#i need to start keeping record of shows now too bc i consume so much | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aki-simp · 3 years

Text

Helping hand.

((A/N: Havent written in a while so I feel a bit rusty. This fic was part of a server collab that can be found here! ))

Tags; Megumi x Male!Reader, blackmail, voyeurism, is this dark content? Also nsfw bc Megumi diddles himself hehe

Im sure I dont need to but just incase : Minors go away

Are there words to express the feelings upon watching the one you love moan the name of your classmate as they touch themselves? Surely there must, for whatever you’re feeling is… gut wrenching? Intriguing? Disgusting? Not so much the latter, you conceded as you watched him. Truly, it was anything but.

You took note of the small shivers that wracked his lithe form, the furrow in his brow. The short heady huffs of air he released whenever he squeezed the base of his cock and the whine that accompanied it. In all his naked glory and whatever thoughts of Itadori plagued his mind, he still had yet to notice you.

As usual. Megumi was a perceptive boy, but you felt it failed where it mattered. Every careful word, every sure action done to get his attention. Unintentionally thwarted by Itadori. You don’t blame him, Itadori is a sweet guy. But you can't say that Megumi’s blind eye to your affinity towards him doesn’t sting. As the thoughts of all the times you looked to Megumi only to find his eyes on Itadori swell to a heavy weight in your chest, you hear him groan.

In the time your mind wandered (and you’re confused as to how, because Megumi is breathtaking) you see he has now made himself more…. Comfortable. The bench where he once sat he now lays on, his chest resting along the seat with his ass in the air, one hand slowly inching his long finger into his hole as the other continued its languid strokes along his cock.

You watched his finger slowly disappear inside himself as the desperation dripping from his needy moans fills the small room, the sounds rousing your cock to an almost unfathomable degree. The light sheen of sweat gracing his forehead, the bright tint to his lips from being bitten to hold back moans topped with the small coat of saliva dripping from his mouth is almost too much. Truly a sight to behold, an eternal image you wished to have ingrained into your mind. It was amazing watching how effortlessly his fingers slid into himself, as if he’d done something like this many times before. And with his sudden cry upon hitting a certain spot, you can tell he has.

Your hand travels to the front of your pants in an effort to quell the unbearable tightness, palming yourself you can feel your watery precum leaking through your boxers. Slowly pulling your cock out, you bite back a stinging hiss as the chilling air touches your head. As your eyes travel back to Megumi’s quivering form, you pump your hand in time with his fingers, imagining the feeling of his warm hole clenching around you. A heady breath is held in your chest, the air in the room reaching a stifling degree.

Over the slick wet sounds of Megumi’s fingers in his hole and his wanton moans, it’s no wonder he couldn’t hear your soft pants just beyond the door. Lost in his own world that you very much wished to be the center of, the pang of jealousy returns to your chest once more when he moans a name once again that is not yours. Watching him with a seething envy of simply wishing he would notice you, wanting to be the one who he dreamed of, the one he pined for. The grip on your cock speeding up at the thought of marching up to him, prying his legs open and making him realize that Itadori is simply who he wants but you are what he needs.

A gasp catches in your throat at the sinister idea that flies through your psyche. With the shaky hand not wrapped around your cock, you slowly reach into your pocket. It pains you to tear your gaze away from Megumi’s flushed and tear filled face, but you’d be able to see it again soon enough. You’ve had it for years, but the phone in your hand somehow feels different now. Be it due to the impending orgasm from watching Megumi in his most vulnerable and debauched state or the fact that your thumb hovered over the camera button with its lens angled right at Megumi’s perky ass, the device felt sacred.

Taking a deep, focusing breath, you quickly check to make sure the flash is off before finally pressing ‘Record’. Swallowing, you zoom in on Megumi’s blissed expression just in time to see his eyes roll back, tongue lolling out from between his bitten red lips. The sultry moan of Itadori’s name makes you curl your upper lip, an urticate reminder that despite the show Megumi has unknowingly put on for you that it is not you who he touches himself to the thought of.

As you watched the flush on his cheeks grow in colour, you could feel the blood rush to your cock, causing it to throb painfully. You kneel, feeling the cold floor in contrast to the rising heat of your body at seeing Megumi not only in front of you moaning without a care in the world but knowing it would be on your phone to view again and again; whenever and however you wish sent a feeling akin to euphoria rushing through your blood. It was almost too cruel, knowing how awful the boy would feel if he knew, but you love Megumi too much to hurt him, you think. Keeping the video to yourself for a while wouldn't hurt anyone, and you definitely weren't complaining.

Your attention is drawn away from the screen view of Megumi to the real deal as he changes his position. This one hides his face, but the new angle ensures you a perfect view of his ass and the flushed leaking cock below it. Whether it was this new display of Megumi’s vulnerable state or the blood leaving your brain to make your cock throb, it seemed the wet squelches of his fingers desperately in search of something deep within his wet hole. Megumi must have thought the same thing as a string of stuttered curses leave his lips before being consumed by a heady groan. Even without seeing his face, you can tell he's drooling, you can imagine it coating his lips.

A knot in your stomach threatens to burst as Megumi’s breathy pants grow. If it hadn't been for the fact that you knew he would never do something like this, you would almost believe he knew he was being watched. The arch of his back, the rock of his hips onto his nimble fingers and the hand furiously stroking his cock was enough to make a masterpiece. Megumi was beautiful, and you would show him.

The hand stroking his cock picks up speed just as Megumi's breath stutters and you slowly, subconsciously lean in. At one last shrill cry of a name that isn’t yours, Megumi cums, a shuddering whiney and sweaty mess. The orgasm that makes its way through you almost makes you drop your phone, but you remember to keep it steady and the look on Megumi's face as he sits up in his post orgasm bliss is worth it. Tears clinging to his lashes, the sheen of saliva on his lips, and a small red spot on his cheek from resting it on the bench, all coming together to create the perfect picture for you to reach your climax as well.

A small taste of blood fills your mouth as you bite your lip to keep any noises at bay. You continue to watch him in your post orgasm haze, admiring his features as you always have. Although you still wished it had been you who Megumi cried out for, you let out a soundless laugh, shaking your head. Putting yourself back into your pants after closing the video, you take one last look at Megumi, as he also composed himself to leave. As he turns his back to the door, you silently slip out.

The walk back to your room was quiet. Images of Megumi flashing behind your eyes as you aimlessly walked the halls. You look out one of the many windows adorning the halls to see a full bright moon. Before reaching your door, you make one last stop at a vending machine for a cool drink. The drink seems to help, soothing the last dregs of nervousness and anticipation before the light padding of footsteps reaches your ears. Quickly turning to the source of the noise, you look just in time to see Megumi slip by. Your gasp is interrupted by the liquid in your mouth, and Megumi turns to your coughing form. “Are you alright?” he inquires with a raised brow, half hearted sincerity laced in his voice.

With a few quick, harsh thumps of your fist to your chest, you nod. “Yeah,” you let out with a shaky voice. “Just caught off guard is all.” you finish with an unsure smile. He hums before looking you over. You watch his eyes travel down your form and you quickly glance down to make sure nothing looks out of place before looking back up to him, his eyes boring into yours. He blinks slowly, his eyebrows furrowed.

Shaking his head, he looks at you once more before asking “What are you doing out here so late?”. Taking a slow sip of your drink before letting out a fulfilling sigh, you look at him and shrug.

“Eventful day made me a bit restless I guess.” you quip before turning to take your leave. He hums as you can feel him watching you as you walk away. You almost wish he could see the smile adorning your face, maybe then, the fake worry in his voice would finally lead to something more. Just like you’ve always wanted.

——————————————————————-———————-———

The next day during class, your mind wanders back to the night before. You attempt to keep your hands busy to keep yourself from growing hard in your slacks. And subconsciously to keep you from grinning at Megumi like a madman. You could practically feel your hands vibrate whenever you held your phone at the thought of what it stored. The smile that etched its way onto your face sadly did not go as unnoticed as you would have hoped for. Your head perks up when Gojo inquires what girl you were texting that made you so giddy before laughing.

You turn away from Gojo, shaking your head. As you make your way out of the classroom, you look at Megumi before stopping. “Hey.” You start, trying to keep your face neutral. The same thrum of adrenaline after last night coming back to you. When the boy in question looks up to the sound of your voice, you have to clench your fists to not allow any more of your emotions through. “Can I talk to you later? It’s not important, it's just…..” you let the sentence trail off, hoping he wouldn’t ask any questions.

And like the good boy you know him to be, he doesn’t. The boy solemnly nods before returning back to the work on his desk. Before leaving, you tell him you’ll stop by his room after classes. After hearing the door click shut, you begin a slow, deliberate walk back to your room in anticipation. Upon sitting on your bed, you take the time to stare at your ceiling, pondering what Megumi will say. What Megumi will do. The blush is imminent , he’s such a reserved guy that being face to face with video evidence of him in such a debauched state would surely fluster him.

Would he cry? Would he get angry? Try to fight you? The mental image of Megumi crying and clinging to you, begging you to delete the video made you sigh. Imagining his lashes heavy with tears, his bottom lip trembling as he stares up at you as if you held his life in your hands which, inadvertently, you practically did. The surge of pride that coursed through you at the thought of having him wrapped around your fingers almost makes you laugh.

Before long, the sounds of laughter and footsteps of students returning to their rooms pulls you from your power induced daydream. Standing from your bed, you let out one long steadying sigh before making your way to Megumi’s room. You spot Itadori along the way, he smiles telling you Megumi is already in his room. How wonderful. How obedient.

Gently knocking on his door, you stand and wait patiently for him to reach the door and the sight of him in casual wear softens your heart. You don’t have time to wonder how he changed so fast or why, but he ushers you into his room nonetheless. He motions for you to sit on his bed as he takes his place in a nearby desk chair.

He opens his mouth to speak, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “So…. you need something?” he questions as he watches you look around his room. The silence is stifling, making Megumi shift in his seat before looking at you again. “Look man, I don’t know what you-“

“As a sorcerer, you should be more aware of your surroundings.” The interruption makes Megumi flinch, though he would deny it. Brows furrowed, Megumi goes to question exactly what you mean before you turn to him, the smirk you had been hiding all day on full display. “Don’t you think if you’re gonna finger your ass in a public place you should have the decency to at least make sure you’re alone?”

All the daydreaming in the world could not prepare you for the look of shock and hurt that adorned the young man's face. The scoff you produce makes Megumi's blood boil, rushing to his cheeks and the tips of his ears. Cute. An expression of disgust takes over his features as he stands. He lets out a humorless laugh as he stands. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re a god damn pervert.” The shake in his clenched fists, the twitch of his eyebrow, you admire it all. It would almost be scary if this situation had not transpired because he quite literally got caught with his dick in his hand.

“If I’m a pervert,” you start, making your way to Megumi to stare down at him past the bridge of your nose. You swiftly grab his chin in one hand, and use the other to block the hand he tried to swipe at you with. “what would Itadori think of you?” The raw indignation from Megumi’s scowl was truly one of the better parts of this whole ordeal.

You can feel him clench his jaw under your grasp, and his attempt to pull himself free from your grasp. “And why would you tell him? You’d look just as bad as I do, recording your classmate jacking off-“ his sentence cut short by the pained sound from you squeezing his jaw. The smirk you wore before is long gone, instead replaced with a cold stare that Megumi won’t soon forget.

“You are loud. Just like you were last night. Calling out to a man who you and I both know doesn’t feel the same. Truly, Megumi. You’re better than this.” You shove him away, pushing him so that he stumbles onto his bed. He makes a move to stand again, but the steady hand on his chest and you standing between his legs stops him. “But this can be our secret. He doesn’t have to know, and you can continue crying and calling out to him all you want.” You chuckle, slowly pushing him down onto his bed and sliding your hand to his throat.

He keeps his scowl on, but his labored breathing tells you another story. “For? I doubt you came all the way here just to laugh at me.” You smile at him, not as sinister as before, and slowly slide your free hand up his side. Megumi hates that he shudders, but he hates your laugh even more. You abruptly stand, walking to his door before looking at him over your shoulder.

“I’ll keep your dirty little secret so long as you don’t mind lending me a helping hand from time to time~” Megumi sits up, confused. He opens his mouth to ask what you mean before you close the door. You pull out your phone to send the illicit video to Megumi. The small chime of his phone and the anguished groan he lets out upon seeing that you had physical proof of his lapse in judgement, made the whole thing that much sweeter. Before walking back to your room once more, you send him a text.

“So I’m free this weekend. What about you?”

#megumi x reader #i am not good at tags #aaaaaaaaa #listen im just a megumi simp with brainrot Ill add more tags later

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rizahawkais · 3 years

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Hi Nia! You're gifs are so pretty! Is it possible for you to show how you get your WandaVision gifs too look so clear and hd? And how do you do your colorings too? (specifically the wanda maximoff in episode 3 gifset ITS GORGEOUS) I'm new to giffing and all the tutorials are kind of old. It's okay if you don't want to though! I understand it may be time consuming.

omg no! never feel intimidated to ask!! i don’t mind at all!

so, i’m going to show you how i made and coloured this gif

mostly bc it’s the only gif in that set w text and i’m going to share my text settings too!

tutorial is below :)

WHAT KIND OF VIDEOS ARE BEST?

.mkv files (the bigger the better BUT i usually think anything above 5 gb is excessive and unnecessary for an episode of television BUT for a movie worth it) itunes downloads (logolesspro on twitter, hd-source on tumblr, live-action-raws on tumblr have some DEPENDING on what you’re looking for) (also, there’s a chance that if you search "show/movie hd download tumblr” you’ll find a tumblr with its itunes download available)

THAT IS IT NO OTHER TYPE OF FILES MAKE YOUR GIFS LOOK GOOD

- my suggestion is always if its new (like just came out the past month) t*rrent it! it’ll be downloaded quickly and .mkv files look the best! BUT if not check the sources above see who has the BIGGEST file if they even have what you’re looking for and then if not then you look to t*rrenting!!

here are the wandavision files i use so you can see!!

SCREENCAPPING

-if you have windows use potplayer! i have a mac so i can’t show you how to use it and it’s not available for me :( HOWEVER back when i had a windows potplayer was the best method in screencapping!!

-I HAVE A MAC! so i use mpv!! (go to mpv.io and follow the directions) BUT DON’T DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ONE (it has a bug that skips frames) try each before the latest one bc from what i heard different ones work differently for everyone!! and i don’t know which one i use (yikes!) THERE ISN’T THAT MANY I PROMISE AND IT’S WORTH IT BC MPV IS THE BEST (i used to use adapter but they didn’t take impressive screencaps in my opinion and it was evident in my gifs you can see it too! )

create a folder for your screencaps! and make sure to rmb the directory order! now we want to create a text file on our built in textedit app on mac! type up all this down below (i like jpg but you can replace jpg w png if you want) AND SAVE THE FILE AS mpv.conf THIS IS IMPORTANT SO DON’T FORGET IT! save it somewhere you’ll find easily and NEVER delete it until you don’t use mpv anymore

just in case you don’t know what to insert after, go to your screencaps folder

now you want to open mpv and go to the corner towards mpv -> preferences and they’ll tell you that there is no .conf file SO GO LOOK FOR THE TEXT FILE WE JUST MADE AND DRAG IT TO THE FOLDER THEY OPENED FOR US AFTER SAYING THERE IS NO .CONF FILE

(i learned all this from @kylos tutorial!! so if any of what i just said about setting up mpv makes NO SENSE to you check out their tutorial at kylos(.)tumblr(.)com/post/178497909311)

now we can screencap!

so let’s find the scene we want RIGHT BEFORE and MAKE SURE SUBTITLES ARE OFF

i pause and then press (option/alt + s) and then SCREENCAPS ARE BEING TAKEN!! and to end the screencaps being taken you once again press (option/alt + s)!!

now we want to delete the excess frames! and put it all into one folder!! DO NOT DELETE FRAMES IN THE MIDDLE OF WHAT YOU WANT TO GIF!! WHEN YOU SKIP FRAMES IT WILL BE NOTICEABLE!!

MAKING THE GIF

this method isn’t used that much BUT I LOVE IT so this is how i put my frames in! first i check to see the size of my frames: 1920 x 1080

so i create a NEW file on photoshop with those dimensions w these settings

now i set my tool on photoshop to path selection tool bc if you have it set on smth like move tool or crop tool at the end you might end up moving or cropping frames you don’t want to!

ok so now we select ALL our frames and drag it on top of our new file on photoshop and the MOMENT we see our first frame in photoshop JUST KEEP CLICKING ENTER until all the frames are loaded!!

you can do file -> scripts -> load files into stack but it is WAYYY slower in my opinion!

now i crop out the excess BUT i don’t resize the gif yet! the dimensions wandavision is filmed in is 4:3 so i go to crop and set the settings to this:

MAKE SURE IT’S ON RATIO SO WE’RE PRESERVING THE ORIGINAL SIZE JUST CUTTING OFF THE BLACK EDGES!! We are going from 1920 x 1080 to 1440 x 1080 this is the dimensions after i cropped

WE ARE KEEPING THE QUALITY BY NOT CHANGING THE DIMENSIONS OF ANYTHING INSIDE !!

now we want to go to actions and create an action!! open up actions w one of these two depending on what your dash looks like!!

so we create an action with this button on the bottom of actions and we’re gonna title it making a gif and hit record!!

NOW LET’S GOOOOO!!

1. make sure you have timeline on your dash!

2. create frame animation (if you see create video timeline just click the arrow next to the button to see your other option which is frame animation!!)

3. now let’s meet our best friend!! the little bar in the top right corner that has all the commands for making our gifs and MAKE FRAMES FROM LAYERS

4. WE HAVE TO SHARPEN OUR GIFS NOW BUT TO DO THAT WE NEED TO CONVERT TO A SMART OBJECT SO NOW WE ARE GOING TO CONVERT TO VIDEO TIMELINE there are two ways: the button in the bottom left corner or the button in the top right corner w all the other commands!

5. select -> all layers DON’T MANUALLY SELECT THEM ALL BC THE ACTION WILL ONLY SELECT THAT SAME NUMBER OF FRAMES SO IF THERE ARE MORE FRAMES YOU WON’T GET THEM IN THE SMART OBJECT!!

6. filter -> convert for smart filters

7. NOW WE SHARPEN!! (filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen) i sharpen twice!! first, make sure we are on legacy w more accurate and remove gaussian blue! the first sharpening will be 500% with 0.4 px radius. NOW SHARPEN AGAIN (filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen) also w legacy, more accurate and remove gaussian blur BUT this time 10% with a 10.0 px radius!

8. it’s hd now!! so let’s flatten frames into clips!! go to the top right magic button again!! and you should see a pop up saying layers are being made

9. now we convert back to frame animation w either the bottom left button or our magic top right command center!

10. make frames from layers

11. select all frames w our magic command button

12. set the animation delay to 0.05 THAT IS THE BEST ONE ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS only use 0.06 when the character is moving really fast in the video itself and it makes the gif itself look awkward BUT NEVER GO ABOVE 0.06 it’ll look slow and laggy and we don’t want that and don’t go below 0.05 bc then it’ll be tooo fast and we don’t want that either!

13. now delete the very first frame on the timeline bc it is an oversharpened duplicate of the second frame! end the recording w this button!

this is what your action should look like expanded! if you made mistakes on the way and it shows up you can just click the specific step and press the trash can on the action tab to delete in from the order!!

NOW AFTER LOADING YOUR FRAMES AND CROPPING THE EDGES OF YOUR FRAMES IF YOU NEED TO JUST PLAY THE ACTION AND THEN YOUR GIF WILL BE MADE FOR YOU!!!!

now i delete some unnecessary frames in the beginning and end and this is what my gif looks like (the size was 46 mb and the limit is 10 mb so the dimensions of the gif are 540 x 405 to get it to 5 mb BUT I HAVEN’T CROPPED IT YET SO THIS IS ME CROPPING JUST TO SHOW YOU WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE)

CROPPING THE GIF

in my opinion if you want your gif to look hd you shouldn’t crop before you sharpen!! i believe that if you crop before you sharpen you don’t allow photoshop to sharpen all the pixels whereas if you crop beforehand there is less to work with!!

dimensions is all up to you!! just make sure to go by tumblr rules!! 540 is the max width and if you want to make two gifs per row then my suggested width is 268 and for three gifs per row my suggested is 177 px! Just have the right width and the length can be whatever you want!!

now i’m going to crop my gif to 540 by 590!!

NOW THIS IS WHAT MY GIF LOOKS LIKE!

COLOURING BASICS

let me show you the best adjustment tools in my opinion and a brief explanation for what they do!!

brightness/contrast: pretty simple increase/decrease the brightness/contrast BUT one of my techniques for when i first start colouring a gif is i select all my frames and do nothing to the settings of the adjustment but i set the layer to screen LIKE THIS

curves: ik others use curves to change brightness/contrast w the squiggly thing BUT i like it to set a white point and black point, this is also a technique i use when i first start colouring a gif when screen doesn’t look good for me SO you use white point to select a pixel on the gif to set as the lightest color on the gif (setting the white point) and you use black point to select a pixel on the gif to set as the darkest colour on the gif (setting the black point) usually the white point makes it TOO bright and that’s why we use the black point to counter it and same goes for when i use screen with brightness/contrast, it gets too bright so i use black point to counter it below is the button for white point and the button for black point, respectively they are shaped as color picker tools

vibrance: generally, i never use this except for color p*rn sets but they work really well in making colors seem more strong

hue/saturation: like vibrance, i never use this except for color p*rn sets but this adjustment is to help change the colors or hue of a color for example: turn blue into purple or turn a blue into a little lighter shade of blue

color balance: I ALWAYS USE THIS!! except for in black and white gifs BUT THIS IS MY GO TO AND IF I DON’T USE IT MY GIFS ARE JUST BLAND i feel like color balance is what essentially balances the colors on your gif and adds dimension to it, it makes your gif go from looking way too yellow to a more golden neutral look and it is an essential adjustment in my opinion

channel mixer: i rarely use channel mixer BUT it is so so useful when you are working w a dark scene just play w the settings and all of a sudden all the blue in a dark scene will be a little more yellow and red and your scene will kind of just look brighter and more visible

selective color: THIS IS ALSO AN ESSENTIAL this helps SPECIFIC colors pop you’re working on a scene where there is too much red on someones face you use this tool to remove the magentaness from the yellow section OR when you feel someones face is TOO yellow and needs more blush you add more magenta in the yellow section of selective color

gradiant map: gradiant map is perfect when you’re lazy if you feel like your gif looks more neutral and you want some red in it but you don’t want to mess with any other adjustments just set a red to black gradiant on soft overlay with a very low opacity and BOOM slightly red but not too much red added!

