Newsies Mutuals We Should Play Among Us Sometime

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?

lil psa for my fellow newsies fans because i’ve seen some certain links being posted again:

please do not post bootlegs or links to them publicly!

i know you wanna share these videos with everyone, and that is super sweet of you, but posting these links publicly puts the people who film these videos at risk of real legal trouble - boots are illegal! - and could easily result in them no longer filming any more videos, as well as making their current videos private. keeping these videos safe helps ensure that more will come, and keeps the people who film them safe too! it’s also just respectful to these folks’ wishes, and respecting them is so important! they’re doing a huge service for us!

if you do have a video you want to share with your friends, please at least do so through dms, or any private platform. do not post them on tumblr, public discords, google drive, twitter, anything - just dm the link to your friend, keep it private and secure. however, there are also certain videos that the filmers do not want shared at all, even privately, and i’m asking you to please be respectful of their wishes too. these videos are only available from the person who filmed them themselves, and they’re the ones marked with “NFT” - meaning “not for trade”.

if you’re ever unsure or have any questions at all, pls feel free to ask me! i am always up for helping. i just want to make sure filmers stay safe and videos stay available so we can all keep enjoying them <3 newsies forever and all that

javey au methinks...

it's slowly coming together, everyone ...... I haven't forgotten y'all I promise .... it's just taking a while to actually write and set up and logisticize and everything .... plus i SHOULD be getting an ao3 account on feb 21st so im hoping to post there :)

THIS IS ALSO JATHERINE in the are you following me scene . you understand

this is javey

redhead Albert is my favourite thing ever.... idk why smth about him is so precious.... RAHHH

Davey keeps him close, flattening himself to Jack's back - he could blame the small bed if he wanted, blame the cold or whatever else, but there's no denying the thrumming in his chest, the determined want of 'keep here, stay here, right here with me'. Jack tenses for a moment, muscles seizing in reflexive panic, and Davey's worried he's wrecked it for a moment before Jack sighs, melts, presses the curve of his back against the sturdy bow of Davey's chest, like a fawn huddling into a shelter, away from the wind and wilderness.

"Spoons..." Jack murmurs, his tone more sleep-drunk than actually drunk now. "Just two li'l spoons..."

"That's right, Jackie," Davey curls his arms around Jack's soft stomach. It's possessive in a way that normally makes him sick, but he has to, has to know that Jack's there, has to let Jack know that he's not going anywhere, and neither is Davey. "You just sleep now, yeah? You go right to sleep, Jackie-love..."

He keeps doing that, murmuring sweet things into Jack's ear, petting along his stomach the way he does to Les when he's sick, the way Jack does to every stray kid who needs a warm touch. He's always doing that, Davey thinks, just on the edge of bitter - giving away all his warmth, letting people seep it out of him. It's kind, so achingly kind, but Davey can't help but wonder how long Jack's been doing that, shivering for the sake of someone else's warmth. Jack Kelly, protector of strays, patron saint of never knowing when to quit.

most writing advice is good as long as you know why it is good, at which point it is also bad. the hardest thing (and most precious thing) about being an artist is that you gotta learn how to take critique. i don't mean "just shut up and accept that people hate your work," i mean you need to learn what the critique is saying and then figure out if it actually helps.

i usually tell people reading my work: "i'm collecting data, so everything is useful." i ask them where they put the book down, even though it's too long for most people to read in 1 sitting. i ask them what they thought of certain characters. i let them tell me it was really good but i like it more when they look a little stunned and say i forgot i was reading your book, which means they forgot i exist, which is very good news.

