

I’m fucking with you, Mick. Figured you already knew.

This again?

You angry?

No, I’m not fucking angry. Just-

Freaked out.

Kinda, yeah.

You shouldn’t be. Please.

It’s weird that I didn’t know, I feel like a schmuck. (And I’m pretty sure by your count we’ve already been on those first two dates.)

I’m sorry. I thought you knew and by some fucking miracle didn’t treat me different. I’d been gearing up to maybe have to have this conversation on our date, ‘cause it’s shit sometimes, you know? I don’t do interviews and I never talk about myself when I gotta do them, but there’s still a limelight and a lot of bullshit that complicates

I’ve been crushing on you since we met basically, and I thought I’d just… let it run its course, keep my mouth shut about it and deal until it went away and we could remain friends without me fucking it up.

Didn’t work, by the way.

Good.

Mickey is talking about it with Etch, who suggests that Ian’s been writing at the diner for a reason.

Etch looks up some lyrics and Mickey caps locks them to Ian

You might have inspired a few lately…

Fuck off. How many?

Since we met? Pretty much all of them.

Maybe one or two made it on to the album, but I wrote those before we really got to know each other so they’re just like… about moments, and how I would feel around you.

Didn’t think of it as creepy but it kinda sounds that way now.

No it’s fine

I won’t do it again.

Said it’s fine. Kinda like it.

Yeah?

You gonna tell me which ones are about me, or is that a secret too?

What are you doing tonight?

Thought you said you were going on tour?

We are, it starts tonight. It’s a small fan club gig here in Chicago.

You have a fan club?

Kinda. I’ll put you on the guest list if you want to come.

(Mickey calls Svetlana to make sure Yevgeny can stay with her over the weekend.)

It’s fine if you don’t want to, we’ll do something else when I get back.

Calm your tits Gallagher, course I wanna go. Needed to make sure I’ve got Yev covered.

Oh okay, good. You’re on the list. Doors at 7, gig starts at 8, no support.

You’ve got no chill.

(Ian doesn’t answer for a while)

I like it.

Good, that was torture. Never doing that again.

(Etch teases him about having his nose in his phone, and makes him aware of new guests arriving)

Gotta get back to work

Yeah, me too. See you tonight?

No chill at all.

Ian invites him to the concert and gives Mickey his phone number. Mickey makes sure Yevgeny stays with his mom on saturday, and after work he goes home and gets ready. Showers and cleans himself thoroughly, puts on cologne and a band t-shirt he hasn’t worn in ages, it’s gotten kinda tight on him since he got it. (He puts on a dress shirt first, tucks it into his pants and glares at his reflection).

He’s on the guest list when he gets there, the girl in the box office can’t find him at first but then Anne shows up and points him out, he’s on the VIP list and gets a pass that he’s told he needs to carry so it’s visible. He makes a point of shoving it in the admission guy’s face, but then shoves the ostentatious thing down the pocket of his jeans. Anne shows him in and tells him about the gig, about how the fan club got started. Anne says he can go backstage but he says he’ll pass, thank you. He gets a beer and finds a good spot, there’s a balcony halfway through the venue where he’s got a perfect view of the stage without having to stand in the front.

They text a little, Mickey says he’s there and Ian says he’ll make a sign when they play a song inspired by him.

run-through of the concert, Ian touches the side of his nose when the song is about Mickey. He’s sexy as fuck, and has some ridiculous stripper moves.

He takes off his hoodie at some point, and sweating through his tank he and Anne put on gloves and start hitting the barrels with crowbars.

Anne is the maestro, maybe Ian crowd surfs at some point? Warren Ellis that violin, man. He has little routines with Anne, and some with Jon too. One song, Anne gets one of his guitars and he does noisy stuff with his violin and plays on the oil barrels with Stran, completely in sync.

They got some good stage banter going, and at some point Ian does a Tom Waits impression, and Anne groans and says he’ll sing the whole thing if they’re not careful. There’s a reason why he’s

For the encore, Ian touches the side of his nose and they start playing a song, Anne saying that this is a first. It looks like Ian is about to sing, but then it looks like he changes his mind and they start playing a song that Mickey sure as fuck hope isn’t about him. The insufferable man on a date right next to Mickey tells the woman he’s with that they were about to play the mysterious title track from their last album that never ended up on the record

“it’s derivative, but cute”

how can it be a title track if it’s not on the album

the guy talks about how he’s got a friend working as an engineer in the studio and he’s sent him an early demo version. It’s not their best song by far, but it’s cool that pretty much no one else has heard it.

Mickey asks the girl if she’s ok with this joker, and she says she’s fine. He offers to get her a cab or something, if she wants to get out of there.

She says she’s not interested

Lady, if I wanted to get with either of you, it wouldn’t be you. Just sayin, I ain’t picky, but that guy would’ve gotten the boot ten minutes into the date if he were here with me, no offense.

WHAT IF.

The concert is over, and crowd starts to let up. Then a fight breaks out at the front and Mickey makes his way towards it. It’s over before he gets there, and sees a guy in his 40s with a bleeding nose, and Lip shaking out his fist, a security guard between them.

Mickey talks to the guard and defuses the situation, putting the bleeding man in the position of a sad overzealous fan. It somehow warms Lip to him, absurdly, and he finds himself apologized to, Lip shaking his hand and wincing when Mickey grips his bruised knuckles a little too hard. Lip vaguely explains that that was an old ex of Ian’s, a real piece of work, and then offers Mickey to come backstage with them to see Ian. Mickey declines.

It’s Lip, Carl and Debbie (Liam is too young, and Fiona too pregnant).

“I was drunk, and wrong, and when I’m wrong I say I’m wrong. (IT’S FROM DIRTY DANCING YOU LITERALLY FORGET EVERY TIME AND HAVE TO GOOGLE IT WHENEVER READING THIS NOTE should I really be quoting Baby’s dad in this fic? Probably. If anyone can, it’s Lip.) And Ian tells me you’ve been there for him a lot lately

I wouldn’t say that

But he did, he doesn’t tell me a lot these days, but he told me that.

Mickey gets another beer at the bar as people mill towards the merch and exit, he sits on a stool with an eye on the backstage passage. He watches the band come out to talk to some of the lingering fans and sign shit. Ian comes out and is immediately surrounded by fans, he locks eyes with Mickey across the room and Mickey raises his beer in a silent cheers. Ian comes up to him after a few minutes, he looks damp and exhilarated and unexpectedly nervous,

How was it?

Not bad, Gallagher.

he asks Mickey over. He has to pack up his shit and do the rounds, but he’ll be done in half an hour, tops. Mickey says he’ll meet him outside.

Ian leaves and Mickey finishes his beer, watching Ian talk to some fans, signing shit and taking pictures. He goes for a piss and then goes out for a smoke.

Ian comes out after twenty minutes, carrying two guitar cases and a large wheelie-bag. Mickey takes one of the guitars off his hands and they walk together.

(maybe Ian has a banjo and he gives it to Mickey to carry and Mickey is all really? I wanna kick your ass so bad right now, country boy, but then carries it anyway.) (banjos are cool)

Walk from the club. Mickey mentions talking to Lip. They talk about Ian’s Tom Waits impression. You’re not musically illiterate at all! Talk about Mickey’s Radiohead tee that he stole from a hookup when he was sixteen, he’s grown into it now. Talk about Ian’s onstage dancing, used to be a stripper, well, not saying you can’t still do private performances (?? you know what I mean! this is not what they’re saying but you’ll remember it) (Note from 2020: I DID NOT REMEMBER IT.)

Talk about wanting to learn playing the trumpet. Don’t have trumpet playing lips.

”Sure you and your lips can do whatever you set your heart to, I believe in you.”

Looks at Mickey and smiles.

”What?”

”You’ve been flirting with me since we first met, haven’t you?”

”Maybe.”

”Huh”

“What?”

“Oh nothing.” “Just re-evaluating everything you’ve ever said to me.”

”Re-evaluate this;” gives Ian the finger.

”That an invitation?”

”Fuck you is what it is,”

“sounds like an invitation.”

Ian tells him a little about his different instruments, Mickey picks up the beat up guitar Gus first gave to Ian and strums it, Ian asks him to play him something but Mickey snorts and says he’s counting on getting laid tonight and him playing would be detrimental to that plan. Ian doesn’t think so, but accepts it when Mickey gives him the guitar.

”I’ve walked some thousand miles,” he starts softly, eyes on his left hand, moving over the strings, ”I have slept many hundred nights, and people’ve said hello and bye through the years since you were mine. But don’t think I’ll stop my mourning, don’t I know it’s overdue. Just because I’ve gotten older, none the wiser I cry for you.”

”Honey, cutie, sweetie-pie,” ”My darling boy, sweet old times, as long as I keep you in mind I will remember what love is like. So, don’t think I’ll stop my mourning, don’t I know it’s overdue.”

”Just because I’ve gotten older, none the wiser.”

”I cry for you.”

I’M THINKING OF WRITING MY OWN SONG BECAUSE I WAS THIS MOMENT TO BE MORE BEFORE SUNSET THAN ANYTHING, ALL SMILES AND DRAMA FREE. SO MAYBE A TEXT THAT IS A LITTLE MORE STRAIGHTFORWARD.

