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writethehousedown · 3 years

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Things Are Really Cool (In Nazareth) (Ninex)- Ortega

a/n: wow hi, welcome to whatever the hell this is? this is a sort of a kind of a n19f verse/masp verse crossover set some years after the originals take place (but you don’t need to have read either to read this), borne out of the semi-autobiographical experience of my last few weeks at work trying to teach five year olds mid-pandemic. basically Nina’s a stressed primary teacher and Monet is her primary teacher girlfriend. this is fulfilling the prompt “Nice” only ten days late and also probably has one million and one typos in my haste to get it out in time for at least Christmas xo regardless, i hope u all enjoy and in the words of boyband JLS, “mewwy cwistmas”.

disclaimer: there are a couple of lines i’ve yoinked out of tv shows here- “lesbian having a panic attack” is adapted from Kimmy Schmidt and the “what are you, forty?” ones are from Always Sunny. leave me alone i’m too tired to be funny at this time of year xo

fic summary: When Nina’s headteacher asks her to pull a Nativity play out of thin air with only a week to organise it, Nina is simply too nice to say no. As a consequence, she is blindly oblivious to what her girlfriend Monet is planning, with useless lesbian results.

Nina knew she was a people pleaser. Always had been, always would be. She was simply too nice to say no to anyone. She had never been one to say no to anything.

She’d never taken the last remaining teabag for herself way back at uni; she’d always elected to leave it for Brooke or Yvie, knowing that Brooke would be grumpy all day if she didn’t have her morning cup of tea and not wanting to deal with the caffeine crash Yvie would experience if she made coffee as a substitute.

It had even started way further back in her life than her twenties. The most rebellious thing she’d ever done in high school was to pull out one of the cables of her German teacher’s computer at the back so she’d spend the whole lesson fixing it instead of teaching their class. In Primary, she was the stereotypical, insufferable goody-two-shoes: didn’t ever lose a minute of Golden Time, finished both her set tasks and the extension work that accompanied them perfectly, and was the worst kind of tell-tale.

(At the time, she thought her teachers loved that- the fact that she acted as their five-year-old corporate spy, ready to report any wrongdoings to headquarters. Contrarily, now that she was a teacher to five year olds, Nina thought that if she heard one more story about who skipped who in the line she would climb very slowly and very carefully into the staffroom microwave and blow herself into fifty million partially-heated bits.)

So when her headteacher ducked her head into her classroom on a cold, wet, rainy Wednesday after all the kids had been dispatched home, Nina panicked. Her eyes darted up to the displays on her walls. Fuck, there were still Halloween pumpkins blu-tacked up there. There was, so far, nothing on her December learning journey wall. And there were still Very Hungry Caterpillars made from bottle tops pushed into dollops of paint stuck to bright green backing paper which had been there since the kids’ first week at school back in August.

Well. Red and green were Christmassy colours. Right?

But Mrs Del Rio didn’t seem all that interested in the state of her wall displays. She’d come to ask Nina if she could film a Nativity play with her class.

“It’s for the parents really,” Bianca had rolled her eyes, folding her arms in her usual no-nonsense way. “Just something they can watch and share with the families since we can’t do a real Nativity. It doesn’t need to be anything big- just a few songs…one, two…say four. And then just have the kids in their costumes with a couple of lines. With a backdrop, y’know, there doesn’t need to be props. Just the baby Jesus…the gifts for the three Kings….maybe a couple of no vacancy signs for the innkeepers…that sort of thing. Just for before we finish up term. Maybe if it could be done by next Friday. That okay?”

And Nina, because she was a people pleaser, had nodded and said yes! and of course! and Bianca had nodded curtly at her in the frostiest thank-you the world had ever seen before leaving.

It had only taken the time in which Bianca’s heels had slowly disappeared from hearing distance for the reality of the situation to sink in for Nina. She’d just agreed to do a whole Nativity play, with songs, and costumes, and props, in the space of eight days.

She was going to be sick like little Jack had done that day he’d come into class and projectile-vomited halfway onto the carpet and halfway into Nina’s outstretched hands.

Nina was so consumed by the all-encompassing panic that she didn’t even flinch when there was a loud, jaunty knock at her classroom door.

“High Court Enforcement,” came a loud, brash voice, Nina finally turning to see who was there with glazed eyes. Willam leant against the doorframe, her messy blonde waves falling over the shoulders of her dark blue jumper like curly vines. She was the only teacher who could match the sass levels of the Year 6s and was a colleague that Nina both loved and feared. Loved because she was straight-talking and blunt and altogether hilarious, but feared because her girlfriend was the deputy head of the school and anything Nina said to her would definitely be reported back as gossip.

Also because she was, for all intents and purposes, a pint-pot riot.

“Nina. Nina. Nina,” Willam said repeatedly, her voice monotone and her persistence irritating. Nina mumbled something out.

“What?”

Nina raked her hands through her shock of frizzy blonde curls and sighed, her stress levels already rising. “I said I’m a lesbian having a panic attack.”

“Oh, that’s a mood. I was sent round to do the collection for the support staff but I’ve already spent forty minutes chatting to Alyssa instead of doing what I was asked. Got a grand total of a fiver so far,” Willam shrugged blithely, coming into Nina’s classroom and perching on one of the tiny munchkin-sized tables. “What’s up?”

The pressure-cooker that her mind was rapidly becoming told Nina to throw caution to the wind and vent, so she told Willam everything in a series of babbles barely comprehensible in the English language.

“So you’ve just agreed to doing a full Nativity video in the space of a week?” Willam cocked her head, pulling a confused face. “Why didn’t you just tell Bianca to fuck off?”

Nina paused, feeling all her panic momentarily leave her body as she fixed Willam with a glare. “Are you expecting me to answer that?”

“No, no. Shit, wouldn’t it have been amazing if you had, though? What d’you think would’ve happened? Maybe she’d’ve shouted so loud at you her lungs would’ve just exploded.”

Nina couldn’t help but blurt out a small laugh. “That’s way too dramatic. She wouldn’t even fire me on the spot because that would mean management having to go in and cover my class tomorrow while they tried to find my replacement.”

Nina regretted the small barb at their management team as soon as it was out, but Willam seemed nonplussed.

“Yeah. Court’s way too impatient to deal with your lil’ rugrats.”

“I’m too impatient to deal with them. I’m too impatient to deal with them on a day to day basis. How I’m going to teach them four Christmas songs in the space of a week, fuck knows.”

Willam cocked her head again, her smile becoming patient. “Well if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

Willam’s words were a small source of comfort to Nina. Suddenly everything seemed doable. She matched her colleague’s smile, glad she’d arrived in that moment. “Thanks, Willam.”

As soon as her words were out, she saw the small, playful twinkle in Willam’s eye. “Because nobody else would’ve been mad enough to agree to the damn thing.”

***

Getting her class sorted and organised for the day couldn’t really be likened to herding cats. No, this process was far more chaotic than that. At half past nine each day what could only be described as a minor tsunami of children hit Nina’s classroom: throwing their jackets into the designated tubs with wild abandon and subsequently knocking anything and everything off her adjacent desk, unloading every possible snack in their lunchboxes into their trays and Nina’s pleas for them to only take one snack out falling on deaf ears, spilling their water bottles and getting the zips on their jackets stuck and wanting to tell Nina a billion and one things that seemed to have happened in the 18 hours they had spent outwith her care.

During the month of December this chaos only intensified. Hats, scarves and gloves littered the classroom floor as they fell off the kids like baubles off a dead Christmas tree, shrieks filled the air as they discovered a new chocolate in the advent calendar, and at least half the class surrounded Nina like festive zombies as they all battled to win the competition of “Who can tell Miss West about what their elf on the shelf had got up to overnight the loudest”.

Nina hammered the little bell she kept on her desk with the palm of her hand, stress levels already rising. “Okay, Reception! Jackets in tubs, snacks in trays and bums on carpet!”

As her class giggled about their teacher’s use of the word “bum”, Nina sat down in her wheely chair and waited for them all to join her on the little strip of carpet in front of her smartboard. It was moments like these where she’d be hit with a sort of out of body experience; she was someone’s teacher, she was this class’ first teacher. She was sitting in front of her class waiting to take the register and start their day. It was slightly overwhelming, even though she’d been doing the job for a number of years now.

Eventually her kids were all organised and she’d taken the register and made sure they all had a lunch to eat that day. Nina made sure to put on her best excited face as she prepared to tell them about the Nativity.

“Right, Reception!” she said, injecting lots of mystery into her voice like a storyteller. “I have got some very exciting news for you all today!”

Their little faces all grew equally excited as they were expectant, and Nina’s heart almost popped. Just then, Harry, a boy with enough gel in his hair to single-handedly keep Brylcreem in business for a year and huge bottle-top glasses’ hand went up.

“Yes, Harry?”

The boy bounced on the carpet, incredibly eager. “Can I tell you what my elf did last night?”

Ten more hands immediately shot up, and Nina’s heart sank. Great.

But she was still teaching four and five year olds and this was truly the most important thing in their little lives, so she fixed a bright smile on her face and tilted her head inquisitively. “What did your elf do?”

Harry was now sitting on his knees, towering over the other children and threatening to knock himself over with every passing second as he swayed in the nonexistent breeze. “He did a poop in my Dad’s shoes!”

The rest of the class shrieked with laughter in response. Internally, Nina was rapidly reaching her wit’s end. Love it. A bit of toilet humour to start off the Nativity rehearsals. Great. Exactly what’s needed. “Oh my goodness! What a cheeky elf!”

“He did three poops! And you know what else? They were cola jellybeans! I ate them!”

Sophie, a girl with long ginger hair in a low ponytail and a gap in her smile where two baby teeth once lived, gasped in horror. “You ate the elf’s poop?!”

The rest of the class fell about laughing. Nina had to get control back of the situation.

“Well thank you very much for sharing, Harry! Okay everyone, let’s pop our hands down.”

There were still ten hands waving proudly in the air like rebellious flags.

“We can do more elf stories at the end of the day if there’s time!” Nina lied. There would not be time. There was never time. But it placated most of her class enough for them to follow the instruction. There was, however, one remaining hand up which belonged to Jason, a boy with hair so platinum blonde it seemed otherworldly.

“It’s not an elf story! I’ve got a question,” he insisted, shouting out despite the fact his hand was already up. Nina relented, just in case he did have something important to ask. Maybe he was about to pee himself. Highly likely with the Reception kids.

Jason, pleased as punch that Nina was allowing him to speak, put his hand down. “Can I tell you a rhyming word I’ve just thought of?”

Nina’s smile grew all the more gritted, and the muscles in her face all the more tense. This was going to be the longest week she had experienced in living memory.

***

Nina would never get tired of living with Monet. The sound of her singing as the shower provided a backing track, the unholy racket she seemed to make when she cooked (a symphony of swearing, the banging of kitchen utensils, and the clattering of saucepans and baking trays). The smell of the Dior Sauvage she used instead of perfume and the Cantu hair custard she combed through her hair after she washed it. The fact that Nina could get a cuddle from her any time she wanted and the soft squash of her arms around her.

But living with Monet was best at Christmastime. The endless arguments they got into about their Christmas decorations and what looked best where, both stemming from a fierce loyalty to their own family traditions. The way they’d write their Christmas cards to their friends with a Christmas film playing in the background, and the way Monet would tease her about having such picture-perfect, font-like, primary-teacher handwriting. The way Monet would get too excited in the supermarket and load party food into Nina’s shopping basket like a child trying to sneak chocolate.

Even though Nina was completely exhausted, she still felt herself smile as she turned her key in the lock and heard her girlfriend loudly singing along with Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, paired with the blast of the extractor fan.

“Hello?” Nina sing-songed as she closed the door shut, shedding her heavy jacket and her scuffed trainers and her backpack full of jotters that had been haphazardly stuffed in as she left work.

“Hello!” Monet chirped back, in what had become their tradition since moving in together all those years ago. “Your timing’s perfect, I just finished dinner.”

“Ooh. What is for dinner?”

Monet gestured to the pile of grated cheese, pan of bubbling baked beans, and loaf of white bread. “Beans on toast.”

Nina snorted and leaned against the counter. “Wow, don’t I have the most perfect domestic housewife! That must’ve taken, what…two hours?”

Monet reached over and squeezed her side, eliciting a yelp that would probably give their downstairs neighbours the wrong idea. “Shady bitch. It’s this or two rice cakes that’ve been in the cupboard for so long I swear they’re turning fossilised.”

“No, I’m kidding. Of course I’m hungry, thanks hun. I’ll make dinner tomorrow,” Nina promised, sliding into one of their second-hand wooden dining chairs as Monet plated up.

“No you won’t,” Monet frowned. “You look dead. What’re your kids doing to you, beating you with their tiny little chairs?”

“The fucking Nativity,” Nina sighed, pausing to thank Monet as she placed two slices of golden toast covered with beans and flakes of grated cheese down in front of her. Admittedly it did look like absolute heaven.

“Have you told Bianca to piss off yet?” Monet scowled, stabbing her toast so hard she threatened to break the plate in two.

“What kind of fantasy-land school do you work at where you can tell your headteacher to piss off and she actually listens?” Nina cocked an eyebrow at her, and Monet shrugged in agreement as she chewed a mouthful. “No, of course not. I’m going to make it happen, though, even if it kills me. We started learning the songs today, which you would think was a simple enough endeavour. Except my class, who usually can’t shut up if their lives depend on it, have all the singing volume and skill of one of Yvie and Scarlet’s cat’s chew toys. They don’t even sound like cats being strangled, that’d probably be louder. It’s like trying to have a sing-song with a room full of laryngitis patients. Except it’s not a room, because apparently we’re not allowed to sing inside because of covid. But I can teach Phonics and the kids can all make the ‘p’ sound at me until their hearts’ content and shower me with their spit like the world’s shittiest production of Singin’ In The Rain? Anyway, we have to rehearse outside. In December. I think my feet actually fell off.”

As Nina finally finished what had unintentionally become a fully-fledged rant, Monet attempted to compose herself as she wiped away a small tear of laughter from her eye and clutched at her belly. Nina watched as her girlfriend took a few deep breaths, then fixed her with a humoured grin. “But apart from all that, how was your day?”

Nina stuck her tongue out at her in response. “Shut up. How was yours?”

Monet rolled her eyes as she speared a bean. “Awful. Tried to assess time with my class today. God I love them, Neens, but they’re so bad, how can they be that bad?”

“If anyone can help them progress, it’s you,” Nina smiled encouragingly, only getting a shaken head in reply.

“No, I can’t. Nobody can. They’re beyond help. Some of the answers I got today wouldn’t even be believable if they were part of some TV comedy show. What month is Christmas in? ‘Santa’. The kid answered Santa. How many months are there in a year? ‘Sixty six’. How many days are there in a week? ‘Two’. TWO!” Monet cried, outraged. Nina couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up in her throat, and Monet pointed warningly at her in response. “Don’t you dare laugh. This is my reality.”

“Hey, you laughed at my Nativity nightmare!” Nina giggled, to which Monet chuckled guiltily. Nina paused to swipe a bit of toast around the plate with her fork, mopping up any stray tomato sauce. When she looked up from her plate, she saw Monet tapping at her phone. Nina frowned disapprovingly. “Hey. No phones at the table.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Monet apologised quickly, though didn’t put her phone down yet. “Monique’s just sent me a screenshot of her friend that’s getting engaged. Look at the damn size of this ring.”

Monet turned her phone to show Nina. Pictured was a diamond the size of a small Pacific nation and a band encrusted with tiny gems on the finger of somebody she’d never met. Nina couldn’t help the way she screwed her face up, which made Monet blurt a laugh in response. “Not a fan, then?”

Nina pulled a face in thought. She was sure that kind of ring made some girls happy, but to her it just seemed tacky and over-the-top, not to mention heavy. “I’m sure she likes it, but I wouldn’t want something that huge. Imagine working in a Reception class with that?! Play-dough stuck in all the little crevices. And Jesus, what if you lost it? Nah, it would stress me out owning that. I would just want one simple little gold band and one singular tiny diamond. Much less of a burden.”

Monet snorted a laugh as she finished her last mouthful of dinner. “You are the only girl I’ve ever met that would consider an engagement ring a burden. Christ on a crucifix.”

“Well!” Nina protested, before realising she didn’t really have anything else to defend herself with. Then, she narrowed her eyes at her girlfriend playfully, kicking her under the table. “Why’re you so interested in my engagement ring opinions, anyway? You asking?”

Monet chuckled as she put her phone face-down on the table. “Bold of you to assume I can afford council tax, never mind a diamond.”

Nina smiled, shrugging in agreement. “Yeah, fair. What should we do tonight? I have Maths jotters to mark but then that’s me done.”

Monet tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. “I would say fucking our shit days out but I don’t even have the energy to operate a vibrator.”

Nina almost choked on her food as she laughed. “Christ, that’s a mood. Finish dinner, pyjamas, rewatch The Office for the ninety billionth time then bed at 7pm?”

“Sounds good, babe,” Monet smiled, lifting her glass of water up to cheers with as if it was sparkling wine.

