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#people who can fix stuff are so cool
ryllen · 1 year
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he who came to Splatville to depend on himself,
adores people who can be resourceful & skillfully depend on themselves for stuff he usually depends on other people (like, fixing stuff)
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arthur-r · 2 years
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i ran out of storage while drawing this so i had to add the white parts in markup and call the rest of it good but this is “self portrait with future beard and pending scar” and i drew it after surgery this morning
#the outfit is stuff i have in real life and so is the scar except it’s not a scar yet it’s a wound#that’s what my mom keeps on telling me when i say wow this is such a cool scar#which is what i say to not terrify myself about how i might always have this scar#anyway if i had still been in ibispaint for the end of this i would’ve added some bright light behind me#because that’s what i was planning on but then i ran out of storage#anyway hi i did the surgery this morning and it went good the IV hurt and the anesthesia was scary but everything else was good#anyway i was gonna fix the shape when i was still in ibispaint but i would need 250 megabytes of storage and i don’t have it :(#so markup is all i have now shdhdf i can’t erase i can only draw on top#which is mostly how i draw anyway but still#anyway the surgery to make my face look regular again all the way would cost money and not insurance at all#so unless it heals really good on it’s own i might look like this forever#so i started thinking about forever and i reassured myself by adding a beard to the picture. and so. that’s why i drew this shdhdf#anyway i missed my dynamic brush and this was my first time using it in a lot of months and i had missed it shdhdf#idk if this is like. good. to people who aren’t on anesthesia. i will have to find out in the morning#but i wanted to break to you guys that it might never go away. but i did that by drawing instead of a picture#because i get nervous on the internet and especially today#and anyway i hope i still like this in the morning but mostly the point before is i have a scar there now#cause that’s what i had to get to not have a tumor there now. and so it’s better and it’s okay but also makes me nervous#but i’m gonna grow up and it will still be okay and this is scary but the worst dangerous part is over#and this is just maybe what i look like right now and maybe it will heal. but i will just have to find out#me. my post. mine.#my art#delete later
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UPDATE What's up, it's the proposal guy. You said you wanted to know how this turned out, so I figured I'd tell you. First some context though, because I'm mean and I wanna keep you in suspense longer.
1- I don't wanna doxx us so I'm not telling you where we live, but suffice to say, neither of us are American, and gay marriage has been legal here for less than five years. For both of us, this is the first relationship we've had where marriage was even an OPTION, and I think that's where we've been getting some of that whole 'this has to be a REAL proposal with EVERYTHING' idea.
2- I gotta figure out how to explain this properly. So, I'm pretty used to being the GUY guy in relationships? I was always the one who did the nice gestures, not the one they got done for. Before I met my dream guy, I didn't really notice or care that it was such a thing, I just assumed that's how shit worked. Also, I promised I wouldn't talk a lot about his stuff here, but his last boyfriend before me SUCKED. Anyway point here is, it turns out we both REALLY like feeling swept off our feet sometimes, and a big part of finding each other has been getting to feel special for once? That's a stupid sappy way of putting it the point here is I think all that's what morphed into "I need to be the one getting proposed to, also it has to be completely perfect", and then our Petty & Extra genes got involved.
So I'm sitting in bed thinking about all that up there, and watching all the comments coming in basically being like "Dude, you are BLOWING this" on repeat, and telling me to compromise, and I look up and see him flossing in the bathroom and making all these doofy faces at the mirror, and it's like a switch just flips in my brain, and I'm like "Oh, I'd rather he gets to have his perfect proposal than we both have an okay one". I'm gonna do it.
Morning rolls around, and while I'm 'out for my jog like normal' I hit up a pawn shop for a temp ring (the ring pop thing is cute but NOT HIM). I found one I was at least confident wouldn't get ruined the first time he got his hands greasy (he fixes old machines as a hobby it's hot as hell), got back home, and hid the box in the toe of my nasty ass workout shoes in the bedroom closet, since I figured he'd check there last.
He was still asleep, because he stays up late no matter what and then is SHOCKED he's tired the next day, so I called and booked a table at our usual anniversary spot. (Side note about the 'he picks bad restaurants' thing. This isn't an 'I like Greek, you like Chinese' situation, dude's just BAD at finding places. He either assumes pricey is tasty and I get to eat some overrated gourmet bullshit, or he'll try and find something hip and underground and risk giving us food poisoning again, and he REFUSES to give up and pick somewhere we've been before when it's his turn to plan date night. I'm obsessed with him <3.) Date was set, I'd propose on the 21st.
Some of you might have noticed this, but fun fact! It's currently the 16th.
Last night I'm doing dishes and he's been sent to our room for mug collection duty, and he's taking FOREVER, so I go check just in case he found the ring, because the man's a gift tracking BLOODHOUND. Turns out he hasn't, he's found my Angry Box.
I assume other people have an Angry Box? Basically, we had this huge messy fight right when we first moved in together, and I never wanna let it get that bad again, so I have this shoebox where I keep a bunch of our stuff I can look at if we're fighting and hopefully cool off. There's one of those photo booth roll things, letters we wrote when he moved back with his parents for COVID, the wine cork from our first date, shit like that. Anyway, he's just sitting on the floor staring at it, and I explain about the Angry Box, and then he! Proposes!!! Kind of.
He definitely didn't have anything prepared, because by 'propose' I mean 'ugly cried & rambled at me for several minutes before I figured out it WAS a proposal', but once I got on the same page it was amazing. I said yes, and he had to admit he didn't have a ring for me because he was CONVINCED he'd win and I'd do it, so I grabbed mine because, yeah, he was right. He was like "this is the ugliest ring I've ever seen" and I was like yeah well the plan is to replace it later and he went "No. You can pry this off my cold dead fingers. After I'm buried with it." So I guess it's not a temporary ring anymore.
I'm just gonna go ahead and skip to this morning. I pointed out we still have the reservation, and he said I should propose there anyway because "We can get a free dessert. They have those creme brulee shot glasses you like. And for love, or something" and I said ok deal, but that means you gotta get me a ring to keep it fair, and his eyes LIT UP. When I swung by his work for lunch he was still on the phone with a jeweler and he had a whole page of notes on three other ones. Pray for me.
OH PS: I was RIGHT that he'd been the one behind the cat biting me, but it wasn't about the proposal stuff, it's because I paid my baby sister three dollars to shout 'fuck you' every single time he enters a room she's in for (if you ask me, he should be madder at my sister for charging so little), and he did it by giving her a bunch of treats for biting his hands too, so now neither of us can pet our baby girl without oven mitts on. HOLY SHIT I love this man.
Oh my goddddddd I love everything about this <333 I awwww'd out loud on a voice call, like, six times while reading. You two are friggin perfect for each other and so obviously smitten with each other and I wish y'all all the happiness in the world
PS Are y'all planning to have a big wedding? If so oh boy I can't WAIT to get that one in the inbox
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joyful-soul-collector · 9 months
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I've seen a lot of people talking about how Barbie talks about how the patriarchy affects women and how well it does that, so I wanna talk about how Barbie talks about how the patriarchy affects men and how well it does that. Because it does that really well tbh.
At the beginning of the movie, it's made very clear that the Kens are constantly competing with each other, and trying to prove their worth, their Ken-ness, to both the Barbies, and more importantly, to the other Kens. In fact, multiple times through the movie it's shown that Ken seems to find the opinions of other Kens as a motivator for him to do things. He tries to show off to Barbie only after he sees the other Kens saying hi to her. He only starts dancing with Barbie when he sees the other Kens dancing with her. He only goes with her to the Real World after another Ken accuses him of cowardice and he decides to prove him wrong. Barbie says "Ken's not cool!" and Ken responds "He is to me."
This shows so damn well what the patriarchy is like for men. Because for the Kens it's not necessarily about Barbie, it's about what other Kens think of you. Being a man you are constantly, incessantly trying so damn hard to prove to the other men around you that you are a man, the manliest man to ever man, the best Ken to ever Ken. Literally doing backflips trying to prove yourself. And this is before patriarchy is even officially introduced to the story, there's no undertone of power yet, this is just what it's like to be a man around other men. It's toxic masculinity.
And when the patriarchy is introduced, that's increased tenfold. At first it looks like they've banded together to take power, but really they're still competing with each other, they're just doing it differently. Rather than competing to see who can get Barbie to fall in love with them, they're competing to see who can be the manliest, have the manliest stuff, wear the manliest clothes, have the manliest house and decorations.
And then they literally go to war. War is considered one of the few places where it's socially accepted for men to be more emotional, form deep and personal bonds with other men, and that's exactly what happens in the movie. They go to war, and there's an entire song where they bond and learn not to fight with each other anymore.
And that I think is the message from the Kens. For men, the way the patriarchy affects them is it forces constant competition and animosity, even around people that are supposed to be your friends. It makes it impossible to express your feelings unless they're with a romantic partner, and all of this turns you into a pent up ball of emotions with nowhere to go.
Which means that the message is: In order to fix the way the patriarchy oppresses men, men need to learn how to form close bonds with people, especially other men. Because like Barbie said to Ken, he needs to discover who he is without her. Men have learned to lean on women as a crutch, using them to figure out how to Be A Person and express emotions in a healthy way, but this can very quickly turn into a woman feeling like she needs too be his mother and teach him how to do these things. And Ken was 100% doing this, or at least he was trying to throughout the movie. Ken was so desperate for Barbie to be in love with him, not necessarily because he loved her, but because he needed a person he could just exist as himself around. Because he couldn't do that with the other Kens, the only person he could be himself around was Barbie.
And what's so great about the end of the movie is that the Kens did eventually figure out how to form close bonds with each other! They went to war, argued and fought, but by the end of the song they were holding hands, kissing each other on the cheek, telling each other they were enough. Even when Ken is up in the dreamhouse, crying and saying that he looks stupid, all the other Kens start shouting back up to him, saying that he looks cool. And Ken responds by giving one of his new friends his coat, which was clearly very important to him.
