#they are gonna stay ugly forever but hopefully i can find a new way to format things that i actually like

[cacowhistle]

i haven't posted like any fic in forever and that's mostly bc i haven't written any that i'm satisfied with. in the meantime tho, have a weird snippet of all for the game fic that i started to try and get a handle on some of the characters. it's not finished and i won't be finishing it. but like some of it is pretty okay i think?? one of these days i'll finish another fic. today is not that day but just like imagine it for me. it's totally gonna happen.

The Foxes are losing.

Correction, Neil thinks, as he watches Matt clash with another backliner, the Foxes are self-sabotaging.

The score is one to six, Jackal’s favor, and Neil thinks Allison is about ready to storm off the court. Halftime, finally, is called as Matt throws the third punch he’s thrown all night, and Neil huffs out a sigh. He isn’t getting back on the court tonight—that’s the second yellow card.

People are attempting to pull the grappling backliners apart, but Neil doesn’t spare them much of a glance as he jogs past, racquet slung across his shoulders. He only has eyes for the bench and the goalkeeper sitting on it, fingers interlocked and elbows resting on his knees as he studies the ongoing brawl with an impassive stare. He’s interested. Hopefully that means they can salvage this.

“Andrew,” he says, stepping through the door, “stay in goal tonight.”

He looks up at Neil, looking utterly unfazed. “That’s not my job.”

Neil gives him a look, an unsubtle warning. Those never work, though—he and Andrew both know it. Words are the only thing that will get Andrew on a leash. Neil’s words. Sometimes Kevin’s, even rarer, Renee’s. Neil is the one with the highest success rate.

“Your job,” he murmurs, voice lowering as he leans in, “is to stay in goal tonight. I don’t care what the other team is saying about me. I don’t need your protection.”

Andrew scoffs. Neil swats the back of his head. Were it anyone else, they’d lose fingers, but Andrew just stares up at him, eyes flat and dark. Neil raises an eyebrow. Andrew is silent for a very long moment, before reaching up to tap the ugly scar on Neil’s cheek with his thumb. He doesn’t even blink.

“I know you don’t,” Andrew says, eyes still dark, “this’ll be much more interesting.”

There have been ugly taunts being thrown around all night. Butcher is the new nickname, the cruel, jeering jab that the opposing team has been using to try and throw Neil off his game. The worst part is, he thinks it may be working. At the very least, he got to see Kevin trip the Jackal’s dealer with his racquet “on accident” after the guy had spat out some sort of insult involving his father’s name. Neil certainly wasn’t worried about himself, though—just how Andrew would react when he finally got out on the court.

He has a vindictive, violent, protective streak. Neil isn’t stupid. One particularly nasty word with the intent to cut deep a bit too close to Andrew, and that heavy goalkeeper’s racquet is caving in a ribcage or shattering another arm. He knows that Andrew has chosen him as his mark, the thing he’ll maim for.

But Andrew trusts him. And he, however stupid it is, trusts Andrew. He’ll handle it himself, without sending someone to the hospital. Even if Andrew disagrees with the method and result, he’ll allow Neil this reclamation of power if he deems it necessary.

Neil isn’t religious, but he prays that he does anyway.

The game resumes with Andrew in goal and Nicky going on in Matt’s stead—Neil isn’t sure it’ll be much better, but at least Nicky won’t try to get the other team to punch his lights out the way Matt’s been trying to all night, with the way he’s been behaving. A sour mood, one that Neil doesn’t quite want to interpret or find out the reason for—it takes a lot to ruffle Matt’s feathers like this.

He’s grinning at them through the plexiglass, though, so maybe he was just feeling like a grade-A piece of shit tonight.

Someone yells across the court. Neil hears the word junior, and his shoulders tense. The Jackal’s goalkeeper shouts it again, grinning beneath his helmet. Neil returns his gaze with a dead-eyed stare, not moving even as Kevin claps a hand over his shoulder.

He leans in, saying only for Neil to hear: “Carve them up.”

Oh, he’ll clear through them like a cleaver.

He makes it to half-court and wastes no time as soon as the buzzer’s gone off. Off like a shot, he races down the court—the backliners will handle the incoming strikers, and there’s the deafening crack of Andrew sending a shot down the court—a confirmation of Neil’s confidence that tonight will turn around. His mark is practically right on his heels, but he manages to snatch the rebound out of the air and pivot away, just as the backliner swings his racquet and smashes against his with enough force to send a rattle of pain all the way up his forearms. Neil doesn’t let go—but the ball goes flying. It’s messy and uncoordinated. It has no place in a Class I game. Neil narrows his eyes at the backliner, who just grins.

“C’mon, Butcher,” he says, and Neil’s blood burns.

It takes less than a second for him to lose his tail. He ducks around the backliner, feinting one way before bolting the other, seeing Allison with the ball—the pass is quick and clean, and before long Aaron is tossing it back Andrew’s way.

It clears the court. Neil isn’t sure he’ll be able to catch it, but he takes off anyways—right between the oncoming defense players, weaving across the court with a snarl. It takes nothing for him to get out of their range, even less to snatch the ball out of the air. They’re still coming, though, and he’s hardly in position to shoot. He’s shot from worse angles, but he can give himself better odds—darting towards goal and passing to himself, the goalkeeper’s got his eyes on him and there’s something ugly in them.

Neil makes the goal. He makes sure to make it hurt, too. This got personal as soon as these shitheads let the name Nathaniel leave their mouths—so he strikes back twice as hard, the best way he knows how.

“At least my father cared enough to chase me across the country,” he snaps, eyes gone wild, “is yours even in the stands?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Or maybe the right thing. The goalkeeper’s eyes light up with fury, and Neil knows the punch is coming before it gets there. It rattles him down to the teeth, and he’s sent stumbling sideways. A second one comes moments later, and Neil’s not fast enough to get out of range. The buzzer goes off and Neil thinks that sound ringing in his ears is the shouting of his teammates. He doesn’t wait for someone to come to his rescue, though—he hits right back.

It takes three people to pull them apart. There’s definitely blood dripping from Neil’s nose as he backs off, panting and swearing as he does so. He doesn’t fight it as he’s swung around and shoved back toward his team, and the sight that greets him is pretty much what he expected: Andrew, being held back by four of their teammates—Kevin with his arms wrapped around his middle, Allison and Nicky holding him by the arms, Aaron pushing against his shoulders. They don’t let go of him until Neil’s halfway across the court toward them, though Andrew’s still simmering as Neil comes closer.

“You’re bleeding,” Kevin says, and Neil grins, all teeth.

“You told me to carve them up,” he says, sharp as a knife’s edge.

[precicus]

planning on getting back to writing with a few new muse ideas :-D

[hpimaginesandblurbs]

a remus lupin smut after the full moon where reader takes care of him and it’s just soft and sweet and nice <3

pairing: young remus lupin x reader 

warning(s): 18+, handjob, so much fluff

word count: 1.4k 

a/n: this one kinda made me sad to write and i couldn’t stop thinking about atyd the whole time. i just wish remus got all the love he deserved. 

“Everything hurts,” Remus mumbled into his pillow, laying on his stomach, finally able to lay down after his long trek up to the Gryffindor Tower. The both of you were laying on his bed, curtains pulled with a silencing charm in place so the other boys wouldn’t hear you muffled conversation. 

The full moon was last night and, as always, Madam Pomfrey kept him in the Hospital Wing for the day to make sure he was alright. He had slept most of the day, but you could tell your boyfriend was still exhausted and in pain. 

It was like this after every full moon since he had told you about his lycanthropy. Just you and him in his tiny twin bed, curtains drawn and just in your own world. It was what he needed, he had told you once. Just you to hold him and be there with him after a terrible night. Even with the boys joining him, it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. You were just happy to be of some comfort to him.

“Maybe a massage would help?” You asked, lightly stroking his arm as you laid with him. Anything you could do after the full moon to help him, you would. It was a promise you had made yourself immediately after he told you about his ‘furry little problem’ as the boys so eloquently named it. You knew it was a major step for him to take with you, and you would do your best to make sure he was okay at all costs. 

“That sounds nice, love,” he said, giving you a small smile but you could see the tension he held in his eyes. 

“Do you want to take your shirt off or leave it on?” You asked gently, maneuvering your body so you were straddling his waist. You felt him tense underneath you, barely breathing. That was never good. “Re?” 

“Ther- There’s another scar,” he said into the pillow. It was muffled but you heard him loud and clear. You took a deep breath bur pressed on. 

“Can I lift your shirt so I can see it? I just want to be careful,” you told him softly, trying to keep him as comfortable as possible. You knew he hated his scars, but you always made it a point to give them love. Every last one of them. You saw him nod into the pillow and you slowly dragged his shirt up his back until it was tucked under his armpits. 

There was an ugly scar across the bottom of his back, still red and healing. Madam Pomfrey had clearly applied Dittany to it, but it would most likely take the week to heal. 

“Thank you,” you said softly and immediately began digging your fingers into his shoulders. 

He tensed and relaxed under you whenever you hit a new spot. You worked out knot after knot, slowly trailing down his back as you went. Your own hands were tense by the time you finished, but it was worth it because he was not boneless against the sheets. For a moment his shallow breathing made you believe he was asleep, but he stirred to reach his hand out for you. 

You took his hand and fell down on the bed beside him. He was looking at you with a small smile again, but this time the smile reached his eyes. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, shifting his body so you were lying face to face. 

“Anytime,” you replied, brushing him off easily. You didn’t want him to make a big deal about your acts of service. He deserved them just like anyone else. Hopefully one day he’d realize it. 

You leaned in for a soft kiss which quickly turned heated, but he eventually pulled away, knowing he was in no shape for sex tonight. It didn’t stop you from looking down though, just in case. And just as you suspected, there was a prominent bulge in his sweatpants, just the outline of it making your mouth water. Werewolf or not, he was still just your horny boyfriend at the end of the day. 

“I can take care of that for you too if you want,” you said with a small smirk, nodding your head in the direction of his pants. 

“You don’t have to. We should probably just go to bed anyways,” he argued lightly, the tips of his ears turning pink at the knowledge that you had noticed his little problem. 

“Well I’m certainly not letting you go to bed uncomfortable. So yes or no?” You asked him simply. 

He gave you a quick nod, making you smile in return. You brought your lips back to his, locking him in a heated kiss, while you hand trailed down to his bulge. You palmed him for a moment, but shortly moved to pull down the front of his sweatpants only to find out he wasn’t wearing underwear. This man was out to kill you. 

You pulled his cock out his pants and gave it a quick stroke, making his hips stutter against your hand. You pulled your hand and lips away from him at the same time, bringing your hand up to lick a strip of spit onto it. He let out a groan watching you, his eyes never leaving yours. 

Your hand returned to his cock and he quickly pulled you back into a kiss. You started with slow strokes, bringing him to full hardness, before you sped up slightly. You wanted to keep things slow so as to not over excite him, but you also wanted to get him off. You were at the perfect speed to do both with a little bit on time. 

He left out a low moan into your mouth when you twisted your hand the way he liked which you swallowed up greedily. You moved your hand the same way again just to hear him make more noise. You loved how vocal he could be when you had your hands on him like this. 

You stayed steady like that for a few minutes, slowly moving him along to his release. Finally you felt his body tense and he said, “I’m gonna - fuck, Y/N”. 

You felt his cock twitch right before he spilled into your hand. You worked him through it until he was boneless once more on the bed and slowly backing his hips away from you. Once you were content that he was thoroughly finished, you gave him one last peck on the lips before moving for your wand to clean the both of you up. 

“I’m sorry I can’t return the favor,” he said once he got his breath back. 

“You’ll make it up to me. I know you,” you said, a smile growing on your face. 

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he mumbled, burying his face into your chest. 

“Good thing I’m never leaving, hm?” You replied with a giggle. 

You expected him to make some witty response like he normally would, but when his head shot up with a look of concern in his eyes, you paused. “Please don’t,” he begged silently. 

Your heart broke just looking at him. This boy who you loved with your entire being, more than words could ever describe, was begging you to never leave him because he was infinitely ashamed of what he was. You never cared what he was, you only ever wanted him. You could almost laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but looking in his eyes again stopped you. 

“I’m never leaving. I promise. Even if you try to push me away I won’t leave. You’re mine and I’m yours. Forever. I promise,” you told him, your eyes never leaving his. 

You felt the relief fill his body and watched his eyes light up. “I love you,” he said, his voice raw with the emotions that he was trying to hold back. 

“I love you too, Re. So much. Now get some rest please. You need it,” you said, giving him a quick kiss to his forehead before you rested your head against his pillows. 

He didn’t put up a fight this time. Most of the time he did, trying his best to convince you he was fine until he couldn’t hide it anymore. But tonight he simply put his head back down on your chest and got comfortable, his arms looping their way around your body to hold you close and make sure you stayed there all night. 

You stayed awake until you heard his breathing out and his soft snores begin. You fell asleep with a small smile on your face, surrounded by Remus and the scent of him, just knowing tomorrow would be a better day for the both of you.

[nicknellie]

Anonymous requested: a Juke one shot based on the song 'Lets fall in love for the night' by Finneas

I’d never heard this song before, but I was seriously excited to write from it when I listened. And Juke is absolutely perfect for it too! This is the first time I’ve written Juke in a while and I’m so happy with how it turned out, thank you for your request!

I Know Better

You need a pick me up?

I’ll be there in twenty-five,

I like to push my luck,

So take my hand, let’s take a drive.

I’ve been living in the future,

Hopin’ I might see you sooner,

I want you, riding shotgun,

I knew when I got one right.

It was a lazy late night when Luke got the text through from Julie. He hadn’t been up to much, just picking at his guitar, trying to figure out a new melody but coming up blank. Bored out of his mind, he had been desperate for something to do, somewhere to go, someone to talk to. Perhaps he had been hoping for something just like this, a message from the girl who made his heart soar very much against his will, asking to see him.

She had asked to be picked up from work – apparently she’d had a very long day and just needed someone to talk to about something that wasn’t work. This happened a lot, Luke thought with a grin as he put his guitar away and headed to his car. Julie would ask him to see her after work, say she didn’t want to talk about it, and then talk about it for at least an hour before they even thought about mentioning anything else.

He didn’t mind. He would have listened to anything as long as Julie was the one saying it.

He clambered into his car and set off, muscle memory guiding him to the office block Julie worked at. It was supposed to be a half-hour-long drive at least, and even that was only in good traffic, but Luke was determined to get there quickly. He couldn’t have denied that Julie had been on his mind all day – like she always was – and for that reason he couldn’t wait to see her.

So maybe he ran a red light or two. Maybe he cut a few corners. Maybe he did some not-so-sensible things that were maybe not-so-safe, but it was just to get to Julie as fast as he could. The thought of her made him reckless, clouded his judgement, gave him the ability to do anything.

It was lucky it was such a late hour and there was hardly anyone else on the roads, otherwise Luke was certain he wouldn’t have got to Julie as quickly as he did.

As it happened, he managed to shave five minutes off the journey, arriving outside the building in about twenty minutes. He could see Julie sat on the front steps of the building, all the lights turned off inside so she was only lit by a nearby streetlamp and the light from her phone. She was wrapped up in a thick coat, her hair spilling out over her shoulders in that way Luke thought was more beautiful than anything else. In his head, he knew he could have just texted her to say he was there, or waited for her to notice him herself seeing as his was the only car around, but instead he opened the door and climbed out, heading straight for her.

Julie only looked up from her phone when Luke was just a few paces away. The way she smiled at him – small, sweet, soft, breathtakingly beautiful – melted Luke’s heart right then and there. It was almost difficult to maintain his appearance of cool and casual when she looked at him like that, but he forced himself to keep it up.

“Hey,” he said, grinning down at her.

“Hi,” she returned, still smiling that cute little smile. “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

“Anytime,” Luke said, waving a dismissive hand. “You know that.”

He extended a hand to her, holding it out like a gift, an offering. A prayer.

Take my hand, Julie, take it and never let go.

“Do you want to come back to my place?” he asked. There was an unspoken ‘or I could take you straight home’ but Luke didn’t want to put the idea of leaving him in her head.

But that worry was silenced as soon as it reared its ugly head because Julie slipped her hand into his and hoisted herself up. Her fingers were much smaller than his, long and delicate, a pianist’s hands. A small part of him wanted to do nothing more than just stand here with Julie, hand in hand, nothing else between them but the silence of the late hour.

He tore himself away from the thought, but not from Julie. Hands still linked between them, they headed back to Luke’s car, charged silence drifting over them.

There were times that Julie didn’t feel real to Luke. The whole concept of a person like her was too perfect to ever truly exist. What were the chances that one person could have so much talent, charm, intelligence, wit, care, love, humour, beauty, sense of adventure, trust, loyalty, and the thousands of other qualities that Julie possessed? What were the chances a person could so easily embody everything good in the world?

At times like that, he was glad he got to hold her hand. Prove that she was really here.

He had been thinking of her all day. Wanting to see her, wanting to hold her, to sing with her, to talk to her, just to be in her presence. He had briefly entertained the thought of actually doing something with Julie, going somewhere together or doing something – anything – more than just talking like they usually did. But he’d soon realised that just talking to Julie was as good as anything could ever get.

His wandering mind hadn’t stopped there thought. Regretfully, he had thought about the future. Whether he and Julie had any chance of one. Luke didn’t often think further ahead than twenty-four hours, but when it came to Julie he wanted to plan his entire life around her. He wanted to be with her forever, and when he thought about it that was all he wanted. Just to be with Julie.

When he thought about the future, she was all he saw.

Together, they got back in Luke’s car, Luke behind the steering wheel and Julie riding shotgun next to him. They had let go of each other’s hands, but Luke reached across of gently squeezed her hand one last time before resting his hands on the wheel and starting the car. His heart was beating faster than he’d ever thought possible, thrumming with some thrilled and exhilarated energy which he was sure was the only thing keeping him alive at that moment.

Whatever it was, it was coming from Julie, and he knew then that he needed her to survive. Right by her side was exactly where he belonged.

I love it when you talk that nerdy shit,

We’re in our twenties talking thirties shit,

We’re making money but we’re saving it,

‘Cause talking shit is cheap and we talk a lot of it.

You won’t stay with me, I know,

But you can have your way with me until you go,

And before your kisses turn into bruises, I’m a warning.

Like normal, they ended up in Luke’s apartment. It had been their same old routine – consider going out for a drink (coffee, at Julie’s insistence, because she had work in the morning and didn’t want to get drunk), realise there was nowhere open that wasn’t a bar, so head back to Luke’s place and use his coffee machine before inevitably ending up like this: sprawled across each other on Luke’s bed, too close to be friendly.

Luke was lying on his back, one leg arched, one hand underneath his head. Julie lay across him, her head rested on his abdomen, her hair tickling his bare skin where his top had ridden up an inch or so. One of her legs was hanging off the bed, the other tucked under it in a way that looked uncomfortable but must have worked for Julie. Luke had her hand in his, toying with her dainty little fingers, running his fingertips across the palm of her hand every now and then and delighting at the way it made her shiver. Both were staring up at the ceiling, not at each other.

As he had predicted, Julie was talking about work although she had said she didn’t want to. Truthfully, Luke didn’t really know what Julie did for a living, only that it involved ‘algorithms and science stuff’ and it seemed dreadfully boring. She clearly loved her job, as much as she complained about the hours, but Luke knew it wasn’t what she wanted to do forever. Still, listening to her talk about whatever equation she’d used that day or whatever machine she was helping create brought a smile to Luke’s face that nothing else could have summoned.

Because Julie was a girl made of passion and talent and beauty and love. And right that moment, her passion was burning like the brightest star in the sky, and Luke couldn’t make himself look away.

“It’s only temporary though,” Julie said eventually. “I won’t be there forever. It pays well enough for me to save for a bigger apartment – maybe a house if I’m lucky, or if I stay there long enough. When I’ve got the time and the space and the money, I’m going to do music. Properly, I mean, not just open mic night down at Eats and Beats. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, it’s my only real goal. Get a house, get a record deal, get my dream life. However long it takes, whatever I have to do to get there.”

“You’ll find that happiness,” Luke assured her. “If anyone can do it, you can.”

Julie hummed a laugh and instinctively curled her fingers around Luke’s where they were still rested on his palm. If Luke stopped breathing for a moment, did nothing but gaze and smile in awe at the way Julie so naturally held on to him, Julie either didn’t notice or didn’t mention it.