***

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh McFun it is to ride in a waffle sofen sleigh, HEY! Jingle bells, Jin-”

“Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah,” Nina cut in, waving her hands frantically and stopping the twenty-three five and four year olds that had previously been singing their little kidney bean-sized lungs out. “What are the words?”

Her class stared back at her as if she’d just asked her what twenty-eight times thirteen was. Although Jeremiah, who was already working at Year 5 level, could probably have worked that out given enough time.

“Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh,” Nina said, rhythmically and clearly. “You try.”

The children all parroted it back to her in their little voices, word-perfect. Thank God, thought Nina. Jingle Bells seemed to be the only song they recognised, so if they turned out to not know it after all then Nina would very probably need an inhaler despite the fact she wasn’t at all asthmatic.

“Let’s try it with the music!” Nina said cheerfully, making sure the bluetooth speaker she’d brought outside was still on.

“Miss West,” a small voice piped up belonging to Amber, the human embodiment of a whine. “I’m cold!”

“We’ll get inside soon!” Nina replied patiently. “Just let’s practise it one more time!”

“I’m cold too,” piped up Joshua, Amber’s male counterpart.

“I’m freezing,” Amber offered again.

“I know, it’s very cold outside!” Nina smiled sympathetically, even though her teeth were gritted. “But we can’t do our singing inside because of the virus!”

“Why not?” Amber pouted.

Nina didn’t really know. The answer was because of the care inspectorate guidelines, but that was incredibly far beyond the realms of a five-year-old’s comprehension. Just then, an idea struck her.

“Well we need to sing our songs outside so that Santa can hear them when he’s taking his sleigh out for a test drive!” she said animatedly. The wide eyes and ohhhh-s she received in reply made her feel like a genius. Move over, Steven Hawking. “Okay, one more time with Jingle Bells. Nice and loud for Santa!”

“Miss West?”

Nina blinked slowly and heavily, taking a small breath before answering the newest child that demanded her attention. “Yes, Sophie?”

“I’m cold.”

“I’m cold!! We’re all cold!!” Nina replied quickly, just that shade away from snapping so that her class knew she meant business. “We’re doing the song one more time and then we’re going inside! So nice big smiles, nice loud voices, and here…we…go!”

Nina pressed play on the song before any more children could regale her with tales of how their body temperatures had dropped to that of a snowman’s.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!” they all enthusiastically sang. “Oh McFun it is to ride in a waffle sofen sleigh!”

Nina rubbed so hard at her tired eyes that she thought they might disappear into her skull. She was momentarily glad of the fact that she didn’t have a teaching assistant to help her, as to have any other adult witness this would be embarrassing in the extreme.

Just then she noticed around five parents queued up at the nursery adjacent to the playground, watching with wry smiles on their faces as they waited for their children.

“One more time!” Nina cried, as she stopped the music with freezing cold hands.

***

“So Nina, when you gonna wife your girlfriend?”

Nina very nearly spat out her tea, a horrifying milky brown hurricane only just avoided. She hadn’t been expecting to answer deep, meaningful life questions in the staffroom during a lunch hour, but Willam was the human incarnation of petrol on a campfire and with her around things were always in danger of going from zero to a hundred very quickly. To Nina’s relief Courtney was also in the staffroom, and she whipped around from the countertop and gave her girlfriend daggers.

“Willam!” Courtney chastised her in a hiss that Nina wasn’t quite sure was meant to be audible. Willam only gave her an incredulous glare, affronted that she seemed to be the voice of reason in the conversational chaos.

“What?! Just askin’. I mean you’re what…twenty-nine? Twenty eight?”

“Twenty-six,” Nina replied. She was now at the age where being assumed she was older than she was was a curse, not a blessing. (If she’d told seventeen-year-old Nina that one day she would be disappointed at no longer being ID’d for wine at Sainsburys she’d have laughed in her face.)

“Exactly. That’s wifeing age. Mid to late twenties.”

“Hey, I passed that stage long ago, where the hell’s my ring?“ Courtney asked Willam, stirring the coffee she’d poured into one of the many, many “World’s Best Teacher!” mugs that littered the staffroom cupboards. Willam responded by turning around in her chair and positioning her pencil skirt-clad ass in the air.

“Right here, bitch!”

“Christ Almighty,” Courtney turned away from her, rolling her eyes so hard they looked like little spheric dice. As Willam gave her best impression of a seal on laughing gas, Nina cast her eyes over to Sasha who was sitting at the other end of the staffroom. As they caught each others’ eyes they shared a long-suffering smile that mourned the death of peace and quiet.

Nina was glad the conversation had been diverted from the subject of her perceived lack of marriage plans. Until Sasha opened her mouth, that is.

“I wouldn’t worry, Nina. Me and Shea haven’t had that conversation either. I mean we’d both love to, but there’s more important stuff for us right now, you know? We’re saving for a house and I think we’d rather live in a place we’ve chosen for the foreseeable future than just having one singular big lavish day.”

“It’s all about what you want to do with the person you love the most, isn’t it? Not just doing what society wants you to do,” Courtney chipped in, her voice warm and kind. “Like me and Willam used to be total party girls before we got our shit together. And now, like…there’s nothing I’d rather do of a weekend than curl up with her on the sofa and get all cosy with a film and a blanket and a cup of tea.”

Willam scoffed affectionately. “That’s your ideal weekend plan? What are you, forty?”

“Yes? As are you?” Courtney replied incredulously. Nina heard Sasha snort in her chair. As she turned her gaze back to the other two girls she realised that Willam was still looking at her expectantly. Nina sank back into her seat, a little reserved.

“It’s not really something we’ve spoken about? Well…no, we have spoken about it, obviously,” she babbled, watching as Willam took on the look of someone witnessing a victim of cardiac arrest. “Like we both want to get married. To each other, of course. But teaching is just such a busy job all the time and…you know, we only bought our flat last Summer and…I don’t know, it’s nice not to have everything happen all at once, right?”

Courtney nodded emphatically in agreement. “Of course! And I mean, if she asked, you’d say yes, right?”

Nina had to stop herself from pulling a face. How am I having this conversation with my boss? “Well, yeah. God, I couldn’t imagine life without her at all.”

Willam pretended to gag, which Nina thought was pretty rich from the woman who had begun the entire conversation. Courtney seemed to pick up on her girlfriend’s distaste.

“I don’t think Willam has ever said anything that cute about me!”

Willam turned around to look at her girlfriend, disbelief on her face. “Yeah, I only left my damn husband for you. Fuck me, right?”

Nina’s eyes widened as Sasha gave a yelp from across the staffroom. That was a small piece of workplace gossip she hadn’t expected to learn today. As Courtney’s face turned red and she shot Willam a warning glare, she turned to Nina once more.

“Nina, how’s the Nativity going?” Courtney beamed artificially at her, moving the conversation along with all the grace and decorum of a one-wheeled snow plow.

Considering the question, Nina thought that she’d rather be discussing marriage plans with her boss and colleagues again. “It’s going.”

“That’s a ringing endorsement. I’m sure that was on the poster of Titanic too,” Willam chipped in.

“It wouldn’t be any less disastrous than the actual fate of the Titanic, at least the passengers could’ve probably remembered the words to fucking Jingle Bells,” Nina deadpanned, causing Willam to break into fits of clubbed seal laughter.

Sasha pouted sympathetically from the other side of the room. “It’s those cute bits that the parents love, though, isn’t it? They won’t mind if they get the words wrong.”

“I’m sure there needs to be a foundation of at least an audible tune though, Sash,” Nina smiled resignedly back at her.

“If Bianca wants a Nativity so bad, just tell her to come teach your class,” Willam half-suggested, half-yelled. “Or get Court to teach them! They prolly don’t need to be in tune anyway!”

Courtney’s expression appeared to be the same as Nina’s after her morning’s rehearsal. “Do you ever stop talking shit?”

“You think I’m bad? That bell is going to go for the Comp’s lunch break in five minutes, Bob is gonna arrive, an’ then it’s RIP our eardrums,” Willam said, pointing to the staffroom door for dramatic effect.

“At least Bob has never presented his clothed arsehole to his partner in front of his colleagues,” Courtney cut in at once, her tone deadpan and making Nina splutter a laugh.

“Aw, c’mon Court! That’s just banter. These girls don’t mind.”

“It’s unprofessional!” Courtney clutched her chest. Willam only snorted in response.

“Unprofessional? What are you, forty?”

“We’re the same age!!” Courtney cried in response, her incredulous tone only setting Nina off in a further fit of laughter.

It was only later on that night once she had driven back home, parked, and approached her and Monet’s flat that Nina remembered the staffroom conversation. She cast her gaze up to their first-floor window in their red brick building, almost being able to feel the way her heart gave a swell at the sight of their Christmas tree framed proudly within the glass. And as she got in through the front door, Monet greeted her with a hug and a takeaway leaflet.

“We’ve got nothing in the fridge, so I thought we could get noodles? This came through the door today and I think-” Monet raises her eyebrows, slapped the leaflet into the palm of her hand decisively. “- it’s a sign from God.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Nina laughed, shrugging off her coat and feeling grateful for not having to cook.

It was only when they were both curled up on the couch, empty pad thai containers in front of them, that Nina turned to Monet and saw the lights on the tree reflected in her eyes. She turned to her girlfriend, threw an arm round her and snuggled in to her side.

“What’s up?” Monet asked, her voice soft and sleepy and a little concerned.

“Nothing,” Nina sighed. It was true. There wasn’t really anything up, and she was the happiest she’d ever been. But she still turned to Monet, tilting her head up inquisitively. “You don’t feel under any pressure at all, do you?”

Monet snorted. “I feel under pressure to get fifteen children who can’t write the word cat on their own to magically be able to write a sentence by the end of the year, yeah.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “No! I mean, like…in life. You didn’t just…buy this flat with me because you felt you had to, right? You wouldn’t do anything because you felt obliged to?”

Monet raised a single eyebrow back at her. “Yeah, I decided to piss my life savings away on a deposit for a flat because I felt I had to. Jesus Christ, Neens.”

“No, no, I know,” Nina chuckled, realising how silly the whole thing now sounded. “But I just mean…in life, like milestones and stuff. You’d never do stuff because you felt you had to keep up, in some way? Reach some goal by a certain age?”

Monet brought an arm around Nina and cuddled her closer, kissing her hair and resting her chin on top of her head. “Everything I do in life, I do because I want to. Especially when it comes to you. Promise.”

Nina gave her girlfriend a squeeze, happy. She took a deep breath, smelt the fabric softener on Monet’s jumper that they both used but just seemed to smell better and feel softer on everything Monet wore.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

***

Nina sat in a child-sized chair with her knees practically up to her chest, a crumpled, printed-out script on her lap that she’d hastily typed up on her work iPad’s notes app the following evening. Her class sat behind her in costumes pulled on over their school uniforms, with books and pens and pieces of paper with botched photocopying on the back under strict instructions not to talk until the whole thing was filmed.

“Okay, Amber!” she smiled breezily at the small girl whose school blouse was sticking out under her angel costume. “You’re kicking off the video. So your line is two thousand years ago, an angel came to a woman called Mary. Practise it for me?”

Amber gripped the hem of her taffeta skirt in two tiny white-knucked fists. “I don’t want to.”

Nina bit her lip. Great start. Fantastic. “We can give it a try together?”

Reluctantly, Amber parroted the words in tandem with her. So far so good.

“Okay. Now do you want to go up against the backdrop and I can film you doing it?”

Amber’s ponytail full of flyaways swung wildly as she shook her head. Nina thought for a moment. Then her eyes came to rest on Hazel- the class’ Mary and, coincidentally, Amber’s best friend.

“What about if Hazel stands with you?”

That seemed to change things and, only slightly hesitantly, both girls got up in front of the hastily staple-gunned silver tinsel.

“Okay Amber. Two thousand years ago, an angel came to a woman called Mary. Ready?”

A nod in reply.

“Go!”

Amber took a deep, shaky breath in. “Two thousand years ago….a woman called Mary.”

Nina stopped filming, fixed the girl with a kind smile. “An angel came to a woman called Mary. Try again?”

The iPad was back in filming mode, and Amber went again. “Two thousand years ago, a…a…a little cute angel came to Mary.”

Nina stopped filming, fixed Amber with two thumbs up. That’ll do.

Things seemed to be going well as Hazel and Oliver (or, Mary and Angel Gabriel) got through their lines without too many bumps in the road. Then, it was time for Amber to take to the stage (or blue curtain with a tinsel border) once more.

“Okay Amber, so your line this time is…Mary told her husband Joseph. Want to practise?”

“Mary told her husband Joseph,” Amber repeated, with all the enthusiasm of a patient about to undergo a colonoscopy. With two days til the deadline, this would have to suffice.

“Perfect! Ready? Three…two…one…go!” Nina smiled encouragingly, as she hit record.

Amber stood beside Mary and Joseph, a little grin on her own face. “Mary told her husband Joyce.”

“…Joseph,” Nina reminded her. Where the fuck had Joyce come from? She hit record again.

“Three…two…one…go!”

“Mary told her husband Joyce.”

Nina couldn’t stop herself from bursting out laughing. “Joseph, Amber!”

The little girl nodded earnestly. “Joseph Amber.”

Nina spluttered. “No…Amber is your name. Joseph is Mary’s husband.”

“Ohhhhhh.”

Nina shook her head, amused. This was what she loved about teaching. None of the other girls working from home could say that they got to spend their day feeling like they were stuck in an episode of You’ve Been Framed.

“Go again. Mary told her husband Joseph. Three…two…one…”

“Mary told…em…um…I can’t remember,” Amber giggled. Nina could feel her own giggles bubbling up inside herself, but she had to stop otherwise it would set her whole class off.

“Mary told her husband Joseph,” Nina repeated, both Amber and Hazel now giggling to each other. “Shh shh! Okay…three…two…one…”

Amber composed herself, took a deep breath. “Mary told her husband Joyce.”

Christ Alive. Nina gasped incredulously, unable to help herself from laughing now. The whole class, Amber herself, and Nina was pretty sure God, were all doing the same. She put her head in her hands, her whole body now shaking with laughter. “Joseph!!”

She already couldn’t wait to tell everybody she knew this story. Not least so she could cement in her mind that it was something that actually happened to her, and not just simply the script of a comedy show she’d dreamed up. Miraculously, mercifully, she managed to get the rest of her class settled down and for Amber to say the correct line on film, even if Nina could be faintly heard frantically mouthing “Joseph!” in the background.

Eventually they reached the innkeepers. Easy enough, in theory.

“Okay, Carter,” Nina smiled encouragingly at the first innkeeper. “When Mary and Joseph ask for a room, you say ‘no, sorry!’. Okay?”

Carter nodded, half a finger stuck up his nose. Nina gestured to him to put his hands down, then began filming. As directed, Mary and Joseph asked if there was any room at the inn.

“YES,” the little boy shouted. The whole class burst out laughing. Nina did not.

Just then, Willam walked past the open door with her class. She gave her a look of inquisition, shooting her a tentative, questioning thumbs up.

Nina put her head in her hands in reply.

***

By some miracle of nature (although it could also have been Nina giving up on work that afternoon) Nina had made it back to the flat before five o’clock. This never happened- five pm was usually the time she left work, but a day full of recording Nativity clips and then putting them together on iMovie while her class played (read; caused havoc) had been tiring and she needed Monet, chocolate, and Merlot.

Only the first thing she heard when she opened the door to her flat wasn’t Monet singing, or the hum of the extractor fan. It was the grainy crackle of a Zoom call and an incredibly distinctive voice.

“So when you doin’ it? Do it tonight. Do it when she gets home from work.”

Monet’s voice- humoured, long-suffering. “I’m not doing it then, Vanj, she’ll be exhausted.”

“That was honestly your best suggestion? When she gets home from work?” Brooke’s voice. “Aren’t you the pinnacle of romance!”

Nina had realised that Monet was on a Zoom call with all the girls, from the way Vanessa had obviously kissed Brooke on camera was being met with half a dozen cries in protest from the others. She excitedly shrugged off her coat and unwrapped herself from her scarf, eager to see her friends again. Part of her was intrigued, though. Why were they all calling each other without her?

“My question is how you’re going to do it,” Akeria’s voice came, as questioning as always. “It needs to be good but it better not be too damn cheesy.”

“An’ you better make sure she got her nails done, she might say no if she ain’t got her nails done!” Silky came shouting through Monet’s Macbook speakers.

“Yeah, you better make it as romantic as you can, Mo,” Scarlet added, making Nina wonder what the hell it was they were all talking about. Before she could wonder any further, she heard Yvie’s distinctive snort of a laugh.

“You are in no position to speak about romance, I mean, need I remind you how you asked me?”

“Shut up,” Scarlet replied, her tone a little bashful as the other girls laughed.

“Monet I could hire you a plane if you really wanted,” Plastique offered, making Nina snort despite the fact she had no idea what the conversation was about.

“Shut up, bitch,” Nina could practically hear the roll of Akeria’s eyes.

Nina toed her shoes off and finally padded through to the kitchen, where Monet’s eyes grew wide when she saw her, her body visibly flinching.

