#Theory of Physical Structures

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

pez dispenser update, yay!

I am Very Interested in the direction you're taking izuku here. He seems to have come out the other side of this breakdown going, "no look! I trust you guys! Here, I trust you guys so much! You can know about the severe injuries I had as a child that never got a police report!"

It's funny to read izuku's pov vs aizawa. Izuku is just like, wow this all needs to end so I can get back to being the Normal And Awesome Deku I have turned myself into, and aizawa is like thirty seconds from having his own panic attack at having a few months to turn this kid into a functional human being.

You can truly tell that with how izuku keeps insisting on that he's got this by himself, with no understanding how crazy it is to expect his friends and teachers to back out and let him take over, that he, still, still, STILL has simply 0 faith or expectation that his teacher is driven to help the little kid in izuku that he's buried so deep down there. That an authority figure who isn't all might wants to save him. I want to eat his unthinking, warped by trauma thought patterns, they are delicious.

Kinda touching that midoriya foresaw and tried to avert the all might conversation issue. Rip, dude really tried, but baby izuku is like one of those puddles in flooded old buildings you can find videos of people dropping a rock in -- it doesn't look that deep, but if you tried to put your foot in, you would be getting a whole lot more than your shoe wet.

Yeahhhhhh Izuku’s really not handling it the best.

Izuku genuinely didn’t keep everything a secret all these years because he didn’t trust his friends. It wasn’t that he thought they’d react poorly or hurt him with the information or spread it around or anything like that. This was purely due to his own internal issues around it.

But they’re three years deep into being in the fucking trenches together. And Izuku very much is considered a bedrock of the class. You can see it in their internal monologues—everyone trusts him implicitly. It’s Izuku. If one of them was going through something sensitive or painful, he’d be at the top of the list of people to turn to. For like, the entire class.

And while Izuku isn’t per se aware of the fact that the entire class views him as the best of them, he is painfully aware of the fact that they’ve opened up to him over the years. And that this is making it look like he didn’t tell them a single detail about his life before he came to the school. Which is fair, because he sort of didn’t.

So he’s overcompensating. He doesn’t need privacy because he trusts them so so much and this proves it, right?? They can totally know the sordid details of the past he’s in active crisis over.

He’s scared that he’s going to lose the people who have trusted him over the years because he seemingly didn’t trust them back. But they all trust him so much that they’re more beating themselves up than blaming him.

Todoroki and Mirio were in that scene like “uuuuhhhh you look like you’re a second from a panic attack we can totally give you space if it makes you more comfortable” and Izuku’s in a spiral like Why Would I Need Space I Trust You Both Implicitly Please Ignore The Obvious Distress.

Fundamentally, Izuku has never processed what happened to him as a kid. He didn’t tell them because he wasn’t ready to confront how bad it was back then. It wasn’t about trust. Telling them meant saying aloud what happened. He just wasn’t ready for that.

And from the path canon took, I don’t really see Izuku trusting adults. His childhood did absolutely nothing to make him think teachers would protect him. And for all Aizawa did right, I think this is one bag in canon he legitimately dropped.

I want to be clear—Aizawa was working at a severe disadvantage. He didn’t even have a lot to tell him the problem existed, let alone how to address it. But it’s specifically the Hero Killer Stain Arc that makes me think that Izuku only would trust Aizawa to a certain point.

After the Hero Killer Stain Arc, Aizawa canonically calls out Iida, Todoroki, and Izuku in front of the entire class. He doesn’t mention what it's about, but he makes it very clear that he knows what happened and that he disapproves. And his criticism is specific: In instances where you are out matched, it is better to run and get help. Iida, Midoriya, and Todoroki need to understand that

The thing is that Izuku and Todoroki both considered that as their first option and then correctly deduced that they'd be burying Iida if they did that.

I will actually die on the hill that is that Izuku and Todoroki did everything right when it came to the Hero Killer Stain. Iida caused the problem, but the fact that he made mistakes was the point of that arc for him. But Izuku and Todoroki?

They both reacted perfectly. And if they had done a single thing differently, they'd have two dead bodies.

When Izuku realizes that Iida's in danger, the city is on fire, Nomu are attacking the train, and his supervisor has fucked off to fight monsters attacking the city. He does not have an adult hero who is free to bring with him, and we know for a fact that he did not have time to hesitate or try to find other options, because he arrives the second before Iida dies as-is. When he's on scene, his absolute first instinct is to run. Izuku canonically clocked the fact that he was out matched, evaluated whether he could safely retreat, and realized he’d never be able to get out of there with Iida and Native. He’d have to leave one or both of them to die.

So he asked for help the safest way he could: sending out the mass text and stalling for time. And canonically, he wasn’t hoping a classmate would show up to the fight. He was hoping they’d report it to their supervisors and get him help, which is exactly what multiple of his classmates did.

Todoroki, for his part, correctly clocked that something was wrong with Izuku when he got the message. And he didn’t just fuck off without telling anyone where he was going. He evaluated the situation, realized the city was on fucking fire and there wasn’t a single hero free to go with them, and told the heroes with him that they needed to go to this exact location the first second they could. And he didn’t have a moment to hesitate or figure something else out, because he also showed up at the very last second before Iida took a sword to his spine.

Frankly, Todoroki and Izuku couldn’t have possibly handled the situation better, but they got absolutely shit on in the aftermath. I don’t recall a single adult who told them they did the right thing, except maybe Native. They had the fucking chief of police telling them they were no better than the guy who tried to kill their teenage friend with a sword and their teacher publicly calling them out in front of the class without the benefit of context.

If I was Izuku, I would have walked out of that entire thing having my preexisting distrust of adults affirmed. Like. There isn’t a world where Izuku realistically looks back on his actions and thinks “damn I really should have left Iida die.” He’s not going to change a fucking thing in what he did. Every single time, he’s going to go save his friend. The only realistic take away Izuku could have from Aizawa’s call out was “wow, that guy is not going to have my back if I have to make a tough call. So if I have to make one, then I’m just not going to him for help.”

Which is kind of where we're at in pez right now, and Aizawa's starting to realize it. Don't get me wrong, Izuku trusts Aizawa more than any teacher he ever had growing up. He doesn't think Aizawa is going to be actively malicious to him. But he also doesn't necessarily think Aizawa's going to have his back.

The crux of it is in chapter 4. Tiny Izuku says that Mr. Aizawa is already on Izuku's side, and Izuku's immediate reply is, "I promise you that Mr. Aizawa has never once been on my side." He back pedals fast, clarifies that he thinks Mr. Aizawa is fair and not on anyone's side, but his knee-jerk reaction is undeniable.

And to me? It's because Aizawa genuinely has not been on Izuku's side since he came to UA. And I don't mean Aizawa has been malicious to Izuku. Fundamentally, the issue is that he misdiagnosed the problem.

Aizawa has spent his entire time with Izuku mistakenly believing that the source of Izuku's issues was the same as Bakugou's. He is only now realizing that his issues were more like Shinsou's.

Fundamentally, Aizawa correctly recognized that Izuku's problems came from the fact that he was raised in an unjust system. But he misunderstood what Izuku's position in it was.

Here's what Aizawa knows, from the jump: Izuku and Bakugou came from the same school. Both have very powerful Quirks. Both have obvious issues with the other. Izuku specifically moves and looks like he had a professional trainer, meaning someone invested in his training as a hero. Bakugou talks like someone who's been told his entire life that the sun shines out his ass and never got punished for being a little shit. Izuku's more muted, but he came from the same school. Two kids with powerful quirks? Likely were getting away with the exact same shit.

When you have an unjust system, you have the people running it, the people benefitting from it, and the people being victimized by it. If the teachers at Aldera were letting kids with powerful quirks get away with murder, both Izuku and Bakugou were likely benefitting from that. And it is absolutely vital that Aizawa undoes that damage before they debut.

He doesn't even need to think Izuku, specifically, was abusing his position in this power imbalance. The damage is done from how the teachers at aldera were likely treating him. Teachers that produce kids like Bakugou tell talented, powerful kids that they're special, that they're above the rules, that they've got something so fundamentally important about them that they can get away with more. Even if you don't chose to abuse that narrative in the moment, that's a hell of a formative experience.

They're about to have a ridiculous amount of power. They are about to be in charge of enforcing the rules. And people who are in charge of enforcing the rules and think they're above them turn into Endeavor.

Aizawa's approached Izuku from a sort of tough love perspective from the jump. He didn't cut him an ounce of slack, and it's because he genuinely was trying to do right by Izuku. No, he's not going to get to smash up his body and make himself a hazard. Figure it out, or go home.

He's had plenty of time to learn how to manage his quirk, after all.

With Stain? I don't think Aizawa, if he knew the full circumstances, would genuinely say the right call is to have Iida's fucking funeral. I think he'd agree with the decisions Izuku and todoroki made. But he didn't have all the information, and, fatally, he didn't ask. He assumed.

He's got three powerful, bullheaded students who end up in a back alley in the middle of the night, having all separately ditched the heroes they were supposed to be joined at the fucking hip with. He absolutely thinks that they either planned it together or that, when they realized what Iida did, Todoroki and Iida went after him in secret to try to keep Iida from getting in trouble--and almost got them all killed in the process. There is absolutely no way Aizawa knows that they actually tried to run and get help at every turn.

Aizawa made assumptions. And a big reason why he felt comfortable making those assumptions was because he thought he knew what Izuku's problem was. He thought Izuku, like Bakugou, had been benefitting from teachers turning a blind eye to his misbehavior for years. But the problem was the exact opposite. Teachers had been turning a blind eye to his victimization for years.

He shouldn't have been treating him like Bakugou. He should have been treating him like Shinsou.

Aizawa's trying to correct the damage of past teachers. If they've spent years telling Izuku he's god's gift to mankind and it doesn't matter what he does because he's a hero and that makes up for it, Aizawa needs to hold him to the fucking rules. He needs him to understand that he's not special, he's not the main character, he's not intrinsically better or more important or above the rules in some magically important way. He doesn't want to hear excuses. He doesn't want to know why this time it was different. Izuku needs to understand that he has to live by the rules too, because he's going to be in charge of enforcing them soon.

But if they've spent years telling him he's worthless, that people can hurt him and it's okay, that he can never, ever expect help from them because he's not worth it? Then fuck, Aizawa needed to do the opposite. He needed the same end result, don't get me wrong--an understanding that the system equally applies to everyone--but he needs to make Izuku believe that the system will protect him again. That Aizawa will protect him. And Aizawa's combing over every fucking interaction they've ever had, and realizing that he hasn't done that, because he spent all his time trying to correct a problem that didn't exist.

I think Aizawa's been beating his head against the problem that is Midoriya Izuku for the past three years. Because Izuku's a hard-worker. He is brilliant. He is a natural leader. He is the fucking cornerstone of the class. He is shining so bright that it's going to kill him, because Aizawa knows how to recognize a star that's burning out.

For three years, Aizawa has tried and failed to get Izuku to realize he can and should ask for help. And he has failed because he thought the problem was that Izuku didn't think he needed help, when the problem was actually that he thought no one would give it to him.

In this last chapter, Izuku finally said aloud the reason behind the core issue Aizawa’s had with him his entire time at UA: Growing up, he thought that there was literally one man on the planet who would care enough to save him. He was the most hero-obsessed boy Aizawa’s ever met, and he thought All Might was the only hero alive he could count on to care if he lived or died.

