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alex-the-nonsensologist · 8 months

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Disney Dreamland - Part 2: Adventureland

Due to my quirk of wanting each land’s name to reflect a broad genre, Frontierland was basically merged into Adventureland (I know westerns are their own genre, but I felt it too niche compared to the other genres I picked). I tried my best not to be stereotypical in regards to certain areas. Cultural experts would be consulted (both native to their country and diaspora).

Also, I should mention, I friggin' love carousels. I put at least one in each genre land. I'm just that nuts about them.

Imperial Courtyard

This area would be similar to the China Pavilion in EPCOT, but more focused on fiction and mythology. Includes a lovely lotus pond garden to sit and relax in. Would have Lunar New Year celebrations in the winter. Disclaimer: I may be a child of Hong Kong immigrants but I grew up a full westerner New Yorker. Please consult cultural experts. At the moment, my mind’s eye is picturing this area neatly tucked away in a corner between World Galleria and the rest of Adventureland.

Sun Wukong the Monkey King / Journey to the West: Dark ride. I only recently learned that despite Sun Wukong being a popular character, he is not in fact the protagonist of Journey to the West. I think centering it on either Sun Wukong’s life and backstory, or the actual journey to the West with the other characters could work. The art style would resemble Chinese calligraphy paintings come to life. I would also love an original song that ties the entire ride together, in the same manner as “Compass of Your Heart” from Sindbad's Storybook Voyage in Tokyo DisneySea.

Mulan stage show: Would contain well-choreographed martial arts stunts, alongside musical performances, with “Make A Man Out of You” being the big showstopper combining both. For the design aesthetic, I’m thinking of something similar to Mulan’s float unit in Shanghai’s parade.

Zodiac Carousel: Under a lovely red and gold Chinese pavilion roof. Features twelve rows of animals of the Chinese Zodiac. Could be located inside the garden.

Jade Phoenix Tea House: Chinese tea, pastries, and dim sum.

Golden Dragon Restaurant: Table service.

Equatorial Tropics

Blends from Polynesia to Africa.

The Enchanted Tiki Room : The only thing I’d change is have a new cast of host birds, to make it unique. Maybe there could also be a temporary Lilo and Stitch / Moana overlay during the summer months.

Polynesian Terrace restaurant: Table service.

Jungle River Cruise: Obviously would not include condescending stereotypes of natives. Otherwise, I would like it to be distinctly unique from other versions of the ride with a new storyline and skipper commentary.

“Treetop Village” : My park’s equivalent of the Swiss Family Treehouse. I wanted to have a suspension bridge entrance like Anaheim’s version used to have (as Tarzan’s Treehouse), which I thought looked so cool, and then I thought about putting my treehouse on an island in the Jungle River Cruise, like Hong Kong’s, with the bridge crossing over the river from the walkway entrance. Then I thought, why not make it a whole village of treehouses on the island, all connected by suspension bridges? It would be limited to a handful of trees so as not to disrupt the Jungle Cruise ride too much, but would still have plenty of scenic views for guests to see. There could be a few interactive elements for guests to play with, such as rope and pulley systems, to simulate the illusion of functioning living quarters. Maybe even include a couple of swings.

Tales of Anansi: Dark ride. A stylized retelling of the Anansi stories with a unique art style, in the same manner as how Lion King was adapted for stage. This is partially to look cool and unique, and partially to avoid Anansi looking too creepy for anyone afraid of spiders. Please consult cultural experts.

Circle of Life buffet: Cuisine from Kenya and Tanzania, the countries of inspiration for The Lion King. But just for fun, one of the desserts could be Timon and Pumbaa’s Chocolate “Mud” and Gummy Bugs.

Disney Dreamland Railroad Adventureland station: Styled after a jungle trading post

Pirate Cove

Visually based off the Adventure Isle area in Paris’s Adventureland. Includes a walkthrough ship, a restaurant ship, a small island (Skull Island), and a picturesque waterfall. This area would probably be outside the railroad perimeter, accessible through a mountain tunnel.

“Pirates Ride” : I think Pirates of the Caribbean is a very neat ride. I have a lot of mixed feelings regarding *ahem* certain scenes, but that’s a lot to unpack for another time. I do not want this version of Pirates to have anything to do with the movies, which while entertaining, I feel have overstayed their welcome (but I will admit the scenery in Shanghai’s version of the ride is breathtaking, both real and digital, and the battle climax is definitely exciting). Rather than copying the classic ride, I would love it if Imagineers would come up with a brand new story with a brand new set of pirates in another part of the world. That said, I have no issue with Jack Sparrow being a walk around character in the area.

“Pirate Explore Zone”: Inspired by the various walkthrough ships in Disney Parks. Could also extend to Skull Island, which includes caves you can wander around, inspired by Le Ventre de la Terre underneath Paris’s version of the Swiss Family Treehouse.

“Pirate Stunt Show”: An action stunt show on the water utilizing floats.

“Pirate Ship restaurant”: Quick service.

X Marks the Shop: Pirated themed merchandise.

Wild Western Frontier

The start of “Frontierland”. Part typical Wild West town, part Native community featuring adobe pueblos, part Grand Canyon-style rock formations. Please consult cultural experts.

Western River Expedition: Based on the never-built attraction by Marc Davis. Would be tweaked to avoid any stereotypical portrayals of Native peoples. Please consult cultural experts. The river flume would be crafted to intertwine with Big Thunder’s railroad. Also includes a snapshot photo-op at the final drop, like Splash Mountain.

Big Thunder Mountain: Mostly the same, but I would rearrange to have the train pass through the underground Rainbow Caverns at the end before the unloading dock. Story could go that in trying to find the last motherlode of gold, you accidentally trigger explosions that nearly trap you, but end up unearthing the caverns; pretty much like the Mickey Mouse short Nature's Wonderland that homages this ride and its predecessor. Lesson being that in life, you may not always find what you want, but sometimes you find something else just as valuable.

Cowboy Carousel: Would appear to be built out of wood. Could resemble a farm enclosure. Horses in cowboy hats and bandanas. This is not really a necessary addition to the area, but as I mentioned, I LOVE carousels and could not resist putting it on this list.

Golden Horseshoe Revue restaurant: American cuisine and BBQ and saloon stage show. Table service. (I have yet to experience this in the existing parks, but I’d like to some day.)

General Store: Cowboy-themed merchandise.

“Native Legends of the West” / “Legends of Coyote”: Dark ride designed in a Native art style. Please consult cultural experts. Could retell various legends of the region, but for a more unified story it could focus on the trickster character of Coyote.

Native-owned shops: Authentic Native American artisan crafts. Shout-out to @disneylanddilettante for the idea. Could feature live demonstrations and workshops for kids, along with guides to explain the cultural significance.

Land of the Dead restaurant: Mexican cuisine. I wanted a place that could be themed as a nod to Coco, my favorite Pixar movie, without being heavily IP themed. Actual Día de Muertos celebrations would only happen in the fall; this restaurant would basically allude to the daily lives of the inhabitants of The Land of the Dead the rest of the year outside of Día de Muertos. Please consult cultural experts. Would include a live mariachi band.

Rivers of America

Embodies the calmer aspects of Frontierland, however I still think they fit neatly into Adventureland if you think of life itself as an adventure, with this area being the "take it easy" part. The northern coast of the river would be on the edge of Mysteryland, part of that land’s city themed area, but with the buildings facing the river themed to New Orleans.

Fort Wilderness Island: Themed to a summer camp.

Fort Wilderness River Rafts: Transport to and from the island.

Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes

“Tall Tales Campfire”: Stage show retelling of classic American tall tales. Does not have to be a literal campfire, as that would limit the shows to nighttime only, not to mention be a hazard.

Camp Woodchuck Kitchen: Based on the restaurant of the same name from Tokyo. Quick service. Waffle sandwiches and s’mores brownies. The original three flavors of waffles sandwiches were Fried Chicken and Maple Sauce (Huey), Bacon and Vegetables and BBQ Sauce (Dewey), and Shrimp and Avocado (Louie).

Johnny Appleseed stand: Apple tarts, apple fritters, apple fries, caramel apples, and apple cider.

On the coast of the river:

Mark Twain Riverboat

“Musical Americana Animals”: Animatronic stage show inspired by The Country Bear Jamboree and America Sings.

Tiana’s Palace: New Orleans cuisine. Tiana’s signature beignets and swamp gumbo are a must. Jazz band playing live music, with appearances by Louis the alligator and performances by Tiana and Naveen. There could even be a short Mardi Gras show every hour.