Ian plays the song and when he’s done, Mickey kisses him and they have really enthusiastic sex on the couch. Mickey is about to leave after when Ian invites him to stay,

How about some long-ass foreplay on the couch and then they move into the bedroom.

They start on the couch, they take it to the bedroom, they collapse on the bed after and Mickey is feeling too good to argue when Ian mumbles at him to “stay”.

(Sings the song, says it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a song, it’s one quick thought put under a spotlight. Feeling like he should have known Mickey his whole life already. It’s too much, isn’t it? In the kitchen.

”do you normally take guys home and serenade them?”

”nah, don’t think it’d be very effective with most.”

”But you figured I’d swoon?”

”Figured you’d want the truth.”

”which is?”)

??? Need to find a good mix of excitement and new and easy, balanced with ho shit wtf are we doing this isn’t going to end well i think i fucking love him shut the fuck up. needs to be sexy and a little rough, as well as painfully sincere against better knowledge. kissing will do that. they’re doing stuff the way they usually do stuff, but for some reason it feels completely different.

Important that Mickey kisses him.

They stand up and stand chest to chest, Ian says they don’t have to do anything, Mickey says shut up and get naked

he helps ian take his shirt off and kisses him the second his face comes back into view

They fucks on the couch.

OR ALT FADE CUT END and don’t go explicit. Just saying, it’s an option. A valid option.

They can go at it in one of the sequels? Like the roadtrip can be more explicit? If I want? But also not?

I mean, there is such a thing as a nice middle ground right.

I just don’t think I’m interested in going all out porn after 40+ chapters of whatever.

THEY KISS AND THEN THERE’S A MOTHERFUCKING FADE TO BLACK MY FRIEND, BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I HAVE DECIDED. Soz

WHAT IF!!

Iggy comes in, is all: guess what I found at the dentist this morning?

M: again? Did Amelia break another tooth?

I: It’ll grow back, take a look at this

E: Did you steal that from the dentist’s office?

M: Rolling Stone, wtf?

E: your dentist’s got rolling stone?

Mickey reads the headlines out loud as a customer comes in and asks Etch about something they’ve lost the other day, and Etch starts rifling through boxes behind the counter as Mickey moves over to sit down in Ian’s booth, rifling through the magazine.

M: what am I looking for?

I: I marked the page

E: what’s this note?

Mickey starts reading the article, realizing that the blurred picture is of Ian, and the interview is with Ian, and holy shit. Ian is legit famous.

Etch starts reading the list of coffees, eventually turning the page over and pointing out that there’s a phone number.

Iggy comes to the diner in the morning, Etch is rifling through stuff behind the counter and Mickey is doing the rounds with the few guests still there after the morning rush.

Iggy shows him the magazine he found at the dentist’s and Etch is in the background like wtf is this, reading from Ian’s note with the coffee orders, Mickey only half listens, trying to take in the fact that Ian is fucking famous.

Etch says there’s a phone number too and Mickey brushes him off.

Then he’s like, hold the fuck up! And gets the note from the trash and tries the number, and Ian fucking answers. And they have the you’re famous conversation on the phone and voila, Mickey has his number and vice versa.

So Mickey calls Ian in the morning, then there’s text talk during the day.

From Ian

So, you’ve had my number for x days and you only now decided to use it?

That’s cold.

From Mickey

You wrote it on a piece of paper you then balled up and threw on the floor, asshole, it’s a miracle it didn’t end up in the trash. didn’t know I had it until this morning.

You suck at this. (This is a nice revelation that he likes, but Maybe that doesn’t come across in text.

Not a complaint btw, just gleeful observation.

From Ian

Are we still on?

From Mickey

Of course.

Dumbass.

Ian

I probably deserved that.

At some point Mickey starts capslocking and sending lyrics to Ian, who has to explain through text why he’s written songs about Mickey, saying that he’ll point them out tonight.

HERE’S A QUESTION

SHOULD I SKIP THE WHOLE “WRITING SONGS ABOUT MICKEY” BUSINESS??

Isn’t it enough that Ian is famous and kept this fact from Mickey? Isn’t the writing songs business a little creepy? and if he did write songs about Mickey, would he really publish them without Mickey’s consent? No. Maybe I’m deliriously tired and about to fall ill right now, but I actually think I should skip that part. It’s a little sad because it’s been part of this idea for three years, but if I’m uncertain about it now imagine how I’m going to feel about it later?

When I started writing this story, it was supposed to be a quick and silly thing, and now it’s something else. It’s not important or anything, but also it is. To me. And making a decision on the rating was a big deal for me, and I think this is another one of those things. I’ve been holding on to this idea for so long but when I really think about it, is it even romantic? It’s romantic in that kind of teenage dream way, maybe? It’s more romantic to me if they fall in love for reasons other than Ian writing songs. But he’s written NTW, and he still thinks about performing it live, but we skip the whole thing about songs being about Mickey.

So they talk on the phone in the morning, and then there’s a text coming in after a little while asking if Mickey wants to come to the show.

HEYHO IT’S A REVOLUTION AND I FEEL FREE

Mickey and Ian text after the show (after Mickey declines going backstage) Ian asks him to meet him round back in twenty minutes. When Mickey goes out there, he sees Ian talking to a couple of fans by the bus and Mickey hangs back to smoke while he waits. The fans leave and Ian looks around, checks his watch, he has a bunch of guitars with him.

I AM LEANING HEAVILY TOWARDS MICKEY KISSING IAN HERE. He’s like “Stop, hold this” giving Ian back the guitar, so he can grab on to him and kiss him, smiling against Ian lips as the guitar tips over and clatters against the asphalt.

They’re outside Ian’s house, Ian says he has to get up at an unholy hour tomorrow. Invites him in anyway.

They’re in the elevator, then they’re in Ian’s apartment. Ian plays him the song, Before sunset ending.

almost none of that rhymed, just letting you know. kinda embarrassing.

(almost none of that rhymed, just letting you know. kinda embarrassing.

yeah, it’s not a very good song. is why we cut it from the record

oh yeah? thought it was ‘cause of the like, intensely personal subject

that too)

They smile at each other like fools and Mickey feels like he is exactly where he’s supposed to be, and there’s no rush. Fade to black.

Etch finds the paper, says there’s a phone number on it. Mickey dials the number and goes out back as it rings out. When Ian answers, he reads a question from the interview and they talk.

He goes back into the diner and basically blows the whole thing off, it doesn’t make any difference to him and he has to go back to work. Yevgeny does his homework and Iggy leaves, and Ian invites Mickey to the gig via text. Etch invites Yevgeny to stay over at theirs for a movie night.

Does Mickey tell Yev about the gig?

Start with Mickey out back, smoking. The phone rings and he waits for Etch to take it, but it keeps ringing. He bangs the door and yells PHONE and then it stops ringing. He kills the cigarette and goes back inside. Etch is behind the counter talking on the phone and going through the lost and found, looking for whatever the caller has lost. Mickey clears a table. It’s afternoon. Etch hangs up but keeps going through stuff in the box, talking to Mickey, when Iggy comes in.

It’s maybe more like afternoon (?) when Iggy comes in and shows Mickey the magazine. He calls Ian and they have a quick conversation (he probably goes outside to have it, to escape his audience) and they establish that Ian is sorta famous. Then they text back and forth a little, until Ian invites him to the show.

Mickey calls Svet to arrange it so Yev can stay with her, and then accepts. He goes home after work to eat, have a shower and change out of his clothes. He wears the only band tee he owns, mostly because it’s funny and because it’s kinda tight and he doesn’t think he looks too bad in it (and a dress shirt is way too much for a concert not-date, not that he tried on a couple first. Then he does a little bit of cyberstalking only to find very little personal information and a lot of crazy fans. Maybe he watches a couple of music videos, but they’re all really weird cartoons so they give him nothing. They’re cool though, and guess the music’s alright, even though he doesn’t have a connection yet to it so it’s hard to tell if he likes it.

Yevgeny calls, because Mickey switched the days and he wants to know why. Mickey asks if he knows about the Broken Bells, and Yev’s like duh who doesn’t? And freaks out when Mickey tells him about Ian. He doesn’t tell him about the whole date situation though, just that he’s going to the concert. Maybe Yev asks for some merch.

Mickey takes an Uber to the venue, even though it’s not too far from the diner (but on the other side, so at least a 30 minute walk) and it seems like they’ve already started letting people in. He hangs back until the admissions office is clear and then tells the lady that he’s on some kinda guest list. She can’t find him, and he’s about to give up and go home when he sees a familiar figure in the background. He calls her Stay-puft first, but then also remembers that her name is Anne and calls her that too. She remembers him, and finds him on a different (VIP) list, the venue staff woman is embarrassed, but Anne is borderline flirting she’s so nice about the mistake. Mickey gets a pass that he’s supposed to keep around his neck, but he shows it to the guards and then tucks it down his back pocket. Anne shows him inside the venue and asks if he wants to come backstage and say hello, but he kindly declines.