There it is. The exact answer about every scrap of self destructive behavior that Aizawa’s been trying and failing to remedy for years. Why the fuck would he ask for help when he needs it? He’s spent his entire life living in a world where people wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Aizawa needed every day of those three years to reverse that kind of damage, and he’s out of fucking time.

Aizawa is legitimately terrified that he fucked up and that it's going to kill Izuku.

Izuku’s Quirklessness is the missing piece of the puzzle that makes everything fall into place—which is why he’s so pissed at All Might for not telling him. Aizawa’s actually kicking himself for not noticing the obvious discrepancies in Izuku’s past. The fact that he grew up with a powerful Quirk was the factor that made him return to the same incorrect conclusion again and again. There were enough hints that he feels guilty for not figuring it out anyway, but if he had known about Izuku’s Quirklessness from the start? He would have figured it out in seconds.

Now that he knows, Aizawa’s changed how he handles Izuku. He doesn’t let there be a single doubt about what he’s doing or why. He makes Izuku explain himself, so that way there’s no more miscommunications around what he means. He makes sure to compliment him whenever he does something right—he’s trying to change courses, but he’s panicking that it’s too little, too late.

And now he’s got this goddamn criminal investigation that Izuku wants to bury, and it’s killing him. Because that’s his student, and he was hurt horribly. And his student just cannot comprehend why Aizawa cannot let it go.

And then there’s All Might.

All Might’s conversation with baby Izuku, for me, forecloses the possibility that explaining OfA is a solution here.

All Might really went in and knocked it out of the park with the best possible attempt at convincing Tiny Izuku that he’s himself. He immediately failed, albeit, but he honestly couldn’t have done better.

There he is, Izuku’s lifelong hero. And he’s there to say the things Izuku’s spent his whole life wanting to hear. All Might met him, and Izuku inspired him. He reminded him of himself when he was young. He thought he could be a hero. He was so impressed he offered to personally mentor Izuku.

And he loved him. Believe you are him, because I loved you too much to ever let anyone take you from me. There is a fundamental flaw in your theory that simply no one cared enough to notice or stop him, because I love you with all of me. I would have noticed. I would have saved you.

If there is absolutely anything that could have convinced Tiny Izuku, it would be that. This isn’t about quality of the explanation. There’s an internal issue that needs to be fixed before Tiny Izuku will believe any of this.

And I think Izuku recognizes this, on a level. As much as he and Tiny Izuku clash, Izuku gets him. He can typically predict Tiny Izuku’s exact responses to things.

But he’s never approached Tiny Izuku like someone he can explain this to. He’s spent this entire time trying to cheat code his way out of this situation. He wants Mr. Aizawa to erase him or to go find the Quirk user and find away to negate the Quirk. He’s never actually even considered explaining this all to himself as a solution.

Because he knows that there’s some kind of fundamental impossibility about it. Even if he can’t say exactly what it is, he knows that there’s an internal issue that means he’s not going to be able to just tell Tiny Izuku the truth.

Voice of God, he is dead fucking right about Tiny Izuku not buying OfA and being liable to tell everyone out of spite. Tiny Izuku would have that shit on the news.

Fundamentally, Izuku is aware that there is a deeper problem driving Tiny Izuku. He knows that it’s not about the quality of the explanation. There is something deeply, profoundly wrong because of what happened to him that makes him absolutely unable to accept that Izuku is him.

But Izuku has never known how to solve the mental wounds his childhood left him with. He still has them himself. He’s been burying them for years, and he can’t anymore.

When action opens in pez, Izuku himself is not okay. He’s just… bleeding internally. He knows how to hurt in ways people can’t see. But you can see how much his childhood is still bothering him in his defense of Mirio. He has never been able to let go of what happened to him. The wounds never healed.

And he doesn’t know how to go to these people he loves and tell them that what they’re trying fundamentally will fail, because he knows he’s been hiding this fucking shipwreck of his own mental health for the past three years but they don’t have a fucking clue at the scale of the problem.

At the end of the day, All Might went in there because he wanted to save Izuku. And Izuku told him not to because he cannot imagine himself being saved.

[cozymochi]

Do you have any advice on how to emulate the twist style? I'm genuinely struggling to wrap my head around it.

NOPE! I wish I did! Because! I’m not sure how to describe what I’m doing in the first place. I just kinda… go. (And anyone who has watched any drawing stream of mine can probably attest to that. Assuming anyone watched them actively, I doubt it sometimes.)

I was just formally taught how to draw what I see (this applies to real-life stuff too, it kinda goes hand in hand), and I just have a nasty lifelong habit regarding stuff I like. If it looks a certain way, I wanna draw it the same way or at least as close as I feasibly can get to it. 😩 This is like…. Years worth of somewhat unrelated knowledge + training just being applied to this goofy stuff. I draw wildly different art styles as a habit hobby.

For twst in particular, I’ve mentioned it elsewhere a couple times, but I did spend a good 2-ish years just trying to acclimate myself into training my hand to get used to how it works at all. It really is just… 80% staring at their model sheets or generic renders, and 20% me just… GOING!

I think people can easily tell when I’m not staring at a model sheet vs when I am lol. I do really like Toboso and her staffs artwork, and I’d like to get closer to understanding it, but there are things that she and her staff know how to do that I still don’t know how to accomplish. And those “things” are elements that I’m currently not able to identify in theory or in practice. Let alone articulate in words either if my meandering and vague way of talking about it is any indication lol. (Im not trying to be 1:1, that’s literally impossible for any human to do)

All I do is just look at it. A lot. I just try to draw what I see and go. Though, I’m sure that’s not exactly helpful or even practical “advice”, especially in just typing. Believe it or not I also can only wrap my head around it so much. And even then, I’m still not satisfied nor confident with where I’m at. Mostly due to my own limits. It’s not easy.

….

Then again I also don’t know how to explain or give “advice” on the fly on something that broad just in general. I wish I could be more useful with a more satisfying answer but, I’m not sure how I would. I wanna be helpful but I’m genuinely drawing a blank.

[nonsensechemicals]

crying whenever i talk about Cookie9 because all my friends have these interesting and unique theories on them while i take everything too literally and they all just stare at me like “dude… uuugh we r TIRED” <-they dont actually say this they are very kind to me but i can Feel It

[thepastisalreadywritten]

(CNN) — The dappled starlight and swirling clouds of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” are thought to reflect the artist’s tumultuous state of mind when he painted the work in 1889.

Now, a new analysis by physicists based in China and France suggests the artist had a deep, intuitive understanding of the mathematical structure of turbulent flow.

As a common natural phenomenon observed in fluids — moving water, ocean currents, blood flow, billowing storm clouds and plumes of smoke — turbulent flow is chaotic, as larger swirls or eddies, form and break down into smaller ones.

It may appear random to the casual observer, but turbulence nonetheless follows a cascading pattern that can be studied and, at least partially, explained using mathematical equations.

“Imagine you are standing on a bridge, and you watch the river flow. You will see swirls on the surface, and these swirls are not random.

They arrange themselves in specific patterns, and these kinds of patterns can be predicted by physical laws,” said Yongxiang Huang, lead author of the study that published Tuesday in the scientific journal Physics of Fluids.

Huang is a researcher at State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science & College of Ocean and Earth Sciences at Xiamen University in southeastern China.

“The Starry Night” is an oil-on-canvas painting that, the study noted, depicts a view just before sunrise from the east-facing window of the artist’s asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France.

Van Gogh had admitted himself to an asylum there after mutilating his left ear.

Using a digital image of the painting, Huang and his colleagues examined the scale of its 14 main whirling shapes to understand whether they aligned with physical theories that describe the transfer of energy from large- to small-scale eddies as they collide and interact with one another.

‘The Starry Night’ and turbulence theories

The atmospheric motion of the painted sky cannot be directly measured, so Huang and his colleagues precisely measured the brushstrokes and compared the size of the brushstrokes to the mathematical scales expected from turbulence theories.

To gauge physical movement, they used the relative brightness or luminance of the varying paint colors.

They discovered that the sizes of the 14 whirls or eddies in “The Starry Night,” and their relative distance and intensity, follow a physical law that governs fluid dynamics known as Kolmogorov’s Theory of Turbulence.

In the 1940s, Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov (1903–1987) described a mathematical relationship between the fluctuations in a flow’s speed and the rate at which its energy dissipates.

Huang and the team also found that the paint, at the smallest scale, mixes around with some background swirls and whirls in a fashion predicted by turbulence theory, following a statistical pattern known as Batchelor’s scaling.

Batchelor’s scaling mathematically represents how small particles, such as drifting algae in the ocean or pieces of dust in the wind, are passively mixed around by turbulent flow.

“This is cool. Indeed this is the type of statistics you would expect from algae blooms being swept around by ocean currents, or dust and particulates in the air,” said James Beattie, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University in New Jersey, in an email.

Beattie wasn’t involved in this study but has conducted similar research on the artwork.

“In my paper, I only ever really looked at the large (swirls in the painting), so I didn’t see this second relation,” he said, referring to the Batchelor’s scaling.

‘An amazing coincidence’

Of course, Huang said, van Gogh would not have been aware of such equations but likely he spent a lot of time observing turbulence in nature.

“I think this physical relationship must be embedded in his mind so that’s why when he made this famous ‘Starry Night’ painting, it mimics the real flow,” Huang said.

Beattie agreed: “It’s an amazing coincidence that Van Gogh’s beautiful painting shares many of the same statistics as turbulence,” he said.

“This makes some sense — the models have been constructed to try to capture the statistics of eddies and swirls on multiple scales, each swirl communicating with other swirls through the turbulent cascade.

In some sense, Van Gogh painted something that represents this phenomenon, so why shouldn’t there be some convergence between the theoretical models and the statistics of Van Gogh’s swirls?”

The study team performed the same analysis and detected the same phenomenon in two other images:

— a painting, “Chain Pier, Brighton,” created by British artist John Constable in 1826-7;

— a photograph of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft on 5 March 1979.

“Unlike ‘The Starry Night,’ this painting lacks well-defined swirling patterns, but the clouds are rich of structures with different scales, resembling those frequently seen in the sky,” the study noted of Constable’s artwork.

On display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, “The Starry Night” is an enormously popular work of art that has been recreated in Lego bricks, drones and dominoes.

Huang said that scientists had long struggled to describe turbulent flow in fluid dynamics in a way that would allow them to predict the phenomenon and that a complete explanation remains a prevailing mystery of physics.

A thorough understanding would help with weather forecasting, flight turbulence and many other processes, he said.

“Even after more than 100 years (of) study, we even don’t know how to define this complex phenomenon,” Huang said.

“It’s extremely important, but it’s extremely difficult.”

"The fact that “The Starry Night” matched statistical models of turbulence even though the artwork doesn’t actually move could suggest that the statistical methods and tools are less precise than scientists may have thought," Beattie said.

"The painting can’t be precisely measured because it’s “actually not turbulence. … (I)t has no kinetic energy,” he said.

However, Beattie said that he was a huge fan of the work of art and that it reflected universality and the beauty of turbulence.

“I deeply love the fact that I can take my understanding of the turbulence in the plasma between galaxies and apply it to the turbulence between stars, between Earth and the Sun or in our own lakes, oceans and atmosphere,” he said.

“What I take away from studies like this is that (van Gogh) captured some of this universality in the beautiful (‘Starry Night’),” Beattie added.

“And I think people know this. They know that something wonderful has been embedded in this painting and we are drawn to it.”