“Hey, babe!” she smiled, looking a little startled. “You’re home earlier than usual!”

“Oh sorry, am I interrupting your Zoom call with all your side chicks?” Nina deadpanned, forcing her way onto Monet’s lap to see her friends on the screen.

“Ninaaa!!!” Vanessa’s face popped up first, her friend waving excitedly as she sat on her sofa in Brooke’s arms. “How are you, girl?”

“Shattered,” Nina sighed, rubbing her eyes harshly. “Just filmed the whole Nativity with the rugrats today. Think it took ten years off my lifespan. How’re you?”

“Good,” Brooke smiled back through the screen. “We ordered our Christmas food today. Trying to convince this one that we don’t need twelve pigs in blankets between two people.”

Vanessa scowled back at her from their position on the sofa. “Uh, yes the hell we do!”

“Twelve pigs in blankets as well as the turkey, stuffing, and all the veg? Y’all are gonna explode,” Akeria said disapprovingly.

“Kiki! How are you?” Nina cried with delight, seeing her friend’s tired but smiling face appear on screen.

“Good. Don’t stop work for a while yet, but it’s fine. Still flat hunting.”

“How’s Pri?” Nina asked, heartened by the way Akeria looked down, trying and failing to suppress a smile.

“Yeah, she’s good. Still batshit crazy. Horny all the time.”

“The ideal girlfriend, really,” Yvie said, a wry smile on her face.

“Nina!” Silky suddenly cut in, yelling. “Did you hear any of what we were talkin’ about before?”

Nina frowned, shook her head. “Something about planes and nails. And cheese. I’m too exhausted to have paid enough attention. Why, were you having a mad bitchfest about me?”

“Trying to ask the girls how best to dump you,” Monet deadpanned. Nina shot Monet a look and squeezed her leg, resulting in her girlfriend yelping and cracking her knee off the table.

Whatever the previous conversation was was soon forgotten about as excited catchups took over. Silky was excited as she was interviewing some singer that Nina had never heard of and wanted the girls to help her work out what questions she was going to ask her. Yvie and Scarlet were lamenting the fact they had to host both of their families for Christmas and had bought a turkey so big Scarlet wasn’t sure it would fit in their oven, and Plastique was telling them the weirdest things she’d been gifted by companies desperate for her to endorse them on Instagram.

“I got a box of sex toys from LoveHoney. That was probably the most random. Me and Naomi had a wild fucking night that night.”

“STOP BEIN’ GROSS,” Silky had yelled down the line, causing Nina to hammer Monet’s volume down button.

Eventually the call came to an end, but not before lots of promises to catch up soon once the situation across the world was better than the shitshow it was currently. As Monet closed her laptop, Nina threw her arms around her neck and nuzzled into her side.

“I miss them,” she sighed, and Monet patter her back comfortingly.

“I know, babe. I miss them too.”

There was a moment of pensive silence, and then Nina spoke again, the Nativity never too far away from her mind.

“I can’t export this video.”

“What?”

“The Nativity video. I can’t export it,” Nina muttered pitifully against her girlfriend’s shoulder.

Monet kissed her hair, making to stand up. “You get a cup of tea. I’ll fix your video.”

“You’re the best,” Nina sighed gratefully, walking over to the kettle.

It was only after she’d sat down with a cup of tea and Monet had promised she’d sorted her video that Nina thought about the conversation she’d walked in on earlier.

She had a strange feeling that it had something to do with her.

***

When Nina arrived at work that morning, she could tell something was…a little different. She couldn’t really tell what it was. It started with the slightly knowing smile Tatianna shot her from across the corridor.

“Congrats, Nina!” she shouted down to her before she ducked into her own classroom.

“Uh…thanks,” she replied a little too late. Okay, the Nativity process had been stressful, but did she really need congratulated?

She supposed she appreciated it. It had been a whirlwind of a process, after all.

Only the odd thing was, it continued. The congratulations came pouring in; Alaska, Ivy from the Nursery school, Alyssa had cooed and gushed for ages about how exciting it was and how happy she was for her.

Nina had only blinked in reply, a little bewildered. “Thanks, Alyssa. It was a stress, but they managed to pull it off in the end.”

Alyssa gave her a funny look, then realisation seemed to dawn on her. “Oh…they’re non-binary! You know I never knew that, sorry sugar. Well congratulations to you both.”

With that, Alyssa hurried away only leaving Nina more confused than ever.

What in the fuck?

When the bell rang and Nina went to collect her class from the line, things only got weirder. Before she could hurry her class inside, Harry’s Mum waved at her from behind the school gate, beckoning her over. Nina’s heart began to sink- she was going to ask her why Harry was only a shepherd, wasn’t she, or why he didn’t get a solo during Little Donkey, or some-other-bullshit-like-that.

To Nina’s surprise, she held up a sparkly gift bag.

“Hi, sorry for bothering you!” she beamed at her. This was already unheard of- a parent apologising for taking up her time? Nina was beginning to question if she had slipped through a crack in the fabric of reality while she’d been sleeping when Harry’s Mum spoke again. “Me and the other parents had a quick whipround and got you a couple of things and a little card to say congratulations! We thought it was the least we could do given your lovely news.”

It was only after Nina had thanked her profusely, taken the bag and led her children into class that her words sank in. What lovely news was she on about?

Nina taught that morning in a daze. Well, ‘taught’ was pushing it; the last few days of term were always movie days or games days, and today was the former. Nina had decided to inject a bit of an educational element to it by showing her class Nativity and then asking them if they thought the film’s play was better than the one they’d put on. Despite it being one of her favourite Christmas films, though, she still wondered why everyone had been congratulating her today. Maybe her Nativity video had really been so amazingly good that people just had to comment on it. Nina decided that this was the only plausible explanation, and so was feeling particularly spirited as it reached breaktime and she sent the kids out to play.

She was sitting in her classroom reading all the messages she’d missed on her group chat when Willam practically crashed through her door.

“Oh my God!” she yelled, practically vibrating with excitement. “Congratulations, you lucky fucker! That’s gotta be the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen. I mean Bianca probably wants your head on a plate for keeping it in, but still! How’re you celebrating? Should we go to the shop at lunchtime and get prosecco? I mean it’s the last few days of term, I’m sure drinking on the job’s allowed. Court wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Willam was talking with such speed that it took a few seconds for Nina to register everything she’d said. “Why…would Bianca want my head on a plate?”

Willam snorted. “I mean it’s kinda obvious. You don’t think she’s gonna be pissed about it? Then again, maybe she won’t. I don’t know, I can’t get inside her head. I’m not on that Honey I Shrunk The Kids kinda bullshit.”

Nina felt her head was so clouded that even if she possessed the brightest fog lights in the world she still couldn’t see what Willam was trying to say.

“Willam,” she asked, slowly and carefully as she rested her head in her hands. “What the hell are you talking about?”

There was a pause as Willam froze, then as her eyes became huge and wide as she slowly raised a finger to point at Nina. “Jesus Harvey Christ. You…you don’t know, do you?”

Nina frowned, bewildered. “Know what?”

“Oh my God. You don’t know. This is the best thing ever. You don’t even know!” Willam howled with laughter, then, before Nina could ask what she was meant to not know, Willam had dashed out of her classroom and had begun yelling into the hall. “Courtney! Court! She doesn’t know!”

Nina began to feel her heart beat in heavy thuds as the bell went to signal the end of playtime. What didn’t she know?

Eventually Nina managed to reach the end of the day. How, she didn’t know. She was so confused by all the different odd events of the day that she felt she didn’t properly make sense at any point to her class, but that probably didn’t matter as they were all so wrapped up in Christmas nonsense that Nina could’ve left the classroom and they wouldn’t have given a shit.

She was just getting ready to leave work for the weekend when Bianca stuck her head into her classroom and made her almost jump fifty feet in the air.

“Nina,” she began, in her own blunt, abrasive way. She didn’t wait for Nina to greet her as she continued. “I know you must be wandering around with your head in the clouds at the moment, but next time do you think you could maybe just run the video by me first? I mean you’re very lucky that the parents took that well. I mean it’s really about the kids, y’know?”

Nina could only blink at her wide-eyed like a deer in the headlights, getting into trouble but not entirely sure what for. Loath to say anything in response, she simply nodded.

“I mean you should’ve really kept it out,” Bianca frowned. She let the awkward, tense silence hang in the air for a few moments before a humoured smile appeared on her face. “But congratulations. I’m very happy for you.”

Without stopping for Nina to reply, Bianca had turned on her heel and left her classroom. Nina could only look at the space she’d previously been standing in. Maybe all of this was a dream. A fever dream. She’d probably contracted some sort of illness and was experiencing some hallucinogenic vision.

She didn’t know how she made it home without causing a crash, but she managed, and as soon as she was through the door she began to vent to the person she loved most.

“Monet!” she called through to the kitchen, hanging her belongings up. “I’ve had the weirdest fucking day in living memory. So first all the teachers were congratulating me…then I got a present from the parents…then Willam was screaming about me not knowing something…and then Bianca gave me a row at the end of the day…but I still don’t know exactly why…but then she said congratulations to me too?”

It was only when Nina stopped and walked through to the kitchen that she saw the kitchen table all done up with candles and laid beautifully, Nina’s favourite meal (slow cooker beef and buttery mash) on two plates, and Monet sitting at the table with her makeup done, dressed in a backless blue bodycon that Nina had once very nearly broke the zip of trying to rip it off her one weekend away.

“Uh…” Nina frowned, more confused than ever. Slowly, as a smile spread across Monet’s face, she began to connect all the dots of weird and the picture it presented illustrated that somehow her girlfriend had to be behind it all. “Okay, what’s going on?”

Monet got up and leant against the kitchen counter. She very gently took both of Nina’s hands in hers. “You didn’t watch the whole video once I exported it, did you?”

Something like dread crossed with excitement began to pool in Nina’s gut. She narrowed her eyes. “Monet…what did you do?”

Wordlessly, Monet reached back across to the table where she picked up her phone and loaded up the Nativity video. Skipping to the end, she got past the end of Jingle Bells and showed the video to Nina. The screen faded to black, and then, Nina watched as another little title card faded into view.

To the teacher that always gives so much of herself to others, I now want to give all of myself to you.

Miss West, will you marry me?

Love, Monet x

And suddenly everything in Nina felt as if it was made of fire, adrenaline and jet fuel. Her eyes flew open, her hand smacked against her shocked, gaping mouth. Her pulse raced and her heart hammered and all of her limbs turned to jelly to the extent she wasn’t sure she was able to stand any more. When she took her eyes off her phone screen and looked at Monet, her girlfriend was down on their kitchen floor, down on one knee like in every princess movie Nina had ever seen, her hair soft and curled and loose on her shoulders and a bright smile on her painted taupe lips. Gemstone tears brimmed in her dark eyes and hung from her lashes like icicles, and there, in her outstretched hands, was an open navy box.

Inside was a ring - gold band, one small diamond - and it was when Nina saw it that she gave a sob, her own tears springing from her eyes like a broken fountain, uncontrollable and erratic.

“Oh, baby, c’mere,” Monet gave a small laugh, shaking her head and immediately rising from the floor to wrap her arms around her in a hug. Nina took a few shaky, shallow breaths, pawing at Monet’s chest to release herself from her grip and look her in the eyes.

“You! You knew…all this time, and you…you put it in the video, oh my GOD, Monet, I could’ve got in so much trouble…I did get in so much trouble, oh my God…and you didn’t even tell me-”

“I thought you’d at least watch the damn thing through before you uploaded it!” Monet burst out laughing through her tears, and Nina joined in in a lightheaded, giddy way.

“I can’t believe this is real. Fuck. My whole body feels like that time we did poppers in Crete. Oh my God. Is this happening? You want to marry me?”

“Well, I would love to marry you, but I’m waiting on an answer,” Monet smiled bashfully, bringing her arm out from around Nina’s waist and holding the ring up so Nina could see it.

The diamond only seemed to glisten more when she saw it through the tears in her own eyes, and the gold shone warm like the brightest star. It was an engagement ring- her engagement ring- and it was real, and it was surreal, but Monet was in front of her waiting for an answer with tears in her eyes and hope in her heart that matched her own.

And Nina had never been one to say no to anything.

#rpdr fanfiction #ninex #background witney #monet x change #nina west #willam belli #courtney act #things are really cool in nazareth #ortega #fluff #kidfic #proposal fic #ficmas 2020 #day 14: nice #tw: coronavirus reference #submission

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dragonofdarknesschaos · 4 years

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I've been thinking (because I'm quarantined and bored, sorry )..how it could be possible for Jack to form a good friendship? ...I mean even if a person shows affection, good intentions or a real interest on his stuff... the chance of Jack's betrayal is still there. I don't know I'm wondering ..if he can have a healthy friendship.

*cackles* Jack Spicer, as he is in XS, is not capable of forming a stable and healthy relationship, despite the fact that he desperately wants and needs one. And if that ain’t the tragedy of the whole series.

The Jack of Showdown

Just when Jack finally starts to actually warm up and be open and honest about his feelings with others, he either gets grossly mistreated (“The Deep Freeze,” “The Apprentice”) or is presented with the choice of being loved and accepted, despite who he is and what he’s done, or giving in to his baser instincts and double crossing his new would-be friends to get praised by someone who could not care less about him (“The Apprentice”). It’s difficult to tell if Jack feels he doesn’t deserve to be happy for some deep and personal reason, or if he’s so focused on being seen as EVIL™ and not good; that he believes he must take any and all opportunities to prove his evil worth. Whatever the reason, the Jack in XS would need someone that will stick by his side no matter what decisions he makes, or what actions he takes to push that person away. Someone who unconditionally supports him and wants to be by his side. The problem is, that’s more of a pet and has the potential to become quite toxic.

The Jack of Chronicles

As for the Jack of XC, he has some boundaries, and he’s not quite as ruthless. He knows he’s kind of a loser, but he still really wants a girlfriend to help boost his sense of masculine ego. But more importantly, he just wants a friend, to the point that he was willing to pay people to hang out with him (just like in XS “Something Jermaine,” “Judging Omi” and XC’s “Magic Stallion and the Wild Wild West,” “Buddy Blue Ray and the Golden Bunnies,” and “Heal Me”).

Jack enjoys Wuya’s company, but she gets frustrated with his lack of action in favor of building capital or just having fun (the Golden Toilet arc, “Super Cow Patty,” “Tokyo Madness,” and “Omi Saves the Holidays” among many others). Jack seems to have moved out of his parent’s basement, and is now in his own warehouse/factory, so he’s really trying to focus on starting up his Evil Business idea and often refers to himself as an “evil entrepreneur” throughout the series. While Wuya appreciates the “go get ‘em” spirit, she still feels that Jack isn’t doing enough to help her, which is the whole reason they teamed up in the first place. Because of her nagging attitude and matriarchal approach to the relationship, Jack often feels smothered and refuses to act. However, he still has boundaries and refuses to do certain things if they are not in his interests as well (“Back in the Flesh Again”).

Jack and Shadow

With Wuya as Jack’s pseudo-mother, he needs a datemate to call his own. Gone is his curiosity in Kimiko (though he does seem to think she’s still cool), but if it’s any other girl, he will do his best to impress her.

Case in point Willow--who he tried to ask on a date if he won the Showdown Trio in “The Fall of Xiaolin.” She strongly states that she isn’t interested in him in the least, and because the two never see each other again, I would assume Jack dropped the pursuit.

Shadow on the other hand, he likely sees a lot of himself in her. They’re both evil, admire Chase, they seem about the same age, and... that’s about where the similarities end. Shadow’s actions say that she is repulsed by Jack, but she never pushes him away, and even praises his “doo-hickies” (“The Laws of Nature,” “Rocco”). With the use of camera drones, Jack witnessed a lot of the private behavior and abuse between Chase and Shadow, and even some of the abuse in person ( “Tigress Woo,” “Rocco”). Even the cold open of “Who Shrunk Master Fung?” features Jack being very careful not to harm a strange bird, who is later revealed to be Shadow. Case in point, the Jack of XC has a streak of kindness in him, and it is unclear if Shadow sees that and resents Jack for having it, or if she admires that aspect of him. Regardless, after the events of “The Laws of Nature,” where Jack effectively double crosses Chase (and her by extension), Shadow likely made the choice to never trust Jack completely. She double crosses him at the end of their wonderful team up in “Back in the Flesh Again.” And Jack doesn’t even get upset or angry about the loss and betrayal. He’s even more smitten and tries to brag to Omi and Ping Pong before realizing they aren’t into it and flies off.

Overall Jack and Shadow have feasible grounds for a relationship--even a romantic one--if they could both create some honesty and trust between each other, but neither is willing to do that, despite Jack’s over sharing (literally every time he opens his mouth around Chase). For further reading on Jack’s relationship with Shadow and Chase, check out this post.

Jack doesn’t interact with Tigress, Kimiko’s older sister, much, but he does bother to keep tabs on her and warns Kimiko about her sister’s more nefarious activities (“Tigress Woo”). It’s unclear if he did this in an effort to get closer to the Monks as a friend, or if he was stalking Tigress because he was attracted to her. In either case, Tigress is never seen again or mentioned by Jack.