He has a quick peruse of the merch table (he checks the CDs, and then sees a smaller table next to the merch with a guy handing out pins, Mickey talks to him and finds out that it’s “fan club” pins to commemorate the gig and Mickey asks if his VIP pass gets him one, it does, and then the guy asks if Mickey wants to sign up for the newsletter) and then gets a beer, before finding a good spot on the mezzanine floor. He’s got a balcony railing for support and beer holder, and he’s got an excellent view of the stage. The floor is filling up with people packing themselves against the front. He texts Ian saying he’s here and they text a little back and forth. He gets someone to watch his spot and goes to the restroom. There, he finds a kid getting cornered by a middle-aged man. The kid looks vaguely familiar and not older than sixteen. Mickey steps in and casually accuses the guy of creeping on a kid and the guy immediately backs off, the kid says thanks and that he’s eighteen (because it’s an 18+ gig) and Mickey says sure.

Getting back to his spot, There is a douchebag on a date behind him that he wants to move away from, but he doesn’t want to surrender his good spot. He decides to tune him out, he’ll hopefully shut up once the set starts. It’s just a couple of minutes after eight when the lights dim and a song comes on louder than before, and the band start coming out on the stage. Ian is wearing jeans and a hoodie, like he normally does, but he’s clean shaven and his normally smiling face is set in blank determination. Anne is the front person, and she commands the audience with the slightest gesture. It’s obvious that the venue is filled with old fans, they all know exactly what to do exactly when she asks them to do it. Ian’s got like four guitars and a whole lot of other shit around him, and he’s super focused on doing his stuff, but now and then he does little routines with Anne and Jon, and gets a big cheer for his occasional solos.

A few songs in, Ian gets up to stand on one of the oil barrels, and Anne starts banging on it with a crowbar. That’s when Mickey starts to really get into it. It’s cool, and it’s a lot harder than Ian made it out to be, but kind of theatrical at the same time. Ian is brilliant, even though he dances like an uncoordinated stripper.

There is banter between the songs, mainly between Anne and Stran (girl sure bangs those drums!) Anne starts banging one of the oil barrels again and Ian and Jon do a little step dance next to each other across the scene.

At some point Ian takes off his hoodie. He’s wearing a white tank and he’s already sweating through it. He gives his guitar to Anne and puts on gloves. Him and Stran do a little bant-y thing and then they start a new song by both banging the barrels in unison while Anne and Jon start playing (maybe Jon plays something else, like an electric piano or a marimba?). At the crescendo of the song, Ian takes out a baseball bat and goes to town on the barrel, sweat shining on his muscly arms and his wet hair flopping down his forehead.

They go off the stage, but come back when the crowd chants a song, stomping their feet and clapping their hands. Anne says they’ve got one more song for them, and they start playing. She moves away from the microphone and it looks for a second like Ian is going to step up and sing. Douchebag behind Mickey tells his date about an unreleased b-side to the last album. But then Ian steps back and says something to Stran, who nods and moves into a slightly different beat. Without blinking Anne, steps back up to the mic and sings the last song.

Some of the crowd lingers by the stage after the lights have gone back on, but most move towards the bar or the merch table. Mickey hangs back to watch the crew take down the stage, and the two oil barrels being handed over to someone in the audience, along with set lists and left-over picks. Walking down from the mezzanine floor to go look for the restrooms, a fight breaks out on the floor. Mickey immediately recognizes one of them as Lip and the other one as the creep from the bathroom, and intervenes by clearly positioning himself on Lip’s side and reminding the creep that he could get him in trouble, the creep backs off and agrees when Mickey tells the security guards it was an accident (in a way that isn’t obviously helpful, but in the end still makes sure that Lip isn’t hurt or arrested for punching a guy) (because he did, he punched a guy, who is thrown out by the guards after Mickey’s intervention). Lip, Carl, Debbie, and Liam is there, but it’s only Lip who knows who Mickey is. He hangs back to talk to Mickey while his siblings go backstage (and PROBABLY DOESN’T tell him a little bit about the guy being Ian’s ex, making it clear that Lip really doesn’t like him). He also apologizes to Mickey for last time. He asks if Mickey wants to go backstage, but Mickey declines. He’s decided earlier with Ian through text that he’ll wait for him and thinks it’s better to do it somewhere that isn’t backstage where he might get asked questions and have to talk to people who aren’t Ian.

He gets another beer and stands in the bar next to the merch, watching as Ian and the rest of the band come out to sign some stuff and shake hands. Ian still looks slightly damp from sweat, even though he’s obviously changed clothes and run a towel through his hair. Mickey wonders if his skin tastes like salt. He drinks his beer.

Ian comes up to him after a little while, asking well? (or texts him, which probably makes more sense? But I also want Mickey to see Ian post-show)

Not bad Gallagher, not bad at all.

Ian looks pleased and asks if Mickey wants to come over, even though Ian has an early morning. Mickey says yes and Ian asks him to wait until they’re done packing up.

Mickey finishes his beer, goes to the restroom (where he sees douchebag by the urinal) and then he goes outside to wait for Ian. (He talks to douchebag’s date and offers to get her a taxi before the guy comes out.) He smokes a cigarette, and before he knows it, Ian is by his side, carrying a fuck ton of guitars. They decide to walk, for some reason, talking on the way.

HEY

Ian says he’s got a car coming and they walk a little bit to where they’re getting picked up. They talk about trumpet lips and stuff and Mickey kisses him. They get interrupted by the car arriving, and Ian picks up his guitars and says “you coming?”

Fuck yes

They sit in silence in the car, but it’s a good one. Ian says

Lip told me what you did back there.

He didn’t tell you shit.

He did, told me you stepped in and stopped him from getting arrested

He was getting his ass kicked, someone had to help the guy

And Liam told me you got him out of a tough situation in the restroom

That was Liam? Some pedo’s creeping on a kid by the urinal, I’m not gonna stand by doing nothing.

You know that’s not what happened

Yeah, well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

He isn’t a pedo, and Lip would’ve beat the shit outta him if you hadn’t stepped in.

You defending this guy?

No, trying to say thanks.

You’re shit at it.

Thank you, Mickey

Better.

So… friend of yours.

No. (Ian isn’t forthcoming with the info)

Alright, whatever.

And he’s definitely not someone I wanna talk about, tonight.

(Ian is smiling at him, all the promise in the world in his eyes)

Fucking fair enough.

They arrive.

OR Ian joins Mickey outside and they stand around and talk

They talk about Ian’s Tom Waits impression. You’re not musically illiterate at all! Talk about Mickey’s Radiohead tee that he stole from a hookup when he was sixteen, he’s grown into it now. Talk about Ian’s onstage dancing, used to be a stripper, well, not saying you can’t still do private performances (?? you know what I mean! this is not what they’re saying but you’ll remember it)

Talk about wanting to learn playing the trumpet. Don’t have trumpet playing lips.

”Sure you and your lips can do whatever you set your heart to, I believe in you.”

Looks at Mickey and smiles.

”What?”

”You’ve been flirting with me since we first met, haven’t you?”

”Maybe.”

”Huh”

“What?”

“Oh nothing.” “Just re-evaluating everything you’ve ever said to me.”

”Re-evaluate this;” gives Ian the finger.

”That an invitation?”

”Fuck you is what it is,”

“sounds like an invitation.”

That’s when a taxi pulls up and Ian walks toward it

Could use some help with these.

They ride in silence

They carry Ian’s instruments from the car, and Ian says something cute

Mickey’s like “Stop, hold this” giving Ian back the guitar, so he can grab on to him and kiss him, smiling against Ian lips as the guitar tips over and clatters on the asphalt.

They’re outside Ian’s house, Ian says he has to get up at an unholy hour tomorrow. Invites him in anyway.

There he asks Ian to play him something that other people don’t get to hear (mostly to be a cheeky monkey, but also because he wants it) and Ian plays him None the wiser.

I’ve walked a thousand miles to end up in your corner booth

Grinning idiot when you bitch, falling fool for your dirty mouth

Sitting on my busy hands when you swagger by and I say -

Hey waiter, pour some coffee in my cup and bring me my toast, before you fuck me up

I’ve been in some thousand fights and it’s clear that so have you, too

Faded threats and cigarettes, sharp glass polished by the sea

Wish you’d put your hands on me and make your feelings clear

Hey waiter

meet me ‘round the back door, tell me I’ve got it wrong and fuck me up some more

‘Cause I’ve fallen a thousand times but never felt this way before, like I should have met you long ago

Walked with you by my side and had your back through thick and thin

Sickness and health, come what may, and I say-

Hey waiter

pop the damn champagne

None the wiser

you fuck me up again

Hey waiter

tell me you’ll be mine

I’ll give you my life

and fuck you up in kind

I wish I was just a plain white shirt

then you could wear me off to work

and I’d be one of the things you keep close to your heart

soft white cotton wrapped around your heart

(Contrasts have faded now

but color still haunt my mind

And words ripped off from their lines

Make bitter tears flood my eyes

Don’t think I’ll stop my mourning

Don’t I know it’s overdue

Just because I’ve gotten older

None the wiser, I cry for you)

Honey, cutie, sweetie-pie

My darling boy, sweet old times

As long as I keep you in mind

I will remember what love is like

So, don’t think I’ll stop my mourning

Don’t I know it’s overdue

Just because I’ve gotten older

None the wiser, I cry for you

’Cause I always say ’I love you’

when I mean ’turn out the light’

And I say ’let’s run away’

when I just mean ’stay the night’

But the words you want to hear

you will never hear from me

I’ll never say ’happy anniversary’

Never stay to say ’happy anniversary’

Bom-chaka bom-chak 23 verses

And he climbed up a mountain

And he looked around

Some kind of forest

With all these dinosaurs

And he stripped his woman

He stripped her bare

But there was a pterodactyl

There!