“What about you?” she asked quietly.

“Music,” Luke said, not missing a beat. “Same as you. I might only be busking and doing open mic nights now, but if I save all the money I make from that eventually I’ll have enough to buy some really good equipment, hopefully hire a manager, really get myself started. I know it’s not gonna be easy, but…”

“But it’s all you’ve ever dreamed of,” Julie finished for him. He felt her nod. “It’s the same for me.”

Teasingly, Luke said, “Hey, if we have the same dream why not follow it together? We could start a band.”

Julie laughed – Luke felt his heart flutter at the sound. She rolled her head to the side to face him, so Luke lifted his head a little so he could actually look her in the eye.

“You and me?” Julie said. “Starting a band?”

“It could be fun,” Luke chuckled with a shrug. He was only half-joking; if he got to chase his music dream with Julie then it would basically be like chasing two dreams at once. “We’re both talented. We could make something really special.”

She laughed again, quieter this time, something solemn about it. Luke wondered if maybe she was really considering it too.

But there was a little voice in the back of his head, something bitter that he thought might have resembled brutal honesty. Julie was too perfect to ever stay with him, in any sense of the word. She deserved someone better, someone who matched her untouchable flawlessness, someone who could really give her everything she needed. Luke didn’t think for a moment that could be him. Besides, someone like Julie would never settle for him.

And yet, when she looked at him like that, brown eyes wide and deep and sparkling, full of their own private universes, seeing Luke at that moment and nothing else, it was hard for him to convince himself that they weren’t made for each other.

It could never last, he reminded himself. He would never be able to keep something he wanted so desperately.

Instead of replying to him, Julie shifted her weight, rolling over so that her arms were crossed over Luke’s chest and her body was half on top of his. Still he looked her in the eye – he never wanted to look anywhere else.

But when she leaned down to kiss him in a way that felt forbidden but mind-blowingly right, he couldn’t help but close his eyes and melt.

It wasn’t every day that Julie Molina would kiss him. He wouldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Let’s fall in love for the night,

And forget in the mornin’.

Play me a song that you like,

You can bet I’ll know every line.

I’m the boy that your boy hoped that you would avoid,

Don’t waste your eyes on jealous guys, fuck that noise.

I know better than to call you mine.

The sun was rising, an amber glow mingled with red and peach and the tiniest tint of blue, peeking through Luke’s thin curtains, but he and Julie hadn’t even slept. They were awake, but admittedly tired, running only on the adrenaline that came from being in one another’s company.

They were still sat on his bed, cross-legged across from each other, Luke with his acoustic guitar in hand. Julie had asked if he had been working on any new songs recently, and who was he to refuse the most gorgeous girl in the world a solo performance? He was picking out a melody he had thought up a few days ago, one that he could get out of his head for some unknown reason. It was only notes so far – he hadn’t had the time to pull any lyrics to it – but it was still a slow, soft melody that made him feel so relaxed that he almost felt as if he’d left reality behind.

All that was pulling him back down to Earth was Julie because she was proving yet again that she was some sort of miracle. When Luke started playing, she had nodded her head, swayed a little, just enjoyed the music. But a few bars in, she had started humming along.

When Luke hit the chorus, Julie sang.

It should have been impossible. Julie had never heard the song before, and even if she had it wasn’t like there were lyrics she could have followed. But somehow she was doing it, pulling the perfect words from nowhere and fitting them to Luke’s melody with ease, like she’d sung this very song a thousand times before. Somehow, she pre-empted every rhythm, every note, every ascending pattern and every dropping dynamic and matched him effortlessly. When Luke instinctively began humming a harmony to her voice, she took it in her stride and reached for notes Luke hadn’t known anyone was capable of hitting.

When Luke hit the last chord, Julie sang a breath-taking, elegant descending run, her eyes closed, a gentle smile playing about her lips.

Not for the first time, he wondered how Julie was even real.

But then a wholly unwelcome thought came to his mind. Julie had a guy. Kind of. Not really. There was someone very interested in Julie (someone other than Luke) who she told him about sometimes. From what Luke knew, he brought her flowers sometimes, he paid her compliments, he texted her almost as much as Luke did. Julie refused to say she was dating him and Luke believed her, but the problem was that this guy clearly wanted to date Julie.

Luke wasn’t jealous. He and Julie weren’t dating and he just wanted to her be happy, so if it turned out that this guy made her happier than Luke did, he would go with it. For Julie, he would go with it.

But he also knew, since Julie had told him herself, that this guy had something against Luke.

Luke had to wonder whether he saw him as a threat.

This guy, it seemed, was jealous. He wanted Julie to himself, which really wasn’t fair on the rest of the world. Julie didn’t deserve to be kept in a box, locked away for just one guy to look at, especially a guy who would get mad when anyone else tried to look at her.

Luke didn’t want that for her.

“Julie,” he said quietly. “You deserve someone amazing. Someone as incredible as you are. They’ll love you no matter what, they’ll trust you, they’ll… they’ll really care about you. That’s what you deserve in life. Along with everything else you could ever want. And I hope you get it.”

She was silent for a moment, an unreadable expression on her face which would have been totally blank if it weren’t for the twitch of her lips and the light in her eyes. Luke wondered, suddenly panicked, if he’d been too obvious about how he felt about her. But thankfully, she just smiled that sweet smile and said, “Thank you, Luke.”

He thought his heart might explode just from those three words.

He thought it even more so when Julie leaned forward and their lips brushed yet again and he realised he was going to get to kiss her again so maybe, just maybe–

The alarm on his phone went off and snapped their moment in two.

Julie sighed heavily and pulled away. Luke immediately missed her warmth.

“This was fun, Luke,” she said, already standing up and stretching. “Really. I love being here with you. But I have work. I need to get going.”

Luke swallowed the lump in his throat. He couldn’t think of anything worse than Julie leaving right then. But he didn’t tell her that. He told her, “It’s fine, you go. You’ve got to chase those dreams of yours somehow.”

Neither of them said goodbye. They just shared a bittersweet smile and Julie left his apartment.

Luke let her, watching out of his bedroom window as she walked further and further away from him down the street. He wanted to chase her, his dream, but he didn’t.

After all, he knew better than to ever call her his.

[summahsunlight]

Perhaps It’s Fate, Part 22

Rating: T, to be safe

Word Count: 1.6k+

Summary: After joining the Resistance as a mechanic, you were happy to keep to yourself, until a little orange and white bb unit and his master wander into your workshop one day.

Pairings: Poe Dameron x Mechanic!Reader

Start from the beginning! 

Taglist: @ms-dont-care​, @starless-eyes-remain​, @elmoakepoke​, @marvelobsessiononastick​, @kiaralein​, @softly-sad​, @totalpoedameron, @ordinarymom1​, @sevvysaurus​, @spider-starry​, @liadamerondjarin​, @jingyuhearteu​, @dream-alittlebiggerdarling​, @paintballkid711​, @ren-ni​, @lostinwonderland314​, @elite4cekalyma​,@elisabethbathgate​

Here is the next part! Likes, comments, and reblog are always appreciated. I hope that you enjoy it. Remember the taglist is open if you want to be added just let me know! Happy reading lovelies!🥰❤️

Poe gasped, jolted awake suddenly. It took several seconds for him to realize that he was no longer on the Finalizer, that he was no longer shackled to that table.  He spent so much time making sure you didn’t have panic attacks that he never dealt with his own trauma.  He couldn’t deal with his own trauma--you were more important.

Shifting on the tight little bunk, Poe looked down at you sleeping soundly next to him. For several months the base of operations for the Resistance had been an old Rebellion battle cruiser while they searched for a new base. Living on a cruiser was nothing new to Poe--he’d spent plenty of time on them when he was with the Republic Navy.  You on the other hand, you were not used to living in space and it was sparking an increase in your anxiety attacks. 

Simply put--there was no time for Poe to face his own demons.

“Commander Dameron?” his commlink chirped. 

Cursing, Poe shifted trying not to wake you and snatched the comm up. “Yeah?” he whispered, anxiously as he saw you stirring. Please go back to sleep--you haven’t slept well in weeks, he thought, waiting for the bridge to answer him. To his relief, you fell back to sleep. 

“General Organa needs you on the bridge, sir.”

Sighing, Poe rubbed a hand over his face and confirmed that he was on his way. He managed to sneak out of the bunk, get his boots on, without disturbing you--however, BB-8 wasn’t as easily fooled. He instantly woke up from his charging state when he detected movement. 

Poe hushed him as they hurried out of the tight quarters. When the droid questioned why he was attempting to sneak away, the pilot confessed, “I didn’t want to wake Y/N.”

BB-8 whistled, sadly. Even he had noticed your mood change since Crait. Poe normally would assure the droid that you were going to be fine but the pilot wasn’t sure any of them were going to be fine after what they’d just endured. He might only be a droid--but he was very much aware the nightmares that both you and Poe were having. He just wished he knew how to help.

Moving through the silent, tight corridors of the cruiser, Poe made it to the bridge. There was only a skeleton crew working so it was unnervingly quiet. Poe had never been one to actually enjoy silence. 

“Commander,” Leia called him over.

“What’s going on, General?” Poe asked, approaching her.

“We might have found a decent location for our new base.”

“That’s good news. Things are cramped around here.”

Leia looked at him seriously. “Poe, I need Black Squadron to go scope it out, make sure it will work for us.”

Poe swallowed, anxiously. This meant he would have to leave you for a few days, maybe several. He felt uneasy leaving you behind, especially since your panic attacks had increased. “Is it possible for Black Squadron to go without me?”

“You can’t hover over her forever, Poe.”

“I...I know...it’s just...the panic attacks have gotten real bad.”

The General sighed and nodded in understanding. She had noticed--and felt--that your panic attacks were getting worse. However, Leia needed Poe--the Resistance needed Poe. The young pilot might not realize it yet, but. she needed him to be the leader she knew he could be. “Poe,” she said, softly, “she’ll be fine.”

He glanced away from Leia, briefly, and when Poe looked back at her, she could see the conflict in his eyes. “I know she will be. I just feel...guilty... leaving her to deal with it on her own.”

Leia smiled, sadly. “Poe, how do you think she handled it before you came along? She dealt with it on her own. She has other friends here that can help her if she needs it. I need you right now, Poe. Can I count on you?”

Poe pursed his lips and ran a hand through his unruly curls. “Yes ma’am,” he replied, hoarsely. 

“You leave in the morning. Go get some rest.”

“Yes ma’am.”

If the older woman was concerned by Poe’s lack of conversation, she didn’t show it on her face as he turned to go. She wanted to tell him that everything was going to work out in the end and take all his worries away--but the truth was, she couldn’t. 

Poe, with BB-8 right behind him, headed back towards his small quarters knowing what was unspoken between himself and Leia. Truth was, Poe wasn’t sure even if she had said the words if he would have believed her. 

BB-8 whistled, moanful. Poe didn’t even have the strength to reach down and give the little droid some comforting head scratches. He went straight back to the bunk, finding you still fast asleep, and he pulled you into his arms.

You stirred, eyes opening to gaze up at him. “Everything okay?” you murmured, sleepily. 

No. “Fine,” he lied, as if he wasn’t worried about his next mission. “The General wants Black Squadron to go scope out a spot for a potential base in the morning.”

“That’s good, right?” you asked, snuggling closer to him. 

“Yeah. Means we can get off this cruiser,” he responded. 

“Good; I’m ready to leave here. I’ll miss you.”

“I’m gonna leave Bee with you.”

Shifting slightly, you gave him a puzzled look. “Why? Don’t you need him for your mission?”

Poe sighed and kissed the tip of your nose. “It’s just a scouting mission; I can take another droid.”

BB-8 beeped indigently. Even on simple scouting missions Poe and Black Squadron got into trouble.

“He’s not wrong you know,” you said, laughing softly.

“I would just feel better if he stayed with you,” the pilot argued.

“Does this have to do with my panic attacks?”

“Yes.”

“Poe, I’ll be fine. You’ve left me behind before--without Bee staying.”

Lazily his fingers slipped through your hair. It was true that he’d left you behind before, without leaving BB-8, he would just feel better this time if his droid stayed with you. “I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

It wasn’t that you didn’t appreciate the gesture--you just felt better when BB-8 went with him, as if Poe was somehow safer if the little droid was on the mission. “I’ll be okay,” you assured him. “Rey and Finn will be here with me.”

Poe didn’t feel any less guilty; Rey and Finn didn’t know how to calm you. I suppose she could make the argument that neither does Bee. He nuzzled his nose against your hair. “Are you sure you don’t want me to leave BeeBee?”

“Yes, I’m sure. He should go with you.”

“Hopefully I’m not gone too long.”

“Well,” you said, drifting off back to sleep, “with any luck we’ll have a new base when you return.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, wishing he could fall back to sleep with you, “with any luck.”

-----

When you woke up the next morning you were not surprised to see that Poe was gone--and that he indeed left BB-8 behind.  You had expected him to do that, even if you had told him not too. The little droid wasn’t too thrilled about being left behind, but it had been Poe’s orders, so he stayed. 

It turned out incredibly helpful to have BB-8 around since you were busy fixing up some fighters the Resistance had recently come into possession of. You had to admit it was nice having the company--even though Rey, Rose, and Finn were all still on the cruiser, they all had their own work to complete and you very rarely saw them during the day.

Your panic attacks were held at bay while you were busy working and chatting with BB-8, it was at night, when you were laying in the bunk alone without Poe that the attacks reared their ugly head.

“I...I’m fine,” you told BB-8 two nights after Poe left. “Just...just a bad dream.”

BB-8 didn’t sound like he was convinced as he watched you desperately try to catch your breath. He offered to go find Rey or Finn. 

Shaking your head, you felt yourself beginning to calm down slightly as you worked your way through the breathing exercises that Poe would normally walk you through. “No. It’s...it’s late...I don’t want to...I don’t want to wake them.”

The small droid moaned and rolled closer to the bunk. You smiled at the simple gesture of comfort and almost instantly the panic passed. Maybe Poe leaving BB-8 with you had been a good idea after all. You reached down and gently pat the droid on his domed head. “Thanks Bee,” you whispered, laying back down and snuggling underneath the blankets. They smelled faintly like Poe which comforted you even more. 

You had just started to fall back to sleep when you felt the bed shift. Opening your eyes, you saw that BB-8 had somehow climbed onto the bed and was reseting at your feet. Smiling, you hugged your pillow and fell asleep.

[killiansprincss]

We Found Wonderland

Summary: Trapped in the past after the S3 finale, Killian and Emma are forced to fade into the background as a newly married couple in a village while Rumplestilskin works on the portal to send them back to the future. (No Marian)

What challenges will they face, after all it’s only pretending to be married after all right?

Inspired by Taylor Swift ‘Wonderland’

Read on AO3

Huge thanks to @captain-emmajones for reading this over for me as I was going insane after editing it for weeks

Happy New Year to all! They say to start the year off as you mean to go on, and my goal for 2021 is to write more so I really hope you enjoy it!

Set just after the CS movie, no Marian.

We found Wonderland

You and I got lost in it

And we pretended it could last forever 

________

Emma had realised on this trip that Storybrooke was her home. Not Boston or New York. Yes things were messy and dangerous in Storybrooke. But it was home. It was where her family was.

She had longed for a family for 28 years especially after the foster system failed her and after Neal abandoned her. But when the boy she gave up for adoption asked her to come home with her, it changed her life. Even if she didn’t believe in the curse at first, she knew it was a place she could eventually call home.

She wasn’t scared anymore. For once, she was excited about the future and what it would bring. And Hook.

This trip had shown a side to him she hadn’t seen before. She knew he had feelings for her, and as much as she tried to suppress her own feelings for him, he was different this trip. He wasn’t pining for her or making his usual stupid flirty jokes. It was clear he cared about her family, he wasn’t selfish.

Kissing Other Hook was an adventure. But seeing her Hook get jealous and punch the other him was even better. She could see in his eyes it was killing him that she was flirting with the other him, way more than she had with him. And she wasn’t going to deny that she enjoyed it.

“You alright love?” Hook's voice pulled her away from her thoughts.

She smiles at him as they walk into Rumple’s Castle, “Yeah. Just excited to get home.”

“Well dearie it’s gonna be awhile before you can do that.” Rumples voice cuts through as they walk into the great hall.

“What the bloody hell does that mean Crocodile?” Hook asks, anger in his voice.

Rumple just laughs, “well it’s not just a portal that I could do easily for you. Time travel has never been done before, except for you two. It’ll take me around a year to create that portal for you two.”

“IM SORRY-A YEAR?”

“A YEAR?”

Both Emma and Hook's voices respond to this sudden realisation.

“You’re telling me, it’s gonna be a year, until we can go home to the future?” Emma asks, hoping she heard wrong.

“Were you not listening?” Rumple asks.

“So we have to stay here for a year while you figure out the stupid portal?” Hook looks angry, like he could use the dagger on Rumple so quickly.

“W-what about preserving the future?” Emma asks, she can’t stay here for a year. She can’t.

“Well you’ve already messed up your parents timeline and they’re still on track. I have no use for you in my castle, so I’ll place you two under a glamour spell in a small little village where hopefully you’ll make little impact. After you’re gone, I can erase the minds of the villagers.” Rumple explains while Emma is still trying to wrap her head around staying here for a whole year.

“My parents just met and are on track to get married and have me. It’s around 2 years before I’m born and the curse strikes. The portal will be ready by then right?”

Rumple just rolls his eyes at Emma. “I’m not an idiot. I say it’ll be a year, it’ll be a year.”

“Then what the bloody hell do we do?” Hook slams his hand down on the table.

Rumple looks as though he could kill him, but he just laughs. “Well I considered keeping you here in my dungeon. But alas I already have my help. You two will be a newly married couple that just moved to this part of the land. You can work at the tavern or something, I don’t really care. I’ll be in touch when the portal is ready.”

“Married?” The two exclaim at the same time.

“Are you two having trouble hearing?” Rumple asks, rolling his eyes.

—————

After probably an hour quarrelling with the Dark One about their arrangement, they’re transported to a small village and a hut that they guess they would have to call home for the next year. It had one large room, with one bed in the corner, a fireplace and what seemed like a stove to the left of the door and a few chairs by the table. It was small alright, and she had no clue how they were going to last a year in this place.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Emma says as she looks around.

Rumple laughs, “I'll be in touch when your portal is ready.” And vanishes a second later.

The pair look around at their home. Seeing the one bed Killian quickly offers, “You take the bed, I’ll sleep on the floor or somewhere it’s fine.”

Emma shakes her head, “no way, you take the bed. I have slept in my car and much worse places before. You take it.”

Hook just laughs, “you really are a stubborn lass. Look, it’s big enough for the both of us. It’ll be fine as long as we stay on our respective sides, no use arguing. We’re going to be here a while, no use one of us being uncomfortable.”

Emma reluctantly agrees.

The first night is the hardest, knowing she won’t see her family, Henry, for a whole year was a lot to wrap her head around. She had really enjoyed this trip when she wasn’t scared for her life, she had seen her parents fall in love and it made her finally understand what that meant, to be born of true love, the true love they had just witnessed.

And Hook. Or rather Killian, she should get used to saying his real name. She couldn’t quite admit to herself that she was falling for him before this trip. It would be a lot simpler if they were going back to Storybrooke, she probably would’ve given him a chance, a date perhaps, and see where it ends up. But this wasn’t Storybrooke. It wasn't even her time. She couldn’t risk whatever they had, not when they had to rely on each other to get home.

The next morning, Emma wakes to find they hadn’t exactly stuck to their respective sides. Killian’s arm was around her waist and she had tucked her head into his chest. It looked very cosy, and to an outsider it would seem they were truly a happy couple. But they weren’t.

Killian luckily wakes around the same time and, noticing the situation they’ve found themselves in, removes his arm and the two don’t say anything about the situation.

Except it keeps happening.

Every. Single. Night.

____

The next few days were spent discussing what their story would be. They had decided that Killian had been discharged from the Royal Navy because of the accident where lost his hand, and they were used to travelling but now had to find somewhere to settle down as a newly married couple.

They found jobs, Emma as the barmaid in the local tavern, similar to the one where she flirted with Other Hook. Killian found a job working by the docks so that he was still close to the water, it was mainly cleaning and anchoring the boats, very different to his pirate days. But it allowed them to slip into the background, not being noticed by anybody and not making any drastic changes to the future.

“How was your day, love?” Killian asks as Emma comes through the door after a long day working in the bar.