NOW TO COLOR THE GIF!

today i have decided to start with a brightness layer set on screen

and this is what we got!

now that’s a little to bright and washed out in my opinion SOOOO to counteract it, i’m going to use my black point tool in curves and i’m going to select this point on the gif (it’s better to choose smth in the background and not smth that’s paid attention to such as monica’s hair or either of their eyelashes)

now my gif looks like this! the base color is complete!

now i think i need to balance all this yellow and red! SOOOO WE GONNA USE COLOR BALANCE!!

i think the best way to use color balance is to keep swinging the balancer until you see what you like and then keep going midtones i think i want more red and i don’t want a cyan midtone and then for shadows i think i want more cyan to counter the redness of the gif but highlights i don’t touch that much NOW HERE ARE MY SETTINGS SO YOU CAN SEE

and this is what my gif looks like

now you can stop here if you want but in my opinion i think the gif looks a lil too dead still SO IMMA USE SELECTIVE COLOR

i think there needs to be a lot lot more RED so i amp up the yellow magenta and black in the red! but i also think the yellows need to be LESS RED so i remove magenta from the yellow! and bc there’s some cyan and blue bc of monica and the flowers in the background im going to make the cyans more cyan and the blues a lil more black! i’m going to remove some yellows from the magenta!! and i add more black to the neutrals and black!! i think it’s always important to add more black to neutral and black bc it adds more depth to the gif by not just making it a bunch of bright colors and having dark colors to contrast to!! my settings are below!

and the result!

now let’s see everything together!

and the before and after!

I HOPE MY COLOURING EXPLANATION MADE SENSE!! if not you can always ask me more questions i don’t mind!!

ADDING SUBTITLES

we want to grab the text tool!

make a text box from anywhere in the middle from the left to right edge. this is so we can make sure our text is centered and will be in the same place for when we have sets w more than one gif w text!

type your text out and make sure you highlight the whole text so that all the settings apply to EACH character! you can find the alignments (for center) in the paragraph tab!

now lets right click on the text layer and go to blending options! add stroke and drop shadow!

now drag it to the desired height you would like and make sure to keep it in mind for when you have more than one subtitled gif in a set!

NOW TO MAKE SURE THE TEXT STAYS IN PLACE AND THE BLENDING STAYS YOU HAVE TO CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT!!

if you want to only have the text applied to certain frames instead of all frames, select the frames you don’t want by clicking the first frame in ur don’t want section ON THE TIMELINE and WHILST HOLDING SHIFT click the last frame of ur don’t want section and then toggle the eye switch next to the text layer

now you see the text

now you don’t

tip: use opacity to fade the text in and out!

the text is going to be on all my frames so i don’t need to toggle the eye but i just wanted to show you just in case!!

now here’s my FINAL RESULT

save for web (file -> export -> save for web)

your gifs have to always be under 10 mb! so, if your WAYYY overboard YOU HAVE TO DELETE FRAMES! or you can divide the gif in two and have two gifs instead of one! however, if you plan on going the deleting frames route MAKE SURE YOU DELETE FROM THE BEGINNING OR END OF YOUR SELECTION i promise you that most of us won’t notice that your characters dialogue is being cut off BUT WE WILL NOTICE IF FRAMES ARE BEING SKIPPED so, don’t delete frames in the middle of ur gif!! idc how little you do it IT WILL RUIN YOUR GIF AND I SAY THIS FROM EXPERIENCE i would delete every fifth frame to cut down my gifs and that may seem like not that big of a deal BUT IT IS my gif looked choppy and poor so it is way better to cut from the end/beginning of the gif

ANOTHER LAST PIECE OF ADVICE in the bottom left of when the save for web menu shows up THERE’S A PREVIEW BUTTON click on it! it’ll show you your gif on your default browser and show you what it’ll look like once uploaded! this is perfect to check the speed of ur gif and the colouring and to notice if there’s a problem with your subtitles or maybe there’s an obvious jump in frames you never noticed before!! i always use preview bc the built-in photoshop viewer of ur gif shows the colors differently and the speed is NEVER ACURRATE!

I USED THESE SAVE SETTINGS!! many say to use selective pattern but i DISAGREE and i think these save settings are the ✨ best ✨

OK NOW THAT IS THE END OF THIS VERY LONG GIF TUTORIAL!! I HOPE THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED!! IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK I SINCERELY DON’T MIND!! JUST DON’T BE RUDE OR ANYTHING BC PPL HAVE BEEN RECENTLY :(

I WISH YOU ALL THE LUCK AND FUN IN YOUR GIFFING ADVENTURES !!

#tutorials #asks #sourceblog #allresources #completeresources #itsphotoshop #dailyresources #resourcemarket #chaoticresources #onlyresources #hisources #sibylresources #dailypsd

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yelenasdog · 3 years

Text

hurricane (brian may x fem reader)

request by the wonderful @speciallyred w prompts 45 and 58 from this prompt list! i was super nervous to write this bc i love her writing but i hope u enjoy!!

genre: per request of anna, angsty! but it ends w some fluff to mend ur broken heart hehe

summary: he’s never home, and neither is she. he can’t communicate, and she just wants to be loved.

words: 1.5k this was supposed to b a drabble OOPS

warnings: crying, sadness, mentions of marriage+kids, mentions and accusations of cheating, i think that’s it but as always, lmk if i missed any!

a/n: ok so a. y/n wasn’t used so if u wanted this do bri x some other female or oc that would work, and b. i also didn’t use anything that would keep this from being able to be read as a gwil!bri fic :) mwah (also i just realized this but this could totally be a song fic for i want love by elton john ok bye luv u)

⭑ 🎸

It was deathly silent in the spacious former home of Brian and his beloved, that had now been reduced to only a house. The ticking of the grandfather clock he had insisted that they had to have when they moved in could be heard ringing out and echoing, pestering the girl to no end.

It was always quiet in their house, even when they fought. There was never a rushed bustle of children you had to get out the door to school, and not even a cat or dog to create a disruptive chaos as they ran about, muddy paws leaving marks on the floor.

There would be the occasional record playing lowly, the notes floating about the house, and sometimes if she couldn’t sleep, she would have Bri play her a soft tune on his old acoustic, his voice having no issue bringing her to rest.

But even now, during one of the most heart wrenching fights that the pair had gone through, it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop on the hardwood flooring.

As Brian was a soft and gentle man, never yelling or raising his voice in the slightest. He wasn’t mean or cruel, in fact, his entire aura calmed her to no end, which is why she supposed she hated this so much.

She scanned with careful eyes over his silhouette, watching as stray curls rustled from the draft coming in from the open window, goosebumps raising on both of their exposed arms.

“What are you looking at?”

“Just you, Bri.”

He rolled his eyes from where he sat on the white sofa, moving his fist under his chin. A scoff fell from his rosy lips as he turned his head to look out the window, not actually paying any mind to the green hills, a light frost covering the entire landscape.

“So are you just going to ignore me?”

“I’m not ignoring you.”

A salty tear rolled down her face, the incoming breeze hitting her dampened face. She inhaled sharply, her chilled skin becoming slimy and cold to the touch.

Brian wouldn’t know that, though, he hadn’t touched her in days. Weeks, even.

She had wanted to say that his words were malicious, with venom dripping from his tone, like some sort of acid was coating his vocal cords.

But they weren’t. His voice never raised a damn octave, staying completely neutral. And it was driving her mad.

“Then what is this, Brian?”

“I’m collecting my thoughts.”

She laughed, the sound lacking its usual melodic intonation that the guitarist adored so much. He was the reasoning behind the dry chuckle, that much he knew, and he hated it. God, how he despised it. But, he would never let it show. How could he, when he was the initiator of the (extremely childish, now that he thought over it) conflict to begin with? He knew his accusation was emptier than the large building they resided in, and he knew that the results would be horrendous.

But jealousy was an ugly green parasite that had rooted itself in Brian May’s heart, slowly consuming him from the inside out. It was like a devil that rested on his left shoulder, insisting that she was unfaithful, taking advantage of his extended leaves. He foolishly acted on the devil’s words, which led to where they were now.

“Well, how long do you need to ‘collect your thoughts’?” She folded her leg under her opposite thigh, leaning towards him, the distance of only a few feet feeling like worlds away to her broken heart. She would always be drawn to him like some sort of magnet, no matter how badly he hurt her.

“I’m not sure, would you like me to do so elsewhere?”

A beat passed.

“Why, so you can go shag someone else, just like I apparently have been?”

Again, silence.

“You were gone for 3 hours every night on every Tuesday the past month-“

“You kept track? You’re out of your damn mind.” She raised her voice, sitting up, suddenly enraged with his obsessive distrust rather than saddened.

“That’s not important-“

“What’s important is that you’re gone on tour for 10 times as long as that, leaving me here completely alone to my own devices! I trust you enough to believe that you remain mine while you’re away, but for some unknown reason, you can’t manage to think the same about me.”

His flippancy on the issue at hand agitated her (or his lack thereof in general, she supposed) to no end. She wanted him to scream and cry, to throw something, to loudly shout, to shed fury fueled tears as she had. She knew it was wrong, but quite frankly she didn’t care.

He tried to speak up for himself, stuttering out something about how he did in fact trust her, but all to no avail. She would have none of it, not now.

“What’s important, Brian, is that every Tuesday, I’m staying 3 hours after work to try to make it so that I don’t have to rely on you for money, because I don’t want you to think even for a moment I’m with you just because you’re some incredibly famous rockstar who happens to be loaded!”

She was standing now, although she couldn't quite remember bringing her body from the comforts of the soft chair by the mantle to her feet. The roaring fire beside her had died down into a flurry of golden embers, heat still radiating from the pile of charred logs, Brian failing to provide even a fraction of the same warmth.

“Because I love you, and as of late, I’m starting to wonder if you love me too.”

He stood, walking over to where she was in a timely manner, his long legs carrying him quickly. Her breath hitched at their sudden proximity, her surprise only growing when he gripped his hands on either side of her face, pulling her forward and capturing her lips in a long awaited union.

She loathed that her stiff figure was melting into him faster than she would like to admit, and she even more, she loathed the fact she knew she always would.

He was able to taste her tears that hadn’t ceased to roll down her face, the bitter droplets seeping onto the tip of his tongue. He pulled away, his right hand caressing her cheekbone while his forehead rested upon hers. His bottom lip quivered, a wave of emotions hitting him like a hurricane in full force.

His eyes become glassy, and all at once, tears flood his eyesight, pouring down his flushed features. He looked down, shutting his eyes and shaking his head. The bawling didn’t stop as he had hoped, though, it just slowed, the liquid dropping onto her shirt.

“I love you, I love you so much that it hurts. And ’m sorry, I’m so incredibly sorry, darling.”

She smiled softly, lightly massaging the top of his scalp, his locks growing frizzy.

“I know. But it’s just so hard- It seems everyone is getting married, and settling down. Hell, even Fred has his cats.”

They both laughed, and she chewed her bottom lip, a habit of hers that Bri had picked up on in the time he’d known her.

“I just get lonely, Bri, and it feels like you never let me know what’s going on in that pretty head of yours. That’s all, honest to God.”

They moved to sit down, and he pulled closer than they had been in ages.

“I’ll support you in any way shape or form, no matter what, yeah?”

She simply nodded, leaning onto his shoulder.

“Yeah. I know.”

Raising his eyebrows, he cocked his head, choosing his next words carefully.

“And if you’re serious about, y’know, having a family and ‘settling down’ and everything, I’ll do it.”

She met his eyes, her smile growing wider.

“Really?”

He hummed, nodding his head. “I love you, and this house is far too quiet.”

She giggled, tossing her arms around his neck and throwing herself on him.

“I must say I agree.”

After the grins had retreated into soft smiles, and the two had come to a much more stolid point, she sat up, patting her lap.

Brian understood immediately, laying his tired head down and allowing her to play with his hair. She moved her hands to oh so lightly trace the crook of his nose and the bags under his eyes (from the late nights he spent performing, wishing he was in the exact position he was in now), the ticklish feeling making him nuzzle into her hand with a whine.

She couldn’t help but smile at the beautiful boy beneath her, as even with all the work that there was to be done between them, she felt confident that he was in it for the long haul.

🦔⭑ 🎸

me @ u for reading that

ty for reading, like and rb if u wanna :) go drink some water and eat some protein if u can!

as always, xx hj <3

#brian may #brian may x reader #brian may x oc #brian may x you #brian may fluff #gwilym lee #gwil! bri x reader #borhap #queen imagine #queen fic #borhap fic #gwilym!brian #gwilym lee x you #gwilym lee x reader #brian may imagine #ok bye mwah

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red-hood-vigilante · 3 years

Text

more hbo spn rambles, thoughts, drabbles etc. long long post.

part 1 here

there’s some things i’ve omitted here bc others have already posted about those things, certain headcanons and characterizations and stuff. those posts are in my likes somewhere (and i’ll reblog them someday), and there’s some posts i’ve read but not liked, which i now can only vaguely remember, which is why some ideas/thoughts are similar

ALSO most of these follow the model i talked about in part one: how s1-5 will stay more or less how they are but s6-10 is changed (some things are cut out entirely, some things are tweaked and some characters + arcs are more fleshed out. more focus on sam’s trauma and post-cage adaptation to the real world as well as dean letting his rage and control issues consume him and how he’d recover and redeem himself)

as i typed these paragraphs, i realized i really have 10 seasons mapped out and ready to go. hbo hire me!!

alright go:

sam and dean get wearier as the show progresses (second half), and eventually they stop putting so much care and thought in the people they save. like...hm how do i say this, like as long as a victim/victims are saved, they don’t care about how that happens or how those people suffer potential consequences, like if the victims lose a limb or have their homes burned down because of the monster, then sam and dean don’t really care. they saved your life, now they’ll leave you with your life in potential shambles and not care because all that matters is that they saved your life, not how it is afterwards. they still care about saving that one person, but eventually it pales a little in comparison to a war between heaven and hell, being the vessels etc. ---> saving people becomes less about making sure they’re actually alright and healing from horrific events and more about just making sure they have a pulse before they move on

when angels lose their wings they are either burned off in the actual fall or ripped off of them in their vessels, which leaves pretty nasty scars on the vessel

ed and harry are so young and bright eyed about the whole hunting thing; sam and dean as kids, idolizing it, finding it exciting and intriguing when they shouldn’t. sam and dean try to get them out of the business before they too are too traumatized and desensitized to do anything but hunt. neither sam or dean will say it but they are jealous of ed and harry and their freedom to leave, and hate them for choosing this voluntarily instead of being dragged into it by tragedy

hbo spn is a slow burn. there’s a lot more shots of sam and dean in silence just sitting together after a hunt, exhausted and too tired to move yet. they’re covered in blood and guts on the side of the road after killing or covered with dirt in a graveyard after burning bones, sitting next to the fire, just watching it. the times they park the car and watch the stars? we get to see it.

dean wears rings and the amulet all the time in the beginning, for the first five seasons. the rings vary; first they’re some of john’s old ones and stuff he finds in thrift stores. then later on he begins wearing rings from people they’ve saved/haven’t saved as a keepsakes etc. when he begins his descent to the holy murderer in s6-10 he wears less and less rings. they don’t matter anymore -> symbolically shedding who he was and what mattered to him

the only accessories sam has is a rosary/cross around his neck. he has jess’ engagement ring in his pocket/wallet. after the cage he vaguely remembers why the ring was there and who jessica was (more on this further down)

the four horsemen are manifestations of different aspects of human nature at its most grotesque and strongest, can’t be killed as long as humans live. war is conflict, famine is desire, pestilence is physical and mental illnesses.

(the seven sins are like the horsemen, tulpas of human nature instead of demons)

death isn’t a concentration of an existing aspect of humans as much as it is the end of life, the antithesis of life. death the oldest of the horsemen and has existed since the beginning of any life, organism, cell and atom. the opposite of life and light, the other half of god (as i’m typing this i’m confused as to why amara was the opposite of god instead of death). death isn’t evil or good, remains 100% objective. doesn’t care for sam or dean at all, but has a begrudging respect for their stubbornness and entertainment they provide due to their flat out refusal to do as they’re told by celestial bodies when anyone else would crumble

by including death i feel like it very naturally begs questions of who decides when someone dies, when someone lives, why would death follow these guides instead of reaping whomever whenever, what happens if a life isn’t reaped at the right time etc. the reader in me adore the idea of death having a library with books and records of everyone who has ever lived and died and how they died - but then, who writes these books and why? do they decide, and if in that case, how? these questions are above my paygrade but you know what i mean? like there has to be some sort of system right, god created everything, death executes to maintain order, some third party deity writes the laws and the books. the three branches of government. ok but it’s hbo so again, i think we shouldn’t dive this deep into things, like as much as these topics intrigue me i don’t want to stray too much from the dirt road trip aesthetic

shapeshifters are extremely rare because they don’t require any kind of human blood or organs/sacrifice to live

i want more exploration of how magic is like science, like it just needs the right ingredients and right conditions. sam thinks of magic as an obscure branch of science; it just requires research and knowledge and clear intentions because science can be controlled and do a lot of good when used responsibly. dean doesn’t like it. he doesn’t trust the unpredictable elements and he’s seen enough to know it never goes well. magic is a force that can’t be controlled by anyone.

sam and dean have full on fist fights regularly. to practice and keeping each other sharp, but also because they’re siblings. they’re feral, insane and unhinged with each other and they get on each other’s nerves A LOT. it’s petty and childish and sometimes it can get a lil ugly but it becomes their way of family therapy. after a fight the next scene cuts to sam and dean with ruffled clothes, nosebleeds and swollen lips at a diner eating silently after beating each other up. either they sit in silence because they’re tired or both are harping on the other’s openings and weaknesses

sometimes they’ll fight a little dirty but they do so in different ways; dean will pull the old ‘look!’ and point to something and then tackle sam when he turns to look while sam will just cry out in fake pain which makes dean stop dead in his tracks before sam headbutts him or kicks him in the groin

we, the audience get used to these fights, they’re sometimes funny and for comic relief, sometimes for narrative purposes (like tricking a monster they’re fighting each other when they’re really not) BUT. then comes the times when sam and dean are actually fighting without holding back and we see how much they are capable of hurting each other or how heartbreaking and difficult it can be to watch when of them are incapable of fighting back/doesn’t defend himself -> swan song when dean doesn’t fight back against possessed sam, or when dean beats soulless sam unconscious

sam and dean also just verbally bully each other constantly but they do have their odd ways of expressing affection and care. they get the other person their fave snack whenever they go grocery shopping without being asked to and are the only other one they truly trust to have their back in hunts. have a cup of coffee ready before the other asks for one. brothers and each other’s best friend. nightmare duo but in a sweet way. the cooperation of ‘the usual suspects’ when they’re in different interrogation rooms but still has the cover story down to a t. code words and code names and cover stories, they know it all

when sam and dean fight together against a common enemy they’re a damn nightmare - because they know each others weaknesses and habits, they cover each other perfectly and in complete silence. they’ve been at it together since they were kids and read each other’s nonverbal cues like a picture book

to build off of what i said in part 1; the winchesters are pretty hated in the hunter’s community. even the people sam and dean frequently work with (bobby, ellen, jo, ash, rufus, bela, kevin, charlie, castiel etc) roasts them all the time and don’t hesitate with calling them out on their self-pitying crap when it get’s too much (spn was just objectively better when characters weren’t afraid of dragging sam and dean through the mud for being selfish and stupid) and this WILL persist in hbo spn. the only reason people continue working with sam and dean is because they know deep down a lot of the things that happens aren’t sam and dean’s fault - but they still blame them for it. doesn’t make it easier how sam or dean sometimes start crap on purpose to save the other

the winchesters are terrifying and people for sure tell stories about them, but not like ‘they’re heroes’, more like ‘they’re insane and dangerous. stay the fuck away from them’. some stories are true, like how they’ve worked with demons, but some are just game of telephone. (dean has apparently a ghost he is frequently possessed by while sam is actually a mutant vampire). hunters hate and are scared of the winchesters. sam and dean are never invited to hunter stuff (burials, memorials etc) but crash them nonetheless even though the hunters do NOT want them there.

you know what drives me insane when i think about it? how some characters in spn already are their hbo spn counterparts; john. mary. adam. maybe kevin?

other things that already are their hbo spn counterparts: dean throwing away the amulet right in front of sam. eyes burning when angels are seen. how ghosts are just tragedies, stuck in a loop they can’t leave. how a lot of the monsters they meet are just victims or their circumstances or the first victim of a curse. the impala being sam and dean’s home. dean not knowing how to comfort sam when he’s upset other than trying to do things for sam that usually brings dean comfort (driving the impala, listening to rock music etc). the roadhouse. heaven being an eternal version of the memories that made you the happiest even though it’s not real. sam wanting independence and freedom but never fully having it. dean fearing being alone more than anything else and that’s where he always ends up. sam has an eating disorder after the demon blood and dean has an alcohol problem he refuses to see as a problem. dean saying “i’d do it again” without an ounce of regret and pouring himself a drink when sam tells him it was fucked up to lie to him about gadreel

the demon/angel hybrid: THIS could be sooo interesting to explore. an angel and demon hybrid are you kidding me?? not to toot my own horn too much but i’m so clever. i should write this story myself. SO. does this creature have parents who fucked in their vessels or was this an experiment by god (yes i love the ‘mad scientist’ idea, that really should’ve been played up way more) or did a pre-existing creature (human or otherwise) drink demon blood and angel grace at the same time so that it created itself? so much potential for some really intriguing storytelling and character exploration - not only the creature itself and what they would be like, but also for the people around; sam, dean, castiel, jack etc. how would they react to this thing that is the very definition of defying heaven and hell and all the natural laws? does it exist before the show starts or will we see its birth?

the powers of the demon/angel hybrid would be tricky; a mix of holy and defiant, grotesque and beautiful. unconsciously forces people to tell the truth when talking to them. poisons whatever they touch. eyes of a demon, wings of an angel. can smite but skin will burn when touching iron. can do deals but will require a sacrifice in return, not a soul, usually a body part taken then and there (the hybrid eats it. it favours eyeballs and the liver - angels like raw meat). lights always flicker. makes things explode when angry (esp people and cars). can manipulate feelings, thoughts and memories. can travel to both heaven and hell, not welcome in either places. + standard stuff like telekinesis, teleportation, mind reading, super strength etc.

sam and dean’s wardrobe are pretty much the same; whatever’s cheap and not covered in blood. however, they do have stylistic differences. sam thinks graphic tees are funny, dean uses whatever’s black combined with john’s leather jacket. their wardrobe melds as they stop thinking of themselves as individuals and more of “me and my brother,”. their clothes are tattered and torn to shreds all the time. hand me downs, hand me ups. when they stray off their “path” and do things that are the crux of a storyline/character arc, this would reflect in their clothes. when sam is with ruby and becomes more and more “evil” he wears more and more red, a colour he has stated in the past he doesn’t really like. when dean is dead, sam starts to wear his rings and john’s and dean’s leather jacket. when dean decides he’s going to say yes to michael he dresses in white, when sam is dead dean takes off every piece of jewelry except the amulet. he holds it clenched in his fists when he’s whispering what comes close to a prayer

logically the amulet should have a backstory but you know what? i love that it’s hinted to be just a piece of cheap jewelry sam found in a thrift store he decided to give to dean. but narratively it should be explained so... idk. what could be logical solution as to why it would react to GOD himself? maybe god wore it once cuz he thought it was neat but he sold it for three dollars because he wanted coffee and then sam found it a week later

i would prefer it if god didn’t show up at all (absent father number one) but if he DID he’s not all powerful just a true neutral (like death, 100% objective) who created a thing that just took a life of its own, much like a parent and a child - the parent helps the child but can’t control it. the times he did intervene or tried to do something it didn’t really have any real long lasting effect so he gave up on trying a while ago.

