@ghostpressure asked: on this day of days im gonna be cliche and ask for jaderose maybe?? of the first kiss variety??
How could I ever say no to some sweet jaderose content? Lil non-Sburb AU, Rose POV!
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You lose count of all the ways Jade Harley is perfect every time you sit and try to name them.
You start with the single bit of hair that falls out of place no matter how many times she tucks it behind her ear, carry on past the way she plucks the bands on her fingers in a way you’re sure echoes some song played on a bass, and around the time you’re settling on the way she smiles with full lips and a fuller heart that shows in the dimples in her cheeks and the shine in her eye, there’s far too many things to keep hold of and they all escape in a dreamy sigh.
She is far too lovely for this world. Were you a traditional romantic you might call her an angel, or a flower in bloom. As it is, your diary is full of neatly transcribed descriptions of the finest of Lythalia’s daughters, wound in vines and tempting you with every look that lures you closer to her, yet able to crush you easily with a single dismissal if she desired. You describe yourself in less glowing terms in such entries, the groveling spawn of Th'rygh, a thing of ugly flesh and dirt not worth being the ground she walks on.
(When marking your diary, Mother gave you a high mark for dramatics, but a low mark for rationale. You’ll take what you can get from the privacy invading witch.)
Still, somehow Jade has not grown tired of your company, and allowed you to continue basking in her glow, which you do without even a modicum of restraint. She foolishly inquired about your home and you responded as if you hadn’t had a handwritten invitation to afternoon tea sitting in your purse for weeks, slightly dog-eared from all the times you’d hesitantly grasped it with intent to present it and then rapidly changed your mind. But no- she asked, and how could you not respond to such an earnest request, such bright eyes and such a broad smile and such glowing cheeks and such a melodious voice and-
You lost count of the ways she’s perfect, and gave her the invitation, and now here you are in your own bedroom, diary kicked firmly under your bed and Jade sitting opposite you in the most garishly beautiful combination of a neon green summer dress and yellow tracksuit pants. She’s folded her long legs into a knot and clasped her hands around her bare ankles, watching with open interest as you carefully mix a pot of tea with little preserved rosebuds all held in an octopus strainer.
“Those are so pretty,” she hums, rocking forward to peer at them closer, eyes blown up big and vibrant through her oversized glasses.
So are you, you think in a swift cliche, before battering it down with a metaphorical broom and smiling shyly instead. “I’m glad you think so.”
“I do! I’ve never had flower tea before... I’ve had normal tea, and green tea, and even a purple tea once... Will this one be pink?” Jade gasps, her rainbow tinted mental voyage leading her to a place that makes her whole face light up and leaves your heart aflutter. “Do you think we could make a whole tea spectrum? That would be so cool...”
“I can’t promise you a spectrum, but this will indeed be rosé.” You’ll leave it to brew a little longer than intended, just to make sure.
Jade giggles, bouncing herself closer across the bed, the only person in the world who can make the gesture graceful. “Do you drink this a lot?”
“Not often, no. Now and then, when the mood takes me. Special occasions.” Your cheeks are racing the tea for pinkness, and you bite back an explanation that you bought it especially for her. “It feels like it should be treasured, doesn’t it?”
“All roses should be treasured,” Jade replies solemnly, and your thoughts hitch on if a capital could possibly be applied, fingers lurching on their way to the honey. You cover it with a cough, poorly, a scoop up the dipper with a delicate twirl to catch some amber across it. She’s watching you, just as closely, and your face has now surpassed the entire pink family and entered into the nether-realms of red. “You know... it’s funny, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Did you miss a joke? Some ironic twist of fate? Please just be about Rose drinking rose tea, how amusing, not some greater embarrassment you’ll have to live with the burden of for all eternity.
“Well.” Jade twiddles her thumbs against each other, rubbing them over the skin of her leg. “I was hoping for flowers, but I didn’t think you’d make me drink them!”
Your mind does what your brother would call the one record scratch sound thats in everything rose come on you know the one its like the wilhelm scream of oh shit waddup moments and if you pretend you dont know it im calling bullshit just like the time you said you didnt know what a flashback was looking youre having one right the fuck now while potential macking material is next to you will you get off this train of thought and get on that.
You get off that train of thought.
“You were hoping for flowers?”
“Maybe.” Jade’s confidence gutters and she stares at her feet, wiggling her exposed toes. “I sort of thought- You know! With how things are, I thought maybe if I asked to come over it’d be like...”
“Like what.” Your mind appears to have ceased functioning.