Jack’s Other Interests

There are a handful of episodes in XC that revolve around Jack seeing or meeting another evil-doer and fixating on them, often trying to model himself after them in some fashion. He does this with PandaBubba to a lesser extent in “Magic Stallion and the Wild Wild West,” then goes full blown fan for Super Cow Patty (in his self-titled episode) and later Le Mime in the same episode, making fan videos and full costumes with personas for both his fixations. In both instances with the truly evil characters (PB and Le Mime), Jack was looking for a sense of acceptance by an Evil Businessman and entrepreneurial peer, and a sense of belonging to a larger community with Le Mime and his henchmen. That desire for belonging to a larger community is reiterated earlier in the series with “Heal Me” and Reverse!Jack’s cult.

However, when presented with an actual fan of his, Tiny Sim, Jack is actually somewhat reluctant to have the fan tag along with him. And maybe that was for the best, as Jack soon discovers that the fan he inspired to become Evil is actually a lot better at it than he, himself, is (“Drawn to be Evil”). In retaliation, Jack confines the fan to being just a creative idea intern. Jack is essentially taking credit for all of Tiny Sim’s ideas, and not paying the kid a thing. Sim, either because he’s doing what his idol taught, or because he feels cheated, makes it a priority to take a Wu or two when he can out of Jack’s stash (“Mark of the Dragon Spirit”). Sadly, the series ended before the relationship between these two could be further developed. It wouldn’t have been healthy, but at least it would have been something.

Another important note, Jack does make the clear distinction in both series that the gallery of sellswords he pays to be around him are only in it as long as there’s money for them to be had. They are not his friends, they will never be his true friends, they’re just people he pays until the money runs out (“Something Jermaine,” “Judging Omi”). So Katnappe, Tubbimura, Cyclops (after their initial debut), and to a lesser extent Vlad will never truly be Jack’s friends. Vlad does make a return in XS’s “The Demon Seed” to try and cheer Jack up (not that he’s very good at it), but he doesn’t seem to want anything from Jack other than to do evil things and pal around. This is a bit of a departure from their first encounter where Jack was presumably paying Vlad to be his hired muscle and inside man (“The Deep Freeze”).

Jack’s Robots

Jack’s relationship with his various Jackbots and other robots is an interesting one. It’s possible that he created them out of a sick sense of wanting to have friends that he could control, but it comes back more to how the bots are presented in both series.

The Jackbots of XS seem to have a hive mind of sorts, as they will blindly (and sometimes literally) follow their master’s commands. Those that fall are replaced as if nothing happened to the fallen Jackbot; their numbers are legion. The bots are later programmed with emotions and feel sadness, but not fear. This is interesting, because Jack is shown having temper tantrums from time to time, but he doesn’t break things, only tosses them around (“The Journey of A Thousand Miles”).

Jack’s relationship with the more “custom” humanoid robots is split into a binary. On the one side are the bots that went rogue and have tried to annihilate him or simply want nothing to do with him: Chameleon Bot, Robo!Jack, and the patent-pending Shen Gong Wu Detect-o-bot. On the other side are the bots he grew very attached to: Yesbot, his Cheerbot squad, and the Shen Gong Wu Detect-o-bot before it went rogue. Both Yes~ and Detect-o~ allow Jack to be more of a child, as he is depicted being held like a scared child with both of them (if I remember correctly. “Oil in the Family,” “The Demon Seed”). He treats them like the parent he doesn’t have around. The Cheerbots are his hott Barbie dolls that he gets to dress up and maintain. He doesn’t go much farther than projecting personalities and life problems onto them. Eventually they are absorbed into the Jackbot hive.

Remember how Jackbots don’t show or know fear in XS? XC opens with Jack having a tantrum, and many of his various designs of bot run away from him. Jack is left cornering Chefbot, who has darts sticking out of his chef’s hat. Rather peculiar for robots to be afraid of their master, especially since they are meant to be hoards of drones. As Chefbot is developed as a character, Jack comes to respect his creation more, but Chefbot says he has no interest in hanging around someone like Jack; he wants to go places and be a real chef! He can’t do that if he’s making paltry snacks for Jack. Chefbot’s last appearance in the series is on a cooking show (either on TV or YouLook) making pizza, while Jack follows along from his RV. Jack seems quite relaxed and at ease, even using the Banyan Twister Shen Gong Wu to stretch his body and the pizza dough. It is never stated, but perhaps Jack is proud of his creation accomplishing it’s dream.

Thank You for Being a Friend

In conclusion, the Jack of XS is incapable of having a healthy friendship with anyone, either because he thinks he doesn’t deserve it or because he really is just a terrible person and pushes everyone away. He would need someone to stand by and support him no matter what he does and no matter how horribly he treats that person. Such a relationship has the potential to become toxic if boundaries are not set and if Jack doesn’t grow as a person.

The Jack of XC is desperate for a single friend, but 98% of the cast sees him as a pathetic loser, and not worth a second of their time. Those that do see value in Jack’s companionship have all been hurt by Jack’s betrayal and lack of trust, or have betrayed Jack, because they have no trust in him (often from a previous encounter). For this Jack to form a stable friendship, he needs someone who he can talk to honestly, openly, and not be judged for his feelings, and he seems to want someone who talks the same way to him. He’s ready for a relationship, he just doesn’t have the rapport or trust built up with anyone.

TL;DR

Jack lacks basic trust in all his relationships. He would need someone he can constantly count on, while also setting healthy and reasonable boundaries with that person. If honesty and trust--ABSOLUTE TRUST--is there, Jack can have a friend, maybe even something more.

#Chaos replies #anon #Jack Spicer #analysis #//the potential is there with Shadow and I strongly believe they were going to become an end game in XC #//but yeah he's burned so many bridges and there aren't even ropes left on some for him to climb on

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aquariusrunes · 5 years

Text

The Superfriends AU (part 2.5)

It had been a long day.

That was Nino’s only thought as he laid along one of the benches in the boys locker room. His arms dangling off the side as he stared at the ceiling tiles.

The day started out with him waking up to a text from his best friend informing him that he would not be in school for the next week and a half. Apparently Adrien’s old man had been in deep talks with some sort of fashion god from America, and now Adrien was going to be one of her star models in her next collection.

The deal closed last night and the Agreste crew was on a jet at five in the morning to get to Steel City USA as quickly as possible. Gabriel had apparently decided it was fine to not even tell his son about it. Adrien’s text had explained that he learned he would be going to America roughly twenty minutes before they left for the airfield.

Nino, of course, told Adrien to have a good time, keep him updated, and that he would email Adrien every assignment and all the notes he missed. And because he was a good friend like that, Adrien promised him lots of photos and a cool souvenir.

But Nino hadn’t been prepared for class without Adrien.

Going to class in general he rarely felt prepared for anymore. It was a full on warzone the minute the seats were filled. With Marinette and her crew taking up the back of the far side of the classroom and Lila and her girls sitting towards the front on Nino’s side. Adiren and he still have their original seats though, as did Chloé. But today, Nino was the only one in the front row.

No one really commented on Chloé’s absence, the girl’s appearances were getting fewer and farther between as the year went on. He suspected she might be working on a transfer of some kind, seeing as how she and Lila didn’t get on well and the blonde would rather die before joining Marinette’s side. Of course everyone asked were Adrien was, and Nino happily informed any who asked.

But then he made a mistake.

Nino had mentioned how Adrian was going to be doing this new collection with Damian Wayne. And as expected, Lila went off.

Apparently, Lila and Damian were childhood best friends. Her parents had known Bruce forever and the two couldn’t wait to set up their children on playdates whenever they could. In fact, Lila was practically an honorary Wayne. Bruce called her his future daughter-in-law because she and Damian were practically engaged. Though Lila wasn’t sure if she had romantic feelings for the notoriously stoic boy, he was very much in love with her. Damian had been chasing after her for years, apparently.

Nino was so done.

He then mentioned the campaign was for one Edna Mode. Now, Nino knew very little about fashion, he would admit this to anyone who asked. He would never pretend to know about fashion. But he did know that Edna Mode was the biggest name their was. Not only did she design the highest end clothing, she also designed superhero costumes! And she was well known as some kind of god to all in the fashion world.

Cue Lila mentioning how she, of course, new Edna. They’d met during Milan Fashion Week several years ago. Apparently Edna drew immediate inspiration from the Italian girl. Lila had been Edna’s personal muse ever since. Edna would fly her to fashion shows all over the world. Lila would be Edna’s star model, the face of Mode, if her mother hadn’t thought Lila too young when they first met. Also, Edna liked to send her cloths, you know, Mode exclusives that literally coast more than all of Paris!

Apparently, Edna was like a grandmother to the girl.

The worst part of Nino’s day so far had to be the fact that, while Marinette’s crew tried to immediately disprove Lila’s statements, Marinette herself wasn’t in class. Nino still wasn’t sure where the girl was. He hadn’t seen her all day, and he was honestly a little worried. He texted her a few times but his messages didn’t go through. His mind was racing with possibilities of what Lila could have done.

And now, he was sitting in the boys locker room. Alya, Rose, Mylène, Juleka and Sabrina were out in the cafeteria, hanging on every word of Lila’s story. It was about how she saved Ace, Bruce Wayne’s personal therapy dog, from oncoming traffic in Gotham City two summers ago. Nino had needed a break. And the boys locker room was perfect, seeing as all the boys Nino knew, and thus would interact with him, didn’t believe a word that came out of Lila’s mouth.

“You look rough bud.” Nino’s head lifted slightly, seeing Kim leaning against the set of lockers to his right.

“Feel rough dude.”

Kim laughed before sitting down next to his friend. “Needed a little break from the rat queen and her pack?” He asked.

“Yeah…” Nino closed his eyes. “Please do not call my girlfriend a rat.”

“Sorry.”

The two sat in silence for a few moments. Kim was the first person, after Marinette, to find out that Nino was working undercover for the girl. He’d even changed Nino’s contact name in his phone to The MoleTM. And the two had rekindled their childhood friendship rather quickly. Kim was the person Nino had known second longest out of everyone in Bustier’s class, the first being Marinette.

Kim also took the liberty of informing the rest of Mari’s crew where Nino’s true loyalty lied. It was nice having his old friends back, especially because he missed hanging out with the boys. Still sucked that they had to keep up an act anywhere Lila could possibly be though.

“DC texted me last night.” Kim said. “Asked me to spread the word. She’s gonna be out of town for a little while.”

Nino slowly sat up, removing his hat as it began to fall and placing it in his lap. “Out of town?” He asked. “Where’d she go?”

“America.”

“Dang.”

“Yeah,” Kim scratched the back of his head. “She said that she had totally spaced about letting anyone know. Apparently she’s got a Great Aunt who lives overseas and she’s gonna go spend some time with her. She’s also gonna get to see one of her cousins. She sounded really pumped.”

“Why didn’t she just text everyone?” Nino asked.

“Mari said that when she hit my contact, she thought she was texting in the groupchat. She only realized after she sent it, so she quickly asked me to spread the news. Apparently she was texting from the plane before they took off. She left real late last night.” He shrugged. “Anyway, she doesn’t have international coverage, so it’s gonna be radio silence for the next ten or so days.”

“Ten days?” Nino questioned.

“Hey, she got permission from her parents, and all the work she’ll miss from teachers.” Kim twisted to be facing Nino directly. “More importantly, I overheard that sunshine’s gone too.”

Nino nodded slowly, unsure of where this was now heading.

“Adrien, despite taking a stance as Switzerland, is one of Lila’s biggest buffers. Still not sure what the kid’s got on her, but whatever it is, it keeps her a least a little in check. And with DC gone, who knows what she’ll do.”

Nino nodded, suddenly aware of just how serious this could get. Of course if Lila said anything Mari’s crew would come to her defense, but rumors involving Marinette always seemed more potent and to have a harsher affect when the girl wasn’t around to directly defend herself. This would be a very dangerous week.

“I’m on guard.” Nino said sternly. “Everything I hear, no matter who it’s from, is going straight to you guys.”

Kim gave a sad half smile. “Remember when school didn’t feel like some sort of secret war?” He asked. “When all we had to worry about was if Chloé would accidently akumatize someone and if whatever they were serving in the caf was edible that day.”

Nino responded with his own half hearted smile. “Ah the good ol days, may they return to us at some point.”

Kim stood, patting Nino’s shoulder. “Keep us posted my dude, you’re our only life line in these trying times.” He watched his friend walk out of the locker room. He’d give it a few more minutes before he left and returned to that most cursed lunch table.

This week was going to be hell. And something absolutely awful would happen before it was up, he could feel it in his gut. And despite what most people thought of him upon first glance, his gut was never wrong.

He pondered briefly about what would have happened had he listened to it when the Liar first showed up. Oh how different things could have been.

…

His knee bounced rapidly, foot tapping against the carpeted floor of the Wayne Enterprise Jet. His fingers rhythmically pounding against the small table set between his seat and the two across from him. His green eyes glaring back at him in the reflection of the window. It wasn’t that he hated flying, or that it really even bothered him, he just enjoyed it more when he was the one in control of the plane.

He had asked, of course, but his father had said no. Even though he knew how, and his father was perfectly aware of how good of a pilot Damian was.

Yes, he didn’t like this pilot. The flight to Smallville had been fine, he supposed, they only hit a minor patch of turbulence that he was sure they would have avoided if he had been piloting, but it was fine. They had gone to Smallville to pick up Jon who was helping his grandmother with some big event happening at the Kent Farm. All the supers were there though, so when Bruce had called and asked Clark if Jon could tag along this week, his father agreed. He was already out of school anyway.

Now they were flying to Steel City so he could be forced to model with some famous Parisian and his lovely cousin and some other girl who’s name he’d already forgotten. Damian never really modeled before, but Edna seemed confident in him. It was also an excuse to see his cousin. He hadn’t seen her in person for a long time.

The knot in his stomach tightened and the rhythm of his fingers increased.

Finally his ears popped, just as a hand softly rested over his own. His fingers flattened out against the table as Damian slowly glanced to his side. Sitting next to him was a sixteen year old boy who was rarely pegged for his age.

Colin Wilkes looked almost nothing like his ten-year-old self that Damian had met six years ago. The venom coursing through him had long since began to alter the boy’s body, making him function as a better host. He was very muscular, with a physique that rivaled that of a professional football player. He had also gotten taller, coming just an inch or so above Damian’s new height. Colin’s face was the one thing that never seemed to change, still round and doughy with stubborn baby fat persistently clinging to his cheeks. His tan skin coated in freckles, the number of which would very depending on the season. His scraggly bright orange hair still hung in his eyes, the bright hazel irises were currently searching Damian for something, some sort of chink in his armor.

Colin’s eyes were very good at finding chinks in his armor. That is, after all, how they got into this whole mess.

“Everything okay Damian?” His voice was soft, it didn’t sound like it belonged in his body, but Damian knew just how low and threatening it could become.

“Course.” Damian tried to break eye contact but found himself failing. Colin’s own eyes squinted as he pushed his bangs out of his face. He knew Damian was lying, he was good at that, he just hoped the boy wouldn’t push it.

With a sigh the red head removed his hand. “Okay,” He breathed, standing from his seat next to the darker skinned teen. “We can talk about it later.” Damian’s eyes remained trained on him as he raised his hands above his head and stretched before saying “I’m going to run to the restroom.”

Damian watched as Colin walked back to the jet’s small bathroom. Once the door was closed, he turned back around, immediately locking with a set of wide crystal blue eyes. “You alright Damian?”

Why was everyone asking him that today?

“‘m fine, Jon.” He looked away from the half Kryptonian, back out the window. After many years of knowing the boy he’d discovered that Jon’s lie detector only worked when he was making eye contact with his target.

“Colin sure didn’t seem to think so.” The boy murmured. “Are you upset that I tagged along?” He asked, eyes downcast.

“Jon I invited you,” Damian scoffed out. “Why would I be upset that you are here when it was my idea?” He crossed his arms instead of going back to tapping his fingers.

“I don’t know, maybe you wanted to be alone with Colin…”

Damian and Jon had a very unique relationship. While Colin had been the first friend Damian ever made, Jon was his second, and more importantly he was the son of Superman. Damian and Jon shared a legacy, a duty to their neighboring cities. They were both very much like their fathers, and very much stuck in the mens’ shadows. Ever since they met though, Damian found that they only ever help to pull one another out of those dark casts.

Clark and Bruce were friends, of course, but not like Damian and Jon were. Jon, like Marinette, felt very much like the other side of Damian’s internal coin. They balanced one another so nicely. He was also one of the few people Damian actually cared for, let alone trusted. Jon was the third person he ever came out to, the first being Tim and the second being Marinette.

Jon was also the one who encouraged Damian to pursue his feelings for Colin. That had been almost three years ago. Now the two boys were rapidly approaching their three year anniversary, and Jon was still their biggest supporter.

The knot in Damian’s stomach tightened again.