Other parts:

World Galleria

Mysteryland

Fantasyland

Create-It-Land

Discoveryland

#disney parks #disney dreamland #armchair imagineering #adventureland #frontierland #theme park design

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andr0medafallen · 1 year

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The Gaslight

A/N: Reposting old fics. Lightly revised.

Pairing: Llewyn Davis x Reader

Warnings: Existential dread, depictions of smoking, brief mention of cancer in relation to smoking, kind of fluffy ig?, lmk if i need to add anything

Description: New York isn't anywhere near as great as it's portrayed by Frank Sinatra or any of the greats of your time. Maybe the only person with a chance at changing your mind about that is someone who feels the exact same way.

Word Count: 2.1k

Everyone who says that there is “so much to do in New York” is wrong. There’s plenty of random bullshit to do the first couple hundred days living there, and then by the time you’re so over it that you’d rather be doing anything else, you’re stuck because you sold your car for rent and you don’t have enough energy or ambition to send out resumes to employers outside of the city and wait one million years for a letter of rejection. You suppose that that may be the reason the telephone had been invented, but every time you even touch the damned machine, you're overwhelmed with a debilitating flood of anxiety that only goes away after you’ve promised yourself you’ll never touch it again. Honestly, it would probably be best to stop spending the crippling $25 a month for the rotary, but you’d have to call the phone company, and that falls under the list of things you would not like to do.

What may come as a surprise to the vast amounts of small-towners moving to the big city is that the over-romantacized gum spattered streets, unaffordable rent, and constant rat infestations all get old really fast. But how can you honestly judge? You were one of those small-town girls with big dreams, once.

Maybe what you really hate about New York is its tendency to point out the worst in you. Somehow being constantly surrounded by 7.78 million people only manages to make you feel more lonely. As if the city is pointing out that even when it is impossible to avoid people, as you often yearn to do, you are still incapable of making a single genuine friend.

As if it’s any sort of consolation, once you realize that there is nothing to do in New York, you start finding like-minded individuals. It was those very like-minded individuals who led you to The Gaslight today. Course, you weren’t here with anyone. You just got handed a flier at Donna’s apartment. So here you were, at The Gaslight Cafe. Sticky tables, dirty floors, some sort of New Yorker reputation that you were blissfully unaware of.

When you entered the bar, the singer hadn’t yet made his appearance.You were five minutes late, but it was the city, so of course that made you ten minutes early. Honestly though, the room was actually kind of nice. It all seemed so comfortable and modern with its stone walls and chic lamps and real wood tables. The room was low-lit with a couple of warm-toned spotlights pointing towards the stage, where an empty oak-wood chair and a metal mic sat. No matter how hard it tried, though, it still didn’t beat the classic dilemma of any bar: Beer-sticky surfaces and the smell of tobacco, hanging in the air like a sacred canopy.

When you were younger you had been a regular at plenty of different venues in your hometown. Some were all ages and family-friendly, some were teenage rock’n’roller’s garages, and plenty were bars like this one where the owners innocently turned a blind eye to your baby face. Those bars usually had vinyl tables, though. What your teenage hangouts all had in common, though, was that you had known people there. The owners, maybe a drummer or two. Plenty of boy-crazy lasses and lads. Maybe you were jaded, but you’ve been finding it harder and harder to remember what it’s like to know and be known. Some days, maybe even today, you thought of what it would be like to build that sort of community for yourself, and the task felt near impossible.

On the bright side, your concert-going experience meant that you knew the best places to sit when you went to this sort of thing; Close enough to the singer so that you could see them, but not so close that it would seem like you cared.

You’d almost finished your first drink when the singer came out. His curly hair was messily piled atop his head and he wore clothes that were very obviously picked out from a thrift store or a clearance rack. Of course, you were the last to judge, because you certainly did the same. It had been a long time since you had been able to afford anything on the main floor of a Macy’s. But honestly, the rugged look suited him. His olive skin looked pale, as if he never went outside except for on his commute to these nighttime gigs, like a modern-day vampire, and his eyes looked tired, like they held the murky depths of the Hudson in them. You wondered how he would be spending his Sunday night if he weren’t here.

All of this was just idle thought though, the bored wonderings of someone who was just about ready for a second drink. It’s not like you cared. That is, until he started playing. You remembered the shows from when you were young, played by fellow adolescents jamming out to Elvis Presley and Howlin’ Wolf. You thought they were so fun, yet still usually left early to go fuck around somewhere else. This was nothing like that. When the singer's deft fingers gracefully twirled between strings, when his voice sang a song of anguish passed down generation to generation, you had never felt so seen. You thought maybe this was it. Some sort of sign that it was alright now and you no longer had to spend every day worrying about bills and how to put your next meal on the table. You didn’t even go to the bar for another drink, you were too enraptured.

When your thoughts did wander, it was all about that man sitting on that chair on the low-hanging stage strumming a guitar. You wanted to know his whole life story. How he ended up here, how he couldn’t leave. Maybe he was a traveling musician, but maybe he was like you. Like Sisyphus, being pushed back into the confines of the city any time he tried to escape its grasp.

When his last song ended you felt like crying. Maybe you already had been crying. Sometimes it was hard for you to pay attention to that sort of thing. Sometimes you get so enraptured by the music that you can’t even manage to wipe your tear streaks until the end of the song, when you frantically will them away with the sleeve of your sweater and the will of a god. This was one of those times.

There really was no real reason to stay once he’d finished his set. You were fairly far from drunk, but hopefully intoxicated enough that you wouldn’t have a lot of trouble getting to sleep. With one last glance at the singer, you slipped out the side door into the freezing New York winter. You were far from cold, though, because when you looked back through the door, your eyes met his brown bark gaze, heating your cheeks with a rosy warmth. You quickly tore your eyes away and shut the alleyway door before fumbling with your cigarette case. Your quickly numbing fingers took their time flicking the lighter going, but once you managed it, you took a deep inhale, hands cupped in front of the cigarette cradled by your lips. The smoke burned through you, warming you from the inside out.

You glanced at the door as it creaked open next to you, once again inhaling from your cigarette. You knew it was a bad habit and apparently some doctors now believed that it caused cancer or something, but you couldn’t remember the last time that you actually cared.

Once your own cloud of shit smelling cigarettes (you bought the cheap stuff, 25 cents a pack) dissipated, you realized that it wasn’t some trash man or drunk guy needing to puke, but your very own sad man in thrifted clothing holding a beat-up hard shell guitar case. Your heart fluttered, standing this close to him. It was your fatal flaw as a New Yorker, one that you refused to admit to anyone. You got starstruck so stupid easily. Usually not even by stars. Sure, you live in New York and there are plenty all over this shithole city,but it’s the smaller ones you adore. You couldn’t give a shit about Frank Sinatra, but one time you saw your favorite 6pm News anchor grocery shopping in Manhattan and got so excited that a paparazzo started taking pictures hoping that it was some B-List celebrity that he wasn’t familiar with.

And so, when you stood in front of this man, who was not famous, and who you hadn’t even known –of– for very long, but you felt like you might burst into flames in his presence.

He had this aura about him that preached of pain and empty hope and that somehow called to you like a beautiful sonnet.

He even had the audacity to look surprised to see you, as if you hadn’t made eye contact when you’d used this door just a few minutes prior. It was clear that he had come out the side exit rather than the front exit in some attempt to avoid having to talk to people, and you thought about letting him do just that, but maybe you still believed in fate just a bit, and maybe she was giving you a second shot just now. You weren’t one to ignore divine interference.

You silently offered him your cigarette, and he seemed to consider it for a moment before settling against the red brick wall beside you and accepting it. You don’t miss how his eyes seem to darken as they take in the red smudges which your lips had placed on the tipping paper just moments ago. He takes a hit from the half-smoked cigarette and there is something so casually intimate about the both of you sweetly caressing a lifeless piece of paper rolled with death and dopamine without a single direct touch between you.

When he made no move to speak, you took the initiative. “I liked your set,” you mumbled, taking the joint. You blew out the smoke in a steady stream. You knew plenty of folks who thought that blowing rings made them all sophisticated or whatnot, but anytime you did it you felt like a JRR Tolkien character–the old wizard guy. Gandalf? The singer (who still hadn’t told you his name) exhaled his smoke in puffs, like little storm-clouds.

“No, it's… it’s not.” His response made no sense in the context of what you had said, but somehow you understood its meaning anyway. That feeling of incompetence, where no amount of praise can make up for any past rejection.

“Well. I liked it,” you responded coolly, as if his opinion on his own music obviously meant less than yours. You turned towards him. The new angle revealed how close the two of you truly were, less than a foot away from each other, and it made your heart increase a few paces.

