cointosser: (Default)
Jaskier "old-timey fuckboy" Alfred Pankratz ([personal profile] cointosser) wrote2021-04-12 08:58 pm
princessvegas: (071. i'm a twit)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-12 12:54 am (UTC)(link)
[ It is a known fact that peanut paste is used to cure malnutrition and starvation in the global south. Julie can save every single elf with peanut butter and crackers, thank you.

She can't help but to laugh a little, shifting to lean over the arm of her chair, knees in the seat. ]
Yeah, nuts do. But peanuts ain't real nuts, that's just the name. They grow underground. And no one eats 'em raw, you gotta roast 'em and salt 'em before you do anythin' with 'em. Here, lemme... [ She holds one hand out to him, palm open, and there are now a few peanuts in her hand, still in their (roasted, salted) shells. Again, not exactly something to go with wine, but she's never let that stop her before. ] Just crack it open and eat what's inside. I mean, you can eat the shell too, some people do, but I wouldn't start with it.

[ She quickly demonstrates as she considers what food options she has available. ]

There's a lot of potatoes. But like, not even good potatoes. And like, cabbage and radishes and stuff? There's a lot of seafood in Nott, which is fine, except they don't have the right seasonings for any of it. Maybe it's different out in Cadens, but they don't never seem to have any good spices or blends. Cayenne, paprika, basically kinda chili powder, cajun, Old Bay. Good stuff. It's mostly like, salt and black pepper and dill.

[ The honest truth is just that Julie finds the pre-television, pre-internet world to be dreadfully boring. She is used to a constant stream of entertainment available to occupy herself with, and re-reading the books she could remember enough to manifest got very old, very quickly. Her distaste for the Singularity makes reading Abraxan books difficult, as they talk about it a lot. And she would much rather read about his world anyway.

Her hands are delicate when she takes the notebooks, opens one to quickly scan over the writing. Yes, these will do. And maybe Ciri will stop mocking her about the difference between dragons and wyverns (Julie still does not get it). ]
Thank you, sugar. My daddy used to say I couldn't read anythin' that wasn't made up of emojis, but look at me now.
princessvegas: (015. raised on biggie and nirvana)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-12 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She laughs. His confusion is obviously extremely entertaining to her, if only because the people who actually named and grow the damn things have been asking the same question for two centuries. ] Honey, I didn't name it. Folks've been arguing about the name of peanuts since long before I was born. It's a legume, by the way. So not a pea, not a nut. It's a bean, basically. [ Agricultural factoids with someone who grew up in America's Breadbasket.

She grimaces just a little at the mention of the lake. It's not the fault of anyone from Nott, but she is not a fan of fish. ]
Yeah, they pull in most everythin' from the lake. I almost never ate seafood before I got to Nott. Where I was from, it was thousands of miles from any coast. We had all the beef, pork, chicken in the world, but not fish. Least not that I would trust.

[ She doesn't fear Thorne, not really. It is, of course, not ideal to be within their purview, but Nott had been quietly simmering and pushing back against the capital long before she got there. If there was to be a fight between them, it wouldn't start with a search for her group, and there would, presumably, be time to get out. Frankly, she's not sure any of the other options are all that much better. Nott, at least, is significantly more ambivalent about the Singularity than anywhere else, and being there gives her access to a kind of magic that would be extremely difficult to find instruction for elsewhere. Everything has to have a trade-off.

With a snort, she turns a page, skims the first paragraph, but then closes the book again. She doesn't mean to be rude. ]
Oh, emoji? They're these lil' pictures that we use as kind of their own language, because we mostly talk to other people in texts now. So imagine if I sent you a message on the mind... network thing we have, but you couldn't tell if I was bein' sarcastic. With emoji, I can add a little face that's laughing so you would know I was jokin'. We can't do it, though. I tried. But you can write a whole story in emojis, if you try. A bunch of 'em have double meanings, or unofficial ones, so you kind of hafta learn to read 'em before you can use 'em.

