If You Could Let Any Newsie Say Fuck Who Would It Be?

GIVE ME CONFIDENT DAVEY! stupid idiot confident davey!!!!! davey who's ego is inflated from being smart so he thinks he could do anything!!! not entitled just a fucking idiot ... love him ... davey who needs jack/Katherine or even les to keep him from killing himself by accident ...

*throws these at you then sprints in the other direction*

The walls of Race’s apartment were far from blank. They were adorned with almost anything he ever found or bought. Posters, shitty drawings, better drawings, sticky-notes, old sheet music, newspaper. Anything Race could find. He was like a crow in that sense.

He couldn’t bear living in between two blank walls. It would feel too much like a psych ward or a hospital- Race was never too fond of hospitals.

The last time he was in a hospital, it was for one of his friends having a baby. He was happy for her, but the blank walls tightened around his chest and held him firmly still, too still. Standing too still between the blank walls, Race couldn’t help but think of the fact that a hospital was the first place he had ever been. It would probably be the last, like it had been for so many members of his family.

Such a sterile place to be filled with so much death. So much pain. So much happiness.

All of it contained in this vessel so devoid of emotion that Race can’t breathe.

It’s not the blankness of the space that constricts his chest, it’s the amount of emotion it contains. He wants to explain it but nobody would really understand the extent of it.

But even before he steps into Race’s living room, Albert understands.

He knows- to a certain extent- what has happened in Race’s life, what has shaped him, what draws him to make forts out of blankets, decorate his walls, write on his arms; and he understands.

Albert has patches sewn onto almost every piece of furniture and upholstery he owns. Albert has posters on his walls and Albert writes on his hands.

Race is just a reflection of him, really.

That’s why he loves him. That’s why Race loves Albert.

Their experiences shape them into the same person. Is that such a bad thing?

i sentence you to track 12 0:41 seconds in newsies cast recording

LAST POLL FOR AU PLS DO IT :3

I NEEEEEEEED modern javey nyc Christmas ......... assistant davey x busker jack .... Christmas Day .... it's snowing ..... maybe even cafe au ......... all rugged up ..... LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT ............. WAHHHHHHH ...

dude what are the newsies birthdays .... like are there canon days or is it just headcanons ......

in case the first one's too weird, perhaps the phrase 'bruised heart', because ive been listening to pink ladies again and have a problem - @pigeonwit

"I guarantee you, you don't want me. You don't."

The words hit Jack like a truck.

When he told himself he was going to finally confess to David today, when he ran through all of the options and avenues for the conversation while on the thirty minute subway ride, he never once considered this option. The option where David thought he wouldn't be good enough, the one where he would say-- that.

Jack's mouth opens and closes for a few moments, the words lodged in his throat, before he chokes out, "What?"

To his credit, David laughs. It's not a happy sound, though- no, it's defeated, and trails off into a sigh at the tail-end of it. As he drops his shoulders, David's gaze flick's to Jack's across the table, before dropping back down to his clasped hands next to his cup of coffee. "You don't want me," David says easily, like it's a fact. Like it doesn't rip Jack in two.

"No, I heard you," Jack says, leaning a little further in, but he makes sure to keep his voice down- he doesn't need the rest of the cafe hearing this. Why he decided to do this in public, he doesn't know anymore, but he felt like he was going to burst out of his skin if he didn't blurt it out. "I just- I don't... get it. What do you mean, I don't want you? I think I know what I want, Dave."

David sighs, shaking his head and giving Jack a desperate, pleading look. "I'm telling you, you don't want-"

"And I'm tellin' you, you don't know what I want or not," Jack cuts in. "And I want you. I want you, and everything you're willin' to give, do you understand?" He stares at David, who is silent, and refuses to meet Jack's eyes.

Jack takes a deep breath and reaches out, gently taking David's hand. David doesn't pull away, but he doesn't grab back. "Look, I... I don't care if you don't want this. That's fine, and we can forget I ever opened my big mouth, okay? But if you- if you're refusin' to give this a shot 'cause you don't think you're good enough... Dave, you can't possibly believe that."

David gulps, his gaze shifting frantically, and he looks like a deer in the headlights. The image makes Jack regret ever saying anything, but when Jack starts to pull his hand away, David stops him with a squeeze. "Do you-" He stops, clearing his throat and staring straight at the wooden table between them. "Do you know how hard it is for... for me to get out of bed every day?"

Jack stays silent. David takes a breath, and closes his eyes.

"It's- It's not that I don't want you, Jackie, 'cause I want you more than you'll ever know," He whispers. "But you... You deserve more than me, okay? You deserve someone who doesn't feel drained every day. Someone who can be... I don't know, happy, without having to try to be. I'm a mess, Jack. You don't want that."