[ontonix]

Complexity Science is Dead.

The so-called Complexity Science has been around for a few decades now. Chaos, as well as complexity, were buzzwords in the 1980s, pretty much like Artificial Intelligence is today. There are Complexity Institutes in many countries. They speak of Complexity Theory. In a beautiful and recent video called “The End of Science”, Sabine Hossenfelder, speaks of Complexity Science and how it has not…

[thanapo]

My first exposure to masc identities were Taiwanese Tomboys and at the time I thought the identity was rather too vague to be ‘serious’ but honestly now I’m thinking there were some real advantages to it

i have been trying for like. months to explain how the relationship between butch lesbians and trans men is not something akin to polar opposites and this is all i got. like it's not like this:

it's a venn diagram with a massive overlap in the middle. i'm not saying EVERY butch is a trans guy and EVERY trans guy is a butch dyke , i'm just saying it looks more like this:

these are not "mutually exclusive" terms- they do not mean the same thing, but we can be the same people, an very often are. there is a long history of butches who identify as FTM, trans men, drag kings, genderqueer, genderfluid, transmasculine, male, polygender, and two-spirit lesbians, and so much more. the relationship between lesbianism and queer masculinity is inseparable and the only people telling you that butches and trans men need to violently separate from one another and be at each other's throats are terfs. even if we do not share identities, we share our struggle together as heavily misunderstood and unseen masculine queers.

we stand up for each other when our identities get confused by strangers, and we get misgendered. we stand up for each other when terfs and terfpilled people tell us that transmasculine people and men can't be lesbians, when people say "butches just want to be men", when people say "butches aren't real women", when people call each of us bull dykes and trannies, when people mock the way FTMs walk and talk and look, and when people tell trans men they're "just butch dykes in denial". we stand up for each other and understand each others struggles.

whenever a butch lesbian asserts they're a woman no matter how masc they are, whenever a trans man asserts that they are a man and not a butch, whenever a butch struggles to be seen as both a man and a lesbian, and whenever a trans man returns to the lesbian community while embracing their manhood, we are part of the same community, we share the same struggles, and we owe it to each other to stay strong.

we are not enemies. we are bedfellows, lovers, family, spouses, partners, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, siblings, friends, each others support networks, even if we don't share identities perfectly. whether you are butch and a woman, butch and a man, butch and something else entirely, a male, ftm, genderfluid, polygender, genderqueer, transmasculine, nonbinary, two-spirit or whatever else you may be lesbian, you are part of our family and your experience is worth being heard.

[thesewordsareallihavetogive]

Life imitates art - Dr. Jack Abbot x amputee!reader

Summary: 2.6k words. Jack is sent into a tailspin when the woman he’s been eyeing for months at his amputee support group arrives at the Pitt in a gurney. Based on this request by @seasiren212! (this is now a series! Here's the master list)

Warnings: canon-typical depiction of wounds and medical situations, cancer in remission, some medical jargon, reader’s history of BKA, Jack’s history of BKA & accident, age gap, angst, etc. The most unrealistic part of this fic is a doctor spending this much time with one patient (live laugh love the U.S. healthcare system).

a/n: ugh I cried a little bit while writing this. I’m so passionate about oncology care mwah. Abbot is working day shift in this fic. Surrender yourself to the plot and pretend he’s covering for Robby if you must. Divider credit!

At 23 years old, your leg was amputated just below the knee. You’d been fighting bone marrow cancer for a while now, and you were running out of treatment options. To mitigate the risk of significant metastasis, your oncologist recommended an amputation.

So it was off with your leg.

Before the amputation, you’d spent months in and out of the hospital. Somehow, despite the fatigue, aches, and genuine existential crisis over whether this reality was a fate better than death, you graduated with your Master's degree in art history after completing most of the program virtually from your hospital bed. You got special permission from the dean of your university’s college of the arts to defend your thesis from the hospital. Your nurses arranged for you to use a conference room on the floor and made sure everything was thoroughly cleaned to prevent the risk of secondary infection.

Your IV was hooked up to some medications you couldn’t pronounce, but by now, you’d learned how to wave your arms around wildly without letting the tubing hinder you. The thesis committee didn’t go easy on you during your defense just because you were sick. Good. You didn’t want them to. You’d researched and studied your ass off, and earned the right to defend your thesis. The one you’d spent countless sleepless nights and nauseating days working on. So what if you were presenting at UPMC’s Cancer Center?

The oncology unit staff were the first to celebrate you as soon as you made it out of the conference room with happy tears in your eyes. In the time you’d been presenting, the halls had been decorated with streamers. Balloons surrounded your hospital room, and you were given an elaborate bouquet of artificial flowers. You did it.

The RN who’d been caring for you the longest was the one to push your wheelchair across the stage during your hooding ceremony. The oncology unit staff lined the front row of the audience and cheered louder than you’d ever heard.

“MA” looked pretty damn good after your name in your email signature. The Master of Arts degree hung proudly on the wall of your apartment, a forever reminder of your resilience through it all.

It took grueling months to find the right prosthetic and get it fitted properly, and even more years of physical therapy to allow you to be here today, giving narrated walking tours through the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Jack met you at his amputee support group.

At first, he assumed you were there as a student. You were quiet. Observant. Some of the local clinical psychology degree programs assigned students to attend open support group meetings. The large, structured tote bag that followed you to every meeting supported his theory. He imagined you had a laptop, a textbook or two, and a can of Red Bull in the bag, if he had to guess.

You didn’t take notes like other students Jack saw in the past, but you didn’t seem like the type that needed to take notes in the moment, anyway. You were a breathtaking wallflower at the meetings, it was hard not to notice you. The floor-length dresses that complemented your body and draped across you in all the right places were delicate and dainty. Jack was dying to know if your personality matched your exterior.

If Abbot had to guess, he’d say the mystery girl at the amputee support group was in her mid-to-late twenties, though she didn’t necessarily dress like it. Your wardrobe was all maxi skirts and long flowy dresses, cardigans and cable knit sweaters, statement earrings and small chain necklaces. Jack overheard one of the younger group members complimenting your clothing style one day, describing it as “serving cottage core meets coastal grandma chic.” Whatever the hell that meant.

At one of the meetings, you barely showed up on time. You were flustered and a bit disheveled, blowing a stray strand of hair out of your face, but still beautiful as ever. An intricately decorated lanyard and your employee badge hung out of the purse’s wide mouth.

Your name, MA. Art Historian, Curator, and Guest Guide. Carnegie Museum of Art.

Hmm. Jack wasn’t really one for the arts. He was most creative when figuring out how to perform complex medical procedures in unconventional situations. He was methodical and analytical in his life. He approached situations and his work with scientific precision, but he could be tempted to give the museum a visit if it meant he might run into you.

The Pitt’s ambulance bay was never empty for long. Gurneys rolled in and out of the ER all day and night. After all his years in emergency medicine, few things surprised Doctor Abbot anymore.

Until you rolled in.

Dana was the first to reach the EMTs, taking report as she guided them to an available room. Doctor Abbot watched from the provider desk, his mouth slightly parted as his eyes tracked you the whole way across the Pitt.

The charge nurse barely made it out of the room and assigned the patient to Abbot before he jumped out of his seat and bee-lined to room five. “On it,” he said, to no one in particular. Dana stood back and observed his uncharacteristic movements for half a second with her hands on her hips before returning to her millions of other tasks.

Doctor Abbot pulled back the exam room curtain to reveal you sitting on the gurney, fidgeting with your museum badge and shaking your exposed shoe back and forth.

“Hi, kid,” he greeted, donning gloves. He took note of the prosthetic leg covered in floral designs resting next to your hip. Not a student. An amputee. Abbot hummed inwardly.

“Oh. Hi, Jack,” you responded, surprise gracing your face. You knew he was a doctor; he mentioned working at the hospital a couple of times during support group meetings, you just didn’t know he was a doctor here. You took him in. Frustratingly, he was handsome as ever in his black scrubs with toned, muscled arms that threatened to burst out of his short sleeves, with a badge that read Dr. Abbot. Attending Emergency Medicine Physician. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

Despite the situation, you couldn’t help but notice that his gray curls were a little more mussed than usual, like he’d run his hands through them at least half a dozen times. You yearned to follow suit.

Mateo followed Doctor Abbot into the exam room not long after and glanced between you and the physician a couple of times, trying to decipher the dynamic. It was obvious the two of you knew each other, but he kept quiet and set up the WOW for orders in case Doctor Abbot needed it.

Jack sat down smoothly on a rolling stool and scooted close to your bedside. Maybe closer than was necessary, but no one in the room objected to it.

“What brings you in?” He swept his eyes over you analytically. You looked fine on the surface, sans the removed prosthetic accompanying you against the bed rails.

“Bum leg,” you sighed. This was embarrassing. Even when you leaned back against the gurney, unsuccessfully attempting to relax, you never broke eye contact with Jack.

“Figures. Mind if I take a look?” Abbot replied without missing a beat. He rubbed his chin, eyes darting between your face and the raised slope of your leg underneath your dress.

You hesitantly pulled up your skirt to reveal the angry red skin surrounding what was left of your knee joint. For some reason, exposing your thigh felt intimate, even in the hospital. It didn’t look good, and it admittedly had Jack concerned, but he wouldn’t let you know that. At least not yet. It didn’t look like cellulitis, at least not on the surface. There was no wound weeping or skin dimpling. He’d still run cultures just to be safe.

“Are you resting your leg often? Do you remove the prosthetic?” He ran through a slew of questions. Sure, he knew more about amputations and prosthetics than the average physician, but he wanted to know more about your story.

“Well, I’ve given roughly 8 hours of walking tours through the museum every day for the past week, plus 2 hours today,” you rattled off your schedule. It was strenuous, but this was the life you worked and studied and fought to build for yourself. You had no regrets.

Jack gave you a stern look, and you shrank under his gaze. You almost reminded him that he was being hypocritical, with his 12-hour shifts at the Pitt, but decided against it.

“What else?” He pressed. You sighed.

“I can put my socks and sleeves on, but they’re tighter than normal. The prosthetic will fit on, but it hurts.” The a lot was silent, but you both knew it was there. “I was limping this morning, and I eventually fell while giving a tour,” you continued. Doctor Abbot immediately scanned you for signs of any other fall-related injury. No bruises or bumps as far as he could see. “But a guest caught me. And the museum director insisted that I get checked out. Even though I’m fine,” you finished, exasperated.

“You and I must have different definitions of ‘fine,’ my friend,” Jack exhaled and leaned back, just far enough to not topple off the stool.

A comfortable silence fell between you two while Jack weighed treatment options. This was more of an outpatient specialist matter, but he was glad you came in. He’d learned more about you in the past 15 minutes than he had in the past 3 months of staring longingly at you during the amputee support group meetings.

Mateo felt like he was intruding on a private moment. He cleared his throat and started preemptively entering orders in your chart.

“Cultures? For cellulitis rule-out, Dr. Abbot?” The physician nodded thankfully to the nurse. Jack didn’t miss the flash of fear that crossed your face. Doctor Abbot ordered an ultrasound as well, just to make sure there wasn’t an underlying abscess forming, potentially evidenced by the edema at the end of your limb.

You cleared your throat. “Could you also run a CBC?” you asked, wringing your hands together. Abbot nodded again and stood, dusting his hands on his pants to keep them busy.

“Why?” It wasn’t accusatory. He’d do it anyway if you asked for it; he just wanted to know why.