@spneveryseason talked about this, how the storyline of sam being possessed by gadreel would be horrifying if we saw everything from sam’s perspective instead of dean’s (her fic is wonderful). in the ‘dean slowly descends into a righteous murderer to become holy’ idea i have this tracks so damn well because again, if dean believes something is right, it is right, no questions about it. everyone around him is like “that’s really fucked up and you should make amends” but dean doesn’t see any reasons for why - sam is alive isn’t he? and seeing it from sam’s pov would really underline how horrifying, dehumanizing and belittling that experience was

john and mary are adam and eve. sam and dean are cain and abel are michael and lucifer. time is a flat circle. history never stops repeating itself.

sam is the villain of s4. he is manipulated and key information is withheld from him but in the end... would it made a difference? it crossed his mind, that he could be tricked because ruby is a demon after all, but maybe he likes the power, the feeling of freedom, that he wasn’t just the baby, the one who always needs permission to do things. if he has to drain possessed people to get that power... so be it. and it’s for a good purpose, until it isn’t. he’s hungry for more, to be feared and respected. he’s enticed by lucifer’s sweet words, the potential of all that power and the idea of ruling two out of three realms. dean manages to pull him back from the brink because sam decides he doesn’t want to be what john thought he was and fail dean and himself like that.

dean is the villain in s9. he is controlling, the mark of cain without the mark. what he says goes - it’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. he doesn’t see how much pain, doubt and fear he causes the people around him. if some victims or civilians die on his watch that doesn’t matter - just some collateral damage. sam can’t make dean listen to him because dean is the older one, the one who’s always called the shots. dean is the angelic one, heaven’s chosen warrior, he is untouchable and unkillable. he’s is an excellent killer, filling the void with blood and rage which is better than the crippling fear of loneliness carved into his bones. 'i butcher for love, to protect,’ he tells himself. ‘why shouldn’t i exterminate, regardless of the cost? i’ve followed the rules, i’ve always sacrificed. now i call the shots. it’s my right.’

sam’s hell trauma is never magically removed. he’s stuck with the memories and the nightmares and the occasional hallucinations. castiel can’t do anything but offers to wipe his memory completely, but sam says no, he is still doing penance.

after dean comes back from hell he starts calling himself old man and jokes a lot about he’s 40 years older now (after he’s more comfortable about speaking about hell)

when sam comes back he feels ancient (he’s over 900 years old at least but he lost count), weary, tired and so so so out of place in this world. he’s forgotten how to put gas in a car, how to drive, how to use a credit card, all the song lyrics he and dean used to yell together, the faces of people he knew before he fell, the softness of a bed, the schools he went to, most of the hunts he and dean, how john died, who mary is, the initials carved into the impala, the taste of food that isn’t raw meat. it’s so much he’s forgotten that he has to relearn. he prefers figuring things out with castiel instead of dean because castiel doesn’t silently resent him for everything he’s forgotten

sam doesn’t laugh anymore. despite dean’s many and castiel’s few awkward attempts, it’s more like quick smile and a quiet “hmm”. on some days he recoils when he sees blood and guts, on other days he’s so apathetic it’s unnerving

sam sympathizes with the brought back mary and castiel more than ever. dean tries to get sam to remember things he’s forgotten from his childhood but sam can’t connect with it anymore. he stopped being that sam a long time ago. dean doesn’t know what else to do than try to force this connection to be revitalized and he fails. sam isn’t that person anymore and this wedge in their relationship becomes a central factor in dean’s s6-10 desperation and isolation. sam is here and safe but it’s not really sam, not the sam dean grew up with

while sam has forgotten how to make coffee, he now knows everything about angels, effective torture tricks, a bunch of lore + biblical history, how to navigate hell, the most powerful and influential demons, rare and powerful spells as well as perfect enochian (he will speak enochian without realizing and it feels more natural than english). lucifer and michael were surprisingly talkative (raging about the unfairness) when taking their anger and hatred out on sam and adam and each other. sam had access to all of lucifer’s memories and knowledge for the time he was the one in control. walking library and encyclopedia of biblical lore.

he still has some muscle memory from hunting and sparring, but sam is ghostly thin and very rusty. even though he’s an expert on lore, he’s not fit to go on hunts anymore and he knows it.

sam remembers adam and swears he’ll try to get him out, but he can’t. just thinking about the cage makes him vomit. he can’t talk about it, much less go near it. after a while sam thinks it might be better to let adam stay down there than let him come back up and feel this crushing emptiness and loss of direction

sam’s trials take place in s9 instead of 8; coinciding with dean’s villain arc. for sam the trials are a chance to redeem himself again, this time for good by closing hellgates forever. they’re scrubbing him clean of the demon blood and his sins and they give him a sense of purpose again now that he can’t join hunts anymore. it doesn’t matter if he dies because of it. it would be nice with a permanent and peaceful death that did something good. dean is taken aback by sam’s devotion to repent for something that happened years ago and for something sam has already paid for a thousand times over. dean realizes how messed up he himself has become and how he’s helped put sam here, on the cusp of self sacrifice again because of sickening guilt and self hatred. dean begs sam to not complete the trials at the cost of his own life and swears he’ll better himself, be a friend and a brother, not a jailer, dictator or a murderer. ‘if you won’t give yourself or life another chance, please give me one.’ ---> s10 pacifist dean learning to let go of the control, the violent tendencies and the rage

oh wait what if gadreel still possessed sam after the trials to heal him but sam is the one who invites the angel in? he’ll keep his promise to dean about staying alive, as well as heal from the inside and have breaks from the world when he doesn’t want to be present, like he and gadreel will alternate being the one in control. he keeps it a secret from dean and helps gadreel imitate him so dean won’t notice. it’s not so bad, being possessed by this angel - sam can say no anytime and gadreel is a nice guy. since they alternate on who’s present they can access each other’s memories, which is terrifying and embarrassing at first, but since gadreel and sam have been tricked and used by lucifer and been punished for it for far too long, they understand each other. now another creature knows their trauma and terrors without the need for verbal explanation. also having an angel residing in his body makes sam feel like he can hunt properly again because gadreel can heal him and take over in situations sam’s overpowered. this could show how messed up sam has come to view himself and his body.

dean is conflicted when he finds out; sam lied but gadreel does help sam heal, sam’s traumatized and his self-worth is fucked up and dean has contributed to that. dean convinces sam to push gadreel out, that sam is still valuable, loved and a good person who shouldn’t be in a place where he views his body and mind like a property to be occupied. sam’s faith begins to come back bit by bit, not in god, but in himself, his brother, in the good things in life. they build their little family; sam, dean, castiel, the hybrids, whomever of their allies that are alive at this point.

castiel can heal sam and dean’s wounds but they are never completely gone; they leave scars and phantom pains. the brothers have SO many scars over the years. dean flaunts them to impress people because he likes the questions and the fearful admiration, the attention and the nods of approval. sam hides them.

when dean is in a bad mood or needs to get his mind off of things, sam just drops something like ‘i don’t get the deal with led zeppelin. one of the most overrated bands of all time’ and dean will go OFF every single time about the entire led zeppelin history, their discography and how they’ve shaped rock music. this will go on for hours and sam will zone out after 1 minute. but dean rants nonsensically the entire drive and it does get him to think about something else for a little bit. they stop at a motel and dean is STILL ranting while brushing his teeth. stops when going to sleep but without fail picks up where he left off the morning after and is so into it he doesn’t notice sam not paying attention at all. we could see this once in s1 when they’re searching for john, another in s3 when dean is anxious about his deal coming to an end and then again in a later season, when sam doesn’t remember to ask/doesn’t have the patience or mental capability, so they’ll sit there in tense silence, showing how much they’ve changed.

---> i can see this SO clearly in my head, how they’ll get in the car and we, the audience, will recognize the camera angle, the same lines and dean’s grumpy mood, and we’ll anticipate what comes next. but sam isn’t that kid anymore and he’s not peeking at dean to gauge what his mood is and how much of a shit eating grin he should wear when being an annoying little brother to cheer dean up. now he’s looking out the window, leaned back, they’re not looking at each other. this shot is a minute or two long, uninterrupted. dean turns on music but neither are singing along or doing anything to lighten the mood.

s1-5: sam gets hooked on demon blood, dean has an alcohol problem. when sam goes through withdrawals, dean decides to quit drinking and joins him because he wants to be supportive, and he realizes that when he drinks two beers for breakfast there’s a problem

s6-10: sam takes painkillers, anti depressants and anti psyhosis meds to numb himself from the phantom pains and reduce post-cage effects. dean started drinking again after sam jumped and still does, but started smoking in addition because he still drives a lot and doesn’t want to die in something as pathetic as a car crash.

there a scene in an episode in the first half of s8, when sam has decided to stay with dean instead of amelia, and dean has rejected benny in favor of sam, and then the brothers sit in a couch watching tv while drinking beer and neither of them look particularly happy about it - that’s how their relationship is a lot of the time. they know they’re fucked up and neither of them will ever be truly happy when the other’s around, but they owe each other so much and they don’t have to explain themselves to each other the way they do to others. they know each other so well, each other’s traumas and the things they’ve done, it feels fake and exhausting to try to be something other than the veteran hunters they are. misery loves company; they are miserable together but would be far more miserable apart and living a normal life. they do love each other, but neither of them are particularly happy as the show progresses. family is hell and so is the lack of it.

OK OK i mentioned it in part one, how i had my own very specific idea about how jack should come to be and here it is. long winded but (might just write a damn fic):

after lucifer was cast back into the cage, he is stronger than he has been in a long time (being in his true vessel helped him stretched muscles he forgot he had. and fresh air.) sam is pulled out of the cage and it leaves a rift in the magic and chains - the binding is weaker and lucifer must act fast to get out before it heals. the cage is still strong enough to hold two archangels, so lucifer has to become weaker somehow to slip out through the cracks. he can’t get out of the cage, but souls can come in. demons bring themselves and human souls as tools for lucifer to use. there’s not much he can do here - consuming them, eating them, touching them, dissecting them doesn’t give him what he wants

eventually lucifer realizes he must do like azazel and create something new of two halves, like when he created demons. he begins melding his archangel grace with a human soul. he tries with demons, but his archangel grace automatically purifies them and leaves them too weak. he must try with a human soul who is good. he finds the soul of kelly kline, who sold her soul to save a loved one. with her, the merging, works.

he has another self, a twin, a son, who’s half human and half archangel. half lucifer. the old lucifer will die but that’s ok, his desires, presence and self will live on in his new creation. the new lucifer barely makes it out of the cage, only able to due to its human side. on earth it creates a body for itself and takes shape, no longer a form of pure power and energy akin to the sun itself but now a person, reminiscent of kelly kline on earth and lucifer in heaven. they name themselves jack. jack searches for familiarity and finds it in sam, their old self’s perfect tool and another hybrid. jack finds a mentor in castiel, a younger brother and fellow angel with human elements. they do not find anything in dean, the key to his former self’s doom.

jack’s powers: their powers are like and unlike the angels because he is half archangel. jack has wings but sometimes they don’t work, or they’ll end up somewhere else entirely. their body is their own, not a vessel, so jack can’t possess people. doesn’t talk but people “know” what they’re saying or want because jack emits their emotions and thoughts to people they’re talking to like a radio tower. jack can also have this empathic connection and communication with animals. his mood affects the weather. immortal. reads minds. can remove a soul from a body and send it to heaven/hell by touching it, with practice they don’t need to touch a body.

other stuff about jack: the human/archangel nature means jack only need sleep and food once a week or so. eats only nougat and raw meat. because jack is a kid they nap a lot. levitates when sleeping. never blinks, stares intensely at everything. their eye colour changes based on their mood. eyes glow in the dark. normal humans who look at jack for too long experience memory loss, fainting spells or migraines and eye contact for more than 10 seconds give vivid hallucinations of their worst nightmares. always barefoot, often floats like 10 cm off the ground because they find it more enjoyable than walking. wears the wildest clothes they can find, nothing matches and nothing is weather appropriate

i have a very specific image of jack in my mind; they look like delirium from the sandman comics with the hair that looks like it’s underwater and the fishes floating around their head, here and here are examples. in live action this would look not good or maybe even ridiculous for sure but in animation... endless potential for angels and monsters to have super interesting designs sigh

castiel’s arc should end with him going from blind soldier, to the unwilling ruler of heaven, finding a place on earth with sam and dean, becoming closer with humanity and eventually a father of three (the hybrids).

#hbo spn #sam winchester #dean winchester #supernatural #iben spoke #ok i'm tired of looking at this now #i just needed to get these thoughts out of my head to get some peace and quiet #more character centric than part 1 #and it turned into such a long post.... jesus #i should make a separate post for post cage sam headcanons #ana if you see this i'm so sorry to drag you into this mess but i wanted to give credit where credit is due

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writefightandflightclub · 4 years

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Out from the cold (Llewyn Davis x reader)

Summary: Llewyn (precious baby) needs your comfort, and oddly, looking after him comforts you too. Fluff but a lil angst to get to the comfort.

Author’s note: I’m doing soft blurbs bc you all deserve a hug from one of our fave fictional husbands. Let’s all destress and be comforted one blurb at a time, okay? (Dunno how many I can do but gonna try and blitz a few requests out tonight. I’m doing these quickly so they’ll be a bit scrappy, please forgive!) ALSO THIS IS EXCITING I’VE NEVER WRITTEN LLEWYN BEFORE AND I’M KINDA HAPPY WITH IT! LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK? (I love this movie so much, one of my all-time favourites, and one of my fave Oscar performances.)

Warnings: just Llewyn swearing, as per. Alcohol and cigs. No drunkeness. Mentions of homeessness / couch-surfing. Mention of abortion.

GIF by @digginmovies

It’s late when he shows up at your door. Or rather, it’s late when you find him in your hallway. You don’t know how long he’s been standing there, because he didn’t even knock. Perhaps he was too afraid to, but by the time you eventually stopped pacing your floorboards and threw a scarf around you, you’d come to fear the worst; that he’d been beaten and left in a gutter or some doorway, or perhpas that he was just stubbornly wandering the streets, preferring to freeze to death rather than “bother” you. Or worse than that... perhaps he’d finally struck lucky and you’d never see him again. Now that he no longer needed your couch, maybe he no longer needed you.

Anyway, all of your fears were entirely unfounded, and it was a shock to find him there, leaning up against the wall. The shortest missing person recovery mission ever known.

“Llewyn?” you question, sighing in frustration and unwrapping your suddenly suffocating red scarf.

His whole body is an apology as he turns his head towards you. Eyes apologetic. Shoulders apologetic. That sorry cord jacket is very, very sorry indeed. Hell, even his curls slump over his forehead in a despondent way, as if they’ve given up too.

This precious man. Why doesn’t he know how special he is? Why does he always dwell in the shadows, rather than allowing himself to be welcomed into this warm, light-bathed apartment of yours. Why doesn’t he realise that he is a light himself, and not a burden? That his presence alone can furnish and illuminate any room. Can compel audiences and, certainly, can move you to train your eyes on him as if he is a star under a perpetual spotlight.

Well, you suppose you should just be thankful that he’s here at all, because he always seems an instant away from slipping into shadow and never coming out again. You are thankful. You are always thankful to find him on your doorstep.

“How did it go?” you ask him, and Llewyn pushes himself up from the wall, despondently shaking his head. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and simply stands there as if forgetting any purpose which might cause him to move. You have to shuffle forwards yourself to give him the hug you feel he so desperately needs, even if he doesn’t know he deserves it. You wrap you arms around him, and it’s a little awkward, and he’s stiff, and he feels of wool and cord beneath your fingertips. Smells of frost and cigarette smoke, and like he hasn’t managed to run his clothes through the laundry in a few days. You make a note to do that for him, if you can coax him into a warm bath later.

“Can I please stay with you?” Llewyn asks in a small voice.

You don’t let go of him, willing him to soften against you.

“Llewyn, you dont have to ask me that, you live here.” You say it like it’s obvious, yet this simple fact is something you are endlessly trying to convince him of.

“I sleep on your couch, because I have no fucking money. Because I’m a piece of shit musician who can’t book a gig except for the Gaslight. And that’s only because I knocked-up a chick who gets me a slot out of pity some nights because she aborted my baby.”

“Llewyn!” you say, heartbroken and disbelieving that he could talk about himself in such a way, and looking, in your shock, like you might come for a piece of him too for thinking so little of himself. But, the world keeps kicking this poor man when he’s down, and he’s running out of energy to keep getting back up, so there’s something in you which can’t blame him.

“I’m just tired. I’m just so fuckin’ tired.”

You bring your hands to the sides of his face, that thick, soft beard under your fingertips.

“Llewyn,” you say softly, searching his melancholy eyes. You want to tell him how talented he is, how important. How special, like you have a hundred times before, but he won’t beleive you. Never does. So, instead, you try something you never have before. At least, not while sober. You dip forward and press a chaste kiss to his lips.

You pull away before his lips have time to react, though even if you had lingered, you’re not sure he would have. You swear that man is so touch-starved that he can no longer recognise affection. That he can no longer remember how to move his lips against another’s. You swear he’s too down on himself that he doesn’t remember how to respond to being wanted.

“Come inside. Your lips are like ice,” you say, and it’s true. You only wish you could thaw him.

Llewyn picks up his guitar case and finally follows you inside, taking his familiar spot on the couch and folding his arms around himself, not even taking off his scarf or jacket. Sometimes you worry that his chill goes all the way down to his bones. Just incase it can help with that, you make him some warm tea and wordlessly pass the mug to him.

“Thank you,” he says earnestly, leaning forward in his seat as you sit at the other end of the couch from him, watching him gripping the warm beverage in his fingerless gloves like he’s never known a warm touch like it.

You sit quietly next to him and allow him to thaw a little, watching the steam rising from the mug as he takes careful sips. It has begun to lash with rain outside, the percussive sound and howl of wind muffled against the window pane, and pleasantly soothing. At least, it sounds soothing to you; Llewyn probably thinks it’s that dark cloud following him around again.

“Have you eaten?”

“Waffles. Had some Gaslight money left,” he says in monotone, staring intently at a particular spot on your hardwood floor. He didn’t make nutritionally sound choices, it seems, but at least he’s had something.

“Good,” you nod. “And do you want to talk about the audition?”

“Nope,” Llewyn responds dejectedly, popping the “p” emphatically.

When he’s drained the cup he sets it down, eventually unwinding his scarf from around his neck and shuffling off his gloves and jacket. Without all his layers he looks a little like a lost baby bird without its nest, or like a winter tree without it’s covering of leaves.

You take a risk in an attempt to perk him up and head towards the vinyl player, dropping the needle on a record you know he likes. And then, you reseat yourself on the couch, a little closer to him this time.

Llewyn finally turns to you, elbows resting on his thighs, looking just a little less morose. “Got any wine? And cigarettes?”

Now, that you could do.

You oblige him, and before long you are sipping on a glass of red, and you let Llewyn rant freely about the audition he doesn’t want to talk about at his leisure, a cigarette bobbing in-between his lips as he talks, smoke wafting around his face and his hair like the ghost of his own curls. You let him rant about the cookie-cutter, soulless, talentless musicians who make it, and the blood-sucking label execs, and the tasteless consumers, and the whole damn thing, until his shoulders look a little less heavy. A little less apologetic. Until he forgets himself and picks up his guitar and begins to mindlessly pluck and strum away.

He starts to sing under his breath, because he can’t help but sing. Because it comes naturally to him, and suddenly he is the only light in your living room. He is under his own super trouper, against the backdrop of the rainy window pane. Light shining against melancholy.

As lovely as he is to look at, with the way his left cheek tugs up with his words and his brow creases with feeling, you close your eyes as his voice filters through into your bones, making you warm from within.

“I love it when you sing,” you say sincerely, and you don’t know it, but your simple, honest words are music to Llewyn’s ears. Those words are something he hears startingly seldom for a man with a talent like his.

Your eyes are still closed when you hear the chaotic thrum of strings as Llewyn sets the guitar down. Your eyes are still closed as Llewyn kneels before you and slides his hands along your thighs, palms down. Your eyes open just before he dips his head and presses a chaste, smoky kiss to your lips.

Your lips do not react. If Llewyn was too touch-starved to kiss you back earlier, you suppose you are too surprised that he might want you back. You want to kiss him, and apparently he wants to kiss you, but you are singing different bars of the same song. Your timing is all off. So, your lips do not meld with his, no matter how long you’ve waited for this. Wanted it. This time too, his mouth was even warm against yours. His hands warm against you. Thawing.

You smile at him, softly. Catiously. As if you might scare him off. As if he is a wild animal who has dropped to his knees for you.

Instead, he remains as you bring your hands back to either side of his face, and lose yourself in his dark, turbulent stare. It is you who suddenly feels catious, as if he is a storm which might swallow you. Might paint you in licks of grey if you don’t first heal his pain. His eyes are raw. Broken apart, and his beautiful soul so exposed beneath them. No wonder he is so guarded. Feels so vulnerable. His heart is so open and so wounded beneath the expletives and the apathy and the lucklessness, isn’t it? It would be so easy to break, like a lost bird far from its nest.

But this time, he stays. Llewyn simply looks right back into your eyes, for once. And when he undoubtedly notices your evident desire there, all he does is question why you are looking at him at all.

“Why do you want me?” he asks you, plainly, shaking his head softly. He doesn’t say more, but you swear you could guess his thought. You could have any Tom, Dick, or Harry. Or a Chad. Some rich, muscly dude with a centre part and a Corvette. I’m nothing. Nobody.

Your mouth forms a bashful, thin line, and you shrug your shoulders, placing your hands over his palms. You desperately want to show him he is somebody.

“I dunno. Why do you sing, Llewyn? Why do birds make music? I just do. I want you. My soul tells me I should, and I listen.”

He looks sad. So sad, So tired, and so you do the only thing your soul tells you to in this moment. You comfort him. You reach up and tangle your fingers into that mess of crotchet black curls on his head. You stroke him and soothe him, and he gives in to you, burying his head in your lap and letting you touch him. Letting you smooth your hands and your fingers and thumbs over his hair, his neck, his back, his shoulders. He wraps his arms around your lower legs and curls around them, still sat at your feet like a stray who refuses to be a house cat, despite how many times you try to coax him in from out of the cold.

“Llewyn, come lie with me a while?” you ask gently, and he looks up at you, unsure. Still, he clambers up from his position and is about to recline on the sofa when you grab his hand. “No, Llewyn. Come lie with me in my bed?”

He gulps, as if you might eat him alive, but he follows as you guide him as if it might be a relief to climb into your jaws anyway, and you lead him by the hand along the hallway and into your room.

He watches you with hesitant fascination as you shrug off your layers, down to your underwear. Then, he follows suit, letting his worn trousers and white t-shirt pool on to the floor at his feet, until he’s standing in only his patterned boxers.

You climb under the covers, shivering at the autumn chill in the room, and you hold the tented covers open for Llewyn to climb in after you.