[ It's yet another thing that she's realizing is too complicated to explain to someone with absolutely no context. It's easier to show, so instead she just manifests what appears to be a late-model iPhone. She doesn't know enough about phones for it to be in any way functional as a phone, but it turns on, and she can make it show various apps. She opens the text app and quickly hammers out a series of emojis, then hands the phone to him. It reads

😏 u πŸ†™ or πŸ˜΄β“ πŸ’­ maybe πŸΈπŸΈπŸ’¨ then πŸ€·β€β™€οΈ? u in?

She does not translate yet. ]
princessvegas: (134. kicking both my heels off)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-18 12:05 am (UTC)(link)
[ Vegas had been one of the last places in the country with a surplus of food, it's true; that many buffets require huge stockpiles, and a city run on hydroelectricity meant that the freezers were able to maintain it while the rest of the country crumbled. But sooner or later, she knew it was going to get bad, really bad. The livestock was all dead, the crops had all fallen by the wayside, and the existing reserves were going to run out. She'd never gotten to hear the plan for that day; she finds herself wondering now if there even was one. But the bounty she'd really been speaking of had been at home home, in Kansas, where well over ninety percent of the state was devoted solely to growing food and raising livestock.

Her family had been deeply impoverished, never had a spare dime for much past necessities, but there was always food available, simply from the sheer volume of farming around them. It didn't mean she wasn't shamed for not cleaning her plate, it didn't mean that her family wasn't reliant on government programs and charity, but it meant that there was food there, food that she knew she could get her hands on if she needed to. Hell, if she were willing to eat nothing but corn, she really only had to drive a few miles to the nearest mega farm and slip into the field. She'd be malnourished, sure, but not hungry.

She's never eaten floor bread (well, in a way that's not 5-second-rule-ish), but it's more due to coincidence of circumstances than class or true wealth. That luck is not lost on her -- she knows that plenty of people in her world, in her time, were starving to death. But is it any different from being born into nobility? Her access to food, to the wealth inherent in being American, was not something she could change or singlehandedly distribute to the needy. She trick-or-treated for UNICEF every year as a child, surely that offsets some of the unfairness in the world.

Though she does giggle, she claps when he deciphers even one of the symbols. Honestly, it's more than she was expecting, so it deserves praise. Leaning over, she translates character-by-character. ]


Okay, so the first face kinda sets the tone. Like, this guy is all smirky, so it's gonna imply that you're up to somethin'. You up or asleep, is the next set. "You up?" is kind of like... it's not just askin' if the person is still awake. It's usually for either goin' back out to party, or else the person sendin' it is hopin' that it'll lead to sex. Who sends it is how you know which way it goes. Then the thought bubbles for "I was thinkin'", and here it's "maybe drinks and smokin' weed", that's the wind gust. The shrug for "I don't know". Then you're askin' if the other person is in it with you. Like I said, a lot of emojis is about the specific person you're talkin' to.

[ She taps the keyboard at the bottom and it shifts to nothing but emojis, hundreds of them, and she swipes through a few pages. ] So you can add any of these to any message you send to anyone you know. Some of 'em are exactly what they look like, the flags and stuff, but most have other meanings that just sort of... happened. A lot of the foods double as sex stuff.
princessvegas: (074. pump your fist)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-19 06:06 am (UTC)(link)
[ Words are great, but he also has no frame of reference for how quickly a text conversation can go. Modern people are incredibly busy, you know, they don't have time to think about flowery turn-of-phrase when they can just slap down a devil face and go. Also, Julie has a fairly decent attention span for her age, so take that as you will, Jaskier. Appealing to the young folk requires brevity now!

And that face totally implies sneakiness. ]


Exactly! It's like talkin' in real life, you have to know the person to know what you can say to 'em without gettin' weird or punched.

[ Her claps are very genuine, and quickly become quite enthusiastic even as she laughs at the incredibly lovely ode to a juicy ass. She cannot fathom what she would ever reply to that in the real world. It would almost be better to get an unsolicited dick pic, because at least she'd know what to say in the latter case. But if she were going to receive a Shakespearean couplet about her ass, that's a good one.