Untying her corset, trying to get out of the horrible clothes she tells him,“Horrible. I hate it here.”

Killian looks up at his ‘wife’, “that bad?”

Emma sits down on the chair. “I had 3 separate men try to buy me a drink whilst I was working. I told them I was working, and that I was married and they still tried to touch me up.”

Killian chuckles, “I’m guessing they aren’t going to do that again.”

Emma smiles, “of course not. I hope they won’t be needing their fingers for a while. How was your day?”

“It wasn’t bad. Can’t say I don’t love being by the water but it’s not the same. Although Cassian said he and his wife want to invite us over for dinner one night this week. Said that he wants to see the wife I don’t talk about enough.” He explains, he knows how Emma feels about getting too close with the other villagers, but if they avoid them for too long it could end up much worse.

“You mean you don't talk about your incredible and very hot wife, all day every day? Why did I marry you?” Emma teases. Their relationship has been like this ever since they got stuck, flirting and teasing but never going any further. “I know we can’t avoid other people forever, it’ll only cause more suspicion, so I guess we can meet them for dinner this time.”

“If this dinner goes well, I will start to talk about my incredible wife some more.” Killian teases back, “about how she’s messy and violent and she snores loudly when she sleeps.”

This earns a laugh from Emma, but also a pillow thrown at his head as she changes out of her corset. She’s never complaining about fitting into jeans again.

~~~

A week passes, more shifts at the tavern and more sleazy drunk men who probably have wives and children at their homes.

Emma earns 10 silvers and 15 bronze a week, Killain, 1 gold 9 silver and 12 bronze a week, which Killian told her is decent money, it allows them to feed themselves with food bought from the market, and buy more clothes which are not comfortable in the slightest. She hates the corsets. Luckily. She only has to wear them at work, the clothes she wears outside of work, whilst ugly and plain, are much more comfortable.

Emma wonders if she’s ever seen any of these villagers in Storybrooke, maybe they’re teachers or shop workers. Did they currently have a horrible life, and even though they’re cursed for 28 years, does it get better for them once they’re in Storybrooke?

The day finally arrived that the two of them have to go to dinner with one of the guys Killian works with. And Emma is petrified, it was fine just the two of them going about their days and telling their story to those around, separately. But telling their story together, they’d never done this. Would they know something was up? Would they know they were lying?

Killian can tell she’s tense, so he takes her hand in his and brushes his thumb over hers over and over. He knows her, he can tell when she’s stressed and knows that this calms her.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he whispers to her as they approach their friends home.

“Killian! So good to see you!” A blonde man opens the door, Cassian, Emma assumes. “Welcome, please come on in.”

Killain smiles and takes Emma’s hand in his as they walk through the door.

“May I introduce my beautiful wife, Emma.” Killian says gesturing to Emma who holds out her hand to shake, assured by Killian this was still the proper greeting in the Enchanted Forest.

“Emma. You are as beautiful as Killian has described. May I introduce my wife, Maeve.” Cassian smiles gesturing to a heavily pregnant woman beside him.

“It’s so kind of you to invite us into your lovely home.” Emma smiles, trying to keep her cool composure.

——

The night is pretty simple, they go over the story of how long they’ve been here, Killians time in the Navy, mostly true stories of his actual time, just a fabricated truth to fit the time and their fake timeline. The food was pretty good for the Enchanted Forest, some type of meat, pork or beef maybe, with rice, beans and vegetables. It was okay, but Emma was really missing grilled cheese.

Cassian and Maeve are really lovely people. They discover Maeve normally works at the market, but picks up extra shifts at the Tavern that Emma works at to make extra money, but is taking time off due to her pregnancy. Emma wouldn’t call it Maternity Leave as she was pretty sure it wasn’t a thing in the Enchanted Forest. Maeve said she was convinced it was a boy, but Cassian was sure it was a girl.

“Have you two thought about children yet?” Maeve asks.

Emma almost spits out her water. “Um great question. Um.” She decides to tell a fabricated truth, make it more believable. “I had a son, when I was younger, before I met Killian. I lost him, and I don’t know if I will ever see him again.” Truthfully, she didn’t want to make up a lie about her and Killian, they were not married, they were not together.

“It's a cruel fate to fall pregnant when young and unmarried. I’m sorry to hear that. I wish you the best for the future.” Cassian tells her. She smiles, thanking that they didn’t ask any more questions on the subject.

But there was one story, one question that really fucked Emma up. It was asked by Maeve when she wanted to know more about their marriage.

“So how did you decide you wanted to marry Emma, Killian? I can tell you two married for love, did you plan a romantic proposal or was it a spur of the moment type thing? Cassian proposed to me with his mother’s ring, he took me to the market stall where we first met. I was selling grain and he kept coming back every day for more grain. After weeks of coming to the stall he admitted the truth. A few months later, he took me back to the spot we first met and said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Of course I said yes!”

Emma looks over at Killian, hoping he has something to say. “You tell it so well Killian! He’s such a romantic my Killian!”

Killain looks at Emma and smiles. “So I lost my brother at sea years ago, and the only thing I have left of him is his ring. It’s kept me safe all these years, and when I met Emma I knew she was special. She didn’t like me very much at first, but I wore her down. She’s stubborn like my brother, so I knew I had to give her his ring. I took her down to the water, it’s not where we first met but it's where we both come when the world feels on top of us. Not much in my life has felt right since losing my brother, but Emma came into my life and she filled that void. So I took her to the water, got down on one knee and told her I couldn’t imagine my life without her. We don’t have much in terms of money, but we have each other and I think that’s enough.”

Was he serious right now? Emma thought he would maybe change up the story of how he wanted to marry Milah or something, but that was far too descriptive and emotional for it to be a lie or a fabrication. He had clearly thought about it, a little too much, Emma thinks.

Maeve was practically crying. “That is a beautiful story. You two are lucky to have found one another.”

She was going to murder him.

I’m sorry this is all that the Tumblr limit will let me post, check out part 2 here

[thedenimdentist]

Bleach Soaking my Warehouse 1001XX

Introduction

The proper way to wash selvedge denim (if you even believe in washing your denim at all) has always been a highly debated topic within the denim community. Since I first started wearing selvedge denim a few years ago, my beliefs, methods, and goals in washing my jeans has gone through a lot of the typical phases most “denimheads” experience. I initially never wanted to wash my jeans, hoping to get the most high contrast fades as possible. I never got into some of the more obscure denim practices, such as ocean washing or putting my jeans in the freezer to get rid of stench or “kill bacteria” or whatever, but I have played around a little with starching to try and achieve some of those SE Asian super crispy fades. 

Since then, my approach to washing my denim (as well as my taste in denim fades in general) has shifted dramatically. While I still can appreciate those super sharp, high contrast fades, I no longer really find them as desirable or visually appealing from a fashion perspective. They can be quite impressive when laid out flat on the floor or hanging, but when worn on body or worked into a full outfit, it just looks kind of bizarre and overly dramatic. That’s just my opinion, at least. There’s no “wrong” way to wash or fade your denim, so if that’s your cup of tea, more power to you.

As of late, I’ve definitely been more drawn to more classic fits and more vintage fades. Conveniently, this preference has also made wearing jeans much more comfortable and my washing practices much more hygienic! If you’ve been following along on my Warehouse 1001XX journey, you’ll know that this pair has been pretty much my daily driver for the past 8 months, and I’ve been washing them pretty much once a month (every 30 wears).

This time, at the 8 month mark (240 wear days), I decided to try something new (maybe even blasphemous within the denim community): I chose to bleach my denim. Not gonna lie, I was pretty hesitant and nervous, because I didn’t want to ruin a great pair of jeans I’ve invested 8 months on and am already pretty happy with how they've aged so far. However, I got over the initial fear and took the leap of faith, and am actually quite happy with the results.

Methods

I’m sure adding bleach to soaking/washing selvedge denim is not a ground-breaking, “never done before” technique to fading jeans. However, there is surprisingly very little information available online on how to actually go about doing it. Thus, I decided to give it a shot, and record exactly how I did it, as well as document my results for anyone else who may be interested in doing it themselves.

Step 1: To start, I just used the standard bleach I already had laying around for laundry: in this case, Clorox.

I’ve seen some videos on YouTube where they dump between half and the entire bottle of bleach into the bath tub to lighten a single pair of jeans. However, their goal was to take a standard darker to medium washed pair of jeans they found at the thrift store and lighten the hell out of em. I, on the other hand, chose to stay pretty conservative and only added about 50 mL of bleach to the bath. (I realize that 50 mL for an entire bath of water is fairly diluted, but as this is the first time I’ve done anything like this, I felt it better to err on the side of under-bleaching than over-bleaching.)

Step 2: I filled up my bathtub to about a finger length’s depth. (Clearly this is not a hard science, and everyone’s bath tubs are different. Nevertheless, I felt it necessary to give an approximate volume of water, as it affects the concentration of bleach added to the bath.)

Step 3: I then added the 50 mL of bleach to the bath and stirred the bathwater in attempt to evenly distribute the bleach. (I would've used a stick or something to stir the water, but I didn’t have one at the time. Instead, I just put on gloves and mixed it with my hands. (To be honest, I’m not really sure how necessary it is to wear gloves when touching bleach. I’m sure it’s not great for your skin, but the amount of time you're actually in contact with bleach is pretty minimal, especially it’s as dilute as 50 mL/an entire bathtub. But whatever. The teenage girl on YouTube told me it was CRUCIAL I wear gloves, so I did.)

Step 4: I completely submerged my jeans into the bathwater for 30 minutes, flipping them at the 15 minute mark. 

Things to note:

I left my jeans right-side-out for the entire 30-minute duration of the soak. My theory was, why bother flipping them inside out. What am I trying to do, hide the indigo-dyed warp from the bleach? Nah.

Do your best to lay the denim out as flat as possible. Not sure how critical this is, but people say you risk uneven bleaching if the denim isn’t super flat, and I’m not about to test their theory and end up with some ugly wrinkles or streaks on my jeans.

One extra step that I added was using a hard-bristle brush to scrub down the areas I wouldn’t mind some extra indigo loss (see photo below). I did this around the whiskers at the start of the first 15 minutes on the front, then on the butt pockets and honeycombs after flipping them over. 

Step 4: After the 30-minute bleach bath soak, I drained the bleach water from the bath, and filled it back up with plain water. I did my best to agitate and rinse out as much of the bleach water from my jeans as I could, and then flipped them inside out.

Step 5: I rolled up my jeans, wrapped them in a white rag towel, and ran them over to my washing machine. I then proceeded to machine wash my (inside-out) jeans on cold for 25 minutes, with the spin cycle turned off. (Note: turning “Spin” off does not mean the drum does not roll and tumble during the washing process. To my understanding, it just means it doesn’t spin quickly at the end to try and expel water out of your clothes (in this case, your jeans) before you pull them out to dry.)

Step 6: I hung my jeans to dry overnight. I sometimes hang them outside for better air flow, but I was lazy this time and hung them inside from a doorframe while blasting them with a fan. (I will note that, because the spin cycle was turned off, the jeans do come out of the machine dripping wet. I laid a towel down to absorb the bluish water drops and protect the hardwood floor.)

Results

I will preface this by saying that the results from this bleach soak are not all that significant. I would have loved to tell you that I’ve discovered the holy grail technique of achieving epic vintage fades, but I’d be lying. That being said, I’m in no way disappointed with the results! The bleach did bring up some of the high points in the fades just a bit, and definitely gave the color of the denim as a whole a bit more pop.

First off, here are a few side-by-side comparisons from before and after the bleach soak + machine wash. It’s a bit difficult to really tell what the fades really look like in the before shots (left), as they’re disguised by the shadows of the creases left from wear. The after photos (right) were taken immediately after hang drying flat, leaving just the fades clear and visible, unadulterated by shadows and creases.

Below are the standard views that I’ve been taking for all my post-wash updates. I just posted the side-by-side comparisons above because I thought it'd probably be helpful to see how drastic (or subtle) differences were in my fades immediately before and after the bleach soak.

Even with my Fuji X-T30, it’s difficult to really capture how the fades really look IRL. Thus, here’s a couple photos I snapped with my old iPhone 8 that I feel accurately depict how they looked after bleaching.

Man, so good.

On-Body

Lastly, here’s how they’re looking on body. Sadly, as always, I feel like my on-body photos never do my fades justice. There’s so much depth of color and texture to this banner denim, I just can’t seem to capture it from further away. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but that’s why I always take so many detailed close-up shots—to best capture what I’m seeing in real life.

Conclusions

While very subtle, I am extremely happy with the results of this first bleach soak. The highlights in the whiskers, knees, train tracks, and butt pockets/seat pop just a bit more, and now I can even make out some visible honeycombs (which have always been lagging). In addition, I feel like it did remove just the right amount of indigo from the entire jean as a whole, bringing up some of the areas of deep indigo and revealing more electric blues. This Warehouse banner denim already had so much depth of color and texture, and I feel the bleach soak only brought out that character even more.

Is doing a bleach soak going to give you instant epic vintage fades? No. But are my jeans ruined forever? Not at all. Maybe bleach soaking isn’t for everyone. If you’re one of those people who are going for super high contrast, chunky, Southeast Asian fades, then no, bleach soaking might not be your thing. However, if soft vintage fades are more your speed, maybe adding some bleach to the mix isn't such a bad idea. 

All in all, I just wanted to document this experiment to prove that adding bleach to a raw denim soak isn’t as scary as people make it out to be. For those of you who may have thought about bleaching your denim in the past but were unsure of how much to do so or were afraid of ruining your expensive jeans, hopefully this will give you the confidence to give it a try, knowing the type of results you might get based on how my pair turned out. Just use your brain and think about what you’re doing and why, and you’ll be just fine. Like so many other strange techniques used to fade denim (most of which I find dumb or so obscure and not grounded in science, or even common sense), bleach is merely another tool you can use to fade your denim.

I’ll probably continue to bleach soak my denim occasionally moving forward. Heck, I may even try doubling or tripling the concentration of bleach to 100-150 mL next time, just to see what’ll happen. Cuz at the end of the day, they’re just jeans, so why not have some fun with it?

[littlespoonevan]

okay this took me forever bc i could not for the life of me think of a tattoo to cover up ian’s  that was actually like. nice but also relevant to monica (bc despite my feelings about her i don’t want to take that sentiment away). i’m happy with the one i chose though so hopefully you like it too <33

(quick reminder: i’m not accepting anymore prompts at the moment while i work on the ones in my inbox <3)

*

Ian is standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom brushing his hair back out of his face with a comb when he hears the water cut off in the shower. A moment later he’s on the receiving end of a damp side hug as Mickey winds the hand not holding up his towel around Ian’s waist to balance himself while he leans in to give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Mm hey,” Mickey greets warmly and Ian pauses in his ministrations to smile at him in the mirror.

Dropping his comb, he turns and settles his hands on Mickey’s shoulders, absently massaging the divot of space beneath Mickey’s collarbones with his thumbs. “Hey. You doin’ anything today?”

He knows Mickey has the day off and days off for Mickey – especially rare weekday ones – usually result in him not surfacing from bed until at least 11:00 before he has a late breakfast and parks himself on the couch for the rest of the day. But today he’s already up and showered and it’s not even 10am. The way Mickey ducks his head when he asks the question also suggests he does have something on.

Which is a little weird – if only because Ian also has the day off since he’s changing rotation from days to nights this week.

“I, uh, I’ve got an appointment in a couple hours,” Mickey says evasively and Ian frowns.

Mickey only ever talks like this when his dad’s involved and Ian will shoot Terry himself if he’s after getting Mickey caught up in his shit again. “What kind of appointment?” he asks, not sure if he really wants to hear the answer.

Mickey must be able to tell where Ian’s mind goes though because he looks up and rolls his eyes. “A real appointment, dumbass,” he says. “At a tattoo parlour.”

Ian instantly feels himself relax and lets go of Mickey to put his comb back in the medicine cabinet next to his morning meds. “You getting a new tattoo?”

Mickey doesn’t answer right away and when he does the words are mumbled at a barely audible volume. “Fixing one actually.”

Ian pauses, turning around to face Mickey again. Mickey’s busying himself with tightening the towel around his waist, pointedly not looking in Ian’s direction. Ian takes the time to let his eyes drop to the tattoo sitting on Mickey’s chest before he steps forward again, brushing his fingers over Mickey’s forearm and coaxing his arms away from his torso. “Mick.”

Mickey looks up at him, letting Ian pull his arms around his waist and releasing a sigh that comes out more resigned than bashful. “Guess I figured since you’re stickin’ around I should probably make it look the way it’s supposed to.”

Ian smiles even though his heart squeezes a little painfully in his chest. He hates that he ever made Mickey doubt the fact he would stay. He reaches up, running the fingers of his left hand over his name. He does it on purpose so Mickey will see the wedding ring and remember. This is forever now. “Can I come with you?” he asks, looking up from Mickey’s chest to meet his gaze.

“Why?” Mickey says, shrugging like he doesn’t care but Ian can tell he probably does. “The guy said it shouldn’t take that long.”

“Well, if we’re in a fixing tattoos kinda mood maybe I should do something about the one on my back.”

Mickey’s face twists into a familiar grimace at the mention of the obnoxious boobs on Ian’s shoulder before going slack with surprise. “You’re gonna cover it up?”

It’s Ian’s turn to shrug. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I mean, I know Monica’d probably find it hilarious but it’s ugly as shit.”

Mickey snorts at that, a sort of no arguments from me, pal!

“And I’ve finally got enough money put away to afford to get something big enough to cover it. I could call and see if they can fit me in too?”

Mickey considers him for a moment before his mouth ticks up at the corners and his hands squeeze Ian’s hips. “Guess we got a date, Gallagher.”

*

They’re led into separate rooms when they get there. Mickey had already had a consultation but Ian hadn’t, not to mention the fact Ian’s is a significantly longer job than Mickey’s. He likes the idea he came up with though.

He’d started thinking about cover ups almost from the minute he’d gotten the tattoo but not only had it been too expensive, he’d also had no fucking idea what to get. He still wants it to be something for her because no matter how fucked up things got and no matter what she’s done, he still misses her. But as time passed the more he’d started to think maybe he wanted it to mean a little more than that too.

In the end he’d settled on something that he thought fit for both of them.

He’s had a general picture of what he’s wanted for a while now and when he shows it to the tattoo artist – Benny, his nametag says – he sketches a couple of his own mock-ups for Ian to choose from. It’s gonna take a couple of hours so he texts Mickey while Benny is prepping his shoulder and tells him he doesn’t need to hang around for him if he doesn’t want to.

Mickey texts him back a succinct, “Whatever, Gallagher,” and that’s the end of that until Mickey texts him again approximately forty-five minutes later, saying, “I’m gonna go get lunch, want me to bring you back something?”

Ian buries his smile against his arm where he’s got it braced in front of him in the chair and tries to remain completely still as he texts back.

Ian: My usual. Thank you <3

Mickey: Whatever

Mickey: <3

*

Mickey takes his time, obviously choosing to eat his own lunch at the mall and kill some time so Ian’ll be almost done by the time he comes back to the tattoo parlour. Ian hears the bell jangle above the door in the main room about five minutes before Benny finally sits back and says, “Okay, you’re all set.”

Ian relaxes in the chair before he remembers he hasn’t seen it yet. He extricates himself from the awkward position he’d been in for the past few hours and makes his way to mirror in the corner of the room, turning around and craning his neck. He catches sight of the corner of it before Benny appears next to him with a handheld mirror so he can get a better look.

It’s perfect.

Sure enough, Mickey’s waiting for him when he comes onto the main shop floor, lunch in hand, and Ian flashes him an affectionate smile before he goes up to the counter to pay.

Other than Mickey asking him again what he got and Ian telling him he’ll show him when they get home they don’t talk about their tattoos on the way home. Not that Ian can really think of much else – he’d been so anxious about covering up his own tattoo, he’d forgotten why they’d even come here in the first place. What Mickey did.

It’s a lot to process – the level of devotion that tattoo shows.