“Y-You want me to... W-what do you wanna do?”

“Nothing you don’t want to, darling. But if you’ll let me, I just want to hold you.”

He hesitates, but he’s cold, and so, so alone, and he’s so tired of never having anything he wants. So tired that he’s willing to forget, just this once, that he can’t give you what you deserve. Or at least to stop consciously reminding himself of it.

He slots his soft, slim body under the covers, and you let the blanket fall over him. Then, you lie on your back and pull him on top of you, until his body covers yours and his head nestles on the cushion of your breasts.

It is quiet enough in the room that you hear him gulp again, but he doesn’t bolt. Once he’s settled, your wrap him in your arms, your fingers twining in his hair, carding through those thick, tangled curls. Your hands smooth up and down his back, until he is humming softly, his face entirely buried in your chest. “Sweet man,” you soothe, and listen to the sound of the rain outside, and the background noise of the record player filtering through. “I know it’s not much, but I love it when you sing. I wish I could give you riches for it, and record deals. But all I have to give in return is a little piece of my heart, and you steal a piece of it every time I hear your voice,” you whisper gently.

Llewyn is silent, and you wonder if you might have scared him off, but he seems quite content exactly where he is. You wish he would stay, but you know he has a cycle of houses, like a traitourous street cat with nowhere he feels deserving to call home.

For now though, he is here, and you begin to sing gently along to the song filtering through from the living room. It’s one of your favourites. One which Llewyn has sung for you many times before.

You look down at the side of his face, his eyes closed, his eyelashes fanned on his cheek, and his beard twitching as his full lips tug up into a faint smile. Finally.

“You have a pretty voice, dove,” he says, and your heart clenches at the pet name. At the fact you have finally found a way to make him happy. You should have realised it would be music.

“No, Llewyn. It’s nothing compared to you.”

“I dunno. You probably have more chance of making it than I do. Maybe you should have gone today instead.” You worry that he has been tugged back into a slump, but you see he is still smiling, and you recognise the humour in his tone, self-deprecating though it is.

By the next chorus, Llewyn begins to softly sing along too, and your heart flutters as his voice vibrates against your bosom.

You tug in a deep, happy breath, and exhale spring into the autumn room.

Llewyn props himself on to his elbows and shuffles up the bed, until his face is level with your own.

You regard him catiously, feeling suddenly as flighty as he usually is.

“What do you want to do?” you ask him, as his lips hover close to yours.

“Nothin’ you don’t want to,” he says, mirroring your words from moments ago.

This time, when your lips meet, softly, neither of you are surprised. This time, your mouths are both warm and moving together, like you sing the words to a shared song, both melding in time.

As Llewyn curls around your body and snuggles into you for warmth, you hope you can get him to stay. You hope you’ve showed him he doesn’t need to wander in the cold any longer.

He has your heart after all, and you need him to bring it indoors; out from the cold.

#llewyn x reader #llewyn davis x reader #inside llewyn davis #inside llewyn davis fanfiction #llewyn davis fic #llewyn angst #llewyn fluff #coen brothers #oscar isaac

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kyidyl · 3 years

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Kyidyl Explains Bones Part 5

(These are under the KyidylBones tag.)

How to dig up dead people.

So, in my Kyidyl Does Archaeology series I talked a bunch about how digging up places was different than digging up people. And you don’t have to read that to understand this, but it might be a little easier for you because I’m not going to re-address the same basics I covered there.

Ethical Stuff: So is digging up dead people ethical? I mean, I think so if strict rules are followed, but honestly the POVs here are as different as people themselves are. Some cultures routinely dig up their own dead and do all kinds of things with the remains. I wish they wouldn’t but, hey, that’s just me. I respect that their culture and choices aren’t the ones I’d make. It’s part of being an anthropologist of any flavor. And, like that one post implies, there really isn’t much of a different between grave robbing and archaeology. The biggest difference is the care we take, the respect we try our best to show, and the purposes to which we put the remains. However, there is a difference between exhumation and archaeology. General rule of thumb: if there’s someone living still that would have first-hand experience of them or if they still exist strongly in cultural memory, it’s exhumation. There’s no hard and fast number of years where it moves from exhumation to archaeology. Sometimes it’s the context that makes the difference. For example, Richard the 3rd’s bones were excavated from that carpark. If they were removed from where they were reinterred, then they’d be exhumed. But the TL;DR of it is that digging up people is incredibly ethically complex and you have to do your best to be respectful. If you aren’t the type of person who can really put yourself in someone else’s shoes and be ok with respecting the desires of a specific culture regarding their own dead...then archaeology is not the right area for you, and that goes double for bioarch. These people had lives and were loved and valued by those around them, and you need to be sensitive.

The legality of digging up human remains also varies wildly from country to country. In the US, we adhere to NAGPRA. If you want a primer on what NAGPRA is and how it works, you can check out this post that I made.

Also a quick reminder that we don’t name the individuals. They had names and you don’t get to give them a new one.

Beyond this cut there be pictures of human remains.

How do you know where to dig? Sometimes, honestly....we don’t. We’re just making educated guesses based on migration patterns and known settlements and research into local history. Generally, if there’s a group of people who lived somewhere, they also did something with their dead. So if you have a settlement, you’ll probably find bodies in it or near it at some point. Sometimes people find remains and are like “uuuuuhhhhh....” and we come and dig ‘em up. This is especially true on private property. Farmers are notorious for this. Construction, too, obviously. Sometimes we look in caves, because very old caves have lots of dirt on the floors and a lot of times if it’s a good cave there’ll be bones in it. Sometimes people threw their dead in bogs and now we have stuff that isn’t skeletons but is really old.

(Source)

That is a whole ass human dude. He’s around 2000 years old. You can still see his facial hair.

So there’s a lot of science behind how and why different environments preserve bodies differently, and I couldn’t possibly get into the detail of that here, but it’s definitely a factor we consider. A swamp in Florida isn’t a good place to expect to find remains, you know? General rule of thumb is: more water = less body, unless there water isn’t standard water (it’s very alkaline, very acidic, or very frozen.). Dry, cold landscapes like the Andes are great for preserving bodies.

So what you find when you go looking is going to vary wildly depending on the environment. My personal experience, though, is in graveyards. Graveyards are an easy thing to dig because it’s not uncommon to just like...know where one was. But graveyards aren’t the orderly things you’d expect them to be, not even modern graveyards. People bury their loved ones on top of other people, graves intersect, and sometimes people would sneak bodies into the consecrated part of the graveyard when the priests/monks/etc. said they couldn’t be buried there. So you can have bodies mixed with other bodies or under other bodies or just like random parts of people that were dug up, someone said “oops”, and then they were re-buried in a different spot. So when we dig a graveyard, we keep complex records of where all of the remains were found, including in-depth drawings. This is one way in which it’s similar to digging up a settlement. It’s...pretty much the only way in which it’s similar. Because part of the reason we do this is so we don’t mix up peoples’ body parts. Graveyards aren’t what you expect - when I was digging in one we thought we’d gotten most of the bodies out so we were using a mattock to make sure and the site director missed cracking the skull of an intact child by about a centimeter. Luckily the swing tore up a little bit of dirt and exposed it, but if it hadn’t? The next swing would have gone right through and inflicted heavy damage. So you have to be careful even in a graveyard.

Another thing about graves is that it doesn’t take long for the wood of a coffin to decay, so when you dig them up you will often just find the body and sometimes some nails. The nails are good, because they show you the outline of where you can expect to find parts of the same individual. This is one of the ways we show respect - we do everything in our power to NOT mix up the remains of different individuals and to separate them when we can.

Let me sidebar here for a minute to explain. See, your bones fit together. I don’t meant “ah yes, everyone’s shin bone connects to their thigh bone”. No, I mean that those bones have grown together in the same space for YEARS and they fit exactly. They have the same texture and thickness, they go together like puzzle pieces....at the spots where the bones touch. Or, as we say, articulate with each other. See, if I were to take, say, my cuboid and try to trade it with someone else’s, it wouldn’t articulate right. But something big like a tibia and femur will not be as easy to piece back together. That, and we don’t always have complete bodies. So we have something called “MNI” meaning “Minimum Number of Individuals”, and the maximum. So...three left femurs mean at least three people. Four right humeruses mean at least four people, so the minimum is 4. However! We don’t know if any of those left femurs or right humeruses belonged to the same person because they don’t articulate with each other. So the maximum is seven people. We have between 4 and 7 people in that set of remains. This becomes really important when you’re dealing with intersecting graves, mass graves, etc. Any time the remains are what we call comingled (mixed). This is what we’re really meticulous when recording where we found a given bone or set of bones.

Ok, back to the main thing. So...how DO we dig up dead people, anyway? It’s generally done in three stages:

Exposing - This is where we dig down just enough to cleanly expose what we believe to be the margins of the grave. We dig to the edges of the grave, not to a set square size like you would with a settlement. This is where we dig really cleanly, expose any grave goods, take pictures, etc. And it looks like this:

(Source. Was super frustrating searching for this bc I have several of these pics on my phone of the graves we dug and can’t use them for privacy/ethical reasons.)

Pedestaling/Cleaning - This is when we dig down around the skeleton and the grave goods, and then we start digging under the bones in preparation for the last stage. This is time consuming, detailed work. When I was doing this with the child we found, I used a mini trowel the size of my thumbnail and a dental pick. It’s *especially* important with juveniles because their bones aren’t fused and those unfused pieces are *tiny*. They literally look like clods of dirt. Most archs - rightfully - can’t stomach the idea of throwing pieces of a human body into the spoil heap, so we’re as careful as we can be. This part, when done right, takes days. It’s a difficult thing to get a picture of, but this one is close:

(Source)

The tags aren’t something I was taught needed to be done, but I can see why someone would. They’re basically just grave goods and features of the grave. They’ll be used to make a map of what’s what later on when the writeup is being done.

Lifting - We never just pull a bone out of the ground because it damages them. So we dig around them until they’re ready to come out on their own (and in the case of a large set of broken bones like you see above in that person’s skull, we’d just take the whole pile - dirt and all - for processing in the lab later. And no, it’s not normal to have the skull glued back together. We don’t glue remains together.). If one piece comes out before the others, it is bagged and tagged. We try not to have them come out separately, but it’s better to do that then to lose one. When we’ve cleared all the dirt out, we “lift” the skeleton, IE, remove it from the grave. If I included a pic of this it would just be an empty grave. :P

We make sure to take all of the grave goods and any soil samples with us, all carefully labeled. Fun fact about soil samples BTW. The soil around the bones and especially in the abdominal cavity can retain molecular traces and bacterial from the flesh that tell us about their gut flora and diet or about any parasites they had (parasites were super common back in the day.). It’s....really cool. So a sometimes, if we suspect that there might be money for that kind of analysis, we’ll take soil samples of the gut region.

We are...well, we’re very ritualistic about all of this. It is, of course, for scientific rigour. But part of it is that we’re systematically dismantling these peoples’ final resting places. They had lives and loves and spiritual beliefs that we are disturbing. This is sacred ground for so many cultures. So it always feels a bit like we’re doing these things in a specific way to show respect to the resting dead. That’s why in my 4 types of anthropologists post awhile back I said that archs are chaotic outside the pit but anal inside it. We want to learn from the dead, and it all feels a bit ritualistic if I’m being honest. And there’s this juxtaposition of digging in the dirt, in the chaos of earth and time, in a very structured, clean, orderly way.

Aaaannnyway I think that’s it for this installment. Ask box is open, I check comments and tags and whatnot. Tomorrow I think I’m gonna do age determination. How old were they when they died? Hmmmmm...

#science #archaeology #death #death mention #skeleton #excavation #graves #KyidylBones

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woozi · 3 years

Note

the thirst tweets yza 😭😭😭 i cannot. as much as fun this was, we were so close to getting jaebs with cats <//3

headlocking sk 😭😭 DJJDSKSK i would stand there like wonu clapping in the soop, for you <3. it's hindi ( actually it's my 2nd language but i speak in it the most w ppl outside of family djdjdjk ) my mother tongue is almost dwording djdjdkdk </3 i think im last gen who still speaks it, kids these days only know hindi or english.

ALSO!!! the footwork in senses choreo???? i liked it sm <3 yugyeom makes it look so easy to move like that?!?

same jdjdkddk godddd sometimes it takes a month to complete a drama which i like and started on my own will and sometimes it only takes 3 days. it doesn't matter how much i love something if i won't watch it, then I won't watch or consume it at all 💀.

ohhh, i've known jamie as an after school club mc first and singer second. like there was this time i was suddenly obsessed w eric nam's before we begin album i think around that time i first listened to one or two songs of jamie ( it was all spotify's doing jddjks) but then i forgot abt both and went back to listening to my regular ones. honestly i feel like i've gotten to know and appreciate jype artists ( those i know ) more, only after they've changed agencies it could just be me or my timing tho djdjdjh. have you listened to hanbin's solo album? honestly it's been no.1 album from 1st half of 2021 for me. i was not even looking forward to it or even knew djdjsk but i'm so glad i did i really like the songs & lyrics.

almost whatever jackson has released after mirrors has been to my taste leaving few bsides here and there. i love lmly <3 idk why for some reason i tend to mix pretty please and lmly up a lot djdjsk maybe it's bc of white tee and jeans. both mvs concept and songs are fantastic but if i have to pick one w/ mv & only considering the song, i do love lmly a little bit more then pretty please. wbu? <3

mark kept saying ' when we go back ' during the live so i got more confused each time, went on twt and got to know djdjdk. twt list of both svt & got7 of update accounts is like my newspaper, in free time i open it to see what is going on, sometimes jdjddk.

and of course i know abt woozi's cover <3 i've listened to it a lot jdjdksk he's so <//3

i could listen to his voice all day.

there is one cover of 10 cm hoshi dropped last year i like it sm <3 it made me so happy!!, around that i was obsessed with some of 10 cm's songs. help is one of my most favorite.

i really really wish for dokyeom to cover more day6 songs or just any songs </3 would really appreciate one from mr. joshu_acoustic too 😿.

did you see the way dokyeom woke up with a smile on his face in 5th in the sopp ep <//3 he's so precious 😭 (i'll try to link next time idk links go through asks tho djjddj sometimes tumblr eats it up). i don't even know what a smile is for first 2 hours after i've woken up. also i think i like this (sk coming and karaoke one - 5th) ep a lil more bc of that half minute of singer cheol it served us. i need him to sing more omg <//3

the soop song tho it's so sweet 😭💕. i love love how they brainstorm and make songs it's such an interesting process. i love what going seventeen is now but i miss watching the song making & recording process (even rho they do show it in inse after cb but jdjdks). the one where they made gose song, recorded it and made choreo/mv i love. it's still remains as one of my most favorite ep. they compose & write songs so smoothly & make it look so effortless <3

thank you for letting me ramble abt silly little things and responding to them, yza <3 love hanging out w/ you. i hope you're also having fun djjddj (i'll try to keep these short fr 😭 djdkdk i feel a bit bad for making you read so much nonsense :3)

take care of yourself, yza <3 sending good week wishes. - 🪂🪂🪂

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE I GOT TO SEE JAEBEOM READ THIRST TWEETS BEFORE MY VERY EYES WHICH ALTERNATE AU IS THIS 😭

also mood tbh we could've gotten something like jacks' puppy vid </3

LIKE WONU CLAPPING FJKDJKFDJFD in true infj fashion <3 wait naurr that's so sad </3 do they not teach it in schools?

ALSO YES OH MY GODDDDDDDDD house king show us ur fancy moves <3 as a fellow dancer i am throwing him my shoe rn <3 also i literally have never seen smth like this in kpop how did people fucking sleep on this icb it..

I FULLY RELATE HELLO????????????????? what dramas have u been watching? and which genres are u into? <3 i also just finished vincenzo today it was so good 😭 took me like.. a week, i think (?), though bc svt has SO MUCH content and i dont like being behind on svt shit esp bc i also run an update blog lmaooo 😭

WAIT I FORGOT SHE ALSO DID EMCEEING 😭 she's such a fun person </3 AND ERIC NAM FDKJDFJK i have one-sided beef w him lmao when he was still new to the scene he would reply to everyone's @s but he never replied to me so i felt v .. </3 (also this is what.. 13 year old me speaking so this def does not reflect how i feel abt him now JKJKFJKDFF) i also get that </3 i feel like jype doesn't manage them well (i dont know shit behind the scenes and shit abt the industry in-depth but u know... it Kind Of Shows esp w how the artists themselves speak abt the agency lol). and i have not!! i am truly a svtpoppie 😭 i will though bc u recommended it to me <3 i also have been seeing him frequently on tiktok lol, ALSO BC OF LEE HI!!

honestly i haven't been keeping up w his albums anymore just the title tracks so i cant say much 😭 i also def prefer lmly over pretty please i was actually obsessed w it for a while!! i love jackson's vision so much though, the cinematography is EVERYTHING

literally reading abt what our boys have been up to like reading the morning paper KJDSFKJDSJKSJKD

V GOOD FOR U TO HAVE COME ACROSS THE COVER... I JUST DISCOVERED IT BY ACCIDENT 😭 also i have to agree although i definitely do not want to admit that i am more than willing to listen to some man sing to me all day 😭😭😭😭😭 jihoon's voice is just... different to me for some reason. i have a hard time picking between him & seokmin tbh </3 hbu, who's ur fave svt vocalist?

ALSO YES THAT WAS SO CUTE OF HIM!! AND V ON BRAND TOO </3 the way u listen to 10cm..... im giving u an award rn <3 im guessing you listen to k-indie too?

DK THOUGH... I'M VERY MUCH WILLING TO ADMIT THAT I'D LISTEN TO HIM ALL DAY.... something about him... AND NOT THE JOSHU_ACOUSTIC FJDJFDJKFD 😭😭😭 i hate his username so much- why... WHY...

I DID!!!!!!!!! and i was so surprised too bc.. who wakes up smiling?????? what'd he dream of???????????? he's such a happy person i cant imagine what thats like 😭 the first thing i do when i wake up is make the >:| face JFJKFDKJFD also oh my god i just read that you're experiencing the same thing 😭😭 bestie trait!! KJJKFDKJFD ALSO YOU COULDN'T BE MORE RIGHT?????????? im always campaigning for vocalist coups im SOOO glad u feel the same way <3 his voice is just so comforting to me </3 idk i just really like his timbre

and v true omg i'm always fascinated to see how they actually work all this out!! the bts recording/choreo making vids are also my favorite gfkjdfkjdfj HOW ARE WE SO SIMILAR WE MIGHT AS WELL BE THE SAME PERSON 😭also jihoon in that gose behind vid........... in universe factory............... i still think about that Look from time to time... 😭this is also why i respect the boys sm tbh. everyone in the industry undeniably works so hard but to actually get this much creative freedom and to basically lead the group and their direction music and performance-wise is so insane to me... no wonder jihoon's always in his studio. i couldnt be happier that they get to live off of doing what they like im also so so proud of them they must work so hard <3 esp w all the content they're giving us.. icb it's always like this in caratland im so used to being an ahgase that gets like.... 1 cb a year😭

AND NOOO OMG DON'T BE SORRY I REALLY LOOOVE GETTING UR MESSAGES </3 and i love how lengthy they are makes me feel like ur just not making small talk (i hate small talk sm 😭) and that you're actually interested <3 i genuinely love bonding w u through these little asks i can never thank u enough for sending them <3 i hope ur having a lovely week as well!! u can always talk to me even if it's not kpop related and u just want to talk abt life or when u need some cheering up <3

#🪂 anon #anon #y.ask #long post

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cloudravine · 4 years

Text

I was tagged by @strawberrylight to answer a few questions that dig a little deeper, thank you ily dshfgs 😚💕🌻

1. Do you prefer writing with a black pen or a blue pen?

Mmm don’t have a particular preference for either

2. Would you prefer to live in the country or in the city?

An in-between? Big cities overwhelm me and the country bores me - for me the perfect balance would be a quiet location close to nature, either in or on the outskirts of a small-ish city ✨

3. If you could learn a new skill, what would it be?

It’s impossible to only pick one! Most of all I’d like to know even more languages and writing systems (including all the ones coined by Tolkien), become an expert at shooting the bow, get back to doing fencing, and learn to play the drums and the cello/double bass 😍🙏

4. do you drink your tea/coffee with sugar?

I only drink tea, and nope, never!

5. What was your favourite book as a child?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I read eight or nine times as a child sdgfs ⚡️

6. Do you prefer baths or showers?

I rarely ever take baths but find them more relaxing and satisfying than showers

7. If you could be a mythical creature, which one would you be?

How do you expect me to choose when I obv wanna be all of them??? 😩😭 In terms of what fits me best, maybe a wood fae/fairy/sprite - and if specific fantasy worlds are allowed, a hobbit in Middle-earth and a sea witch in the Continent 🍃

8. Paper or electronic books?

Paper books for sure!

9. What is your favourite item of clothing?

My black TPWK hoodie 🖤

10. Do you like your name? Would you like to change it?

I like it and defo wouldn’t change it 😊 It comes from Robin Hood and exists in some variation in many different languages, which I find brilliant :’)

11. Who is a mentor to you?

Mmmm probably my closest friends bc I look up to them and value their judgement so much 💞

12. Would you like to be famous? If so, what for?

Nope hahaha, too much stress and pressure 🙈

13. Are you a restless sleeper?

Unfortunately yes rip

14. Do you consider yourself to be a romantic person?

Omg I’m probably the most romantic, cheesy and extra person you’ll find out there shfgsd 😂

15. Which element best represents you?

Water 🌊

16. Who do you want to be closer to?

Physically - my friends who live abroad 😭 Metaphorically - it’s homophobic that I’m not besties with ot5 and Henry Cavill 💔

17. Do you miss someone at the moment?

My friends from Norway in particular, and yesterday night I dreamt about my German host mum so I’m missing her a lot today :(

18. Tell us about an early childhood memory.

I remember playing lava and recording radio shows/podcasts on cassettes with one of my sisters 🌸

19. What is the strangest thing you have eaten?

No idea haha

20. What are you most thankful for?

The love in my life, and the fact that I’ve been able to live my dream of travelling for the past ten years or so 💖💖

21. Do you like spicy food?

My nose starts running and I lowkey die when it’s very spicy sdhfs (typical weak white person behaviour lmao), but I do like when it’s just a little spicy 🙈

22. Have you ever met someone famous?

Quite a few, yes! Was VIP at a Tokio Hotel show, got autographs from Simple Plan and All-American Rejects, etc. Not sure it counts as ‘meeting,’ but I also passed some of the guys from Avenged Sevenfold on the street in Montréal once 😌

23. Do you keep a diary or journal?

I’ve tried many times but always end up giving up after a while bc it’s too time-consuming and I can’t be bothered rip

24. Do you prefer to use pen or pencil?

Mmm maybe pen?