When you told him your name, it elicited the tiniest of smiles in response, and he held out his hand for you to shake. He didn’t seem to smile much, but he still had the most beautiful laugh lines around his eyes. You shook his outreached hand, its warmth dulling the stinging pain of the cold.

“Llewyn Davis,” He introduced, before pulling his hand back to his side. A part of you missed his warmth already.

“Llewyn.” You tested the word out on your lips, drawing it out slowly as if tasting it. “It’s a pretty name.”

Llewyn’s eyes crinkled in response, and you responded in kind with a toothy grin. Pretty, pretty, pretty.

“Well, thanks for the smoke. I should probably head home before anyone starts worrying,” he spoke, snubbing out the spent cigarette on the brick wall and readying up his guitar case.

As he turned away to leave, you raised an eyebrow at the man, not quite believing his story. “And where is home for you, Llewyn?”

He turned back towards you, surprised by your antics, and shrugged. “Anywhere with a nice enough couch, I suppose.”

You smirked at him, giddy at having caught him in his white lie. “Well I can’t say my couch cost more than twenty dollars, but my heater works. Deal?”

The way his eyes seemed to soften at your words made you unbelievably happy. He wasn’t quite smiling, but he seemed so much less stressed.

“That’s…that’s really nice of you,” Llewyn mumbled. You hesitantly reached forward and took his hand, fingers brushing his palm before closing around his calloused left hand, which had so expertly been holding down bar chords and hammer-ons moments before. He squeezed your hand in response, as if to tell you that this gentle act of intimacy was acceptable. When he saw you looking up at him expectantly, he realized that he hadn’t yet answered your question. “Yeah, deal.”

#llewyn davis x reader #reader insert #mine #llewyn davis fanfic #llewyn davis angst #llewyn davis fluff #inside llewyn davis #oscar isaac fanfic

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melancholysway · 1 year

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Serendipity (2007!Raphael x Fem!Reader 4

CHAPTER IV: There’s Something About Raphael

Chapter Key:

——— = a flashback is happening or ending ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ or ====

= perspective change

~ = small time skip

You sighed to yourself as you looked in your empty camera bag. Another missed opportunity to take a beautiful picture of Stella perched up on the window sill staring into the sunset that loomed over New York City.

Sunset. A moment of peace and clarity, before street lights come on to illuminate illegal activity, crime, bad decisions, and deviancy. The moment before the moon comes in and takes over the sun with its bright light. It stays in the sky for hours before the sun claims its spot, and the cycle repeats.

It was almost time for the moment all of NYC waits for: Nighttime.

The time when every other city sleeps, yet the people of New York City fail to follow this stigma and are forever awake and alive.

Crime seems to not take a break either, and that was the downfall of this city’s tendency to stay awake. However, that’s exactly what The Nightwatcher is for, to stop the crimes that policemen are too tired to pick up or are too slow to get to.

About five weeks went by since the attack and when you last saw The Nightwatcher. Your wound had healed up fine with no complications, so there was no reason to tell Casey about anything that required Raph’s presence to fix.

Aside from this, you’ve been holding up fine.

You had the strength to go to Monday’s classes, and once your 1-2:15 pm class was done, you had the rest of the day to yourself and didn't have classes until Wednesday. You and Jade took this opportunity and had all of that Tuesday in between to hang out and grab a bite at a nearby Asian Fusion restaurant to finish off the day. Aside from not walking anywhere deserted or empty such as alleys or quiet towns far from the city, you felt perfectly safe walking around on your own. Raphael was right about the Purple Dragons moving on from you to someone else because, in the days that followed, you heard word on campus that they had mugged an older couple.

Other than that, you’ve been untouched. However, you know to not let your guard down, and to really watch what you say to some New Yorkers.

And now, five weeks later, here you are. In your room upset still about your camera.

You wondered when Raphael would grace his presence again. You were hung up on the fact that he said he was going to try to get it fixed, and were confident that you would see him again.

You just didn’t know how long it would take.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“‘Ey, Don!” Raph’s voice made Donny jolt from surprise and halt his clock in for his shift as tech support.

“What’s up, Raph?” Donnie absolutely hated when that happened. He especially hated when Mikey would creep up on him and scare him on purpose, he was the easiest to scare out of the four. However, he wouldn’t dare confront his older brother about it.

Raph smirked, “Nuthin’ much, sorry I scared ya.” He looked down at his younger brother sitting tensely in his worn-out office chair.

Donnie spun around in his chair, “It’s cool, do you need something?” the spinning element of his chair is part of the reason Donatello loved it in the first place. He banned Mikey from sitting in it because of this very reason. He just wouldn’t stop spinning, until one day, Mikey spun so much that he winded up flying out of Donnie’s chair and sprained his ankle.

“Nah, just wonderin’ if you eva finished fixin’ that camera.”

Donnie placed his feet on the ground and abruptly stopped his spinning. “I did, actually. Thanks, it got rid of my boredom.” Getting up from his chair, he walked toward the large table that was for his various trinkets and gadgets. Some were completed, and some were left unfinished. He picks up the polaroid camera that he spent in his free time fixing for Raphael. He didn’t ask questions about why he needed it fixed, he just saw an opportunity to put his mind to work and took it.

---

“Can you fix dis?” Raphael’s amber-colored eyes stared at Donnie’s brown ones through his magnifying goggles.

Donnie looked at the broken item in Raph’s hands and couldn’t quite comprehend what it was. “And what exactly is ‘dis,’ Raph?” He mimicked his brother’s accent, earning an eye roll from him.

“A camera, or more like what's left of it. I don’ know, just thought it’d give ya sumthin’ ta do.”

“Something to do…”

Raph places the remnants of the girl's camera on Donnie's table in his lab, as he backs away to let his younger brother take a look at it.

“...Give me three weeks max.”

---

“Thanks, lil bro.” Raph nudges Donnie’s head and picks up the camera, admiring his intelligent brother’s work. He notices a tiny slot on the left side, and that’s when Donnie clears his throat to get his attention.

“Before you take it, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

Donatello reaches into a nearby drawer and takes out a very, very tiny black card.

“I know whose camera you brought back.”

Donatello is smart. There isn’t a dumb bone in his mutant turtle body.

When it came to things that weren’t about science or math, he wasn’t as smart, but still was.

He was slightly clueless sometimes, yet other times could find small inconsistencies in what people said like he was a DA during trial.

That’s why Donatello was such a strong member of the team.

With that being said, he had a hunch about this.

---

Donatello wasn’t one to be nosy like Michaelangelo. So, when Raphael brought a random broken camera home and asked him to fix it, he brushed any skepticism aside and tended to the task at hand.

However, one night as he was still getting familiar with all the parts he had and some were missing, he noticed the tiny slot on the left that was still able to pop in and out.

And by pressing it, out popped the micro SD card inside. The more surprising part was that it was still intact.

It might’ve been a bit extreme on Donnie’s part, but he quickly turned on his computer and put it in a holder to insert into his PC.

He prayed to whatever higher up that there wasn’t anything invasive or…rated R on it.

He clicked through the many folders on his personal computer until he found the one he was looking for in his recent.

Taking a deep breath, he clicked on the newest folder and waited for it to load onto his computer. Donnie watched as an array of different tiny squares scattered across his screen, and he picked the first one to easily navigate through the others without missing any.

Donatello seemed to remember this face, it was of Casey and April's neighbor, Y/n.

‘This is the girl Casey and April know, is it not?’ He pondered. Donatello remembered a few times he and his brothers would have to go upstairs to hide so they wouldn’t reveal themselves to their friend's neighbor. Donatello was able to get a good look at her at times, and there was no doubt that she was the owner of the camera Raph found.

He clicked through and landed on a clear shot of her, as she stood next to someone Donnie could think of as being her friend. Donnie studied the photo. The background looked like someone's bedroom, and they both put peace signs up at the camera. Y/n’s e/c eyes seemed to shine from the flash, and they were staring back at him.

After going through a few other photos, Donnie stopped and took the SD card out of his computer.

He enjoyed this. Donatello found it interesting what humans did and what their life was like. To be fair, he and his brother's first taste of what the human world was like was seeing Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” on a big screen in Times Square through a sewage gate at around 8 years old. He could never forget that day, and although he’s grown now and constantly sees how humans talk and interact through TV and patrol (before Leo left for training,) he still enjoys seeing what their lives are like and how they live on the surface. It comes bittersweet, though, he can witness it, but never be able to experience it for himself. And this, dear readers, was the downside of Donatello’s continuous curiosity.

---

“How’d you get her camera?” Donny asked a visibly confused Raphael.