“I just,” He sighed leaning his head back. “You’ll be meeting my cousin.” Damian began, pausing to check and see if the boy was listening. Jon’s eyes were wide and attentive, as they typically were when Damian spoke. “She’s, very, how do I put this?”

“Is she mean?”

“No.”

“Hard to get along with?”

“Hardly,” he laughed. “I’d say she’s the easiest person in our family to get along with. Easier than Grayson, and that’s really saying something.” Damian undid his arms. “She’s just got this sixth sense, she can read people. It’s eerie sometimes.”

“What do you mean?” Jon’s head tilted slightly. No matter how old they got, the half Kryptonian always had this look, it was that of a lost puppy. Tim often mentioned that it was the reason Damian decided to be Jon’s friend, because he reminded him of his animals. Jon had also filled out the older they got, taking on the more traditional physique of the super family. His face was chiseled and square, like his father’s with a softer nose resembling his mother’s. He adopted the traditional Kent glasses and was even currently wearing a red flannel, but the one thing that helped him stand out from the rest of the family was how he gelled his hair up into spikes Damian found the hair choice a tad ridiculous but often opted not to comment on it.

“The last time I saw Marinette in person she happened to meet one of Grayson’s girlfriends. Her name was Kattie something, I don’t really remember. But I do remember how much Grayson liked her, even thought he loved her.” Damian recalled the day in his mind. “She met her for ten seconds, tops. Shook her hand, they introduced themselves, Grayson and Kattie left.” Damian’s eyes moved downwards, focusing on the table between him and his friend. “After they were gone, Marinette turned to me and told me that Kattie was cruel and would break his heart before the month was up.”

“And?”

“Two weeks later Grayson woke up and she was gone, along with all the money in his wallet and his credit cards. All of the watches Bruce had bought him over the years were gone too. She also took his car.” Damian shrugged. “Course, it didn’t take us long to track the bitch down, but still. Grayson was heart broken.”

Jon nodded slowly. “You’re afraid Marinette isn’t going to like Colin.” It wasn’t a question. Another reason why Damian thought their friendship was so strong, Jon had learned how to read him.

“It’s not that I think she won’t like him, I mean it’s Colin.” Damian’s hands pulled at the bottom of his jacket. “But, I don’t know, she’s predicted at least four breakups in my family and she didn’t even meet those people! It was just based off my brothers describing them. Hell, she even predicted Stephanie and Tim’s break up.”

“What has she said when you’ve talked to her about Colin in the past?” Jon asked leaning heavily on the table.

“I, well, I have talked to her about him before but, briefly. It’s not like I’ve gone into long exaggerating details about him. I’m not exactly a gusher, Jon.”

“Well I know that.” Jon’s head tilted again. “She knows you have a boyfriend though, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that it’s Colin?”

“Yes.”

“What else?” Jon sat back in his seat, Damian could see Lois Lane in his eyes.

“She knows how we met, that he’s a meta, and that he’s a redhead.” Damian tried thinking back to whenever he had mentioned the boy. “She knows that he doesn’t have any family ties, that I like him, and that we do vigilante stuff together.” Damian’s eyes raised to see an unimpressed look on Jon’s face.

“You got to get better at expressing yourself Dami.” He said flatly.

“Something I’ve been telling him for years.” They both looked up as Colin retook his seat, quickly taking Damian’s right hand in his left. “What are we talking about?”

“Noth-”

“Damian’s worried that his cousin isn’t going to like you.” Jon said, voice mostly flat but slightly amused.

“Kent, are you aware of what my family does to snitches?” Damian asked, eyes narrowing as he felt Colin squeeze his hand.

Both of the other boys laughed. “I only ever snitch to Colin though! And that’s Colin! Usually it’s fine! And only the important stuff, I know when not to repeat you to him.” Jon’s laugh grew, catching the attention of Bruce who was sitting on the opposite side of the jet.

“I appreciate it Jon. Your information is always good.” Collin mused. “And Dames, you don’t need to worry. If your cousin doesn’t like me, then she doesn’t like me, not a big deal.” He shrugged. “But, since it is obviously important to you, I will be on my best behavior.” Colin leaned over and kissed his boyfriend’s cheek. “Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”

“Famous last words.” Damian grumbled out, face quickly returning to the window. While his friends laughed and began a new conversation Damian’s grip on his boyfriend’s hand tightened. The knot in his stomach felt like it was going to explode.

_______________________________________________________________________

(part 1) (part 2) (part 2.5) - Here (part 3)

If you have any questions about the story / AU feel free to ask! And if you want to be tagged, let me know! I have no set posting schedule I just upload whenever I get something done, I doubt updates will come this fast in the future, but it helps when I see everyone’s interest in it! Makes me really excited to write and keeps my mind flowing with ideas! Also, I know not everyone is a fan of Damian and Colin as a ship, and if that is not your thing that’s totally fine, but please do not be rude or send hate about it just because it isn’t your personal preference.

Also this is part 2.5 because it still involves the key players for this au getting to where the story is actually taking place and I wanted to wait for Part 3 to be when they all start actually interacting with one another.

@graduatedmelon @northernbluetongue @violatiger8 @bamagirl513 @vixen-uchiha @beaversuenightly @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @todaylillypads @laurakinneylance @vgirl-10123

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esabri · 4 years

Text

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necessary scharf sharp Flügel wing schaffen create Nachbar neighbor Wasch wash Fledermaus bat eher rather Menge crowd mais corn vergleichen compare Gedicht poem Schnur string Glocke bell abhängen depend Fleisch meat einreiben rub Rohr tube berühmt famous Dollar dollar Strom stream Angst fear Blick sight dünn thin Dreieck triangle Erde planet Eile hurry Chef chief Kolonie colony Uhr clock Mine mine Krawatte tie eingeben enter Dur major frisch fresh Suche search senden send gelb yellow Pistole gun erlauben allow Druck print tot dead Stelle spot Wüste desert Anzug suit Strom current Aufzug lift stiegen rose ankommen arrive Stamm master Spur track Elternteil parent Ufer shore Teilung division Blatt sheet Substanz substance begünstigen favor verbinden connect nach post verbringen spend Akkord chord Fett fat froh glad Original original Aktie share Station station Papa dad Brot bread aufladen charge richtig proper Leiste bar Angebot offer Segment segment Sklave slave ente duck Augenblick instant Markt market Grad degree besiedeln populate küken chick liebe dear Feind enemy antworten reply Getränk drink auftreten occur Unterstützung support Rede speech Natur nature Angebot range Dampf steam Bewegung motion Weg path Flüssigkeit liquid protokollieren log gemeint meant Quotient quotient Gebiss teeth Schale shell Hals neck Sauerstoff oxygen Zucker sugar Tod death ziemlich pretty Geschicklichkeit skill Frauen women Saison season Lösung solution Magnet magnet Silber silver danken thank Zweig branch Spiel match Suffix suffix insbesondere especially Feige fig ängstlich afraid riesig huge Schwester sister Stahl steel diskutieren discuss vorwärts forward ähnlich similar führen guide Erfahrung experience Partitur score apfel apple gekauft bought geführt led Tonhöhe pitch Mantel coat Masse mass Karte card Band band Seil rope Rutsch slip gewinnen win träumen dream Abend evening Zustand condition Futtermittel feed Werkzeug tool gesamt total Basis basic Geruch smell Tal valley noch nor doppelt double Sitz seat fortsetzen continue Block block Tabelle chart Hut hat verkaufen sell Erfolg success Firma company subtrahieren subtract Veranstaltung event besondere particular viel deal schwimmen swim Begriff term Gegenteil opposite Frau wife Schuh shoe Schulter shoulder Verbreitung spread arrangieren arrange Lager camp erfinden invent Baumwolle cotton geboren born bestimmen determine Quart quart neun nine Lastwagen truck Lärm noise Ebene level Chance chance sammeln gather Geschäft shop Stretch stretch werfen throw Glanz shine Immobilien property Spalte column Molekül molecule wählen select falsch wrong grau gray Wiederholung repeat erfordern require breit broad vorbereiten prepare Salz salt Nase nose mehreren plural Zorn anger Anspruch claim Kontinent continent

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afoxysunny · 4 years

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Jives as High Duke

So Jives gets a second pick and oh my G did i struggle with choosing this one. In the end I'm pretty happy with the decision to give him the Monkey Miraculous

The whole story for how he ended up with having to pick a second time is already on the post about Stingy, who gets the Turtle from Jives, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much

So here are the references for this design

This design came out a lot simpler than it probably should be considering that it's based on the Chinese Monkey King but Jives isn't one for overly flashy and elaborate costumes in my opinion

Also, yes, again, his eyey should be blue but making colour changes to coloured pencil drawings is really hard, I'm sorry

Again, i just did what felt natural to me and in no time this was the outcome. Conclusion: drawing Jives comes very natural to me and i appreciate him for that

Design Notes:

Chest Pattern - i wanted to make the chest pattern here resemble the one he had as Grinder Turtle, this was also a big factor that sold me on giving him this Miraculous. I just think it looks really cool and it connects the two designs in a vague sense

Beanie - my boy Jives always wears some sort of hat, this is no exception. The Monkey Miraculous is a Crown and here it blends in so it now replaces the brim section of the beanie. On second thought it might be a little basic to choose a beanie but it just really suits him, i couldn't think of a better fit. Especially because it goes along really well with the headshape of the monkey i based him on

Toque Macaque - I'll be real with you, I'm not a huge fan of monkeys which makes them one of the few animal species i don't love and also makes the biggest reason i wasn't immediately happy to give my dear Jives this Miraculous xD I'm shallow i know. Anyways. I may not know a lot about monkeys but i knew enough to pick this macaque because the colours go well enough with the Monkey Kwami Xuppu and i liked the markings it has. [coicidentally this specific kind, the Toque Macaque, happens to share its natural habitat with the peacock ;)]

Tail - on his back you see how the rope detailing from his chest and pants combine into the belt and eventually the tail. I wanted the markings to kind of resemble a harness for climbing, i don't think it comes across too well though

Hair - the little bit you can still see of his actual hair coincidentally blends in almost seamlessly with the colour of his costume, that wasn't planned but i like it a lot

Reasoning:

At the point in time where i made the decision that Stingy would take the Turtle Miraculous from Jives i already had most Miraculous assigned to most other characters, in fact i was only really missing one for Ziggy. So spoiler alert i guess for him. I fudged around for a while between the Mouse and the Monkey, both would've worked well with either but in the end settled on the Monkey for Jives for multiple stupid timy reasons. For example the chest pattern i already mentioned, my ship-trash side going "a monkey and a peacock fit together way better aesthetically than a mouse and a peacock would", he and Xuppu would have a funny bro dynamic together etc.

Story:

I already explained why and how Jives loses the Turtle Miraculous to Stingy in my post about the latter so I'll just give a short summary here before moving on

As per usual Jives didn't eat much throughout the day and ends up fainting. This time it's a much bigger deal though. Usually he doesn't actually fully faint, just sway a little, maybe collapse but for the most parts he stays conscious just really weakened. That day the team of new heroes is fighting an important battle when he full on passes out in the middle of it. Luckily Stingy is able to step in to build their defense up again.

Obviously, instead of saying "i eat as little as possible because i have a problem" Jives just shrugs it off and goes "guess i didn't eat enough again, my bad guys, sorry" and thinks it'll be fine. He didn't expect Álfurildi, aka Sportacus, to take this very literal and announce that he planned on having them eat in his airship as a whole group anyway gor team moral and to make sure they're all healthy enough to actually handle a Miraculous. They deduce that must have been the reason Jives full on fainted this time, while going by his usual life he obviously didn't need as much energy as he now needs to be a superhero so the simple solution is to just eat more.

He makes excuses to not eat with the others as often as he can but one day he'd have to actively leave the others to do so as he already is in the airship with them when they start preparing to serve the next meal. That day he actually snaps at Sportacus that he just doesn't want to eat. Unfortunately, thanks to being such a gentle soul and also sensing Jives frustration and hunger Sportacus tries to comfort Jives with the worst thing he could've said. "heroes gotta eat well, so you can become big and strong" to which Jives absolutely loses it. He snaps at him "I'm already too big without eating anything, can't you just leave me alone!" and just jumps out of the airship. By now he already has Xuppu as his new partner so of cause he makes it down unharmed to run off into the forest. Sportacus wants to follow him but Robbie stops him. Robbie, who so far was pretty quiet and reclusive when the teens came to visit, says he will go find and talk to him taking Pixel with him as he is his best friend after all.

I'll spare you the unnecessarily details i cane up with and just say this is the moment Robbie gets to explain how the powers i gave him work and we get to see that he does really deeply care but just can't really express it. They find Jives and thanks to Robbie being able to relate to him about some of his insecurities and Pixel being a great friend he ends up confessing to them about his eating disorder. He never wanted to be the odd one out but never managed to fit in with the others. It's hard to hide you're different when you're towering over your peers so he figured if he just stopped eating he'd stop growing and though it had no positive effect on him he just couldn't stop doing it even after realizing how bad it had gotten.

Going back to the airship together once the situation calmed down a bit and with Jives' permission they let Sportacus in on this secret. As Robbie figured, the local health expert knows exactly what foods wouldn't upset such an empty stomach too badly and they start the process of finding a few good things for Jives to eat so he doesn't break down again.

Name:

Quick, something more lighthearted

When Jives gets his second pick for a Miraculous his eyes fall on the little Monkey, Xuppu. The two pretty quickly get along thanks to Xuppu being a jokester and Jives liking how bro-like they can talk and poke fun at each other. This turns out to be a great pick as this Kwami of Jubilation not only like shouting random noises around just like Jives but is also sassy and straightforward enough to remind him to eat every once in a while by poking fun at him using something Pixel once said to him "I'll not let you eat less than the Kwamis" (yes this part should've technically been in the reasoning section but you kinda need the context of the story for it so i put it here)

So Trixie explains that Xuppu's transformation and powers are based on the Chinese Monkey King (she knows that from the Guardians) but Jives really isn't one for flashy costumes and important titles so not only is his costume more basic than it probably should be but also he wamts to name himself "Duke". Stingy immediately objects "A duke is about as royal as a prince! You're completely underselling this concept. You have to trade with me! You get yoir turtle back. Let me be King!" Xuppu and Wayzz look at each other and roll their eyes, Xuppu then steps floats forward to say "well, he's not entirely wrong. Wouldn't you like to pick something higher?" so Jives chuckles and goes "High Duke". Again Stingy is outraged by this disrespect "that's ridiculous!" but Xuppu laughs and says "no, i like his style! Let's do this!" and so their new duo is established

Look, don't judge me, everyone headcanons Jives with growing not all legal things in his garden so now that he's actually a teen in my au I'm keeping it xD

Thank you so so much for reading so much of my rambling. You're so cool for taking the time to read this!

#Lazytown #miraculous ladybug #Lazytown au #Miraculous Lazybug #revive the lazy #jives junkfood #maggi mjói #Xuppu #Eating disorder #mentioned

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recentanimenews · 3 years

Text

FEATURE: Why Early One Piece Remains So Magical

If you go back and rewatch episodes from One Piece's early years, there's a vibe that can best be described as "breezy." Not that the series doesn't have its emotional, heartbreaking moments (it has a bunch) but there's a sense of meandering delight. You know when you wake up in the morning on a day that you have all to yourself? That feeling of "Well, what am I going to do today?" That's the feeling I'm talking about. Early One Piece has a lot of that.

First, I should clarify that when I talk about "early" One Piece, I don't mean specifically pre-time skip. I actually mean the story up until about when the Going Merry gets its viking funeral. The adventure up until that point had been full of hints and nods and little tangents about where it could go, but it's when Garp arrives, reveals his connection to Luffy, and then basically lays out the schematics behind how the world works and who the Emperors are that suddenly One Piece begins to fall into line a little bit.

For me, that's where early One Piece definitively ends. I'm not saying that the stuff to come after it is worse in any way. Far from it. There is so much joy and cool stuff to be found in arcs like Thriller Bark and Sabaody and Marineford and Whole Cake Island and Wano. One Piece is still an engaging, enrapturing story, and I sincerely doubt that I will ever quit it. It's just a different kind of story.

A lot of this has to do with how the series allocates its goals. In early One Piece, the main overarching goals are "find the One Piece" and "ensure Luffy becomes King of the Pirates," and both of them are approached very loosely. There's a real "We'll get there when we get there" attitude. In fact, most of the major arcs from this time period — Arlong Park, Alabasta, Enies Lobby — don't take place due to any grand plot machinations. The story does not push them to the forefront. Rather, they happen due to the Straw Hat Crew wanting to take care of one of their own. They are the main thing going on, yet they are totally character-based, and in that way, almost happenstance. Luffy does not strive to take down Arlong or Crocodile or Rob Lucci. Rather they get in the way of his beloved crew member's happiness, and he can't abide by them.

Also yes, Vivi is a Straw Hat.