#Anonymous

21 notes · View notes

gemstoneconstellations · 4 years

Note

I love your fanfics! And I was wondering do you have any tips for original fanfic writing or just writing fics in general?

wow this actually ended up a lot longer than i thought it would, but here we go!

Original fanfics, hmmmmmm....

What I generally do is base things off of my own personal experience. Like all my iida fics are stuff that happened between me and my husband before we got married. Can’t help falling in love fic with bakugo, that was a previous relationship i had (which there is more to that story). Caught with todoroki..... thats how i got out of a ticket with a cop and how i learned that when i half check someone out and half start thinking about what i would do to that fine man in uniform (curse my uniform kink) that i glare/make a suspicious face. and when he confronted me about what i was doing, ready to write some kind of ticket for whatever i was doing wrong, i was so embarrassed that i blurted out that i found him very attractive and what exactly was on my mind and how i wanted to take that uniform off him.... that has happened with a emt too, i missed the green light looking at his bulging biceps after he rolled up his sleeves to write on a clip board.... he waved and i proceeded to squat in my seat and slam my face against the stirring wheel. escape artist cat was actually a dream i had, someone was taking off my cat’s pretty ribbon collars and putting ugly ones on her and i woke up sooooo mad, but i turned that dream into a romance story (reality kuiper was taking her collars off herself cause she was a brat) Stories about yourself, no matter how small you think it is actually has great potential to become a fic.

its also okay to borrow ideas from other forms of media. I do. example, Silk Maiden, based off of an old batman episode from the early 2000s. its completely okay to do that. I’m not saying copy and paste the exact scenes. Just take the premises and then change it. some examples, like the movie Brave is the Scottish version of Aladdin. the princess who wants to be free and live her life beyond her princess duties needs to get married and she is not having it and wants to change the rules and runs away to find something new. premise is the same but how the story is told is different, one denies every prince and find her own prince in the streets of her kingdom and the other finds a cake that turns her mom into a bear that helps them understand each other and appreciate each other more. a weeb example is isekais. There are sooooo many isekais. japan, Korea, and china are all mass producing isekais right now. the premises are all the same, someone from one world now in another world primarily thanks to magical truck-kun who is probably could be branded as a mass serial killer at this point. I read a lot and i love korean isekai romance novels. I have read an isekai where the character was a villain who then was reincarnated with the memories of her villainous previous life who decided to live her new life by repenting by helping others but guess what? truck-kun came in the form of a airplane crash and she wakes up again in her first life’s preteen body before she became a villain. I’m reading an isekai isekai, author of an isekai met truck-kun and woke up inside the body of one of her characters in her isekai novel. all the same premise but told in a different way. i want to write an isekai for bnha! take a premise and write what you wanted to see happen between those characters if they were in that situation.

same for some fanfics, like you read a fanfic and you like the story that you read but you wished for something more. You like the idea but you wished that it went in this direction or you wanted different types of interaction, its okay to write your own fic with the same premises. i’ve done that. (side note: but if you are gonna base off of it where a lot of the stuff is the same the give the proper credit where it deserves. no stealing peoples hard work) thats what fanfic was originally made for, fans wanted something more from their favorite works or wants something different (Thank you star trek fandom who started all this). I’ve read a lot of villain deku fics and i was craving a specific type of villain fic where “he really isnt a villain but is one but there is a reason why hes being evil cause it is for the greater good cause of deku’s savior complex and border line martyr complex he’s had since he was a child” with a side of “hero/villain romance”, “surprise quirk” and “badass” and a healthy scoop of “bakugo becomes a better person on his own without deku at UA through the power of friendship cause he has that potential without deku’s constant interference”. no one had what i wanted, so i started writing it myself.

also dont worry about being original. you can write a common idea that everyone sees a thousand times a day, like isekai, and people will love it. focus on how you are telling your story, dont put so much effort in being different. actually, common or typical tropes/ideas help make the story more relatable. two books can be equally as good but one person can like book A over book B because they felt more connected to the characters in it. they could relate to the emotions that were being conveyed.

now writing tips....hmmmmm well not everything works for everyone but this is what i do

I write notes down, lots of them. I have notebooks full of notes for my fics. some people can just sit there and start writing, but i like notes to keep me on track and remind me of stuff i wanted to add. Writing it down makes it easier not to forget, cause you are just lying to yourself if you think you’ll remember the idea for later. i got dialogue, scenes, plots, random quirk ideas, diagrams, (12) oc profiles, outlines, lists, and a event idea that i have that i want to do some day, all in my notebook. If you are going to write a long fic i strongly encourage that you do this. Outlines are your friend, they are bones of the story Ex:

Hero By Another Name original outline:

meet at a fire, firefighter impresses kiri who will later seek her out

kiri is becoming popular and wants to share the fame

they bond some how(?)

firefighter kiri, kirishima needs to wear a firefighter uniform

firefighter turns out to be a mega fan of red riot

photoshoot

kirishima finds out shes a nerd and is cool with it

firefighter is now popular

camping with baku or bakusquad?

miscommunication

kirishima does a big confession

I always start off with the key things i want for sure to happen. then i start adding to it. I write out the scene i definitely want to see or i can see clearly in my head. i just keep adding to it till its at least three pages long of just outline that has some images, random dialogue i want someone to say or little summaries of the scene i want.

its okay to jump around when you write. there are some parts that you know you need in a story to help it move a long but it can be boring. so i write one scene that i want to happen next and then i think of what needs to happen to get to that point. like how in hero another name where kirishima shows up unannounced to her apartment and finds out she hoards all his hero merch while not wearing pants. how do you make that not sound creepy and have kirishima be okay with it? by adding bits of how much of a fan she is through out the story! when they first have dinner together i threw in that red riot shirt to help break the ice and that he would then know that she was a big enough fan to buy his merch and that she admires him and that he is an inspiration for her. then later adding that interview where she talks about how she became his fan shows that she has years of dedication to him as a hero. so when he sees all the merch she has, it would make sense to him that she had all of that and not go “huh, will i be able to leave this place if i enter?”

if you dont know it, look it up. research. i wrote a fic before where the reader was pregnant the entire time, i started at two months to birth. I knew nothing about pregnancy on how it can affect your daily life and what it feels like beyond what health class and child development class taught me. So i looked it up. there is seriously so much that doctors look for during those many ultrasounds cause there are so many things that can affect your health and the baby’s and did you know there is pregnancy diabetes? you can become diabetic only during pregnancy, like after you give birth it can go away or stay, the human body is just tripy. but thanks to that research, people who have had children before left comments going “yessss, i remember feeling that” or “god, this was my sister in this scene, it sucks”. Its that relatability i mentioned before that really helps and it makes the story more believable.

(this is just my personal opinion mainly here feel free to ignore) when it comes to smut, write what you know and not what you fantasize about. im not calling anyone out but i can tell from how someone writes sex that they never had it and they are most likely younger than me. i’ve experimented a lot in my 25 years of life and i find myself going “oh sweetie, thats not how the vagina/anus works” when i read fics sometimes. there are guides online that are very informative and tell you what the feelings are like that you would expect. dont rely on porn too much on how sex works physically, maybe for dialogue. (i think of porn as just live action fanfics for the human mating ritual fandom). its okay to use other smuts as reference tools as well, especially if you dont know anything of the bdsm lifestyle.

beta readers help a lot. if you are unsure of ideas that you have, talk it out with a friend. I sometimes do this for myself or help others with their fics. its actually a lot of fun with a group of people where you just keep shooting off ideas together about stuff and just go all out fangirlling to the point you are rolling on the ground smiling. this can help with writers block or motivate you to keep writing. also having another pair of eyes to look at your fics, not just for corrections but for input on the story can help make it better. someone can see things from a different angle and point stuff out to you, plot holes or things that you can add.

im not sure what else to say other than stuff like format and spacing. sometimes i see people who write too long of paragraphs or there is no clear separation between them. thats killer on the eyes and makes me not want to read at all cause all i see is this wall of text thats just overwhelming. i want to call who ever formatted textbooks cause thats how they do it and it makes it so hard to concentrate on reading and absorbing the info. if i see fics with no clear breaks or long running paragraphs, i usually give up half way cause i just cant do it. its hard to keep track where you are reading and you start trying to focus on it too much that the story is just lost on me. it is hard on people like me who have dyslexia (who ever called it that is just cruel to people who have it cause you can never spell it without spell check and pronouncing it is just ugggh)

i hope this helps

#my weebs

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brightblueinky · 4 years

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Long winded ramblings about a Bronycon video

So I’ve seen some hubbub about a YouTube essay going over the history of the Brony fandom up until the last Bronycon. (You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVOF2PiHnc ) I just got around to watching it today and I was...somewhat confused by some of the stronger negative takes I was seeing floating around Twitter, and I’ve been in a “fandom discourse” mood lately so, hey, I thought...why not talk about it. The first part of this was originally going to be a Twitter thread until I realized Twitter wasn’t going to let me keep going on the thread so I gave up and decided to put it here instead (lol) so it’s probably going to be a bit choppy since I was trying to keep it readable for that format.