25. What is your star sign?

Cancer ♋️

26. Do you like your cereal crunchy or soggy?

CRUNCHY OMG, pls take soggy cereal away from me 😳

27. What would you want your legacy to be?

Warmth, love and kindness 🌻

28. Do you like reading? What was the last book you read?

I studied literature for five years - does that answer the first question? haha 😅 Last book I read was Andrzej Sapkowski’s Sword of Destiny sdhfgs and it broke me so bad I haven’t been able to read anything else since sdgfs bye

29. How do you show someone you love them?

I check up on them, send them stuff that reminds me of them, make time for them, share the stuff I’m interested in with them and create a good environment for them to do the same, etc. 💕

30. Do you like ice in your drinks?

Yes

31. What are you afraid of?

Pain and loneliness

32. What is your favourite scent?

My cat’s smell 😭💗

33. Do you address older people by their name or surname?

Surname, unless we’re family / well acquainted (but I’m gonna have to change that habit when I live in Norway since practically everyone is on a first name basis there haha)

34. If money was not a factor, how would you live your life?

This is tricky bc I can’t imagine what it’d be like living life without having to think about money at all 🤔 But I think I’d travel a lot? Ideally I’d love to be working in something Tolkien-related (but not full-time sfgsdd), and I’d probs spend my free time with friends, out in nature and maybe doing some volunteering :)

35. Do you prefer swimming in pools or the ocean?

The ocean for sure! Or a lake ☀️

36. What would you do if you found $50 on the ground?

I’d keep it, except if I knew who it belongs to and how I can give the money back to them

37. Have you ever seen a shooting star? Did you make a wish?

Yes and yes, though I can’t remember what my wish was 💫

38. What is one thing you would want to teach your children?

That it’s okay to be whoever they are, and that they should accept others for who they are too and show tolerance and openness as much as they can 🌷

39. If you had to have a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it?

I’ve been considering so many tattoo ideas but always end up changing my mind after a while... Would really like something Harry or 1D-related and also some more Tolkien tattoos - it’s just super hard to decide on what exactly 😭

40. What can you hear right now?

My step-dad’s coffee machine working + workers doing renovations outside

41. Where do you feel the safest?

Mmm that’s a hard one, maybe when I’m with people I trust?

42. What is one thing you want to overcome/conquer?

It’s difficult to pick only one bc I’ve got quite a few issues I need to improve on (anxiety, bad self-esteem and insecurity to name only a few) 🙈

43. If you could travel back to any era, what would it be?

The Viking era hands down! ⚔️

44. What is your most used emoji?

All the pink hearts 💗💓💝💞💖💕

45. Describe yourself using one word.

Passionate

46. What do you regret the most?

I’m always most mortified to think back on instances where I accidentally hurt/upset someone in any way 💔

47. Last movie you saw?

Mudbound, which was very heavy but excellent!

48. Last tv show you watched?

Dear White People 🌈

49. Invent a word and its meaning

I feel like my cat Mia’s name sould become a verb that can be conjugated 💁

Tagging @amantisegreti @technicallysideacc @micshiefmanaged @gcralts @goldenfive @going-there-and-back-again @peachtimelord @feanarofinwion @daggryet @zenmalik - no pressure of course! 🌸💛

#strawberrylight #amantisegreti #technicallysideacc #micshiefmanaged #gcralts #goldenfive #going-there-and-back-again #peachtimelord #feanarofinwion #daggryet #zenmalik #interactions #about

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fmdtaeyongarchive · 3 years

Text

— after meeting you.

date: 2011-2021.

word count: 1,886 words, excluding lyrics.

summary: ash makes a song over the course of ten years.

triggers: n/a.

notes: creative claims verification.

it’s a song a decade in the making. over the course of ten years, he comes back to it over and over as a diary of his idea of the perfect love.

2011

he begins it on the doorstep of the first time he’ll ever fall in love. he’s a trainee and his days are filled with nonstop practice. when he comes home late at night or in the early hours of the morning, he barely has the time to pull out his homework to complete enough to keep passing classes and avoid a scolding from the company, but he still finds time to try to put into words what he’s feeling.

love is everything he’d heard about and more. he’s had the butterflies, the moments of awe, but he’s also found himself confused at times by how much he has to learn about being someone’s boyfriend. hand holding on the playground in third grade and shy kisses during spin the bottle in middle school hadn’t prepared him for actually falling in love.

he’s young, only fifteen when he writes down the first words of what he has no idea will one day be one song of many he stands on stage and sings by himself. he has no idea about the heartbreak he’ll endure in the next decade, that the one he thinks will be his first and last will be far behind him by the time the world gets to hear the words.

we understand each other i was surprised how we got used to each other

he’s never felt this way with anyone. the quiet understanding, the spark he feels at every touch and every glance they share between ash leaving class and heading into practice or on the late nights of the weekend when he can slip in time to see them. if this is the love everyone’s always talked about, that everyone’s written countless songs about and based movies and art on, he can understand why.

in the bright morning i open my eyes while thinking of you

he’s young and it feels like no one takes his love as seriously as it feels to him. it’s all-consuming and he just knows they’re the two that got lucky to find their soulmates and life partners so young. the idea of fate battles with his desire for free will, but he doesn’t care which is real when his arms are around them.

it’s only a few lines, tucked away on a sticky note stuck to the margins of a school notebook, but they show a boy who believes in every word he writes, words he’ll reshape and flesh out when he’s older and his korean has refined itself into something more sophisticated than he can offer at fifteen, but one phrase he writes doesn’t change at all:

i love you

january 2016

more pieces of what will eventually become the song stick themselves together over the years, through relationships and flings, but it’s not until years later that he sits in a vocal practice room at bc entertainment alone, old notebook in front of him and his fingers on the keyboard.

the notes of the melody he writes link to years into the past and stay with him for years into the future.

solo music is still a pipe dream for him, but something he’s afraid to put a name to has sparked again in his heart. it’s not the only time since the first time he’d fallen, but it’s the most confusing for him.

see, they’re not dating. they’re friends who have fallen into the trap of letting skin on skin bleed into their hearts to mean more than it does.

for ash, at least. he doesn’t know if his touch has bled into her bone marrow the same way hers has into his, and so he doesn’t say anything. not to her. instead, he lets his fingers idle on a piano, recalling the moment he’d first looked over at her and realized he was in trouble.

for as complicated and messy as his situation is, the melody line he crafts doesn’t soar too high or too low, it doesn’t tumble over itself in rapid notes or odd time signatures, though he still simplifies it down some more a few years later when he comes back to it. it sits in 4/4 time signature, the most basic, for love sits inside such a simplistic framework, bent out of shape by the imperfect humans who inhabit it and, as ash has now come to learn, sometimes break the frame in half.

the piano piece is therapy in keys, the only therapy he knows at the time, not for lack of needing it, but because of lack of time and motivation to take care of himself in the way he should.

the impending spiral downward in the next few months he can’t foresee yet will be the breaking point, but he’ll never stop coming back to the keys when he feels emotions he can’t share with anyone else.

late 2016-2017

more lyrics and music slot into place over the rapidfire falling he does over a few months. there’s the model trainee he thinks he could love that shatters his heart in the aftermath of a heartfelt confession. there’s the ill-fated relationship that starts hopeful, but dissolves into fighting before he can even write much embodying that hope. then, there comes her and then him, the ones that leave him looking back on his record of love put into song and makes him want to spill tears to drown every instrument and wet every notebook so he can never write something so hopeful again.

there are times he writes words about them, but, often, he’s at a loss for words, and the song becomes more instrumental than voice, silence on his part.

silence is what damns him in the end.

2017-2019

in kijung, ash is sure he’s found the true muse to the song he’s been writing for years.

just like now when it’s peaceful i want to be with you forever i thought that as i was looking at you i was so happy after meeting you i was able to love you so much because you embraced and understood my young and immature mind warmly

he almost plays the song for him one night, almost decides he wants to rewrite it to be solely about kijung so he can sing it for him and only him, but fear makes him back out.

months later, fear makes him back out of the relationship altogether and the song remains a patchwork quilt of lovers past.

mid-2020

when she’s back in his life, the tone changes.

when we hurt each other with nonchalant tones i can’t bear our distant relationship so i’m sorry even now when i’m anxious i want to be with you forever i thought that as i was looking at you

he knows now that love can hurt just as badly when one’s in it as it can once it’s ended.

are you happy after meeting me, too? i’m sorry that i have more that i couldn’t give you i’m selfish and unstable but i wanted to treat you well

he breaks her heart and his own at the same time and comes to realize he’s no longer a man built to be deserving of the love he’s prayed at the altar of his whole life.

late 2020

there’s a piece of writing advice ash has heard over and over again for as long as he can remember: write what you know.

but when he pieces together the last lyrics of the song, they’re to everyone he’s known and someone he’s never known at once. they’re to someone he’s accepted he’ll never meet, or to someone he let slip away. he can’t tell which one, but he knows it’s more fantasy than reality.

he bleeds out every ounce of hope he has left inside of him and leaves it printed in ink and bared in song. ten years of hope etched into one song, meeting a man who now stands empty of it. he’s faced with a mirror image of someone brighter and bolder, touched with love, but left shielded from the inevitable heartbreak attached to it.

in the end, they sit over an instrumental that’s been recrafted so that something sad hits under the hope, harmonizing the truth with the dream he’s packed away and abandoned.

i think i found a perfect love that i’ve waited for for a long time because you held me and gave me energy because you hugged me by being considerate lovingly after i met you

2021

he sends in the demo to the company right before the release of his fourth solo album as closure, but he doesn’t expect to hear back that they’re interested in having him release it. it’s so different from the sound that most of lovesick had been drenched in. it fits better the music he’d been known for releasing three or four years ago when he’d been first starting out as a soloist. it makes sense that it does, considering much of the song had been created before then, but management seems more excited for it than he’d expected.

he doesn’t realize right away why, but once he gets the brief for some, he realizes that maybe they’ve decided he’s been too mopey as of late to be marketable.

despite his best efforts not to let his hesitancy about some infect his work on this song, some resentment builds inside as he spends time in the studio on it. the more he listens back to different takes of his own voice singing back the polished lyrics over the finalized melody, the more he feels like he’s mocking himself. it sounds out of place in his voice.

he’d give up if he didn’t know that letting bc know he was throwing in the towel would only mean they’d put someone else on the job to get the final product completed, and as sour as he is, the song still has strings that attach to the inside of his chest that he’s not ready to cut to hand the song over to someone else.

erin is the one who points out what’s wrong to him one night when she comes to visit him in his studio.

“you sound really young here.” she’s silent for a moment, and then she corrects herself. “you sound like you’re trying to sound young.”

she’s right.

he’s trying to sound like the fifteen year old ash who had been the root of all of this. for a man who’s been so insistent he’s not good at playing a character when he’s writing, he’s taken on the persona of someone who can skate along the surface level of the song for the sake of marketability — a man the words can’t hurt.

the song isn’t about first love just because those were what the first words had been written about.

so, he re-records it, singing it like the man who’s experienced everything he’s been through. he switches out the arrangement from coffee house acoustic to transition the instrumental from a simple piano and strings arrangement o a full-out orchestral arrangement toward the end.

when he’d felt the first rays of love, he may have thought that it was as easy as two complementary instruments, but in the decade since, he’s learned all of the moving pieces that have to come together.

by most accounts, its arrangement lends itself to a run of the mill emotional ballad, and bc will either love or hate that, but some of the pieces that had been failing to line up slot in to place.

listening back, the song still makes him sadder than he can imagine a younger ash would be proud of.

the night he finishes, he sits in his studio with the lights low and loops the track, searching through every line for a flaw he needs to fix. it comes without thought, looking for what he’s done wrong.

as he sits there, he hears his own voice repeat over and over again thoughts from years past, singing about once-perfect loves that had only been perfect for flashes of time in a broad expanse of history, and he stops the track. for once, he’s done searching for his own faults.

#fmdverification #&& when you're screaming but they only hear you whisper | self para #god i have had the idea for this verification for soooo long icb i finally wrote it

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snarkystjames · 4 years

Text

Listen To Your Heart || St. Berry

Date: December 13th. Late afternoon

Location: McKinley High School & Rachel’s house

Starring: Rachel Berry @starberrycupcake & Jesse St. James

Notes: Jesse shows up at McKinley after hearing Rachel is banned from seeing her boyfriend. He offers to help her study.

Warnings: partial song fic bc it’s glee (gross)

Rachel Berry:

Rachel had begun the year determined and not distracted by anything and now here she was, almost the end of the first semester of her senior year completely consumed with something other than the future. It had felt so good to be so focused on Hunter and absolutely nothing else but now that she was grounded until her grades were up, she was frustrated with herself. She didn’t regret being with Hunter in the least bit. She’d had the best, most wild three months of her entire life and she wasn’t about to regret any of it because of school. She would just have to pull herself together and quickly get her grades up and she and Hunter would be off to starting their future in no time.

Her teachers were seemingly exasperated with her constant requests for extra credit and make-up work so she could hopefully pull her grade up before her GPA dropped significantly. Though reluctant, they still gave her a much needed chance and she knew that if she could just get it all done she would be set and she could see Hunter on her birthday without having to sneak around. It had only been a couple of days but knowing she couldn’t see Hunter made her want to see him even more.

Rachel was just finishing up glee club when she sent a text to her boyfriend, letting him know she was finally out of class and was thinking of him when she bumped into a familiar face right outside the door, almost knocking her phone out of her hand. “Oh! Jesse!” She glanced around to make sure her glee peers were nowhere to be found. “If any of the New Directions see you, they’re going to flip out on me.” She let her eyes trail up to his face, her demeanor softening a bit. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”

Jesse St. James:

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m here to see you, of course,” Jesse replied with his usual confident demeanor. He had been waiting right outside and as soon as he’d seen Rachel come out of the room, he was right in front of her. He didn’t care whether or not any of the other New Directions’ kids would’ve spotted him. “I’m not here to spy but you were amazing in that last number-- someone might want to tell Finn that he was a little pitchy on the last refrain because he probably doesn’t even realize.”

Jesse smoothed out the front of his jacket, playing with the ends of his chiffon scarf for just a moment before smiling at Rachel. “Vocal Adrenaline is taking a break from rehearsals today-- a rarity-- so I thought it'd be the perfect opportunity to see you. Is your boyfriend going to mind if I'm here to see you?"

Rachel Berry:

Rachel felt a little apprehensive about seeing Jesse at all much less alone, especially considering the smile that involuntary spread across her face at the way he told her he was there for her. Their history was complicated and Jesse had a great track record of making her feel on top of the world and then ripping the rug out from under her. For some reason, however, she trusted him each time. Even now despite her apprehension she could feel the trust.

Rachel chuckled, shaking her head. “Finn was fine, he’ll be ready by competition. We did win Sectionals after all.” A cheeky grin spread across her face as she looked at her former lover but it quickly faded when he mentioned Hunter. She felt mildly uncomfortable in that moment, thinking she should maybe tell Hunter about this little run in. “I’m sure Hunter wouldn’t be thrilled to know you’re here, especially considering that I’m grounded and not even allowed to see him.”

Nibbling on her bottom lip, Rachel glances around again before sighing. He had come all this way to see her. “I can’t really hang out too long because my dads will be home in a couple of hours and I’m supposed to be home when they get there…” she offered, letting him know that if he wanted, she could make the time for him.

Jesse St. James:

“Congratulations on the Sectionals win, by the way. It’ll be fun to see you and your boyfriend go head-to-head at Regionals; I’m sure we’ll be seeing you at Nationals again this year,” Jesse grinned. Upon hearing that she and Hunter were banned from seeing each other due to her being grounded, an idea popped into his head. Any time an opportunity presented itself to Jesse, he was raring to grasp it at first chance.

“So let’s go to your house,” Jesse suggested, completely unbothered with the fact that he just invited himself over to Rachel’s house. “I’m sure your dads will be supportive of you getting homework help from me; I did go to college, after all.” Of course he intentionally left out the fact that he’d dropped out because he didn’t actually go to his classes. But that wasn’t a necessary detail right now.

Rachel Berry:

“Thank you,” Rachel grinned. “It will be a lot of fun because he’s as competitive as I am. That is if the Warblers even let him stay long enough.” She rolled her eyes, sighing as she thought of all the drama that Hunter had been through so far this year. “Of course I’ll be at Nationals. I have to win, it’s crucial to my reputation-- if I can start out in the Broadway scene as a national show choir champion it’ll be extremely helpful in getting the respect that I deserve.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows at how forward Jesse was, though it shouldn’t have come as such a shock. “Jes, what makes you think I can have anyone over if I can’t have my boyfriend over?” She asked him, nodding her head towards the way she would begin to walk. “Wait, you want to help me with my homework?” She giggled. “Do you even know anything about Trigonometry?” Rachel couldn’t remember the last time - if there was ever a time - that Jesse even talked about homework or anything that wasn’t related to show choir or Broadway. “I have some make-up homework- I actually could use help on it.” She said as she approached her locker, opening it up to grab the homework she needed to take home. “I had thought about sneaking out to Westerville but I don’t really have a way to get there and back before LeRoy and Hiram get home so..” She shrugged.

Jesse St. James:

As Rachel walked towards her locker, Jesse accompanied her and met her pace. “Yeah, I’m great at math,” he boasted, though he honestly couldn’t say what he knew what trigonometry even looked like. “It’s just like, adding and subtracting stuff, right? How hard could it be?” At the mention of her going off to Westerville, Jesse nibbled on the inside of his cheek. He wanted to say something about how that was a bad idea and Hunter was causing her to neglect her studies but he thought it wiser to keep his mouth shut.

“Oh, before I forget,” he spoke up as she rummaged through her locker for her things. He pulled out a slim jewelry gift box, held closed by a simple gold ribbon. “I brought you your birthday present in case we don’t see each other before then. I figured you could use the pick-me-up after being grounded, too.” He handed off the box, giving her an expectant look for her to open it now. He looked happy and hopeful as she opened it to reveal a necklace with a small gold star charm.

Rachel Berry:

Rachel shook her head as a giggle fell from her lips. She wasn’t sure if he was joking or not but she was among towards him being serious which was no help to her. Still, it would be nice to have the company for a little bit. She was about to speak again when Jesse interrupted her by pulling out the small jewelry box.

“What’s this?” A grin spread from ear to ear as she closed her locker and took the gift from him. When she opened it up to reveal the golden star, Rachel’s stomach flipped. “Oh, Jes…” her grin faltered a little bit as the weight of the gift settled in her. It was incredibly sweet and it made her heart skip a beat. “You shouldn’t have, I can’t accept this..” she tried weakly to deny his thoughtful gift. “It’s too much.” Her brown eyes looked up to meet his, her voice soft.

Jesse St. James:

“Stop it, it’s your birthday gift,” Jesse pushed, taking the gift box from her and stepping behind her. “A girl such as yourself should have the best accessories to accentuate your beauty and talent.” He helped to put it around her neck and once he was done, he returned to stand in front of her to get a good look. “See? It looks perfect.” You look perfect.

So it was probably pretty obvious to everyone that Jesse still had feelings for Rachel but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do nice things for her-- especially since the gift was for her birthday. With Hunter out of the way for the time being, he knew this was his chance to get back in Rachel’s good graces and establish himself as her close friend. “So? Are we going back to your place to study?”

Rachel Warbler:

Rachel bit down on her lip as Jesse moved to slip the necklace around her neck, placing her hand on the small gold star that now rested on the base of her neck. It was the sweetest gift anyone had ever given her. When he came back to get a look at her, a blush painted her cheeks at his words. Shaking her head gently, Rachel smiled at him. “Thanks, Jesse. I really love it.” She felt the warmth in her cheeks spreading down her neck, the effect he had on her was obvious and she was regrettably transparent.

When Jesse suggested going to her house, she let out a soft sigh, checking the time. “I suppose, but you have to leave at five. You can’t be there when my dads get home, I’m walking a fine line and I don’t want to not see Hunter until we graduate.” She explained as she gathered her things, closing up her locker for the day. Hunter. She again felt compelled to let Hunter know that Jesse had showed up. “And you have to help me with my homework to some extent- no distractions.” Rachel pulled out her phone as she led the way to leave the school, sending a text to Hunter to give him the heads up that Jesse showed up at McKinley and was giving her a ride home. “Can I get a ride home?” She asked Jesse, glancing over at him. “My dads dropped me off and I’m supposed to get a ride from Kurt but there’s no need for him to go out of his way since you’re here.” She smiled.

Jesse St. James:

Jesse grinned ear to ear when Rachel finally agreed to him coming over. Even if it was a few hours, he’d take what he could get. “Yeah, of course. My Range Rover is parked right over here,” he gestured in the direction of his car once they were outside. “I promise I won’t do anything to distract you but I also wouldn’t be opposed to singing with you if you wanted; it’s been a while since we’ve had a duet together. You know our voices sound phenomenal together.”

When they both got into the car, Jesse’s phone connected via bluetooth and he scrolled through his music, looking for the perfect song for such an occasion. He knew the Rachel Berry he loved-- who also loved him-- was in there somewhere… He just needed to coax her out. The opening melody of Roxette’s Listen To Your Heart started playing over the speakers as Jesse started driving out of the parking lot and towards Rachel’s home.

Rachel Berry:

A smile spread across Rachel’s face when Jesse suggested singing with her. It had been a bit since they’d had the pleasure of singing together and she would be lying to herself and everyone else if she said they didn’t fit together vocally. He was the only person that could ever keep up with her talent. That is, until she met Hunter. “I suppose a harmless duet wouldn’t hurt.” She said as she got into his car, settling in and buckling her seatbelt.

When she heard the first note of the song flow through the speakers, her stomach clenched and she glanced over at Jesse, a small grin tugging at her lips. She knew the song and she knew it well, obviously. His choice of song wasn’t lost on her and she knew that she shouldn’t lead him on-- but she also couldn’t resist a chance to belt out one of her most favorite classics. Shifting in her seat a little, she folded her hands in her lap, closing her eyes.

I know there's something in the wake of your smile I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yeah You've built a love but that love falls apart Your little piece of Heaven turns too dark

Jesse St. James:

Jesse had known that Rachel couldn’t resist this song. When she started singing in that crystal-clear voice that Jesse adored so much, he couldn’t help but to smile and nod his head. He kept his eyes on the road but glanced over to her whenever he had the chance. These days, it was rare for him to hear Rachel singing unless it was at a competition. Singing with her was an even rarer occurrence.

When the next verse started, he sang along with her. Just like the first time they sang Hello together in the music library those years ago, their voices melted together beautifully.

Listen to your heart

When he's calling for you

Listen to your heart

There's nothing else you can do

While stopped at a red light, Jesse looked over to her and when he caught her gaze, smiled brightly at them. Regardless if on a big stage, in the choir room, or doing a little karaoke in the car, Jesse always enjoyed singing with her.

Rachel Berry:

When Jesse’s voice melted with hers during the chorus, Rachel couldn’t stop the smile that appeared on her face, looking over to Jesse to catch his eye when they were stopped.

Sometimes you wonder if this fight is worthwhile

The precious moments are all lost in the tide, yeah

They're swept away and nothing is what is seems

The feeling of belonging to your dreams

She kept her eyes on Jesse as she sang with him, giving it her all as usual. She could feel something crawling up from the depths of her heart, something that was supposed to be shoved deep down to never be touched again. It felt good to sing with Jesse but for a brief moment as she looked to the man next to her she saw Hunter- the mirage taking her breath for a split second. Rachel shook her head, she sang with other people all of the time, it didn’t mean anything because it was Jesse.