"I don't want that for you," Jack murmurs, squeezing David's hand back. "David, we... we can wait 'til you feel better, or healed, or whatever the fuck it is, but regardless, I don't... I don't need you to change for me to love you, okay? You deserve that, just as you are."

David finally looks up, and gulps hard. "...Love?"

"Yeah. Love," Jack responds.

David's shoulders sink a little, and he nods slowly, his grip on Jack's hand tightening. "I'm broken," David mumbles. "And I-- I know that sounds dramatic, but I've never... I've never been good at this, and you know that. You've been there for all of my breakups."

"Yeah, I have," Jack nods, "and I know that you didn't deserve a damn one of 'em. David, you're a catch, and if people don't get that... That's their problem. Not yours." With a soft sigh, Jack looks down, then shifts in his seat and looks back up at David. "You don't have to make a decision now. We can talk this out when you want, 'kay? The ball's in your court, Dave, but... You ain't broken. I swear."

"Jack..."

"There's a difference between broken and bruised," Jack murmurs. "Okay? You... You might be goin' through a rough patch. You might be hurtin', and that fuckin' sucks, but that don't mean you're beyond repair. You said the same damn thing about me."

David gulps hard, then uses his free hand to rub his eyes. "I... I don't know if I'm ready for-... I'm sorry..."

Jack shakes his head. "You got nothin' to apologize for, okay? If you need to wait, we wait."

"I want to," David explains. "I-... I really, really want to try with you, I just..."

"It's okay," Jack whispers. "I promise."

"Promise," David whispers back.

They finish lunch. They go to the park, then to a bar. They table it for a month and a half before David takes the plunge and kisses Jack. A bruised heart just takes a little time, and Jack Kelly would wait an eternity and a half for David Jacobs.

HI!! i am SUCH a massive fan of your work and your writing style and the way you write javid ... do you have any tips on making description and dialogue/switching between the two not sound clunky?? im having trouble 😭 im eating all your fics rn btw ... gnawing on em

oh!! goodness that is high praise - well first of all thank you, that is so sweet of you to say, and i'm so flattered you felt like you could ask me for help on that. but i gotta be honest, i'm very much an amateur and i really don't feel like i have much right to give 'advice' as it were - i'm still figuring out a lot of stuff myself tbh. but something i can definitely do is tell you what i do, why i do it and how i try to improve my own writing, as it's something i think about a lot and therefore something i feel very comfortable telling people about - but again, disclaimer, this is just what works for ME. i used to be really hard on my writing because compared to the work of other people i've seen, i felt like i was being way too flowery, overstaying my welcome on a lot of passages, being overly preachy, etc etc - but trying to emulate other people's writing entirely just doesn't work and completely sucks the fun out of it. so this is just what works for me. anywhore lets get to it

so i focus on a few things when i'm writing dialogue, the biggest one being 'Do People Talk Like This?'. now that's not always the most helpful question to ask yourself since everyone talks differently and there's really no point trying to categorize it, but where i find questions like that help the most for ME is when i'm thinking about what the character's thought process would be in saying this. for example if i'm writing oscar and morris, it just doesn't feel right to have them say shitty things for the sake of being cartoonishly shitty, because what's the thought process there? 'haha i'm gonna humiliate this kid because i'm just evil!!' no one. no one does that. they have their own reasons for wanting the newsies to feel beneath them, and even if i'm only writing them for a line or two, i want that to be the thing i get across, rather than just 'the delanceys are assholes' (even if their purpose in my fics is usually to be assholes).

i also try to draw from reality a lot, conversations i've had, things i notice when people speak to me. it's difficult since i'm autistic and therefore misread things or miss things entirely, but i try to do my best from my own experiences. a lot of my scribbles so far have just been casual little snippets of javid conversations 'cause that's a really fun way for me to get to know the characters and how they'd behave in casual conversation. i really like looking into davey's weirdness and so i draw from a lot of the weird things i do, the weird jokes i see other people make that i find so damn funny, weird body language that i love, etc etc. and it's fun to see how the characters react off one another when they're just being silly. sometimes i just need to lock two characters in a room together in your mind and see what they do - it doesn't really accomplish anything in terms of fic, but it helps me get to know them and how they interact with each other.