It’d felt like someone had taken a knife to Ian’s own chest when he’d first seen it. Like a giant declaration of all the ways Ian had fucked Mickey up. Now though, now Ian feels it for what it is. Unconditional love.

By some unspoken agreement they both head straight up the stairs when they get back to the house, following each other into the bedroom and closing the door behind them. When they’re stood face to face beside the bed Ian finally opens his mouth to speak.

“You first,” he requests quietly, the moment feeling oddly intimate as Mickey glances down, shrugging off his jacket before reaching for his t-shirt.

Ian watches with rapt attention as he pulls his shirt over his head, eyes zeroing in on Mickey’s chest as soon as he lets his arms fall back to his sides again. There’s tape over it but Ian can still see it clear as day. He lets out a breath and steps closer, fingers hovering above the letters. The extra “l” fits in seamlessly and other than the “h” being a little on the small side in order to make it fit, you’d never know it wasn’t there in the first place.

Ian looks up to find Mickey staring off to the side, a faint splotch of colour on his cheeks, and Ian bites down on a smile, carefully turning Mickey’s chin back towards him. “I love you,” he says softly, darting in to steal a kiss. It’s enough to make Mickey relax and lean into him, which is all Ian had wanted really.

“Alright, your turn,” Mickey says when he pulls back. “Enough with the secrecy bullshit.”

Ian huffs a laugh but obligingly steps back and pulls on the hem of his t-shirt. Once he gets it over his head he tosses it on the bed and turns around, feeling oddly nervous for Mickey’s reaction.

Mickey doesn’t say anything right away but after a beat Ian feels the gentle pressure of Mickey’s fingertips right around the outline of the tape and he knows what Mickey sees. A compass with a rope intricately woven around it.

“I wanted something for Monica but I wanted it to be for me too,” Ian explains, unprompted. He turns to face Mickey again and finds him watching him carefully, like he’s trying to work something out.

“I felt really fucking lost for a long time after everything that happened,” he continues quietly. It’s hard to look Mickey in the eye but he forces himself to anyway. “And I know I kinda have a habit of running away from my problems but…I always want to come home. To my family. To you.”

Mickey’s throat bobs at the last part, hands twitching for a moment at his sides before they reach up to land on Ian’s shoulders. “What’s it got to do with your mom?”

Ian gives him a half-hearted smile. “I looked it up; Monica means advisor.” He lets out bemused laugh, shaking his head. “She’s- She didn’t give me good advice,” he says seriously because if nothing else he wants to remind Mickey that he knows Monica played some role in their relationship ending all those years ago. “I know that now but- she did show me what I didn’t want my life to become.”

Mickey nods, expression softening like he understands.

“And…she was lost too,” Ian adds, blowing out a breath. “I don’t think she ever had anyone like you to remind her she had something worth coming back to.”

Mickey stares at him for a moment, a myriad of expressions flickering across his face before he cups Ian’s cheek. “She could’ve come back for you,” he says solemnly and Ian smiles, covering Mickey’s hand with his own.

“I know,” he murmurs. “We were never enough to make her stay though.” Ian presses his forehead against Mickey’s. “You make me want to stay.”

Mickey doesn’t say anything to that, just draws him into a kiss filled with surety and love. Ian wraps his arms around him and kisses back, pouring everything he has into it. Because really, in a lot of ways, Mickey should probably be the one with the compass tattoo considering all the times he’s managed to make his way back to Ian right when he’d needed him.

But he likes it. The past couple of years he feels like he’s found himself again. And in doing that he found Mickey again.

And he’s never, ever letting him go.

*

[somehow-on]

Notes - 2020

Wiping your ass is next to godliness.

I'd throw a fat man in front of a train for you.

I'm alone in the center of the universe, everyone else is just increasingly complex epicycles.

Everyone plans to empathize until they're punched in the mouth.

I'm always on time, I'm a true punc.

Do I talk to myself? I do everything to myself.

Stay woc.

Nihilist in theory, pragmatist in practice.

Vectorian Grey.

H2650-1, J-bend, 1.25 inch. Compression Washer.

Full grown, adult sized, bangeroos.

How about instead of doing everything shittily all at once, you do one thing well?

Third Riech Feminist.

Lee Moses - she's a bad girl

If I'm going to die on a hill it's going to be frigging mount hillaminjarro.

Never compromise nor coordinate.

Dump sack.

Tracing paper.

Sex, the world's oldest commodity.

Arm Q's: infection vs bursitis, bone spur, IV soreness, basketball, drinking, elevation, some reason antibiotics aren't working

I'm no racist, I voted for Biden.

I'm not a socialist, I'm a social distancer.

I'm a Hooverist.

Other people's money.

Stop taking my chances.

Beautiful/fertile, ugly/sterile.

Get good at hitting your target, or get good at coming up with excuses for why you missed.

Life is for the risk tolerant.

Never regulated.

Sicker than sars-cov'ers, higher than Mars rovers.

60 Watt, 75 Watt

No one has a clearer vision of the absence of truth at the center of existence.

The meek and the brash.

I'm jewlatto.

Your amazing ability to invent clever new ways to be miserable.

Barry White - I'm gonna love you just a little more baby

Admiral Sissy Mary.

Imagine sisyphus getting prizes.

social darwining not distancing.

Wyatt Dykeman.

My life in bits.

You should see the other 7 billion.

Eyes are the windows of the cell.

The Heat of Composition.

The arrows of time.

It's not free will that is the illusion, physical cause and effect itself is illusory, all there is is brain chemicals and/or qualia.

My life as a trophy case to my disillusionments.

Theories on life list.

What is a superstition but an illusion of control?

This country's been in the toilet ever since we elected that Catholic Kennedy.

X is a religion, but not because it's a ethics, but because it's an explanation. Nothing can be explained.

What does the urkel tv show have to do with anything?

Was the most popular girl out behind the school. - 2013

puts the miscue in promisuous. - 2013

It doesn't bother me that people call me fat; I'm just thick-skinned. - 2012

Parezewsky, Mozca.

Vanguard Commodity Fund. VCMDX.

Gleeconomist.

I'm just a tall, hairy, little girl.

Diligence. Due diligence. Owed diligence.

Get yur kit off.

Smart as a button.

Sysiphus laughing.

Bluff the devil.

To sugar in our boogers and cream in our jeans.

The one inch of spacetime in front of my face.

The matrix but it's your own brain simulating your life one second at a time.

God gave his only son as a false flag operation.

Shitposting cannot be refuted, it can only be repeated. - TIB

Can't be arsed.

Breath spilled.

To me, every bumper sticker is basically a swastika. Tattoo.

S. J. Perelman. Mort Sahl. George S Kaufman.

Wide eyes nights late lying awake.

I just wish I could do less.

Meaningless, purposeless, alienating, novelty.

You don't have to hold so tightly to your ideas of how the world ought to be. If you relax just a little it's not going to fall apart. It will still keep getting a little better every day, and you'll have given yourself some room to enjoy what is good in it.

Ethically-Sourced Sadism.

Pathos-Aggresive.

The answer to every question is either everything or nothing.

People are always trying to help me find my wallet.

For a while I was living in my car dealership.

Avoid work, acquire orgasms.

The real reward is the silence and nothingness you make along the way.

Our relationship is purely physical, she's my aerobics instructor.

Pogo - Walt Kelly

Ameianto - super combo. Liniker

MMT is just communism with extra steps.

Crown of mud.

Don't count other people's status.

The emperor is fully clothed but is actually just a homeless weirdo off his meds.

Repeater.

Blackface is offensive, I only ever do African-American-face.

We must protect the children and coincidentally my social status.

Jeff Bezus Christ.

Born and bred and dipped in butter.

VMBSX - mortgage backed securities

Your son is going to grow up loving me, so who's the real cuck after all?

Avarice.

The dead infant is fulfilled. Baby coffin.

Chiaroscuro.

Data Based God.

Laugh while you burn.

Boredom is gravity always pulling you back to earth. Comedy is ramp that tricks your penchant for boredom in to launching you for a brief moment into the sky and closer to God.

Nihilists know the price of everything and the value of nothingness.

Acquisitive.

Speak less, smilf more.

The world is my cloister.

Breads Benedict.

Hose down, pimp up.

Health, wealth, and mirth. Birth, worth, and mirth.

London Fog.

I don't want to be in any club that wouldn't have me as their president.

Recognize the future.

You only do two weeks anyhow, the week you go in and the week you go out.

Use my time machine to go back and kill clippy before he is ever shipped.

It's not about the size of the boat, but the ocean of lotion.

The weight room is where we determine the proper weights for our pitch randomizer.

Failed Utopia. Utopia of the failed.

South of the wall.

Mektoub, my love. Movie.

She wants me to take her to the pound town county courthouse to apply for a liquor license, if you know what I mean.

I only do two things, break hearts and chew gum. And I'm delivered a monthly subscription of gum.

Beckett-head Wendy. Wundy.

I'm a consummate consumer.

Billy Joel: The father of hip hop.

Bask & wallow.

There's nothing to be done. I'll do on. Call that doing, call that on.

Hell and madness: trying to control that which you cannot.

Only reason anyone does anything: to make friends.

We are all united against the past, but in a war against all for the future.

Elena ferrante, the lost daughter.

Paul oster, hunt for herman miller.

Reality is plastic - hypnotism book

Fund the police! Coming straight from the underground.

My life's just a $10M bit.

There's a method to my badness.

Good fences make good neighborhoods.

Someone's gotta keep the bad world from the door.

Dom-text.

Isolate your favorites.

Huey Newton and the Lootings.

Too hasty by far!

Drinking my Soylent, doing my thang.

We only like the beginning of things.

Johnnie Ray.

Having sex astride a grave, the love gleams an instant and then it's dark once more.

Give us this day our daily death.

Live small & petite mort.

There's no small lives, just petite morts.

Gems in the mud.

Mud-miner.

I let you lose.

Air, water, food, hugs.

Shut up, show off.

Friendship is forever, romance is by the hour.

A shoulder to sigh on.

Pithetic. Inspires pith.

Everything is dim, inapparently.

Cum-dumptruck.

Mr. Smarty.

Moist with meaning.

Covid-wife.

Cuddle to completion.

I'm a very adorable pervert.

Still chasing my perfect compliment. Ultimate.

You don't pay me to be doing something all the time, you pay me to do the right thing at the right time, and to know what and when that is.

Melo-chromatic.

Go with Goethe. Go with Godot.

Off-black.

Peddling my piddling wares.

Godot waits for me.

Thick-stick thespian. Dipstick lesbian.

To want something is beautiful, to get it is obscene. Cloying. Nauseating.

I'm not smart enough to say little, I have to say a lot.

Papa Pill.

Pall.

Patience Zero. Seize the delay. It gets better, then worse.

Worrier-Princess. Golden State Worrier.

I'm looking for someone out of my league physically, intellectually, and morally; who I will try desperately to hide all my shortcomings and flaws from until one of us dies, hopefully me.

Greylord.

[ladyhistorypod]

Episode 5: Is a Woman’s Place Really in the Kitchen?

Sources:

Amelia Simmons

The Atlantic

Connecticut History

Michigan State University Libraries

Smithsonian Magazine

Further Viewing: Amelia Simmons’ Thanksgiving Dinner – YouTube

Buwei Yang Chao

“Chinese linguist, phonologist, composer and author: oral history transcript / and related material, 1974-1977”

Chowhound

Brown University

Brown University (YouTube)

Open Recipes Openly Arrived At: Mrs Chao’s How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (1945) and the Translation of Chinese Food

Chow Chop Suey: Food and Chinese American Journey (book by Anne Mendleson)

New York Times

Mary Mallon

Annals of Gastroenterology

History Channel

National Geographic

Smithsonian Magazine

Discover Magazine

Attributions:

Drum Roll

Stove Clicks

Food Vectors

Click below for a full text transcript of the episode!

Alana: I hit my step count for the first time in quarantine today because I was walking all up and down northwest Washington DC looking for brisket five days before Rosh Hashanah. By the time this comes out we’ll be well past Rosh Hashanah, we’ll be like into Yom Kippur kind of area.

Lexi: Yeah. We will.

Alana: But oh my god. I'm so tired. I'm not used to doing that much walking… but… all over… But I found one! I found one.

Lexi: Where’d you find it?

Alana: Trader Joe’s.

Lexi: Of course!

Alana: Trader Joe's, man. I looked at the farmer’s market but they were sold out and that was really sad because obviously…

Lexi: People probably preordered to the farmer’s market.

Alana: That's the thing I only thought about it like Thursday, and the preorders needed to be in by Wednesday.

Lexi: Ooooh.

Alana: So… walking all around northwest Washington. I checked the farmer’s market stand to be like oh maybe they brought extra and I went early like I get there at 10:30 now and they were sold out.

Haley: It’s kind of like Thanksgiving for it, like where you have to preorder your turkey or ham. And I'm kind of terrified for that moment because I'm hosting Thanksgiving. But I need like an eight to ten pound turkey, nothing like– I’ve seen thirty pound turkeys when I was researching this. Like how big is a brisket?

Alana: It depends. The brisket that I got was three pounds. Three point one pounds.

Haley: And that's it for you or for like others?

Alana: It's for me and for my extended quarantine household. Shout out to Maureen and Paul, I don't know if they're listening to this episode but they said they were gonna listen to the first two, so… 

Lexi: But you can make a lot of brisket if you want to.

Alana: Oh yeah, I'm gonna make all of it. It reheats really well.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Alana: Hello and welcome to Lady History; the good the bad and the ugly ladies you missed in history class. I'm in the virtual studio with my spice wife Lexi. Lexi, do you want to explain how we got spice married?

Lexi: Well for one we're both really spicy people, um, so that's got to be the first reason. When you put two spicy people together equals a spicy marriage. But no what happened was I was moving out of DC and I had a collection of spices because I love spices and I needed someone to take my spices so Alana took them. And then the other day Alana was cooking and talking about all the spices she uses and it happened to be a combination of the spices from both spice cabinets so it was a spice marriage.

Alana: We shared our spice assets.

Lexi: And hopefully someday we will live together, and our spices can stay together forever.

Alana: Someday.

Lexi: Or they'll expire. But spices last a long time. 

Alana: Spices last a while. Also here, “here” in air quotes is Haley. Haley, do you have a favorite dish to cook?

Haley: I love making anything with mashed potatoes. I really like find it just calming to peel potatoes and then chop them up and then watch them boil. I like those like specific steps I can go through.

Alana: I’m inviting you to help me make latkes because that's the worst part. This has been a very Alana is Jewish episode already but I'm inviting you to make latkes with me so that you can peel all the potatoes because I hate doing that.

Haley: I've never had a latke before so I don't know how much help I’ll be.

Alana: Didn’t you live in New York?

Haley: Latkes have eggs. I've never had a latke sans eggs, so.

Alana: I’ll find a way. For you I will find a way to make latkes sans eggs. And I'm Alana and my friends call me a Trader Ho because I grocery shop almost exclusively at Trader Joe's.

(Haley laughing)

Lexi: Which friends are that?

Alana: My internet friends. My sunshines.

Haley: I was like… we don't call you that. You have other friends?

Lexi: You have friends that aren’t us?

Lexi: Okay so the theme today is cooking and because of this theme I would like to dedicate this episode to my great grandmother Eleanor Delucia, who we called Nana most of us call Nana. But the reason I would like to dedicate it to her is because she spent a hundred years of life cooking and living through history and so I think it's very fitting that this episode would be dedicated to her. And because of that I want to ask you guys if there's any family recipes that are weird or unique to your family.

Alana: Yes I do have a very special recipe, actually I have a couple, from my Grandma Louise. I recently started– oh my god Alana’s going to be Jewish on main again– I started making challah every week from scratch and I'm using my grandmother's recipe that is so incredibly complicated. And like you– you have to boil water, but you can't boil water too much, like it has to be exactly 110 degrees when you use it. And then you have to rise the bread– like rise the dough at exactly 90 degrees, and it's so complicated and so I've started using that recipe and I'm crushing it. I’m crushing it. It was my first time making challah by myself and I used this recipe that was super complicated and I nailed it. I nailed it. And then the other one is, I started making a potato zucchini soup and– like when I was a teenager. And I made it for my grandparents at their house once and my grandmother was like “you know what would give this a really beautiful green color is if you left–” like you peel the zucchini but if you leave the peel in the bowl– not in the bowl, in the pot while all of the vegetables are cooking together, the soup will be more green. And it'll be like– the color will be more pronounced and– oh my god, she was so right. And so now that's like how I make it. So those are my fun family stories.

Lexi: That's so beautiful.

Haley: I don't think we have like a distinct recipe or sets of recipes. We will cook Cuban or Persian food. And I've noticed with my mom and myself since we're both like lazy, lazy beans, we’ll take the complicated recipe, like Alana was saying, with all the ingredients, all the different measurements, what you have it, and just make it into a Crockpot friendly, or like one pot friendly recipe, versus making it a three hour long process. Because so many times I’m like I really want Persian food and it wasn't until a few months ago where a Persian restaurant opened down the street from me. And every time I open like one of my marked Pinterest tabs it would be like eight to ten different ingredients that I could not get at my local supermarket. And then thirty plus steps, culminating into three to four hours of cooking, which I just do not have, especially writing a thesis at the moment.

Lexi: I think for my family it's a dessert heavy situation, like on both sides. My mom's family has these German rollout cookies that we make for Christmas, sometimes other holidays– we made little George Washingtons for my graduation party, which was cute, but they're just flat cookies. And then on my Italian family’s side, the thing that we do at weddings as we have a table where all the aunties bring cookies and then it's like a place of privilege or pride to be the best auntie with the best cookies for the wedding, which is really cute. So I think cookies are a big deal in my family.

Alana: Cookies are– are a big deal in my family too, and I find it– like, my grandmother died three years ago… just over three years ago– and I find like, making cookies so spiritual. That I'm like this is something that we used to do together. It's one of my favorite pictures of like little baby Alana and Grandma Louise and she's teaching me how to use a cookie cutter and it’s so cute.

Haley: Okay I have to amend mine because we've brought up desserts. Like I just said probably five minutes ago I'm real allergic to eggs so my Christmas like cookies all egg free, or like before we could do the– the substitutes were oreos like dipped in chocolate. But my birthday cake was a homemade Rice Krispies treat like cake. My mom would just make like a ginormous one and like decorate it. So all my– just because like what were you gonna do with a child that couldn’t eat her own birthday cake? That's just sad and depressing. So my mom basically was like we're gonna have a Rice Krispy treat or we're going to have ice cream cake. So that– I guess that is heavily unique for my family.

Lexi: So cookbooks emerged as a status symbol, and in 15th and 16th century Europe, cookbooks were filled with recipes from palaces and courts and they were favored by kings and queens. And the wealthy loyal followers acquired these cookbooks as a sign of their devotion, eating like royalty… it brought them closer to being royalty. Gradually, as access to print books became more common and literacy rates rose, cookbooks became a staple in households all around Europe. But one cookbook in particular changed the way a nation ate. And that’s the cookbook we're gonna talk about today. In the year 1796, Amelia Simmons wrote the United States of America's first ever cookbook. In doing so, she forever changed cookbooks, shaping a future in which cookbooks were used by people from all walks of life. Amelia’s book was called “American Cookery, or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables.”

Alana: Can you spell that?

Lexi: V-I-A-N-D-S. 

Alana: I hate French.

Lexi: It was published by Hudson and Goodwin in Hartford, Connecticut. While it was not the first cookbook printed in America, it was the first one written by an American. It was a unique cookbook. It was distinguished from its British counterparts for its attention to more practical methods of cooking and it provided recipes that can make large quantities of food for families on tight budgets. When I say large quantities, I mean the ingredients were prepared in huge, huge quantities. One of her cake recipes called for two pounds of butter. Amelia also believed in saving time, and one of her recipes called for the person making the recipe to milk a cow directly into the mixture. Amelia's cookbook resonated so successfully with America's home cooks that it was reprinted for thirty five years after its initial publication. Amelia's recipes may not be as commonplace in American households as they were during her lifetime, but they are a great resource for analyzing and understanding how food and language are related in history. Some of them you use terms became commonplace in American language such as calling pancakes slapjacks, referring to lard and butter as shortening, coining the Americanization of the Dutch word “Koekje”– I might have said that wrong– which would eventually become the word “cookie.” She actually spelled it like C-O-O-K-Y not I-E like we spell it today. Her legacy continues in her home state of Connecticut, where her recipe for “Election Cake”– a floury bread cake baked in large quantities– became a common after-voting snack for Connecticut's residents and remains relevant today. Plus, Amelia’s recipes let historical chefs recreate and taste recipes, experiencing the history of America through the flavor of food people the past preferred. And, so I guess in summary, Amelia kind of started the whole trend of American cookbook culture. She established the means by which American women make their food– and American people in general I guess not just women– but at the time she definitely was writing as a woman for other women because the recipes were so practical and focused on how a mother might cook for their kids or wife might cook for their husband or how you might cook for a family so definitely she was a woman writing for women but I really think it’s an interesting and fascinating story that she created the first cookbook, and it was a woman who did it, and that's really really cool.