“Like a date, oh my God! You’re worse than John!” She puffs up her cheeks behind a pout. “What are you gonna wear, Jade, are you going to do your makeup Jade, do you have any idea how gay this is Jade, maybe you should take her flowers and be the one who makes all the ladies swoon Jade.”
The only thing you can actively draw from anything she just said is that she does an impeccable impression of John.
Jade’s eyes flick up to you, back to the tea, and then with a fresh wave of resolve fix on your face with adamantine strength, narrowing behind her glasses to a determined edge.
“Is this a date?” She asks it with each syllable crisp and clear, her teeth leaving marks in her lip with how hard she bites it after. The words finally break through to you, fire behind the already intense burn in your cheeks, and you expect you’re red enough to live up to your namesake.
“It...” Oh dear. You hadn’t prepared for the scenario in which there was any actual interest, as ridiculous a prospect as it had always seemed. “It...” Your gears are caught and grinding, hitched in place, and you swallow hard to dampen your tongue so you can wet your lips before managing to finish- “It could be?”
Somewhere, your Mother is likely laughing at you.
Here and now, Jade’s eyes go big, and then bigger, and her lip pops out from beneath her front teeth with such speed it makes a sound.
“It could be?” She slams her hands to the bed between you and makes you jump, heart already pounding. “That’s not a no!”
“It’s... It’s not.” What’s happening and how do you get off this ride before it starts to plummet.
“That’s not a no!” She repeats it gleefully, smile returning as she reaches out a hand to pat hopefully at your knee. “So- So, maybe it could be a yes?”
You have lost control of your life, and the tea is likely so strong by now you may as well have shoved a whole flower in your mouth.
“It- I suppose it-” You can hear how flustered you are, and do your best to exert some kind of damage control that just makes you feel more ridiculous. “Are you- Are you asking me for it to be?”
“Duh,” Jade huffs like it’s obvious, which is terribly presumptuous of her, given the current disarray you find your mind in. “So what do you say? What... do you say?”
And once more, the sweet flower wilts beneath the pressure of self-doubt, and your hands move without informing your brain of their decision, finding her fingers and tangling with them in a silent but informative gesture that’s pulling more conversational weight than your entire vocal system.
Jade stares at your fingers for a moment, and this time the light that spreads through her is a sunrise, slow and creeping and inescapable, blinding to watch too closely but something you find difficult to tear your gaze from. It illuminates her moles and freckles, the way her muscles move as she tightens her grip on yours, the fabric of her dress shivering with her excited breaths and splaying perfectly over her pants.
You lose count of the ways she’s perfect even as her joy runs like molten gold between each one and highlights it for you so brightly you can’t possibly miss it.
It occurs to you, as a very distant dream, surreal and hardly possible in this reality, that you are apparently on a date with Jade Harley.
Jade seems more settled into the concept, hurriedly closing the gap between your legs with a few more bounces so your linked hands sit on the boundary between laps, crossing the great divide with a bridge that feels sturdy enough to weather many storms. She wiggles, a tremble of her shoulders that washes all the way down to her waist, and then leans towards you, slowly, a falling tree you should run from but find yourself watching and waiting for the impact instead.
Her lips purse, then pucker, and you realise what’s going to happen with just enough time left for klaxons to start blaring in your mind at the fact you’ve clearly lost all grip on the realms of the possible and in some kind of fantasy from which you’ll wake the moment you let yourself believe in it.
And yet.
Jade kisses you like snow melting on a fingertip, light and fleeting and possibly imagined were it not for the ghost it leaves behind. She stays close, eyelids fluttering in nervous blinks, and you have a moment in which you can reclaim your rational mind and pull away, a moment to possibly escape the fairy-tale you are about to leap into and pray it won’t be Grimm.
Instead you press forward, too fast, bump your mouths together in a way that isn’t so much romantic as it is slapstick, and Jade giggles and leans back enough to rub her lips and cover up a bashful smile.
She tries again, before you have time to admonish yourself, tipping her head and letting her lips meet yours all silk to skin and lingering, pressure and warmth and stillness that’s somehow still overwhelming despite how slowly it arrives.
You have found another way she’s perfect. The soft fragrance of grass and perfume on her skin when she’s so close, the gentleness with which she kisses you despite how strong you know her to be.
Limitless perfections, even in such a small action, and no hope of counting even one when all your thoughts are consumed by the fact her lips are on yours.