So first of all, my background, so I can be completely honest about where I'm coming from and try not to portray what I'm saying as like...an end-all-be-all take here, because I don't wanna do that. I was never really an MLP fan. I watched the first season of FiM and really enjoyed it, but I didn't really engage with the fandom because by that point I'd gotten to where I didn't spend much time in huge fandoms. So I can't come at this from the perspective of an MLP fan. When I’m addressing the fandom here, I’m coming at it as an outsider in the sense that I am not a MLP fan/brony. What I AM going to do is come at this from the perspective of something of a "native" to fandom. I've always been a geek. I've engaged in online fandom in some form or another since I was about 8, which was in the mid 90s. I've been around the fandom block. Actually, I can even say that I used to lurk on 4chan a lot and I saw a lot of the early Brony discussions there. I also watch @JennyENicholson's videos, and yeah, there's been times where I've been bugged because we had a disagreement of opinions and felt like it was a little harsh. She's got a dry sense of humor and sometimes it's hard to read when she's joking and when she's being genuine. So like, I wasn't surprised when I saw some hubbub from some people online about her doing the video about Bronies. Not at all. But I gotta say...I am really surprised by some of the more INTENSE takes on the video after watching it?? The LARGE majority of the video is @JennyENicholson covering this fandom from an INSIDER'S perspective. She was an MLP fan before FiM, she was active enough in the fandom to be a BNF. A huge, huge amount of the video is positive and nostalgic. In fact I now wish I HAD been in the fandom! It seems like it was a lot of fun! The only thing I felt was maybe harsh in the video is I think she gave the impression that being "furry" is exclusively a sex thing, but by the end she talks about furries being a community that's a very inclusive, kind community with a lot of queer people, so even then I think if you're really paying attention to the whole video you're not going to come away with the idea that the furry community is bad. Just maybe could've had more nuance earlier in the video? So from glancing through mentions of her in a Twitter search (which is definitely not going to be a perfect sample) from what I can tell there's like two things that people seem to be upset about with the video: 1, the idea that the fandom is "dead" and 2...just...Body Pillows. So let's talk about the dead fandom thing first. As I mention, I have been in fandom a long, long time. Although I (usually) shy away from big active fandoms now, I started off in bigger ones--Sonic, Pokemon, Digimon, LOTR, etc. The two fandoms I currently care about the most, though, are definitely fandoms that tend to be called "dead" and were never HUGE to begin with (Princess Tutu and Chrono Crusade). I think I can count on my hands the number of ppl who actively discuss or create fanwork for CC. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've been on both sides of the coin here. And let me reassure Bronies: "Dead", while maybe too strong of a label for what it actually means, does not have to be a negative thing and you don't need to defend your fandom from it, IMO. I think the "dead" label simply means that interest in the fandom has cooled, the number of active participants is significantly down from the heydays of the fandom, etc. And I don't think that's an unfair label for brony fandom from what I know. If there was a large scale replacement for Bronycon then maybe it'd be unfair, but...yeah, if you're losing your large hubs for the fandom community, if the flow of fanwork and discussion has slowed, I think "dead", as it's used, isn't an unfair label. But again, I don't think this is a bad thing! I'd imagine that even the current state of the brony fandom is larger and more active than the Princess Tutu fandom at its greatest heights. It's a pretty relative term. It doesn't mean nobody cares, or that you can't still enjoy it! All the "dead" label really means is acknowledging the change in a fandom. It's not a bad thing. I might be 1 of ~30 writers for Chrono Crusade on AO3 but I still have fun writing fic and I still get hits and occasional positive comments. It's not bad. Just different. Okay so now let's talk about the body pillow thing and oh man, is this going to be a minefield, lol. Let's first talk about my personal lens I'm going to come at here... I've created NSFW fanwork. Some of it taboo. I'm also (somewhat) a part of the "proship" discourse on Twitter which is basically a community of people that push back against another community of "anti"-shippers who feel that some ships are problematic (because of character age, power dynamics, etc) and shouldn't be shipped. (I think that simplifies a lot of the discussion on both sides but it’ll do for the purpose of what I’m getting at here, I think.) At its worse this debate has lead death threats and suicide attempts. I have seen people get treated abusively for fanwork (sometimes NSFW but not always). (And I also want to add that while I think the major component of the pro-ship discussions on Twitter are anti-harassment, there’s been some ‘edgy’ types who think that it’s fun to harass antis with NSFW fanwork and the like and I want to make it clear that is ALSO ABUSIVE AND NOT OKAY.) Basically, I want to say I'm sympathetic to a knee jerk defensive reaction over NSFW fanart. Okay? I can get why people might want to push against criticism of stuff they enjoy/create, and that there’s an element of possibly being harassed for fanwork you create. But the thing is, I don't think this is really the attitude Jenny is taking in the video. She lightly mocks NSFW stuff and body pillows, but often describes it as "harmless" and "fine". The only time she's critical of it is when she notes that sometimes body pillows with suggestive poses could be on display at conventions where young kids were present--at a con celebrating a show MEANT for young kids--and that probably shouldn't have been allowed. She's not saying you can't buy a body pillow, or create one. She didn't even say that while discussing body pillows of characters who were 10! She expressed personal discomfort, but the only restriction she really suggested was "keep this out of the sight of minors." And I don't know why that would be a controversial take. I read lemons when I was younger so I'm not going to sit here and act like it's going to completely ruin kids lives or anything. But I ALSO think it's appropriate to have boundaries for sexual materials for kids (or anyone who doesn't want to engage for whatever reason). I want my stuff to be clearly labeled as NSFW, with tags being clear about the content, so people know what they're getting into. I’ve grown to care about this even more as I’ve gotten older. I don’t really want to know about minors reading my nsfw fanfic or anything. I’m not going to, like, parent them and shame them if they do, but I don’t want to engage with it, I want my stuff to be labeled, and I am DEFINITELY not going to put it on public display at a place where I know kids are allowed, ESPECIALLY not when it’s work based on stuff MEANT for children! I mean, I grew up in a fundamentalist Evangelical household and I will rant at you for hours about how damaging I feel that environment was, and that I don’t think kids and teens should be completely shielded from sex, etc. But that doesn’t mean that having boundaries in place is a bad idea, especially when minors are involved. I also think that boundaries are good just for the sake of consent, too? I’m not saying that someone accidentally seeing suggestive art is the same as them being raped, please don’t conflate it like that, but if people don’t want to see it for whatever reason they should be given the opportunity to make that choice as much as possible. The stuff that Jenny mentioned brony conventions would do (requiring stuff to be sold under the table, or having late night hours for the dealer’s room where 18+ merch could be displayed and sold) seem like really good policies and pretty similar to what I’ve seen at anime conventions I’ve attended (although occasionally some stuff that was maybe a biiit more suggestive than I’d be comfortable displaying in public...but hey, my local con allows kids but also makes it clear in their rules that it’s mostly geared for 13+ attendees and that it’s up to parents to decide what’s appropriate for their kids, and I think that’s fair). And yeah, I know, nothing that Jenny showed in the video being displayed at Bronycon was 100% explicit, just suggestive. She notes this in the video herself, saying that yeah, it doesn’t show genitalia, etc...and as I’m writing this I think I’ve maybe rambled too much about NSFW fanart when most of the stuff we’re talking about here is more “suggestive” than straight-up porn, since that’s probably muddying the waters a bit. But I gotta, gotta, GOTTA address the sentiment I saw multiple times on Twitter in response to her video: “Dakimakura/body pillows aren’t sexual and to say that is orientalist.” I...what? What the fuck? Okay, again, I’m going to make it perfectly clear what my background is here so that I’m not claiming to have some expertise that I don’t have: I am white. I am VERY white. My parents did the DNA test thing and the most “exotic” thing that came up is that my dad is 3% Spanish. Not latin american, I mean from Spain spanish. I am sooooo fucking white. I’ve studied a LITTLE of Japanese culture in college classes but that wasn’t even my field of study (Communication major on a Broadcasing track, minor in Theatre) so I’m not going to tell you I’m an expert on Japanese culture. I’m just a weeby geek that grew up in anime fandoms and never really stopped consuming Japanese pop culture. I have a very limited experience with Japanese culture. I am NOT an expert on what is and isn’t orientalist. I know I’m really hammering in this point here but I think it’s really, really important that I make it clear that I shouldn’t be used as an expert on this subject. But what I DO have a background in is someone who has engaged in Western fandom of stuff from Japan from a young age, I did spend a lot of time on 4chan, this is NOT the first time that I’ve seen some form of an “this isn’t sexual at all and you’re just a PERVERT” discussion about fanservice and...okay first of all, I highly doubt anyone saying this is any more qualified to define what is and isn’t orientalist than I am. I think this is bullshit and it feels like an attempt to make your opinions more legitimate by implying people that disagree with you are some form of bigot. (And look, I was a sheltered, insecure, stuck-up teenager in fandom, part of the reason I feel like I can recognize this is I totally pulled the same shit. I am not going to act like I have never tried to pull this and that I’m a pure innocent woke intellectual who’s never said something foolish, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let it slide, either.)