Alana: I like how you said like cookbooks were status symbols and I'm thinking about cleaning out my grandmother's kitchen and there were just like cabinets full of cookbooks and I'm like oh, hello, yes, I am the aristocracy.

Haley: I actually have a question about the cookbooks, Lex, cuz I couldn’t find this in my research. But could you find like what constitutes as a long time for being an in-print cookbook.

Lexi: So, nothing I read said like thirty five– because because thirty five years was how long hers was printed for.

Haley: Right.

Lexi: Nothing said that that was the longest or that that was normal. It was notable but it wasn't a record. So…

Haley: Right.

Lexi: You know. I don't know exactly how long recipes last, but when you think about how trends change so much and how we don’t really eat things today that my grandma used to cook at dinner parties in the seventies. I'm sure cookbooks don't last that long and when we think about Amelia's methods and then we think about what people ate even in the mid-1800s it was totally different already, so even fifty sixty years later so. Yeah.

Haley: That’s the exact train of thought I was using because I've noticed when I was just researching different women to see who I wanted to dive into, a lot of the cookbooks if they weren’t out for those like thirty year chunks, it was revisions. Every few years here's a revised copy. And that's like a thing in our academic world as well where new trends happen, new events happen. And recipes and also just work needs to be updated. So I like that like the thirty years but also that she's just still relevant.

Lexi: Yeah. So we don't know that much about her. Like, all we know is that she was an orphan and that's literally it. We don't know about her personal life, we just know that she wrote this book. There's no other records of her in any way. Yeah, and there's actually a Youtuber I'd like to shout out named I believe it's Townsend's I think that's how you say it– it's like the word “town” and the word “end”– who does these recipes that Amelia put in the book. And he does other historical recipes too, and other historical videos but if you want to see an entire playlist of Amelia's Thanksgiving dinner recipes check out that channel.

Haley: Well that's a great segue into my gal because we're gonna keep going on the cookbook train and also kind of I want to say revolutionizing the American kitchen, in a sense, but we're going to do with Chinese food now. Not necessarily like the American food, which I got from Amelia, sensing it’s more of a not necessarily British take but American classics.

Lexi: Establishing American classics.

Haley: There we go. Yep, that's awesome. So I'm going to preface this, I calling–

Lexi: Something I forgot to say on that, she used like corn and stuff which was not available in Britain so… 

Haley: Oh, I love that. That's. So good for what I'm gonna be talking about. So she is Dr. Buwei Yang Chao. And I'm gonna do a little side note: I’m not going to be pronouncing these Chinese words, phrases, whatchahaveits, correctly because I do not speak Chinese. And yes, you heard it, Doctor. But don't worry we'll get into that. Born in 1889 in Nanjing, China Buwei was a Chinese-American physician and writer but most recognizable as a person who brought us, as Americans, potstickers, stir fry, and essentially the first cookbook of Chinese-American food. Before we begin, I just want to go over what potstickers are because I didn't know what potstickers were and I'll get into that more but potstickers are type of Chinese dumpling usually with a crescent shape, pan fried on one side, simmered in some sort of broth. And full disclosure part of the reason why I didn't know what potstickers were because I've only had them from Trader Joe's. I.E. that whole egg thing coming back in. So back to Dr. Buwei. As a female doctor in China, she did have a Japanese training as a surgeon and gynecologist and she actually pioneered the use of birth control for women in China which blew my mind. I was reading like a New York Times article and got into a whole wormhole of this doctor’s just life and bam, coming out with pioneering in birth control and medicine of that nature. And she definitely had a mix of Chinese medicine and then also like Western school medicine because a lot of the Western schools were in Asia so she got the mix of both. And she was credited with that sense of bringing Western medicine to China as one of like the first females to do it. And a lot of the time, her medical like knowledge was noted as quote “new style” and also as a side note I believe that in her entry exam essay it was about women's education, which I thought was really cool. Like how educating women was a good and powerful thing. And I only found that only one article so it might not be true, but I'm praying that it is true because I was just so baller to go into med school with your entry essay being about women's education and like the right that women have to be educated at such a professional level. So why did I bring this all up, because come on Haley we're here to talk about food. Well, while she was in Japan and studying at Tokyo Women's Medical College, she started cooking her own meals because she didn't enjoy the Japanese cuisine. It just didn't sit right with her. Totally different, she wanted the comfort of home and since Japan didn't have–

Alana: Raw fish? I’m with her. I’m with her. I don’t do the raw fish.

Haley: Exactly. Like if we went to Italy and for me, the eggs in all those pastas, I would be going out, buying my own pasta, making my own carbonara, sans eggs. Totally natural. But Japan, kind of like what Lexi was getting to, Japan didn’t have all the traditional ingredients, so she would modify her traditional Chinese recipes to fit in with what she could get from the Japanese markets. And when she returned to China in 1919, she opened the Sen Ren Hospital, and after a few more years, marriage, blossoming career, she was offered to teach at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thus we get into her time in the U.S. And her and her husband like there are a couple of years where they go back and forth teaching, practicing medicine, living their life. So when she was writing or just before she was writing her first cookbook which is “How to Cook and Eat in Chinese” and that came out in 1945. She would try and test out her food. This was also often in the U. S. so with ingredients that her readers would have, and she added these elements to her everyday cooking. So this wasn't like “I'm going to write this cookbook for people to buy it and make money off of it but not use it myself.” She fully invested, saying “look, if I'm gonna produce something for people to read, I have to use it in my everyday cooking. I have to live by this.” which I really respect. So in a history perspective, 1945 was the tail end of World War II, and for writing cookbooks– writing cookbooks takes years to do. If you saw the movie “Julie and Julia” you kind of get a glimpse of that, where you first write about the outline, what you want to cook. You want to have appetizers, mains, and desserts. And then you get it to the publisher, they say “cool, do these work?” You test and test and test, just years and years and honestly I could be totally getting this timeline wrong. This is just my preliminary knowledge. So 1940s, we’re in World War II, it was also a difficult time for cooking and food in general in the United States because not just having the native Chinese cultural food that she was used to, and now she had to supplement in the U. S., they’re are also going through food shortages and kind of restrictions from food stamps and just what was available during World War II. So she really used some innovative and creative thinking when writing this masterpiece of hers. And a lot of it also came from, just the New York World's Fair happened in 1939, and I don't think this had a direct impact on her writing the cookbook but I think it had an impact on her selling a cookbook and becoming like this wide sensation because that World's Fair was about showcasing food from around the world and pushing having new cuisine in US culture. And then a few years later, we have this cookbook about Chinese food. And on overall note, Buwei’s cookbook was not the first Chinese cookbook in the U. S. in terms of being published in English, but it was more the first that was universally understood in the sense of getting the food, understanding the writing and measurements, it was very comprehensive and accessible to a wide audience. This OG cookbook in 1945 “How to Cook and Eat in Chinese” also had expanded editions in 1949, 1956, and 1968. So what I was asking Lexi before, she kind of kept up with the words, terms, recipes, and just… I tried to find some of the cookbooks but all of them are out of print at this point. Regardless, it brought new terms and techniques to US kitchens and over two hundred different recipes which included terms, ingredients, techniques, tools, but also like etiquette. So how to use chopsticks, what are the polite ways you should be eating dumplings vs fried rice; which I thought was really cool, and I tried to look through like the two cookbooks I had in my apartment and I couldn't find anything where it was like “here's the etiquette you should use.” Granted, they were more US based cookbooks, it wasn't one targeted for a certain cuisine. And she also acknowledged the help from her husband and daughter, Rulan. She would cook and her daughter would write down in English, usually translated from Chinese to English. So if I may dazzle you with a quote from– I believe this is from The New York Times– and also just culmination of an audio source that I found. It was like an interview and I saw– there's just so many, so many things of her using like this quote and a mo– mashup of this quote: “I am ashamed to have written this book. First, because I am a doctor and ought to be practicing instead of cooking. Secondly, because I didn’t write this book. The way I didn’t was like this. I speak little English and write less. So I cooked my dishes in Chinese, my daughter Rulan put my Chinese into English.” And this quote has so many variations, but it's basically saying that she can't take full credit because she was still a doctor, she couldn't necessarily write in English the way that US publications wanted her to, and she needed a lot of help, which is so fair for any cookbook or any writing source. And I just thought that was amazing. Like I kept finding clips and even when people were kind of telling her story years later, we're saying like she was ashamed to like have written this cookbook and taken away from her medical studies. But also values how great of an impact this cookbook had on the U.S. Now you know how I said that she coined the term stir fry and potstickers. Well it's because “cha’ao” and “guotie”– again, we don't speak Chinese, please don't come after me– really didn't have English translations. Like the term Chinese food is really just like a US word. It's not something that's used in China. You can't– you won't go to China and just be like “I want the Chinese food. I'm going to Chinese food restaurant it's because the way Chinese food is broken up in China is regionally so they they don't group it up as one whole country as we do and how someone of this cookbook does it's very specific to where you are in China and it's not a representation of the country as a whole like unit but for this cookbook and us as Americans we just say Chinese food and that's again coming back to what is available in each region so for the US and for this cookbook this is what's available in the U. S. not what's in available in northern versus southern China and there are a ton of other words that were in this book that didn't even stick in our English macular so like that's what is really interesting trying to find a copy but alas I couldn't find one online because I feel like if we re read this we wouldn't understand as shafts not just like with the vernacular but just the way it was written and the way some of the food kind of was presented she also just to wrap everything up she wrote two more books afterwards of how to order in each Chinese and then another autobiography called an autobiography of Chinese women put into English by her husband your friend child so she still just fantastic amazing woman like this blew my mind especially being in San Francisco that's my story of Dr. Buwei.

Alana: So I am going to be talking about Mary Mallon, and there has been a lot of talk about her recently and we'll get to why she's been in the news. So she was born on September 23rd, which is my mom's birthday and also yesterday on the day this comes out, in 1869 in a poor area of Ireland called the Cookstown in County Tyrone. And I am like a little bit familiar with Irish geography, like I know the names of some counties in the Republic of Ireland. Like we've talked about County Mayo, we talked about County Cork, County Kildare, if you know it then you know it. And I was like I've never heard of County Tyrone and I know there are like twenty-eight counties in the Republic of Ireland but– so I was curious, I was like where is that. It's actually in Northern Ireland so it's technically in the U.K. So Mary Mallon immigrated to New York City as a teenager in 1883 or 1884, about then. And she starts working as a cook, around the turn of the twentieth century and she is famous for her peach ice cream. In 1906, she was hired as a chef for the family of Charles Warren, who was a banker in 1906 so they have cash cash. And they go on vacation in Oyster Bay and Mary comes with them to be their chef. Several members of the Warren family contract typhoid over those couple weeks. And typhoid is considered at the time a poor people's disease, because you contract it mostly from contaminated water. Imagine thinking that like, only rich people deserve clean water. Like call me a socialist, but I really think that everyone should have access to clean water. And Warren’s landlord is concerned about being able to rent the property the next summer because there was this outbreak. And so he has hired a sanitation engineer named George Soper, and he's been an expert in tracing the outbreaks, and he tests all the pipes, and he tests everything. There's nothing. So he focuses on Mary. Turns out, several other families that Mary had worked for have also had typhoid outbreaks. And this is where, listeners if you haven't guessed, Mary Mallon becomes… Lexi put in a drum roll here please…

(Drum roll)

Speaker 1: Typhoid Mary. I can see Haley like laughing in her Zoom but they’re on mute so that's fun. So George Soper goes after her. Asks for samples of everything and she chases him out of her kitchen with a fork. Like a– like a barbecue, two pronged fork. Not like a… like a dinner fork.

Lexi: I have a tiny fork are you scared of me?

Alana: Like a FORK. So he returns with cops to have her arrested. And Mary hides under a floor board, but some of her dress is caught. And so they find her, and they arrest her and they force her into quarantine for three years on North Brother Island, which is a quarantine facility– a little dot of an island in the East River near the Bronx. She is tested up and down for typhoid and they all come back positive for salmonella typhi, which is the bacteria that causes typhoid. But she has no symptoms. She's the picture of health. She is released in 1910 on the condition to never cook again. In 1915, there is a typhoid outbreak at Sloan Maternity Hospital in Manhattan. And the health department is called, and the hospital is just like how– like, we’re a hospital, everything is so sanitary, how did this happen? And the health department says who… who's doing your cooking? And the nurse– the nurses are just like “oh, this lovely Irish immigrant. Her name is Mary Brown.” She had changed her name to keep working as a cook. And that sounds kind of like irresponsible, but what else could she do? She had no other skills, she's not married, she originally immigrated with her aunt and uncle but they've died, and she's an Irish immigrant during a time of very high anti-Irish sentiments. She really didn't have another choice. But they catch her, and they forced her back into quarantine for the rest of her life. They’re… say that she could have had a gallbladder removal surgery and they would have let her go, but she didn't want it. And I was like why wouldn’t she want it? But also, the doctors imprisoned her, essentially. And she even referred to herself in a letter to her lawyer as “the kidnapped woman”. So I do kind of understand why she'd say no. And then she died in 1938 of a stroke. And only nine people attended her funeral, which– this is another like Alana’s Jewish kind of thing but I'm like “that's not even a Minyan how are you going to do anything??” Lexi is rolling her eyes at me. But in pop culture she is demonized, she's the butt of jokes and cartoons. But there are other asymptomatic carriers at this point, all over the country and even in New York. So I think she is demonized particularly because she's a woman, particularly because she is unmarried, and particularly because she's an Irish immigrant at a time of anti-Irish-ism. I don't know if that's a word. But she's been in the news recently. A lot of my sources are from like June. People talking about Typhoid Mary because… talking about asymptomatic carriers and being super spreaders. 

Lexi: I think that's so fascinating how people are tying her story into our current situation.

Lexi: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at leading history pond our show notes and a transcript of this episode will be on lady history pot dot tumblr dot com if you like the show leave us a review or tell your friends and if you don't like the show keep yourself our logo is by Alexia Ibarra you can find her on Instagram and Twitter at LexiBDraws. Our theme music is by me garage band and Amelia Earhart; Lexi is doing the editing. You will not see us, and we will not see you, but you will hear us, next time, on Lady History.

Haley: Next week on Lady History, we're talking about our suffragists. Women's right to vote and remember everyone, register to vote please and thank you.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Haley: I really don't understand eggs on a fundamental level.

[that-is-where-they-wait]

That is Where They Wait Ch 13: This is Why Jay’s Not Group Leader

previous / next all chapters AO3 FFN [HAHA 13th CHAPTER ON HALLOWEEN, I’m a GENIUS. jk I’m just dead, sorry everyone, happy Halloween. hugs and kisses to the 5 (five) people that still give a damn about this fic] res·pite | /ˈrespət,rēˈspīt/ | noun | 1. a short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant. 

The shadows created by his tiny flame cut stark figures on the walls, the floor, and both their faces. They were far too sharp to be natural, too unsettling to be ignored. Kai was getting sick of the agitation thrumming under his skin.

This room they'd found was nice and all, especially considering the door had a lock, but they couldn't stand around and wait for safety forever. The longer they stayed put, the longer they risked getting well and truly lost. And seeing how Karlof had been lost when Kai'd found him cornered by the spirit, that was definitely a risk.

Kai twisted the knob and pulled.

The door stayed put.

Frowning, he tried again. And again, tugging more harshly. Still nothing.

They'd just gotten themselves locked inside the room. Did it lock from the outside or something?!

Frustrated when persistently pulling at the door did nothing, Kai yelled and punched it as hard as he could. A moment later, hissing and rubbing his knuckles, he realized that was a mistake.

"Let Karlof try," the other man said, buckling up to attack and slamming the door with all the force he had. Both of his gauntlets hit the wood with an impressive, booming 'thud', but the door held. Kai squinted — were there even any cracks on the thing?

"Uhh … do it again," he suggested hurriedly. "Maybe if you keep at it, it'll start to crack."

And Karlof did take a few more spirited swings at the door standing in their way. No good; somehow the door was still in one piece. Not even anything other than hairline cracked. (Just how did a stinking door manage to be stronger in the face of Karlof's punches than him, anyway? Ouch, his ego.)

"Doesn't make sense! How is door not broken already?" Karlof asked, absolutely dumbfounded.

"Great question! Wish I knew." Petulantly, he threw his leg back and kicked. Unsurprisingly, it did nothing, and he was left glowering at the door as his toe throbbed briefly. The last bit of the flame in his hand winked out as he lost his focus, and he had to generate a new one. (Blast their weakened powers.)

Okay, so this was an exasperating turn of events. But hey, they could find another way out. Kai's free hand flew to his chin as he thought about it. Maybe they didn't have to break the door …

"Hey, Karlof. Maybe if you use your metal powers to rip off the hinges. You think we could get the door off that way?"

Karlof just stared at him for a second.

"Karlof don't particularly care."

Hold on, what.

"Walked all day just to get to stupid mansion, then ran around forever just to get away from ugly monster. All Karlof want right now is some rest."

"Tell me you're joking," Kai hissed. "We can rest once we get back to where we were! Unless you wanna be wandering around lost."

"Breaking down door takes energy. Karlof don't have energy right now. Plus, if we can't go out, monster can't come in," Karlof pointed out.

He had a point. Kai remembered what the others had said about the magic surrounding everything. It leeched their energy, didn't it? Karlof looked pretty wiped. He was loathe to stay away from the others any longer than necessary, and he hated how everything about this place felt, but it'd be just mean to deny the guy a chance to rest. He liked to think he wasn't that much of a jerk.

Karlof grimaced after a moment. "Also … maybe pulled leg muscle while running. Don't know for sure."

"Oh, and of course you save that for last," Kai groaned. "Okay, fine. We'll stay in here a while. You're just lucky the door's locked."

"What I wouldn't give for a working camera right now, to capture the look on your face." Cole shook his head and chuckled.

No one had counted on the passage from the clock workshop taking them right back to the room they were staying in — least of all Jay and Skylor, who had their first taste of the passages from a bewildered posse of ninja stumbling out of the wall. They'd both jumped nearly clear to the ceiling; poor Skylor had actually almost fallen off of the bed she was sitting on trying to scramble to her feet.

"Ohh, shut up! The wall just opened up out of nowhere and spit you out; what was I supposed to think?! You would've have been just as startled!"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, zaptrap."

"It was pretty funny," Lloyd said, smile muted but genuine.

"Helpful," Jay huffed. "You wouldn't happen to have found them, would you?"

Cole shook his head and gestured at the empty space to his left. "What do you think?"

Jay sighed, expression dropping. "Thought so. … You guys mind explaining why the walls just spit you out?"

"Please," Skylor added. "If you're going to give me a heart attack, at least tell me why."

Lloyd turned to really see her, and noticed that she was fiddling with what looked to be the pieces of her crossbow. Then he did a double-take. Before he could say anything, Zane spoke up.

"Apologies for startling you, and hello, Skylor. It's good to see that you're — oh my."

"Yeah, I know." Skylor grinned ruefully, eyes obscured by…

"Those are Kai's shades," Lloyd blurted out. "How come …?"

"Ask Jay," she shrugged. "He had the idea of giving them to me in the first place."

"Hey, I couldn't dim the lamp or fireplace anymore or they'd go out, and I know Kai's always carrying a pair of sunglasses with him, so …yeah."

"They really do help, though," Skylor said. "It's easier to fix this thing" — she frowned at her broken weapon of choice — "when I can keep my eyes open."