Fast-forward about 15 years and we're dealing with the team-up to take down Kaido and the discovery of the Poneglyphs. These have personal ramifications, but they're very narrative-based. Definite things in the plot will happen when they are completed. For me, this is exciting in, again, a different way. For a long time, the Straw Hat Crew was kind of aloof to their accomplishments. They stopped a warlord from over-throwing a kingdom and released a sky nation from the grips of a megalomaniacal tyrant and declared war on the World Government just so Robin could live freely. Then they sailed away like "Yeah! That was fun! Break out the meat n' booze!" Now, they're very aware of their impact on the world. They are major players who recognize their roles.

In the first Wano opening "Over The Top," the wonderful Hiroshi Kitadani croons, "I have to get there because I want to get there first." But in "We Are!", the first-ever One Piece opening, he sings, "Compasses and such will only hold us back." Obviously, I doubt this was deliberate, but it's kind of indicative of the aims of these two sections of the One Piece timeline. One is about explicitly getting somewhere. The other is about getting somewhere ... sort of.

Of course. none of early One Piece would be possible without the talented folk behind it. Having previously directed on Sailor Moon, series director Konosuke Uda oversaw the series until midway through the Enies Lobby arc, during a time when the character designs were often less formal than they are now. Noboru Koizumi's beautiful characters seemed to burst with enthusiasm and feeling, their faces tailor-made for the expressiveness required of the series.

The late Michiru Shimada worked on many scripts and her work remains consistently underrated for just how well she translated Eiichiro Oda's big character moments to the screen. Nami's "Help me?" Luffy waving the flag for Wapol and Chopper to prove that it didn't break? Zoro declaring that he will never lose again after his loss to Mihawk? Shimada had a hand in turning all of these from unforgettable manga scenes to unforgettable anime scenes.

Meanwhile, directors like Hidehiko Kadota, Junji Shimizu, and many others ensured constant energy. And finally, you had Shiro Hamaguchi, who after composing the score for a little game called Final Fantasy VII, gave One Piece its iconic music. Early One Piece is full of wonderful anime creators and I implore that you look them up and see what they each bring to the table.

I think early One Piece's mix of playfulness and amazingly touching emotional moments is why it remains so rewatchable for me. At the point of this writing, it's almost 1,000 episodes long. Under most circumstances, that would be too high of a hill to climb. But those first few arcs present a world I want to be in, a world so comfortable and exciting that the episode number doesn't matter anymore. It's a testament to their power that so many fans have stuck around this long. Early One Piece, y'all. There's just something about it.

Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daniel Dockery

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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raeynbowboi · 5 years

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Dating Disney: Prince Phillip

So, I’m a writer. A fantasy writer. And I happen to also be a certified medievalist. Then I got to thinking, a whole lot of people have talked about what the Disney princesses would be wearing and look like, but nobody’s really given the Disney princes or heroes the same love. So, I thought I’d take a look at the time period, culture, and costumes of the Disney men (and later women) to determine how appropriate or inappropriate their costume is for the era. Now in full earnest, I am not a fashion historian although I wish I was that sounds like such a fun job. This is just what I could find doing some online research. And I’m starting with Prince Phillip instead of Prince Florian because Phillip has always been my favorite prince and I only realized why he was when I figured out I was gay and crushing big time on that cute prince so we’re starting with him.

Character: Prince Phillip Movie: Sleeping Beauty (1959) Setting: Tuscany, Italy / Holy Roman Empire Year/Era: ~1350, Early Italian Renaissance (14th Century)

Many people erroneously place this movie in England, Germany, or France, which is understandable. Disney Wiki lists the movie as being in England, the Sleeping Beauty Castle is based on Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, and the bulk of the story is a combination of the French Perrault version and the German Grimm version, albeit decisively leaning more Grimm, unlike Cinderella that leans more Perrault. However when the characters of this film are photoshopped next to other Disney characters, they tend to look slightly darker and tanner, hinting at a more Mediterranean location, although they could very well be living along the Cote d’Azure in France. However, what ultimately places this movie in Italy is surprisingly the pieces of Phillip’s costume. While researching this, I found that parts of his costume were almost exclusive to Italy, appearing only otherwise in France. With this time period we can also gather a general idea of the condition of their world. In the 1350s, Italy was not an independent country and was part of the Holy Roman Empire. However, because the Alps separated Italy from the rest of the empire, Italy had a lot more free reign to hand power over to local kings and high ranking noblemen who would in turn be loyal to the holy roman emperor, as an emperor would still outrank a king. Thus it’s still possible to have kingdoms inside of an empire. Of course, I am an expert on neither the 14th Century nor the Holy Roman Empire, so this is more of an educated guess.

Outer Layer: The Cap, Cloak, and Boots

I was genuinely surprised by how easily I found Phillip’s cap. It’s called a bycocket, and was a gender neutral hat worn by royal and noble men and women starting in the 13th century, and often decorated with feathers. So not only is the hat era appropriate, it’s also appropriate for his station and status. The cloak would certainly show wealth. However, considering that he is out riding and is not attempting to show off his wealth, the long cloak would be to his disadvantage. Cloaks would be worn to combat the cold or the weather, and the movie gives us no indication he needs to worry about either, so he’s just wearing it to look cool. Finally, his long leather boots I initially wrote off as fantasy writing because I wasn’t finding any boots that looked like his until I found art from the medieval period with boots that match his own, although dating the artwork is difficult. This may have been an outlier in design, as many more of the boots from this era that I saw had lacing going up the sides to adjust the fit, but plain leather boots did appear to exist in the very approximated time frame. Funny enough, when he loses these three types of garments after falling in the river, he is effectively wearing commoner clothes. Without the tall fine leather boots, excessively long riding cloak, and royal bycocket hat, the rest of his appearance can easily pass for a commoner, which is what Aurora mistakenly believes him to be.

The Lower Layers: Shirt, Tights, and Shoes

The trickiest part of Phillip’s costume was the gray part of his top because my initial instinct was to call it a tunic, but tunics tend to reach closer to the knee outside of renaissance fairs. The neckline in particular bugged me as it seemed to situate itself more on his shoulders and swoop down around the neck as if the piece was more ornamental. Then while looking for images, I found it. A giornea, a piece of clothing worn over the lower layers and found exclusively in Italy or France (where it’s called a Journade) It’s a type of tunic, but with the sides missing. In fact, in certain images (like above) there’s even a line visible under the sleeve on the giornea that shows where Phillip’s giornea doesn’t close all the way and is therefore held together by a belt. Unfortunately this line stops at the belt, and if it’s really two sides of a garment held together like the reference pic, there should be a “through line” from below the sleeve all the way down to the end of the “skirt” of the giornea. I’m afraid if there is a name for Phillip’s shoes, I failed to find one. These are effectively “indoor shoes” worn inside of Phillip’s riding boots or changed into when he took the other boots off. Socks hadn’t been invented yet, so these shoes that were probably treated to be softer, and were designed for walking around on smoother interior surfaces. And his shirt is just well... a shirt. Just because it’s not a modern garment doesn’t mean it has to have an odd name. It’s just a black long-sleeve shirt with a high collar.

Outfit Two: Royal attire

The only real noteworthy part of Phillip’s second costume is the doublet he wears, which is a long-sleeved coat worn over the shirt and often worn by nobility and royalty. However, there’s a major problem with Phillip’s doublet. The sleeves designed with the slits in them is called a Paned Sleeve, which was invented in the 16th century, 200 years after this movie is set. Now, it’s possible that the poofs on Phillip’s doublet are deliberately designed with stripes and are not in fact a Paned Sleeve, but it is the most historically inaccurate part of Phillip’s wardrobe. While yes, a doublet existed in the 14th century, the one worn by Phillip would be far more at home in the 17th century.

The Verdict

He truly seems to be dressed for his proper era and Disney clearly did their research while applying some design choices of their own. There’s only a few small issues with his giornea, since it fits over his neck and should be two separate sides held together, but the “skirt” of his top shows no seams that would indicate a further divide in his giornea. While one could argue he’s dressed below his station, Phillip was probably out for a leisurely horse ride or might have even been hunting. Doesn’t matter how rich you are, you probably wouldn’t work out in an expensive tailored suit. He’s wearing less expensive clothes because he doesn’t need to look princely, he just needs to dress practically. And that works. The second outfit however needs to ditch the poofy sleeves, or at least make them one solid piece of cloth to save them from being unfashionable for his era. Still, I was not expecting Phillip’s outfit to be so era appropriate, and Phillip passed with flying colors. Phillip for the most part is dressed like he’s from the 14th century, just with a slightly more modern update to some parts. Collectively, I’d give him an A-. The doublet is a problem, but it’s not what he’s wearing for most of the movie, so I can let it slide as them wanting to make him look more “fancy”.

#disney #medieval #prince phillip #disney prince #medieval clothing #historically accurate #disney phillip #renaissance #sleeping beauty #disney princesses #historically accurate disney princesses #14th century #costume #period clothing #period costume #historically accurate disney #aurora #maleficent

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latitudesunknown · 4 years

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Tiny Haven Gazette #3

In which I drop the gazette format because it takes an ungodly amount of time and nobody cares. 🎉

My house gets a first floor, and coincidentally, my storage doubles, which is a relief. That should free me from spending 30mn every day desperately trying to figure out what to part with for at least a month.

So much space!

And now that it’s been upgraded, I get more customization options and can change the outside of my house!

¨🦄¨

By sheer dumb luck, I finally figure out how to get money trees!!!! I can’t believe it took me so long (although I’m very happy I never looked the answer up online). I should have known there was something up with the glowing golden hole that appeared whenever you dug up some money, that thing was clearly magic!

My pockets were full, so I had no choice but to bury back the money bag I’d just dug out, and this happened. Honestly considering how often I walk around with full pockets I’m astounded this didn’t happen sooner.

So now I have a little money tree orchard. Next experience: does the money tree give you MORE money if you plant a bigger money bag? Tried it this morning, will get an answer in a few days.

¨🦄¨

Raiiiiinbow!

That’s it. There’s no story to go with it, but it’s the first rainbow I’ve seen in the game!

¨🦄¨

I can’t stop thinking about that sweet little cow I saw on @astorytotellyourfriends ‘s island last week, so I decide to build the last house in the hopes of finding her on an island and inviting her over.

In the process, I realize I could have built myself a beach house all along.

Damnit!

To my horror, however, the very next morning, the house has been sold to a stranger!

Thankfully, my new neighbour, while not being Norma, is just as sweet.

I covet her living room SO BADLY. And also I kinda wanna eat her. Why would you design a rhinoceros to look like a cake?! She must get nightmares where people run after her, trying to bite off her strawberry horn.

¨🦄¨

Shortly after, and as a result of me ignoring him completely for a few days, Phebus FINALLY decides to leave the island.

I actually took a chance when I decided to talk to him, considering that’s the way he always looks.

“Good luck with the neighbours, their stories and their problems... you’re going to need a good dose of patience!”

That shouldn’t be a problem because, unlike you, I actually like people!

And because I like people, of course, joke’s on me, because I feel super sad to see him leave. 🙄

¨🦄¨

Following his departure, I start buying mystery island tickets like a crazy person, hoping to bump into Norma, but so far, no luck.

Why did I meet so many chickens?!

It’s the second day Phebus’s old house is on sale and I’m sure it’ll get sold to a random NPC any second now. The stress is intense!

¨🦄¨

I don’t know what’s up with them but everyone on the island keeps asking me if they should change their catchphrases! After the tenth time, I finally give in with Lili, assuming she’ll just come up with a new one on her own, but then am faced with a horrible screen that is asking ME to come up with something on the spot!

Have I mentioned how much I love it when she makes that face?

It took me ten minutes and some internet research to come up with this. This is too big of a responsibility!!

At least she was happy about it.

I’ve gone back to refusing to help the others, though. At least not until I can come up with proper catchphrases for them!

¨🦄¨

For the very first time, I get asked to play postman for my villagers. See, Nacer’s been bonding with Kali (no wonder, since they’re both jocks), but he was too shy to give him a present himself.

“Kali has helped me so much, I picked up a present for him. But I’m too shy to give it to him myself...”

Feeling like cupid, I hurry to Kali’s house. 👼🏹💘

“A frog costume! Oh la la!”

I have to admit that wasn’t the kind of gift I’d been expecting considering how much they both love sports, but ok!

“Did Kali say something about the gift?”

That was super cute, I hope I’ll get more requests like it!

¨🦄¨

In the span of one week I must have learnt about 20 new mimics, which, honestly, I find baffling. Most of them are just sliiiiight variations, it’s ridiculous. In the game I used to work on we ended up with about 50 expressions per character, but that was because they needed to express a wide range of emotions in very subtle ways. You don’t need that for cute island critters, especially when emoting is such a slow process in the first place!

¨🦄¨

Justine visits again one night, which gets everyone on the island talking.

“Since we have a visitor, I’ve baked some cakes. I hope she’ll like them...”

“I absolutely MUST tell her ‘hi’ before she leaves!”

“No, don’t mind me, you’ve got a visitor! Focus on being a good hostess!”

I like their reactions so much I spend more time speaking with my islanders than my visitors whenever I have one, haha.

Also, I love the smoke trails in the sky whenever a plane leaves. That small connection to a bigger world is very comforting.

¨🦄¨

Abraham, true to himself, is adorable.

“Good evening, sweets! Grum grom grom... My tummy also says good evening!”

🥰

Later we play to a little game with freakishly accurate results.

“Let’s play! Tell me your favourite color, and I will tell you what food you are.”

“You chose orange, which means you’re easy to live with, but you can also sometimes feel lonely.”

In the end, he said I was an onion. Layers, y’see.

¨🦄¨

I also finally figure out how to eavesdrop on people’s conversations, and get treated to many a story.

Lili : I just read my horoscope... You’re not gonna believe it! It’s sick!

Phebus : What am I supposed to not believe, exactly? The horoscope, or the fact that you managed to read it through? You know what, just tell me what it said, let’s get this over with.

Lili : Listen to this... “Your travels will bring good surprises.” Isn’t that sick?! Especially for me, because I love good surprises!

Phebus : Um... I guess? I mean, I don’t know. How did that make you sick? I’m confused.

Lili : Nah, just wait! After that, I went shopping, and it was the spring sales! Get that, I got a sweet little dress on sale! I was so happy I thought I was going to pass out!

Phebus : What?! Don’t kid with that! D’you need me to call for help?

Lili (totally ignoring him) : So anyway I put on my new dress and went for a walk. And that’s when it started raining big time, and I got drenched... Why didn’t my horoscope warn me about that?!

Phebus : I don’t know... have you tried reading the weather column instead?

¨🦄¨

I catch Vanessa and Maëlle talking about a movie they both watched... except they both remember it very differently...

Maëlle : Oh, Vanessa, thanks for lending me that movie, I loved it! The costumes were gorgeous... I want the leading lady’s straw hat!

Vanessa : And that chase in hydro planes! Pfiiiiiiiouuu, ppfffz, ka-BOUM! That was awesome sauce!

Maëlle : And that dress with golden trimmings that she wears at the picnic... that was fine art!

Vanessa : And what about the fight against the giant robot? When he punches a hole in the planet? Whazaam!

Maëlle : Yes! He really stole the scene with his diamond plates... It must have cost a fortune! ... ... Wait, did you say he punched a hole in a planet? Was that before or after the ball?

😂

¨🦄¨

Later, I find the same two talking about Maëlle’s insect infestation problem (probably caused by all the sweets she keeps in her house, just saying). When she asks me what I would do, I tell her I’d just move out, which gets me a VERY judgmental look from Vanessa.

“How do you manage to get rid of them?”

Vanessa’s solution, in the end, is for Maëlle to sell her house to “an insect-loving weirdo”. I wish I knew if that was a dig at Abraham or if it’s just a coincidence.

“Bah, that can’t be impossible. You just need a real weirdo who thinks insects aren’t so bad!”

¨🦄¨

Lili and Raymond get into a big argument about Lili’s cooking skills...

Raymond : By the way, Lili, I haven’t thanked you for lunch the other day! It was very good!

Lili : “Very good”? Seriously, don’t you have something even more corny? Nobody says that anymore! Don’t you mean it was delicious? Or maybe extremely refined? Or maybe super exquisite?

Raymond : Oh! You’re right, I’m sorry. Um, it was... delectable... succulent... A concentrate of sheer deliciousness!

Lili : And?

Raymond : And... every bite sent my taste buds into a transcendental ecstasy?

Lili : Oh! Is that a question or a statement, Raymond?

Raymond : A statement, of course! Pff... All that to describe a stupid sole meunière...

Lili : Don’t tell me you’ve just called my sole meunière, my mother’s own recipe!, “stupid”?!

I’m still amazed that they parted in good terms, I thought for sure Lili would keep on fuming

¨🦄¨

After trying to get my first residents to spruce up their apartments, with mitigating results...

I mean, the ball, jars and punching sack are all gifts of mine, so that’s cool he’s got them all out at the same time, but that’s still a sad little barren house.

I finally look it up online and discover their houses are actually not supposed to be like this at all! Turns out poor Nacer, Vanessa, Abraham, Renée and Lili are all stuck with generic houses because they got to my island too soon!

This is what Renée’s house should look like!