The only man who’d ever come close to knowing her as much as Hunter did.

Jesse St. James:

Jesse was in high spirits as they continued to harmonize through the song. He liked the way she looked at him when they sang to each other. After the song eventually came to an end, Jesse turned down the volume as the next track played.

“Still as amazing as always; it’s a wonder why you’re not already on the fast track to Broadway,” he said to her. They were just a few blocks away from her house by now. “It’s too bad you can’t pass all your classes by just singing… You’d be valedictorian.”

When they pulled up to the house, Jesse parked his car in the driveway. It’d been a little while since he’d been over to her house-- not since when they were still dating each other. It almost felt like stepping into a timewarp, into the past.

Rachel Berry:

Rachel blushed again for the second time that day when Jesse complimented her, giggling softly. “That’s really sweet.” She said, looking over at him as he parked. “What about you, though? You’re equally as talented as I am...if not more so. You shouldn’t be here in Ohio-- you should be in New York already.” She shook her head, her tone serious. “I know Vocal Adrenaline is important to you...but they’re holding you back.”

She knew from the times they’d spoken that Jesse wasn’t back solely for Vocal Adrenaline-- but for her. “You can’t let anything-- including me-- hold you back.” Nibbling on her bottom lip, she grinned a little, reaching over to place her hand on his. “You’re too good for this place, Jes.” Rachel gave his hand a gentle squeeze before moving to take off her seatbelt.

Jesse St. James:

Jesse was quiet for a moment after Rachel told him that he shouldn’t let anything hold him back. It was nice that someone believed in him-- that he was destined for bigger and better things than Ohio. He squeezed her hand back and smiled at her. “This is just a temporary gig-- another credit I can list on my growing résumé,” he insisted, knowing that he couldn’t be confined to such “small picture” ventures.

When they exited the vehicle, Jesse let Rachel lead the way up the path towards the front door. “But for the record, it isn’t you that’s holding me back,” Jesse clarified, pausing for a moment to clear his throat, “New York is still my future. You’re part of that future, too.”

Rachel Berry:

Rachel paused briefly with her keys in the door as Jesse reiterated that she would be part of that future. It was sort of flattering that Jesse was so adamant. She may be part of his future career-wise but romantically she just couldn’t do it. Anytime the thought tried to crawl out from the back of her mind all she could see was Hunter. “We will take over the Broadway scene,” she chuckled, opening the door to let them in. “Our names will be in everyone’s mouth.” She dreamed for a moment about her and Jesse being friends and being a powerful force in New York together.

“You and Hunter getting along is crucial, though, or it’ll never work.” Rachel cleared her throat as she led him into the dining room, placing her things on the table. She was suddenly very aware that she was alone with Jesse and it made her palms a little sweaty. “So, uh, trigonometry…”

Jesse St. James:

"Oh, definitely. The first time you have a leading role, you and I will win for Best Actress and Best Actor; we'll do so much press as the two ingenues from Podunk, Ohio who made names for themselves-- together." Jesse followed Rachel into her home, also acutely aware that with her parents not present it made them very much alone. He took the time to take a look around, familiarizing himself with how things looked similar to the last time he was here. Nostalgia washed over him, picturing his teenage self with a doe-eyed sixteen year old Rachel Berry singing duets together around the piano in the living room.

Jesse forced himself to step away from the past, aware that he needed to put himself in the present to continue being part of Rachel's life. "So what's Hunter's plans? College in New York? He probably wants to do something boring like being an accountant, right?"

Rachel Berry:

Rachel chuckled to herself as she took a seat at the table, noticing the way Jesse skirted around her prompt for the homework help that he’d come for. She should’ve known better-- Jesse couldn’t actually help her with her homework. He just wanted to spend time with her and if she were being honest, she did, too. She wanted to spend time with him without Hunter around so she could assess Jesse’s actual intentions and feelings and if he could actually handle just being her friend.

“I told you, we’re moving to New York. He’s wanting to go to Cornell- which, admittedly, isn’t ideal because it puts two more hours between us than we have now but it’s not like we can’t make it work. We’ll meet halfway most times, I’m sure.” She said, having not given much thought to their future other than the fact that they were going into it together, even if it meant being apart for a few more years. “His father wants him to go into the Navy, follow in his footsteps. But we haven’t talked about that much, though.” Nibbling on her lip, Rachel tried to push the thought from her mind as she usually did. She hoped that when the time came, Hunter would choose her over the Navy without prompt and she didn’t have to be that girl.

Jesse St. James:

“Navy?” Jesse murmured to himself, wondering how that would impact Rachel’s future. “So he’ll be on a boat somewhere? Like a sailor out to sea for weeks and weeks at a time..? Doesn’t sound like fun.” He finished perusing through the living room before returning to Rachel’s side at the dining room table. Her books were spread out on the table and when Rachel opened up the math book, his eyes became wide like saucers. He couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was looking at, but he wasn’t about to make that apparent.

“A sailor and a broadway superstar don’t really mix, do they? It’s not exactly the ‘Broadway power couple’ I envision when I see you walking down the red carpet at events.” Jesse flipped through the pages of the trigonometry book, eyes scanning the content to see if there was even a little bit of something he understood so he could help.

Rachel Berry:

Rachel sighed, looking down at the table as Jesse mentioned Hunter being away for long periods of time out in the middle of the ocean. She really hadn’t taken a moment to sit alone with those thoughts and really assess. She thought being grounded from Hunter was bad, but what about when he was shipped off somewhere and she couldn’t speak to him every single day whenever she pleased? She suddenly felt nauseous.

“M-maybe it’s not ideal. But it’s what he wants...he doesn’t hold me back from what I want.” She was trying to convince herself rather than Jesse. “If...if the Navy is what he wants to do then I can’t stop him.” Rachel trailed off, thinking of the first date she’d gone on with Hunter when they had discussed their lives. “Though...I don’t really think it’s what he wants really. I think his dad is more or less pressuring him into it.” As these thoughts began to nibble at her anxiety ridden brain, she wasn’t so much focused on getting to her homework. Glancing over at Jesse, Rachel shook her head. “Do you know anything about the Navy? Do they, like, go to actual war?” She realized then she had little to no knowledge of any military branch.

Jesse St. James:

Upon hearing that Rachel wasn’t especially supportive of Hunter’s decision to join the Navy, Jesse thought to himself that perhaps he found the fracture in their seemingly perfect relationship. It would be cruel to manipulate Rachel, but honesty was the best policy… Being upfront with her about his opinion of the military wasn’t the wrong thing to do, right? “Oh, I’m pretty sure people in the Navy go to war,” he answered, leaning back in his chair a little. “I mean, I only know from television but there’s a bunch of ships and submarines in the ocean watching the Koreans, right? It’s like, an island, right? So it’s surrounded by water. Isn’t the US. on the brink of a war with them right now?”

He backed off a little when he realized he might be scaring Rachel. “Maybe you can convince him not to join the military. The guy’s in show choir too, right? I mean, there’s no way he can get into NYADA but lots of actors hack it in New York without an education. He could totally get an ensemble role.”

Rachel Berry:

“War?” Rachel asked, looking at Jesse with her forehead wrinkled, the nausea turning her stomach again. “L-like, war?” She shook her head, imagining the worst case scenario. There was a vivid image in her mind of her in New York, alone. And then another of her coming backstage from curtain call of one of her shows to a phone call letting her know that Hunter was dead and never coming back. She took a shaky breath, closing her eyes and shaking her head as she tried to calm the anxiety that was rapidly building in her chest.

“Uh, yeah,” She cleared her through, pressing her lips together as she looked down. “He’s extremely talented. He’s better than me, even. Well...at least just as talented.” Rachel explained, rubbing her hands over her face, taking another breath. “I just don’t…” She tried to get the images out of her head again, sighing. “Maybe...maybe he won’t go. Maybe he’ll change his mind and realize that it’s not his dream and he’ll find something else. Y-yeah...maybe.” Rachel placed her hands down on the table, sitting up a little straighter, visibly uncomfortable, anxious. She didn’t want to think about this anymore, it was scaring her and she didn’t have Hunter there to comfort her and talk it through. She didn’t want to have an anxiety attack in front of Jesse, either, regardless of whether or not he’d seen it before.

Jesse St. James:

Jesse mentally kicked himself when he realized Rachel was on the verge of an anxiety attack, clearly caused by him. “If anyone can convince someone into doing something, it’s you. If he really likes performing as much as either of us you can convince him to do something else with his life. Besides, who goes to college just to waste it in the military? That’s just dumb…” Maybe he would talk to Hunter too; it was the least he could do after making Rachel unnecessarily worry. “I mean, weren’t you just talking about Ohio and Vocal Adrenaline holding me back? Don’t be surprised to run into me this time next year because I am definitely going to New York, too. Even if I have to bus tables while I go to every audition out there, I’m going.”

His tone about New York was much more self-assured than before and it was all thanks to Rachel’s words. She had an innate ability to cheer anyone on, right beside them. Even if Rachel wasn’t actually doing anything, she really was a driving force for Jesse to find his place. He just hoped that when he landed on his own two feet Rachel would be standing right beside him.

Rachel Berry:

Rachel just nodded her head as Jesse tried to talk her down from the looming anxiety attack. “I guess. I...I don’t even really want to think about it anymore.” She tried to get the jarring images to leave her mind as she took a deep breath, appreciating the way Jesse changed the subject.

“Y-yeah...I know you’ll be there. I don’t doubt that.” She looked over to Jesse, placing her hand on his. “That’s why it’s important to me that we all get along. We’re going to be in each other’s professional lives at the very least.” She said, giving him a gentle smile. “It’ll be really nice to have a familiar face to work with, I’m glad it’ll be you. I mean that.”

Jesse St. James:

Jesse nodded a bit when she agreed that they’d all be in New York together. At least while Hunter was in college figuring his future out, Jesse would be the third wheel; he had that much guaranteed for him and he was completely fine playing the slow game. Rachel had almost gone back to him once before, so it was only a matter of time. “Right? The three of us will be bonafide New Yorkers in no-time. Now c’mon, I promised to help you with your math homework so tell me what chapter you’re on and I’ll look up the answers on my phone.”

He was satisfied that he managed to talk her down a bit and she was smiling, so he took it as a good sign. Her worries were obviously still there because a matter like that wasn’t going to be overlooked; Jesse knew her too well to know that he’d inadvertently planted a seed of anxiety somewhere in Rachel’s brain. One thing was certain to him, however: if Hunter was going to commit to the military, things might not work out for him and Rachel. That was the golden opportunity Jesse had been waiting for.

#rachel berry rp #jesse st james rp #st berry rp #glee rp #1x1 rp #paras #para: rachel #rachel

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angelbabylu · 5 years

Text

The Art of Losing // AI

pairing: i created an oc for this bc its pretty heavy

prompt: Imagine you and Ashton are married and have a baby girl. You and your baby girl are driving back from a long day at the carnival and you get into a bad car accident.

warnings: this is supposed to be sad okay, warnings for death, drug use, & problematic domestic situations

word count: 5.5k

notes: this is for @myemptywallets who sent me the prompt. i hope this is does your prompt justice. shout out to my love @5sosnsfw ! thanks reading and editing this. love you

title from the poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

- before -

There is no sound in the dressing room as Ashton sits typing away at the screen of his phone. He had taken a few photos of the boys during sound check, and now he’s posting them: Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, the works. With his focus buried deep in the world of social media, he is lost to the world around him.

A voice floats through the device on the desk in front of him, disrupting the silence with an exasperated, “Ash.”

He lets his eyes to flicker up to the neutral-faced woman on the screen for a half a second before shifting his attention down to Twitter once more.

“One second, babe. I just need to send this tweet.”

With a heavy breath, she tries to convey her feelings of discontent. Were Ashton paying attention, he would have picked up on it in seconds. Then again, were Ashton paying attention, she wouldn’t be upset in the first place.

“Ashton, I think you guys are big enough now that you can hire someone else to run your twitter account.”

He doesn’t hear her. Or, if he does, he’s too engaged to respond.

It takes a full minute for his head to pop up and his eyes to meet piercing ones, their intensity dulled by the LCD display. She never quite looks the same behind a screen. Something about her felt diluted by the machine that separated them.

“What?” His thick brows furrow, creating a deep V in the space between them. She is opening her mouth to restate herself when his brain catches up.

“Baby,” he scoffs. They had talked about this. “You know how impersonal that is to me. Our fans deserve to hear straight from us.”

This time he keeps his eyes on her long enough to take in how disconcerted she is. Ashton knows that face better than his own. There were hours in years past that he dedicated to learning her every emotion. On that day that Ashton said those fateful words (“Maren Anderson, will you marry me?”), he promised to always do what he could to keep her happy. His current actions were contradicting that vow.

“Mare, you okay?”

The look she gives him says that she obviously isn’t. He feels a twinge in his gut at the realization that he had been neglecting her. Placing his phone back in his pocket (after covertly hitting send on the tweet), he gives his attention over to her.

“What’s up?”

“I miss you.”

It is three simple words, but the weight of them is enough to crush Ashton’s heart. This is why he had become so engrossed in the business side of the tour. Being the band’s personal PR agent is just one of the many tricks he uses to keep his mind occupied. The more menial tasks he finds to consume his days, the less time he spends thinking about to what he left behind at home.

She reaches her left hand up to sweep her hair out of her face, the diamond on her ring finger catching the light, sparkling on screen. Ashton still remembers the day he gave her that ring - more so than the day he had stumbled into Tiffany’s at Saks Fifth Avenue, drugged out of his mind but sure of one thing: how much he wanted her to be his wife.

“Why aren’t you on tour with me again?” He tries to keep his tone light, recognizing what the scrunch of her nose meant. If he allows the conversation to continue with professions of just how much pain the space between them is causing, she will inevitably start to cry. Selfishly, he doesn’t want to go on stage thinking about his wife crying thousands of miles away, with no way to comfort her.

“We’re blaming Eden,” she says, and that is just the segue he is hoping for. If there is one thing that could put a smile on both their faces, Eden is it.

“And where is my little devil?”

His wife is sitting on the couch in their living room, and if the smile she shoots over the screen of her phone is any indication, so is their five-year-old daughter.

“Daddy!”

The scream is accompanied by high pitched giggles as a flurry of dark curls materializes on screen, dislodging the camera from her mother’s hand. In the next second, Ashton is facing the light of his life. She is smiling, as always, her dimples the size of craters on her cheeks.

“Hey! How’s my favorite girl?”

“Once again, your daughter comes on screen, and you forget I exist.”

His wife’s voice comes from somewhere to the left of the device, meaning she doesn’t see the roll of his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he calls out. “Who are you again?”

Neither Maren nor Eden take lightly to the joke.

“Daddy, don’t be mean!” the curly-haired kindergartener chastises.

“Okay, okay.” He raises his hands in defeat. “What are my two favorite girls going to be up to today?”

Maren’s head pops up on screen then, resting her cheek gently on the top of their daughters head. She doesn’t take the phone from Eden, knowing how much she likes to be in control during these family FaceTimes (“She gets this control thing from you,” Maren never hesitates to tell her husband.)

“We’re going to the carnival!”

He catches his wife’s guilty eyes over his daughter’s head. Just last week she had sworn they wouldn’t go to the carnival, citing it as punishment for Eden’s recent unruly behavior.

“We’re only going for a few hours,” Maren tries to explain. “Because Eden was good and cleaned her room today without me having to ask.”

“And I spoil her?” His voice is incredulous, hinting at a conversation they’d had numerous times before.

Eden, too clever for her own good, comments, “You both spoil me.”

The sound Ashton releases is an embarrassingly loud guffaw. Eden is sharp, to the point where Ashton is continuously amazed by her mind. Of course, he remembers watching his younger siblings mature, but something about watching his daughter, someone he helped bring into the world, go from only being able to laugh and babble to now developing her own firecracker sense of wit, felt different. He is immensely proud. And grateful to be blessed with someone as amazing as her.

“Your eyes, your smile, and now your sass,” his wife says fighting a slight smile. “She is her father's child.”

And she is. The resemblance is uncanny. Not only in their looks, but in their personality as well. They are both talkative pranksters, demanding of attention, always in need of stimulation and excitement. Together, they wreak havoc in their house. They are partners in crime. His wife often complains that they needed another child ASAP. It is easy to feel out of place in the Ashton and Eden Show.

“I’m daddy’s child when I’m bad, mommy’s child when I’m good, and uncle Lu’s niece when I whine too much.”

Eden recites the mantra Maren has been repeating since Eden could talk. There are more sayings for the other boys as well. She is Mikey’s niece when they couldn’t get her away from her video games and Calum’s niece when she is melodramatic.

(A few days before they had gone on tour, Ashton had walked into their house to find Eden home from Kindergarten, sprawled out on the tan carpet of their living room. His wife at their record player with a Depeche Mode album in hand.

“What’s going on here?” he had asked.

Maren shrugged. “She came in, threw herself on the carpet, and asked for this album.” She waved the Some Great Reward Vinyl in her hand before slipping it out of its sleeve and onto the player.

“Bug?” Ashton turned to his daughter then, looking for more information.

No such luck.

“People are people, daddy.” She said as if there was some great weight on her five-year-old shoulders only Depeche Mode could solve.

Ashton caught his wife’s eyes. Then, as if there was no other response to the scene in front of them, they both sighed, “She is Calum’s niece.”)

They speak for a while, Eden monopolizing most of her dad’s attention. She is in the middle of a nonsensical story that Ashton was having a hard time following.

“Four, five, six hippo princesses and a dinosaur car chase!” Ashton’s mind supplies, and even though he has no idea what that means, he nods along anyway.

A knock on the door interrupts them just as Eden begins to mention Ali’s tater’s and lasers, or perhaps alligator lasers, Ashton isn’t really sure. She pauses though, all three of their attention shifting to the door as Ashton called the person inside.

It’s three people. Luke, Calum, and Michael stumble through the door of their dressing room looking all fired up and ready for the show. As soon as they see who’s one screen, they do not spare Ashton a second glance.

They crowd around the back of Ashton’s chair and begin to all speak at once, offering varying greetings to Maren and Eden.

“Sorry little bug,” Calum begins once everyone has finished exchanging pleasantries. “We’ve come to steal your daddy away.”

Luckily, Eden does not put up as much of a fight as she usually does.

There are tears - there are always tears. The second Eden hears that her dad has to leave, she begins to cry. Her nose scrunches, similar to the way Maren’s had earlier, and her eyes well up with rivers.

“No please,” She begs her uncle. “I wanna talk to daddy.”

All five adult hearts at that moment shatter. The boys know how hard it is for Ashton to be away from his daughter. Truthfully, it is hard for them to be away from her too. At that moment, Ashton is the only one with a child, and in many ways, Eden has become theirs as well.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, they have done this enough that everyone knows how to calm the five-year-old down.

“Eden,” it is Luke’s turn this time. He crouches at Ashton’s side, bringing himself down to be face to face with the screen of the iPad. “You know your daddy & your uncles will call you after the show.”

“Yeah,” Maren chimes in, her hand gently running through the unruly mop of curls on her daughter's head. “And we have the carnival. If you talk to your daddy all afternoon, we won’t be able to go.”

Eden still doesn’t budge. “I wanna keep talking to daddy.”

“My little sunshine.” Ashton and his daughter are twins. He boasts about knowing how to talk her down. “Go to the carnival. Have as much fun as possible. Then later when you get home, you’ll have twice as many stories to tell me and all the time in the world to tell them!”

At the thought of making more memories to share later with her dad, the kindergartener reluctantly resigns. “Okay,” she pouts.

“Love you, little bug.”

They exchange a round of “I love you’s” before Ashton got up and got ready for the stage.

- after: ashton -

Calum receives the news first. He is the closest to the wings of the arena stage that night, so when their manager rushes on stage, only ten minutes of the set remaining, he is the first one she runs into.

Ashton doesn’t realize that he has stopped playing for a full minute. It is not until Michael and Luke stop playing as well, both their attention on Calum, that Ashton begins to register that something is off.

Later, he will tell them that he knows the bad news is for him from the get-go. How can he not, with the way Calum breathes, “Fuck,” and immediately turns to him.

The arena is almost silent now. What was once thousands of fans yelling the lyrics to She Looks So Perfect is now a mass quiet, curious faces. Ashton wonders if the crowd can feel it too, can feel the realization that his manager’s next few words will tear his life apart forever.

“We regret to inform you that due to a family emergency we will be cutting the show short. . .”

Ashton doesn't get to hear her finish the speech because the boys rush towards him, all but forcing him off stage. He knows his body is moving, vaguely aware of the gentle hand at the small of his back, guiding him through the backstage area. His mind - that is elsewhere. It buzzes with one question only: What the fuck was happening? It takes him a full minute to realize he is repeating it aloud.

He doesn’t get his answer until Calum shoves him into a chair in their dressing room - the very same chair he sat on earlier when talking to his daughter and his wife.

“Promise me you’ll take deep breaths after I tell you this,” Calum commands. That is never a good sign. That phrase is not one that is usually followed by good news.

Ashton looks up and meets Luke’s eyes. He is surprised to find that he and Michael are confused as well. Calum is the only one who knows what was going on.

“Cal, what the fuck is happening?” Ashton says in lieu of the promise.

Calum is silent for what feels like a full minute. Ashton could hear the sound of each second passing from the clock on the dressing room wall. Tick, tick, tick.

It counts down the seconds before Ashton hears, “Maren and Eden got into a car accident.”

Luke and Michael release gasps of shock, both staggering as if Calum’s words are enough to knock them off their feet.

For Ashton, the words don’t quite sink in. He is on his feet before Calum’s next breath. The phrase alone is too much for Ashton to process, but he is aware that it is Mare and it is Eden and it is bad news.

“Okay, I need to - “

He doesn’t get to finish before Calum is pushing him back into his chair. “You need to breathe. We have a flight. The four of us. We leave for LA in 2 hours. The car will be pulling up any second now. We’re gonna go to the hotel, grab what you need, and then we’re gonna go.” He speaks like he would were it Eden in a crisis, demanding and almost infuriatingly slow.

“Do you understand?”

When Ashton nods, Calum shakes his head. “I need you to use your words, Ashton. Do you understand?”

He’s not sure his voice will work. He surprises himself when he’s able to croak out, “I understand.”

“Did you want to try eating breakfast today?”

He doesn’t get a verbal answer. Instead, the mop of hair peeking out from underneath the comforter slowly shakes no.

“You need to eat something,” There is a pleading in his voice. Still, he gets no response from the body tucked tightly in the bed sheets.

Sighing slowly, he closes the door behind him.

Maren hasn’t said a word since they came home from the hospital without their daughter. He understands. Some days he’s surprised he’s able to get out of bed at all. His mother thinks that he’s in shock, that the finality of everything hasn’t hit him yet. Maybe he hasn’t realized he will never see his little girl again, never see her smile, never hear her say a sharp comment, nothing. He thinks she’s partially correct. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognizes that this truly terrible thing has happened to him, but if he doesn’t give himself the time to think, the time to mull on just how world crushing the situation is, he won’t snap. He won’t fall to pieces like his wife has. And right now, he has to keep it together for her.