“I’m in remission. Bone marrow cancer. Doesn’t hurt to check for signs of recurrence when funky things happen,” you shrugged, though you were obviously tense as you gestured to what was left of your left while pulling your dress skirt back down.

The room went silent.

That definitely would’ve been added to your chart’s medical history if you hadn’t come in by ambulance and instead had the pleasure of meeting Lupe at registration.

Up until now, why you attended the support group meetings wasn’t Jack’s business. Now, you were his patient. Your health and history were absolutely his business now.

Doctor Abbot offered a small smile and agreed to the additional test. You didn’t want his sympathy, he knew that better than anyone. He knocked on the door frame on his way out with a promise to be back shortly.

For a minute, Jack pondered what it would’ve been like to know he’d be losing his leg before it happened. When he had his accident, the decision was made for him. The blood loss had been near fatal. He’d long since passed out when the military medics realized they were forced to decide between his life or his limb, the lesser of two evils. He wondered if he had the time to plan a new reality beforehand, if things would be any different. Any better. He didn’t think they would.

He thought you must’ve been young when you were diagnosed with cancer. You were young now, notably younger than him. He wondered when you had the amputation, how old you were—how young you were. The ‘stump’, as you called it, was healed. The multiple incisions left silvery scars on your marred skin. You had lived without the leg for quite a while now.

Mateo drew your blood panel and cultures. He carefully added the bottles and tubes into a stat biohazard lab bag with the promise that an ultrasound tech would be by soon.

“Good news and bad news,” Doctor Abbot strolled back into your exam room with results as soon as he could, true to his word.

“Good news: Blood cultures were negative and the CBC was all within normal limits. And the bad news,” he continued, scrolling through your chart on an iPad before looking up at you. You nodded with a sharp inhale and gripped the gurney’s side rail, prepping for whatever diagnosis he might deliver. His eyes softened.

“Bad news,” he said quieter, “is you’ll need to stay off that leg for a while. At least until some of the inflammation goes down. I’ll leave the specific guidance up to your prosthetist. But for now, doctor’s orders are to cut back on the 8-hour walking tours. You got a wheelchair?” He asked with his arms crossed over his distractingly broad chest. He was solution-oriented, but not convinced you would heed the medical advice. You were strong-willed, that much was evident.

You groaned and threw an arm over your face to cover your eyes. You thought of the wheelchair you’d shoved to the back of your closet years ago. After a few beats of silence, you nod. You’re not happy about the plan of care, but you agree to it nonetheless.

“Do you have someone to take you home?” Jack asked, shuffling your discharge paperwork to keep his hands busy. Otherwise, he might give in to the urge to reach out to you. 

Everyone you knew was either working or busy. Internally, you felt like a burden. The people in your life didn’t feel that way, but it didn’t make the guilt go away. You chuckled inwardly. What doesn’t kill you gives you a dark sense of humor.

“I’ll figure it out,” you replied nonchalantly, already opening the rideshare app on your phone. Jack frowned. If he weren’t in the thick of his shift, he’d offer to let you hang around in the lounge and take you home himself, but that wouldn’t be for another 5 hours. At least.

“I’ll come check on you after my shift,” he resigned. It wasn’t a question or an offer.

“You don’t have to do that,” you looked up at him from beneath your lashes, shocked that he would even suggest such a thing.

“I insist. It’ll make me feel better knowing you’re okay,” Jack replied without missing a beat. So he cares about you. Hmm. His hands found his hips, only adding to his inherent sass factor.

“You don’t know where I live,” you retorted. The banter was fun. God forbid a girl take advantage of her amputation to flirt with a silver fox trauma doc.

“I’m literally two taps away from finding your address in your chart,” Abbot smirked. He wasn’t lying. A couple of gestures on the iPad later, he was parroting your address back at you.

“Fine. But you better bring food with you.” It was your turn to leave no room for argument. You eyed him up and down, watching the way he squared his shoulders with confidence.

“It’s a date,” Jack replied easily, without thinking. You couldn’t tell whose cheeks were more flushed, yours or his. He didn’t dare take it back, though. Either way, you agreed.

“It’s a date.”

a/n: At the risk of sounding desperate, I'm begging y'all to leave comments and interact with my work. The likes are so super duper appreciated but I kind of feel like I'm posting into a void when 99% of the engagement is likes with no comments. anyway!! COMMENTS ARE REALLY APPRECIATED!! They keep me motivated to write more <3

Find more of my writing on my master list.

Turn on post notifications @thesewordsxupdates to get notified when I release new fics.

[arayapendragon]

dr. jacobo grinberg, the scientist who went missing for researching shifting 🗝️

the man, the myth, the legend. being a keen enthusiast of the human brain from a young age, dr. jacobo grinberg was a mexican neurophysiologist and psychologist who delved into the depths of human consciousness, meditation, mexican shamanism and aimed to establish links between science and spirituality. 

grinberg's theories and research can be tied to reality shifting, seeing as he explored the fusion of quantum physics and occultism. being not only heavily established in the field of psychology but also a prolific writer, he wrote about 50 books on such topics. he was a firm believer of the idea that human consciousness possesses hidden and powerful abilities like telepathy, psychic power and astral projection. 

the unfortunate loss of his mother to a brain tumour when he was only twelve not only fuelled his interest in the human brain but also pushed him to study it on a deeper level, making it his life’s aim. 

he went on to earn a phd in psychophysiology, established his own laboratory and even founded the instituto para el estudio de la conciencia - the national institute for the study of consciousness. 

despite sharing groundbreaking and revolutionary ideas, his proposals were rejected by the scientific community due to the inclusion of shamanism and metaphysical aspects. on december 8th, 1994, he went missing just before his 48th birthday. grinberg vanished without a trace, leaving people thoroughly perplexed about his whereabouts. some believe he was silenced, while others believe he discovered something so powerful and revolutionary that changed the entire course of reality, or well, his reality. 

grinberg's work was heavily influenced by karl pribram and david bohm's contributions to the holographic theory of consciousness, which suggests that reality functions the same way as a hologram does. meaning, reality exists as a vast, interconnected macrocosm. it even suggests that all realities exist among this holographic structure. 

lastly, it also proposes that the brain does not perceive reality, rather actively creates it through tuning into different frequencies of existence. 

this not only proves the multiverse theory (infinite realities exist), but also the consciousness theory (we don’t observe reality, but instead create it). 

grinberg’s most notable contribution was the syntergic theory, which states that, “there exists a “syntergic” field, a universal, non-local field of consciousness that interacts with the human brain." - david franco.

this theory also stated that 

the syntergic field is a fundamental and foundational layer of reality that contains all possible experiences and states of consciousness.

the brain doesn’t generate consciousness, it instead acts as a receiver and its neural networks collapse the syntergic field into a coherent and structured reality. 

reality is created, not observed. 

we can access different variations of reality (which is the very essence of shifting realities)

the syntergic theory is even in congruence with the universal consciousness theory (all minds are interconnected as a part of a whole, entire consciousness that encompasses all living beings in the universe). 

grinberg concluded that 

all minds are connected through the syntergic field 

this field can be accessed and manipulated by metaphysical and spiritual practices, altered states of consciousness and deep meditation. 

in conclusion, the syntergic theory proposes that our consciousness is not a mere byproduct of the brain, but rather a fundamental force of the universe. 

grinberg was far ahead of his time, and even 31 years after his disappearance, the true nature of reality remains a mystery. regardless, the syntergic theory helps provide insight and a new perspective on how we access and influence reality. 

summary of grinberg’s findings:

the brain constructs reality 

other realities exist and can be experienced

other states of consciousness exist and can be experienced 

consciousness is not limited 

all minds are connected through the syntergic field 

shamanic, spiritual, metaphysical and meditative practices can alter and influence our perception of reality. 

some of grinberg's works that can be associated with shifting:

el cerebro consciente

la creación de la experiencia

teoría sintérgica

[flimsy-roost]

I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.

[nymphaura777]

Manifesting physical changes in appearance without surgery, is it possible?

Okay, so it is 100% possible to change your physical appearance, including your bone structure, with just manifestation. This isn’t just some abstract idea or a wild theory yk it’s based by the way your mind, body, and energy work together. If you want to reshape your face, jawline, or even your posture, manifestation can absolutely make it happen.

Your body is constantly changing...and bones are living tissue, and they go through a process called remodeling. This means that your skeleton isn’t static...and yk it’s being rebuilt throughout your life. When you focus your mind on a specific outcome, like sharper cheekbones or a more defined jawline, you’re sending signals to your mind causing the change...

Science already supports the idea that your mind has a direct impact on your physical reality. The placebo effect proves this...people experience real, measurable physical changes just because they believe something is working.

Let’s not forget about neuroplasticity. Your brain is designed to adapt to new patterns and ideas...when you repeatedly on a certain change of the appearance you desire, your brain starts to treat that vision as reality.

Epigenetics takes this even further. This is the science of how your thoughts, environment, and behaviors can influence how your genes express themselves. While your DNA remains the same, your body’s response to your mindset can alter the way your genes activate, affecting everything. By focusing on your ideal appearance and holding that image in your mind, you’re literally programming your body to align with it.

It’s not just theoretical...it’s practical. When you fully belief that you’re changing, the changes start to actually happen. For example, if you’re manifesting a sculpted jawline, your body might instinctively start making micro..adjustments, like improving your posture, chewing in ways that tone your face, or even activating dormant muscles. These small, consistent changes create visible results over time.

Yk what the actual truth is? manifestation has no limits. If you can believe it, you can achieve it. Your body is far more adaptable than you’ve been led to believe. The main key is strong belief only. You don’t need surgery or external validation...everything you need to change is already within you.

So, yes, you can reshape your face. Yes, you can change your bone structure. Yes, you can manifest the appearance you’ve always dreamed of. All it takes is the courage to believe in your power and the commitment to see it through.

So believe that it's already yours and see how you'll be shocked by your own desired apperance when you'll look at mirror..

[sjyuns]

OUT OF MY LEAGUE ┆ A SIM JAEYUN ONESHOT

SYNOPSIS! summer’s here and so is jake’s chance to finally muster up enough courage to talk to you — the prettiest lifeguard he’s even laid his eyes on. only problem? jake’s too awkward and unlucky, but fortunately that’s exactly your type.

OR IN WHICH! jake tries a multitude of things for the first time in hopes of gaining your heart

GENRE! loser nerd!jake x lifeguard fem!reader, down bad! jake, simp behaviour, mutual pining, fluff, humour, first love, strangers to friends to lovers

WORDCOUNT! 12.0k

CAUTION! drowning, reader wears a revealing swimsuit, jake gets a boner, boobs, jake is like geeky to the point where you’d get tired of his thoughts, sexual jokes, one joke about being gay (happy pride month)

MIKAELA’S! thought of a baywatch au, but got carried away and wrote something totally different... going to be one of my last few fics before i go on hiatus cause of exams so i hope you enjoy!! i might write some drabbles/sequel based on this jake☺️ btw i've never been to miami so hahaha… sorry NOT PROOFREAD! | collection

REBLOGS AND FEEDBACK ARE DEEPLY APPRECIATED!

read more on this jake: HERE

Jake can’t swim. Maybe that’s really the least of his problems right now since he’s already chin deep into the trenches of the vast ocean gasping for a catch of precious air to fill his screaming lungs.

And he really should be panicking because drifting metres away from the coast of Miami's sandy beach is wrong — at least that’s what you had said to the two ten year olds you had just saved from the ocean last week. 