While writing this I googled ‘dakimakura’ to make sure I was spelling it right and noticed that Wikipedia does note that the origins of this style of pillow are sometimes used by Japanese kids as something like a security blanket, which I’m guessing is where the justification for the argument is coming from, but let’s be intellectually honest here--body pillow covers being sold at a convention aren’t primarily meant to be a security blanket for kids. And, okay, maybe you have a body pillow cover with a character on it that isn’t exactly in a sexual pose, just laying fully clothed on what looks like a bedsheet background. But I don’t think it’s an unfair argument to say that even THEN it implies a sort of intimacy, right, possibly a desire for a romantic attachment? Like, sharing a bed with someone doesn’t have to be sexual or romantic, I used to share a bed with my brother in hotel rooms when we were kids, but I’m also not going to share a bed with my brother and then hug him closely to my body no matter how he’s posed or what he’s wearing??? And look, maybe a body pillow isn’t ALWAYS sexual but to say it’s NOT sexual, which kinda implies NEVER, is so disingenuous. The top result I got when I searched for “anime body pillow” is a shop that includes categories like “18+ body pillow” and “sexy body pillow” and also SELLS FAKE BREAST INSERTS FOR SOME OF THE PILLOWS SO YOU CAN SQUEEZE THEIR BOOBS (obviously, NSFW link: https://www.dakimakura.us/ ) Like, COME ON, I don’t think it’s orientalist to say that something is sexual when Japanese people are actually selling body pillows they label as 18+. The second result even has a second for pillows you can insert sex toys into. And yeah I saw the guy saying “masturbation isn’t sex!” and sir at BEST you have a very narrow and incorrect definition of sex as simply being intercourse and, again, at worst you’re just being straight up dishonest. In fact, I’ll straight up call myself out for this. There’s a fanart body pillow of a fictional character I’ve considered buying several times! (Not porn but still probably NSFW link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/701912275/dakimakura-hypnosismic-doppo?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=hypnosis+mic&ref=sr_gallery-1-4&organic_search_click=1 ) Is this porn? No. You can’t see much. But on one side of the pillow he’s got his shirt untucked, you can see a bit of his stomach, and his fly is undone and you can see the band of his underwear peeking out. This is sexual. I’m not wanting it to like, get off on it, exactly...honestly it’s maybe a bit ironic, and a lot of wanting a body pillow in general is I like sleeping hugging onto something but I have a different sleep schedule from my husband I find him too big to hold all night and too warm in the summer anyway. But I’m not going to tell you that me wanting this PARTICULAR pillow case isn’t at all sexual, I know what I’m doing, I like the character and think the drawing is hot. I’m not saying don’t buy body pillows, okay? I’m not saying don’t sell them. I don’t think Jenny is either (she literally OWNS ONE that she shows in the video!!!). But don’t act like there isn’t ever anything sexual about it existing to try to defend their existence, okay? You don’t need to be a fucking coward about it, and you especially don’t need to say it’s racist if people call out something as being suggestive when, well, it fucking is. And I think it’s totally 100% reasonable for someone to say “hey I don’t think it’s a good idea to display suggestive art around kids, especially if it’s depicting young characters.” TL;DR -- Chill, guys. CHILL. Your fandom is getting smaller and the term people use for this is “dead” but that’s not a bad thing, you’ve still got the fandom, you can still enjoy it, there’s definitely no need to take personal offense over it. And enjoy your body pillows, but don’t be disingenuous about the fact that they can be suggestive and try to act like anyone that calls it such is racist, that is such bullshit. Like what you like, other people’s opinions of it is not automatically a personal attack on you, there’s no need to jump to being defensive every time someone says something vaguely negative about it. Chill, fandom friends. Fandom ain’t bad but it also doesn’t need to be the center of your identity and you don’t need to lash out against people for daring to have opinions about a thing you like. You especially don’t need to act like other people are perverts for noting something being suggestive. Chiiiiiiiiiill.

#long post #fandom #bronies #my little pony #youtube #ramble #fandom discourse

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this-is-a-podcast-fanblog · 5 years

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PENUMBRA LIVE

I just got home from seeing Juno Steel and the Train From Nowhere Live, and I have SO MANY EMOTIONS AND THOUGHTS AND THINGS I WANT TO TELL YOU GUYS

so full reaction under the cut. Obviously, massive spoilers for the live show, so don’t read if you plan on buying the recording and want to experience it for the first time that way.

Something you guys should know: AS I WROTE THIS, Alice Chuang (whom I met at the show) DM’ed me on Twitter and we have been chatting back and forth for a while now, I am LITERALLY TEXTING ALICE CHUANG AS I WRITE THIS.

Okay. Holy cow. First of all, the obvious: the show was amazing, the actors were all crazy talented, the energy of the crowd was great, I had a fantastic time and am so happy I went. The music, sound, and lights were really cool, minimalist, but conveyed the show tone beautifully.

And THE COSTUMES!! Not sure who picked them, but they were perfect. Joshua had the same trench coat/white shirt/jeans combo from the last liveshow, but for Dahlia Rose he wore a lacy white blazer that also had pink flowers on it. It looked very good on him and his face when Juno says “You bought me clothes?!” was hysterical. Engstrom and Valencia were elegant and totally creepy. M Sutherland had a red and grey suit and waistcoat; he also had eye makeup but it was a little more subtle. Valencia was in a gorgeous shiny red dress and lounge singer black gloves up to her elbows. Those were all cool, but nothing is EVER gonna top Noah’s Nureyev outfit, which was a pair of black pants, white shirt, black tie, and a black and white striped corset with the tie tucked into it. You may be thinking, “oh, HG, that just sounds like a waistcoat” nope!!!! It was like actually a corset! He also had killer eyeliner. For most of the show he wore a black blazer, but as Duke Rose he wore this crazy glittery golden blazer covered in sequins. It was gaudy and he rocked it, it suited Duke so perfectly!

Those four made up the main cast, but there were two other actors - first of all, Kate Jones, obviously, as Miasma. She had ghostly white makeup and covered her face and head with a white shawl. That, plus the fact that the lights turned red whenever she stepped on stage, made the perfect creepy vibe. She had a lot more lines in this than the original - Juno would refer to her voice in his head a lot, and every time, she came out and said something creepy. She was on a little raised stage behind the rest of the cast so she was glaring down at him and it was just asdggkfj;fldj a it was so cool.

Then there was another cast member I totally did not anticipate - Melissa DeJesus (Quanyii) played the Ruby7! She also worked props, so when Juno was talking about Nureyev’s coat, she held it up, when the bell rang during the card game she rang it, and she also played Miasma’s assistant pointing the gun at Nureyev (it was a cardboard rifle, they also used it when Juno had to shoot out of the car). For the Ruby7 she held a steering wheel and stood in front of Joshua and Noah making the car noises into a microphone or with a whistle. Also she had a necklace shaped like a license place that said “Ruby7″. It was such a cute way to show the car, which some of you may remember was something I was speculating wildly about when I first bought the ticket. Every time Nureyev mentioned how great the Ruby7 was she would vamp and at one point she blew him a kiss and he blew one back it was so adorable.

i’ve been typing for a half hour and I haven’t even gotten into the actual show yet

Before the show even started, there was amazing energy. I bought two posters from Kat Buckingham, who was working the merch stand, found a great seat, chatted with the people sitting near me, and just felt the excitement. There were so many amazing costumes, and like a third of people were wearing ear cuffs with chains in honor of Peter (I was among this number). Kevin Vibert made some announcements about emergency exits and whatnot, and then the lights dimmed. There were two curtains on opposite sides of the performance area, Joshua and Noah FLIPPED OPEN the curtains on different sides and just did this power walk to the mics in the middle while all of us audience members screamed and cheered for a solid minute, it was glorious.

Almost immediately I noticed a change to the script - they added a subplot about an additional Martian artifact Miasma had stolen, called the Key of something I don’t know how to spell, which apparently locks away any concept, like locking away sound around a person (this was revisited during the assassin bit). When Nureyev mentioned the key Juno said something like, “Wait, I don’t think that’s how this is supposed to happen” which was a cute way to acknowledge the changes they were making. Then he started mentioning some Season 2 stuff (”I dreamed I only had one -” “We all only have one life, detective!”) and Nureyev cut him off and then launched into a recap of the events of 2Murderous2Mask. He brought up audience members to reenact it, and it was really funny and I loved it a lot.

One of my favorite changes was that a couple of times when Juno was internally monologuing, Nureyev would be there too. At one point Juno acknowledged it like, “I do this thing where I just talk, and usually it’s just me.” Nureyev was really energetic, Noah got super into those parts and would take the mic down from the stand and be gesturing and hopping around while Juno watched. They also went into a lot more detail about the Throne of Arkuthusis (I probably spelled that wrong) and Samantha Carthwright (now called Sammy), who was played by an audience member. Juno explained that anyone who sat in the chair could have infinite knowledge and people would ask them questions. Nureyev then asked the audience member a bunch of questions in different accents which A.) was really funny B.) was crazy because apparently Noah can do an insane range of accents C.) cute because Juno just let him do it for a while before cutting him off. It had a very “petulant married life” vibe when Nureyev shared Juno’s monologues, and I’m not sure if it was supposed to be some significant commentary that Nureyev was “in Juno’s head” or just fun staging. Either way, I loved it.

