hii pidge, i saw u mentioned race + horse imagery in your last post and i def agree bc horses are v loyal n ofc there is the thing of (metaphorically and also literally) carrying people's loads, and bolting when faced w danger so I would love to know if u have any more thoughts about it? :))

tbh i don't have many artsy references for why race is horse-coded, it just makes the most sense to me. mostly because i think the modern view of horses is kind of a joke? like we've all seen the memes about how fucked up horses bodies are, we've all seen the ones about how 'oh if horses run too fast their lungs bleed' or 'if they eat too much their hooves fall off' and 'humans thought they had it bad but then they looked at horses and said 'that guy's got it worse'.' i think that applies to race all too well, really, ESPECIALLY now that we've seen what some people reduce his character to be. the funny guy. the bitchy twink who's only there to be a punchline. but he's more than that - or maybe he could've been if he was born a little earlier, back when horses had meaning and sprang fully formed out of seafoam and brought the greeks to troy, but now they just run. they run their laps, and a bunch of drunks scream at them for not being fast enough, for not knowing the terrain well enough, as if that's something they can control. because race can't control it, but he's still trying his damnedest to run the course as well as he can. he's always doing as much as he can as fast as he can - he's the second, for god's sake, he has to. but as much as he tries to keep it under control, to follow the bends and jump every hurdle, there's always going to be a point where he stumbles. where his ankle twists or his hoof splits too far to fix. if he's lucky, he'll retire - but most likely, he'll be led out by the nose towards a carrot and a shotgun, and then maybe his bones can be melted down into something useful. that's all he tries to be - useful. a hard worker, a fast runner. but up until he breaks, he's just going to be a joke.

that said, if you do want a good poem about horses, maybe check out 'at grass' by philip larkin. it's not necessarily race-coded but there were a few lines that made me think of what his life might be like after he stopped being a newsie; standing anonymous, his racing name gone, his past victories plaguing his ears like flies.

🎶

Hi Hi!!!

You actually got one of my favourite songs of all time, Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell

And in terms of favourite lines it could honestly be the whole song, but I especially love this section:

hihi pidge - punch your lights out for the wip game pls :)

this is exciting for me cause i love 'punch your lights out' soooo much

it's an arcade au set in the 1990s (yes that's a bold choice for a gen z to make no i don't care) - jack is a cashier at medda's very run down arcade in their very sad small town. pretty much everyone's going out of business and with consoles drying up arcades, they're kind of just. counting their days until they close. so medda tells jack she's going to be opening up their roller rink again - to their town's local roller derby team. which jack is,,, not thrilled about; a men's roller derby team in a 90s small town is just a big neon sign that says 'UNSTABLE AND GAY', and jack's a chubby foster kid with ADHD who's picked on enough already, being around the local insane queers is not going to help. and then david jacobs comes into the arcade. david jacobs, the new kid, the immediate valedictorian, the perfect boy next door who everyone fucking adores. everyone except jack. because david jacobs is a smarmy pretentious asshole who hates him for no reason. so they have a standoff; whether davey's queer or not, jack's assuming he's not going to want people to know he runs around in legwarmers and glittery eyeshadow wrestling other men on a roller rink - but if jack were to tell someone, davey would get spot to immediately kick his ass into oblivion. it's a rock-and-a-hard-place situation. so they decide to deal with each other. and it's... fine.

(it is not fine. but we will get to that. eventually. someday.)

snippets under the cut for your convenience!!

It doesn’t help that Davey’s weird. Not Race weird or Crutchie weird or even Kath weird – weird in a way Jack can’t quite get. It’s like walking into the arcade rinses away his prim-and-proper schoolboy act completely, leaving behind something ancient and secret that Jack can’t stop looking at.

Right now, Davey is – in the most literal way possible – climbing Hotshot like a tree. He’s got his arms wrapped around his shoulder and has locked his knees around Hotshot’s waist, and is now clambering his way across his broad shoulders so that he can dangle like a scarf around his neck (Jack is discovering that Davey isn’t so much built like a regular person, but more of a cat, able to turn his body into a wet noodle at will). Hotshot, for his part, has barely moved a centimetre under Davey’s weight and is still engaged in his conversation with Spot. Even Davey’s taking part, laughing and chatting away, and the rest of them nod along and smile at whatever he’s saying as if he’s not got an arm and a leg wrapped around Hotshot’s neck. Jack doesn’t understand it at all.

[...]

“Davey.” Jack says blankly. “What are you doing.”

Davey keeps staring at the ceiling.

“Davey, you’re on the floor.”

And Davey should say something clever and biting and fucking annoying, like ‘oh, am I? Here I thought I was in Tahiti’ or – fuck, Jack doesn’t know, he’s not smart. But Davey just hums quietly and drifts the wheel on his heel back and forth, back and forth, and Jack tries not to be entranced by the raise of his knee, the flex of his thigh. Fucking Davey.

“It’s a good floor.” Davey says, far away. “Feels nice, being part of the floor.”