What the Kens did, that's what men in the real world need to do. They need to form close bonds with other men and stop competing with each other. Hopefully not by going to war the way the Kens did, Barbie isn't a blueprint for solving the patriarchy lol.
I'd be happy to do it through a song though.
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hierarchyproblem · 4 months
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I used to volunteer at a charity that gave out food to homeless people on the evenings. They got a lot of donations - excess stock from the amazon warehouse, that kind of thing - so they also distributed supplies to homeless shelters and womens' shelters and stuff. My job was loading and unloading the vans, sorting donations, and cleaning the big warehouse that they rented. I got on especially well with one of the other guys there; he was an old-school anarchist and a wilderness outdoors type who spent half his time living out of a tent in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, so he had stories and shit. I think he was in a kind of long-term homeless-by-choice situation; when he wasn't up in his mountains sometimes he'd squat in the warehouse and store his stuff there while he was between other accomodation. The charity was cool with that, he'd been with them for a long time and they knew the deal and they had the space.
Except one day one of the directors or whatever came down and threw his shit out onto the street and told him to be gone by the end of the day or he'd call the police. No idea what precipitated that and I never saw this guy again. Writing this out it seems insane: surely he must've done something to precipitate that? Nobody so much as suggested that at the time. I heard what had happened from one of the drivers, and he said the fucked up thing about it was that this chair of trustees (or whatever his role was) was prestigious and well-off enough he could've got any hotel in the city to put this bloke up indefinitely just by asking! But he chose to fuck up this guy's living situation as far as I could tell just to flex his property rights.
I always knew, obviously, that charity is at best a superfical treatment only of the symptoms of capitalist society, and totally orthogonal to the revolutionary change that'd be needed to actually fix the social and economic problems of this shitty society. Of course. But this is what opened my eyes to how much abuse and exploitation goes within the charity sector itself. This is the worst I've heard of, but the same principles are rife: poor conditions, long hours, ducking your workplace rights if you're "just helping out occasionally," poor pay for paid staff and volunteers treated like they're disposable. It shows too how easily a charity for homeless people can end up writing off the people they're set up to help, especially if they refuse to passively accept the little that's on offer. Not every charity has all of these problems, but a lot have at least some. And the guys at the top end up running it like a business 'cause that's how everything's expected to be run; if you've got upper-management experience that's how you see the world.
I don't volunteer there anymore and I'd think very carefully before giving any of these organisations your time or your money. There's homeless people in your area I bet - give them your cash directly and spend the time chatting with them if they like.
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luveline · 2 months
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hiii jadey <3 i’ve been having a bit of a rough time in college lately and i was wondering if you’d be willing to write some bombshell!reader where spencer talks about being bullied in high school and maybe bombshell can relate? even if not, just a lot of comfort please? i hope you’re doing well!! <333
ty for ur request!!! fem
It’s a blessing and a curse whenever you come around. Spencer’s thinking he hadn’t seen you in a while when your text lights up his screen, a summoning if there ever was one. 
Hi Spencer, I need some help with my laptop. It turns out for about ten seconds and then turns off again. Do you think you can fix it?
He has no idea. Probably. Do you want me to come by SCU? 
No need
“Spencer!” you say, practically glowing as you drop your messenger bag on his already crowded desk. “Sorry, that’s so heavy.”
“You’re here,” he says, surprised. 
You lean down to hug him in his chair. Spencer can’t ignore that he likes every part of you, your arms as they wrap around his shoulders, the perfume on your neck as you touch your cheek to his, even the soft exhale of your breath by his ear. “Hi, Dr. Reid,” you say gently. “Missed you. So happy my laptop isn’t working ‘cos now I get to see you.” 
You pull away with a grin. Your lips are a shade of pink that Spencer won’t soon forget.
“That was fast.” 
“So fast,” you say. “You know I love an excuse to see you and to not be at work.” 
You work very hard, but you’re like anyone. Stealing time is fun and free. “You’re not gonna get in trouble, right?” 
“With who? Hotch doesn’t care if I’m here and Sandy,” —you full body shiver at the mention of your boss— “won’t notice I’m gone for another hour. Besides, I can’t have a broken laptop. They’re pretty cool, right?”
“Laptops?” 
“Yeah, I like them. I just need the WiFi to work everywhere.” You squint at him. “Is that something you can do?” 
Spencer cannot make the WiFi work everywhere you go, but he can soft reset your laptop after a short investigation of the problem. It takes about five minutes, in which you steal Morgan’s chair and get comfortable next to him, legs crossed, hand resting open on your thigh. “You’re so smart. I bet you were very popular in high school.” 
He laughs, startled, a horrible sinking feeling moving through his chest. “What? Why would you think that?”
“‘Cos you’re a genius at everything, right? I bet you were always helping people with their homework.” 
His lips last. He doesn’t know what to say. “I don’t think I talked to anyone in high school who didn’t want to hang me at the top of a flag pole,” he says honestly. 
Your lovely smile falls flat. “What?” 
“I skipped a couple of grades, so I was younger than everybody, and I wasn’t well liked. I was actually bullied pretty badly.” He laughs again with that same brittle panic. He’s talking without thinking, it just spilled out, it’s spilling still, “I used to get beat up for breathing wrong.” 
You’re quiet. Spencer panics worse because why has he told you that? You’re so sweet to him but that doesn’t mean you wanted to know about his worst moments, he can practically feel the affection you had for him melting away as you realise he’s a loser, he’s pathetic–
“I was bullied too,” you say, giving him a tentative smile. “All the way through high school and a little bit after that, too. Maybe that’s why we get along so well, huh?” 
He looks at his hands. “You were?” 
“Yep.” He can hear the strain of wanting to sound normal. “I mean, I didn’t get beat up, Spencer, that’s awful and I’m– I’m so sorry.”
You’re the last person he’d ever want an apology from, because you’re one of the only people he’s ever met who likes him as he is. You could never make him hurt the way he did back then. High school was years ago and it lingers like it happened yesterday. “I can still remember the stuff they used to say to me,” he says. 
“I got made fun of for so much stuff,” you agree. “Boys I didn’t even know would berate me in the halls for just being there. I got called ugly so much I genuinely believed I was for years.” 
“You’re not ugly,” he says immediately. 
“I know.” 
He nods thoughtfully. “It’s hard trying to forget about it. I think if people knew how much I carry with me from then they’d tell me to let it go, but I can’t.” 
“You don’t have to let it go, Spence, so long as you know it’s not your fault it happened.” 
You offer your hand. Spencer stares at it. You wiggle your fingers and he thinks, Oh, grasping it quickly, before you change your mind. Your fingers slide between his and you rub the back of his hand with your thumb, smiling approvingly, eyes crinkled with pleasure. 
“They don’t know what they missed,” you say, a hint of shyness in your voice that’s swiftly covered by your usual confident drawling, “they had unfiltered and unadulterated access to the Spencer Reid, n’ I have to pretend my laptops broken just to see you. So crazy.” 
You give his hand a good squeeze.
“It was sort of broken,” he says as you take your hand back. He’s sure his brain is broken too. 
“Nah, it always does that. I just give it a love tap and it fixes it again.” 
“A what?” He laughs so loudly it turns heads. His crush on you turns to full blown infatuation.
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seph-ic · 1 year
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My favorite thing ever?
Nico has a service dog 
Because after Mr. D diagnoses him with PTSD he feels kind of hopeless and overwhelmed (especially after her hears that it can’t be easily fixed with magic or anything) 
So Mr D. Suggests that he get a service animal. 
Nico argues that animals hate him because he ‘smells like death’. Mr. D Points out that Mrs O’Leary doesn’t hate him. 
They both go talk to Hades who jumps at the excuse to win back his son by buying him more stuff. 
The dog ends up being a hellhound mix (don’t ask how.) 
The mix is mostly so she is a bit smaller for convenience (so she can fit in places.)
I'd assume she looks something like a Burmese mountain dog mix.
Her names Penelope (Penny) and Nico loves her. 
Nico and Her spend a couple of months doing service dog training with Artemis and the hunters (dogs are one of her patron animals.)
the time he spends with them also gives him a bit of closure and helps him process what happened to his sister.
soon enough she's graduated their honorary service dog school and is fully trained.
She goes with Nico everywhere. Since she is half hellhound she can assist with shadow travel and make it easier for Nico. (To Wills relief) 
She helps Nico with panic attacks and nightmares. 
She grabs things for him (KitKats, sword, water, pillows.) 
she can even open the fridge in the big house.
If Nico is having a really bad episode or a flashback he can’t come out of or if he’s in any physical danger, she knows to go get Will Chiron or MR D. In a heartbeat. 
Again a shadow traveling dog being useful.
Will makes extra sure that everyone at camp is aware of how service animals work. 
He teaches all the campers about what Penny's job is and why they’re not allowed to distract her.
On occasion when she isn't working she'll play fetch or get pets from some of the kids. 
All Nicos freind's and family love her.
Like everyone wants to be a part of this dogs life, Nico has literally never been more popular.
Hazel buys her a sweater for the holidays.
Rachel helps Nico also dye part of her tail at one point (to keep her identifiable) and they give it a cool design.
Annabeth asks if she can make her a cool dog house.
Piper insists that they take her to the groomer and buys her little bandannas.
Percy helps Nico teach her how to swim.
She will also grabs medical supplies for Will sometimes.
Grover also knows how to talk to her and regularly lets her know how Nico is doing (not that she doesn't already know.) 
Nico finds it easier to eat with Penelope.
It kind of forces him to eat on a schedule, since Penny has to be fed three times a day and the two of them can eat at the same time.
Nico also gives her little scraps off his plate sometimes which makes them both happy.
She gets absolutely spoiled. 
At one point Nico gets worried that she might get hurt fighting a monster. Hades assured him she won’t but Leo makes her some extra cool dog armor just in case
She also has a little bag attached to her vest for carrying supplies on quests and long journeys. (list of things these bags might contain: Ambrosia, Dog treats, Water/kitkats, extra weapons, drachmas.)
Nico connects so well with this fucking dog.