She adds a few more emojis, πŸ†πŸ₯ πŸŽ†πŸ€―πŸ˜πŸ’, lets him try to work that one out as she polishes off what remains of the wine. She is well aware that he will have no idea what a fortune cookie is (she is prepared to give him one if asked), but assumes that the visual will make enough of an impression. ]
That one's for a real good night.
princessvegas: (071. i'm a twit)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-19 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Knowin' what tone to use and knowin' when to shut up are two different pages in the same book. [ It does not surprise her in the least that Jaskier has gotten himself punched. More than once, she assumes. She has not gotten the impression that people in his world are particularly tolerant, nor that there are any severe consequences to punching people who annoy you.

She nods approvingly, because he really did nail the general gist, even if it's twisted a little. She points at the unknown emoji, to explain. ]
That's called a fortune cookie. It's this thin cookie that's folded up in this shape, and there's a little piece of paper with a fortune inside it. You break it in half, read your fortune and then eat the cookie. [ She holds out her hand to him, where now she has a single fortune cookie in her palm for him. ] You only get 'em when you eat one kind of food, Chinese food. Anyway, for the emoji, it's more about the shape.

[ Which should be obvious, given the context. She thought he'd have a harder time with the taco than the fortune cookie. ] But you almost got it perfect, just a lil' backward. So yeah, the first two for sex. The third is a firework, do y'all have fireworks? Anyway, it means it was great. The next one is having your mind blown because of it. Then love, and marriage. So you read it as "I had sex so good that I think I met my future husband". Or wife, whatever. You can also do it like [ πŸ†πŸ˜΅ ].

[ She holds up a finger, as if she has made a brilliant point. ] Dickmatized.
princessvegas: (098. sweat dripping down your chest)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-23 02:20 am (UTC)(link)
[ Don't take the fortune too seriously, Jaskier. There are lotto numbers on the back, it's not a big deal. She honestly doesn't care if he throws it away or frames it, but she notes it all the same, with a smirk.

She wiggles a hand, gesturing "sort of". ]
I can show you fireworks if you want, but I don't wanna scare you. I mean, they're way up in the sky, big bursts of color. We use 'em for celebrations, mostly. Certain holidays, important victories. Oh, Disney World does 'em all the time. They're loud, but the only reason for 'em is to be pretty and entertainin'. They do whole shows, set to music and stuff. But like I said, I don't want you to freak out.

[ There's no negativity or criticism in her voice, only genuine concern. She knows that some people can't handle loud noises or explosions, and now she knows that Jaskier is one of them.

The fact that she has had to define fireworks and not the concept of being dickmatized is incredibly funny to her, and her nose scrunches as she giggles over it. ]
Every girl's been through the wringer with one of those guys, and the ones that don't are either liars or virgins. That shit'll put you in the loony bin. That's why I made up my mind years ago, never be the one who falls.
princessvegas: (128. this dirty little damsel)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-24 04:04 pm (UTC)(link)
[ They're simple things to her, but something that she has learned in the past few months is what seems basic to her is a mystery to others. She had never thought, before Abraxas, that she knew very much. She's from a poor public school in the Midwest, from a place so sparsely inhabited and blasΓ© about education that her high school 4-H club had more funding than the entire AP program. She's used to being the one who needs things explained, who's treated like an ignorant child, surrounded by people with better educations and deeper understandings of the world. Now she's pulling random science facts and tidbits about prehistory from her memory, and just those small actions have built confidence in her knowledge that she never thought she'd have. She doesn't know if she would have been able to push ahead learning magic if she didn't feel boosted by the simple act of actually knowing stuff. Stuff that she didn't even knew she knew.

And there is something extremely gratifying about showing someone a thing that they've never conceived of before, of seeing their reaction and watching their eyes change with comprehension.

Her warning is actually based on the fact that she accidentally gave him a panic attack within a few minutes of meeting for the first time (if confetti cannons warranted Xanax and weed, he would need heroin to cope with unexpected fireworks), but it's fine. She actually expects that he'll be exposed to fireworks either way -- there's no way in hell that Sam doesn't throw a Fourth of July cook-out with a bunch of Roman Candles -- so she just laughs. ]
Look, I ain't think to say anythin' at Halloween, I'm not gonna spring somethin' even bigger on you without a warning.