For the card game, there were a few changes. Engstrom asked Juno if he knew how to play Rangian Street Poker and Nureyev-as-Duke said “Don’t say no!” through his teeth right as Juno said “nope.” and then an explanation followed. After a while Juno lost track and got annoyed and before Engstrom could get mad back or explain the whole thing again Nureyev-as-Duke covered Juno’s mouth with his hand and then when he pulled his hand away he fucking caressed Juno’s cheek with his knuckles while Juno glared at him and the audience went feral.

Hey by the way Noah Simes? Is just fucking incredible like his mannerisms as Duke were so over-the-top but amazing, when he reverted back to Nureyev there was an IMMEDIATE shift just in the way he talked and the way he stood, like with Duke everything was all exaggerated and he drew out all the “you’s” (So in the phone call he basically went “See youuu SooooOOOOnN!!! :D”) but then for Nureyev he was a lot more reserved, and he had this smug little half smirk for most of it. Just like, what does it feel like to be that talented, wish I could relate.

They didn’t actually play cards, but Noah did rip a piece of paper to be the dueling wargoats card. Even so, the tension was strong and you could feel the suspense even if (like me) you knew exactly what was coming next. Also, I forgot to mention, there were a lot of sound effects! When Juno heard someone’s thoughts (he heard Valencia’s and Nureyev’s a few times) that would be a voiceover, the train noises were all played, gunshots, etc. The assassin wasn’t actually shown, but you could hear the voiceover for that as well.

You’re all probably wondering: THE DOODLES. They were actual crumpled balls of paper that Juno pulled out of Nureyev’s coat; later when they were back in the hotel room, Nureyev took off his jacket and said he was going to bed (Noah just kinda stood there with his eyes closed) and Juno threw one of the notes at his head and literally went “Nyeh” as he threw it. We all laughed for quite a while.

Jupeter jumping through garbage chutes was great, Noah sort of pushed Joshua and then they pantomimed jumping down - but apparently I’m supposed to believe that Peter backflipped into the garbage chute, from the way Noah gestured, and I’m HERE FOR THAT, he’s just that much of an extra bitch. (Nureyev was very much an extra bitch throughout this entire show, as you know if you have ever listened to The Penumbra Podcast).

The whole getaway chase was awesome. Not sure if I mentioned this yet, but they had one mic that could be taken away from the stand and walked around, which is how they did the phone calls, the person on the other end of the line would stand off to the side with the wireless mic and perform like that. Once Juno, Nureyev, Valencia, and Engstrom got on the train they did all of those lines, but a nice new addition to the script was Valencia threatened Juno with a gun and Nureyev pushed Juno slightly behind him with a hand on his chest (actually I can’t remember if this scene happened here or in the casino, suffice it to say it happened and it was gay and wonderful) and said basically “if you even so much as warm his skin” and followed that up with a threat, I forget exactly what. Then when Nureyev pumped the brakes of the train he grabbed Juno and pulled him to one side, and Valencia and Engstrom’s actors left.

For the tight room they ducked into to hide, Noah and Joshua sort of pressed together back to back and tilted the mic stands so they were still able to talk into the mic. There was a great line where Juno said something like, “Is there a reason why you keep shoving us into tight spaces together?” and then they got out and Noah took the wireless mic and went up to one of the curtains on the side of the stage, then he sort of fell through with a shout and Juno was locked in the room with Valencia. She took the other wireless mic and circled him, which was soooo creepy and really cool, especially with the moody lighting they had over the whole scene. When Juno pretended to faint Joshua just like,,,, threw up his arms and dropped to the floor in the most dramatic swoon possible it was great, and when Valencia died she fell through the curtain on the side of the stage and someone caught her.

The showdown with Engstrom was tense and great. M Sutherland has a great presence and because he’s really fucking tall he seemed very menacing next to Jupeter (especially earlier when they were in their crazy suits and he was just all polished). With his suit and beard and eyeliner he sort of looked like a younger president Snow ala The Hunger Games, perfect villain vibes. Nureyev did the whole pin-him-by-the-arms thing as Juno described it in his monologue and oh god Noah did the most PERFECT fox smile throughout the whole thing, but what’s weird is I can’t actually remember how Engstrom’s death went?? I assume he fell through the curtain but I just,,, genuinely can’t remember?

Right after that they seemed to have a technical issue with the train sound effects so Joshua and Noah adlibbed it for a few seconds, then it started working again and they grabbed each other’s arms and did the whole jump-off-the-train thing. When Juno asked where the Ruby7 was, Melissa DeJesus came out with her arms tied in ropes, I guess to show the car had been captured and then BOOM KATE JONES AS MIASMA. She’s so scary and intimidating, and her voice sounds even cooler live than on the show.

Then!!! The gun is pointed at Nureyev!!! and oh god Noah’s face in this scene first he looked a little panicked, but then resigned, and the lights went BACK AND FORTH BACK AND FORTH from regular to Juno’s monologue, and this super scary layered clip of Miasma saying “I will have what I want” played and oh god it was just so totally incredible and I loved it and by that point I was aware the show was about to end but I never wanted it to, I wanted to sit there and watch this forever, and I knew I couldn’t which made me a little sad.

and oh wow wow wow...

then we got to the part where they got in the car, and Juno had his monologue, and Nureyev was watching him for the whole thing with the sweetest loving smile on his face, and then he told Juno not to give up on him yet and then Noah and Joshua reached into the space between the microphones and took each other’s hands, so they were holding hands and the crowd went WILD. Obviously this episode didn’t have a kiss, but the ROMANCE of that moment was just PEAK it was so freaking phenomenal, and when Miasma said the whole “There it is, your final resting place,” they didn’t even look at it, for a while they were just looking at each other for a few long seconds, and then they both turned to look at the tomb and they just stood there holding hands looking ahead all resigned and determined, and then the lights went down and it was over.

(the cutest thing about the whole hand holding though was Noah kept glancing over like either he was trying to show Peter’s intense desire to hold Juno’s hand or else he wasn’t sure when he was supposed to grab Joshua’s hand and he was trying to make sure they did it at the same time. Either way it was sweet and looked really good.)

They did the curtain call, I screamed so loudly for each actor, and then anyone who wanted to meet the cast went and lined up in the hallway outside the theater. The staircase by this hallway was also the staircase into the bar, so all the bar and restaurant, so all the restaurant patrons were very baffled to see the Penumbra-goers in our cosplays, (and me wearing the pride flag around my shoulders.) While I waited to meet with the cast I got to chat with Kat Buckingham! I also talked to her when I bought merch, and I told her I thought she was talented - she said “I bet YOU’RE really talented!” and I almost cried, then she told me I was free to DM her, also encouraged me when I told her about my podcast, and was all around just the sweetest.

The cast were at a table, sort of like a convention, and we just went down the line and got our stuff signed. I got to talk to all of the actors and they were SO! VERY! SWEET! I hadn’t thought at all about what I was gonna say, so I just kind of mentioned whatever. I told Noah that I write Jupeter fanfiction and said, “So that means I have your voice in my head a lot”, and he said like “That’s... somewhat unusual to hear, as I’m sure you can imagine.” I told him he was really talented and he signed my poster and was very friendly, thanked me for coming even though literally I was thanking him because HOLY FUCK HE WAS SO AMAZING. Also, Kate Jones asked me what my shirt said (it said “I am too emotionally attached to fictional characters” and thought that was cool.

I told Joshua, Sophie, and Kevin that this podcast inspired me to start my own podcast, and they were so incredibly encouraging and supportive about that! Joshua asked if I had fun (as if I could have not had fun!) and thanked me for coming - like both of these amazingly talented stars of this hit show are thanking me for coming to see them, that’s so humble and kind and ugh I just stan this cast so much. @rudzik-art made some amazing artwork, which I turned into prints to give to Sophie and Kevin, and they really loved it! Sophie even signed both my poster and the one I got for Robin, even though their rule said only one item per person. Then they both thanked me for coming, and I headed out to catch my train home.

Overall, this show was phenomenal. There was only one thing in the whole production that I disliked: they took out the “It’s not polite to tell someone his gift means nothing to you” line, and I’m not really sure why, because that line forms a lot about the characters? But artists’ choice, of course. Personally, I would have loved to see it, but the pacing was just as good without it.

I’ve been looking forward to this for so long, and now that’s it’s over I’m experiencing some pretty strong post-show depression, not gonna lie. I just want to come back and see it again every night for the rest of my life, even though that would not be good for the cast. I want to go out and make art and share my work and maybe someday inspire someone anywhere near as much as this inspired me.

TL;DR THE LIVE SHOW WAS FUCKING INCREDIBLE.

If you weren’t able to make it to either live show and you have some questions about it, feel free to send them to my inbox!

#the penumbra podcast #the penumbra podcast live #juno steel and the train from nowhere #juno steel #peter nureyev #jupeter #rita #miasma #live show #i can't wait for the video #i loved this so much and I love that I can experience it again through the video #aah #I hope the second one went really well too!!!

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samsonet · 5 years

Text

Mum said we have to play outside

Sequel to Mum said it’s my turn on the Switch.

He wants to show Hop around Wyndon.

Going out in public takes preparation, though. When fans see Champion Leon, they rush to him, and they’re not always socially appropriate, either. He does not want to risk exposing Hop to any of the particular touchy ones.

So he’s not wearing his uniform today. Instead, he picks a black sweatshirt and trousers. He can’t keep his hair loose, so he ties it in a bun to hide its length. He can’t wear the crown snapback, so he’ll have to go bare-headed —

Oh, who is he kidding. He picks a different cap — this one white — and puts it on.