When he gets downstairs, he finds Calum, Michael, and Crystal in the kitchen.

There are a million people staying at his house right now. Luke refuses to go home. He spends most of his days curled up in bed with Maren. From what Ashton can gather, neither of them say very much. They just sit together in silence. Sometimes when he walks by the TV will be on. Other times, they’re crying. But he hasn’t heard either of them utter a word. He’s happy (a funny word at that moment) that Luke can be there for Maren in a way that he can’t.

Mikey and Crystal will go home sometimes. Mostly because Maren doesn’t like seeing Crystal, the small 4-month baby bump a reminder that of the child they had lost.

His mom and his siblings are milling around somewhere. They flew in just a few hours after he did.

God. Just 4 days ago he was still on tour. He shook the thought out of his head. There was no point in worrying about how his fans were reacting to its abrupt cancellation.

Calum catches sight of the motion and looks over him with scrutinizing eyes, “You okay?”

Calum had been his rock in the past four days. Ashton will never forget how he ushered him from one place to the next that first night, getting him ready for the plane flight and the subsequent visit to the hospital. And now, there was no way he could plan this funeral without Calum. They were the only ones strong enough to. Better yet, the only ones strong enough to pick themselves up after a good cry.

Neither of them told anyone about the day at the funeral home. Calum had barely been able to clarify, “We’re looking for child caskets,” before the both of them broke down in tears. That was the only time Ashton allowed his emotions to slip. Even then, he forced himself to regain composure, perhaps too quickly. Ashton is afraid that if he lets himself to really cry, he will never stop.

“Fine.” He responds to Calum’s earlier question.

Eventually, his sister joins them in the kitchen and all five of them make breakfast. It is a little crowded, but everyone just wants to be around each other, so no one complains.

The funeral and wake will be later that day. The wake is being held at his house so of course his mom has been up since the crack of dawn cleaning. Never mind the fact that they could easily hire an entire crew to do so. His mom recruits his siblings, Michael and Crystal to help with the cleaning. Calum and Ashton go over final funeral details. And Luke and Maren. . . they cry and try to gather their strength for the funeral.

Ashton makes it through the funeral, his eulogy, and the wake that follows. He makes it to the end of the week. He makes through seven days of his wife not uttering a word to him. So, he feels weak when the thing that finally causes him to break is his mom leaving.

He had rolled his eyes at the airport when she asked, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” and all but pushed them onto the plane. He knew they wanted to stay and be there for him, but his siblings still had school. They had already taken a week off. They made promises to see each other the next holiday and then said goodbye.

It doesn’t hit him until he gets home.

There are no more distractions.

The funeral is over.

The few days post-funeral he had spent shopping for and catching up with his mom and his younger siblings.

Now they are gone too.

Michael and Crystal are home together.

Luke is probably curled up somewhere with Maren.

Calum finally went home to his girlfriend, no longer needed to help plan a funeral.

Ashton is alone.

Maybe not totally alone.

He takes a deep breath and climbs the stairs, en route to his room. He knocks but knows better than to expect an answer before pushing it open.

He’s surprised to find that Luke isn’t there. He’s even more surprised to find his wife sitting up, and scrolling through her phone. “Luke went home?” he asks.

She doesn’t even look up at him.

“Yeah.”

Yeah. The first word his wife has spoken to him since the death of their daughter.

He sits gingerly on the bed. His side of the bed. A bed he hasn’t slept in for months.

“Should we. . .” he trails off, looking at her, hoping to meet her eyes.

She keeps her gaze down.

“Should we talk about it?”

For a minute, he thinks she isn’t going to respond. She’s almost robotic in the way she stares at the small device and in the movement of her thumb. He thinks that maybe if he sticks it out, if he sits by her, she will look up at him and they will finally get to talk about it - to go through this pain together.

They don’t.

“Ashton,” Her voice is small. She turns off her phone, but her eyes never leave it. “Don’t take this the wrong way but - “

Her voice is breaking, just like his heart.

“I’m having a hard time okay? I just want to be alone to process my emotions. I can’t talk about it. It is still too painful.”

He doesn’t know what that means. What he’s supposed to do with that information. A million responses roll through his mind.

He eventually settles on, “Okay.”

Before he’s even out the door, he has his phone in hand, dialing a number he hasn’t touched in years.

- after: maren -

The first words Maren says after Eden dies are, “I need to go get Eden ready for school.”

She’s woken up by someone placing something on her bedside table, and for a brief moment, before she even opens her eyes, her subconscious thinks it’s Ashton waking her up to go get Eden. They had done it many times before. He would make her breakfast, a nice gesture, but inevitably wake her up with the clanging of the breakfast tray on the bedside table.

But this time it wasn’t Ashton, and she would never get Eden ready for school again.

When Luke lets out a shuddering breath, reality comes rushing back to her. As soon as her eyes open, she is crying. She has only seen people through her tears recently.

Luke is crying too.

At this point, it’s two days since Eden’s death. One day since they got home from the hospital. The car was hit on the passenger side, where Eden had been peacefully babbling, playing with a stuffed giraffe she had “won for her uncle Lu” at the carnival.

A drunk driver. Dead on impact as well.

The car had spun out, gone off the bank on the opposite side of the road before being stopped by a thicket of trees. She had been conscious until the airbag deployed, causing the majority of her injuries.

Lucky. That’s what the doctor said when she awakened. She was lucky to walk away with a few burns and a broken arm.

Mourning a child felt impossible. If the driver had hit her side and Ashton were planning her funeral, she knows it would be hard, but some part of her thinks like it would be better.

She has experienced life. Eden has not. She’ll never experience the first day of first grade, she’ll never get her first report card, do a science project, have a first crush, bring a significant other home, anything.

The thought swarms her mind what feels like every second of every day. So much so that she can’t speak. She thinks that if she does, all that will come out is a list. A list of things that she’ll never see her baby do.

So, she locks herself away. Luke is the only one brave enough to come and see her - and even then they don’t speak. They cry and listen to Eden’s favorite albums and watch Paw Patrol of all things. All without exchanging a word.

She leaves her room twice in that first week. The first time, she shuffles down the stairs in search of water. It’s expected when what feels like a thousand voices float up from the foyer, getting clearer as she gets closer.

She knows that all the boys are there. They wouldn’t leave Ashton’s side at a time like this.

When she walks into the kitchen where they’re gathered, everyone grows quiet, watching her as if she is teetering on the edge of a break.

To be fair, she is.

She sees Crystal’s baby bump for the first time since the accident and immediately breaks down in tears.

The second time is for Eden’s funeral.

Ashton even gets a fucking priest. Neither of them are very religious, so it feels disingenuous. She briefly wonders if five-year-olds go to heaven. If Eden is somewhere at that moment, being taken care of.

It’s a nice thought. Something easy to believe.

Perhaps that’s why Ashton got the priest in the first place.

She sits in the back and leaves before it’s over.

Ashton tries to comfort her at times. She’s aware of him coming to her door daily, of the food he sends up with Luke even after she says she doesn’t want to eat, of the gentle hand that he places on her shoulder at the funeral that she promptly shakes off.

She loves Ashton.

She does.

But Ashton is Eden’s twin. They were always joking about that. Now, Maren couldn’t look at him without being reminded of everything she’s lost.

She doesn’t expect it when Ashton stops trying.

The day she sends Luke home is the day she pushes Ashton away.

She realizes too late that it’s a mistake. It means getting out of bed and making her own tea.

The first day she tries but finds one of Eden’s sippy cup forgotten at the back of the cupboard. She spends three hours on the kitchen floor crying.

At the end of the second week, she works up the energy to make an appointment with a grief counselor.

“And how is your husband taking all this?”

Counseling is going great until she gets that question.

She doesn't know how to tell her counselor that she hasn’t seen her husband in weeks. She has no idea where he is or what he has been up to. She never even asked him how he was feeling about the death of their first child.

At the encouragement of her counselor, she makes an effort to reach out to Ashton.

Staring at her phone screen for hours, she finally decides on a text.

Dinner?

She’s not sure that he will respond.

He does, seconds later.

He says, i'll be home in 20.

After all that time, Ashton still came running when she called.

She thinks it’ll be cute to bring back some of their old traditions. The first time she cooks for Ashton, it is after spending an entire day wrapped around each other. Naturally, she was wearing his clothes while she did it. Somehow, it becomes a ritual of theirs: her wearing his clothes as she moves about the kitchen, him watching from the sidelines pretending to help.

What she finds in his t-shirt drawer derails the entire night.

When Ashton walks in, she is not in the kitchen preparing dinner, but in the living room, sitting quietly in the dim light of their table lamp.

“Really?” Maren asks. This is the second conversation they’ve had since Eden, and she feels like this will be their last.

Ashton’s eyes finally fall on the bottle in her hand. It’s a translucent orange with a handful of white pills sitting at the bottom. When she shakes it, its rattle thunders through the room. His flinch lets her know that at least part of him feels remorse.

He had stopped taking Xanax before they got married. It was their deal. She would only marry him if he got clean. To know that he was back. . .

Ashton’s first reaction is to downplay it all.

“Eden is fucking dead, Mare. This is my way of dealing with it. Just like yours is to disappear to your room for weeks and refuse to say anything to me.”

Maren doesn’t respond. She knows that if she opens her mouth to speak, she is going to yell. Gritting her teeth, she tries to keep her comments to herself – comments about how her dead daughter is not an excuse for him falling off the wagon.

Her silence only serves to agitate him.

She has to tighten her grip on the pill bottle as he continues, voice rising as he yells, “What so you’re allowed to feel things, and I’m not?”

Anger bubbles inside her. First, he uses their daughter as an excuse to go back to the dark places of his past, and now he is throwing her own grief back at her. She stands, facing him, but tries to keep her voice level, aware of how easy it would be for both of them to start screaming.

“This isn’t feeling things. This is you not knowing how to deal with your emotions, same as always.”

“What the fuck are you on about?” He asks, as if this isn’t a conversation they’d had before, as if she hadn’t once begged him to go to therapy for it.

“When you were on tour, and you missed us, instead of allowing yourself to feel it, you buried yourself in work and pretended everything was fine. This is no different.”

“You’re comparing the pain that I’m feeling over our dead daughter to me missing you on tour?”

“No.” She knows he is purposely misunderstanding her for the sake of argument. She explains herself anyway, “I am saying that just like how you refused to deal with your pain then, you are refusing to deal with your pain now.

“Ashton, our daughter is dead.” He winces at her impassive tone. That is the difference between them. It has taken her months of depression and counseling to be able to say those words. Ashton isn’t there yet, and she knows that if he doesn’t acknowledge his feelings, he never will be.

“Our daughter is dead. And that is not something that you can forget or pretend isn’t happening with drugs. You need to allow yourself time to mourn her. The drugs? That’s not helping you feel things.” She calls back his earlier phrase again, to drive her point in. “That’s helping you burry those feelings.”

He recoils as if her words are a slap to the face.

“Oh get off your fucking high horse, Mare!” Because of the volume and the intensity of his words, now Maren is the one to flinch. It was like this before too, with the drugs. He was easily irritable, prone to blaming his out of control behavior on anything other than himself, “I had to deal with this shit by myself. You disappeared. I had to plan this funeral while I mourned the loss of our child. And you created this distance between us. You! The only other person who understood what I was going through.”

He’s screaming by the time he has finished.

And he’s right.

That’s the painful part. Maren fucked them up first, but if she sticks around, Ashton is going to make everything worse. She knows she didn’t deal with Eden’s death in the best way just like she knows that Ashton isn’t coping in the best way now. If they continue down this path, they’re just going to keep hurting each other.

“I think I’m gonna go.”

“Go where? We’re not done.”

She ignores his angry protests and sidesteps him as she makes her way to the door.

“I love you,” she says. Her back is to him, hand already poised on the knob. “I will never love someone as much as I love you. And that’s why I think it’s best if I go.”

“Why are you always trying to walk away from us?” His voice is small now, barely above a whisper. She can feel him pleading in his words.

He is referring to the first time she gave him an ultimatum. Back then, he had brought her the beautiful ring that still sat on her finger, but he had been so drugged up he could barely get words out. What she told him then is what she tells him now.

“You need to realize Ash that this is bad for you, for the both of us. When you realize that and you get clean, come find me.”

She looks back at him for a brief second, and the last thing she sees before she leaves are the tears running down his face.

end notes: don’t forget to let me know what you think! thanks for reading!

tag list: @5sosnsfw / @bloodmoonashton / @lukescaboose / @5sex-of-summa / @deviantnines / @halcyonnhood / @gh0st-0f-y0u-95 / @aspiringwildfire / @cal-pal-cuddles / @hotmessmichael / @hereforlukescruff / @softforcal / @ohhmuke / @calum5os / @grittyisathot / @calumamongmen / @ashtonandcalslefthand / @asht0ns-world / @colorful-queen-of-the-roses / @peraltiago-drarry / @slowlyelectronictragedy / @myemptywallets / @pagesuponstpages / @fallfrxmgrace / @thefireisgone / @michaelorwhat / @dammitbands

#ashton irwin #ashton irwin fic #ashton irwin blurb #ashton irwin imagine #5sos #5 seconds of summer #5sos blurb #ashton irwin angst #ashton irwin au #ashton irwin fluff #5sos fic #5sos imagine #5sos fluff #5sos au #luke hemmings #calum hood #michael clifford #my fics #jay writes

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todaysbiggesthits · 4 years

Text

The Exam

Best Music Moment of 2019

BC: Three straight hours of this

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in my Chapman Ryder Cup match with Code -The Robert M. Chennault Playlist in my Ryder Cup match with Laser -Vampire Weekend's "M79" with Parks and Rec theme interlude in Pawnee Peytonville with my babe -Late night music game with JD and Chaps this Fall -My kids competing for best air guitar solo to Daft Punk's "Digital Love" -The Stones soundtracking Raceday morning with Counterfeit Kenny and the Kennel Boys

Codem: -Picking up the keys after closing on #our house and listening to Arden's dreams for the pad while listening to the songs that brought us together in the first place. -Perched in the balcony of Park West watching Chromatics live and in person. -The Chapman format playlist that Brendon and I put together. It was just one song on repeat. Xtal - Aphex Twin -Plugging in my klipsch's for the first time in the new house to listen to elliott smith on the day of his death. the sound of his discography wafting throughout the whole house was a true delight.

Bronco: My 6-year-old discovering Green Day. My 9-year-old discovering Metallica. Both discoveries have awakened something in them that is hilarious and awesome to behold. And seeing Tool was pretty flaming awesome.

JD: March: Realizing I’d never heard this Stones song, nodding along to the opening riff, and exploding into my biggest laugh of the year at the first line.

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June: The Joni Mitchell performance in the Rolling Thunder Review documentary on Netflix. June: Catching the Thom Yorke Anima short film at the IMAX theater on the Upper West Side. July: Code and I getting a perfect 99 score on the greatest rendition of “Emotional Rescue” karaoke you’ll ever see. October: Playing the music game WAY too deep into the night with BC and Chap (look for the next day’s hangover on my worst moments list).

Chap: Patrick Stickles singing "I'm sorry dad no I'm not making this up" to his dad in the audience.

Nasty: Listening to music at BOB. Nothing but jams that whole weekend. Driving in with Laser - GOOGLE MUSIC JAMS. Trip to the casino - JAMS. Hanging out on the deck - JAMS. Driving to the course with Blazer Black - Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love for Planet Earth aka JAMS. In the cart with Code - JAMS. Driving Chappy and Sfreddo to the rental car - JAMS (but quietly).

Larse: Greta Thunberg speech dubbed to metal

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Best Shows Seent in 2019

Nasty: The Killers @ Summerfest. Hot Fuss will always be an all-time favorite album and Mr. Brightside is the best pop song of our lifetime, IMO. Also, my wife loves them which is about the only band in middle of the venn diagram.

Larse: The Lonely Island at Summerfest

BC: Dead & Company

JD: 1. The Rapture at Music Hall of Williamsburg 2. Viagra Boys at Bowery Ballroom 3. The Strokes and Parkay Boys at the All Points East fest in London with drunk lads screaming along to the guitar parts 4. B Boys at Union Pool 5. Titus Andronicus at Bowery Ballroom 6. Avey Tare at Market Hotel 7. Tame Impala at MSG 8. Weeping Icon at Elsewhere 9. Priests at Elsewhere

Code: interpol - chicago theater illuminati hotties - hideout it looks sad - subT downstairs robyn - riviera steve malkmus - art institute eleventh dream day - hideout colleen green - sleeping village swearin' - lincoln hall surf curse - subT shura - the bottle

Chap: TA was the only show I saw. It was great!

Bronco: All of them. They were each great in their own way. Aside from Tool I was able to interact with the band members at each of the shows. One I didn't have a ticket for and scored one at the door. One was in the tiniest venue I've seen a show at. One had a surprisingly entertaining opening act. And Tool surprised me with how much I enjoyed an arena show despite being so far away I couldn't see the facial features of the band members. And there was SOOOOOOO much weed being smoked in the Garden that night. And I was with a few good buddies. And I was able to sell my fourth ticket for twice what I paid, simulatenously covering me and my fourth friend who had to bail because his life sucks because his wife sucks.

Confession of 2019

Nasty: I consume more music at my cushy, suburban OrangeTheory workout classes than in my own free time. S/O to Coach Vanessa for having some Girl Talk on her playlists.

Codem: i had more fun listening to stuff that i already knew about than stuff that was coming out.

BC: I saw a Yacht Rock cover band and didn't hate it -I succumbed to social pressure and saw DMB -I didn't realize until the last minute that my favorite album was released in 2018 (Wild Nothing). Removing it greatly reduced my loyalty to my list.

Bronco: I'm losing my edge. I enjoyed way more lady singer bands this year than in any other year.

Chap: Couldn't get my shit together on the tracks list so just posted a random playlist

Larse: Not really a confession but more of a TIL (today I learned), but Raphael Saadiq was an original member of Tony! Toni! Tone!

Biggest Disappointment of 2019

Bin: The National @ Summerfest. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "the frontman was completely detached, even confessing at one point that he was excited to get back home to his family. The result was an incredibly depressing show — which, given the band's dour songs, is really saying something." ... Huge Bummer.

BC: Didn't see nearly enough shows with nearly enough of yous

Chap: Sturgill Simpson... unlistenable!

Bronco: Baroness.

Laser: Modest Mouse opening for The Black Keys

Code: i was really messed up by dave berman's passing. i had tickets to see him play at the end of august. it was going to be my first catching him live and in concert. i had waited for this moment since i picked up american water back in 2003. two weeks before he was supposed to come through town, he up and died. also, much less of a bummer, the chromatics show in miami that Arden and i were going to attend got canceled two days before the show.

Most Overrated of 2019

Nasty: Kanye's shoes

Chap: LEGACY! LEGACY! – Jamila Woods seems to have been highly regarded? Not my thing

BC: FKA Twigs

Bronco: Baroness.

JD: Big Thief

Code: cancel culture

Larse: Mayor Pete

Make it Stop 2019

Chap: In my house, the Nutcracker Suite. It's great, until the 300th time that day.

Nasty: Cage the Elephant (but children, instead of elephant, and in real life, not the band)

BC: Lizzo

Code: lizzo

JD: Memes

Larse: Trump

Bronco: News

Biggest TBH Regret of 2019

Chap: Can't seem to get to more than one show per year; Jessica Pratt in a church by my old place

JD: Missin’ dat Pratt yet Nick!

BC: Should've listened to the Kanye album. Should've spent more time with the Deerhunter record.

Rotty: Skipping CHVRCHES at Summerfest

Code: another year with no fog party

Nasty: Not going to Indy 500. lol jk.

Bronco: I didn't buy tickets to a few shows I would've liked to have seen. One of them I went to the venue and didn't get in. That bummed me out, but I crossed the street and had a few beers by myself for good measure, so it wasn't a total loss.

Detective Murtaugh of 2019

JD: Everything.

Bronco: Shows that don't start until 10pm. That Girl Band show nearly wrecked me.

Chap: How much I loved Bruce Springsteen's adult contemporary western-themed old-man album.

BC: The ten seconds I lasted with 1000 GECS

Nasty: For the life of me - I cannot figure out how to operate the "play next" queue on these apps.

Laser: Lizzo at Summerfest - lot of younglings running around; people were racist towards Lizzo's security guards, she vowed not to come back to MKE, one of the most segregated cities in America :(

Resolution for 2019 Status

Laser: — How It Went: Who can even remember this shit...I'm sure it was that I'd do better at keeping track or listen to more shit people suggest and I'm sure I failed.

BC: Listen to one new album a week; reboot the Classic Album Review Club How It Went: Noooot toooo gooooood

Code: catch ovlov, pictureplane, washer, chromatics, EMA and colleen green live this year. How It Went: i saw chromatics and colleen green. last i checked .400 gets you into cooperstown.

JD: Greater consciousness of how I’m using my attention - an ineffectual and meaningless protest of the ways the world is burning down in pursuit of it. How It Went: Not bad! I especially nailed the “ineffectual and meaningless” part.

Chap: Learn Piano; Guilt Joe Dons into finally inviting me to a concert. How It Went: Learned some piano but got to busy for it... Couldn't guilt JD to invite me anywhere but I DID invite him to a show! The same one I went to! With him!

Bronco: Read more 'classic’ books. I didn’t read many of them, even in school (especially in school? Never could read a book I was told to read). But I’m leaning in the sci-fi direction of 'classics’. I just read Dune this summer, and wrapped up Fahrenheit 451 the other day. I’m feeling an unexplained need to beef up my nerd credentials and this seems the way to accomplish it. How It Went: Nope. Fell back in to zombie-apocalypse genre series that I've been reading for a while. But I am currently reading arch-nerd Neal Stephenson's "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell". It's almost 900 pages, I feel like I've been reading for months now, and because I'm a stupidly slow reader, I read only before going to bed, and can only make it 10 minutes before falling asleep and hitting myself in the face with my phone, I'm only 25% of the way through. But man is it painting a creepy yet eerily plausible scene of the near future. Guy just knows how to write.

Nasty: Hope last year I was smart enough to leave this blank. (editor’s note: [removes shoes, pets cat, puts on slippers, retires to favorite easy chair, sips martini, slowly pulls reading glasses out of cardigan pocket, dusts them off, loads todaysbiggesthits.tumblr.com, scrolls to ‘Resolution for 2019’] “Nasty: I’m sticking with it - get to NY for a show with JD.”)

Resolution for 2020

BC: See Phish in 2020

Codem: i'm making it easier this year. catch ovlov, washer, EMA and colleen green live this year. bonus points: see dom's much anticipated return to the stage.

Bronco: Build a vinyl collection. I know I dumped on Brendon for suggesting he press copies of Carpet Affair, but my kid's getting way into music and listening to it on his own (via Alexa in my bedroom which is super fucking annoying), so we're getting him his own record player and I think it's going to be a cool activity to go record store diving for whatever classics we can scrounge up.

JD: Get to more shows. Take more aimless strolls spinning tunes.

Bin: Send an email about music on the TBH! thread.