Hi pidge - 🫐🍒 for the ask game pls :)

noodles lets GO-

🫐 a line from a published work that you’re proud of, but no one’s mentioned yet - or if you can’t think of one, an underrated line in general

ohhh hm. hmmm hm hm hm. okay i know what my answer is but it's not newsies so full disclosure there:

“But-!” Donnie splutters as Simmons lashes leather straps around his arms and legs. “But that’s pseudoscience! None of what you’ve said has even been tested, let alone proven, you’re just – you’re delusional!”

Barlow slams his fist on the table, inches away from Donnie’s head, and the metal sings in his ears like a banshee.

“I am a scientist.” He sneers, lips pulled back, half feral and all mad. “And you are little more than the second evolutionary stage of a child’s first pet. You’re not the first to turn up your nose at the uglier side of discovery, Donatello, and you won’t be the last. You’re welcome to call my methods an abomination, but tell me – where would humanity be, had Darwin not killed God?”

(you have no idea how simultaneously proud and ashamed i am of that line. most metal thing i've ever written and it's for a ninja turtles fic.)

🍒 favorite sweet quote from a wip

“Manhattan liked that I kissed you?” He asks, brows quirked, and Davey jerks to stare at him like he’s been caught in a trap.

“Well-!” He sputters awkwardly. “It – I did say, y’know, I-I’m Manhattan, and – and Manhattan’s me, in a way, like – when I knew something was wrong with it, sometimes it knows when something’s wrong with me, or – or when something’s, um…” He turns and clears his throat, staring from the shore to the treeline to anywhere Jack conveniently isn’t. “When something’s… Really, really right with me…”

Jack claps a hand on Davey’s shoulder, forces their gazes to meet.

“Davey.” He says firmly. “Does Manhattan… Have a crush on me?”

Davey steeples his fingers over his mouth, trying to hide his flustered grimace.

“Little bit?”

🎶 :))

hi noodle :) you got:

i love being so terrified of the future that i cant even enjoy the present and wind up lashing out and ruining it all due to my own inflated sense of what i SHOULD be doing and what SHOULD be happening but i just wanna rest but i can't, because i need to make sure i can rest later too, so i'll just run off in whatever direction looks appealing until i collapse. anywhore how are you guys doing.

hiya pidge - 🪐🍬🥐 for the ask game?

hiya noodle!!

🪐 ⇢ name three good things going on in your life right now

i'm going to an animation festival in april! i'm almost done with RBR chapter 5! i'm having a consultation at a gender clinic in may!

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

davey would beat jack in a fight and i side-eye anyone who thinks otherwise. he may not have experience fighting the way jack does but davey's proven that his fight/flight/freeze reflex is fight, whereas jack's is flight. even if his form's bad, even if he's not got the experience, he would be willing to fight jack - jack would not be willing to fight him back.

🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh 

anything from the snapcube sonic fandubs, but specifically '... i miss my wife, tails.'

happy birthday pidge!! hope u had/ are having the best day :))

NOODLE!! thank you so much buddy!! my friend baked me a cake :') and it's BLUE!

hihi - 4, 18+19 for the ask game pls :)

4: ship you dislike?

yknow what i actually can give a good answer to this, livesies/92sies sprace. i didn't include it in the first answer because i figured since i liked uksies sprace it didn't count but i'm gonna count it - literally all those two did was be conventionally attractive white men (well. white children for 92sies) who stood next to each other one (1) time. i don't get it. i will never get it. thank you uksies for giving sprace substance, you literally did the impossible.

18. ideas for stories/aus that you have, that you might or might not end up creating?

manhattan, west virginia has already left the station, the part 1 plot is outlined and part 1 chapter 1 is already complete, i just don't want to post it until i finish run boy run. but apart from that there's the pet shelter au, which i know how to write but don't entirely know where to go with, you can find that under #daveys terrible cat au, and the stick season au which had the opposite problem as in it popped into my head fully formed but idk how to write it yet; jack and davey grow up together in the same small town, are best friends who go through their 'teenage nihilist' phase and agree that yeah, the world's all going to shit, but they'll be together when it ends and that's enough, eventually start discretely dating - and then davey gets a full ride to a college jack didn't even know he'd applied for. and jack can't exactly say 'you can't go, you promised me we'd rot here together and i can't do it alone' so he lets davey go with the promise that they'll be fine. and they are not.

19: what kind of story would you never write?

in fanfiction,,, hm. i don't think i have many boundaries there. like i'm writing my cringe wingfic aus and pet shelter aus and i'm probably gonna write even more tropey and/or comedic shit like that 'cause it's fun for me, but i also really like my plotty multichap stuff, so,,, hm. probably sickfics? i've just never seen the appeal. sorry if that's a boring answer.

in original works, psychological slice-of-life fiction. fuck that. fuck it to hell. hated reading it. hated writing it. respect to better authors and better readers but it is not for me.

hihi - mrow for the colour thing u are one of my favorite writers I've ever read ( fanfic or otherwise ) :)) pidge javey my beloved

noodle!!! ive gotten into a habit of nodding to myself when you like my posts like a regular customer just walked into my little imaginary shop like 'hello my friend!! how are we today?? what can i get you?? thank you so much for coming!!' its fun fbsnsj