[ There's a snort, somewhat bitter, and she refills her glass with a thought, as the bottle has long been emptied. She takes a knowing sip, looking over the rows of grapevines. ] You've never been a woman. When you're a girl, you get jaded early. Men hurt us, startin' early. Half the time, it's your own daddy does it first, if he even stuck around. [ She fishes a joint out of her cleavage, because of course that's where she keeps such things, then lights it with a wave of her hand. Taking a drag, she offers it to Jaskier, blows the smoke out in a cloud. ] There's this famous saying in my world. 'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.' You wanna survive, you better learn that fallin' in love is just breakin' all your defenses down for 'em.

[ When she looks back at him, it's with an expression of resignation, acceptance. An eyebrow lift that says, That's just how it is. ] Every woman you've ever known has a story about when she loved a man and he used it to ruin her. They just never told you.
Edited 2022-01-24 16:05 (UTC)
princessvegas: (046. we are the new americana)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-01-30 06:34 pm (UTC)(link)
[ He "admits" to have never been a woman, and she chuckles with a wry smile. It's not that she thinks less of him for not understanding -- she doesn't think he's capable of understanding. She doesn't think any man is, because they live in a world that teaches them that the things they do to women are fine, just, logical. That women are the fools, are helpless, deserve it.

She does not appear surprised to hear his sordid history (look, when she decided to make a cuck out of her god-king, she knew exactly what she was doing), and in fact, she mostly just looks entertained by it. She's not someone who cares all that much about respecting the institution of marriage, nor does she think it's Jaskier's responsibility to stay away from married women. Their fidelity has nothing to do with him, unless he is a very different man than Julie believes him to be. ]
Yeah, and those were the ones who weren't in love. Those were the ones miserable enough with what they had to be lookin' for somethin' else. It's when you don't want anyone else that makes you weak. Gives 'em the upper hand.

It's like bein' on a tightrope all the time, with no net to catch you, and you know you're gonna hit the ground eventually. You can give a man your whole world, and he'll throw it back in your face without a thought, 'cause it was never gonna be good enough for him. Men, most men, don't want a woman to be a person. They just want mommies and maids they're allowed to fuck, too. So you cook and clean up after him, you listen to his problems, you raise his brats, you lay there long enough for him to get off and fall asleep, all 'cause you love him, right? You love him, so you don't ask for any of that for yourself. Because the second you ask for anythin' more from him, need more, he'll disappear. I remember readin' this statistic once, that if a woman gets cancer, there's a seventy-five percent chance her husband leaves her while she's sick. Doesn't matter how old they are, how long they've been married, nothin'. Seventy-five percent. When the man gets cancer, the woman stays more than eighty percent of the time.

Inhale right after the hit, don't let it sit in your throat. That'll irritate you, make you cough. [ He coughs and she takes the joint back, takes another long pull. She has to think about her answer, eyes cast over the vineyard, the sun beginning to lower in the sky. ] My story... my story ends with lightnin'. Love's not anythin' I'll ever need to worry about.
princessvegas: (039. have you been spending)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-02-01 04:16 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Well, she did come from Tinder culture and then die, so it's enough to jade even the dreamiest of romantics. And she recognizes that she's lucky, that she didn't come from a world where a woman needed a man to survive. It's new even for them. But it doesn't mean that she hasn't seen, lived through the aftermath of men's selfishness, their failures. She grew up learning that the worst thing she could make a man feel is anger, because he might beat her or else find another woman. That the price of love was turning a blind eye to betrayal, to abuse. She watched her female relatives and friends endlessly pick up the shattered pieces of themselves while the men who broke them pretended they couldn't hear the pained cries.

Julie doesn't care for most people, as a general rule. Views others first and foremost as tools to provide her with what she wants. That goes double for men. The walls that surround her heart tower twice as tall for anyone with a Y-chromosome. The risk they bring is so much greater than any woman.

She laughs a little, takes a sip and another hit before she passes the joint back. ]
If I want a man dead, I'll do it myself. Hell hath no fury and all that. [ There's a pause where she looks at Jaskier from the corner of her eye. ] No, he wasn't struck by lightnin'. There's no one "him". It's all "him"s.