as far as descriptions go, the thing that helped me the most was (and you're going to laugh here) going outside. i know, touching grass actually did improve my writing, it's shocking. i'm pretty lucky since i live in a seaside town with a lot of forest areas so i spent a lot of time last spring/summer just walking around with my head fully empty, and if i had any thoughts come to me that i liked, i put them straight in my notes app the moment i got them. it felt pretentious as hell at first, and yeah, some of them aren't GREAT, but it's better to have my thoughts written down somewhere i can access them again rather than just not have anything to work off of at all. i've started just carrying a notebook around with me so that if i ever have a thought that feels worth keeping i can just jot it down right away. it can literally be any thought, i think i have a line in there about a can of redbull. anything that keeps the thoughts coming. i also keep a little list of quotes my friends have said as well - it's mostly funny stuff like "adren says: FUCK CHARITY!!!" and "i love his seven year old boy swag" but every so often i get something like "time is irrelevent, the sun will still be up in the afternoon", which i think of every time i feel like shit for needing more rest.

also something that people told me to do a lot which i HATED hearing but fuck if it's not true, is to just read. like when i was in my contemporary lit class and i could just chew over alys conran for a week or two it was like a factory reset in my brain. holy fuck i love alys conran she is a goddess she IS the blueprint. she completely redefined how i look at and interpret my surroundings. and ali smith - i wouldn't say i'm a huge fan of her stuff but the way she does dialogue and character voice is SOOO special to me. i hated being told 'just read!!' because i KNOW i should be reading but unfortunately my energy is dogshit and taking in new informaton is hard, but honestly it doesn't even need to be a whole book. it can be anything. i've had my shit rocked by tumblr posts and fanfic drabbles. anything that can make me go 'huh i like how they did that' or 'hm no i don't think i like how they phrased that' is helping my understanding of how i want to write.

(and in a similar vein to that - having character tags is so helpful for me!! like i'll see the vaguest thing and be like 'yeah davey would say that' or 'oh that's jack energy' and even though it's small it still improves my understanding of the characters and how they interact/think/speak)

in terms of switching between the two, i think i have a pretty obvious pattern when i write dialogue; "the first part of dialogue", then we look at the character again, how they're saying the words, what their body language is like, what they're thinking, "and then we finish what they're saying." that works for me because i'm a chronic overthinker and i like being able to focus on the little things the characters might be trying to say without saying them outright, like if davey's stimming for a specific reason or if jack's body language is more stilted than it should be because he's hiding something, or if the narrating character is focusing on something specific that the speaking character is doing for whatever reason. but i've also been trying to notice when i'm overdoing that pattern and when it feels right to change it up a bit. i want to try and improve my pacing, since sometimes i'm spending waaay too long slogging over prose when i want a scene to feel fast-paced and intense, and sometimes i feel like i'm glossing over something that would be important to the character. so sometimes (like when jack first appears in run boy run) i want the character to go into bullet-time to emphasise the weight of what's happening and what they're experiencing, and how the character FEELS about things when they're given time to properly experience it, but other times (like in their argument at the end of the chapter 4) i want things to snap and crash into each other very quickly to emphasise a character's fight-or-flight response, how they react to conflict, what they do when they don't have time to properly think about what they're doing.

and,,, yeah i think that's everything i can think of. again i'm not gonna act like any of this is gospel, i don't even know if this is even helpful to anyone besides me, i just know that this is what goes through my head when i'm trying to write effectively. whether or not it works is up for debate - i'm still in uni and i'm still trying to explore what works for me and what doesn't. but honestly i'm very proud of the progress i've been making and it was really fun to just talk about that for a second, so thank you roman, this was very lovely! have a wonderful day :)

David didn’t want his first visit to the lodging house to be this, anything but this would’ve been better.

He attempted to readjust the way JoJo’s arm hung across his shoulders, fingers digging in in a grip that matched the wince on his face with every limped half step.

Les forged on ahead of them in some kind of attempt to clear the way, and people moved for the dirt-stained kid with tear tracked cheeks and an arm held to his chest, spattered with blood; his own or someone else’s David wasn’t sure yet and as much as he wanted to grab Les and give him a once over for any injuries aside from the obvious, JoJo who’d gotten a club to the knee and then the head once he went down took priority.

JoJo was also spattered with blood, but it was obvious it was his own, leaking from his newly crooked nose-

He lurched to the side suddenly, and David did his best to keep him upright but he was tired and his head was spinning and something in his chest was sending shooting pains along his ribs when he breathed too deep and staying upright was hard-

“Sorry Dave.” JoJo’s voice was slurred like he was drunk and Davey realised he didn’t even know what age he was. Not old enough to get drunk, not even close, 14 at most surely, not the youngest but younger and-

“It’s fine. We’re almost back, just a couple more steps.”

“Y’seen Splasher?”

“Don’t worry about him right now. We’re almost back.”

“That copper got him real good Dave. I don’think I seen him get up.”

David swallowed bile, clung to JoJo’s waist a little harder.

He hadn’t seen Splasher get up either.

“I’m sure he’s fine.” He said out loud.