Not that Jake was listening or that he was following you around the beach: no he’d never, he was just being a good citizen. Yeah, that’s what he’s telling himself.

Because Jake Sim was anything but a sucker for pretty lifeguards in red swimsuits who looked like they could solve all his problems with a kiss. With hair that swayed like chimes as sea salt sprayed you, a goddess-like smile as you sauntered around the beach as if it was your home. Skin that glowed under the sweltering heat of summer, you looked as if you were from a different dimension altogether, and Jake wonders if you’re real, if he’s really here, watching you.

Okay, so maybe Jake was watching. Really intensely. But you would never know that because everytime you came so close as to look at his vicinity, he’d hide his face behind his textbook — right, his coveted quantum physics textbook he brings to the beach, his idea of a good beach read. 

“She’s so pretty, can you actually believe we’re on the same planet as her?” Jake pesters Jay endlessly, mouth practically foaming at the sight of you in the signature red latex swimsuit.

“What other planet would we even be on then?” His best friend scoffs, the first time he’s ever seen Jake so down bad for basically anything other than wave particle theories.

Jake ignores him, eyes still fixated on you — a bright smile plastered on your face as the sun’s rays hit you like a spotlight. “I want to explore the science of the atoms that make up her being,” he says, absentmindedly.

“Okay nerd, wrap it up,” Jay stops his friend, before he embarrasses himself from the volume of his voice. “No hot chick is ever going to dig a loser nerd, more so one that’s head over heels for atomic structure.”

Jay’s right, you’d never be interested. And Jake pouts at that very idea as he watches you talk to your colleague, another baywatcher named Sunghoon. And he can’t help but envy a little at Sunghoon’s figure — tall, athletic, and definitely doesn’t look like he secretly enjoys the elements of the periodic table song. (Jake thinks it’s catchy).

Jake doesn’t even need to take a look at himself to know that he’s nowhere near Sunghoon’s level of physicality. With a body that’s only been to the gym to work there as a receptionist, Jake knows nearly nothing about sports or swimming to be exact, only dragging himself out to the beach to accompany Jay and to watch you save lives.

“If you want her to even know you exist, you have to do something other than hide behind that ass textbook of yours.” Jay points out, and Jake gets deep in thought. Jay’s absolutely right, but between your lifeguard duties and his nervousness from just being around you, he can barely think of a way to create an opportunity to even talk to you.

“How about I create a damsel in distress scenario where I desperately need help and she swoops in like my saviour.” Jake suggests and Jay groans at his best friend’s weird delusions.

“Do you think you’re in some kind of teen beach movie, that’d never work,” he scolds, “just go up and talk to her like a normal person.” 

Normal. Jake thinks his definition of normal differs far from one of a passerby. Normal to him was burying his head in books, building a ten thousand piece lego figurine and bragging about his accomplishment to Jay the next day, you’d never like his normal, that was obvious to him.

“But I’m shy,” Jake states, as if drowning in a vast and wide sea is clearly the better option as compared to walking up to you and saying a simple ‘hi’. 

It probably would be, in his defence, if he actually knew how to swim. Jake has never set foot in waters this deep or treacherous but it wasn’t rocket science, how hard could pretending to drown even be?

“Fine, whatever,” Jay gives in to him easily, knowing Jake would end up doing whatever he wanted to do anyways, “but don’t come wailing to me when you embarrass yourself in front of her.”

Jake scoffs, Jay doesn’t know that he’s got it all planned out in his head — from the moment he shouts for your attention to the moment he acts as if he needs mouth to mouth cpr and your plush lips touch his. A goofy grin lighting up on his face as he imagines the last scenario in his head, your fingers pressed gently against his skin, eyes glazed with worry as you call out his name in hopes that he’d wake up. 

How romantic, too romantic even to the point where Jake turns pink and giggly with excitement, ignoring the look of horror his best friend casts on him to search for you across the beach.

“I can’t believe you’re actually doing this, you’re going to get traumatised — like a trauma for the sea when you actually drown and can’t —” Jake tunes him out, used to his friend’s nagging. 

“Don’t worry man I got it,” Jake says with utmost confidence, “she’s gonna fall in love with me at first save and then we’d kiss and marry each other before adopting a dog that’d be named Layla.”

“Layla is such a bad dog name,” Jay scoffs and Jake shrugs, head and heart both racing at the thought of you.

Jake remembers the first time he’d ever seen you around the beach, the day when Jay dragged him out of his summer home to ‘exercise’: a mere ruse to get his nose out of his textbooks and enjoy summer vacation for once.

That day, he waddled through the sandy beach, grumbling about how the granules of sand stuck to his feet uncomfortably and how they occupied the spaces between his toes. His favourite spider-man comic that looked like it’d been through war and back settled neatly in his grasp as he hung his head down to avoid the piercing rays of sunlight.

It’d only been minutes and he already wanted to leave, unused to the sticky feeling of sweat coating his skin like glaze. It’s loud here, too loud — party remixes blasting through the speakers of multiple beach goers along with the nonstop chattering and constant movement.

The only time Jake had ever been to a place this crowded was comic con when he was ten, and even that was air conditioned. Eyes still locked at the sandy pathway before him, Jake mumbles a string of vulgarities, fingers curling around the pages of his tattered book, lips dry from the heat.

And suddenly a shout from afar, a piercing ‘watch out!’ that gave Jake no time to react before a beach volleyball hammered into the side of his head, the force causing him to plummet into the floor with a disgruntled ‘ACK’, comic now thrown to the side as he held his head in agony.

Stupid fucking beach goers, he thinks, after having nearly consumed a mouthful of sand from his fall of grace. Do they know nothing about trajectory? Parabolas? How hard could it be to hit a ball properly?

His eyes are shut, mouth open to let out a moan of agony, head thumping wildly. This was such a bad idea, textbooks would never hurt his head this much.

“Bro, are you alright?” The familiar voice enters his ears, and Jake musters the energy to open his eyes, giving his friend a dead stare.

“Is the grass green?” Jake replies agitatedly, head still beating like a drum.

“Well there’s a lifeguard coming to check up on you, you know the pretty one that’s on duty today,” Jay states and Jake couldn’t really care less — the spot on his head still swelling. As if some pretty lifeguard could change anything.

Then he takes in a waft of your scent before he feels your presence, lavender sea salt and dreams as your fingers gently grasp his arm, turning him onto his back. Jake doesn’t know what’s happening, your touch leaving tingling sensations that made him miss the warmth of your fingertips, no matter how short the contact was.

“Sorry, I was reprimanding the kids who knocked you out, are you alright?” The same words or care that once came out of his friend’s mouth now coming out of yours, yet for some reason they made his heart flutter and ears burn.

Everything’s suddenly in slow motion and long gone was the snappy feeling of annoyance once he heard you, a melodious voice that could calm waves causing him to glance at its owner, only to see you — eyes, smile, skin all honey sweet. Jake almost lets out a soft gasp at your beauty, something about the tenderness in your eyes and the mirth in your smile that made flowers bloom in his chest.

He feels a different kind of lightheadedness, the one where he feels like he’s drunk on champagne of love. “Is this heaven?” he mumbles, a mindless question that allows a soft giggle out of your lips.

Jake’s in a daze, staring at you with a gaping mouth and clear, innocent eyes — his hair a mess on his head and his face sprinkled with the tan granules of sand. It feels serene, almost surreal how suddenly everything around him feels calm.

“I don’t think we’re dead just yet,” you answer, fingers moving to tuck flyaway strands of your hair behind your ear. The eyes of the boy in front of you are so bright and inviting you almost forget what you’re actually here to do. “Is your head alright? Any headaches, confusion or vision changes?”

“I think I’m hallucinating,” he replies, breathless. The pretty boy in front of you looks like he’d just fallen from heaven as he tries to sit himself up, head still spinning a little from the impact.

And he stares at you as if you’re some goddess, some mythical creature he’s never seen before. “I think I’m very much real,” you reply, pearly whites flashed out at him he almost faints. 

“Yeah, cool, right,” Jake finally snaps out of it after receiving a sharp nudge from Jay who’s trying not to scream at his friend’s interaction with you. “Absolutely, same. I’m so real,” his cheeks flushed rosy red as his eyes left your figure to dart everywhere else.

Jake thinks that even the mighty spiderman hasn’t experienced embarrassment this bad before, in fact probably no one has. “So are you feeling alright?” you ask, worried as you finally take the time to scan his head for any major injuries. 

Previous situation long forgotten by him, Jake can only seem to focus on how excruciatingly close you are to him right now, with your body leaned over his face, cleavage literally dangling in front of his eyes like bait. 

And if it was possible to get even redder than he was before, Jake feels heat rush onto his face. It was probably two inches or three away, or should he say they? He doesn’t know, because he’s never been in such a situation before — the two of them, so perfectly shaped by the tight red latex swimsuit you wore just right there.

Jake also doesn’t know if he’s salivating or not, and he’s way too scared to even move a muscle to check or tell you about the weird position he was in, or maybe even adjust himself so his hard on isn’t poking through the material of his beach shorts so Jake just decides to lean back a little and close his eyes: respectful, gentlemanly, meditative.

“There seems to be no major problem from a look at it but if you’re feeling any of the symptoms i’ve listed before, don’t be afraid to come find me or any of the baywatchers.” 

“Sure,” Jake responds, eyes still closed and body shaking, too scared to open his eyes again. 

“Jake, are you feeling good?” 

He peeks open his eyes, only to find you with concerned filled features and Jay who looked constipated trying to hold his laugh in. “I’m alright,” he says, playing it off as nothing.

“You’re unusually red,” you point out, brows furrowed. 

Jake lets out a sheepish laugh, “it’s a sunburn, you know, the second degree kind when your blood vessels dilate which causes redness.” 

Oh, he’s cooked — reaching the third stage of awkwardness: babbling extremely useless facts. It’s a tier system, as Jay liked to term it and he’s reached the gold tier of loserification.

“You’re cute,” you state, and he momentarily goes into a shock, soul leaving his body for a split second before returning. Did you just call him cute? Him? The guy who slept with spiderman plushies and talked to himself when he was bored?

“Thank you,” he replies before cursing at himself on the inside. Thank you? What were you, his teacher? “You too, I guess.” His hands rub the nape of his neck uneasily, tongue darting out to wet his shriveled lips.

“Thank you, Jakey.” 

He’s so gone.

“He’s so cute, you don’t even understand Hoon,” you groan, face in your hands, wailing in such despair that someone else would think you were mourning. “His eyes, his face, his mannerism, everything.”

Your lifeguard partner leans back into the grey couch of your rest lounge, face full of boredom and annoyance at your nth time talking about the boy you’d seen on the beach.

Sunghoon’s arms folded over his broad shirtless chest as he said flat toned, “you know I got it the first time. If you like him that much just go up and talk to him.”

You sigh, fingers running through the ends of your hair in deep thought, you wish it were that easy, “there’s no opportunity to.” 

“What does that even mean,” Sunghoon questions, “you’re literally a baywatcher, you can create opportunities to talk to that loser. Ask him to join the team or something.”

“He’s not a loser,” you fight back, as if you knew Jake personally. Sunghoon shoots you a look and you immediately add on, “maybe he is, but that’s what’s cute about him.”

“He either carries a physics book or a spider-man comic to the beach everyday to watch you,” he points out, “he has no life.”