“Didn’t know it was ‘ers. Casey found it and gave it ‘ta me to give to you; thought you would be able ‘ta fix it.” Lie.

What else could Raph say?

‘Oh yeah found it while me and Casey were out beating up Purple Dragons, we saved her, and I stitched her up. But don’t worry, she doesn’t know who I am because I wore my Nightwatcher suit and got her to close her eyes while I did it.’ Yeah, like that would fly with Donny. He cannot let any of his brothers figure out he’s the Nightwatcher. The fact that he’s already defying Splinter’s orders to not fight while Leo’s gone is bad enough. Not only that, but he revealed a part of himself to a complete stranger.

“From what you gave me in the beginning, it seemed like it was smashed forcefully. I mean, there’s no way she may have dropped it.” Ah. Raph was understanding where Donnie was going with this. The purple-banded turtle didn’t have anything to go off of conspiracy-wise due to lack of evidence, but he still had a funny feeling that it wasn’t Y/n who broke it.

“Do you know where Casey found it?”

“On the street, near an alley somewhere.” Raph really felt like he was being interrogated.

“An alley? Why would it be there? Instead of dumping it, she probably would want it to be fixed, righ-” “Look, Don. I don’t know.” Donatello was a little too smart for his brother's liking. Either that or he’s a terrible liar. Or both.

Donatello walks back over and takes a seat in his chair. He successfully clocks in and waits for someone to call.

“Tell Casey to check up on Y/n, because who else resides in an alley?”

Raphael rolls his eyes for what seemed like the 367th time at his brother.

“Tha bad guys, Don.”

“Exactly. Now, shoo.” Donnie motions for Raph to get out of his lab so he can work in peace, much like how he always has to kick Mikey out while he’s on the clock. Getting the hint, Raph thanks his sibling again before shutting the door behind him.

“How about I check up on ‘er instead, Don?” Raph suggests to himself.

---

Now, Raphael was not one to forcefully insert himself into anyone’s life. I mean, how could he, anyway? He’s the complete opposite of Mikey. He remembered a few years back when Mikey found someone’s cat on the roof and went to return it, only to be called a “mutant freak” by the owner. He’d rather save himself the heartbreak of not being accepted by people and keep it pushing. April and Casey accepted him, that’s all that mattered.

He was though, once accepted and was involved with a girl before Leo had left: Sabrina.

Sabrina had been Raphael’s first crush. He didn’t know what to do around her. Sabrina’s friendship was a total mistake, remember earlier when it was mentioned that Mikey inserts himself in others' lives and not Raph? Yeah, this happened here.

All 4 brothers had rescued a girl from being robbed by the PDs, and Mikey had gotten excited because he noticed that her school bag had a pin from his favorite show. He stepped out of the shadows on accident but didn’t get screaming or fainting in return. Instead, they had a 10-minute conversation geeking out about the show until Leonardo put a stop to it. Unknowingly, they had befriended a short, brunette wavy-haired 18-year-old girl.

From then on, Sabrina had been a good friend of theirs, and somehow found a way to Raphael’s heart without even trying.

It was expected mostly from Donnie, because (although he begs them not to bring it up anymore,) he was the first one who had feelings for the only human girl they had met prior to Sabrina: April. Although Donnie got over it with time, it was also because he knew he had no chance once Casey came along.

Raph wasn’t sure why he fell for Sabrina. She was a mix between Donnie and Mikey- nerdy, crazy, you name it, but in a good way. Her clear, mocha skin and hourglass figure are something that especially caught him, as well as her forest-green eyes. She was the complete opposite of Raph, which is probably what attracted him to her in the first place. He wasn’t one to spill his feelings, so he dropped subtle hints here and there. He was a flirt, and that was what enticed Sabrina.

They became close, closer than he’d ever imagined.

He would come by almost every night, and they would talk for hours until she fell asleep. One night though, Sabrina had found the courage to flirt back, and this was the night of Raphael’s first kiss. He found that he loved it, and he might’ve even maybe loved her.

This lasted for about a year and a half until she packed up and went to college, never to come back since she was moving as well. It wasn’t like Sabrina broke his heart or anything, she just was moving on in her life, and he wouldn’t be a part of it. It became reality when her number wasn’t working, as she got a new one. There was no way to contact her or rekindle anything they had. It was a hard pill to swallow for him but Raphael eventually got over it. So, he doesn’t bring it up. It’s simply a memory of what once was.

---

Raphael seemed to like the idea of coming to see you.

He of course wasn’t comfortable with revealing himself to you, but at the same time, he wondered what you would think about him.

You already knew that he has 3 fingers, so fuck it. Raphael didn’t like change, but he also didn’t like platonic routines. He needed something to spice up his life. After all, he has so many years to live, why not live it up and do new things?

So, he decided on paying you a visit. Besides, your camera had to be returned.

Making his way to his room, Raph takes his duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder. Without being noticed by Splinter or his baby brother, he leaves the lair and opens the makeshift garage that held his bike. It was right next to Mikey’s Cowabunga Carl van, how it usually is.

Raph changes into his nighttime persona and places his helmet on as the final touch. Finally.

Revving up his bike, the red-clad turtle decides to take a spin around the city as the sun sets before stopping by at your house.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a chilly Thursday evening, and you were cooped up in your studio apartment. After Skyping your mom to say hello and catch up, you decided to get started on some dinner. You scattered through your fridge to find something good to make, but nothing good. You were leaning toward a homecooked meal rather than something frozen.

After thinking of recipes to make, you were reminded of something that Jade’s mom made one time you came over for dinner. Although you never asked for the recipe, you could very clearly remember how it tasted with the different spices and herbs. Not only that, but you could put your slow cooker to use and have the possibility of making leftovers.

You gathered the food items and ingredients you thought you needed: Rice, an array of spices and seasonings, chicken breasts, and…

Ah.

You were out of asparagus.

Jade’s mom had pan-seared them with some minced garlic, butter, and pepper. They tasted heavenly. Even Jade- who’s known to be picky when it comes to vegetables, loved the way they tasted.

No biggie, the local grocery store was no longer than a 5-minute walk. The sun was still setting, being that it was around 7 pm. Getting on a pair of sneakers and a sweater, you left your home and toward the elevator that took you down to the lobby.

You walked the streets of New York. The air was brisk, with the occasional gust of wind tickling your skin. You passed countless people, none that you’ve ever seen before. The random drug dealers on the corner, small stand-owners that were selling trinkets or food to get by, homeless men and women asking for money, hookers that stood on the corner and tried to swoon men into buying their services, and so on.

New York City, you either love it, or you hate it. There is no in-between.

You just so happened to love it.

Despite the crime and terrible things that may happen, NYC is truly a beautiful place, a melting pot of different cultures, and people that come from all walks of life.

Making your way across the street when the light changed, you’re introduced to the small grocery store you’re very familiar with going to. The gorgeous array of fresh fruits and veggies, the deli meats that were cut to perfection, it was a nice staple in the area you were in. It also just so happened to be the closest to you.

You grabbed a plastic baggie and ripped it from the other small ones attached to the rack, and walked past the few people standing in front of the fresh veggie section. You looked toward the asparagus next to the crowns of broccoli and picked a bundle that looked the most vibrant in green.

Placing it in your baggie and tying a knot to close it, you walk toward the register to pay. A mere $2.51, is not bad at all! You hand the cashier a $5 bill after he puts it in a yellow bag for you to carry. You tell him to keep the receipt. Nodding, you’re handed your change and put it in your pocket, “Have a good evening.”

The young man smiles at you, “You do the same.”

Exiting the store, you start on your way home. The sun is getting to the point where it’ll be replaced by the moon, and the nighttime will officially be here.

“Stella, no.” For what seemed like the 30th time in the span of a few minutes while you prepared the chicken, Stella was clawing at your sweats because she was interested in eating whatever you were making.

You were pretty excited about a nice calm dinner tonight, you were putting the chicken in the slow cooker with the rice and decided to wait until that was done to make the asparagus. It shouldn’t take long, anyway.

While you waited, you connected your phone to the speaker in your room and allowed it to play loud enough to hear in the living area with the TV. During the wait, you caught up on some of your studies. It was mostly Physics. There was an exam coming up in less than two weeks, and you wanted to be more than prepared to take it. You seemed to breeze right through it, and before you knew it, about forty-five minutes went by.

You were sitting on the couch petting Stella with one hand and writing with the other until you heard a knock on your window that came from the bedroom. It sounded strikingly similar to the one you heard the last time you saw Raph. Despite knowing nothing about him, you felt an excitement bubble inside you, and anxiety beginning to form simultaneously. You hoped it was Raphael because it meant your camera might be fixed. Not only that, but this was your chance to convince him to stay awhile and chat.