Like he always struggled with people and he never really even considered being an animal person.
But he absolutely adores Penny.
He talks to her about things that worry him and just finds her presence so unbelievably comforting.
Will solace (who I think personally would become a vet sooner than a doctor) Has this dog on the best fucking diet you could imagine
you have never seen a more medically healthy dog.
And she ADORES Will
Partially because of how calmer Nico is with him, and partially because he keeps a treat jar in the infirmary now.
The best part! she cannot die (from old age at least) Immortal service dog!
Having a huge fluffy head is great for pressure therapy.
Nico (neurodivergent) likes the texture of her fur and stims by petting her or playing with her ears.
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justficsiguess · 5 months
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thinking about... yandere!batfam...
Imagine you're living your normal life and *boom*, one day suddenly a portal opens right in front of you, you fall through it, it closes right behind you. You can only make out a few vague shapes making their way towards you before you pass out.
When you wake up you're... in a bed. Surrounded by a bunch of people who introduce themselves as the Wayne family. You're in Gotham. There was some kind of portal accident with a villain and you fell here from a different dimension and you're stuck until they can figure out how to fix the portal machine, because it was broken during the fight.
Villain? Portals? Gotham? And what was this family doing there during a fight?? They explain that they're vigilantes, Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, etc etc. They decided to tell you this because you'll have to work with them to figure out your home dimension and they didn't trust anyone else to take you in, plus this is just more efficient [and more comfortable than living in the batcave]. I haven't decided yet if you're from a dimension where they exist in comics or don't exist at all, but either way, you're really confused bc this is just not something that happens in your universe.
Anyways. You live with them now, get closer to all of them, work with them sometimes (even though you can't do much, mostly you just watch them work but they insist it's important you're there), decorate your temporary room in the manor a bit, learn some stuff about this dimension (some people have superpowers?? cool!!). You can't go outside though, they say that would be dangerous, as you're not from this dimension and not supposed to be here at all. You want to go back home, but the repairing of the portal machine seems to be very complicated, everyone keeps telling you they just can't figure it out...
One day, during a rare (very rare) moment alone, you decide to look around the manor. You still haven't seen everything in here, it's so big! After some exploration, you stumble across an interesting room that's kind of hidden away. It looks almost exactly like your new room in the manor, but dusty, with some items you remember the Batfamily proudly showing you as you were decorating your room, and becoming unreasonably disappointed when you didn't like them. But the most concerning thing is that there are pictures of you. Not new ones they took since you've been here, but older ones, where you're younger. But, no, it doesn't seem like they're pictures of you exactly, there are photos of a pre-teen you on Bruce's shoulders, that can't be you, you just met them! There are also pictures of a vigilante you've never seen before, which you figure must be this other-you as well. What happened to them? And why would everyone hide this from you?
Turns out you didn't come here from an accident with a villain at all. The Batfamily lost the other version of you somehow and decided they wanted you back. But not a strong, smart vigilante like the version of you from this universe. No, they could get hurt again, or figure out what's going on sooner and escape. They chose you, hoping they could slowly get you accustomed to the idea of staying and then one day lie to you and say they can't fix the portal machine, they can't send you back. It still hurts them to know you're not exactly like the you they lost, you were raised in a completely different way, of course you're not the same, but they'd never let you go, either. They love you.
They were hoping you wouldn't find everything out so soon... but, well, they can fight over whose fault it is that you were able to find this room later, first they need to find a way to calm you down and stop you from leaving them.
If you find yourself drugged and/or tied to your bed, don't be mad at them! You gave them no time to explain before you started panicking and trying to get away, they couldn't just let that happen!
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vhstown · 4 months
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super short london slang guide !!
i haven't got a scooby doo about cockney so this is mainly gonna be mle and like the way 14 year old secondary school boys talk oookay let's go (just so yk i am a londonder!!!!!)
direct things to call people (or avoid calling people)
bruv, blud, man, mate, fam (can use in replacement of a pronoun like he, she, you and i or for emphasis — "man's got a meeting, bruv!")
more on "man" it can be used in plural too — "us man" or "them man" or "you man"
my g, my guy (for referring someone you are friendly/friends with)
bossman (something you'd call a shop or business owner — "aye bossman get me the 3 wings and chips yeah")
big man (usually used in a sarcastic friendly but kind of demeaning way, the older cousin of "big guy" — "oi big man what you sayin' cuz?"
i wasnt going to put these here cause of personal preference but 😭 people are gonna use them anyway so i might as well tell you what they mean:
peng (adjective cute/pretty — "her? she's peng!")
leng (adjective hot/sexy — "rah, he's leng you know?)
nouns
ting (usually to refer to a girlfriend but can also just mean "thing"... or a knife? — "don't chat to my ting fam!")
grim (very outdated word for a promiscuous woman — "she's a grim bruv!")
skeng (gun)
shank, spinner (knife)
paper, Ps, pronounced "peas" (money)
ends (neighbourhood, area — "if i catch you in my ends yeah")
mandem (group of friends — "having a laugh at the pub with the mandem" aha)
gyaldem (group of women / female friends)
ganja (weed)
blem (cigarette)
pagan/paigon (snitch or untrustworthy person, not a super common you might wanna use "snake" or "snitch" instead)
wasteman (someone who's useless, a lowlife)
pussio/pussyo (pussy, coward)
other common words and phrases
wagwan, or "wag1" in text (what's up, what's going on)
bare (a lot — "i got bare problems with him!")
gassed (prideful, full of yourself — "im actually so gassed, man got promoted"
"and that" (instead of "and stuff" — "i got links and that")
"allow it" (let something slide — "i forgot my wallet allow it bossman")
safe (like "alright cool", or as a bye — "aight safe")
"pattern up" (fix up, get it together)
hard, tight (cool, good, though "hard" is also used in an offensive way — "bro thinks he's hard, pussio")
blam (to get shot, not actually very common to hear in my experience)
sheffed (up), shanked (to get stabbed)
ahlie (used as an interjection when in agreement with something, similar to phrase "am i lying?")
non-mle specific words i hear sometimes
thick (dumb, stupid)
clapped/tapped (ugly, weird, unattractive)
merk/murk (kill, beat up)
slag, sket (slut)
chav (used to refer to someone of the low social status, associated with violent or rude behaviour)
taking the mick, taking the piss (being annoying)
mad (means crazy obviously but people use it a lot, can have positive and negative connotations — "that's mad!")
nonce (literally means pedophile / sex offender, do what you will with it 😭)
dickhead, bellend (similar to douchebag)
wanker (used towards someone you dislike, or in a joking way)
geezer (usually to refer to an old man)
also!!!
depending on which communities are predominant in the area, words from other languages can come in / have come in
some words are common with US slang too because they share origins 😁 ain't that cool
there's a lot of influence from jamaican patois due to the history of british jamaicans in london for ex in words like "ting" or "mandem" or "wagwan" (hence why mle is sometimes referred to as "jafrican") and its not strange to hear "bomboclaat" or "bloodclaat" here either
in communities where there's muslims and arabs (especially in east london) you might hear arabic terms like "wallahi", "khalas" or "astagfirullah" (though people debate whether that's cultural appropriation or not)
south asians have also had an influence with words like "gora" or "ganja" though again this is largely area based and the impact of hinglish is also found a lot outside of london
some people have a mix of different dialects! i mainly alternate between mle and estuary (sometimes yorkshire don't ask it is very easy to pick up...)
you're not gonna hear every single word here all the time the usage varies throughout london. the way north and west londoners speak can be v different for example
uhhhh if you wanna learn properly just listen to some grime or sutn . listen to londoners speak!
for some more resources in-depth PLEASE check out these guides made by other british people ! (one and two)
ok that's it bye bye british ppl & londoners feel free to add on! it is midnight rn so ive probably missed stuff lol... dms are open in case you've got any questions or want any help :p
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hells-wasabii · 3 months
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Hi!!! Can I have Vox with an s/o who is overlord of possession. Style kind of like a doll and can possess people and control dolls and stuff. Bonus if they can also take off their limbs and stuff
a/n:I'll admit i wasn't sure how to approach this one, but i hope its alright!
Character: Vox
Type: Headcanons (Vox x Overlord of possession!reader, general)
From the moment he arrived in Hell, he heard talk of the hierarchy. Overlords were the strongest of the sinners, and he'd be damned if he wouldn't rise to the top. So when meeting you, he initially keeps it cool with a grin and a handshake but it all changes when he finds out just what you're capable of. He first thinks of you as a rival. Why wouldn't he? You were an overlord who could control other demons. That was his thing! Sure, you'd been in hell longer and had your powers for some time before he even got there, but he made it cool.
The two of you couldn't be more different. He was based on technology that was constantly progressing, which meant his look was changing all the time too, but you remained the same. your means of possession were ways that had been tried and true, so there was no need for many upgrades. Why fix what's not broken, as they say.
When you say take off their limbs, my mind really wanders to Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. your limbs can be detached wherever they're sown, but can also be controlled when they're not on. He shrieked the first time it happened too. 100%. all the while you're bending over to pick up you just give him a look as he coughs into his fist as a means to try to cover it up.
It isn’t until he sees you in action with dolls and the like that his apprehension turns into interest
Vox is the sort of demon who works in groups so he’d undoubtedly try to recruit you to the Vee’s. You don’t mind changing your name, do you? Gotta keep with the aesthetic. Ha! Just kidding, unless you’d be down enough to actually do it.
While joining the group wouldn’t be too bad of a choice, an alliance would be a better way to go instead. You had ties to the older overlords as well, it wouldn’t exactly be wise to dive head-first into a group like that with the sort of connections you had.
Vox does think your means of possession is intriguing. His abilities he understood. Television could be mind-numbing and overly persuasive, but you pulled your powers from older practices.
That being said, he's inspired! Imagine what the two of you could accomplish if you worked together! He'd be lying if he said he wasn't looking forward to the possibilities.