Well, Jake does do that but that’s what you liked about him. The way he frantically hides his face behind his books whenever you look at his direction, forehead and eyes peeking out once in a while to see if you’re looking away. His facial features and the way he talked so animatedly to his friend about god knows what. You think you could watch Jake talk about paint drying and you’d still be interested.

“Look, if you like him that much and he obviously likes you, then find a way to talk to him — or like I don't know, pray that he drowns and he needs you to save him?” Sunghoon suggests, seemingly getting into the idea of setting you up with Jake. Summer around here was boring anyways, and he needed entertainment.

“Wow, how charming of you to wish that upon him,” you scoff, rolling your eyes at your friend’s suggestions. In the past few days you’d been watching Jake, you’d never seen him step foot into the waters, not even a dip of his pinky toe. In fact, he’d always place his stuff the furthest away from the sea, under the shade of a palm tree that decorated the area.

If Jake Sim ever needed saving it would probably be from something unusual like getting his foot stuck too deep into a sand hole he’d dug out of boredom.

“Alright, fine whatever you want. I guess you could stick to bae-watching instead like a coward.” Sunghoon sweeps his hair back, glancing at the clock hanging on the lounge entrance that gleamed a bright red 16:00, an indication of the start of your next shift. “Just saying you could always just ask him to join you for your duties, Heeseung does that with his girlfriend all the time.”

“Jake’s not my boyfriend,” you point out and Sunghoon scoffs, grumpy about the start of the next shift, “yeah, I bet you wish he was.”

With a grunt he stands up, beelining for the entrance as you follow suit, millions of thoughts running through your head. 

Despite how people may have perceived you to be — a popular, outgoing person who had boys lining up for a chance to be by your side, you’d always found awkward boys charming: a nerd who’d focus on no one but you, who’d talk on and on about the things that interested them, who’d treat you special in a way no one else would; intelligently.

And there was something about the pretty boy on the beach, his awkward mannerisms and geekish way of speech that so starkly contrasted his attractive features. Jake looked nothing like a nerd at all and maybe it’s exactly that unexpected charm that pulled you towards him.

“Hey, isn’t that Jake?” Sunghoon stops in his tracks, finger pointed at a figure in the water that was flailing around, splashes of water visible from the elevated platform you were on. “Can he actually swim?”

You have to squint your eyes to recognise the figure that’s not too far off the shore — a mop of messy brown hair and a white tee shirt that clung onto his body like second skin. Yup, probably Jake. No one else would have the idea of wearing a shirt to swim like he would.

Another indicator was the tossed away comic book at the shore, spider-man on the cover prominent alongside Jake’s nike slides. And you’d think that Jake out of all people would know better than to jump into the ocean recklessly, especially when he seemed like the kind of guy to watch water safety videos for entertainment and enrichment.

There’s immediate urgency in your steps, rushing down the creaky wooden steps and onto the soft sand, heat scorching the soles of your feet before you take a dip into the ocean, rescue tube against your back as you swim towards him.

Sunghoon follows suit, recognising your intent. Toes padding across the wooden groyne for a better entry point to Jake. 

Jake is struggling. And he wonders why Jay didn’t try to talk him out of this plan even more than he did. The water’s cold in contrast to the heat he’s gotten used to, engulfing him with nowhere to go. He kicks his legs in sheer attempt to keep himself up, arms mechanically swinging in circles like the demonstration video he’d watched on youtube just last night.

The salt water stings his eyes and he has no option but to close them — hoping that his best friend would notice that he’s now metres away from shore and finds a baywatcher (you) to save him.

It then all happens in a flash as he feels a board prop his body up, his back bent over the buoyant material as someone pulls him to safety, water no longer encapsulating his limb.

Is it you? He really hopes it is. Jake wishes that he had the capacity to open his ends right now and endure the stinging sensation to take a look at his saviour but he’s weak and his eyes are burning.

Sooner than later he finds his feet dragging through wet sand, sticking onto his leg with a sensation he wants to shake off. 

“Jake, can you hear me?” your voice resounds in his ears but before he has the chance to reply, another voice cuts him off.

“I think he’s passed out,” a deeper voice, a man. It makes his heart palpitate, “check if he’s breathing.”

Jake’s senses now heightened from his loss of sight, feels your presence getting closer, body hovering over his, and he can feel them brush over his chest — his mind is in a frenzy and he holds his breath, trying to keep still.

“Hoon, I don’t think he is,” he hears your voice filled with nervousness. Should he open his eyes now? Or should he continue acting?

Amidst his decision making process, you move in a rush, palms getting situated on the centre of Jake’s chest, periodically getting distracted by the outline of his lean body through his translucent white shirt.

Jake doesn’t need to decide because one push of your body weight causes him to wheeze, a lough cough leaving his mouth from the heavy chest compression.

Opening his eyes to be greeted by the sight of you and your counterpart both looking down at him with worry, Jake flashes his audience an awkward grin, unknowing of what to do next.

Half of his mind has drifted away, feeling betrayed by how his plan had failed him, how swimming was actually way harder than it looked. The other half was scrambling to redeem himself in front of you, not wanting to seem like a loser, because it was 2025 — almost everyone knew how to swim.

“Jake, you okay?” you say for the nth time since you’ve met him, seeming as though every time you manage to interact with your crush it’s always about him needing saving and you being the saviour.

He nods, a soft cough under his breath in hopes to clear the saltiness lining his throat before propping himself up with his elbows and passing a look between you and Sunghoon. “Thanks guys,” he mumbles, fully taking in how embarrassing this was, “fuck this is really embarrassing.”

You giggle, extending a hand to pull him up. “Why would you go in the water if you don't know how to swim?” You questioned, head tilted cutely as you looked at him with curiosity that filled his heart.

“I do know how to swim,” Jake lies, “I mean it’s really all about buoyancy and overcoming it due to the lower position of our centre of gravity. Plus, if your lungs are full of air and you’re on your back you’d float for a substantial amount of time—”

Sunghoon stares at you in horror, as if he was asking you if this was really the guy you liked. 

“Sorry guys, i got too carried away,” he catches himself before he could spiral into viscous forces, upthrust, let alone rotational equilibrium. And he catches how you’re looking at him — an adoring smile so perfect his heart skips a beat and his stomach flips. Jake swears he can hear angels from god’s heaven harping love melodies as you exchange his gaze.

“Don’t worry man, she’s into that kind of stuff,” Sunghoon says beside him, patting his back encouragingly, “it’s like she has a nerd kink.”

A loud slap echoes through the air as you send a betrayed look to your friend, cheeks heating up at his confessions about you. Jake, similarly wears the same look — as if a fairy had sprinkled rosy dust over the apples of his cheeks.

His teeth gnaw at his lips in discomposure as he watches Sunghoon flee the scene, a victorious smirk etched on his face. 

“Sorry bout him,” you speak up amidst the silence, moving over to sit yourself next to Jake, a slight breeze making you shiver, “he’s really…weird.”

You tuck the stringy strands of your wet hair behind your ears, toes playing with the granules of sand under them. 

Jake feels resentment in his heart for the very first time. Not for Sunghoon or anything else, but for the evening sun and the way it kisses your skin. He watches you in soft adoration before replying, “it’s not weird.”

You look at him, a soft hum leaving your lips in curiosity of the meaning behind his words. “I mean the nerd kink, not Sunghoon. Like—there’s nothing wrong with having a kink or being kinky. It’s just a preference, a kink— I should really stop saying the word kink right now.”

You laugh out loud, not a shy giggle but a real one. Your head thrown back in sheer entertainment from the boy beside you who looked like a moonlight’s kiss. And you think that you like him a lot. Because with Jake you felt as if you were at ease, it seemed so natural to talk to him about odd things: something you’d never really done before. But now you could only think of the things you have yet to hear him talk about, all the things that’d be nice to do with him.

Jake thinks that if the cosmos had a lullaby, it’d be your laugh resounding freely in accompaniment with the waves that hit the shore. He only now realises that it’s already evening and the beach is clearing out. And for some reason today, the beach feels like home: or maybe it’s just because he’s next to you.

He soon realises that you’re much more than just the pretty face that he’d noticed you for — for some reason, you bring out a different side of him: and he didn’t mean the loserish antics or babbling of nonsensical facts, you make him want to try new things, act wild, take risks. Around you he feels like living, something he’s never once felt like cooped up in the four walls of his study room.

“Yeah, you definitely should,” you grin at him cheekily, teasing him, “wouldn’t want people around to think you’re kinky.” 

He lets out a soft chuckle, eyes glazing over your face. He realises that you not only look pretty under the morning sun, but throughout the day; a different kind of pretty, the kind that reminded him of seasons. And Jake feels the sudden need to lean over and kiss you without knowing why. 

His fingers crawl towards yours, fingertips brushing over your soft skin cautiously, as if he was asking for consent to touch you, to feel you as if you were a sacred being and he was just him: in all of his geekish glory and ways.

Fingers wrapped around yours delicately, he wonders if you can feel how nervous he is through the sweat on his palms. Jake leans closer, breath slightly erratic in his own way — he’s never done this before, never felt this before: wanting to kiss a girl, and he thinks that he really should’ve searched up more about the topic of love or watched a tutorial on how to french kiss and maybe practice it on his arm before he actually gives you a kiss.

You welcome the warmth of Jake’s touch, fingers twirling over his in quiet acceptance and need. You wanted this, you wanted to kiss him, feel his lips on yours. The heat of his breath hitting your lips as he stared at you intently, eyes searching for some sort of answer to questions unknown to you.

Before you can lean into him, Jake pulls back, breathing heavy as he stares at you with complex feelings. Your shoulders sag a little in disappointment as you call out to him, voice soft and airy.

The way his name rolls off the tip of your tongue almost makes him lose his mind but Jake holds himself back, tongue darting out of his lips to satiate the lack of your lips against his for now. 

It’s an indescribable feeling, to hold himself back from pressing his lips on you, temptation and desire clouding his mind. But he thinks to himself that you deserve more than that, more than just a kiss and frantic panic from him. Jake knows himself well, that without a plan he falters and the last thing he’d ever want is to leave you hanging while he took his own time to figure out his thoughts.

It wasn’t that he needed to figure out his feelings, no — from the very beginning Jake knew he liked you, that much was true. The swelling, hopeful feeling in his chest every time he sees you, how he loses his mind and forgets almost everything about his being when he is with you. The catch in his breath when you look his way and the comfort of your simple touch. It was more so the aftermath of such a rushed feeling of want: Jake had never dated anyone, let alone liked a girl. You were his first, and he wanted it to be right, be good. Not perfect, just genuine.

“I’m sorry, I just–” he whispers under his breath, his puppy dog eyes softening your heart. He cuts himself off, and he didn’t need to say more because you understood. His affection was prominent and sometimes love, in its whole entirety, didn't have to be rushed through like the world portrayed it to be. You think that love, sometimes deserves to be slow, like the calm dwindling of a campfire that mocks the sun, a feeling that warms us, feeds us, and cares for us. And for now, the heat of Jake’s hands on yours is enough, and you’ll hold on to this pulsating heart of yours against other rhythms. Because the world will come and go in the tide of a day, but here, his hand, with your future in its palm seemed to be everlasting.

“It’s alright Jakey,” you hum, a wordless confession of acceptance as he falls into your orbit just as you do his, an unspoken connection as sure as gravity that said I will wait for you, unconditionally. 