Placing your Physics textbook on the coffee table, you walked briskly to your window to investigate the sound.

Looking at the window, you couldn’t help but smile at what you saw.

It was Raphael, in his full metal armor, Camera in hand.

You unlocked the window and opened it up, the gust of cool night wind entering your bedroom. It was finally nighttime, and the New York City lights replaced the sun in the darkness.

“Raph?” You were confused as to why he didn’t just knock on your door. It was extremely odd that he came through the fire escape, but after thinking about it for a moment, you would probably feel giddy and anxious if The Nightwatcher passed by you in your own apartment building.

“I uh…I have sumthin’ for ya.” His muffled voice through his helmet states. You noticed the slight stuttering with his words, almost as if he was nervous to be in your presence.

“You actually fixed it?” Taking it from his hands, you look all around your camera. It’s just like how you remembered it, old but still fully functional.

“Nah, not me. I got one of my bros to fix it.” You noticed a sense of pride in his tone, almost as if he was proud of his own brother's work.

“Tell them to thank you for me, seriously. This camera…means a lot to me.” Popping open the little slot on the side, you see the memory card there, and you pop it back in place, relief cascading over your entire body. A few weeks in you thought you had misplaced your SD card, but remembered that you left it inside the camera that day. Up until now, you had assumed your memories had been wiped, there was a slim chance the micro SD card would be preserved after what happened. But, it did.

A complete stranger had gone out of their way to fix your beloved device with no questions asked. No favor in return expected.

Without second-guessing it, you hugged Raph. Your arms going around his waist instead of his neck. You felt something rock hard on his back that felt abnormal.

It was possible that his suit could have a storage compartment back there. But at the same time, it didn’t make sense on why he would have one in the first place.

You immediately felt him tense up, and his arms didn’t wrap around you as yours did him. However, you didn’t expect them to. You were just happy someone took the time to help you.

You pull away after a few moments, and Raph clears his throat.

“How are ya holdin’ up?” He asks. It’s hard to tell what his facial expressions are because you can’t see his face through his helmet, but his tone seemed to match what his face might show.

You were about to answer until suddenly a particularly colder gust of wind shoots through the window, and you shiver in response.

“Would you want to come inside, Raphael?”

You couldn’t believe Raph was in your apartment. He still kept his suit on despite now being indoors, but you knew he wouldn’t take it off from your interaction last time you suggested it. He seemed uneasy at first, but after some persuasion with dinner, he complied. You allowed Raph to make himself comfortable, and he found your couch extremely comfortable. It looked as though Stella found him comfortable because she immediately jumped on his lap once he sat down.

The chicken and rice were finished, and while you made the asparagus in the kitchen, you couldn’t help but laugh at how Raph interacted with Stella on the couch. It was cute. Raphael seemed to like cats because he knew just the right spots to scratch that made Stella purr and meow with glee. You wondered if he had any pets of his own.

You and Raphael made small talk while you were finishing up cooking the last part of the meal, and it was pleasant. You informed him that your wound was healing up fine, and you were getting back to moving normally slowly but surely. You answered all his questions about cleaning it and dressing it with many confident “yes’s.” It felt like Raph appreciated you taking care of your own wound, and you lifted up your sweatshirt to show him the progress. Lifting it down, you thanked him again for patching you up, and for getting your camera fixed.

“What’s it mean to ya?” He asked. You continued plating the food for both of you and pondered.

“Well,” You grabbed a portion of asparagus with a pair of tongs to put on both plates. “My mom got it for me. I moved here alone for college, and it was a good luck gift.”

Finishing, made your way to the couch. Sitting down beside Raph, you handed a plate to him. “Thanks,” he muttered.

“U-Um, do you want me to like, turn around?” You realized eating required Raph to lift his helmet, and he seemed to realize that too.

“Nah, that’d be weird. You shouldn’t be able to see much anyway.” He was right. It was dark outside, and that meant the only source of light you would get is from the TV that was on in your living space in front of you both.

Raphael took a gamble and assumed you wouldn’t see.

Which you didn’t.

It surely wasn’t ideal for him, having to lift it to take a bite of his food; nonetheless, he enjoyed each time he did. You both sat beside each other on your couch (slightly awkwardly,) while the noise from the TV echoed through your apartment.

Despite the distraction of the TV, you had decided to spike up another conversation with Raphael. He winded up complementing your cooking, and you couldn’t help but smile at his words.

You firstly started by asking where he learned to fight. You couldn’t forget the type of fighting style he had, but couldn’t put your finger on the name of it. He explained that he was raised by his Japanese father that taught him ninjitsu, which he practiced in his free time (this was quite often, he mentions.) Not only that, but you also learned that he followed Bushido, which is something you didn’t expect. It seemed hard for him to open up, but at the same time, that’s all Raphael wanted to do sometimes. He winded up going on a slight tangent about his fighting skills, and he told you he had polished them to be damn near perfect. You had heard pride seer through his words and his tone.

The conversation seemed to bounce between him and you.

He wondered why you chose a college in NYC.

“Why not, you know? It’s a beautiful city with so many opportunities.” To this, he agreed.

You explained your current living situation, and how you managed to stay here and go to college at the same time. He seemed to admire the fact that you had a job and went to school. He asked you about your job, and you pointed out being a waitress at a local diner.

You asked Raph some more questions about his life, like if he went to college or anything. He explained he didn’t go to any real school but learned at home. He wasn’t planning on going to college.

How could he, anyway?

For now, his duty as a vigilante was what he was focused on.

“Someone has ‘ta keep the streets safe. These lousy cops sure ain’t,” He stated. Raphael seemed to be extremely passionate about what he did and why. Judging from his accent, he sounded like he was from Brooklyn. His accent was one you’ve heard plenty of times off the street, but he was one in particular that you enjoyed hearing. He winded up telling you why exactly he became The Nightwatcher. Not only was it to keep the city safe, but it was because of that day he heard about the Purple Dragons violating and killing a woman. Raphael’s tone was uneasy since the thought of it made him physically ill. He couldn’t believe some people existed who did such things, but this world isn’t rainbows and butterflies, he explained.

You didn’t want to pry, but you wanted to know some more about his life. Other than being a vigilante, what else was there for Raphael? There was something about Raphael that made you extremely curious.

“You mentioned brothers once, right?” You scrape your plate, gathering the scattered pieces of rice for one last delightful bite.

“Yeah, I got three.” He was able to come clean about his family and siblings. He mentioned that one of them is an I.T tech support online, the other was a host for kids' parties, and another was in a different country since last year, and some change. He seemed to like talking about his father and two brothers that were currently at home but had some sort of animosity against the one who was abroad from the way he described him.

He went (pretty vaguely) on about how they lived. Other than all learning ninjitsu and how they were all the same age (you learned he was the same age as you,) and just minutes apart, you had no clue which part of NYC he or his brothers resided in. You had assumed he was born in NYC because his accent was a dead giveaway of where he was from and where he lived. Not only that, but you didn’t know how he knew Casey.

“Ah, he’s a family friend.” Was all he said. It seemed he and Casey were pretty close, but he provided no backstory on how they met. He went into slight detail about knowing April before Casey, and she eventually brought Casey around to meet him and his brothers.

You told him about your small friend group, too. When it only consisted of your good friend Jade. Because you were still fairly new and only just close to completing your first year in college, you were still low in the friend department. You told him briefly about how you befriended Casey and April, and you went to thinking. You thought about a potential friendship between you and Raph. You already knew the same people, and Raphael saw firsthand how Casey cared about you as if he was your older brother. So, you were able to be trusted somewhat.

Raphael wasn’t about to risk it all and reveal himself to you with just over a small ounce of trust.

He couldn’t be selfish to his family and potentially put them in danger. But, he knew deep down Mikey and Donatello and even Splinter would want someone new to talk to. Someone trustworthy like April and Casey yet came from a different walk of life than they had. God knows when Leo is coming back, anyway.

So, here you were.

---

“Here I am!” The loudmouth mutant states as he skillfully flips from the stairs and onto the living room couch. The orange-banded turtle had just gotten back from another day of getting beat by kids, but his tips for the day are what put him in such a good mood in addition to the other news.

Today was the day, Leonardo was coming back.

“Hey, Mikey.” Donny put his hand out like he usually does when his younger brother gets home from work, and got a wad of cash in his hand as a response.

“Probably be the last of it, Leo’s coming back!” Mikey was extremely hyper about today. It had been a full year since Leonardo went away for training, and he was finally coming home.