So I’ve decided to try and gift them all their true houses’ furniture, little by little. I know they can’t change their wallpapers or floors, but hopefully if I get them the right couches, beds, etc, they’ll display them all. 🤞

#animal crossing #animal crossing new horizons #long post #my post

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muthaz-rapapa · 5 years

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StarPre: Zodiac Forms

Now that I’ve got the good quality official art, c’mon, did anyone seriously think I would not ramble about the zodiac forms in another long post? :P lol

Crap, I should be studying my Japanese since I’m traveling to Tokyo next week (GONNA GO VISIT THE PRECURE STORE, WOOOOT~!) but I want to get this post out first cuz I know I won’t have time or internet access to do it later.

So let’s do this!

Taurus form – BRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDSSSSSSSSSS

This one I like best out of Star’s two forms (but Pisces is awesome too!) for that reason but I also love how they changed her short tutu-style skirt into an asymmetric, flowing one. And that cow pattern is to die for~! <3

The butterfly earrings and horns are a very nice touch as well! *chef’s kiss*

Pisces form – I can’t explain why or how Hikaru pulls off the mermaid look so well…but she just does, okay?

Maybe it’s the twintails.

Anyways, super cute! Adding a touch of blue and deep magenta to the overall light pink theme really makes her look more tropical.

Then there are the sea accessories and ugh! Sometimes when I look at this, I’m reminded of Mermaid Melody except the way Star is designed here looks a lot more fun.

Before I get into this, I just want to say that we can now celebrate Lala’s bubble shorts blooming into space dresses! Aaaaaahhh~ <D

Leo form – Y’know when I saw Lala go “RAWR!” in the movie trailer, I was like “This is it, if this is the last thing I see, I’ll be happy I lived”, hahaha!

Lion imagery is just so cool, y’know? (as Gelato can testify)

The wild hair, the crown.

Yeap. This pretty much confirms it. Lala is Space Queen. ;D

Cancer form – I’m simultaneously gushing over her crab hair, how much I love this shade of yellow green and giggling mad that she resembles a jellyfish more than a crustacean. xDD

*sigh* Really, I think Lala’s forms turned out the best. They faithfully captured the aesthetics of the Star Princesses while retaining Milky’s original design and without making it overly gaudy, too.

Lala, you are perfect! <3

Libra form – Normally, I would say that’s too crazy for even crazy magical girl hair but then I remember Felice’s Alexandrite form and how extra that was in all its Mother Nature floral glory…

…and I just shut my trap.

Still, it seems like Libra form had the least effort put into it.

I mean, yea, they moved some colors around (more like seeped the orange into the ombre of Soleil’s hair) and extended the reaches of her dress but it’s practically the same thing save for Libra’s hairdo…which looks more like a wig she put on that anything.

That’s just it. The dual cornucopia there catches your attention right away on how…fake it looks that it’s as if the rest don’t matter as much. Which is sad cuz the Libra Star Princess is perhaps one of the best Star Princesses based on what little personality we did get from each of them. And I just wanted to see something more creative for her form, that’s all. :(

Maybe it’ll look better in motion? We’ll just have to see if that happens in the movie. As of right now, this still picture isn’t really helping my impression of it.

Scorpio form – Much better. Absolutely adore the slimmer cut and my, does Elena look downright gorgeous with a ponytail! <D

I’m always reading about how “full of passion” Scorpios are and while I don’t let those descriptions get in the way of appreciating their characters, have to admit that “passion” was the first word that came to my mind when I saw Soleil in this form.

She literally looks like a goddess of sunsets. Beautiful.

Capricorn form – Still not sure if I’m the type of person who favors something just because I so happen to share a quality or trait with that one certain aspect of a character…

And I freely admit that the Capricorn form is not the best of bunch (though it’s definitely not the worst)…

…but it looks unarguably lovely regardless and I love it with all my heart because me is a Capricorn, after all~ <3

The tiny hearts themselves may be a bit much but it’s part of Capricorn Star Princess’s design so honestly, I have zero problem with it. They’re adorable~

Then I kinda squealed because Selene traded her umbrella/lamp shade skirt for a fancy bed canopy! LOL xDD

But most of all, it’s simply wonderful to see Madoka with wavy hair (AGAIN WITH THE HAIR!). Ooooo, gotta love that transition from light purple to fuchsia! X3

Like I said before, they made the Cures’ respective color schemes and the Star Princesses’ color schemes quite compatible. But that’s a given since they’re within close range of each other anyway.

Sagittarius form – Ok, I may have said Lala’s forms looked the best but I believe the Sagittarius form alone can blow everyone else’s out of the sky.

I mean, look at her! Isn’t she friggin’ STUNNING?!

The long side pony tail (*SCREAMS*), the mature vibe the long gown gives off and most of all, MADOKA HOLDING AN ACTUAL BOW AND ARROW AND LOOKING LIKE A WARRIOR MAIDEN DESCENDING FROM THE HEAVENS TO PURGE THE EVIL FROM THIS WRETCH WORLD!!

HAAAAAA……I dunno why I get so emotional over form changes, I just do.

Alright, first things first. This is not the place for me to spill my grievances about Cosmos in general so rest assured, I won’t do that. But I am allowed to say one thing.

Toei. I don’t understand your incomplete logic.

Cure Cosmos is a rainbow Cure. You either give her all twelve differently colored forms or you give her none at all.

Seriously, it makes no sense that she gets four zodiac forms, leaving the other girls with only two when we could have had:

1) the original starters with three zodiac forms each

2) Cosmos with either twelve (because SHE’S THE CURE OF EFFIN’ RAINBOWS!!) or one exceptionally glorified rainbow super form (with seven cat tails because RAINBOWS!!)

This is less about midseason Cure privilege (which Cosmos has heaps of) or the fact that they won’t be able to fit so many forms in an hour long special (it’s movie budget so piss off!) and more about not doing your math right to get the best, maximum output! xP

*sigh* Ok, petty raging done (for now). Moving along…

Aries form – As some of you may know, I’m not a fan of Cosmos’ rainbow skirt but I find I can easily overlook that (along with the cat ears, the flat top hat décor, the weird braids and the dorito clips) to appreciate the full picture.

And the Aries form may just be my most favorite out of Cosmos’ forms. Since Aries is the ram constellation, the white wool trim looks appropriate, especially against the crimson of her outfit. Frankly, I think Cosmos looks better in this red design than her normal blue-rainbow Cure form.

Then there’s the poofy (kyaa~!) hair that just acts so well as a backdrop to the ram horns.

Mm, yes, definitely my favorite. *nod nod*

Gemini form – Again, where the fuck were you when Met Gala was happening this year?!

Like, this would not only fit right in with the camp theme but could’ve won best dressed that night!

The only thing I’d consider getting rid of is the rainbow but then it’d probably look less campy so maybe not.

Anyways, I was the least fond of this form when I first saw it but the more I look at it, the more I’m learning to like it…??

The red cape (and cherry earrings) provides a sharp contrast to all the green going on, too.

Virgo form – Azure blue complements light pink and white in a very angelic sort of way. Pretty~

Cosmos’ hair also looks delightfully charming when it’s curled and has a flower decoration in it.

…That’s all I have to say, really.

Oh no, wait.

It’s extremely odd to me that Cosmos gets two zodiac forms that correspond to other Cures’ birthday signs and she doesn’t even get the form of her own birthday sign.

Hikaru’s is Aries and Elena’s is Virgo. Look who got those forms.

Yuni’s sign is Libra. That form went to Soleil instead.

…WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?! >:/

Aquarius form – Is it just me or do the rainbow pleats actually work here?

We’re dealing with water and the droplet beads attached to the ends really reminds me of the rain so that’s probably why.

Cosmos’ hair also looks mega good in waves, too.

And the stars~! Exquisite!