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comicaurora · 1 year
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do you have any tips on writing soft magic systems? I only ever see them talked about when people are comparing it to hard magic systems or criticising it, which is a shame because I love systems where magic is just in the background being unimportant, with implied rules that will never be explained
god I wrote up like eight paragraphs of explanation and I was really working out some cool stuff there and then the app glitched and destroyed it all and I'm so upset
Unfortunately this reduces to a previous problem, which is "figure out how Tolkien did it and then do that."
Middle Earth is laden with magic. Hobbits being good at hiding is magic. There's a random throne in the ruins at the end of Fellowship that lets whoever sits in it see literally the entire world, and that's hella magic. Aragorn radiates One True King magic and occasionally heals people with a touch. Galadriel's mirror lets people see any point in time, past or future. Gandalf knows several spells, but most of the time he's doing less granular stuff by making lights or small fires or going all Servant Of The Secret Fire Wielder Of The Flame Of Anor etc etc. Elves are inherently so magical that the words of their language are never forgotten by anyone who hears them, the laws of physics don't apply to them, their havens are magically pleasant and beautiful, and the planet itself is magical for them - flat for the elves, round for everybody else.
The benefit of a soft magic system is that it produces a feeling in the characters and audience that the world is vast, wonderful and unknowable. It's at its best when it can answer why, but not how.
Why did the old empire of men have a throne that let you see the entire world? That makes sense! It's hugely tactically advantageous! HOW did they get the damn thing? No idea, doesn't matter, they clearly made it work somehow because the throne's right there. Why does Galadriel's mirror give you limited, randomized omniscience? Because while it's a useful tool if you can use it, seeing the future is a dicey and weird game, and the future can change if someone knows it's coming. HOW does riverwater in a birdbath do that? No idea.
Soft magic systems start running into difficulties when the writer needs to decide how it can or can't solve a given situation, which is a very common issue in storytelling, a format almost entirely centered on problems and solutions. For hard magic systems with clear parameters on what is and isn't possible, this is comparatively quite easy. The wizard can't magic this problem away because-
They're out of spell slots :(
They don't know a specific spell that can do that specific thing
There's another caster nearby stopping them
The object that lets them do magic isn't working
They need to speak words/do gestures/use materials to cast, and they can't for whatever reason
There's something "antimagic" around stopping them
Etc etc. The possibilities are easy to run through, because the "how" is clearly defined, and can be negated into a "how NOT." If magic uses spell slots, stop the characters using it by taking those slots away. If magic needs a material focus, break or destroy it. This prevents magic from feeling like an unsatisfying "a wizard did it" fix for all difficulties because the wizards can only do specific things under specific circumstances.
Soft magic systems can contrive answers to this too, but it can be a bit tricky to justify, and if it's Too Convenient it can feel like the magic system really just does what the writer needs it to do. When asked "why can't magic solve this problem?" soft magic systems can answer in several ways:
Too tired, sorry :( magic is Taxing and stuff so the caster can tip over whenever's convenient
They're in a Bad Vibes zone that's hindering their ability to cast because soft magic can be impeded by soft problems like "somebody was very mean here once"
That specific magic is tied to a specific location, like a magical elf forest, and doesn't work outside of it because it's intrinsic to the place and can't be replicated
There's another magical being around and their kung-fu is more powerful
These explanations work, but that's conditional on the story not making the audience think the magic SHOULD work in this situation, and this is entirely based on what's been established in the story thus far. If the wizard has been able to fly up until now, parking the gang at the bottom of the cliff and saying "sorry, fly machine broke" feels contrived. But if we've only ever seen other, intrinsically magical beings fly, the audience is unlikely to expect that the party's humble wizard will suddenly bust out a set of feathery wings as a gift from baby jesus himself. On the writing side, it's really a matter of feeling it out and making sure nothing feels too jarring - if the character who's previously displayed a certain specific space of abilities suddenly does something completely unrelated (like going from clairvoyance to slinging fireballs, or from a healing touch to earthbending) that feels inconsistent AND it teaches the audience that this soft magic system is softer than they realized, and can then make it much harder for the writer to then convince them that this caster CAN'T spontaneously manifest a power or gimmick that'll save them. But if the magical characters or objects operate within a specific space - one character that specializes in fire, one object that specializes in remote viewing, one artifact that lets its holder control the winds - then the audience will expect and accept things that fit in those broad, soft categories without speculating too much on the underlying "how" of their mechanics.
But the temptation to explain "how" is very strong for writers, and soft magic systems especially have trouble with this, because soft magic systems start calcifying into fragmentary hard systems when they're forced to explain "how". It locks in a hard-defined axiom that can be logically extrapolated. Because a soft system is not DESIGNED for that kind of internal logic, doing that will usually cause axiomatic collisions as they contradict one another. If a hard system is a crisp, geometric crystalline structure where any tangent line drawn through it will intersect cleanly with other lines in very predictable ways, adding "how"s to a soft magic system is like drawing tangent lines through a bowl of pudding - you're gonna get a lot of intersections in awkward places.
To pull an example out of absolutely nowhere, if a soft system without clear rules establishes something like "this spell can be used to summon an object towards the caster, but it DOES NOT WORK on living things", there are a number of questions that can become relevant:
Who made that spell to have those limitations?
Why can't WE make spells that DON'T have that limitation?
How is the spell defining "living things"? Would it work on a plant or a skeleton or a piercing in someone's body?
Why did you let this character use it on a living thing anyway, joanne?
In a lot of soft systems that try to lock in hard spell parameters, "who made these spells" and "why can't WE make spells" become the first and most obvious axiomatic clash. If magic can be created to do what the caster wants, why and how does that work, and why can't WE do it? This forces the writer to come up with an explanation to solve the clash without letting the protagonists make up whatever spells they want, therefore solving all plot problems forever - sometimes something like "the inventors of spells were intrinsically magical beings, like elves or dragons or whatever, and thus we ordinary scrub mortals can't make new ones." That's a functional explanation, but it reduces to a previous problem again - that this hard-ish magic system was created by someone with access to an unstructured soft system.
In a soft magic system, the only answer to the question "how does this magical thing work" is "because magic." If any other explanation is needed, things rapidly collapse into hard lines and axioms and covering for edge cases. How can elves run on powder snow, shoot targets in the dark and see for hundreds of miles? They're magical. Does that mean they can fly like a balrog or sling fire like gandalf or control weather like saruman maybe can? No, of course not, that's not their kind of magic and we have no reason to expect it from them. They're just magic. Magic means a lot of different things, and in a soft system the audience has to operate based on vibes rather than rules.
This can be difficult to balance. For instance, Star Wars has a soft system in The Force, and if you squint, every single movie and show uses it differently. It's not super disruptive to the audience's immersion because it's never framed like a Hard System with Hard Rules and it almost never pulls something out of COMPLETELY nowhere, but if you look at what it does from movie to movie and then show to show, it expands from "influence the wills of the weak-minded", "seeing the future a little bit" and "force choking" to "general telekinesis" and "limited telepathy" to "FUCKING LIGHTNING FROM THE HANDS MAN" which is a hell of a twist the first time you see it, to some even more buckwild stuff in the two different animated Clone Wars (like Mace Windu fighting an entire droid army Samurai Jack style and using the force to pull every bolt out of one of them at once, or the planet with the living incarnations of the Light and Dark Side) and the explanation never goes further than "The Force is magic, it's in everything, people who are good at The Force can use it to do a buncha stuff." It's not consistent, it doesn't have rules, but the audience accepts that Force users can just kind of do stuff that fits the Vibes of the stuff it's already been shown it can do. And as SOON as they tried to say "The Force is strong in people who have LOTS OF MIDICHLORIANS" everybody hated it, because it gave us a "how" answer to a question nobody wanted to ask and it made this pervasive, wonderous, soft magic system that Surrounds And Binds Us Luminous Beings Are We into "we are space wizards because we contain an above-average number of bugs."
As a chronic worldbuilder myself, I absolutely understand the impulse to explain and overexplain and lock in the Hows and the Whys, but as far as I can figure it, soft magic systems live and die on the writer's ability to restrain themselves from saying "how." The answer is "magic." The rest is just writing the story in such a way that "magic" doesn't become plot-breaking.
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bogleech · 3 months
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MY DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS THREAD
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is the first DQM game I've ever gotten to play after admiring the series since childhood. The bad news is that it leaves out exactly the three DQ monsters I love most. The good news is that everything else about it is great. I've been taking regular screenshots as I play and I am going to start adding things about it to this post, so it is going to get long. First of all here are exactly my next three favorite monsters in the franchise, which they fortunately did include, and were all available to me by almost the first area:
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"Mad Mollusk" or in other dq games "taileater" is great because it has a sad flabby slug face at one end and a fanged leech mouth at the other end. When it uses magic, it reveals giant eyeballs in its antennae somehow?! Love how big the "carnivorous" mouth gets in the attack animation. What a stretchy guy!
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"Lunatick" is just called "meda" (eye) in Japanese, I'm glad they decided it was like a parasite thing in the localization.
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Finally there's DROHL, a classic DQ enemy that looks like...well I'm not gonna say what it really looks like but I think it's a cool little freak unrelated to that and I think it talks exactly like Droopy dog. Oddly it's known as a "Drohl DRONE," and I believe there are other "castes" in other DQ games, but only the "drones" are in this one sadly. I've yet to find this in the wild; I got it through the breeding system!
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....Which is by far the most addicting thing about this game. The actual gameplay is good solid turn based RPG stuff, if a bit basic, but every monster can be bred with another monster to unlock a slew of other species. This is one of the first games in which they actually call it a "fusion" system now, I guess dropping the word "breed" from the English localization, but all other in-game dialog still calls these the 'parents' and 'offspring' and even makes jokes that they're getting married, so yeah, it's still breeding. What happens when you breed a slime with someone's dead grandpa??