"Good to hear it," Zane said, ever the one to keep tabs. "But hopefully you won't be needing it too soon." Skylor frowned, but didn't respond.

It was hard to figure out how he felt about this. On the one hand, heh. Of course Kai kept sunglasses on him at all times.

On the other hand, the fact that they were Kai's only pulled worse at something in Lloyd's chest. If they didn't find him fast, Skylor using his sunglasses was gonna feel more like a sick joke than anything …

He expelled the thought quickly.

Kai would be okay. He had to be.

Cole went around haphazardly patting different objects in the room until he knocked back a glass lantern on the mantelpiece shutting the passage entrance, meriting a few snickers at how silly he looked. Then he started telling Jay and Skylor how they'd discovered the passage system, but gratefully let Zane explain the uglier details. Lloyd jumped in to describe their surroundings in the open hallways and several rooms that had been explored as well, including some of the more eccentric details. Skylor, having evidently taken on the role of unofficial scribe out of sheer boredom with her current situation, reached for a notepad and started scribbling away, asking questions ever so often.

"You know what I think is going on here?" Jay said, after a beat. "We crossed dimensions walking through the forest and now we're in a horror video game. That's what happened."

"Jay."

"Listen, I'm right," Jay declared, with far more confidence than he had any right to have. "Think about it. Everything's too quirky. Too conveniently inconvenient."

"Jay, I swear to Lloyd's grandfather I will hurt you." The effect of Cole's words were mostly nullified by the fact that he was shaking his head in his hands. (And for the record, it was still weird when people swore on his grandfather.)

"Explain," Skylor said, openly giggling at the absurdity, and Zane looked as confused as he did amused.

Ahh, good ol' Zane.

Still, the fact that Jay was joking around when there were people missing rubbed him the wrong way.

"I'm serious! We just so happen to be stuck in here because the doors won't open, and they can't be busted down, and the windows are barred! Have you ever heard a more video-game thing in your life?"

"Splendid situational analysis skills right there, Jay," Cole responded drily. "A+. What do you propose we do to solve this?"

But then again … Cole had been tensed up and radiating apprehension, the entire time they were searching, to the point where it had started to make Lloyd nervous, too. He looked like he was beginning to lighten up again, as he poked at Jay's ridiculousness.

"Whoa, hey, I didn't ask for leader talk! Just saying. Not to mention, that ugly ghost clown respawns when you kill it. That's some next-level malarkey right there."

"D-don't call it that," Skylor gasped in between laughs. Evidently the pain meds had kicked in.

"And why not, huh? Are you trying to tell me it doesn't look like a clown and the Overlord had a really ugly baby?"

"Goodness," Zane remarked.

"Jay, do you ever think before you open your mouth?" Cole groaned, exasperated chuckles slipping out despite his best efforts. "Ever?"

"It's a personal point of pride to improv anything and everything I say," Jay said matter-of-factly. "Come on, you know this."

"This is why you're not group leader."

And since when was Lloyd the one to growl at any sign of fun when things were rough? He'd seen the way Jay's face had dropped when Cole announced that Kai and Karlof were still missing, and according to Zane he'd fought it before. If he was goofing off, it wasn't for lack of understanding the gravity — it was in spite of it.

So he'd bite. He'd pick back up the pieces of the child left over from when he'd been too small for the green gi, and play along. When they went back out to search, it'd be easier to keep his morale up if he let loose a little now.

They needed this.

"You know, Jay does have a point," he chimed in now. When everyone's attention turned to him, he grinned and clarified, "About the video game thing. Also the things in here are so … weird, they might as well be props. Like the clocks! What would anyone do with that many clocks?"

"And it does seem odd that there would be so many weapons on display …" Zane murmured under his breath.

"Yeah, exactly!"

Jay beamed. "Finally, someone sees it my way! I would bet my hand that this is all because of that dumb discount survivor Kai got at the shady store across from Doomsday Comix. I knew there was something weird about it. You should never trust a shady discount game."

"Hey, Kai got that game for you, because he was sick of you bellyaching about the Temple being haunted!" Cole replied. "Think an awful lot of me, doncha? Won't even take the former ghost's word that there's no ghosts in there."

"Uh, like I'd take your word for anything! Why don't you take this?" Jay threw a pillow at Cole's shoulder, much to their shock. They held their breath and waited for their reaction … and Cole worked his jaw for a second, then promptly picked up the pillow and nailed Jay in the face with it.

"Whoa, hey!" Lloyd cried. They paused and looked at him again.

"... We don't have nearly enough pillows for this."

Jay only blinked for a split second before grinning, balling up his blanket and whacking Cole with that instead.

Skylor doubled over laughing.

Absolute mayhem ruled for all of five minutes. Zane had been unwittingly dragged into the pillow/blanket fight that had evolved, and Lloyd figured if everyone else bar the one person who couldn't was doing it, he was definitely throwing himself into the ring. It only lasted up to Cole and Zane ganging up on him and wrapping him into a blanket burrito until he was screaming uncle. Even if she couldn't participate, Skylor was absolutely living for the chaos; she was practically munching on popcorn, tossing stray bedding into the fray (from a safe distance) for the rest of them to pounce on.

When they eventually settled down and sobered up, the air settling down on their shoulders again wasn't as oppressive. The soft afterglow lingering after they'd laughed some of their stress out made everyone feel a little more like they would be okay in the end, like they could go out and search again and they'd find everything they needed to — Kai, Karlof, and a way to escape this awful place and put it behind them for good.

But for right now …

"So. What's next?" Cole fluffed a pillow and set it back on the bed he'd grabbed it from.

"We should go back out and keep looking," Lloyd stated, grabbing a blanket off the floor and pointedly folding it in an apologetic-looking Zane's direction. Cole snorted — Zane might've felt a liiiiittle guilty about teaming up on Lloyd and accidentally knocking Jay down with a pillow, but he'd enjoyed every bit of that fight, and Lloyd knew it and he knew they both knew it.

"So soon?" Skylor asked. "You were gone for a while. Maybe you should take a break or something first …"

"Yeah!" Jay agreed, putting away his own blanket. "You were walking in secret passages and stuff! Aren't you tired? I know I'd be."

"If we do go out again, we should switch out who remains here with Skylor to prevent that," Zane said.

"Not 'if'," Lloyd said. "It's dangerous out there, and didn't you say Kai was injured? Karlof doesn't have any idea what he's up against if he bumps into it, either. Not to mention, we haven't even seen a trace of Shade around longer we wait, the worse our chances of finding them are. I say we keep looking a little longer."

Cole grimaced. He understood Lloyd's impatience, of course. He was worried, they all were, and nothing about their current situation looked good. And every second they spent trapped put him painfully in mind of another haunted building that had preyed on their fears and ended in nothing but trouble …

But the green ninja's insistence on searching until they found their missing was beginning to look near-obsessive. And while he hadn't said a word about being tired, his group had been on the move almost constantly since before they'd even arrived at the mansion. He'd fought for his life once already, and the building's magic was persistently weakening them. He had to be tired. Cole knew he was.

For the kid's sake, Cole hoped again that they were alright. If they weren't …

He shut the train of thought down before it could set itself off. He could do without losing his composure like that again, particularly now that he wasn't as isolated.

"Ech. I was actually thinking we have lunch or something first. It's been a while since any of us ate."

"Lunch …?"

Ohhh First Spinjitzu Master he could not be serious.

"Yes, Lloyd," he said dryly, "sometimes human beings need to eat food. You know, to survive and stuff."

"I know that!" Lloyd exclaimed. "But how do you know that it's lunch time, specifically?"

Cole paused to consider it. Usually, his appetite was the subject of a fair few jokes, but here he was using it as a surprisingly reliable indicator of when they should eat, sharpened with fatigue as it was. Because he was absolutely basing this off of his appetite.

A crinkle broke the quiet. Heads turned to see nothing else but Jay, teeth already sunk into a granola bar and blinking up at them.

"What?"

Cole sighed, rummaging through his backpack and frowning when it took a minute to find him anything worth eating. He unwrapped a sandwich as he said his next words.

"First trail mix at unholy hours of the morning, now this. If you're going to keep snacking precisely when it's not time to eat, you can't turn around and wonder why you're never hungry. I mean, not to suggest there's ever a bad time to eat, but you know what I mean."

"But I'm not hungry enough to eat a full meal!" Jay protested. "Any more than this and … I dunno. Don't feel up to it. And aren't you a fine one to talk?"

"But he has a point," Zane said, concerned. "Your appetite is usually larger than this. Does your stomach still hurt?"

"Nah," Jay said dismissively, though he polished off the bar and didn't make a move to eat anything else. "I'm just not that hungry. Besides, I'll just save it for later."

Cole opened his mouth to tell him to eat at least a little more, anyway, but the last thing he'd said made him think.

Because when he considered it …

"We're starting to run low on food, aren't we?"

"Now that you mention it, I guess we are," Lloyd said, surrendering to the fact that they were eating now and pulling out some food. He didn't immediately eat it, though. "And we can't go get more, can we?"

"I have extra food in my bag," Zane offered, looking a little meek. "... The truth is, I kept storing food and snacks in it for missions and never remembered to take them out. It might not be all that much, but perhaps it could help us last a little longer."

"Hoarder."

"Hey, it's saving our hides now, isn't it?" Lloyd elbowed Jay. "Be nice."

"But I'm afraid it won't last us forever …"

"Right. We gotta think long-run," Cole said. "We have backup food, but there's …" He took a moment to count. "Five of us. Seven including the missing two. And none of us are running on full strength. This stuff's gonna go fast. If Zane's stash runs out, we've got no way to get more from outside, plus there's no way anything in here would be edible."

"Blegh." Jay made a face. "Can you imagine what it'd be like? The mold probably has mold growing on it. No thank you."

"Thank you, Jay, you're really doing wonders for my appetite." Skylor groaned.

"You're very welcome."

"Keep it to yourself," Cole said. "Just because you're not hungry doesn't mean you have to make sure everyone else isn't."

Jay harrumphed at him but didn't say anything else.

"We need to ration, don't we?" Lloyd said.

"I don't like that," Jay said. "That implies we're staying here."

"... Not that I like the idea," Cole hated it, in fact. "But again, we might have to start thinking long-term. Hopefully, Kai and Karlof aren't far, but who knows how long it'll actually take to find them. And that's not even taking into account how we'll find a way to escape …"

"Okay, you've made your point," Jay moaned. Cole followed his gaze to Lloyd, who was eating his honey sandwich with dark eyes, and sighed, feeling another twinge of worry.

"Well, this doesn't bode well for me," Skylor commented. "I didn't think we'd get holed up this long."

"Is this about food? How much do you have?" Zane asked.

"Mm? Only about enough for a day and a half, plus snacks. And that's being generous," she admitted sheepishly. "I've only got a little more left."

"It's alright," Cole replied. "None of us were really expecting it. You can just … mooch off of Zane?"

"Well, geez." Skylor raised an eyebrow. It was pretty funny, paired with the sunglasses. "When you put it that way."

"Don't worry," Zane reassured her. "Feel free to take what you need."

"Pft. Alright," Skylor said at last. "Thanks."

"Glad we got that set straight, but what're we gonna do about water?" Lloyd brought up. "My bottle's nearly empty."

"He has a point," Zane said. "Having food is essential, but we cannot afford to dehydrate, either."

"Man, Nya'd be nice to have around for that," Cole sighed. "... But it's probably a good thing she's not here."

"It's been well over a day and we still haven't contacted her."

"Maybe longer, even," Jay sighed glumly. His eyes flickered with worry for a second. "You … don't think she'd come looking for us, do you?"

"Don't sound so hopeful, Jay," Cole warned him. "There's no way it'd end well if she did."

"It was bad enough when I ran into it," Lloyd added. "If it stumbled into her before we did …"

"Okay, okay, I get it," Jay whimpered. "Forget I said anything."

"But do we need a water master for that?" Skylor cut in. "We could try to melt ice and make do that way."

"PIXAL has the same idea. But that would be most efficiently done with a controlled heat source such as Kai's fire, and Kai isn't with us right now," Zane said. Lloyd's face darkened.

"I know, but once we find him. Because we are going to," she said pointedly.

"I suppose I could just set some ice near the fireplace and let it melt, even though it would still be slow," Zane said. "Until we find Kai, of course."

"Right," Lloyd answered before Cole or Jay could say anything. "We will." But the room felt tenser again, more quietly charged than it had before.

How much longer they could keep that conviction up remained to be seen.

[neshabeingchildish]

WEEK ONE: CHARACTERS 1/08 | Jasper Dunlop

I decided to share my favorite piece from a fic that I’ve written about Jasper. It’s an excerpt/flashback sequence from Determined: A Chasper Fic where I establish a headcanon for Jasper that I bring everywhere with me now, unless something else specifically happens. It’s about buckets, but sad. I was gonna do one of my Jasper headcanons thingies... Maybe another time. :)

And the FCs for these unknown/other characters are HERE. Did not select a Bilsky dad. 

Whenever Jasper's dad popped the question to his mom, she was just about visibly pregnant, embarrassed about it and desperate to do this the right way. Jack Leigh was desperate to "fix his mistakes" and "make an honest woman out of her." Oh, and also drunk. So drunk, that he didn't know if he was coming or going. He needed the liquid courage to go back to her after she'd told him that if she had to do this on her own, she would. She didn't have to do it on her own! At least, he didn't want her to. He couldn't figure out where he'd get a ring at this time of night, but came across one of those Bilsky brothers. The whole family was a bag of rotten apples. One of them had to know a guy… Hell, one of them WAS the guy. "A ring? Yeah, I got rings. What's your budget?" Jack Leigh emptied his pockets and had maybe a few hundred bucks, and a punch card. He shook his head and called, "Jeff! Get Daddy that box of rings! The cheap ones!" A teenage boy rushed to… of all places… the BBQ pit and lifted the lid and grabbed a box. Daddy Bilsky gave it to his old buddy and said, "I'll letcha grab two of 'em. I hear you gotta get two. My old lady and I got hitched on the run, so we never even got one of them, but I've collected her plenty over the years. She don't notice when the cheap ones go missing." Jack Leigh didn't even shift through the box. He grabbed a couple, waved to them and went on his way.

Jeff came back to his father and asked, "Dad, how mad would you be if I think I gave you the good stuff?" Jack Leigh heard Daddy Bilsky fussing at his kid, but he was too out of it to hear what he was saying.

Whenever Pansy left, Jack Leigh got one of those rings back. She threw the wedding ring right at his head and slammed the door as hard as she could with a baby on her waist. He was too drunk to care about whatever she'd said, too. He was often that way, but he did come across that ring again when he was clearing out of that little place. He tossed it in his pocket, in case he ever wanted to pawn it. Might be cheap, but he could probably get a few beers for it. It stayed in his wallet most of the time, though. He couldn't see Jasper back then… legal stuff that he totally understood at the time, but whenever he would look at the ring and think about hocking it, he'd think about his baby boy, out there… The one that he'd even bought the stupid thing for. He couldn't seem to part with it. Not because he missed his wife, but because he took a wife because he was going to be a father, and nobody but him messed that up. It was a reminder that he needed to get clean and needed to straighten up. Maybe some day, he could see Jasper again. Maybe someday, he'd give him this stupid ring. He got it appraised, just to see if it was worth anything. Because he was curious if the sentimental value of it would even mean anything to the kid… this was maybe 3 years later. The damn thing was worth more than his crummy life. He could literally sell it and probably wind up getting himself out of his debt! But… looking at the thing, listening to the guy talk to him, very suspicious that this shady character probably stole this from some place, and was likely gonna put out an alert about it… Jack Leigh thanked him for his time and put it back into his wallet. He hadn't gotten completely clean, but that was sobering. He knew he had to keep it together, carrying something worth that much with him, especially considering that it was worth even more in sentimental value.

He met Jasper when he was four. Adorable chubby kid with dimples and curly hair. He was excited to meet him and told him everything that he could possibly tell him. Jack Leigh came to a realization whenever Pansy told him that he could come to see him… He'd messed up. He should have had a room FULL of gifts and cards and money that he never got a chance to deliver over the past four years. He should have had candy and cookies and really… fanfare. All he had was that ring and he certainly couldn't hand him that at age 4. He stopped at one of those weird gas station gift shops and said, "Anything for like a 4 year old kid… I don't even know what he likes!"

"We got grab buckets," she said and pointed towards a display. It was like a grab bag, but in a bucket. All kinds of little toys and stuff that would most likely break and stuff if it wasn't a choke hazard. Hopefully, Pansy wouldn't kill him. He went over there with a bucket of junk and threw in a hundred dollar bill that he got back after this purchase. Pansy was judging him from the moment that he handed that garbage to her son. But, the kid was excited, "WOW! A BUCKET!"

"Uhhh… there's stuff in it. Toys and stuff," Jack Leigh said. Jasper got onto his tiptoes, but Jack kneeled in front of him, seeing his features for the first time since he was an infant. Seeing how much like his own childhood photos he looked. Pansy must've seen it too. There was something about the way that she looked at the kid. Jack Leigh didn't like it, but who was he to judge? He hadn't even been around.

"Jasper, I don't think that any of that stuff is safe to play with!" She said and snatched the bucket from his little hands. He jumped, frightened and Jack Leigh noticed and reached for his hand, to try to give him some comfort. He was about to cry. She was taking away the only thing his daddy had given him…

"Well, can't he at least have the bucket?" Jack Leigh asked.

She looked at him like he was an idiot. "He's four. Why would he want this ugly big bucket?"

"I do want the bucket, Mom! I love it. It's a nice bucket, Daddy." She looked bothered. She dumped the toys in the garbage and handed him the bucket back, then went to sit down, and glare at them. Jasper didn't really look in her direction during the visit, but Jack Leigh wondered if he couldn't feel the same… whatever it was that she had radiating for him that he felt from her. He was allowed a few more visits, until he showed up with Adanna one day. Pansy stepped outside and interrogated her, then said that Jasper wouldn't be coming for any more of these "disappointing little visits," and sprinkled on at the end, "And I WILL be contacting you about child support!" That was that.

Adanna convinced him to fight for custody, at least shared. He had gotten his life together and he shouldn't have to be punished forever. There were disputes, but after a while, he ran out of money for that fight and her husband didn't. So, not only could he still not see Jasper, and had legal fees, but… child support. He couldn't do it. He'd already gotten so low, that he went back to some of his old ways. He was lucky to have Adanna around. Eventually thought about giving her the ring, but explained to her why he didn't think that he could. "Can I at least see it?" she wondered.

He pulled it out and she was already uneasy. He handed it to her and she cried, "I'm glad that you don't want to give this to me, because it's full of negative energy. Guilt, despair, regret, heartache… This isn't something that you give to someone that you care about."

"Should I get rid of it? Sell it? I'm probably never going to see my son again…"

"Even if you see him, he can't have this, Jack Leigh. It's got a signature on it."

"Is there a way to fix it?"

She cleansed the ring and once she was done, she smiled at it and said, "This ring has new hope. It wants to find someone to love, but it feels like it belongs to someone."

"Who?"

"I don't know, but I sense that this ring wouldn't be at home with me." She reached out to give it to him, but he shook his head.

"If you hand it to me, it'll just absorb my negative energy again. You hold on to it for me. If I don't give it to Jasper, I guess it'll find its way to whoever. I want it to find them in peace."

Jasper, Charlotte, and Henry were sitting on the floor, talking about their readings. Henry was shaken up by his, but Jasper kept staring at the Fool. Adanna said, "Jasper, can I show you something?" He got up and followed her through some crystal beaded curtains to a cute little room, where she climbed up a step ladder and got a ring box off of her bookshelf. "Jack Leigh told you about this, right? When you two talked?" She stepped down and opened the box to show him a ring and his heart leaped in his chest.

"Is this my mom's wedding ring that she threw at his head? I've heard about it from her! She'd say, if I'd been more smart than mad, I'd have pawned that for the child support! Can I touch it?" She handed it to him and told him the story, because obviously, Jack Leigh had been more focused on the drinking, the fighting and the accident. Jasper gasped and said, "You think that this ring belongs with me?"

"I think that it belongs with her," she said and glanced at Charlotte through the beads. Charlotte was laughing a melodious laugh at a story that Uncle Roscoe was telling on speaker phone, while catching up with Jack Leigh. "I think that she'll love it, when you're ready." She cupped his chin and lovingly said, "Fool."

[euphoriacrossing]

3 Star Island!

So I never dreamed I would get there this fast because I barely even tried, I just did the usual things, but in like one day I went from a one star island to a 3 star island and some of you know that that means that KK Slider is coming!