Larse: None

Chap: Eh I'm cool

Most Anticipated of 2020

Code: my man dom said that he is coming back to the world this year. i have to believe that he'll keep his word. i'm thinking 2020 is going to be the year for chromatics' Tommy.

Chap: TWOD, Perfume Genius, Jason Isbell

BC: Huey Lewis and the News, Tame Impala, Run the Jewels

Bronco: Kvelertak and Mastodon, maybe some surprise extra Tool material?

JD: Working Men’s Club

Nasty: Spotify getting Jay-Z's catalog back.

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doomedandstoned · 5 years

Text

A Chat with Ancient VVisdom Ahead of Ohio Doomed & Stoned Festival

~By Billy Goate~

In 2015, I was stuck in a motel on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Long story short, I was in a bad way. That’s when I picked up the album ‘Sacrificial’ (2014) and poured into it. It was like salve to my soul and it’s been a continual go-to ever since. So thank you for that.

Thank you, hopefully you are in a better place now! We've all been there before, not in a motel in Sao Paulo but in a bad place. Music to me has a similar effect. I've been told our music has that sort of effect on some people. Almost like experiencing something meditative putting them in a state of tranquility which to me is a giant compliment. And on another note there are bands out there that do the same thing for me, so I completely understand.

It’s been about two years since you brought us the follow-up to that one, ‘33’ (2017), which I know a lot of people resonated with, as well. Much of the lyrical content comes across as a love song to Lucifer, leading us to be curious about what Nathan Opposition’s own beliefs are when it comes to the occult, supernatural, and the Devil himself?

For me, Lucifer is enlightenment. Satan is free will. The devil is a symbol of the manifestation of reality. The goat, the pentagram, the symbolism behind the imagery, the meaning behind the veil is more relevant now than ever.

Today's society needs Satanism. It is an evolved outlook on individualism and freedom of choice. There is acceptance and love within the basic tenets of Satanism and further down the rabbit hole you may even be able to find true self.

People need to dig deep in the emotional paydirt of actually Satanism to find the gateways to unlock the reality they wish to enjoy and experience.

So to answer your question, I've always been fascinated by the topic of the occult. At a very young age. I'm 35 now and the signs of me losing interest in the topic are slim to none.

Read any good books lately?

Haven't been reading because I've been writing. When I'm deep in my writing process I like to clutter my mind with my own thoughts and not someone else's. For me, this allows the ideas to fester and ferment, then I harvest and consume. It has its own timeline, almost like it has a will of its own. I like to let ideas for themselves and when they are ready they will let me know and I will reveal them to the rest of the world.

We hear you’ve got a new album slated for release on Argonauta Records, ‘Mundus’ (2019). What’s the story behind the album title? What lyrical themes do you explore?

Yes, Mundus will be out September 27th 2019 on Argonauta Records. The album title is an ancient roman Latin word for World. The album cover was illustrated black and white pointillism by an artist named Karmazid who lives in Aschaffenburg, Germany.

Longtime friend and fan of the band, when he turned in the album art it said "Mundus" on the banner that is wrapped around an image of the earth being crushed by the hand of doom, my brother Michael guitarist in Ancient VVisdom and I both loved the artwork so much we decided not to change a thing and call the album Mundus. So technically, we let Karmazid name our album.

My lyrics on Mundus are based in the ever growing threat of doom consuming the fears of humanity in general. Too many crazy things happening in this world for something big not to happen. Society is like a dormant volcano right now ready to be active once again. This album has themes that fit the times we live in right now. The fears of the masses and the global problems that a rapidly expanding population has created have brought us to the point of no return. Now it's no longer a question of will it happen, it's when will it happen.

We’re very much looking forward to your upcoming visit to Ohio Doomed & Stoned Festival. What do you have in store for us?

Expect the next level of Ancient VVisdom. We play something off of every album, we have a new rhythm section and my brother Michael and I will be on electric guitars.

When we take over the stage, we transform it completely so expect a production. This will be our heaviest , most focused and thought out set we've ever projected, thank you and really looking forward to it!

How do you like to prepare before a show? Any pre-show routines?

I always like to do some vocal exercises, get the pipes warmed up, pick up the guitar and do some finger exercises. Once I feel comfortable with that I'll set it aside and start presetting our stage.

It's good to stay organized, especially when you have a few extras on stage to set up. It's a lot to keep track of and show settings can be chaotic environments. Best to stay focused.

My brother Michael, his wife owns and operates a record store in Lakewood Ohio called Black Market Records, we have a rehearsal space in the basement. We call it "The Abyss" -- a huge space where legend has it Nine Inch Nails used to practice! So a lot of rehearsing and planning happens there. Other than that good to stretch a little bit and smoke a little bit, get the mind and body right.

The gearheads among us will kill me if I don’t ask about what you’re packing these days -- instruments, pedals, amps, the works. What are the tools you use to work your magic?

We are playing all Peavey amps with Marshall cabs. Jackson guitars, BC Rich guitars, Jackson bass. My brother, lead guitarist, has a Rock Master head with Boss DS-1 Distortion, MXR Carbon Copy Delay, TC Electronic Corona Chorus, Boss tuner.

I play rhythm, one crunchy tone the whole way through. Drums are Sonor Phil Rudd signature kit, loud and booming, all black.

For Ancient VVisdom, we find a real fine balance off sound volume and tone and somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot. It's not about blowing up ear drums but more about finding that nice break up and using the tones to drive the songs at the place they need to be.

It's really a magically thing music is. Especially working with my brother as well as we do. Locking in isn't an issue because we play the same way, only he's way better than me!

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Interviews #Ancient VVisdom #Austin #Texas #Doom #Metal #Occult #Rock #Ohio Doomed & Stoned Festival #Argonauta Records #Doomed & Stoned

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modernlcve · 5 years

Text

* — stats — shawn rhodes !

* — basics !

full name: shawn rhodes. nickname(s): none. age: twenty - one. date of birth: march twenty - third. place of birth: dayton, ohio. gender: male. pronouns: he / him. sexual orientation: bisexual. level of education: high school graduate.

* — physical !

tattoos: none. piercings: he’s let go of his ear piercings and his lip ring. he’s just grown that’s all. notable features: i think his curly hair is Cute. he also tries to keep some kind of Facial Hair at all times so he doesn’t look like a Tween. weakness(es): no spine. scar(s): two surgical scars on his chest. a long scar on the side of his thigh, starting at his hip.

* — domestic !

occupation: yeah he’s shawn from target now. residence: in carina, he stayed in a cheap motel in the delphinus heights area. in phoenix, i think we decided he, aubrie, and piper all share a place. social class: lower middle case. parents: whitney chapman, age 43, shawn’s mother and only discernible family for most of his life. she’s not the best mom, but she isn’t the worst either. bastard Rhodes is his dad, who was in and out of his life until he graduated high school and then got Dropped. siblings: i mean frankly. who knows how many siblings they actually have. the only siblings he’s aware of are the carina rhodes trio. extended family: his mom was decently close to her older sister, they’d crash with her every now and then when they were between places.

* — personality !

positive traits: dependable. enthusiastic. plucky. negative traits: impetuous. mercurial. reticent. myers-briggs ( x ): isfj; the defender. temperament: phlegmatic. moral alignment: neutral good. horoscope: aries, the ram. hogwarts house: slytherin.

* — favorites !

movie: the cabin in the woods. tv show: the office. book: it. drink: apple cider. food: he will kill and die for that good cincinnati style chili. animal: dogs. color: red. song: don’t look back in anger by oasis. artist: cage the elephant. celebrity crush: zoe saldana.

* — impressions !

first impression: he doesn’t make a strong first impression, if only out of self defense. he’s always been the type to look to blend in, and part of that is being just nice and inoffensive enough to fly under most people’s radar. self impression: shawn does genuinely think he deserves better ( and that maybe for once he’s finally getting it ). he thinks he’s a good person who’s been beat down, and yeah he borders on having a victim complex but. lover impression: yeah he gets nervous on dates he simply doesn’t have the confidence to not. but in an established relationship he really just Loves the idea of having someone to rely on and someone who can rely on him like he didn’t get that in his family and Revels in getting to have it now.

* — et cetera !

turn ons: short people. confidence. familiarity ( if that’s not a psycho thing to say ). turn offs: aggression. gossips. smokers. drink/drugs/smoke: yes/no/no. dominant hand: right. clean or messy: clean. early bird or night owl: night owl. hobbies or special talents: he’s gotten pretty good with computer stuff since piper has Enlisted him. he’s musically inclined but he doesn’t really want to do anything with it.

* — QUESTIONNAIRE !

01. where was your character born? what brought them to carina/phoenix? what do they like most about the town?

shawn was born in dayton, ohio, but he never really put down roots there. his mom moved him around a lot, so while it’s technically his hometown, he doesn’t really have a super strong connection to it. he came to carina to meet up with the rest of the Rhodes clan. he moved to phoenix for a Few reasons, the main one being piper’s manic roadtrip, the fact that as much as ohio sucked north carolina just Hates queer folx, and also just bc he lives for travel and shaking things up. he likes the people the most at this point, getting to blend aubrie in with his siblings really is a Dream Come True

02. who are your character’s friends and family? who do they surround themselves with? who are the people your character is closest to?

shawn’s family is his friends. he really only had his mom to speak of for a lot of his life, and their relationship is Fine but not the Best. he’s considered aubrie family for a minute now, just because he’s one of few people who’s been there for him when he’s needed it. he mostly surrounds himself now with his newfound siblings and the people they know as he tries to get acclimated to that.

03. what is your character’s biggest fear? who have they told this to? who would they never tell this to? why?

shawn fears instability. the big reason he doesn’t like resent or blame his mom for how rocky their situation was when he was growing up is because he knows she hated it as much as she did. he watched how she kinda wrecked her shit by caring too much and he worries he’s gonna go down the same path. he strives to have some kind of really boring domestic life one day, but he already knows he gets antsy staying in one place too long so like maybe its already too late. he’d probably talk to aubrie about this but he’s not ready to dump everything on say piper yet even if he knows all her business.

04. has your character ever been in love? had a broken heart?

not really 2 either. he didn’t stick around any high school long enough to Really Date, and once he graduated and moved out he met aubrie and while he didnt have an all consuming Thing for her at the start, once he realized he did he stopped dating and started Pining baby

06. it’s saturday at noon. what is your character doing? give details.

working probably. gotta stay on that grind. if he’s not at work working, he’s probably helping piper film or edit or whatever she has to delegate to him. and if for some Miraculous reason he doesn’t have to do either of those things, he’s chilling with aubrie or goofing off on his own. he’s interested in music and likes to hang out around record stores or just stream something Solid and stare at the ceiling its how he Centers himself.

07. what is one strong memory that has stuck with your character since childhood?

he has a lot of Negative ones but. i like to be happy. he vividly remembers going to see Batman Begins in theaters. his dad was in and out of his life, but it was one of the times he was in and staying with him and his mom. they made a whole little day out of going to the movies and lunch before and then all went home together and it was just a nice little day where their dads Dumbassery didn’t ruin everything.

09. what is something that upsets your character? where do they go when they’re upset?

shawn is Upset when he feels like he doesn’t control a situation or when he feels Lonely jsut general things ig that make everyone sad. when he’s upset, he likes to have his space and go to his room and just be in a space where he Is in control and feels like a Human

10. when your character thinks of their childhood kitchen, what smell do they associate with it? why?

his mom was big into making candies and stuff as gifts and goodies for people in her life. because they’re from ohio peanut-butter buckeyes were a Staple in any candy mix so that whole peanut butter and chocolate situation is Nostalgic to him.

#( shawn rhodes. )#( stats. )

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survivor-guyana · 5 years

Text

Immunity Results #3

Meet Your Judges!

DAN

Hi sisters, it’s Dan, king of half faced selfies, here to roast your lip syncs

NEHE

Hi sisters, it's Nehemiah, king of not winning a game he deserves to win, here to judge you guys like you never been judged before, p.s Tim stop stealing my role as the one straight black guy in the org community

CHARLOTTE

hi sisters, i’m back from the dead and ready to roast some bitches. i honestly don’t remember if i’ve played more than one main season but i was in kuang si and really that’s the only one that matters. not sorry!

CONNOR

hey sisters, hope you missed me because im still not coming back.

DENNIS

Hi sisters, I was forced to write this start. But entertain me

JESS

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him-and I didn't know how potent that part might be-that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

HOSORORO

youtube

Dan: 31/50

Theme: 5 - No real theme tbh, I guess the editing incorporated some nice colors and stuff. I wish y'all could have been more in sync with a theme tho. Maybe I'm just being critical.

Creativity: 5 - The editing was creative, I liked the effects and the added little bits that went along with the lyrics. I think the difference between this video and the others tho was that the others tried something new and exciting to spice up their videos. Was it more creative? Maybe? There's nothing wrong with picking a bop and lip syncing, but it's 2019 ladies, spice it up.

Effort: 7 - She may have bought that hair, but y’all yanked it right off. I think some of you really tried harder than others, but I stan when people just do their best and record where and when they can. It shows dedication and I like that shit. I think that the effort into learning the lyrics without reading them off the screen and dedication to filming in the car kind of showed y'all want this.

Composition: 7 - BITCHHHHH I’M GAGGGGGT. It’s 240p, but honestly Ariana Grande who? Whoever edited this made it seemless, but honestly the low quality needs to get clocked a few points.

Entertainment Value: 7 - The dancing, the outfits, the lip sync skills? A bitch was entertained. While the other videos tried to make things new and exciting, y'all delivered what I think of as more of a successful project.

Jess: 34/50

Theme 8/10. If I had to say the theme, I'd guess that it's "bad bitches" which you all are.

Creativity 5/10. If a 0 is 1 person playing basketball instead of lip syncing at all, and a 10 is a full out choreographed dance number done by your entire tribe, I think this falls solidly in the middle. I don't think there is a lot about this that sets it apart from past music videos I've seen, but I don't think it is bad.

Effort 8/10. It seems like most of your tribe members were at least majorly involved and tried to make this good! And you all put effort into the dancing/attitude you had, it felt like everyone tried to match their actions to the song.

Composition 6/10. I think the editing is good and it matches the timing of the music which is nice, the cuts are usually on the beats! But it did get a little repetitive after a while, like I felt as though the same thing was happening throughout the whole video and there wasn't a variety in the images/cutting style/etc. I also think it was hard to tell if the video was in sync because for some reason y'all are in 2007 and only uploaded this at 240p???? Are you guys all over the age of 45 why did you do that. Finally, the flickering glitter filter was cool at the start, but I wish you'd spiced it up and not just used that throughout the entire video, also at points it was a little distracting due to the bright colours that would pop up.

Entertainment Value 7/10. Six of these points are for the girl who was in the car because she was killing it and I loved her. I took points off for a similar reason I had above -- it felt like the video was one note and I wish you guys had a little more variety throughout.

Dennis: 38/50

Theme: 6/10 Creativity: 8/10 Effort: 8/10 Composition: 8/10 Entertainment: 8/10

I know I will get alot of hate comments for this, but this in general is not really a song to lipsync too. EITHER WAY I think you did a good pretty good job with it. All of you seemed to enjoy yourself and the editing was enough to keep my attention throughout the whole video. I didn't really get the theme, but overall it was a very entertaining Lipsync!

Connor: 35/50

Ok this is good. You clearly all worked together artistically so that your individual shots were coherent. Im not crazy about the pink strobe kinda thing going on through the entire video but you were all performing and this is well done. Theme: 7 Creativity: 6 Effort: 8 Composition: 7 Entertainment Value: 7

Charlotte: 42/50

Theme: IF THE THEME WAS FABULOUSNESS YOU ACHIEVED IT. ARIANA WOULD BE PROUD. 8/10

Creativity: I feel like you could have done a little bit more with some of the lyrics but all in all I loved this video and now I'm just being picky. 7/10

Effort: See above. I think you could have done a little but more but keeping the pink aesthetic through your editing and ALL THAT DANCING werk werk werk. 8/10

Composition: Love. That. Aesthetic. 10/10 PLUS YOU'RE ALL IN THE SAME CAMERA ORIENTATION I LOVE THAT. LOVE THAT FOR YOU.

Entertainment Value: FUN, ENJOYABLE, FLAWLESS, NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE. 9/10

Nehe: 44/50

7 8 9 10 10

Now this is a fucking music video work bitches work

TOTAL: 224

ARAKAKA

youtube

Dan: 29/50

Theme: 7 - Annoying advertisements? Trying to show the effects of product placement on our every day life? I loved it haha I was shook.

Creativity: 6 - V creative, but was it really a music video? I guess parts were but I also was like so lost after a while. I think song choice is always important and I was so bored during the song parts. I wish you had made the song part as creative as the ad parts.

Effort: 4 - Honestly the effort was misfocused on the ads and less on the music video, was I mad about it? only like 50%. the song was boring and just kinda blah so it was interesting

Composition: 5 - Choppy, but I can’t edit so rip

Entertainment Value: 7 - Honestly this how to video taught me so much and I’m shook. THE POPCORN I LITERALLY SCREAMED. While I nodded off during the music video portion, I stanned the ads

Jess: 32/50

Theme 6/10. I think your theme was ads? I didn't really understand it but it was fun and unique.

Creativity 8/10. I have never seen anything like this that's for sure.

Effort 4/10. It seemed like everyone in your tribe was in the video I think? But most of the stuff you guys submitted was 1 take/shot and wouldn't have required a lot of editing, which is the most time consuming/effort requiring portion of the challenge so...

Composition 5/10 The editing of the commercials was pretty good, but it didn't flow as well as it should have because the audio levels were a bit all over the place. Also at one point it was in colour and out of focus but I wasn't sure why? Also a+ for doing your video in 1080p (@ other tribes take note). Since the actual music video portion was just one shot, I feel like I can't really give you a higher rating than the other tribes in this category.

Entertainment Value 9/10 First frame: a guy in a Stitch onesie with a bottle of tequila and a mug that says "ray of fucking sunshine"?? I laughed immediately. Then I was shook when later I realized it was actually a shot glass and was close to the camera and it got even better. This whole video was wild and I had no idea what was going to happen so I was pretty entertained.

Dennis: 45/50

Theme: 8/10 Creativity: 10/10 Effort: 8/10 Composition: 9/10 Entertainment: 10/10

This is probably the last kind of video which I expected in a challenge like this. I think it was really creative and connected entertainment with comedy and a nice little theme. I am very impressed good job!

Connor: 20/50

“””””Acting””””””” “””””””Edgy”””””””” Eggs?? Im vegan. What was the point of this? Was there a point? Pop corn girl gets you an extra point but this is not a music video. To quote bandersnatch, you chose the wrong path.

Theme: 3 Creativity: 6 Effort: 4 Composition: 4 Entertainment Value: 3

Charlotte: 34/50

Theme: I've been out of the ORG world for awhile but is this what music videos are now??? I feel like the music video of your video was sorely lacking. YouTube loves ads but not that many!!!!! I did think the ads were pretty creative though so I marked up points for that below. 6/10

Creativity: See above. 9/10

Effort: It wasn't just straight up lip syncing so I gotta reward you guys for that. 8/10

Composition: That black and white switching to color towards the end got me fucked up. 6/10

Entertainment Value: To quote the person sitting beside me: "OMG another ad?"Cute concept, not sure it works as a music video but you tried. 5/10

Nehe: 35/50

Honestly this was something i never seen before and i enjoyed it hahaha

TOTAL: 195

TAKAMA

youtube

Dan: 26/50

Theme: 6 - Cats? Bikes? Awkward White People Dancing? Are these the themes you went for? If so, y’all killed it haha, but it wasn't cohesive and I don't get what y'all were going for really.

Creativity: 5 - honestly, I stan an original song choice bc I haven’t seen this before, but also, a song like this needs to be sold and I don't know if y'all pulled out all the stops. I would have liked to see more passion from some of you in the props and theatrics department.

Effort: 5 - Some of you seemed to try a little harder than others, but overall y’all were feelin it

Composition: 5 - A little choppy, but I can’t edit for shit so like good job?

Entertainment Value: 5 - Okay Miss Tim with that bike balance, idk your name sis (maybe Jones) but striped sweater, pm me on skype – dan.disbrow so I can buy it ty. Other than that I don't really remember much besides a lot of cringey dancing.

Jess: 29/50

Theme 1/10. Tbh I don't really know what the theme was here, did you guys forget this category??

Creativity 4/10. Pretty much the same reason that I gave Hororo's tribe a 5, I'm giving you a 4. I am taking one point off because they at least did some stuff to make their video more unique/specific to their song whereas I think you guys could have used this editing style/dancing/etc to any song and it would have also worked, so it wasn't super unique.

Effort 9/10. Everyone who was in the video seemed really into it and did a good job having fun! But this is a 6 person tribe... one person wasn't in it and they weren't the editor?? You should vote them out if you lose.

Composition 9/10. The editing flowed well, you showed everyone on the tribe a pretty decent amount, and everyone's individual videos were pretty on point for lip sync? Usually when people film on their webcams it's not in sync, but these were all really good! You lose one point because the video quality was low and wasn't 1080p which it really should be.

Entertainment Value 6/10. I liked everyone's attitude and dancing and I loved the cats. I originally had 5 but then I remembered the cats and went back and added another point. But I wish you guys had done something unique for each mini song, like maybe divided them up amongst your tribe, or had people change outfits or something? If you had done that, I'd have given you way more points for theme and entertainment value. But because it was kind of repetitive/one note, it's hard to say I was REALLY entertained the whole time.

Dennis: 37/50

Theme: 9/10 Creativity: 7/10 Effort: 8/10 Composition: 7/10 Entertainment: 6/10

Comment: What stood out for me in your video was the theme. I assume that you wanted to mimic the fans v faves theme with a riff off and I thought that was actually quite smart. Everything else seemed to be for me what I would expect from a lipsync, but besides the theme nothing that stood out to me especially.

Connor: 27/50

The lip sinking is a little off at times (im coming back to this part, in the middle / two ish minute point-on it is not good) and I think the transitions from song to songs could have been smoother, but I think this is creative in terms of it being a mashup. I think there could have been more “music video” aspects to it. In addition to y’all singing. EXTRA POINT FOR THE CATS ( stripped sweater??? who is this??? Queen????)

Theme: 5 Creativity: 6 Effort: 6 Composition: 4 Entertainment Value: 6

Charlotte: 28/50

Theme: Was your theme Pitch Perfect? Like, I'm not sure whether or not there was anything you guys planned out but it really just seemed kind of randomly thrown together. 5/10

Creativity: I liked the cats? 6/10

Effort: See above. I feel like y'all just kind of threw this together? It was missing something for me. The person in the stripes pulled it together for you though so 7/10

Composition: Y'all really out here in 2019 not filming in the same orientation? I'm deducting 50% for that. It's a travesty. Also, if one person does a filter and no one else does, does it really make sense? IDK. 3/10

Entertainment Value: ... again, I liked the cats. Plus the stuff with the bicycle was weirdly entertaining. 7/10

Nehe: 31/50

TOTAL: 178

Thank you judges!

That means, Takama, I will be seeing you that tribal council on January 28 at 10 pm est.

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