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.....There are multiple monsters you can get from that, but one of them, and the one that makes the most sense, is Slimeshroom! This is a new DQ slime that's some fungus! What's also fun is that every monster has up to three skills, and each skill actually unlocks a ton of spells, attacks, boosts and effects as you spend skill points on them. Then when you breed two monsters, you can give the baby any three skills from the parents. Any at all! I used this to make my Slimeshroom both a healer and a fire mage in the early game. This catches you up with the same progress I talked about when I first got the game almost two months ago so here's some things that have happened since:
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I bred a flying cat and a vampire chinchilla to get a.....sexy bat??
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I helped a fat rat - that's the name of his species - rescue his son
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I bred a people ghost with a lamp ghost to get a bag of dirt!
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I fought this bastard giraffe man who called an elderly wizard a "naughty boy" and put him in candy jail.
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"Duffer" from the Giraffe quest is also best friends with Eileen the eye demon, and when you rescue him, they become your loyal subjects! BAD NEWS: this entire game is actually a prequel to Dragon Quest 4, and the player character of this game is the villain of Dragon Quest 4. Duffer and Eileen are also in Dragon Quest 4. They die :( .......Maybe this game gives you a chance to fix that future??? I don't know.
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fluff-n-cookies · 6 months
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having Hawks as your Body Guard.
it simply came to be like an epiphany from whatever deity lies from above. Body gaurd AU, as always fem reader, reader is 7-3 years old, and shy, hawks is a soft yandere, and Platonic.
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Now in this AU Hawks is a body guard for people who need body guarding and since you have a pretty well known and wealthy family in this AU you are considered to be a prime target for well, bad people, ya' know?
anyway so hawks recently gets a call to be a body guard for your family now hawks is okay with this but the problem is when he realizes HE IS TAKING CARE OF YOU.
like your this tiny little thing that doesn't even speak that much how is he going to survive taking care of you EVERY DAY?
it just so BORING.
but hey, they pay well. (and he hears that the family's main body guard is Endeavor so there's that too)
so he gets there, standard procedure, nothing too interesting getting the names of his ward, where he'll be taking you etc.
and then he actually meets you and boring stuff happens, he tries to talk to you and then talk to Endeavor but being a child and a shy one at that you're not someone who he'd call fun.
he picks you up from your school, drives you to your house, another person's house (your moms friend) house, doctor appointment, barricades you from other people you know the drill.
it probably isn't until you're in danger that he actually starts to care. I'm guessing burglar that tries to hold you hostage.
because something inside him just clicks.
he suddenly has his feeling of unease and discomfort when he doesn't know where you are and when you're not by his side.
Mama Bird mode is activated.
he also finds that he wants to interact with you more, and gets closer to you. as in helping fix your hair, playing with you and then helping you clean up, and wanting to just really interact with you more.
has you hold his hand and lead the way to all your favorite places and he eyes everyone else to see if they're a threat.
since you're so shy, Keigo takes it upon himself to answer the questions you didn't even ask, alike you could be at the zoo, and eye a random animal for too long and he'll be spitting facts all like "did you know that Butterflies can taste with their feet, using something called Chemoreceptors that help them to identify plants! cool right?" and stare at it for even longer and he's buying you a plushie, it's over, you are getting that plushie!
and when your family is out in public he just kinda
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and it's so fucking funny, he just barricades you so much the media doesn't have a single photo of you that your parents have not posted. and Keigo anonymously keeps reporting it so they take those posts down, HE CANNOT HAVE ANYONE ELSE HAVE YOU YOU"RE TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD.
oh my god, if you talk to him more than you normally would with anyone else, he can and will look so damn smug, he loves the fact that not even your Parents have what you have with him.
at some point Mama Bird mode is Elevated, he just can't take it anymore, he fucking applies to be a nanny.
I'll write for endeavor and miruko in this Au on monday and tuesday respectively maybe a little before that if I'm too impatient.
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epiicaricacy-arts · 4 months
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oh we’re still so young, desperate for attention
this was super experimental so i will talk about my process (+ clearer version) under the cut
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i’ve been looking at a lot of “messier” or more textured painting styles recently and an artist that stuck out to me is clariondeluna ! they posted a self-portrait recently that i really liked and i was super interested in the brushwork seen in their work. i love all the textures and how the shapes feel so loose yet everything is so detailed.
that’s not a method for me at all!!!! i cannot paint like that at all and the stuff i like to paint is very different to theirs. which is okay!!!! i had no intention to copy this artists style so closely like with what i tried to do in my raiden painting, i just wanted to try this style out :^)
it’s been a goal of mine to avoid over-rendering like i tend to do a lot, and i think i’ve been doing good with that recently! the mindset i’ve got going on right now is that if i find myself staring at it too hard for too long, i have to leave it and move on. if there’s still something wrong with it, i can fix it later once ive got a fresh view!
i’ve been trying a lot of things with my art this year. i always try to challenge myself with each piece, and to end the year off i wanted to be as uncomfortable as i possibly could be with this painting. i let myself draw whatever i wanted because i still wanted to enjoy it, but everything i did in this process was new, including parts of the subject matter.
i’ve never drawn a head at an angle like this, and i struggle with drawing mouths open. i don’t do bold lighting like this, and if i do, it’s not fire. i’ve never drawn fire! i also rarely work with warm colours and i hate using green, so i combined those to be my colour palette. i like working cleanly so instead of having a dozen different layers for one section, each section only had 1-2 layers for rendering. instead of clipping masks i would simply paint over things loosely and clean it up later. i never like having limbs cut off in a drawing so i had his other arm go GOD knows where. i don’t like weird patterned backgrounds so i made myself figure out how to like it!
IS THIS MY FAVOURITE PIECE OF ALL TIME. no. absolutely not. but i’m very proud of how this came out with all the challenges i put on myself. i WANTED to get better at these things and be more broad with my art, both in terms of the styles and subjects i portray.
okay let’s talk about wtf this drawing is
for those who don’t know, the design in this painting is my fatui/“Father” lyney fan design (read the design post here). the concept isnt super complicated and i don’t really have much explanation for it, but i wanted to combine the story of how lyney wanted a delusion before getting his vision, fire eating circus acts and how olympic medalists will bite their medal to prove it’s real??? don’t quote me on that i’m like 75% sure that’s a thing that happens. i don’t watch sports though so im just believing someone i heard on the internet ages ago.
anyways. i think fire eating acts are cool. and i think the fact that lyney wanted a delusion is very interesting to me. scratches my brain in the right places. and yk as a magician lyneys character revolves a lot around fooling people and creating illusions so i guess what im saying here is that lyney is trying to prove to himself that this power he’s been bestowed is real. bc his whole life his only constant has been lynette so he is trying to see if he can trust this new power. cause i guess this is an alternate universe where lyney does eventually become “Father” but he never got his vision ??? idk im not making lore for this i just wanted to dress up this funny little guy.
ok i’m done
thanks for reading
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here’s my dog
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wosoimagines · 6 months
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You Didn't Know? - Arsenal WFC/Reader
prompt: R is new to Arsenal after proving themselves at the World Cup, but there are a couple of hurdles they have to face before the team fully accepts them.
warnings: none
words: 6497
I will say that I am not deaf or hard of hearing so if there is anything that I've gotten wrong, please let me know so that I can fix it (I tried to do as much research as I could). Anything that represents sign langue is in continuous italics.
Also, this will become a series, so don't worry about needing to ask for a part two because it will be coming. (I think that this has honestly been one of my favorite ideas for a fic ever and I can't wait to continue it)
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(Y/N) POV
I grinned as I got out of the car. I wiggled my eyebrows at the camera once I noticed it. Honestly it wasn’t too surprising that Arsenal would be filming my first day here. I didn’t hesitate to greet the people who were waiting for me either.
“(Y/N), it’s really nice to finally meet you,” the woman that I knew as Clare Wheatley greeted me. I quickly shook her hand once she held it out to me. “Congratulations. We’re really happy you’re here.”
“I’m gonna show you around,” the dark-haired woman who was behind Clare spoke up. I sent her a soft smile. “I’m Sadie Ross. I’ll also serve as an interpreter for you should you need one.”
“You know Auslan?” I asked. I didn’t always have the option to take out my cochlear implants here recently. Once Sadie confirmed that she did in fact know Auslan, I couldn’t help the grin that overtook my face. “I use a Northern dialect usually, but I do know the Southern dialect as well.”
“No worries,” Sadie assured me. She moved closer to me before patting my shoulder so I would follow her. “I’ve studied both dialects.”
“Cool.”
I followed Sadie through until we got to the locker rooms where I was given my own Arsenal gear to get changed into. It was obviously just practice gear, but it was nice to be in official gear from my new club.
“It suits you!” Sadie assured me once I stepped out of the locker room.
“I like it!”
“So, we’re going to take you on a tour, show you the grounds, show you your new home,” Sadie said. I couldn’t help but smile as she had started to sign the words she was speaking. “This is obviously the changing room. This is the technical corridor, so we essentially have all of our tech staff in here. Our head coach Jonas in this hall.”
I looked down the hall that Sadie had been talking about. I started to move with Sadie so that I wouldn’t fall behind her.
“If you come down here, this is where the medical section is. Stuff like physiotherapy, massages, cold therapy, all of that sort of stuff will happen here.”
I paid attention as Sadie walked me through where the medical team could be found along with any rooms concerning treatment were. Sadie also showed me where the meeting room was and assured me that she would be at all of our team meetings and regardless of if I had decided to wear my cochlear implants or not, she would be translating everything that was said.
Then we were off to find the gym. This was one of the places that I was most excited to find since I knew I would probably be spending quite a bit of time in the gym. I appreciated that Sadie had also pointed out where each section was.
Soon we were headed outside.
“So, this is where we come out to get to the pitch?”
“Yeah.”
I grinned as Sadie pointed out where the exhibition pitch was. I was sure that I would be out there soon enough. Before long we had made our way to the mess hall that they had. It was there that I met Mikel Arteta.
Sadie had disappeared while Mikel introduced himself to me. Then I got to meet Win. Who immediately had all of my attention as I moved to the floor to play with the dog.
It was ultimately drawn away from Win though as Sadie made a reappearance. I was quick to get to my feet as I took notice of what Sadie had in her hands. I took in the back of the kit that had my number and name on the back.