Although Raphael was still upset about Leo leaving from the beginning, he was also slightly excited and relieved his older brother was coming back. Crime wasn’t taking a break just because Leo did, and the streets were getting worse.

“I am also happy Leonardo will be returning, Michelangelo.” Splinter came from the shadow of his room, gathering with his 3 sons in the living room. Leo should be home in the next hour or two, so they all sat in anticipation ready.

There had been a sound from one of the pipes outside the lair, indicating someone was entering.

Mikey couldn’t seem to contain his excitement, and he stood right in front of the wall that would soon reveal his oldest brother.

Only, it wasn’t Leo.

It was April and Casey. April held a slightly worn-out envelope that was labeled with a South American stamp.

“We got mail from Leonardo again, I thought he was coming today?” Casey asked, April handed the envelope over to their rat sensei, and he tore the top open with his nail.

“What’s it say, Masta Splintah?” Raphael asked, getting restless.

“Leonardo has decided to continue his training beyond the time I originally sent him for.” Mikey’s seemingly permanent smile faltered for the first time today, and he slouched on the couch.

Raphael looked toward Mikey, sulking now. Donnie had a disappointing look on his face, and Master Splinter sighed deeply at the news.

Leonardo had become so immersed in his training, that he forgot to take into consideration what his family thought.

“Great. Just great. Now we havta sit here without Fearless for God knows how long now!” Raph exclaimed. He hated seeing his little brother so upset. Mikey was the most excited to see Leo, and he didn’t show. Raph was especially angry because, despite Leo’s training period ending and him not showing, it still meant they had to refrain from fighting on the surface. Which also meant crime would continue to plague the city.

‘Fuck. That.’ Raph thought. He was on the brink of defying Splinter’s orders, but not yet. Raphael knew he would be the first to crack, he was never one to follow rules very well, anyway. He just didn’t know when.

---

As the night went on, you and Raph caught a glimpse into each other's lives. He seemed to like listening to you speak, and vice versa. You noticed that Raph would go on tangents and sometimes it was hard to follow, but he always went back full circle to his first point. He just had a lot to say, and this was the first time in a long time that someone was listening.

You realized you had spent 2 whole hours together in your apartment. When you and he were finished eating, you got up and motioned for him to give you his plate so you could wash it. Instead, he gets up and takes yours and insists he washes them since “It’s only right, ya fed me.” To which you complied and sat back down on the couch.

Whilst drying the dishes, the police chatter suddenly came on Raph’s radio. There was a robbery occurring at a nearby drugstore.

“How’d you get that?” You asked, Raphael, stretched his limbs slightly as if he was getting ready for something.

“I have my ways Y/n. I like ta beat ‘em to tha punch.”

“So…you’re leaving?” You asked. He nodded his head, almost reluctantly

“Thanks, fa dinna,’ I haven’t had sumthin’ that good in a while.” Raph complimented your cooking once again, and you blushed at the fact that he appreciated your amateur cooking skills.

“It’s the least I could do. After all, you help so many people every night in this city, and you went out of your way and helped me.” You watched as he walked towards the window of your bedroom from where he came in earlier, and you frowned.

“Wait, Raph.” The suited man stopped in his tracks and turned around to face you.

“I know you came back to return my camera but, when will I see you again?” You looked at his visor and hoped that you were staring directly at his eyes. Raphael wondered, too.

He wasn’t able to come around during the day, only at night. Besides, he usually caught up on sleep during the day, anyway.

You fiddled with your fingers nervously while asking your next question before he could respond to the first one. “And I was thinking…we could be friends?”

“Friends, huh?” Raphael didn’t have any friends other than Casey and April. Sure, there was Sabrina, but she was no longer in his life. He pondered about it for a minute.

“I’m determined to learn more about you. There has to be more to you than just The Nightwatcher.”

You didn’t realize it.

You didn't realize that what you just said made Raphael’s heart skip a beat.

It’s funny, he’s only known you for a little bit, and vice versa. Yet, you have this persistence to get to know him. The real Raph.

“I’ll swing by sometime, promise.” With that, he waved you goodbye and uttered “Have a good night.” To which you replied that he does the same, as well as to be safe out there.

Opening your window and standing on the fire escape, he let himself out.

As you closed the window and sat on your bed, you were confused as to what his response meant.

Were you friends, were you not?

He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.

However, he did promise he would come by again, and he emphasized the word ‘promise.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After jumping up onto the roof, Raphael took his helmet off for some fresh air, and a moment before setting out to find the crime as he sighed.

Despite not knowing his face, you trusted him enough to let him in and sit in your apartment, as well as know where you lived. He could’ve been one of those sleazy guys he and his brothers used to protect women from on patrol, but he wasn’t. You had some type of trust.

He felt a funny feeling brew inside him, where the all-too-familiar imaginary butterflies flew around his midsection.

He thought back to what you said before he left.

“There has to be more to you than just The Nightwatcher.”

Putting his helmet back on, he jumped from rooftop to rooftop.

As he made his presence known on the street beside a drugstore where the alleged crime was taking place and tripped the thief to stop him, Raphael concluded that he wanted to get to know you more than he already did.

What your likes and dislikes were, your little quirks, your opinion on certain viewpoints, and your thought process.

And he couldn't wait to do just that.

In contrast, you were excited for him to share the same.

PREVIOUS CHAPTER: HERE

NEXT CHAPTER: HERE

#tmnt 2007 #bayverse tmnt #donatello #leonardo #raphael #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2012 #tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2016 #tmnt fanfiction #tmnt fanfics #raph x reader #raphael x reader #tmnt x reader

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lorirwritesfanfic · 1 year

Text

Vivid Memories

Book: The Royal Romance/Heir Pairing: Liam Rys x MC (Jade) Rating: T Word count: 1198 Reading time: ~5min Summary: Liam and Jade go out to dance and the night will bring back a fond memory to him. Based on the prompt: @kingliamappreciationweek day five: Friendships/Relationships/AU

Author’s note:

Jade Bourbon is a creation of this author. The others characters are owned by Pixelberry Studios;

The dates and places mentioned in this fic are part of a timeline I came up with to guide myself as I write Liam and Jade's story. Please do not assume this is canon.

Once again, thank you @lizzybeth1986 and @sazanes for hosting King Liam Appreciation Week ❤

Paris, July 2018

City lights illuminated the royal motorcade as Liam gazed out the window and toyed with Jade's wedding band while holding her hand. The last time he was here, he kept wondering if he would come back with her again to have another late night stroll. He wondered if he'd ever be as in love as he was then and if things didn't work out, he'd be happy to back. Every stone in the streets, every tree, every bush, every lock attached to the Pont Des Arts railing, even the waters of the Seine were their witnesses. Every part of city knew how he felt that night. Paris would never be the same to him again.

Fortunately, Paris would know now how much their love had grown and how happy they were to spend the last days of their honeymoon.

"We're here!" Jade cheered as the car rolled to a stop in front of a crowded nightclub.

Liam's forehead creased as he glanced outside. "Is this place, Lucas?"

"Yes, sir," the driver replied.

"Of course it is! There are several pictures of The Weeknd when he was was here yesterday!"

"I don't follow..." The king's brows furrowed in confusion. "How is the weekend a person?"

"It's an artistic name, honey. He's an R&B and Soul singer."

"Oh... Is he good?"

"He is. But do you mind waiting until later for us to expand your knowledge on 2010's music? We're here for a very specific reason."

"As you wish, my love."

With a small signal to his guards, the car door opened and Liam climbed out, extending his hand to Jade so she could do the same. Before the paparazzi could recognize the couple, the King's guard ushered them into the nightclub.

A strange scent reached his nose as he found himself in a dimly lit hallway. Smoke, magenta lights, loud EDM music, murmurs and moans in delight as strangers eagerly explored one another's bodies in darker corners surrounded him. Once in a while, Liam made an effort to join his friends in celebrations at nightclubs and dive bars, but he couldn't say he was very fond of places like this.

Just then, Jade smiled at him, pulling him by the hand. She probably didn't know, but that small gesture meant so much to him.

New York, September 2017

When the cab pulled to a stop before the Kismet, Jade thanked the driver and paid for the ride. Liam's brows furrowed. Perhaps he should've paid the cab. It was the least he could've done after she went through all the trouble of arranging a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty in the middle of the night. Yet, all her actions were so fast paced he could barely keep up. Did all New Yorkers seem to be constantly in a hurry or was it just the ones he had crossed paths with?

Before he knew, they were standing on the sidewalk to walk back into the nightclub. It was a pity they had to return. She was right about that place being the most exclusive nightclub, given the long line still formed outside. But a noisy and crowded nightclub was the last place he wanted to be.