[ The sky takes on a purple cast, and she stands, offers him her hand. ] C'mon, I'll show you fireworks.
princessvegas: (081. and i don't give a damn)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-02-03 05:38 pm (UTC)(link)
[ "Songs about women killing men" is basically a valid musical genre unto itself, as far as Julie's concerned. She can build him a whole playlist to listen to on repeat while he practices emojis.

She snickers and barely restrains from calling him a baby, because she is a child in an adult's body, but the joint disappears after she breathes out a final cloud of smoke. With a wave of her arm, the sky goes from dusk to midnight, stars twinkling against the indigo field that ends at the limits of the vineyard. A second thought turns their seats instead to a large blanket spread over the grass. It's blue gingham and quite worn, because that's the blanket that Julie remembers best, from Independence Day and Memorial Day celebrations, the blanket that she would fall asleep under in the back of her father's truck after the show was over. The wine sits in a corner, a fresh bottle, and she feels a pang in her heart looking over the scene. This exact setup, it's not something she ever gets again, not for real, and it had once seemed so reliable. Something that would be there for her every summer.

She slips her shoes off at the edge of the blanket, then lies down to look up at the sky, a halo of pink spread around her head. ]
Get comfortable. It's the only real way to watch.
princessvegas: (134. kicking both my heels off)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-02-07 07:36 am (UTC)(link)
Remind me to teach y'all about tents. [ Honestly, everything she hears about traveling a lot before the advent of the automobile sounds truly awful. At least being stuck in a shitty medieval town comes with a bed.

There's a bang and several whistling noises as the first fireworks launch from somewhere near the edge of the domain. They sail into the sky, disappear for just a second, then begin to explode into glittering dandelion displays of every color. Thunderous noise becomes a constant drone as more and more fireworks take up the sky, some spreading wide like flowers, some remaining in tightly clustered balls, some shooting further up like streamers. Music plays around them as if on speakers, mostly because that's how Julie's recollection of it works, timed to vaguely patriotic country songs. The fireworks drown most of it out anyway, though they remain coordinated with the rhythm.

Her face begins to hurt from beaming so much. She really thought she'd never see fireworks again, not after the superflu. Maybe it's the American in her, maybe it's just the girl who's spent the past year and half almost completely devoid of simple joy. She turns her head to watch Jaskier's reaction. ]
princessvegas: (042. we are the new americana)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-02-08 01:38 am (UTC)(link)
[ He does know he's allowed to cuddle Geralt without sleeping on the ground, right? Or like, in some form of shelter. A lean-to, even. She's going to get them a tent. They can spoon in their horse blankets without bugs landing on their faces all night, at least.

She touches his shoulder gently when he jumps, because this is what she was warning him of, but he so quickly falls into the same enchantment as children seeing fireworks for the first time. The bursts keep coming, overlapping each other in rainbow-colored balls, then they switch to hearts and stars. Julie's pretty sure that, if she concentrates hard enough --

A series of music notes bloom across the sky. They don't actually mean anything (Julie can't read music), but the symbols are there. ]
princessvegas: (025. survival of the richest)

[personal profile] princessvegas 2022-02-09 06:08 pm (UTC)(link)
[ There's a finale of sorts, a sequence of flares and showers, then she lets it end, leaving just the dark sky above them. The sudden quiet is almost piercing, but soon enough, the sounds of the vineyard -- crickets, wind, the horses -- return.

Fireworks are so ancient in Julie's world that she can barely conceive of one where they're not present. She knows that there are guns in the Free Cities, albeit rare, but does that mean that they don't function on gunpowder? If there's one thing she's pretty sure of, it's that humans will find a way to make entertainment out explosions far faster than they'll find a way to responsibly use such power.

She rolls onto her side, props her head on her hand as she considers the idea. ]
I mean, I don't think fireworks would be very hard with magic, probably easier than regular fire. But with the way they feel about magic out there... [ She shakes her head a little. ] I can't wrap my head around havin' magic and then hatin' it like that.