“Such a beautiful kit,” I said as Sadie handed it over to me. “Honestly, can’t wait to play in it.”
“Come on,” Sadie said with a chuckle. “Let’s get you changed into it.”
I did a little fist pump before the two of us headed out of the mess hall and back to where the changing rooms were. Once I had the kit on, I headed down the hall to the room that Sadie and I had passed earlier.
“How’s it look?” I asked as I entered the room.
“I’d say it’s probably one of the best looking kits you’ve ever worn,” Sadie said. I let out a laugh at that. Honestly, I didn’t have the chance to wear that many different kits. I had left Australia to go to the States to play college football for Stanford. Other than my youth club kits, the only other kits I had been in were with the national team, but those had been more recent. “Not too big or too little?”
Of course, we had to take pictures of me in the kit while I was in front of the logo that was on the wall. It had been one of the moments I had been looking forward to since it was announced that I was signing with Arsenal following my college career and performance at the World Cup. Then I moved to take pictures of me signing my contract.
The rest of my afternoon was filled with a photoshoot in a full kit before we headed to Emirates. It was pretty cool to finally be able to take in the stadium in person considering I had grown up an Arsenal fan. I didn’t mind the photographer that followed me around getting pictures of me exploring Emirates.
We even sat down for a formal interview before Sadie played twenty questions with me so that fans could get to know me better.
“Why Stanford?”
“Why not?” I countered. I laughed as Sadie rolled her eyes. “I dunno why I chose Stanford. I had played with youth clubs, but no one was looking to give me a shot with their senior team in Australia. I was smart enough to get scholarships to attend school in the States. Stanford happened to have open tryouts and I was just really lucky that I was able to impress the coaches there and they ended up giving me a spot on the team.”
“Was it hard?”
“Yeah. I was pretty much all alone in a country I didn’t know and having to constantly prove myself,” I admitted. My time in college, while it had been great, had probably been the worst time of my life so far. “I had to practice all the time while keeping up with my studies and even then, I would barely get playing time. Then we had the 2019 College Cup. I didn’t get a lot of time still, but our coach, Paul Ratcliffe, had taken notice of all the practice I put in, specifically with my penalties so when the game went to penalties, I got to take what ended up being the final penalty. I finally knew what the biggest shot of my career was.”
“Did it help you to prepare for the shootout in the World Cup?”
I shrugged at that. Nothing could compare to the shootout that happened at the World Cup. I hadn’t even expected the penalties to go on so long that I would even take one, but then that plan had collapsed, and I ended up taking the final penalty knowing that France wouldn’t have that much film on my penalty kicks and tendencies.
“Nothing will compare to my World Cup penalty. That has probably been the best moment of my life,” I said. I motioned to my ears. “I do kind of have an advantage. It is nice to be able to literally turn off all of the noise. And if you watch the play back close enough, you can see that I had turned it back on right after the ball left my foot. Being able to go from dead silence to hearing the entire stadium cheering was incredible.”
“Did you get the game ball?”
“I did. It will be brought over after our next national camp because surely by then I’ll actually have my own place.”
“Now to backtrack, because you’ll be getting to play with Lotte and Alessia obviously. Not only did they knock you and Australia out of the World Cup but you, as mentioned earlier, won the 2019 College Cup by scoring the winning penalty which caused the two to lose the same game. Is there gong to be any bad blood?”
“No, I don’t think so. Does it sting that we didn’t win the World Cup? Obviously, but we were able to do an amazing job and we overcame everyone’s expectations that they had set for us. In the end, it just wasn’t our year for it. So, I don’t have any hard feelings about that,” I said. I had been upset and frustrated that we weren’t able to win the World Cup, but I was still really proud of the rest of the Matildas. “As for 2019, that’s a question for Lotte and Alessia. Honestly, I’m not even sure if either of them remembers me from it. I might have scored the goal, but my role that season was not a huge one. I didn’t even see an increase in minutes that second year with the team.”
“What are you most excited about being here with Arsenal for?”
“To play for the team I’ve always loved,” I said before looking over my shoulder at Sadie. “It is really cool that I’m also going to get to play with Caitlin and Steph more than just with the national team. And it isn’t just them. I could pretty much learn from most of the players here with Arsenal and I’m excited to get the opportunity to do so."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I sat by myself again in the mess hall. It seemed that until I got rid of this ear infection, no one was going to approach me except for Sadie. I had really appreciated that she was sitting to eat with me. My hunt for a place to call my own had also been stalled considering I had been trying to rest.
But it had already been three weeks with none of the normal tips and tricks I knew had helped to get rid of this ear infection. Our medical staff at Arsenal hadn’t been able to help me, so they had gotten me in to see a doctor. The doctor had told me it was labyrinthitis, an inflammation of the inner ear.
I had been given medicine for the dizziness that I was experiencing but it did nothing to help the pain I still felt. It led to me ultimately being ruled out of the first qualifying round of the Champions League that took place two weeks ago.
And I couldn’t help but feel like it had partially been my fault when the team came back after being eliminated by Paris FC. I hadn’t even been there with the team for the games. I also wasn’t entirely sure how much the rest of the team knew about why I had been a scratch for the journey.
I looked up at the small tap on the table. Sadie sent me a soft smile as she sat down.
“How you feeling?”
“Tired.”
Not only was I dealing with an ear infection, but the loneliness was starting to get to me. I knew that it would be hard to communicate with my teammates while I wasn’t wearing my cochlear implants, but none of them had tried to get to know me. Not even my national teammates.
I couldn’t wait for the national window to open. Unless I was deemed unable to travel, I didn’t see why I wouldn’t be called up. Even though we’d be in Perth, rather than Brisbane, I was still happy that I’d be back in Australia. I’d even get to see Theo since he had gotten a job with the Matildas. I knew that his main job was to act as an interpreter while I was with the team, but he was also helping take care of all our gear as well.
I sent Kyra a small wave when she smiled at me. The small smile that had taken place on my face quickly turned to a frown though once she moved to join Caitlin and Steph who were sitting with a couple of the English players on our team along with Katie. I sighed as my head dropped down.
“I can say something to them, you know.”
I shook my head. I didn’t need Sadie tackling my problems for me. Besides, once I got over this ear infection, I’d be right there with the other Aussies.
“The last thing I need is for them to think that I’m a coward because I can’t join them and then I send you to confront them for not spending time around me.”
Sadie softly sighed before she nodded. I knew that she hated that I had been left on the outside of the team, but what choice did I really have? I wasn’t really that great at reading the lips of anyone outside of the Aussies and it wasn’t like Sadie could follow me around all day to translate everything for me, she was still one of our assistant coaches.
It was honestly just a really unfortunate situation. One that I hoped would be resolved within two weeks. I wasn’t sure where I would be at mentally if I couldn’t play in our WSL season opener.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My ear infection had finally gotten better a week before we were slated to take on Liverpool, but I was still finding it hard to talk to any of my teammates. Kyra seemed to be the only one willing to seek me out, but it wasn’t often as she was still attached to Caitlin and Steph’s hips. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t been as excited about getting to start against Liverpool. I had questioned Jonas’ decision when he told me, but he said it was the perfect chance to see what I would be able to do so that he could figure out how he would use me for the season.
It would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the number of knocks that I was taking. It seemed that Liverpool had decided to target me. I wasn’t sure if it was because they weren’t sure what I could do, or maybe they had decided that I was the weak link on the field. But I could handle what they threw at me.
At least until Taylor Hinds and I clashed in the midfield trying to fight for the ball. She had got a hand on the side of my head which ended up knocking off my cochlear implant. This was one of the times where I hated my cochlear implants because it wasn’t like I could just leave it on the ground to come back to while I chased after the ball. No, I had to make sure I grabbed the cochlear implant that had come off my head to make sure that no one stepped on it and destroyed it.
Ultimately, I didn’t even have to worry about Hinds getting too far because the play was called dead. I had assumed that Hinds was going to be reprimanded for the swipe at my head. I wasn’t really sure, but I knew that it gave me time to put my cochlear implant on.
I didn’t tilt my head in confusion when I saw the ref, Emily Heaslip, going to talk with Liverpool’s coach, Matt Beard. My eyes darted between my own teammates because I had no idea why Heaslip was talking to Beard. At least I didn’t have a clue until Heaslip started to wave me over. I glanced around me to make sure she wasn’t trying to get someone else. I even pointed to myself as I raised my brow in confusion. Heaslip nodded her head and waved for me to go over where they were again.
I shrugged as I jogged over to the sideline.
“She’s cheating,” Beard said once I got close enough to hear them. He pointed to the side of his head. “She’s got earbuds in. Getting information from someone up top.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I watched you put it in,” Beard said as he turned to me. My hand flew up to touch my ear. “Yeah, those!”
“You mean my cochlear implants?”
“She should be sent off.”
“They’re medical devices. I have to have them to hear.”
“I’m sure that’s what she tells everyone so she can cheat. After all, how good can a college walk on be anyways.”
Now that was uncalled for.
“I’m better than you because at least I’m playing professionally.”
“Take them out.”
I froze at that. Surely, I didn’t hear that right.
“Take them out before the yellow I’m going to give you becomes a red.”
Heaslip was out of her mind. My eyes immediately darted over to Jonas as I motioned to my ears causing the man to make his way over to us. I wasn’t surprised that Sadie was following behind. Nor when Kim left the huddle of my teammates to see what was going on.
“She’s getting a yellow for blatantly cheating,” Heaslip said once Jonas asked what was going on. “At least I’m giving her the chance to continue the game.”
“They want me to take my implants out,” I explained. I knew that Jonas and Sadie would both be confused as to what cheating they were talking about. “Neither of them are listening that they’re medical devices.”
“Calm down,” Kim softly said from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder at her.
“No, they don’t get to discriminate against me just because they’re idiots.”
Heaslip had enough arguing I guess, because when I looked back at her there was a yellow card pointed at me. Definitely not how I wanted to start my career with Arsenal, but there was nothing I could do to change it now.