sometimes people i didn't ask will read my work and tell me i don't like it. and that is okay, you don't have to like it. but i look at the thing that they don't like and try to figure out if i care. i don't like that you don't capitalize. this one is common, and i have already thought about it. i do not care, it's because of chronic pain and frankly i like the little shape of small letters. you use teeth and ribs in all your work. actually that is very true. i don't know what's up with that. next time i will work to figure out a different word, thank you. you're whiny, go outside. someone said that to me recently and it made me laugh. i am on the whine-about-it website as an internet poet. you are in my native habitat, watching me perform a natural enrichment behavior. but i like the dip of whiny, how the word itself does "whine" (up/down, the sound out your nose on the y), but i don't know if i want to feel whiny. maybe next time i will work on it being melancholy, like what you would call a male writer's poetry.

repeated "good" advice clangs in a bell and doesn't hold a real shape, dilutes in the water. like sometimes you will hear "don't use said." you turn that around in your head and it bounces off the edges of your brain like it is a dvd screensaver. it isn't bad advice, but it feels wrong somehow, like saying easy choices are illegal! sometimes i will only use "said." sometimes i will just kick dialogue tags out to the trash. sometimes i make little love poems where the fact that i do not say "said" is very bad, and makes you feel bad in your body, because someone didn't say something. i am a contrary little shitbird, i guess.

but it is also good advice, actually. it is trying to say that "said" sometimes is clutter. it makes new writers think about the very-small words and very-small choices, because actually your work matters and wordchoice matters. "i know," you said. "i know," you sighed. "i know." we both know but neither of us use a dialogue tag, because we are in a contemporary lit piece.

it is too-small to say don't use said. but it is a big command, so it gets your attention. what are you relying on? what easy choices do you make? when you edit, do you choose the same thing? can you make a different choice? sometimes we need the blankness of said, how it slides into the background. sometimes we don't.

i usually say best advice is to read, but i also mean read books you don't like, because that will make you angry enough to write your own book. i also mean read good books, which will break your heart and remind you that you are a very small person and your voice is a seashell. i also mean you need to eat books because reading a book is a writer's version of studying.

my creative writing teacher in the 7th grade had a big red list of no! words and on it was SUNSET. RAZORS. LOVE. GALAXY. DEATH. BLOOD. PAIN. I liked that razor and love were tucked next to each other like birds, and found it funny that he believed we were too young to know the weight of razor in the context of pain. i hated him and his Grateful Dead belt, where the colored teddy bears held up his appraisal of us. i hated his no list. it is very good/bad advice. i wasn't old enough yet to know that when you are writing about death you are also writing about sunsets and when you write about love you are tucking yourself into a napkin that never stops folding.

back then my poetry was all bloody, dripped with agony when you picked it up. i didn't know there is nothing beautiful about a razor, nothing exciting about pain. i just understood sharpness, which he took to mean i understood nothing. i wrote the razor down and it wasn't easy, but it was necessary. that's what i'm saying - sometimes it's good advice, because it's not always necessary. and sometimes it is very bad advice, because writing about it is lifesaving.

hang on my dog was just having a nightmare. i heard that it is a rule not to write about dogs - in my creative writing mfa, my teacher rolled her eyes and said everyone writes a dead dog. the literature streets are littered in canine bodies. i watched the rise and fall of his ribs (there is that word again) and had to reach out and stop the bad dream. when he woke up he didn't recognize me, and he was afraid.

it is good/bad advice to say that poems and writing have to mean something. it is bad/good advice to say they're big feelings in small packages. it is better advice to say that when my dog saw where he was, he relaxed immediately, rubbed his face against me. someone on instagram would make fun of that moment by writing their "internet poetry" as a sentence that tumbles across a white page: outside it is sunset and my dog is still in a gutter, bleeding a galaxy out of his left paw. or maybe it would be: i woke the dog up/the dog forgot i loved him/and i saw the shape of a senseless/and impossible pain.

the dog is alive in this one, and he is happy. when i tell you i love you, i know what i said. write what you need to write, be gentle to yourself about it. the advice is only as good as far as it helps. the rest is just fencing. take stock of the boundaries, and then break them. there's always somewhere else you could be growing.

i love you, keep going.

Race: I made you breakfast 🥰😘💞✨️

Spot: it's burnt

Race: yeah well.

Race: it's made with love. Not skill