He steps into the living room, setting the champion cap on his brother’s head. “Hey. Have you ever been on a monorail?”

It turns out Hop expects the monorail to be just like the train from Wedgehurst. He gasps in surprise when the car rises and the city comes into view below them, and Leon has to laugh.

Hop’s sitting backwards, face almost pressed to the window. Leon is too big for that, so he’s sort of twisted halfway so he can watch the scenery and keep an eye on the digital display. It’s his job to make sure they stay in the safe side of the city, after all.

“Lee?”

“Yeah?”

“You really live here?”

“Hop, we literally just left my flat.”

“But how do you not get lost?”

“Oh, come on! I’m not that hopeless.”

The car passes over the dead-end street that Leon often finds himself in.

“...Charizard usually gets me where I need to go.”

Hop laughs, fogging up the glass.

As the rail goes, Leon points out landmarks. There’s the Hondew Building, there’s Sleet Street, there’s Rose Tower. And there…

“The stadium! That’s the stadium! You battle there, right?”

“Yep!”

“We gotta go see it!”

Leon forces a smile. He knew Hop would be excited to see Wyndon stadium for himself, but he had been hoping he could avoid actually going there. This was supposed to be a day off; he didn’t want to spend it at his workplace.

But Hop is giving him those big pleading eyes…

“Okay. We have to get off in three stops, then. Pay attention or we’ll miss it.”

Three stops later, Hop grabs his hand and pulls him out.

Leon spends the walk thinking about how he wants to play this. The public isn’t allowed to enter the stadium when there’s no match, and he’s not sure he wants to use his position to bend the rules. On the other hand, Hop did come all the way out here, and he should probably get to see something that most fans can’t.

Would bringing him into the locker room be cool enough? He could get to experience what Leon does before a match, sit on the benches, maybe let Wooloo out to chew on things.

But as they enter the stadium, Hop doesn’t ask about any of that. Instead, he heads right into the gift shop.

Why? He has to know that Leon would give him any merch he wanted, if he asked.

Leon follows, curious, until Hop turns around and holds up a hand. “I don’t want you to see this. It’s a secret.”

“...okay, then.”

He stands by the doorway, pretending to look at his phone. Hop disappears behind the racks.

Minutes pass. A staff member comes up and asks if he needs help, but when they recognize him, they apologize and back off.

It’s incredibly awkward, but he supposed that’s just what happens when you’re the older brother of a tween.

“Hey! Give him back!”

That’s Hop’s voice. It strikes Leon like a knife to the chest.

“‘ey,” an older boy’s voice mocks. “Gib ‘im back!”

Leon rushes toward the voices.

He finds them in the back, by a rack of posters. Hop has his fists curled and his face scrunched, like he’s about to cry. There are two teenage boys standing in front of him. One of them is holding a pokeball just out of Hop’s reach.

“You’re the one who dropped the ball, mate. If you want your Wooloo back, you gotta ask nicely.”

“I — I — please, give me back my Pokémon.”

The other boy laughs. “Dude. He looks so much like Leon.”

“He does! Do you think Leon looks like this when he begs?”

“At least Leon can talk right, though. But hey, you’re cute, too, kid.”

Alright, that’s enough.

Leon steps forward, plucking Wooloo’s ball out of the boy’s hand. He hands it to Hop, putting an arm around his shoulder.

“You okay?”

“Y-yeah, I’m fine…”

“Good.” He turns to the boys, glaring at them. “You two had better go. Now. And don’t come back.”

They stare at him. Leon can pinpoint the moment where they put two and two together and realize that the reason “this kid” looks so much like Leon is because he’s Leon’s little brother.

“Oh shit.”

And they run like hell.

“I’m sorry about that, Hop,” he says. “Most people here are nice, I promise. I’m sorry about the bad ones.”

Hop holds his Wooloo close to his heart. “Thanks for helping me, Lee.”

“Of course! That’s what big brothers are for, right?” He glances at the rack, noting that a couple tubes have been half-pulled out. “Now. You wanted to get something, right? Is it okay if I help you look for it?”

“Yeah… I wanted… I wanted to find a poster for number twenty-one.”

Twenty-one? Who would that be… Raihan is number 241, but if he’s who Hop meant, he would’ve just called him by name. And there aren’t any major leaguers who have two-digit uniform numbers...

“Um… who’s number twenty-one?”

“Soledad. From the minor league.”

“Ah.” Soledad is… a normal-type specialist, if he remembers right. “You’re a fan of her, then?”

“Gloria is.”

“Ooooh.” He wiggles his eyebrows, letting the motion do the teasing.

“Lee!”

“Sorry! You’re so cute.”

With that, he starts searching methodically. The minor league is nowhere near as popular as the majors, but there’s gotta be some merch for them…

As it turns out, there is one singular poster with the number 21 on it. Hop smiles when he finds it, the trouble from earlier seemingly forgotten.

“How much is it?” Leon asks, pulling out his wallet.

“It’s okay. I’m gonna pay for it myself.”

“You have money?”

“Mum gave me some on my birthday.”

Hop’s birthday was months ago. Had he been saving it all this time, for this?

“Alright, I’m impressed. Go buy your friend her present. I’m sure she’ll love it.”

Hop does not ask to walk on the pitch. He’s not even interested in checking out the locker room. Instead, he darts about the lobby, taking deep breaths like the air itself is different. He reads every sign, looks at every screen.

Leon walks behind him, carrying the bag with the poster.

Eventually, his brother returns to his side. “I’m hungry.”

“Hello, Hungry. I’m Leon.”

Hop makes a noise that can only be described as verbal keysmashing.

“Ha! Sorry, sorry! Come on, let’s get something to eat. I know a place. Here, pull up ‘Z-Noodles’ on your phone.”

Z-Noodles is theoretically a fifteen-minute walk from the stadium, but Leon forgot that he has a much longer stride than Hop does. It’s okay. It just gives them more time together.

He keeps his arm around his brother’s shoulders. They don’t talk, but the silence is comfortable. If Leon had to guess, he’d say Hop is looking forward to the meal as much as he is himself.

“Lee?”

“Yeah?”

“Those guys, back in the store…”

“Oh, don’t think about them. They won’t bother you again, got it? Not as long as I’m around.”

“It’s not about that.” Hop’s face is pinched. He wrings his hands. “They were making fun of how I talk.”

“They’re just stupid, Hopscotch. They don’t like seeing anyone happy, so they’ll do whatever they can to pull you down. Don’t let them win.”

“But, Lee… you don’t talk like I talk.”

Leon bites the inside of his cheek. He does not want to explain to Hop about Wyndon’s classism problem; it had been painful enough to grow up around it. Learning the quirks the Wyndon natives had, losing his Postwick accent…

“I mean… I dinnae ken abou’ tha’. It’s all fer show, you know? I turn it on an’ off.”

Hop stares up at him, eyes wide and unblinking.

Then he breaks down laughing.

“Dinnae— dinnae ken! Oh, Lee! Can you imagine talking like that during a match? Nobody would know what you were saying!”

“I guess I’d need you to translate, then!”

Hop is smiling again. That’s all Leon wants, really — all he can ask for. He’d do anything for that smile.

They’re digging into some delicious ramen when Leon asks, “So, did you have fun today?”

“I did! It was lots of fun!”

“I’m glad.” Sluuuurp. “You know, if you lived here, you could see everything. You could come with me every day, and you’d get to do whatever you want.”

Hop looks down at his bowl. “Yeah.”

“I mean… I’m not trying to pressure you. It’s just… I miss you a lot, you know? And we never really have enough time to just… hang out.”

Hop sighs and mumbles something under his breath.

“What?”

“I wish I was Gloria’s brother.”

What.

Leon goes back through everything that’s happened since his family arrived. Has he done something to hurt him? He didn’t mean to. He doesn’t even know what it would be. Or is this something Hop has been thinking about for a while, something that grew out of the years Leon was away?

Or...

“Hop… Is this about those boys picking on you because you look like me? I’m sorry about that—”

But Hop is shaking his head. “No, it’s not that. It’s— actually, I wish Gloria was our sister. That would make everything so much easier.”

“What do you mean?”

“Then I wouldn’t have to choose between you.”

Is… is that how Hop thinks of it? Having to choose between his brother and his best friend, not being able to be there for both of them at once? In that case, it’s clear why he clings to Gloria. She’s a small girl with no family besides her mum, and she’s not even a trainer. There’s no way she can compete with Galar’s undefeated, beloved champion.

Hop must pity her.

“Hey,” Leon says, reaching over and taking Hop’s hands in his own. (Hop is so small, so delicate.) “You’re not choosing between us. You have us both. I’m going to be your brother no matter what. And I’m sure… I’m sure that Gloria will always be your friend, no matter what. It might be hard to keep up with both of us, but you can do it. I know you can.”

There. There’s that smile again. “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem.” He squeezes Hop’s hands, then lets him go.

“But, you know, Lee…”

“Yeah?”

“If you endorsed us both for the gym challenge, then me and Gloria could come to Wyndon together.”

Leon laughs, ruffling his brother’s hair. “I’ll consider it. Now, finish your food. There’s so much more I want to show you.”

#pokemon swsh fanfic #hop pokemon #champion leon

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