“Kim, go,” Jonas said. My captain hesitated, but she moved away from the group to join our teammates. “She quite literally can’t hear if she doesn’t wear them.”
“They come out. Now.”
Heaslip wasn’t even listening to what we were saying. Jonas nodded before glancing at Sadie.
“Okay, just give us a minute so (Y/N) can get them out.”
Heaslip nodded and stayed where she could watch as I walked back toward the bench with Jonas and Sadie.
“It’s not fair,” I said. I had no idea how I was going to play if I couldn’t hear since I always wore my cochlear implants when I played. “My first game with the team and they get to ruin it because they don’t know what cochlear implants are?”
“I’m not taking you out,” Jonas said. I blinked at that. I hadn’t expected him to keep me in. “You can still play without needing to hear. Just try not to keep playing too long after plays are whistled dead.”
“Oh, because that’ll be so easy.”
It wasn’t like I could just keep my eyes trained on the refs for the entire match.
“Sadie will hold onto them.”
I sighed as I looked between the two. It would be nice to finish my first match with Arsenal. I couldn’t do that if I let idiots ruin it for me. It only took me a second to take both of my cochlear implants out and hand them over to Sadie before was back out on the field.
Coming off from the first half, I knew that I was skating on thin ice with Heaslip with the amount of time it took for me to realize when plays were dead. I wanted nothing more than to keep my head down while Jonas talked to us at halftime so that I could at least pretend that the rest of my teammates weren’t staring at me, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to look up so that I could understand what was being said as Sadie translated it for me.
Going back out for the second half wasn’t any easier. I had been slow to move at kickoff since I was relying on when everyone else moved. I tried my best to stay away from fouls, whether my team was committing them or Liverpool, since they were the most unpredictable ways for plays to be called dead. It wasn’t as bad as the first half had been.
But it really came to a head in the 67th minute. We were already down by one, but Caitlin was getting the chance to make a run. I had made the decision to pull toward the middle of the field from my side as the rest of the midfielders were still behind the forwards and I. Caitlin was clearly fouled by Koivisto, but no one was stopping even though Caitlin stayed on the ground.
My eyes stayed trained on Caitlin who wasn’t getting up as I moved backwards. Then I decided to do something that was definitely risky, but I knew that if Caitlin still wasn’t getting up then it would be good for our trainers to check her out. So, I darted across the field where Koivisto was still trying to move the ball. Koivisto stopped and relaxed as soon as I got close to her, but it didn’t stop me from knocking into her to win the ball back. As soon as the ball was at my feet, I sent it out of bounds.
As soon as I had turned to go check on Caitlin, I knew that I was in for it. Heaslip had her eyes trained on me as she started to march over where I was. I scoffed as I rolled my eyes at the clear fact that it was me that she was coming to talk to rather than Koivisto who had been the one to actually foul another player.
I didn’t even pretend like I was paying attention to Heaslip this time. I was just tired of all of the bullshit from this game. However, my eyes did widen when she pulled out the yellow card again and pointed it at me before the red card followed since I had already gotten a yellow.
“Oh, come on. What do you want me to do?” I asked her as I motioned to my ears. “I can’t hear. You made sure of that.”
Heaslip’s lips were moving, but I had no interest in trying to figure out what she was saying. This was insane and I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to have to fight these cards just so that I could play in our next match.
“No seriously, I would love to hear what you want me to do. Oh, wait. I can’t because you made me take my implants out.”
I shoved the arms that were trying to pull me away from Heaslip away from me. I couldn’t wait to fight these cards though so that Heaslip would never call a game again. There’s no way anyone would ever have her referee a game once they found out that she had discriminated against me by denying me the use of my cochlear implants.
I was a bit surprised when Caitlin got in between Heaslip and I before the older Aussie started to push me back. She was pointing toward the tunnel, so it didn’t take much to guess that she was telling me to get off the pitch. My shoulders slumped forward at the obvious disappointment from the player that I had spent so much time looking up to. I couldn’t bring myself to meet anyone’s eyes either as I made my way off the pitch and to the tunnel.
I didn’t even bother to stop by Sadie to grab my cochlear implants. This had to be the worst debut I ever had.
I took a seat in front of my locker. It was an easy technique that I liked to use to help keep me grounded. It made it easier not to lose myself if I could feel the ground under me. I stayed there for the rest of the game. It wasn’t until Jonas and Sadie had entered the locker room that I realized that the game had ended.
“That was the worst game I have ever played.”
Sadie frowned but she relayed the message to Jonas who rubbed at his forehead. Jonas’ eyes stayed trained on me even though mine had to dart between him and Sadie so I could understand what was being said.
“I should have taken you out. That’s on me. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to prove to them that you were better than they gave you credit for. Which you did. We’ll fight the cards and I’m sure that they’ll be overturned considering you really didn’t do anything wrong.”
I shook my head at that because there was nothing that we could do to allow me to redo my first game with Arsenal. Especially in Emirates. It had all been messed up.
“I have dreamed of this day since I was a kid. And it got completely fucked up. I don’t care if the cards are overturned, but I do want apologies from Beard and Heaslip.”
Jonas nodded in agreement once Sadie let him know what I had said.
“Completely understandable and I’ll be sure that it is known that we fully expect apologies from both for forcing you to do something you didn’t want to with your cochlear implants. Whether or not you wear them should be entirely your choice.”
I nodded as I wiped the tears away from my eyes. I knew it wasn’t guaranteed that I would get an apology from either of them.
“I believe there are some fans who would still like to see you. Even if you did get sent off.”
I sighed and dropped my head at that. Before the World Cup, no one was interested in meeting me. It meant that when I had a bad game, or it didn’t go the way my team had expected, that I could leave without disappointing too many people.
But I knew that I needed to go see the fans. They deserved something good from me today after the game. I got to my feet, and I found that Sadie was holding my cochlear implants out to me. I took them from her before I headed out of the locker room so that I could go see some of our fans.
I fiddled with the cochlear implants in my hands as I made my way out of the tunnel to the field. I just wanted to greet the fans and then head home. But it seemed that nothing was going to go my way as I was snagged by the back of my jersey.
When I turned to see who had grabbed my jersey, I was surprised to find Caitlin behind me. She was holding a microphone causing me to full turn to find her in the middle of an interview. I furrowed my brow because I wasn’t sure why she had stopped me considering I hadn’t crashed the interview until she pulled me back. But my eyes moved away from where she was to the reporter who Caitlin was talking to.
“You’re going to have to give me a moment,” I said once I realized that the reporter’s lips were moving a lot faster than I could decipher. It didn’t take me long to get my cochlear implants on before I looked back at the reporter. “Okay, now I’ve got my ears on. What’s up?”
“I was hoping to get your thoughts on your first game with Arsenal. I know after how you played in the World Cup that a lot of the Arsenal faithful were looking forward to seeing you only to find out that you were an illness scratch during the Champions League games.”
“I won’t lie. It’s all been a bit frustrating. Up until today, none of that had been anyone’s fault,” I admitted. I knew that I had to be careful about talking about my frustrations for tonight because I could still be punished if I said the wrong things. “I’m just hoping things will start turning around.”
“What’s been so frustrating?”
“Well, obviously I was an illness scratch for the Champions League games we had. I had been dealing with an ear infection during that time and it lasted until last week. It was brutal and there were times where I was in so much pain. It was just unfortunate that it had to happen almost as soon as I had arrived at Arsenal,” I said as I rubbed the back of my head. It had honestly been the worst ear infection I had ever had. “It made it hard to communicate with anyone really, so that was really hard because I do enjoy spending time with others. But I finally got rid of the infection last week, and Jonas decided to give me the start. So, things are starting to turn around.”
“Even with how tonight ended?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Caitlin who had asked the question. She had a frown on her face. I wasn’t entirely sure why Caitlin looked upset, but I knew that it probably had to do with me crashing her interview or the fact that I just revealed that I had been in pain and isolated.
“Getting carded for the reasons I did was insane and frustrating. Jonas and I have already agreed that we’ll be appealing the cards,” I said. Honestly, I couldn’t believe that Caitlin was okay with the cards I had been given. “I’m sure we’ll win the appeal. I would like to make formal complaints about both Beard and Heaslip considering how I was treated.”
“Well, I’m not entirely sure that you’ll overturn those cards,” the reporter pointed out. I turned my head back to look at her. “You obviously got into a heated talk with Liverpool’s head coach, Matt Beard, and tonight’s referee, Emily Heaslip.”
“It’s simple,” I shrugged. Was I really around this many people who had no idea what cochlear implants were. “One of my cochlear implants fell off and Beard had to be nosy, even though he can’t tell the difference between earbuds and my cochlear implants. Then Heaslip sided with him without talking to either Jonas or I. Which she should have done to figure out what I had in my ears if she was really worried about someone cheating, but she refused to hear us out as we tried to explain.”
“Well, I wish you both better luck for the future.”
I sent a soft smile to the reporter, happy to finally be done with the interview. Caitlin followed me as I headed to where our fans still were so that I could greet them. Caitlin stayed close to me as we talked with the fans and took pictures and gave autographs. I didn’t think much of how close she was staying to me until we were headed back through the tunnel.
“So those weren’t earbuds?”
I stopped in the tunnel causing Caitlin to crash into my back. I honestly hadn’t been expecting the question. Once I regained my balance, I turned to face Caitlin.
“We played at the World Cup together. Not only that but we spent over a month together to prepare for it and then play in it,” I pointed out as I tilted my head in confusion. I knew that I had tended to stick around the ones on the national team who were closer to my age, but we had all spent so much time around each other. The World Cup was one of the few times where I had worn my cochlear implants even when I didn’t want to. “You’ve seen my cochlear implants before.”
“I thought they were fancy headphones,” Caitlin defended. I shook my head as I let out a sigh. She could have just asked me what they were, and I would have told her. “So, what do they really do?”
“We can come back to that in a second,” I said. There was something else that was bothering me now from today’s game. “Were you upset with me when I got the second yellow because you thought I had gotten the first one for wearing fancy headphones?”