I can't believe I am almost finished with story mode. It seems like it went by so quickly and I am still so often in complete awe of this game it seems unreal I've almost "finished" it. But of course it's hardly OVER as I don't have a complete museum, a 5 star island, all the islanders I want, the exact look and style I want for my island, I'm not done upgrading my house, I believe there is a Nook's Cranny upgrade you can get as well as I think a museum one (I might be wrong on the museum but I thought maybe), my furniture catalog is far from complete. I mean, there are things to keep me busy for a long, long time. Just even dressing up differently everyday and/or running around goofing off with my sister or friends, there is plenty to keep the game fun for a while. And hopefully there will be updates that add more. Considering all the things that they left out, there is plenty more they could add back in with an update someday that would make a lot of people happy (say... diving for instance? I'm shocked that in an island getaway themed game they left out diving. Or even minigames, I am so heartbroken they didn't include minigames because my sister and I had so much fun playing those in New Leaf.) and until they do, I'll be forever waiting for the game to be "complete". So my Animal Crossing adventures are far from over.

Still there is a bit of melancholy that comes with finishing the main storyline of a game, even when there is lots left to do. And games like Animal Crossing play into that. Like really, KK slider concert as the credits roll? That is nostalgic for so many reasons, and makes your heart just break that the experience is "over". Ugh I almost want to skip that part all together to go back to just having fun.

Anyway, island update. Wart Jr. has moved in and everytime I see him I want to die. I'm not a person who usually minds the ugly characters so much, but he is like a different level gross considering his name is gross and he doesn't look too great. Maybe if he was a different color, or something and definitely he'd gain like half his points back if they just named him Kevin or something. But instead he's the worst. 100% my least fave character and he moved in automatically before I even knew how these things worked. Ugh. It's the kind of stuff that makes you wish you'd used some kind of guide. Games shouldn't make you feel BAD for /not/ using some kind of guide to avoid issues with gameplay. It should be challenging but rewarding, imo, not just punishing.

But alas, Marina is moving in tomorrow, so I can't be too mad. Actually yes, I can but I'd rather be excited. So I am. Very much so. She's probably one of my favorite characters from recently. I have older favorites but she grew on me in Pocket Camp when i was playing to tide new over until New Horizons and that's when I decided I wanted her here. So here she shall be, tomorrow, tomorrow, you're always a day away!

Roald moved in sometime too. He was just someone I moved in fast to avoid anymore Wart Jr type mistakes on the game's part again. I don't dislike Roald, but I'm not sure I'd ask him to stay if he were leaving.

Supposedly the rumor is you can move other characters out with amiibos, like once you are full the character will strike a deal with one of your residents to live there. So I am trying to move Coco IN next, and move Wart Jr. OUT. I originally wanted Tammy out but she can wait... she isn't as "gross me out" as Wart Jr. is.

And then as for island decoration, I really think I'm ready to have the path tool which I think I get tomorrow? As well as the terraforming tool? Not totally sure, but I would think so. I will then be able to start on finishing up my outdoor bath area, and starting really shaping my boardwalk by the beach area, as well as just giving the island more shape, paths and stuff the whole nine yards. I'm excited to see if I can turn what I've got into a 5 star island with time. I really hope so. I know my friends have the making of a 5 star island. I feel like my sister might even have a better start than I do. But I'm just gonna work hard, have fun, and remember it's just a game.

Oh also I have been having a lot of fun helping my sister out. She doesn't do as well saving money in these games (which is crazy to me because in real life she scarcely ever spends a penny) so I paid off the loan she was on tonight so she could expand her house, and I still have half a mil in the bank. Though I owe more than that right now myself, I just like to get it all collected before I pay. Anyway, though, I am happy to be my sister's in game benefactor as she's my real life one. I mean, while she rarely spends money, she bought us these games and some amiibo cards too, so yeah, the LEAST I owe her is a few bells.

She pays back the favor by doing things for me though too. Like she bought me the red lighthouse with nookmiles which she also struggles to make, because I wanted red and I only had the blue one. And she helps me collect materials like when I needed giant clam shells, or if I run out of stone she's there. She just does... sisterly things, and I do them back and it ends up being a really nice way to bond.

Gosh, it's a clear perfect night and I haven't seen one shooting star yet. What gives? If you have a certain amount of material saved do you not get any more chances to wish on a star until you use it? Haven't seen a falling star in a few days here. =/

And oh, I found some of the best boots and such at my sister's Able Sisters. Actually she always has better clothes than me there, but at least she let's me visit so I can get twice as much cool stuff to make outfits. I'm like... running out of storage space as I only have 400 now. Ugh. But the clothes! I love them. And my current outfit is totally rockin'.

(I had to go in Resideny Services because it was the closest place with light. And YES, I wear my sunglasses at night. It's called accessorizing. Lol jk.)

Anyway, I'm gonna see if I can find and/or make a tarauntula island and make me some bells. Full disclosure, the ingame tarauntulas scare me in real life, but I gotta make that money some way, some how, ya know? So I do it the badass way. 😎 lol, no not really that badass if you saw me die three times in a row trying to get on tarauntula. But still...

[everlarkficexchange]

To be Her O.A.O. (one-and-only)

written by: @noneyabidnes

Rating: Mature (in future chapters)

Prompt 73: Katniss marries Gale before he’s sent to fight WWII. Gale sends home his buddy Peeta to break the news to his wife and family that he’s fallen in love with someone else in Europe and is staying there after the war… Peeta is under the impression Katniss is a cold woman that only married his friend out of obligation but finds out the other side of the story soon enough. [submitted by @alliswell21]

Tags: era-appropriate derogatory terms for Axis powers, amputation, angst

A/N: I got permission from @alliswell21 to shift from Europe to the Pacific Theater of Operations, since I geek out over that side of WWII history (my Pop was in some of the places mentioned in this story.) This was intended as a one-shot. I didn’t want to commit to chapters, but it’s spiraled out of control and now I can’t stop myself.  I’ll cross-post it on ffnet (ryebrewster) and hopefully will find some closure.  If you find some of the language awkward or somewhat un-PC, I was attempting to be era and region appropriate, but it’s hard to write an Appalachian and a Philly accent without both coming across pretty hick.  Guess I never listened to myself talk before.  -rye

–//–//–//–//–//–//–//–

Chapter 1

At the moment, I can’t believe this road ever ends.  It rolls away from me, ever higher, ever rockier, taunting me with each uneven step I take.  Foolish me had thought I would just hitch a ride.  I should have guessed from the name that it would be a ‘road less traveled by.’  Rocky Ridge doesn’t exactly sound welcoming, but Gale had always made it sound like the closest a man could get to heaven.  At least, until he met a certain honey-tongued Polynesian girl whose hips swayed like the island breezes.  Then heaven made a quick detour to places on her that we best not discuss in public and I definitely won’t be discussing whenever I find the end of this infernal road.

I pause, resting on a particularly large boulder off the side of the narrow road.  Hard to believe any car could make it up the path.  Certainly not my Dad’s old Tudor, scraping its fenders on each slight turn to avoid the next large rock too heavy to move, and barely jeepable given how narrow.  Briefly my inability to drive doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, but then the throbbing in my left leg reminds me that walking isn’t a great alternative either.  I’m still getting the hang of my prosthetic, despite all the weeks (oh God, it’s been months, hasn’t it) spent in rehab in San Diego.

Gazing around me, I can begin to see what Gale always beat his gums about.  These forests are beautiful, and so peaceful.  Such a shift from the tropical forests in which we stewed.  The proximity of my memory is enough to shake me from enjoying the moment.  The color green took on such an ugly connotation during the war.  Sitting on this boulder, I feel like I want to reclaim the hue and give it back its fresh and lovely place in my mental palate, but I do wonder if there will ever be a time when I won’t associate lush forests with machine-gun fire and jungle rot.

As the leaves flutter in the breeze, I catch a brief glimpse of metal roof in the distance.  Finally, I may be making progress.  Once more I pull the wrinkled and cracked photo from my pocket.  Katniss.  Her scowl hasn’t changed since he first handed me the image three years ago.  At the time, it was to boast about the girl waiting back home.  When he handed it to me again five months ago, it was to beg me to explain to her.  To get her forgiveness, if not her blessing, for him not coming home.  I hope the lump of cash in my rucksack would help to secure it, but her scowl challenges me each time I look at it.  He’d said she was an easy woman to love, but an impossible one to live with.  I can only imagine how she’ll feel about a crippled stranger appearing on her doorstep.

Righting myself again, I’ve renewed hope that the distance isn’t much farther.  It’s as I round another bend that I hear the arrow whizzing past and striking a tree several feet to my left.  My gaze slides to my right as I’m reminded that I’ve no firearm.

“I don’t miss twice,” the voice growls from the foliage.  It’s feminine and angry, a combination I’ve been warned about but didn’t think I would confront quite so soon.

“I don’t intend to be aimed at twice.”

“Could hear you coming from a mile away.  What business you got up Rocky Ridge?”

“Gale sent me.”

I can hear the air sucked out of her lungs despite the distance.  The silence stretches on before she quietly emerges, her bow lowered at her side.  Immediately I know it’s her.  I’ve stared at her picture long enough that I would know those high cheekbones and quicksilver eyes anywhere.  Her braid is loose with fly-aways and her neck shows the proof of a battle with some clawed creature.  For a moment my memory jumps back to Philadelphia and the unfortunate circumstances of my own childhood, but I think these scratches aren’t human.  Katniss clearly is of the forest, part dryad, part fairy, Artemis herself standing before me, at home in nature in a way I’ve never been.

“Gale?  Is he…?” she breathes out, fear seeping into the short syllables.

“He’s alive.”  It’s all she needs to hear for now.  Her head drops and she lets out another long breath.

“I guess you’ll be wanting something to drink.  Doesn’t look like you packed for the hike.”

“I am a bit parched.  My canteen dried up two clicks ago. You’d think I’d be better at rationing, but I had no idea the road was this long.”

“Clicks?  You talk funny.  Where you from?”

“Philadelphia, ma’am, but clicks is how we measure distance in the Marines.  Kilometers.  Gale never mentioned you guys live so far out of town.”

She just nods, turning her back to me and heading off through the greenery, on a path only she sees.  I follow her on the assumption that it must be a short-cut to the house, not because I’m keen to test my prosthetic out over the exposed roots and downed branches. 

“I can’t walk as fast as you, ma’am.  The Japs took my leg along with a bunch of my friends.”

She stops and slowly turns back to face me.  “And you walked all this way?  Why didn’t you catch a ride in town?”

“I didn’t realize no one would be coming out this way.  Like I said, I grew up in Philadelphia.  There’s always traffic everywhere you look.  Never occurred to me that I might walk out of town and never pass another car.”

“I can walk slower.  I’m not getting any hunting done with you making all that racket.  My sister’ll check your leg when we get up there, then I can give you a ride back.”

“I did come to speak to you.”

She nods again, turning away from whatever I might have to say.  Silence descends upon us.  Normally I would fill it, but I’m struggling enough just to stay upright, that I don’t bother to engage her, and I figure her for the quiet type anyway.  She’s alert, taking in the sounds of the forest around us, and I find myself remembering following Gale in much the same way through the mountains of Okinawa, the resemblance both eerie and comforting. 

After longer than my leg would prefer, a clearing opens up before us with a handful of houses and barns dotted across the ridge.  Sheep and goats graze below me in a field while a couple horses stand in the shadow of the closest barn.  It appears to have seen better days, needing a fresh coat of paint, but it’s obvious that someone has been attempting repairs on it from the ladder propped against the side leading to relatively fresh boards.  She catches me staring at it as she turns around to check my progress.

“We had a bit of a storm a couple weeks back.  Some branches took out an old window.  Took forever to clean up all the glass, but at least none of the goats ate any.”

I take it that she performed the repair herself, a fact that would surprise me if she were any of the women I grew up around, but seems perfectly normal given what I’ve already learned of her.  I search the hillside for any sign of a man, young or old, and come up empty.

“Do Gale’s brothers help you out at all?”

Her eyes narrow at me, clearly not suspecting I had knowledge of the younger boys.  Her scowl settles as she explains, “Rory’s taken up working for the lumber yard in town and he takes Vick down with him.  Vick runs deliveries for the grocery.  They both pull their weight around here.  We all do.”

She’s offended, that much is clear.  “I would never doubt that you do, ma’am.  From everything Gale told me, you’re all a well-oiled machine up here.  I just don’t think he knew the boys had taken up jobs while he was gone.  I think he hoped his pay was enough to keep you all afloat, along with your hunting of course.”

Her scowl deepens as she steps closer to me.  “You say he’s alive but you keep talkin’ bout him in the past tense.  You gonna tell me what you’re doin here, soldier?  You seem to know an awful lot about my business.”

I can’t help but stumble back at the intensity of her ire.  It draws her attention to my leg, still unstable on the steep ground.  Her face softens briefly before the scowl returns. “Let’s get you inside and off that leg.”

The house is just a handful of rooms lumped together with a porch across the front.  It’s clear at a glance that as space was needed, they just built on with whatever materials were available, but there’s a pride that’s been taken in the appearance nonetheless.  Flowers bloom along the front of the porch and herbs hang drying from the rafters.  Two rockers with flowered cushions are tucked against the house, sheltered equally from the sun and any rain that might roll through.

As we step through the door the only light filtering through comes from a handful of windows of varying sizes.  Gauze curtains blow gently at the open panes, reminding me of mosquito nets.  I shake the memory off before it drags me down, instead turning my attention to the closest chair quickly being vacated by a young woman with delicate features similar to Katniss’s.

“Prim, let him sit.  He’s a bad leg.  Might need you to look at it.  Walked all the way up here.”

“Why didn’t he ask Haymitch for a ride?  Not like the man has anything better to do.”  The young woman I’m guessing is Prim glances at me with equal parts scowl and concern as she makes room for me to sit.

“Not from around ‘ere, so he doesn’t know Haymitch from Adam,” Katniss offers. “Says he knows Gale.”

Prim halts in her movements as she takes me in.  I’m dressed in my civvies and my hair has grown out a bit from my time in San Diego, but the duffle on my shoulder gives me away. 

“You were with him?  Is he okay?  Where is he?”

It strikes me this is the first time the question has been asked and the unspoken one that follows.  Why isn’t he here instead? 

Katniss slams a tea kettle down on the fire box in the corner, breaking the tension with the clatter. “Prim, can you grab some of the tea from over there?  I’m steep up some sweet tea quick while you check him out.  Then I can give Mister—” she cuts off, realizing she still hasn’t asked my name.

“Mellark,” I supply, rising out of my seat to stand at attention.  “Corporal Peeta Mellark, 3rd Battalion, 14th Marines. Pleased to make your acquaintance Mrs. Hawthorne, Miss Everdeen.”  I nod to each in turn.  “I’m sorry I didn’t offer it up sooner. I was with Gale for a good chunk of my tour.  We made it through Guam and Okinawa together.  Even ended up side-by-side on the USS Hope being ferried back to Tongatapu after our artillery backfired.  I promise you, he’s alive Mrs. Hawthorne.”

She had turned back to face the kettle, but with my final announcement, I can see her shoulders have risen to her ears.

“Please don’t call me that,” she mumbles quietly, and I strain forward to hear her.

“Katniss,” Prim begins to scold.

“No, Miss Everdeen, it’s okay.  Actually, it makes the rest of what I have to say easier.”

Katniss turns and I can see for the first time that tears line her eyes, just waiting to fall.

“He’s not coming back, is he Corporal?” she whispers, as though saying it too loud will make it true.

I shake my head slowly, wishing all of this had gone differently.  “He doesn’t want a divorce.  He figured you’d prefer it that way.  But no, he’s not going to coming back to Virginia.”

“So there’s not another woman?”

I glance at Prim, unsure of how much Katniss wants me to reveal in front of the younger woman, but it’s clear the two are close.

“Um, I’m afraid to say, there is.  She’s from the islands, Tongan, a sweet girl.  He…” I stumble, unsure of whether I should finish the thought, knowing it might cause her more pain. “He said what was between the two of you was a partnership.  That you had always said he deserved someone who loves him.  She loves him plenty.  He’s going to go back there, to Tongatapu, as soon as the clean-up is done in Japan and his tour is over.  So, whether you get divorced or not doesn’t really change things for him.  He still wants most of his pay to come here. He knows you’re looking out for his family.”

She nods at what I say and sinks into a chair by the stove.  “He had stopped sending letters after Guam.  I didn’t…I didn’t even know he’d been injured.  Did he…?  Is he okay?”

“He didn’t lose anything important, if that’s what you mean.  Lost a little chunk of his ear.  His hearing’s not so great, not that it ever was.”  She chuckles lightly at my jab.  “I’d still be out there helping with the clean-up if it wasn’t for my leg.  They had to send me stateside to learn to walk again.  I last saw him in Tonga when he was shipping back out.”

“And he asked you to find me.”

I nod though I know she’s not looking at me.  Her gaze is out the window, toward the houses down the ridge, where I presume the rest of his family lives.

“Said he couldn’t write you a Dear Jane letter.  He wants me to write him when I know you’re okay.”

She stiffens at the sentiment.  “Okay?  As though I’ll be perfectly fine with a complete stranger just showing up and telling me my husband has abandoned me for another woman?”

I can’t help the lump that forms in my throat, but I cough to try to dislodge it.  “Pardon my forwardness ma’am, but was he ever really your husband?”

At that her eyes snap back to me.  The pot behind her is obviously boiling so she stands to move it off to the side of the stove and sets about putting tea into cheesecloth.  “What Gale was to me is really none your business.  Seems like he must’a told you an awful lot though, you coming here like this.  What’s in it for you?”

I sigh, knowing this was coming.  “He saved my life on Okinawa.  He realized the ordinance was about to backfire and tackled me out of the way.  If he hadn’t, I would have lost a lot more than just my leg.  I don’t really have a home to rush back to.  I promised I’d check in on you and his family.  Make sure that you understood it wasn’t anything you’d done wrong.”

The pot slams again and before I know it Katniss is out the front door.  Prim watches her stomp out, but makes no move to follow her.  I take my cue from the younger woman.  I’m in no shape to chase Katniss across the hillside anyway.  Prim shifts her gaze to me and tentatively starts asking me questions.  Where am I from?  Where did I fight?  What was it like?  Some I can answer easily, others leave me speechless.  For all the rehabilitation they did for my leg in San Diego, no one ever really talked to me about how to deal with coming back home.  No one talked about the nightmares we all wake from at night—or the ones that haunt us throughout the day.  I fall silent eventually, when it gets to be too much, but in my focus on all her questions I haven’t noticed how she’s lifted my leg and been examining the spot where my prosthetic rubs against the stump, just below my knee.

“I’ve had miners who’ve lost hands and arms come through here.  Mining means workin’ with TNT and it doesn’t always turn out s’good.  I haven’t had any legs though.  You’ve got your stump mighty irritated.  I’m gonna clean it up and wrap it for you.  You need to stay off it a coupla days to keep it from gettin’ infected.  You can take my cot here in the living room.  I’ve been sleepin’ in Katniss’s room most nights anyways s’as we don’t have to heat the whole house.”

She bites her bottom lip as though she’s said too much.  I can’t fight the questions swirling around in my own brain.

“Did Gale ever live here?”

Her eyes widen as she takes me in.

“What did he tell you about the two of them?”

“That she’s easy to love but hard to live with.”

Prim lets out a soundless laugh.  “He would say that.  He thought it was love but she always knew better.  They were great together—as hunting partners, as friends.  When our Pa’s passed away, it was just us and two other families up here on the mountain.  We had to band together to get through it all.  My ma, well, she just couldn’t handle it.  She was a nurse down at the clinic in town, but after…we couldn’t get her to leave the house.  Gale’s Ma, she’s tougher.  She buckled down and started taking care o’all us kids, but there were six o’us and only one of her.  Wasn’t long before Gale and Katniss stepped up.  They already knew how to hunt, had been going out in the woods together for years.  Ma and I used to go out and pick herbs—we use them down at the clinic to help out people who can’t afford the expensive medicines.  But I knew there were others that were edible, that we could live off of.  I took Rory with me.  We sold the goat and sheep’s milk down in town, though ain’t many people got a taste for it since they can get cow’s milk at the grocery for cheap.  We make cheese out of it too.”

She peters out, unsure where her train of thought was going, and focuses to gently wrap my stump having already cleaned it.  In a moment, the thought returns to her.

“He asked her to marry as a matter of convenience.  He was shippin’ out and knew that if they were married it would be easier on his ma—and frankly I think he trusted Katniss to take care of all of us more than his ma.  The woman is amazing, but she’s got a bit of a weakness for the drink, but then, most of the folks ‘round here do. They never stopped moonshinin’ ‘round these parts.”