On another note, again she always comes as a strange package because if cats in general hate water, then pairing Cosmos up with Aquarius is the biggest mismatch of them all, them both having a blue theme be damned. xD;

~~~~~

*SIGH* Finished!

…Or not. One last thing. There’s always one last thing.

It’s just a real shame that these forms are exclusive to the movie. I mean, I know we all have our opinions on whether or not Form Changes are actually useful in the tv series (I don’t care, I just like looking at them and that’s reason enough for me)…

But the stock footage was severely underwhelming for StarPre so having these in the show may have done some good to alleviate that feeling.

Also, the Zodiac forms have a much closer relation to the space motif than the Twinkle forms do. Seriously, the most noticeable things about the Twinkle forms are the tiaras and it’s weird because we already have the Star Princesses. So WHY do we need to put tiaras on the Cures? They’re not aiming to become princesses themselves, they’re channeling the powers of the stars (aka the Zodiac princesses!) so they should take on appearance respective of the star signs!

Again, I really don’t understand Toei logic.

……AND ONE MORE THING! OMGODD

Is there anyone out there who tried to draw what the first four Cures would look like in the forms that went to Cosmos? And if there is, may I see them? Please, pretty pretty please please please?!?!?

#i can't art so i'm desperate #alrighty after sunday's ep post i'm off #will post about the Precure store later if I manage to find the time #wahaha if i'm lucky and/or not jetlagged i might even get to watch Precure Sunday morning in my hotel room #we'll see #star twinkle precure #cure star #cure milky #cure soleil #cure selene #cure cosmos #star princesses

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artificialqueens · 5 years

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Beneath the Amber Moon, Part 6 (Galactica AU Group Fic) – TheDane & Veronica

Heyyy!! Welcome to Part 6 of “Beneath the Amber Moon,” a group fic set in the Galactica Universe. Click here for previous chapters.

We hope you’re enjoying it! Let us know what you think!

Summary: Sand witches, sketches, jet skis, and baby influencers.

/////

Courtney skipped down the beach, Julia’s hand in hers, the little girl giggling and running to keep up. She was glad that she had an excuse to avoid the huge buffet and endless sugary cocktails. She’d already indulged quite a bit this week, and knew that any more would only make it even harder to get back into Supergirl-shape for her publicity shoot back in LA. Not to mention, Bianca had given her a look as they disembarked that sent shivers down her spine. But she wasn’t thinking about that, not now...

“This looks good!” she said, pointing to a spot in the sand and handing Julia a bucket. “Can you fill this with water? Then I’ll show you the secret.”

“Okay!” Julia took the bucket and ran off towards the ocean, Courtney spreading out a towel and watching her closely. The water in the bay was calm and gentle, and while she knew the 7-year-old would be fine, she didn’t want any accidents.

“Courtney!”

Courtney glanced up to see Violet, walking down the beach towards her, tote bag in hand.

“Hey! What’s up?”

“I made you something.”

“You did? For me?” Courtney smiled. “What?”

“... A sketch? For the jacket?” Violet said, a small smile playing on her face, as if she couldn’t believe Courtney had already forgotten. “From yesterday.”

“Oh. Right.” Courtney blushed, waving to Julia as she scampered back from the water, now able to turn fully towards Violet.

“So, it’s a truly horrendous piece of… clothing, but I think I made something you might like.” Violet reached into her tote, taking out a thick piece of paper, and Courtney gasped.

“It’s a completely different jacket!” Courtney grabbed the paper, holding it up in the light so she could see it. It was drawn in soft watercolors, but Violet had managed to keep the rainbow theme, the new cut she had suggested giving it a much more current and young vibe, while the simple buttons, the denim material and the strategically placed rhinestones somehow aged it up to almost be appropriate for any adult that actually wanted to wear a full rainbow. Courtney was elated at how much better the new version looked. Maybe her new collection would be wearable after all.

“Hi Violet,” Julia said, settling down in the sand.

“Oh,” Violet shifted. “Hi.” Juju’s twins were at that awkward age where they were almost real people, but not quite, and it was very unsettling.

“Courtney’s gonna teach me the secret to making creepy sand witches’ castles.”

“That’s...nice.”

“Get it? Sand witch?” Julia asked gleefully.

Violet blinked down at her, and Courtney stifled a laugh, putting a hand on the little girl’s back.

“Okay, first we need to make a nice tall mound for the base. That’s right, work on that.” Courtney turned back to Violet. “That jacket is amazing. Have you thought about any of the other designs?”

“I may have...made a few more sketches.” Violet bit her lip, clutching the sketch book. “I was gonna work on some more now...do you wanna go over them...later?”

“Sure!” Courtney grinned up at her. “How do you feel about the title ‘Creative Director’?”

Violet laughed. “Sure.”

“I’m serious.”

“Oh...” Violet looked at Courtney, like she was still searching her face for traces of a lie. “Well... We’ll see.”

“Is this good?” Julia asked.

“That is the most perfect mound I’ve ever seen!” Courtney told her. “Okay, are you ready for the secret part?”

“Yes!”

“Um…so...”

“Do you wanna hang out with us and work here?” Courtney patted the towel beside her, and Violet shook her head. “You sure? I’m about to reveal a pretty cool secret…”

“No thanks,” Violet said with a light chuckle. “I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.” Courtney smiled again.

“Bye Violet!” Julia called, then clutched Courtney’s arm. “Show me show me!”

“Alright, pumpkin.”

/////

“Oh my god…” Raven groaned with delight, biting into a sugary, cream-filled donut. With a crispy outside and a soft, pillowy center, drizzled with the perfect amount of doce de leite. Heaven.

“You want me to leave you two alone, or…?” Juju teased, taking a bite of her panna cotta.

“Shut up, I’m having a moment,” Raven said.

“Yeah, I can tell. Let me know if you need a change of panties.”

Raven laughed and punched her lightly on the shoulder.

“Just let me enjoy the afternoon, bitch! I have two babies; I never get me time.”

“You have two nannies, too. Your whole life is me time,” Juju countered.

“Okay, do you know what it’s like managing two nannies and a housekeeper? Because that is noteasy.”

“No, can’t say I do. But if I want to know, I’ll be sure to ask Raja.”

Raven let out an indignant little shriek, then picked her donut up again.

“You’re my real friend,” she said to the pastry, taking another bite as Juju laughed beside her.

/////

“Hey, guys.” Alaska approached Courtney and Julia, who were still busy making tall, drippy sandcastles.

“Look!” Julia cried, happily showing off her creation.

“That’s amazing!”

“It’s a castle for a sand witch!”

“Sand witch?” Alaska laughed at the silly pun, while made Julia giggle.

“Courtney taught me how to do this drippy thing, wanna see?”

“Totally.” Alaska knelt down, watching Julia drip the wet sand through her fingers, adding to her already towering castle. “That is a very cool technique.”

“I know,” Julia said, beaming and hugging Courtney around the waist.

“Is there no end to your talent, Court?”

“I’m just trying to stay out of trouble,” Courtney laughed.

“Trouble?”

Courtney’s eyes shifted over to the nearby lounge chairs, where Bianca was sitting, oiled up, skin already glowing with a healthy bronze tan. She’d pulled the straps of her bathing suit down off her shoulders, giving Courtney an even better look at her cleavage. From this angle, she looked like a 50’s pinup girl, and all Courtney could think about was sinking her teeth into the smooth skin of her perfect thighs.

Alaska followed Courtney’s gaze and let out a little chuckle.

“Having some...self control issues?”

“You could say that,” Courtney admitted, biting her lip. “But I’m trying to take precautions.”

Courtney wiggled her fingers, showing off her decadent stiletto nails, and Alaska laughed, shaking her head.

“Trust me, girl...those are not gonna stop you. But I wish you the best of luck.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Julia asked, head tilted curiously.

“Um, we’re talking about...the tickle monster!” Courtney grabbed her and began to tickle her, causing her to shriek with happy laughter.

/////

The fact that he had managed to slip away undetected should probably have made him feel bad, but honestly, Patrick only really felt ecstatic at the fact that he avoided an afternoon of beach activities and jet skis. He had made his way to the top of the boat, setting up so he could easily see and hear the entire party going on, in case Fame needed him.

For now, however, he was beyond happy to just sit down, the budget his assistant had mailed him and one of the staff had kindly printed in hand along with a red pen, the sounds of everyone floating to him on the wind, as he got down to work.

/////

“Hey, lil bear…” Jinkx wrapped her arms around Adore’s shoulders from behind, giving her a soft kiss on the cheek. “How are you, baby?”

“I’m good!” Adore swallowed her mouthful of paella, picking up a piece of fried calamari. “Trying to sober up so that I can ride on one of those sick jet skis.”

“Mmm, sounds fun.” Jinks settled down onto the bench beside Adore, adjusting her hat.

“You wanna join? They said that Courtney and I could do it after lunch.”

“Uh, no. Not really my thing. But I’ll be cheering you on.”

“Fair enough.” Adore took a huge bite of a shrimp pastel.

“So...do you think we could have a little chat, just the two of us?” Jinkx asked, voice low. “When you’re done eating.”

Adore’s blood ran cold, unfinished pastel paused in mid air. Shit.

“Sure. I mean...I don’t know when I’ll be done, though. Did you see that spread? Ha ha,” Adore laughed weakly.

“I know, it’s fucking awesome!” Detox agreed, devouring a bowl of moqueca like he needed it to live.

“Right, but...look, I’ve really been wanting to talk to you, babe,” Jinkx tried again, tucking a lock of Adore’s hair behind her ear.

“Yeah, too bad we don’t live together!” Adore joked.

“Dore.”

“Be right back, Imma go get seconds!” Adore jumped up from the table and raced back to the buffet.

Jinkx let out a sigh, then saw Alaska glowering at her from across the beach.

“Ugh, don’t start, I tried.” Jinkx knew Alaska couldn't hear her, but she still wanted to say the words.

“What?” Detox looked up from his plate.

“Nothing.”

/////

“Well that looks, complicated.” Fame took a sip of her drink, looking over at Raven.

She was standing in the water nearby, trying to get both of her twins to sit still on a big flat rock. They were dressed in crocheted mermaid costumes and giant ridiculous flower headbands.

“Tanya! Smile for Mommy! Smile!”

Detox stood by, snapping photos, the man clearly finding the entire thing beyond amusing.

“You should see the shopping session.” Raja bit into a strawberry. “They had custom Dolce & Gabbana jackets.”

Fame shook her head. Her friend was truly delirious. She had always known that Raven would go completely overboard, but it was still somewhat unsettling to see toddlers that were only serving as playthings for their mother, though Fame would never dream of saying it. She loved Raja too much, and it was never wise to get in an argument with a business partner. Fame turned away from the beach, the amusement of toddlers in mermaid costumes already passed, as Courtney and Adore rode by on their jet skis.

Raja watched Fame’s face fall. They hadn’t had a chance to discuss the fact that Courtney had showed up, both of them too busy, but Raja could see it as plain as day on Fame’s face that she was unhappy with the turn of events, though she was sure Fame would look exactly the same to anyone who hadn’t worked with her for more than a decade. Raja didn’t care about a lot of people, but she did care about Fame, the blonde somehow worming her way into her heart and staying there.

“So, how are you holding up?”

“Holding up?” Fame bit her lip, so clearly lying it was almost pathetic. “I’m holding up amazingly.”

Raja smiled. “Don’t lie to me. I know you too well for that.”

Fame sighed. “I’m fine.”

“Just know that I’m here.” Raja touched Fame’s shoulder. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

/////

“Augh!” Courtney shrieked, as Adore rode by, dangerously close, spraying her with water. The two of them were tooling around the bay on jet skis, having beelined for them the second lunch was over. Adore could barely listen to the instructions, she was so anxious to get on.

“Is this what it would feel like to ride a motorcycle?” she yelled to Courtney.

“I think this is probably way more fun than a motorcycle!” Courtney shouted back. She sped up, chasing Adore around the boat, seeing Bianca standing on the dock, watching them, a drink in hand.

“B, you’re missing out!” Adore called to her. “Too bad you’re so old and no fun at all!”

Bianca raised her middle finger. Courtney slowed her own jet ski, looking up at her with a cheeky grin.

“Wanna get on?” Courtney asked.

“Uh, I don’t think so,” Bianca chuckled.

“Why… Ya scared?” Courtney revved the engine, riding in a slow circle, and Bianca smirked at her. She sucked down the last of her cocktail, setting her glass down and taking off her cover-up.

“Scared...pffft,” she scoffed, slipping on a life jacket, handed to her by the steward trying to keep them all from killing themselves. “How the fuck am I supposed to do this, anyway?”

The steward beckoned Courtney forward, helping support Bianca’s weight while she lowered herself down, hands gripping Courtney’s shoulders.

Bianca eventually settled in just behind Courtney, pressed into her back.

“It’s probably better to hold onto her waist,” the steward told her.

Bianca swallowed, placing her hands around Courtney’s waist, feeling those abs under her hands.

“Are you good?” Courtney asked.

“I’m good.” She then let out a gasp as the jet ski lurched forward, Courtney accelerating quickly, causing her to hold on tighter. “Fucking hell!”

Courtney giggled, gunning it even faster, loving the feel of Bianca’s thighs gripping hers, arms now tightly wrapped around her waist, lips inches from her neck, where the hair was standing on end. The faster she went, the closer Bianca held her, and so she zipped around the bay like a demon out of hell.

Bianca’s heart pounded, cheeks feeling hot and flushed as she pressed close to Courtney, clinging to her. Why did she think this was a good idea? And why did Courtney always have to feel so fucking perfect in her arms? She cursed internally, kicking herself for letting her feelings run away with her. Honestly, it was unlikely that Courtney was thinking about her as anything more than an ex. Her best friend’s sister.

Of course, then a hand reached down, gently squeezing her thigh, as Courtney asked, “Everything okay, B?”

“Ahem…Yeah. Everything’s fine. You’re an excellent driver.”

Courtney giggled, leaning back into her arms, and Bianca felt her icy heart melt a little.

/////

“Almost seems fun.” Karl looked at the jet skis, the sounds of Adore’s screams carrying from the distance.

“Almost being the keyword.” Sutan laughed. “Remember when we went to Sunny Beach? In Bulgaria?”

“You almost died.”

“And who’s fault that was?”

Karl rolled his eyes. “No one forced you to drink a double whale and go swimming.”

Sutan smiled. “Everything seems like a good idea when you’re high on coke.” They were some of the last to make their way towards the boat, the two friends having spent time at the beach, looking for seashells for Sutans mom, Karl’s pockets filled with conchs of different shapes and sizes. Sutan threw an arm around Karl’s shoulder. “Thank god we don’t do that anymore, huh?”

“Yeah... Thank god.”

/////

“I like your bracelet.”

Violet looked up from her magazine, surprised etched into her features at Fame’s voice, the blonde standing behind her deck chair, a small smile on her perfect face. They had all returned to the boat, the giant ship now cruising through the water to whatever destination Fame planned for next.

“I…” Violet touched her bracelet. “I, umh. Thank you.” It was a thin golden band, the metal woven together, and Violet had fallen in love with it the first time she had seen it.

“Where did you get it?”

“I found it at TILT.”

“Oh, so it’s vintage?”

Violet nodded. She was unsure why Fame was being so welcoming towards her, her mind briefly wondering if Sutan had asked Fame to keep an eye on her, but that didn’t make sense.

Violet stood up, ready to respond to Fame’s question, when her world turned dark.

/////

Courtney climbed out of the hot tub and onto the deck, muscles loose and relaxed. The evening air had turned chilly, sun low in the sky, and she shivered.

“Need a towel?”

Bianca caught her eye, giving a half smile, unable to stop thinking about their jet ski ride.

“Yeah, thanks.” Courtney hugged her arms, and Bianca stepped forward with a large beach towel from the shelf, wrapping it around her shoulders.

The gesture was more intimate than she’d planned. She looked into Courtney’s eyes, lashes wet with tiny beads of water, and gulped. But at the same time, she didn’t really want to look away.

And it appeared that she wasn’t the only one, Courtney holding her gaze, an inscrutable smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“Violet!”

A sudden shriek pierced the air, Fame’s voice ringing out, snapping both Bianca and Courtney out of their little daze.

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the-desolated-quill · 5 years

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Okay, Enough With The Live Action/CGI Hybrids - Quill’s Scribbles

So the trailer for the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog movie came out...

Do I really need to say it? Everyone and their mums have already said it. Hell, you’re probably saying it right now.

Sigh. Okay. Fuck it. I’ll say it.

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?!?!

The trailer itself is shockingly bad. It looks bland and generic with almost nothing in common with the games. The jokes are forced and painfully unfunny (why are the people in the airport more concerned that the ‘child’ in the bag isn’t James Marsden’s rather than that there’s a fucking child in the bag in the first place?!), Jim Carrey is being his usual obnoxious self and is plain and simply a terrible choice for Doctor Eggman (isn’t the whole point of Doctor Eggman that he’s supposed to, you know, look like an egg?), and the soundtrack is utterly cringeworthy (Gangsta’s Paradise? Really?!?!). But that all pales in comparison to by far and away the biggest problem with the trailer. And I think you can all guess what that is.

Yes I’m of course referring to the noticeable absence of Team Chaotix. An artistic decision so despicable, it’s practically a hate crime. For shame! Everyone knows that Charmy Bee is the best character in the franchise and yet they don’t have the guts to put him in the movie! Fucking philistines!

...

Oh yeah, and Sonic the Hedgehog looks like a monstrous abomination concocted from the fever dreams of Doctor Frankenstein and Walt Disney.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about just how grotesque and disgusting this CGI Sonic is. He looks like what your computer would produce if it caught pneumonia. What I especially don’t understand is why they veered away so heavily from the original, iconic design. I mean...

I don’t know about you, but I’d honestly have no problem if the movie just kept this look from the games. Hell, I think even giving him realistic fur would be pushing it. This is perfectly fine. I could totally see this design working in a movie. Instead we get the secret love child of Gollum and Papa Smurf.

He just looks so weird with human proportions. The leg muscles, the two eyes, the human looking teeth. Apparently the filmmakers wanted this Sonic to look as realistic as possible. Because when I pay to see a movie about an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog that can run at supersonic speeds, that’s my first thought. ‘Is it realistic?’

... Jesus Christ.

But of course the main problem with this live action Sonic movie is that it exists in the first place. When it was first announced, I assumed in my naivety that it would be an animated movie. Because that would make sense, right? There have been movie and TV adaptations before and they were all animated. Imagine a big budget computer animated Sonic movie. That would be really cool. But it was not to be. In Hollywood’s infinite wisdom, they decided to go the live action route because... Actually why did they choose to go the live action route? Well that’s what I hope to address in this very Scribble.

Live action adaptations and remakes are nothing new of course. Disney had tried it a few times in the past with movies like 101 Dalmations, there have been other live action versions of animated or illustrated characters such as the Grinch and the Cat In The Hat, Garfield, the Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and there was of course the infamous Super Mario Bros movie, which answered the question of what it would be like if the Mushroom Kingdom took place in the same universe as Judge Dredd. But this is the first time live action/CGI hybrids have been huge money spinners. Disney struck gold back in 2010 when Tim Burton’s version of Alice In Wonderland made a billion dollars at the box office and now the company is mining through their back catalogue of Disney classics and giving all their movies the live action treatment. Initially I was okay with this because in the case of Alice In Wonderland and Maleficent they were at least trying to reinterpret the original films and put a new spin on them, but now they just seem to be copying the movies verbatim. Making live action remakes just for the sake of making live action remakes.

Now other studios are trying their hand at, the most notable being Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Here’s a picture of the original Pikachu:

Cute, right?

Now here’s a picture of the live action Pikachu:

Can you see the problem here?

(also why the hell is Ryan Reynolds the voice of Pikachu? I honestly can’t think of anyone more inappropriate for the role. It’s like casting Samuel L. Jackson as a Powerpuff Girl)

The fact of the matter is some things just don’t work in live action. Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon work in their respective universes because they’re animated creatures in an animated world, and their anatomy and design fit that world. In the real world, it just doesn’t work. Pikachu looks strange and kind of creepy in the real world. The same is true of the other Pokemon. Jigglypuff looks utterly adorable in the games and animated show with its spherical body and cartoon eyes and you just want to take one to bed with you and cuddle them like a teddy bear, but in the real world it looks fucking scary!

I wouldn’t want to cuddle that thing! It looks like it would go for my throat given the opportunity!

The same is true of Sonic. Paramount’s attempts to make him look more ‘realistic’ just makes him look incredibly alien and out of place.

Another example I like to bring up is the film Christopher Robin. Now we all know Winnie the Pooh. Silly ol’ bear. Charming, cuddly and endearing, right? Just look at him.

How can you not fall in love with him?

Now here’s the live action version:

When I first saw the trailer, I was utterly creeped out. He looks like something out of a horror movie. Add to that that they got the original voice actor from the Disney cartoons to reprise the role, and Winnie the Pooh pretty much became the source of all my nightmares for the next couple of weeks. That lovable voice should not be coming out of that... thing.

It’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Look:

Charming and lovable.

Weird and unsettling.

Creative and fun.

Photoshop disaster.

Sweet and likeable.

Fetch my crucifix and holy water.

Emotional and expressive.

So ‘realistic’ to the point where he looks like he has the emotional range of a teaspoon.

Now I recognise this largely comes down to subjective opinion. If you like these CGI redesigns, that’s great. More power to you. But I know for a fact I’m not the only one getting increasingly weirded out by these computer generated demons from Hell.

So why does Hollywood keep making these films. Well obviously in the case of Disney it’s because they’ve ran out of original ideas and want to make a quick buck by exploiting their audience’s nostalgia. (the same can be said of the Star Wars sequel trilogy). But what about other studios? Yes they’re financially motivated too, but there’s got to be more to it than that.

I think it’s largely down to the stigma of animated movies. Animation has become synonymous with children. When you hear the term ‘animated movie’, you automatically associate it with ‘kid’s film’. And ‘kid’s film’ is often used in a negative context. Like it’s somehow lesser than quote/unquote ‘proper’ movies. Live action suggests a certain pedigree. A sense of prestige. But that’s obviously bollocks. The quality of a film isn’t dictated by whether it’s live action or animated. It’s determined by the writing, directing and acting. There have been live action films made for kids and animated films made for adults. And I’m not talking about Sausage Party. I’m talking about Finding Nemo.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Finding Nemo? Isn’t that a kid’s film? No. It’s a family film. And that right there is the problem. You heard me say Finding Nemo, an animated film about talking fish, and you automatically associated it with a kids film. But the thing is Finding Nemo deals with some very dark and adult themes and its moral message of not being overprotective and allowing children to take risks is intended for the parents, not the kids. Obviously kids can still watch and enjoy Finding Nemo, but it’s the parents who are clearly the target here. The same is true of Toy Story 3. Children can still watch and enjoy it, but the film is clearly intended for people who watched the original Toy Story when they were a kid and are now grown up. When you stop and think about it, it’s really sad that family movies are associated with kids movies. Not that there’s anything wrong with kids movies obviously. But why do people assume that family movies are meant for kids? Why can’t they be adult stories that are also accessible to children? Books have done it. The Artemis Fowl series is kid friendly, but its tone, themes and style suggest the author has an older and more sophisticated target audience in mind. A Series Of Unfortunate Events is popular with kids, but it’s adults that get the full experience because of the way Lemony Snicket uses postmodern and meta-textual elements in the books, which would sail clean over the head of a kid reading it. The idea that a live action remake is somehow more ‘grown-up’ than an animated movie is just absurd. The original Lion King was very grown up, thank you very much. There are lots of bright colours and fun songs for the kids, but it also doesn’t sugarcoat the darker themes such as death, betrayal, corruption and abuse of power. Mufaser’s death isn’t going to be made any more impactful in live action. The animated version was more than heartbreaking.

Shifting the conversation back to Sonic, this is also intrinsically linked with another problem with Hollywood at the moment. Movie adaptations of video games. And again, it’s a similar problem. People, especially critics, view video games as being lesser than movies. Roger Ebert famously said that video games will never be considered art. But that’s nonsense. There have been loads of video games that could be and have been considered art. BioShock, for instance, which scrutinises and criticises both objectivism and capitalism. There’s the Mass Effect trilogy, which is often described as this generation’s Star Wars. The Last Of Us is widely considered to be a masterpiece by gamers and literacy scholars alike. Hell, the fact that Hollywood wants to make movie adaptations of video games at all suggests that games do in fact have some inherent artistic value after all. And it’s not as if I’m wholly against making movies based on video games. There are some games that could translate really well to films, Sonic being one of them. (I personally loved the Ratchet & Clank movie, for example. It’s just a shame nobody else fucking watched it due to the almost non-existent marketing). However there’s an inherent problem with translating video games to movies as opposed to, say, translating books to movies. In book to movies adaptations, studios are adding something. Visuals, sound, performance, etc. In video game to movie adaptations, they have to take things away. The most obvious is interactivity. Unlike movies where nothing is required of the audience other than to just dumbly stare at the screen, video games require the audience to actively control the story. Move the character, kill baddies, solve problems and stay alive. You are an active participant in the narrative. As a result, the emotional connection you feel with both the plot and the characters is often stronger than that in a movie because you have direct influence over what happens.

Also video games have the luxury of being able to tell their stories over the course of eight to thirty to even a hundred hours of gameplay. There’s no way you could condense something like The Last Of Us down to a two and a half hour movie. There would just be too much lost. Important character moments and plot points that would have to be chucked in the bin. Yes things get lost in book to movie adaptations, but nowhere near at the scale of a game to movie adaptation. A possible workaround would be to make game to TV adaptations instead, but then we’re back to the interactivity problem again. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that movies are better than books or that video games are better than movies. I’m just saying they’re each individually suited to tell their own kinds of stories in their own unique ways, therefore translating from one medium to the other is often difficult. The Last Of Us would never make a good movie, and that’s okay. The game is still amazing and the story is still amazing. Its artistic merit isn’t lessened because it can’t be translated to films, in the same way the merits of a bike aren’t lessened because it can’t fly. It’s just not designed to do that.

I guess the point I’m making is there’s no one way to tell a good story. There are an infinite number of ways it can be done. So lets stop Hollywood’s obsession with pigeonholing everything into one format and actually explore the possibilities, shall we?

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog movie #live action cgi remakes #video game movie adaptations #quill's scribbles

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