A soft sigh escapes your lips as you turn to look up at the sky, a mix of orange and pink, as if the universe was dictating a story of your feelings. The once blaring sun now a calm hue and you think you could stay here forever, with Jake’s trembling fingers wrapped around yours and the rhythm of his slow breaths.

“The sky is really beautiful today,” you gasp, watching the sun dwindle down in real time.

Jake’s still staring at you and he can’t seem to peel his gaze to the scenery you’re complimenting because nothing could seemingly ever compare to your beauty. And he’s seen this scene before, in those romcom movies and he always thought it was cliche but now, he understands it. 

“So are you,” he whispers, and you catch it. You’ve heard this one before. Many times. But it was something about his voice, something different that told you it was the truth, like it wasn’t the same like the rest. “You look like a princess.” My princess, Jake thinks.

“And you look like a prince,” you tell him, your fingers tracing the veins along his hand. And you could sit here for hours doing that: tracing his veins like streets in a city made of Jake; all leading you back to his heart.

Jake holds back a smile, his heart beating inevitably. “I think a prince would know how to swim,” he jokes.

His eyes glimmer under the stars, and you wish Jake would just take your heart. “Well, I guess my prince doesn’t,” you say offhandedly, absentmindedly.

He catches on without a beat, the darkness of the skies seemingly giving him a burst of confidence. Or maybe it was just because it was you — his pretty girl who’d unexpectedly become his home.

“You’re my princess then,” he sighs contentedly, “we can be Eric and Ariel, you know, since you’re basically a mermaid and I’m a land being.”

Oh my god, you laugh (something you seem to do a lot whenever you’re with Jake), “I’m a lifeguard Jake,” you correct him, incredulously.

“But it’s synonymous to us,” he tries to explain, “unless you want me to be akin to Ursula, I could totally rock the villainous sea wizard character but then it’d be incest.”

Jake says it too innocently you almost tumble into him from laughter, corners of your lips burn from excessive smiling. The summer in your bones warmed the winters Jake’s skin has weathered as he catches you, steadying you as your body moves erratically from laughter.

“Jake, you’d be my uncle,” you breathe out, and he shrugs.

“That’s why I said that it’d be incest,” he exclaims, “but it’s common in some cultures — they’re called avunculate marriages, kinda cool if you ask me. Not the incest, I mean the fact.”

“Just shut up,” you tell him endearingly, head moving to rest on his shoulder.

Both of you don’t address the insinuation of a relationship but instead you and Jake just stay quiet, basking in the comfortable silence between you with occasional teases and questions. And Jake can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly.

You continuously tease Jake that he has a thing for people in red latex suits. The outfit of the superhero on his coveted comics he so often brings around having a close resemblance to the red of your baywatch swimsuit. Jake groans every time you bring it up, face buried between the nape of your neck as you continuously humor him. He takes it like a champ though, because it’s you, and he knows you’re secretly obsessed with the comics he brought to the beach too, oftentimes sneaking a read between your shifts that you now spent with him under his favourite palm tree.

It’s a comfortable cycle, coming to the beach with Jake, clocking in, taking a break with Jake, doing your second shift, and Jake sending you home. Your Jake-filled routine filled with laughter and stupidly knowledgeable facts that you’d never use in your life: like how if you break the word 'helicopter’ into prefix and suffix, it’s not ‘heli’ and ‘copter’, it’s ‘helico’ and ‘pter’. 

You were stumped for a long time, as he proudly showed you the definition of it in his very own Oxford Dictionary (who the hell owns a paperback Oxford Dictionary?). “See,” Jake said, chest pumped out as his finger underlined the word, “Pterodactyl too, because pter means wings.”

You don’t ask how he knows all this or how he also knows that starfishes apparently poop through their mouths. And you vividly remember how animatedly Jake talked about the sea creature and its habit to expel waste through their mouths. “Their stomach extends out of their mouths to engulf and digest their prey, marine invertebrates like clams and smaller crustaceans like corals, and then it goes back in then the waste comes back out.” 

Jake gives you a live demonstration without you needing to ask, waddling through the sands as he searches for a starfish, shoving it into your face in pure enthusiasm as he pointed out the different parts he was just talking about. 

Not to mention his extreme love for comics, a cute framed picture of a ten year old Jake at comic con beside his bed along with other minifigures and intricate lego sculptures. It was endearing to say the least, how Jake wanted to share everything with you and wanted to know everything about you.

And you want him in the bluntest way, you wanted his lips, his hands, his arms. You wanted him the way the ocean wants the shore, constantly reaching again and again. 

You share with Jake everything about you and he memorises it like it’s facts, like it was supposed to be his form of common sense. He knew your favourite book, your drink order, and the way you always tapped your fingers on your thigh when you were deep in thought. And he wanted to tell you that he prided himself in the fact that he memorised the freckles on your skin from the sun, how they were like miniature stars forming their little constellations. He wanted to hear you laugh, and know that he was the reason, and tell you that you had completely beguiled him, that you were his entire world.

It’s crazy how fast you can get to know a person, how fast someone can feel like a blanket of warmth even under the summer sun. Jake for once doesn’t have an explanation to this feeling, he just feels like this is what he’s for. It’s pure coincidence, or maybe fate, or even sheer blind luck but no matter what it was, you had his heart. 

Not only that, you also had the breath caught in his lungs, each bone in his spine, even bone in his body, every single finger that shakes whenever you are near, all the muscles that ache in his mouth to kiss you, his eyes that are always looking for you. You had much more than just his heart, you had everything that kept his heart alive.

Jake watches you as you do your superhero duties. Right now you’re watching a flock of kids, pulling them away from the oceans cautiously as you talk with them, facial expressions spirited and eyes shaped like crescents. The past few weeks of being around you did nothing but fuel his desire to be with you — well technically he was already with you but you get the gist.

And he decides that if he really wants to get this right he needs to ask people of experience, those that have dabbled in the field of dating anything, though more specifically hot women who were way out of their league, so he approaches his best friend who he hadn’t seen in a while; given, he was too caught up in your pretty smile and twinkling eyes.

“Simp,” Jay rolls his eyes at his best friend’s sheepish smile, “you leave me hanging for weeks and suddenly when your girlfriend has work you come to me for entertainment.”

“Not my girlfriend, yet,” Jake corrects, acknowledging the title of being a simp, “which is exactly the topic I came to talk to you about.”

“What, you want to know how to rizz up girls?” Jay cocks his head as Jake lays down next to him, head hitting the soft sand with a thud.

“No, I want to know how you managed to bag someone out of your league,” Jake says and Jay rolls his eyes, unable to believe the nerve his best friend had of insulting him right when he needed advice. “You know, how your palms don’t get sweaty around her, how you even managed to get her to like you— just saying you look nothing like the type of guy your girlfriend would ever go after.”

Jay takes a deep breath, forgetting about how much he missed his friend’s company the moment he opened his mouth. “Number one, she chased me so I am definitely her type,” he starts, “number two, that lifeguard of yours literally loves you, she looks at you with heart eyes I don’t get what you’re asking me. Just ask her if she would ever accept some geekish freak like you as her boyfriend.”

“You suck at giving advice,” Jake scoffs, his best friend giving him little to no substance to even work with. No manual on how to ask a hot girl out, where to go, what to do, if he should bring you to a fancy restaurant or the movies — actually scratch that, Jake probably didn’t have the caliber to keep his mouth shut about the different facts running through his mind in the movies and he’d probably clumsily find a way to embarrass himself with his lack of decorum at a fancy restaurant too.

“Well, I answered, didn't I?” Jay fights back, “why are you even asking me, shouldn’t you be asking her — you’re not bringing me out on a date, are you?”

Jake cringes at the thought. “Touche,” he grimaces, “I’d never take you on a date, you’d probably drain my wallet with the way you eat. No one would ever want to date you after seeing that.”

“And guess who out of the two of us actually has a girlfriend,” Jay grins, “plus, you should be nice to me, I’m literally helping you. Don’t you know the saying — the one that goes never bite the hand that fingers you or something like that.”

“You’re not fingering me, what the hell,” Jake groans, mind consumed with a disgusting image of Jay. How the hell did I even become friends with this man, Jake thinks. “Please, never finger me or say that ever again or I’m actually going to hex you or worse, I’ll tell your girlfriend you confessed to me over the summer and you’re actually a closeted gay.”

Jay flashes an expression of horror, as if he’d just seen a ghost. Jake crumples up in laughter at his friend’s expression, arms hugging his body as he rolls around. “I’ll do the same if you do, I’ll tell your girlfriend.”

Again, not his girlfriend yet, but Jake doesn’t take the effort to correct it, liking the ring of the title a little too much.

Jake spends his afternoon thinking while you’re hard at work. What would be the best way to ask you about all of your dating preferences without making you suspicious? And he settles on his grand idea of a survey, you know like a buzzfeed quiz he could make and slip a few integral questions in that would help him fill in the blanks in his head.

He scrambles onto his phone, fingers flying over the keyboards as he logs into his buzzfeed account (user pinktiger551, long story) before he inputs questions to his buzzfeed quiz, occasionally pausing to think of filler questions to throw you off. And when it’s completed in its full 7 question glory, he thinks it’s perfect — not too obvious of his true intentions yet lighthearted and easy.

When your shift is over, you’re greeted by an over enthusiastic Jake, phone in hand and he shoves the device into your hands. 

“Hi Jakey,” you greet him, overwhelmed by the particular amount of energy he had today, “what’s this?”

Oh shit, Jake didn’t think of that — he panicked for a short while, “uhm, it’s for my psychology course, yeah.” Jake settles on that, trying to convince himself more than you as you stare at him knowingly. Jake didn’t take psychology, hell a few days ago he was grumbling to you on how people who took psychology were wasting their time and physics was way better.

But you accept it for now, wanting to see what Jake had up his sleeve. 

“First date,” you read, scrolling through the poorly written options, one of them directly stating ‘something else (tell me)’. You hold back a laugh at the sight of Jake’s serious facial expression, “do I just click this if my first date option isn’t on this list?”

Jake nods fervently, eyes of curiosity gazing at you, “now you have to tell me what it is,” Jake says, prepared to take a mental note on what you say.

“Well, I’ve always liked the thought of a beach picnic, you know those romantic ones where it’s late at night and there’s fairy lights surrounding us and we eat a load of junk food and laugh at everything but nothing at all? Yeah, I think a beach picnic would be nice.”

Jake’s supposed to take mental notes, but his mind is too caught up in the pronouns you’d used. Us? We? Barely catching on to your mention of junk food and jokes. 

You said us, he grins, a lopsided one that showcases his set of pearly whites.

You scroll through the rest of the questions, unable to stop yourself from chuckling at the amount of times Jake had managed to sneak his name into the answers. It was adorable, too adorable. “Jakey, are you sure this is for uni? Seems a bit too informal for it,” you ask again once you reach the second question, a filler question asking for your priorities in a zombie apocalypse, one of the options being Jake, “I mean, not everyone who takes this quiz would know you personally let alone have kids with you…”

Two options below Jake’s name was the option of ‘our kids (perchance?)’ and you’d like to think that this option was dedicated to you and that this was not some random survey Jake gave around to random girls on the street.

“You’d pick our kids over me?” Jake gasps from your head, his mop of hair moving over to block your vision of the phone screen as he double checks the choice that brings him to his despair. “Our fake kids over me? I can’t believe it!”

“Well then you shouldn’t have put it in as an option, you know I’m a sucker for kids,” you argue and Jake has no retaliation, only having himself to blame for his lack of deep thinking.