She glances at the pot on the stove.  “She never finished makin’ the tea, did she?  You want something stronger?  We have a little ‘shine around.  Ma and I use it for our patients, but I’d say you fit the bill.”

I consider the offer before shrugging her off.  I’ve never had moonshine, but there was some camp swill that would get passed around whenever we stayed too long at one post.  Didn’t take much to get things to ferment in the jungle.  Would rot your gut, but took the edge off the misery of sitting in a swamp day and night.  And then there was the hooch at the clubs.  Enough to make every Jane look like a pinup but all it took was one tale of Cupid’s Itch to scare us young GIs away from the women who hung around.  Well, most of us anyway. 

“I should stay sober.  I don’t know what state she’s gonna be in when she gets back here and I can’t imagine she’s gonna be too pleased with you telling her I’m staying the night.  I’m about the last person she wants to see.”

I find the thought makes me sad.  I’ve been carrying her picture so long, there’s a part of me that feels like I know her.  I’ve traced her scowl with my finger.  I’ve practiced what I would say, though it didn’t come out that way.  I’ve tried to imagine her smiling.  Gale made it sound like an impossible feat, but I have a feeling there has to be a way to bring out that side of her—not that it’s my job to do that.

Prim’s voice cuts through my silent misery.  “She’s not angry at you.  She’s not even angry at him.  And you seem like a nice guy.  I mean, if Gale trusted you enough to send you all this way, you have to be a good guy.  Usta be he’d kill anyone that came close to Katniss.”  She pauses for a moment before looking me straight in the eye.  “You don’t think he’ll ever come back?”

I shake my head. “I honestly can’t be sure.  I don’t know that he’s thought it all through, but this girl of his is pregnant and his tour’s up in another month.  He’s already gotten approval to stay in Tongatapu.  They can’t live together on the base since they aren’t married, but he’ll be part of a skeleton outfit that maintains the place until the Navy decides it doesn’t need it anymore.  By then, he’ll be through his commitment so he could go anywhere, but after all the things he said about him and Katniss fighting about having kids, I can’t imagine he would just take off if there’s a little one in the mix.”

“He’s like a big brother to me, y’know?  After Pa died, Gale did a big part of raising us. I’m gonna miss him.”

“He talks about you guys all the time.  He didn’t just carry Katniss’s picture, he carried all of yours.”  I pull the well-worn photo of Katniss out of my pocket and her eyes widen in recognition.

“Why do you have that?”  She snags it out of my hands.

“He gave it to me.  Has your address on the back, or at least you used to be able to read it.  It’s been through some things.  He wanted to make sure I found her.”

“’Easy to love but hard to live with.’ That’s what he says?”

“Yep.”

“Well, she’s not going to get any easier now.”

With that, Prim straightens up and tosses the photo on the table, and begins re-organizing her supplies from cleaning my leg.  My fingers itch to reach out and reclaim the picture.  I’ll never admit it aloud, but that photo means something to me.  The stories Gale told and the ones I’ve created in my own mind, the happy world they’ve built on this mountain despite all the hardship.  I’m not ready to let that go.  The door slams behind me before I find the courage to grab for it though.

“We need to go tell Hazelle,” she tosses the words at Prim, ignoring my presence completely.  Prim acknowledges her but continues putting away her supplies.

“Peeta’s gonna sleep out here for a coupla nights while his leg heals up.  He can’t be walkin’ on it til it’s calmed down some.”

I can feel Katniss’s glare on my cheek but can’t peel my own eyes away from my hands, still fighting to resist the urge to grab the photo.

“I could give him a ride into town so he could find a room to lay up meantime.  Why’s he gotta stay here?”

Prim’s tone allows for no discussion.  “He’s Gale’s best friend and he’s my patient.  He ain’t gonna hurt us.  You wanna kick him out on one good leg?  God have mercy on your soul, big sis.  It’s my bed I’m offerin’ up. He’s stayin’.”

I can feel the blush building up my neck at the insinuation that I might want anything untoward from them.  Prim’s right.  I would never want to take advantage.  After all Gale has told me about these women, I could never, but another part of me is happy at the thought of being here—in a place that sounds more like a home than anywhere I’ve lived.

Katniss takes a step in front of me, forcing my attention up to her cold stare.  “Don’t know what Gale was thinkin’ sendin’ you instead of a letter, but you best be on your Sunday behavior.  I know how to skin a stag.  You ain’t much of a challenge, Marine or no.”

Instinctively I know I shouldn’t smile, but I can’t fight it no matter how hard I try.  “Mrs. Hawthorne, I’ll be a choir boy just for you.”

She smirks slightly before returning her attention to the forgotten tea.  “I don’t need no choir boys ‘round here.  Gale certainly ain’t one.  But if you can carry a tune better’an him, that would be much appreciated.”

Prim’s smiling at me from across the room, so I know the awkwardness has passed, at least for the moment. 

“And please, stop calling me Mrs. Hawthorne.  Ain’t nobody ever called me that.  No point in startin’ now when we all know what Gale is up to.”  She pauses in her work before turning back to me. “There’s a baby.” 

She states it as fact.  She’s not looking for confirmation, but I nod nonetheless and watch as she swallows a lump in her throat before continuing.

“Yeah, he would never abandon a kid.  Posy’s the only one on this mountain that we still have to worry about and he knows Hazelle and I won’t let that little girl down.”  She shakes her head, as though to remove the thought.  “ So, do you sing, Corporal Mellark?”

“Peeta, it’s Peeta.  And to be honest, not very well, but I can play the guitar and the harmonica okay.  My talents lie more with wrestling, baking…and painting.”

“Seems like an odd combination for a Marine.”

“If any of those islands had been a giant cake, I coulda taken out the Japs with some fancy frosting tricks.  Instead I was just the guy everyone came to for their camouflage.  Guess I’m good at making people look like mud.”

“Don’t think that would take much talent, no offense.”

She’s poured me a glass of sweet tea and I lean forward to claim it.  “No, I s’pose not when you’re surrounded by mud and can just smear it all over yourself, but the guys seemed to prefer when I did it.”

“You must have a gentle touch.”  As soon as the words are out her mouth, the blush begins.  “Not that…oh hell, nevermind.  I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

I let the chuckle rumble out of my chest.  The hospital in San Diego wasn’t exactly a cheerful place with most of us still fighting phantom limbs and shell-shocked from being sent home.  And it’s as I’m enjoying the first laugh I’ve had in months that I finally see it.  She cracks a smile, small, secretive, and the single most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.  It takes my breath away so quickly I feel light-headed.  And now I can see why Gale found her so easy to love.

[stillgotme]

HELLO EVERYONE ok i’m finally doing this after like 84 years lmao

SO yeah several people in the past few months have asked me about my editing process and i said that i’d hopefully do it after gen 2 stuff and since i’m taking a break from gen 2 and wanna stall bc returning to gen 1 will be painful, ya girl got her ass to go through with it. keep in mind, this tutorial is for people who already know the basics of photoshop. if you don’t there’s many tutorials online that’ll help beginners. i’m gonna be editing a pic of val and chance all dressed up and ready to crash a prom to get lit with their homies maggie and eli

*rosanna pansino voice* LET’S GET STARTED

so i use reshade and i believe the version i have is 3.0.7 or something idk but it’s 3.0 and i switch between 3 presets that are my own. the one i use the most started with pickypikachu’s cinematic preset as a base.

now, i know not everyone has reshade, but there’s still a way you can mimic the DOF effect with photoshop. when my stubborn ass edited everything myself all i did was duplicate the photo, apply field blur and adjust the bokeh lighting, added a layer mask and with a brush using the color black, i “colored” in what i didn’t want to be blurry and BOOM ya got that DOF goodness

so for DOF i use either the marty mcfly shader or the matso shader and even both, like in this case. i also love that sweet mxao bc ooh yess them SHADOWS. but unfortunately bc i’ll never ever let go of alpha hair and you’ll have to rip them away from my cold dead hands, ya get this shit.

the dof and shadows cutting through the hair making it look ugly and blurry and just all around BLECH

so when taking screenshots, i take two photos. one with the dof and mxao and another without those shaders

now i open both pics in photoshop and layer the photo with the effects over the one without

ok this is totally optional and you don’t have to do it but i like to crop my photos and the preset for my cropping dimensions is 1150 x 705 bc that’s what i’m going to resize my photos to (w/ 300 resolution). again, totally optional, you don’t have to do this part but i do.

so now i add a layer mask to the top layer

next i select the brush tool and choose whatever brush i wanna use. i usually switch between these two brushes depending on what i need at the moment. and make sure the color you’re painting with is black.

and now just “paint” over the ugly parts to erase them. depending on your photo this can sometimes take a while, but hey ya get that dof and beautiful alpha hair. i also take this time to erase some of the blurriness that forms around my sims from the dof effect

right click on the layer and select “merge down” and i’m left with this. obviously, you see some parts that aren’t blurred anymore but i just fix it with the blur tool at 100% opacity, zoom in on the unblurred edges and blur them in with whatever brush i choose. i personally choose the one with hard edges and i make sure the brush size is very very small. this part’s also a lil time consuming so ya gotta be patient.

doesn’t that look better? now it’s time to get to the actual editing lmao. first, click layer > background layer to make it a background. this is necessary for me bc of the photoshop action i use.

so in order to give my pics that “crisp” look, i first reduce noise and these are my default settings

then i do topaz clean

then smart sharpen

then i use the liquify tool bc sometimes there’s jagged edges on the shoulders, elbows, chins, etc. that i wanna smooth out. i also use this to adjust facial expressions, like for this i wanna make the smiles curve up a lil bit more bc chalerie are in love and happy  

now this is the part where i kinda nitpick bc i’m a perfectionist lmao like i clean up some lines on val’s arms and fix that weird spot on the collar of chance’s shirt, all that small stuff people wouldn’t notice but I DO so i fix it

alright now it’s time for me to draw hair! again, this is optional and i understand not everyone has a tablet or likes drawing hair so skip this if it ain’t your thang. first add a new layer for the hair.

i like to add extra hair to make it more full or fix clipping and “highlights” to kinda emphasize the lighting effects i’ll do later and i usually go with a lighter color of the hair for the highlights OR i do the color of the lighting. in this case i’m just going with a very light brown color. this brush is from this set by castrochew and i have the opacity at 100% and size at 3 px.

this is what it looks like after i draw all the hair. and for the highlights i always reduce the layer opacity to 50-60% or even less than that depending on how subtle i want them to be. after that, i merge them all down.

now it’s time to do all the shading and highlighting. make sure you do it all as separate layers, too. even tho i use mxao it still doesn’t do enough for me, so i always add shadows and i recommend you use dark brown for the shadows as black is a a bit too dark especially when you’re adding shadows around the faces. like y’all don’t want it to look like your sims put mud on their face. trust me guys i contour my face.

now take a hard edge brush and draw where you wanna add shadows

apply gaussian blur and erase any excess “shadows”  then reduce the layer opacity to your liking. now keep doing that in other areas where you wanna add shadows. it all depends on the picture and i really just use my general knowledge of how lighting and shadows work. remember, make sure each shadow and highlight you add is a separate layer!

for highlights, use a light color, a soft edge brush, change the brush opacity to 60% and change the layer mode to “soft light”. like with the shadows, just paint whatever you wanna highlight, gaussian blur, reduce layer opacity, etc. then after you’re done shading and highlighting, merge all the layers down.

then to enhance the highlights even more i use the dodge tool with the exposure at 25% and paint over all the highlighted areas

so this is how it looks after i did all the time consuming stuff and now it’s time to play with COLOR YEAHHHHHH

this is the action i’ve been using forever and it’s a ride or die, always got my back, never fails me, always there when i need it. all i gotta do is click on that and press the “play” button and everything’s beautiful and colorful and all my problems seem to go away and suddenly the your lie in april soundtrack is playing the background

but most of the time i untick the “curves” layer from the action as it can be too bright for me and i just adjust the curves of the image to what i prefer.

now it’s my favorite part! time to add that good-ass LIGHTING and since i went crazy with the lights for the background, it’s gonna be fun to do this one hehehe. ok so first duplicate your image and then choose the color of the lighting you want. for this pic, i want the lighting to be a nice light warm yellow/orange color

now for the brush mode, choose “linear dodge (add)” and change the opacity to 35%-45% or hey even higher if ya wanna go bright as fuck. and get a soft edge brush and make it big. like fucking BIG. you see the size i put it at? yeah, make it big bc we want that beautiful shit EVERYWHERE

YEAH DAS DAT SHIT I LIKE. keep painting over areas ya wanna see glow and even paint over the same area twice to make it brighter. hell, don’t just stop at one color. add other colors of light if ya want. add some pinks or blue or purple, adjust the brush size, go crazy. BLIND EVERYONE.

buuuuuuut with all the sweet lighting, it tends to make your pretty pic look all washed out and also lighting doesn’t always work that way. and that’s why i told y’all to duplicate your image bc we’re gonna add a layer mask again and with a soft edge brush you gotta erase some of that lighting. change the brush mode back to normal, put the opacity at 100% and make sure your brush is black and get rid of what you need to. but what’s good about this is you don’t have to be perfect and it’s ok if there’s still some lights on your sims bc now it looks like the light is shining on them awwww. now merge that layer down

now color balance! i like to enhance the red, magenta, and blue most of the time but as always it all depends on the photo and what your preference is.

all that’s left to do now is change the image size. i change the resolution to 300 ppi (it doesn’t really do anything but like it’s become a habit of me to do it so i do it idk) and make sure if you’re making your image smaller, you apply “bicubic sharper” so your image stays sharp when you change the size

AND THIS IS THE FINAL PRODUCT.

so this is my editing process and i hope some of you learned some stuff from this. also please keep in mind that i also encourage y’all to do your own spin on things when you edit. i’m all for taking tips from others and learning cool new tricks but develop a style that fits YOU. eventually you’ll find it and i know that you’ll end up creating something amazing that shows how unique and lovely you are.

anyways, i’m so glad i finally got this done. love you guys 💖💖💖

[survivor-kuwait]

Episode 5 - "I think I jumped the gun with this one, but I wanted to strike first." - Corey

Willow, I’m going to win this for you. Chloe is next. Anyone who voted you out is next. They’re all gone #LibraStrong Thanks for being a great friend

Cloe came back and thats fine with me. Since she is Ian’s sign partner amd I feel like I have a strong connection with him maybe she’ll work with me. I hate this bottom five goes to warzone thing. It really messes up social and strategic plans. I hope i can avoid tribal again. I dont want to go. I got a vote steal, I dont know of I sent in a confessional about it or not. Im glad I have it and now im looking for the idol.

- - -

Me: Gets of work at 2 Challenge: Due in 5 hrs Me: Go gets McDonalds

- - -

I did the challenge and I got 11. I hope that good enough to keep me away from the bottom 5. It sucks that we have 9 people on our tribe which means only 4 people will be safe this round from the warzone. I just want to stay away from it as long as possible. Dont like going there because it is so stressful.

The fact that I’m so close to an idol and now am basically on a deadline to get it in case things go south here is TERRIFYING! I’m separated from my allies except Corey who I like, and nervous on how to do this. Losing the tiebreaker and the fact that I had a 50/50 chance of doing it in 11 guesses is making this feel like a perfect storm that would absolutely lead to a really awful elimination for me. I just gotta work!

Someone got to MY advantage before me, the AUDACITY to take MY ADVANTAGE.  It's not that I want two advantages, it's that I don't want other people to have them.  Just who do you think you are?  That wasn't there for you to just pick up, I HAD DIBS.  Someone here does not respect the virtue of dibs and therefore they are not a Bro. If you are not a Bro then you aren't my bro.  If you aren't my bro then what are you? I'd say you're dead to me, but you're more like Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense, you've been dead the whole time.   We after that ass Jimmy, we after that ass.  https://twitter.com/beforefamepics/status/1039687902643539968?lang=en

Warzone sucks amd I dont like being in it. I feel good hopefully but Im still wary. Warzone still makes me nervous. I have Renee in here so atleast there is someone I can bounce of strategy with out being paranoid. There are people who ive been in warzone with before and others I havent. Matt S. Seems like a great guy and Renee has talked to him on our tribe so hopefully we wants to work with us. Tbh I dont know who i want gone. Still open minded this round.

Maynor messages me 1 time after the split: MAYNOR IS MY #1 ALLY FOREVER!l?!! Idk if it’s true but I love him and gave him my idol clue , and I support him, also based off nothing besides the fact we have been throughout few warzones together I trust Jacob and Madison and trace so hopefully I don’t die this round either xoxo Gossip girl

So my first warzone is pretty much as terrifying as I thought. I don’t think my name is in the mix but I’ve never been fully confident in this game. I feel like I can trust Corey and he’s trying to enact this plan to vote Renee. People seem concerned about saving chloe but I don’t really have a preference either way. If it’s bwtwwen Renee and Chloe then I hope it’s renee but I won’t be sad if it’s chloe. I’m just trying to be under the radar and I hope that’s gonna work

I'm immune??!??! This challenge always goes poorly for me and here I am. My little gay ass in the Final 18? Like YAYAY? I survived 6 boots which is 1/4 of the game already and I'm living!!! I hope that it can speed up, cause I'm really bored and I really want to find something on this damn idol board and I thought i found sumnthin, but an UGLY already got their grubby hands on it. So I'm defeated on that aspect too. But you know what, I'm seeing another round! And that is great for now!!

So I’m back in the war zone again after actually trying for a challenge. My hangman method wasn’t the worst but not the most fantastic. Being in the war zone is not fun. But this time I have people discussing the vote with me so that’s less scary. Maybe I’m gettin somewhere

So far, its been quiet again. But so far Cloe’s name has been theown out because she has already been voted out. I’m good with voting out Cloe. I just hope no crazyness happens the last hrish. Im already being stressed about my project dont need the vote to be stressful.

This round is going to be somewhat hectic. For the first time I feel I am in real danger, let’s see if it works out.

It looks like everyone is down to vote for Cloe. I’m really hoping I can trust these heathens when they tell me its gunna be Cloe or if Im being duped really hard. Im so paranoid cuz I really want to do good in this game. Hopefully bonds help me out if somehow the worst happens and Renee goes. Injust dont want it to be me. 

No warzone woohoo, now I just need Corey or Devon to leave and I’ll be set.

Woot woot, safe again from tribal. I wanted to come into this game and be more social than I have ever been before. I can already see myself struggling with that and I need to work on it. It’s one thing to be aware of it but a whole other thing to actually make sure I get my shit together and do it. This time I’m actually going to make sure I do it.

I'm real happy I'm the last one to not go to the warzone bc I feel like people will kill me immediately if I give them the chance. I love Matt and Owen.

Going into tribal council tonight, I am nervous. I am not letting jacob or madison in on the plan which can only hurt my game in the longrun. I think I jumped the gun with this one but I wanted to strike first as I usually wait but always end up losing allies that way. Hopefully, with damage control, I can be okay. If somehow the vote ends up on me, rip! Can't say I didn't try - I just may have tried too hard too quick. I hope the bonds I have made until now are strong enough to get me to another day here. I am hoping to see Renee walk out - otherwise, Chloe. I just hope I didn't screw up too bad.

This round i am finally not going to tribal!! Two rounds was enough for me. Especially after the last one, that vote was A LOT. Double tribals ain't fun when its one round of voting and two people leave. A whole other strategy goes into that. So Chloe comes back and from retrograde and i was a little nervous because i was part of voting her out. But then I talked to her when she was back and she was really cool, she said she had stuff going on irl which is why she wasn't around which i totally understand because that's been the case for me recently so I am not holding it against her now (because originally that is why I wanted to vote for her when we did). Honestly the fact that she went THAT hard in retrograde to come back really just changed my opinion of her. It definitely showed that she wants to still be here (at least more than Willow did)  and i really respected that. Made me see her in a new light. When I first encountered Renee in this game I was excited to see her, she was excited to see me and we briefly chatted but I wasn't too sure how closely we would be working together. then for this Guess Who challenge Renee asks for my help because she got stuck and asked if i could look over her parameters to see if I saw anything because she was missing something. turns out she did have a miscommunication with the hosts and it got her a less than favorable score and she ended up going to tribal. I briefly talked to Owen about the challenge, just keeping those lines of communication open to suss out if him and i are working together or not. I am still not 100% if we are explicitly working together. I have been unsure about this tribe and safety. I cannot tell if it is normal that no one is talking because we are safe, or if people just are not talking to me. Could be a little bit of paranoia, but I could also just not be desirable for social interactions. Only time will tell, i guess.