When Jade does pull back, it’s slowly, careful, hands still locked and her face still close and red and beautiful. You have many things you could say, about finally, or why, or beauty and perfection and so many emotions beating frantic in your chest.
You chase her, and kiss her again, and hold her hands tighter, and you hope that in the taste of your lips she finds everything you’ve never been able to say.
[ID: four separate digital art pieces of women in fantasy dress.
Image 1 is labelled “Aud, Cleric, Grave Domain.” Aud is slouched and appears disgruntled with lightly tanned skinned and similarly colored hair. She is wearing a large green shawl/poncho and baggy olive trousers that end just below the knees. Her shins are wrapped in strips of cloth and she is wearing wooden sandals.
Image 2 is labelled “Eve, Wizard, School of Lore Mastery.” Eve is smiling with one hand on her hip and one to the side; she has medium-toned brown skin and dark brown, curly hair and is smiling. She wears a tunic in two tones of purple with gold accents and embroidered with gold DNA decals. She has on fitted tan pants and knee length, lace-up purple boots. She is floating a book into her hands.
Image 3 is labelled “Ivanya, Warlock, Pact of the Old Ones.” Ivanya has pale blue-grey skin, and a small bit of white hair peeks out from beneath a large hooded blue robe. Her hands end in long claws and the skin turns to black the closer it gets to her hands - one is up in the air, balancing an orb of red light. In addition to the robe she is wearing a long blue shirt with cutouts along the sternum, a long light blue skirt with a slit up her leg, and dark blue thigh-high boots. Her shoulders, chest, and boots are adorned with bones.
Image 4 is labelled “Daisy, Paladin, Oath of the Watchers.” Daisy has tan skin with freckles across the bridge of her nose and long blonde hair that falls to her waist. She is wearing a full suit of silver armor, accented in pink and red, and a red cloak trimmed in white fur is draped across one shoulder, falling to the ground. There is a silver sword under one arm, and her headpiece is adorned with a large pair of silver wings. End ID]
Real fun paper doll art collab with some people from my writing group! They drew the bodies/faces/etc/ and I drew all the outfits to make them a funky fresh DnD adventuring party!
Aud belongs to @ghostpressure Eve belongs to @tehstripe Ivanya belongs to @whipapp and Daisy belongs to @horreurscopes
jay im loving cartoon opinion night.. do you have anything on the impact of streaming+binge schedules bc i've seen so much on that wrt live action tv And Yet
oh oh oh oh absolutely. as you know i have opinions on approximately everything.
this is just my take and not based on anything that any professionals have said, but i think overall it’s actually really good for cartoons because the precedent that you’re gonna have more than one episode available at a time to watch gives less pressure for episodes to have to stand on their own.
like back fucking forever ago when my family actually had cable TV there were so many shows that i only ever got snippets of and missed the chance to get more invested in because there was literally no chance to see the episodes in order outside of the occasional marathon. shows like kim possible or danny phantom or samurai jack come to mind because those were on a lot and i loved watching them but it wasnt until i got older and looked it up that i realized i only ever saw a handful of the same episodes over and over again just because that’s what they aired
and knowing that that’s the way the majority of people are gonna have to consume your media means that, to a degree, every episode needs to introduce and resolve some sort of individual conflict. but now there’s more leeway.
i also think of stuff like over the garden wall, i dont think over the garden wall would have worked properly pre-streaming. OTGW did air consecutively across 5 days but if i remember correctly it was up on the CN website almost immediately after airing, and might have even been on itunes in its entirety before that. and each over the garden wall episode definitely has it’s own story, but watching any of them without the others is a complete disservice.
i havent had cable in years so i dont know if OTGW was ever shown on tv again but if it was i can imagine that it’d have too be a Special event, because with commercials each episode is a 15 minute block, x 10. and so streaming being an option allows stuff like this thats paced and presented in a very nontraditional way to be seen, repeatedly and on demand, as intended
THAT’S A REALLY GOOD POINT. i don’t think I ever really noticed it but steven universe does feel so bizarrely claustrophobic despite literally being intergalactic in scale in a way that i don’t think does it any service.
i think keeping a show Bottled for the most part is a very serviceable mechanic i mean obviously i do because im a phineas and ferb stan but once again it’s not an issue of any one thing SU does being Objectively Wrong, its the failure of these decisions to interact with each other properly
philippa i really wish i didnt have to be the one to break this news to you but the homestuck epilogues canonized jade having got a dog dick when she merged with bec Exactly Like From All The Weird Porn People Made and some folks actually tried to defend that choice