For a moment, he wished he hadn't answered his phone when Drake called to ask where he was. He wished he could've taken Maxwell's suggestion to meet them later at the hotel. Why didn't he seize the opportunity and suggested taking a walk around the city with her? He could've seen the city through her eyes, maybe he could've taken her back home. He just met this enigmatic woman and it was no exaggeration to say he'd gladly spent the rest of the trip getting to know her.

A soft and warm hand then reached for his, bringing him back to reality. As their eyes met, she smiled softly. "Come on! I'm in the mood to dance now."

Was she this excited earlier? Perhaps she was, but he didn't notice it while he watched his friends go straight to the dancefloor to be sure they were having fun.

While Jade guided him back inside, he was surprised they didn't bump into anyone on the way, given how dark the entryway was. As the music grew louder, pink lights reflected on her hair and leather jacket. To follow her, even in a dark hallway, was exhilarating. Somehow, he had this feeling that something good was waiting waiting around the corner.

When they finally reached the dancefloor, the music changed to a pop song not entirely unfamiliar to him.

"Oh, I love this song!" Jade beamed at him and immediately pulled him closer, wrapping her arms around his neck as she sang along.

In any other situation, he would've found a way to politely keep a respectful distance between them. After all, they barely knew each other. Yet, he just didn't. Ever since they kissed on the boat, he yearned to be closer to her, to know the smell of her hair, to figure out the base notes of her perfume, to feel how soft her lips were when they get swollen after searing kisses.

His body moved along with hers, following the upbeat rhythm of the song. As he placed a hand on her waist, she turned away, pressed her back against his chest and kept dancing. Anything similar to this in Cordonia could've cause a huge scandal. But here, it didn't matter if she took the lead, if their steps weren't perfectly choreographed, if she was way too close than his security detail would allow any stranger to be. He was free to do as he pleased. And right now, nothing was more pleasant than this.

As his hand slowly roamed across her stomach to keep her closer, a part of him still wondered if he wasn't taking advantage of the situation. The last thing he wanted was to disrespect her limits.

"Is this okay?" He murmured in her ear.

Smiling, she looked back at him, placed her hand over his, intertwining their fingers.

"It's more than okay."

With that, his shoulders relaxed. Somehow, following his own whims had brought him more joy than any other moment he followed his friends suggestions. Perhaps, it wouldn't be so bad to be a little reckless for one night.

Paris, July 2018

The dark and crowded hallway, once again, was no match to Jade's eagerness to dance. A mix of joy and pride rose inside his chest. To see his wife happy was always a pleasure, but to know he made her happy was something else entirely.

As soon as they stepped into the dancefloor, the song changed to Into You. Her smile grew wider.

"Oh, this song!"

"The song of our very first dance at Kismet," he added.

Jade's eyes softened as she looked back at him and pulled him into a tight hug. "You remembered..."

"I do. Quite vividly, I must say," he murmured.

"Mmmm... How vividly are we talking about?" She asked with a mischievous smile.

His arms encircled her waist as they started to dance. "Enough to cause a scandal," he whispered. "Perhaps this is something we can discuss further at our hotel suite?"

"I'll hold you to that, my king."

#choices fanfic #the royal romance #liam rys #liam x mc #kingliamappreciationweek #lorirwritesfanfic #lorircreates

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hrhmiat · 2 months

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"Have you ever been in one of these?" he asked. But Michael looked so sweet standing there with his hand out all expectantly, and his eyes so kind, like, come on. It's just a cheesy carriage ride. What could happen? And it turned out I was wrong. The bench was not that big.

And I'm not that jaded of a New Yorker. Michael and I were sitting calmly beside each other on that bench, Not Kissing, and the next... we were in each other's arms. Kissing. Like two people who had never kissed before. Or, rather like two people who used to kiss a lot, and really liked it, and then had been deprived of kissing each other for a very long time. And then, suddenly, they were reintroduced to kissing and remembered they liked it. Quite a bit. YES. WE KISSED FOR TWENTY BLOCKS. IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. IN AN OLD-TIMEY HORSE CARRIAGE!

#sorta out of context #my favorite lines #the princess diaries #mia thermopolis #michael moscovitz #princess diaries #books #old-timey horse carriage #book 10 #forever princess #twenty something blocks #I'm not sorry and I'll wait #meg cabot

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rnbria · 1 year

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Reflective of my interests at the time.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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By: The Quillette Editorial Board

Published: Dec 23, 2023

The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was founded in 1971 with a mission to fight poverty and racial discrimination. Its early litigation campaigns, which targeted the Ku Klux Klan and other overtly racist organizations, met with success, and the group soon came to be seen as an authoritative source in regard to right-wing extremism more generally.

Another form of expertise the organization developed was in the area of marketing—especially when the market in question consisted of deep-pocketed urban liberals. As former SPLC staffer Bob Moser reported in a 2019 New Yorker article, the group has consistently taken on attention-grabbing urgent-seeming causes that its leaders knew could be leveraged as a means to gain publicity and—more importantly—donations. It’s no coincidence that the SPLC’s co-founder and long-time fundraising guru, Morris Dees, had previously operated a direct-mail business that sold cookbooks and tchotchkes. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same,” Dees told a journalist in 1988.

Dees’ big fundraising break at the SPLC came when he got access to the direct-mail list from the 1972 presidential campaign of Democrat George McGovern. The SPLC co-founder went on to maximize the SPLC’s revenues through what would now be known as targeted methods. According to one former legal colleague, for instance, Dees rarely used his middle name—Seligman—in SPLC mailings, except when it came to “Jewish zip codes.”

Thanks to Dees’ slick marketing expertise, the SPLC was eventually taking in more money than it paid out in operational expenses. (As of October 2022, its endowment fund was valued at almost US$640 million.) But over time, his hard-sell tactics began to alienate co-workers, as there was an obvious disconnect between the real class-based problems they observed in society and the fixations of the naïve northern donors whose wallets Dees was seeking to pry open.

“I felt that [Dees] was on the Klan kick because it was such an easy target—easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on,” former SPLC attorney Deborah Ellis told Progressive writer John Egerton. “The Klan is no longer one of the South’s biggest problems—not because racism has gone away, but because the racists simply can’t get away with terrorism any more.”

On March 14, 2019, Dees—by now 82 years old, but still listed as the SPLC’s chief trial lawyer—was fired amid widespread rumors that he’d been the subject of internal sexual-harassment accusations. His affiliation was scrubbed from the group’s web site; and the organization’s president, Richard Cohen, cryptically (but damningly) declared that, “when one of our own fails to meet [SPLC] standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.” (Less than two weeks later, Cohen himself left the organization, casting his resignation as part of a transition “to a new generation of leaders.”)

In describing his tenure at the SPLC during the early 2000s, Moser argued that the very structure of the organization betrayed its hypocrisy: Here was an entity dedicated to social justice (as we would now call it), yet which was run by an extremely well-paid, almost exclusively white, corps of lawyers, administrators, and fund-raisers who ruled over a mixed-race corps of junior staff. As far back as the 1980s, Dees was openly admitting that he saw the fight against poverty as passé, and admitted that the “P” in SPLC was an anachronism. Jaded staff began ruefully referring to their own flashy headquarters as the “Poverty Palace.”

Dees and Cohen may have left the Poverty Palace, but the SPLC’s tendency to betray its founding principles clearly remains a problem, as illustrated by a new SPLC report released under the auspices of what the group dubs “Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives.” (This verbal clunker seems to have been reverse-engineered in order to yield the acronym, “CAPTAIN.”)

The report purports to demonstrate “the perils of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” and “anti-trans narratives and extremism.” Much like the dramatically worded hard-sell direct-mail campaigns that the SPLC started up under Dees, it’s marketed as a matter of life and death: According to the deputy director of research for the SPLC’s “Intelligence Project,” the “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” uncovered by the SPLC has “real-life, often life-threatening consequences for trans and non-binary people.”

At this point, it should be stressed that there is certainly nothing wrong with the SPLC—or anyone else—campaigning for the legitimate rights of people who are transgender. Such a campaign would be entirely in keeping with the SPLC’s original liberal ethos. Just as no one should be denied, say, an apartment, a marriage license, or the right to vote based on his or her race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation, no trans person should be denied these rights and amenities simply because he or she experiences gender dysphoria.