Caitlin only shrugged. My shoulders slumped forward because her silence said it all. My own teammates had thought I was cheating along with our referee and opponents’ coach.
“What is it that they do?”
“They’re basically my ears,” I said. This time it was Caitlin who was tilting her head in confusion. “It’s kind of how I’ve always seen them. I have my actual ears and they can hurt and, obviously, I can still get ear infections. But since my actual ears can’t process sound, I have my cochlear implants which are my hearing ears.”
“So, they’re like hearing aids?”
“They have the same purpose but work differently,” I said. A lot of people asked me about this when they first found out that I had cochlear implants so that I could hear. “Hearing aids just amplify sounds so they can be detected by damaged ears. Cochlear implants bypass the damaged parts.”
Caitlin slowly nodded as she furrowed her brow in thought. I didn’t mind answering the questions she had for me. I never had been opposed to answering questions about my disability. But if my own teammates hadn’t realized that I had cochlear implants or what they did, I wondered how many people were unaware of my situation.
“And we all just ignored you when joined the club.”
“It hurt, yeah,” I shrugged. This time it was Caitlin’s shoulders that slumped forward. “I understood though. Outside of our little Aussie group, no one on the team had ever played with me before. And it wasn’t like I’ve exactly had a lot of experience playing with any of you either.”
“But we ignored you.”
“I couldn’t really talk to anyone,” I pointed out. It might have sucked and hurt while I was being ignored, but I had understood why I was ignored. “Sure, I could talk, but I wouldn’t have been able to understand the rest of you.”
“Ross didn’t ignore you.”
“Sadie? She knows Auslan, AKA Australian Sign Language,” I said. I had gotten better offers from other clubs, but Arsenal had already told me that they had an interpreter on staff. “Sadie is literally employed as an interpreter for me now that I’ve joined Arsenal. It just so happened that she was already an assistant coach here at Arsenal and now they’re also paying her for acting as an interpreter.”
“Oh.”
I furrowed my brow. The last thing I wanted was for Caitlin or anyone else on the team to feel like I resented them for not being able to communicate with me. Maybe if I was a kid then I would feel differently about the whole situation, but I had long ago come to terms with the fact that most people wouldn’t be able to communicate with me sometimes.
I grabbed a hold of Caitlin’s wrist as I dragged her to the locker room. I was a bit surprised when we ran into Kyra who was leaving the locker room. It was obvious that she was headed home too considering she had her bag with her.
“Back in the locker room,” I said to her. Kyra’s eyebrow shot up as she looked between me and Caitlin. I looked over her shoulder though to see that the rest of the team was in the locker room. Even our injured players who were talking with the others. “Team meeting! No one leaves until I’m done talking.”
Everyone’s eyes were drawn to me as I turned back to look at Kyra. Kyra nodded before moving back into the locker room which allowed me to drag Caitlin in. Once the locker room door was shut, I let go of Caitlin’s wrist so that she could move to sit down.
“It’s been brought to my own attention that a lot of you are more than likely unaware that I’m Deaf. I was born deaf, and I do use cochlear implants to hear,” I announced. My eyes darted around the room to see how my new teammates would react. “I also know Australian Sign Language, or Auslan. So does Sadie. I wasn’t ignoring anyone or wanted to be left alone during my first month with the club, but wearing my cochlear implants while dealing with an ear infection is quite annoying for me so I chose not to wear them. And I’ll answer any questions you ever have. I really have no problem answering questions.”
The team stayed quiet as they processed everything that I had just told them. The longer the silence went on, the more nervous it made me. I couldn’t help it as I started to fidget where I was standing with most of the team’s eyes still on me.
“So Heaslip made you take off the only thing that allowed you to hear?”
My eyes darted over to where Alessia was sitting. I hesitated for a moment before nodding in confirmation.
“I wasn’t cheating,” I repeated. Just the idea of my new teammates thinking that I had cheated made me nauseous. “And all the warnings for not stopping at the whistle? I couldn’t hear. I had to take cues from everyone else. Well, from you guys.”
My eyes turned to Kim who got up to move in front of me.
“If anyone else ever tries to make you take off your cochlear implants when you don’t want to, they’re going to have to go through all of us,” Kim assured me as she put a hand on my shoulder. “And I know that I’ll be giving you my full support in appealing the cards and any other action you wish to pursue against Heaslip or Beard.”
I sent her a small smile. It was nice to have someone who was willing to back me up so quickly. Especially considering that it seemed like the whole team had been under the impression that I was ignoring them on purpose.
“You’ve got my full support as well,” Alessia said as she stood up.
I didn’t miss how my fellow Aussies shared a look before they also stood up to declare their support. And soon after they stood up, so did the rest of the team.
I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face thanks to the support that the team was so willing to give me even though none of them truly knew me yet. It might have honestly been one of the first times that I ever truly felt like my entire team had my back.
789 notes · View notes
essentiallyleaf · 6 months
Text
day 20. cockwarming. with. jisoo.
1105 words.
tags.
kinktober ‘23, idol x male reader, cockwarming, angst, i don’t even know anymore, possibly the coldest cockwarming fic to ever exist, so much angst and for what.
notes.
short and a little rushed. sounds just like every day of my life. exhaustedly, leaf.
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You plop down on the bed, barely able to take your black dress pants off before the dizziness gets the best of you. Jisoo is there, laying still, facing away from you and towards the cloud-shielded moon outside of the open window, like she always is. You can’t really tell if she’s awake or not, and the alcohol certainly doesn’t help.
This must be what they mean when they talk about magnetic fields. We’re immersed in them all the time, but we can’t see it, something about a wavelength our eyes are not tuned to. It’s like even when it’s past your bedtime (which on a weekend night like tonight is at least three hours after your regular bedtime), the sky completely starless, when you zig-zag through the streets and keeping your balance requires a voluntary effort, when your white shirt has more than one almost fully dried Bordeaux stain on it, you don’t know why or how, but your red needle always points back home, back to her.
You always manage to find your way to your shared bed, well, shared right in this moment, but often, too often one could easily argue, the bed feels hollow and freezing as Jisoo’s in it alone. Maybe that’s why the first thing she does when you lie down on it, is take your strong arm and wrap it around her waist to hold her close and share some of your alcohol-boosted warmth, and keep her own arm over it as if to ask you to never let go, never leave her again. She’s awake. Your natural response is to use your other hand to brush her long, silky black hair and watch it flow through your fingers, but as she feels your breath caress her shoulders, she knows that you can’t promise much more than that.
This shouldn't work. Well, to be fair, it isn’t working. But throwing stuff away, whether it’s dropping old photos in the fireplace, or leaving an entire relationship behind you to possibly never see your special person again, that hurts. It’s not just about the value of it, no, if that was the case, if that thing you’re throwing away still brought value to you, then you wouldn't be getting rid of it, right? It’s about admitting that something went wrong along the road, that things didn’t work out, that a wrong turn was taken, and that maybe, you were the one who took it. So the only thing you can do is turn away, keep going down that road, and if you ever happen to look back in a moment of accidental lucidity, justify your own mistakes.
So Jisoo reaches back and starts rubbing the outer side of your naked thigh, slowly traveling up to your ass as you lay a trail of quick kisses on her shoulder. Once she starts fiddling with the hem of your boxers and pushing her own butt back towards you, you get the message. You take your underwear off and stroke your dick a couple times before her nightgown is hiked up and her cheeks fully envelop your length. Your pecks take a trip up to her neck while both of you start shifting your hips up and down, back and forth against one another’s, a couple of low moans leaving your mouth.
It was your fault, but what if it wasn’t? What if that girl, what was her name even, hadn’t asked you for a lighter? What if she hadn’t looked at you all night with those warm brown eyes, what if she hadn’t asked you for a ride home? Any of those would’ve fixed this. The nights of yelling at each other’s faces and the nights of dead silence, the feeling of unbridgeable distance even when holding hands, the cool air of beach days in the middle of August. Maybe invisible walls are the best solution in some cases, and fuck it if they break some people’s immersion, as long as you can see the sun rise in the distance, you can live with not being able to touch it.
Jisoo suddenly stops her motion just to raise her thigh a little, suggesting you to enter. You align yourself with her slit and penetrate her warmth, her slick coating easing you through her walls and quickly letting you bottom out inside her, but as soon as you try to retreat, she puts a hand on your hip, halting its movement. She just places her thigh back down and stays still for a few seconds. A few seconds that enclose some kind of understanding, or, a feeling of understanding, at the very least. Most of the times when you have a revelation, an epiphany, you have no idea what the fuck is being revealed to you, you only see the light bulb turn on. Your kisses get wetter and longer, traveling from her upper neck to her ear and to her jaw, your hand finds itself on her soft, perfectly sized mound. She starts contracting her abdominal muscles repeatedly and rhythmically, squeezing your shaft between her tight walls, your pelvis still fixed in its place. You see her skin glow more than usual under the faint moonlight, and you think you taste a little salt as your tongue brushes her cheek, which you can’t help but groan on every time Jisoo tenses around you.
Invisible walls are not meant to be broken. They’re meant to disengage, to discourage. What does it say about us when they manage to do what they’re meant to? Is it sad, disheartening? Does it speak about our sense of agency as a whole? What if you did something different, what if it was your fault? You can’t go back, so what can you do about it now? Another night of getting drunk, another night of having sex, in each other’s embrace but miles away.
Your hand feels up her thigh as hers reaches between your legs from the back and starts massaging your testicles. You can’t hold back anymore. Her abs contract once, twice. You stop counting, she feels too good. Your thigh wraps around hers as you cum inside, letting out multiple guttural moans right next to her ear. You drop load after load of white paint onto her walls and into her womb.
You think you hear a little sniffle. Again, the only response is to caress her hair and leave one long kiss on the back of her head. Not more. Sometimes we hurt people that love us, love people that hurt us. And if it’s true that opposites attract, then likes must also repel.
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footnotes.
sorry if this is depressing. how can i help you get back to horny, the superior mood? lunatically, leaf.
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