But the SPLC’s report hardly confines itself to such unassailable liberal principles. The real point of the project, it seems, was to catalogue and denounce public figures who’ve expressed dissent from the most extreme demands of trans-rights activists—specifically, (1) the demand that children and adolescents who present as transgender must instantly be “affirmed” in their dysphoric beliefs, even if such affirmation leads to a life of sterility, surgical disfigurement, drug dependence, and medical complications; and (2) the demand that biological men who self-identify as women must be permitted unfettered access to protected women’s spaces and sports leagues.

The SPLC’s authors seek to cast their ideological enemies as hate-addled reactionaries whose nefarious activities must “be understood as part of the historical legacy of white supremacy and the political aims of the religious right.” And it is absolutely true that some of the organizations they name-check are hard-right, socially conservative outfits that endorse truly transphobic (and homophobic) beliefs.

But many of the supposed transphobes targeted by the report aren’t even conservative—let alone members of the religious right. In a multitude of cases, they’re simply parents, therapists, and activists who argue the obvious fact that human sexual biology doesn’t evanesce into rainbow dust the moment that a child—or middle-aged man—asserts that he or she was “born in the wrong body.”

It’s also interesting to note who gets left out of the SPLC’s analysis. The most influential figures leading the backlash against (what some call) “gender ideology” are women such as author J.K. Rowling and tennis legend Martina Navratilova, both of whom come at the issue from explicitly feminist perspectives. Being successful public figures, neither woman needs a cent from the conservative think tanks that the SPLC presents as being back-office puppet-masters of the alleged anti-trans conspiracy outlined in the CAPTAIN report.

In keeping with the conspiracist motif that runs through the document, the authors have provided spider-web diagrams that set out the connections binding this (apparently) shadowy cabal. In this regard, it seems that Quillette itself served as one of the SPLC’s sources: In a section titled, “Group Dynamics and Division of Labor within the Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network,” the authors footnote “an August 23, 2023 podcast for Quillette,” wherein

it was revealed that [Colin] Wright is in a relationsihp [sic] with journalist Christina Buttons, who is an advisoary [sic] board member of [the Gender Dysphoria Alliance] with Drs. Lisa Littman and Ray Blanchard, an editoral [sic] board member of Springer’s Archives of Sexual Research [a mistaken reference to the Archives of Sexual Behavior] with J. Michael Bailey. Notably, Buttons and Wright are interviewed by host Jonathan Kay. In addition to hosting Quillette’s podcast, Kay serves on FAIR’s board of advisors.

We’ve chosen to highlight this particular (typo-riddled) text from the report not just because of the absurd suggestion that our publication has enlisted in an imaginary “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network,” but also because the above-quoted roll call of supposed gender villains illustrates the intellectual dishonesty that suffuses the whole report.

Let’s go through the references one by one, in the order in which they are presented. The Gender Dysphoria Alliance (GDA) is a group led by people who are themselves transgender, and who are “concerned about the direction that gender medicine and activism has taken.” Are we to imagine that its members are directing transphobia—against themselves? Lisa Littman, formerly of Brown University, is a respected academic who’s published a peer-reviewed analysis of Rapid Onset Gender Disorder. Ray Blanchard is a well-known University of Toronto psychiatrist. The Archives of Sexual Behavior is a peer-reviewed academic journal in sexology. Michael Bailey is a specialist in sexual orientation and gender nonconformity at Northwestern University. Colin Wright is a widely published writer (including at Quillette) with a PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara. (The SPLC’s claim that he is in a relationship with journalist Christina Buttons, who also writes about gender issues, is completely true. But the fact that the group saw fit to report this fact as if it were evidence of sinister machinations says far more about the report’s authors than it does about either Wright or Buttons.) FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, is a classically liberal group led by a Harvard Law School graduate named Monica Harris. Do any of these people or groups sound like extremists?

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The fact that the SPLC is attempting to market its report as a blow against the “anti-LGBTQ+” movement, writ large, is itself quite laughable, since many of the activists who’ve been arguing for a more balanced approach to gender rights are themselves either gay (as with Navratilova and Julie Bindel) or (as with the founders of the GDA) transgender.

Others on the SPLC gender-enemies list are author Abigail Shrier, and therapists Sasha Ayad, and Stella O’Malley. These women openly broadcast their views in best-selling books, as well as mainstream magazines and newspapers. The idea that the SPLC has successfully “exposed” these women through some kind of investigation, as suggested by the title that’s been slapped on the CAPTAIN report, would be ludicrous even if they’d said anything scandalous (which they haven’t).

And what course of future action does the SPLC endorse? For one, it concludes that educators should stigmatize gender-critical views as analogous to “racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.” The report's authors also want academic journals to sniff out groups that “espouse an anti-LGBTQ+ ideology” (as that latter term is speciously defined by the SPLC). And in a final flourish, the group urges reporters to “be aware of the narrative manipulation strategies and the cooptation of scientific credentials and language by anti-trans researchers when sourcing stories about trans experiences.”

With this last point, we get to the real nub: The apparent goal is for this report to be read as a catalogue of people, ideas, and groups that must be shunned. Indeed, the authors explicitly cite the work of one Andrea James, a once-respected arts producer who, as Jesse Singal has documented, now runs a creepy (“stalker” is the word Singal uses) web site called Transgender Map, which lists personal details of anyone whom James deems a gender heretic. When it comes to one-on-one communication, James’ manner of dealing with critics is exemplified by an email sent to bioethicist Alice Dreger, in which James referred to Dreger’s then-five-year-old son as a “womb turd.”

One way to describe the CAPTAIN report is as an SPLC-branded rehash of the information contained on Transgender Map. And one can understand why the authors thought that such a gambit might work. The SPLC already publishes other curated lists of hatemongers—e.g., its “Hatewatch” service, “Hate Map,” and “Intelligence Report.” It wasn’t such a long shot to imagine that this new report might convince readers to treat the listed “Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network” acolytes as equally disreputable.

But if that was the authors’ goal, it doesn’t seem to have been achieved. The SPLC report landed with something of a thud—and has attracted little attention on social media except insofar as it was mocked by its intended targets.

This may have something to do with the report’s timing. For several years now, a backlash against this kind of gender agitprop has been building within many of the same liberal and progressive circles that the SPLC has traditionally targeted for donations. The trend is reflected by the rise of such groups as the LGB Alliance, a coalition of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who are fed up with the ideological takeover of LGBT groups by a militant subset of trans activists.

The same trend is playing out internationally. While the SPLC does its best to heap blame on America’s conservative Christians, many of western Europe’s governments (none of which are in thrall to the Heritage Foundation or the Charles Koch Foundation) have been following a more gender-critical path for years.

Just a week after the SPLC put out its report, in fact, the UK government published new guidelines advising teachers that they have no duty to automatically “affirm” a child’s assertion that he or she is transgender; and that, in considering such situations, teachers should speak with a child’s parents and consider whether the child is under undue influence from social media or peers. Sweden, Finland, and Norway—hardly bastions of Christian conservatism—have also rolled back policies that rush children into transition. In Canada, several provinces have recently enacted rules that require parents to be notified when a child seeks to transition, even in the face of a sustained media campaign that repeats lurid claims to the effect that such policies will cause an epidemic of trans suicides. Are all of these foreign governments also complicit in the vast “junk-science and disinformation campaign” against trans people that the SPLC claims to have “exposed”?

The SPLC would hardly be the first progressive organization whose reputation has suffered by going all-in on the gender issue. The American Civil Liberties Union, which also was rooted in traditional liberal values before succumbing to more faddish progressive tendencies, has attracted ridicule due to its parroting of slogans such as “men who get their periods are men,” and the claim that males have no “unfair advantage” over females in sports.

These organizations have never been shy about angering conservatives and reactionaries; indeed, they wear such anger as a badge of pride. But their cultish refusal to engage with the reality of biological sex also antagonizes progressive feminists seeking to protect female spaces from biological men, and LGB activists who see the attempted erasure of sex-based attraction as a species of progressive homophobia.

Which is to say that the SPLC’s report seems not only intellectually dishonest, but also self-destructive. While the SPLC leaders who green-lit this project once may have been able to bank on the popularity of pronoun checks and esoteric gender identities among the wealthy white coastal progressives who comprise the bulk of their donors, this is an ideological movement that’s decidedly past its peak. It’s a marketing error that the savvy Dees likely never would have made.

The SPLC obviously does a lot more than lend its name to sloppily edited gender propaganda: A review of its press feed shows that it still has staff working traditional legal beats such as voters’ rights, police accountability, and humane treatment for prisoners. But when an organization publishes misleading materials in regard to one issue, the natural effect is to raise serious questions about the group’s values and credibility more generally—questions that SPLC supporters will want to think about the next time one of the group’s fundraisers hits them up for a donation.

This is what institutional capture looks like.