The rest of the questions pass by in a blur, Jake’s intentions as clear as day as you reach the end, confetti flying pass your screen as the screen read: “You want to date Jake” in bold, an adorable picture of Jake in glasses underneath it along with a short paragraph:

Jake is the one for you! Even though he may be geekish or weird, Jake is your soulmate. This is a sign from the universe! Don't miss the chance to date Jake! Please, date Jake!

“So do I have to go on a date with you now?” you grin, waving your results into Jake’s face, the soft glow of the screen illuminating his features as he stared at it with glossy eyes.

Even though this was all planned by Jake, his cheeks are a pretty coral shade, his teeth gnawing at his lips in habit of nervousness as he shrugs, “I guess the universe is telling you to do so.”

“And I guess I just have to take this as a sign,” you answer. Jake under the evening glow of the sunset looked even more golden than he was before, and in this instant you realize that this man in front of you, who you think could be crowned the most attractive, funniest person in the world, actually wants you back in your whole entirety.

One of Jake’s favourite things about human physiology is the way one’s eyes changes when they look at someone they love, he watches the way your pupils dilate automatically like they do when it’s dark outside but this time it’s because of him — and he’s pretty sure he’s looking at you the very same way. The edge of his eyes soften a little and sometimes they even get watery which he can’t seem to control. Tears of joy, of course. And he has this habit of raising his eyebrows around you, as if he is trying to make his eyes bigger, trying to get a better vision and see all the details, blinking less in hopes of elongating this moment even if it was just for a millisecond more.

“Next tuesday?” Jake asks, and you nod your head in confirmation. “Is the universe telling you that that’s the day?”

“Yeah, and so is tarot.com,” he adds, “scorpio men are supposed to be filled with luck next tuesday, I think I’d probably need it then.”

“You’re such a nerd,” you laugh.

“Yeah, I get that a lot. But you love it don’t you,” he teases, “I still haven’t forgotten about your nerd kink, princess.”

You groan, never forgiving your coworker for it, “you’ll never let me live past that, huh?”

“I don’t know, will I?” Jake’s eyes crinkle around the corners, clear and radiant.

“I sure hope so,” you state, unable to keep your eyes off him, “or I’m going to start on my red suit theory again.”

This time it’s Jake who groans in embarrassment, whispering soft ‘no’s as his hand reaches out towards you, fingers caressing the back of your hand. “It’s just a mere coincidence, this is absolute torture.”

“Is it?” you grin, pulling Jake closer towards you, his presence welcoming as you inhale the soft scent of his being — a hint of vanilla and musk that you’ve come to recognise as home.

That night, Jake giggles on his way home, victorious from the results of his survey. You totally bought the psychology thing, Jake convinces himself that as he kicks his feet under his duvet, fingers flying across the screen as he texted you.

Jakey (my nerd🫶🏻) [ 11.45 PM ]  goodnight pretty princess☺️

Jakey (my nerd🫶🏻) [ 11.45 PM ] i miss you

Jakey (my nerd🫶🏻) [ 11.45 PM ] btw what is your idea of junk food🧐 just some details i need for psych class

You [ 11.46 PM ] Jakey go to bed

Jakey (my nerd🫶🏻) [ 11.46 PM ] I can’t I’m shaking from excitement haha

It’s Tuesday and Jake’s freaking out (as he has been the past few days) — having already triple checked tarot.com's daily love horoscope tab just to make sure that today or all days would be his lucky day. Jake, although a believer of science over anything, decides that today he’ll leave it up to fate.

He faces himself in the mirror, chest puffed to imitate confidence as he straightens his dress shirt for the nth time, going over the creases of its collar. The time on the digital clock hanging on his wall showed ‘18 00’ and he pats himself on the back for being right on time, having told you he’d pick you up at 6.20.

Jake picks up the single white rose flower he’d built with lego carefully in between his fingers, the delicate structure having taken him seven hours to figure out how to landscape; but Jake didn’t mind because it was for you, and he knew you’d cherish his effort and time.

Unlike Jake’s clean look, his bedroom is a mess: courtesy to his extreme panic when he woke up late from his nap, his usual alarm seemingly only unsounding on the most important days of his life. Tiny pieces of green and white lego splattered over the floor as Jake tiptoes through the mess to finally escape the confines of his bedroom.

As he walks to your house, Jake dials up his best friend, in hopes that everything is already in place. “Did you do it? Jay I swear if you dip on me again like you did five years ago during our science olympiad presentation I’m going to hex you into another dimension.”

“Calm down schoolgirl,” Jay’s voice ringing across the phone, occasionally cracking up, “I did it, and I told you I had a stomach ache that day, I wasn’t lying.”

Sure he wasn’t, Jake just enjoyed teasing his friend. “Did you get the junk food?”

“I said I got it man, everything you sent on the list: cheetos, doughnuts, bread, and whatever the hell lobster butter chips are — those were six fifty by the way, you better pay me back.”

Jake hums, he’s not going to be paying him back, the view of your house now directly in his view, “okay now scram, I’m picking her up right now — wait actually I’m kind of scared, like not kind of, I’m freaking out on the inside. Quick question, do you think I should’ve carried my lucky charm with me today? You know the one I take to all my science competitions?”

“You mean the piece of spider man's suit that you claim is real? No?” Jay almost reprimands, “you’re going on a date Jake, not to a comic convention.”

“Right, right,” he whispers under his breath, inching closer to your front door by the second, “thanks dude, you’re the man.”

Jay grunts over the phone, a half assed reply before he hangs up and leaves Jake standing alone before your front door, single lego rose in hand making him feel bare. Maybe he should’ve brought a gift, oh he definitely should have.

Before Jake dwindles into full panic mode, the door opens and all his thoughts fly out the window because you look like you fell from heaven, white fabric of your dress draped across your silk skin, smile that embarrasses  the sun into chewing its glory, stingy thick rays of you stealing the air from his lungs.

“Hey Jakey,” you greet him, and he feels all his worries wash away — like your voice was raw harmony that trickled throughout his body and soothed his soul.

Jake for a second is speechless, mouth a gaping mess as he just looks at you, pupils dilated and all. “Is that for me?” you ask, kitten heels clacking down the cement stairs of your home, extending your hand to take the lego flower from his grasp. “I’ve never seen a lego flower like this before, is this a limited edition of their series?”

“Kinda,” Jake manages to croak out, still entranced. He realises that he’s never really seen you outside your usual working clothes or a large, oversized shirt you usually wore home. Blush heat lips and honey ocean skin wrapped in soft melodies of lace satin, Jake with the whole dictionary memorised in his head, can’t seem to find a word to describe you; and maybe that was exactly how you looked, indescribable.

Jake doesn’t tell you that he spent seven hours rummaging through his lego collection like a mole digging through soil to find the correct pieces for this very flower, disassembling some of his favourite figurines to attain the fitting pieces. He doesn’t tell you that he built a white rose because it represented pure, true love and he felt it was fitting of you — his first love.

Falling in love, it’s a weird feeling. Jake can’t remember the moment he realised that he was actually in love with you and that this was much deeper than a shallow attractions based on your looks, he feels it burn so intense like an explosion of fireworks in his body; it’s the sleepless nights that left him feeling exhilarated at the thought of seeing you the next day.

“You look really pretty today,” Jake whispers as he pulls you in for a hug, breath tickling your cheek, painting them a sheen of pink. 

“Do I?” you lift your head from his shoulder, arms still wrapped around his neck, “you look handsome, like a prince.” 

“I suppose I’m pass the Ursula stage then?” He jokes and you giggle, “am I promoted to Price Eric now?”

“I’ll see,” you reply, pulling away with a lingering touch, fingers running down his arm to intertwine your hands with his as you lead him down the familiar path to the beach.

“So this is a test,” he furrows his eyebrows and you shrug.

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”

“C’mon baby, don’t do this to me,” Jake says absentmindedly, endearment dripping out of his lips like second nature. Your heart pumps, a song of fragile birds flooding your soul. Jake speaks in whispers of warm summer rain and silver rivers dancing through the abyss of the morning sky, and you smile, falling into this daydream. “At least tell me the prerequisites, is this a point based exam or like an aptitude type.”

“Charm me,” you tease, and Jake looks at you knowingly.

“You’re making fun of me again,” he groans, guiding you to the set up his best friend had prepared for him. And Jake thinks that his best friend has outdone himself yet again, and he starts to forgive him for all the times he’d ditched Jake during important science competitions because it looked like a dream — fairy lights draped around the area with a romantic ambience, food set up on the picnic mat that Jake guides you to. 

You take in a breath, shocked at the view. Jake seemingly always outdoing himself whenever it came to surprising you. “It’s beautiful Jake.”

Jake’s shoulders rise up in victory and confidence, his first date looking to be going extremely smoothly for him: or perhaps it was because it was with you and you brought comfort with you everywhere you went.

“Lobster butter chips? These are so expensive,” you almost squeal, letting go of Jake’s hand to pick up the bag of chips in excitement. 

Making a mental note to thank Jay when he sees him, Jake makes space for the both of you to settle down, summer breeze blowing as the waves hit the shore rhythmically.

And it’s in moments like this, you wonder to yourself why no one has ever been entranced by Jake as you are right now, how someone like him — so innately pure and beautiful in all definitions isn’t seen as he is in your eyes. Because his laugh is utterly contagious and his smile makes you giddy for no reason, the jokes he makes etched in your mind that you still burst out laughing days later: you’ve fallen for every second you get to spend with Jake, even if those seconds have left you wanting more. But in those small moments of wonder, you look at Jake and feel glad that no one else has seen him like you do, because if they looked deep enough to see all of those things within him, then you’d never have been able to.

You don’t even have to think about what to say, Jake already midway in a tangent about how excited he was for this day to arrive, something about extreme rituals and late night searches on some sketchy website called doctornerdlove that made him question his whole being.

“This man was a virgin at thirty nine, I thought I was reading about my future self,” he explains, pulling out his phone to show you the extremely sketchy website he had to get through two security warnings and five closed advertisements to reach, “and there was something about how someone tells him that sometimes a girl actually tried to flirt with him but he was too scared to even talk to them so he never got a girlfriend. And I was like oh my gosh, that could’ve been me— thank god you appeared before I turned 39.”

“Jakey, you’re twenty-two,” you look at him, adoringly, just like you’ve always been. “And you’re not even scared to talk to girls.”

“Age is just a concept, you know baby,” he starts, and the endearment still makes you shiver in delight, “and I am scared of girls, I was especially scared of you.”

Oh, you croon your neck in curiosity, you never knew that. Jake takes that as a signal to continue, hands flying through the air as he tries to mimic the exact situation, “okay, it wasn’t really fear, it was more of a wow-my-eyes-are-going-to-fly-out-of-my-sockets thing when I first saw you. You were checking up on me after the ball whammed into the side of my head, remember? And I asked you if you were real.”

“Jake, I literally thought you were so attractive then, I flirted with you,” you exclaimed.

“You did not,” he argues, “no way you did.”

“I called you Jakey and said that you were cute,” you point out.

“Yeah but my mom calls me that too,” he tries to retaliate, “not saying that the way you say it makes me think of my mom–”

“We were strangers.” And Jake realises. Oh, maybe it was possible. Maybe. Not that he’d recognise it in the heat of that moment where he was way too busy ogling at you and your things, but he’d never confess that to you. “W–well, I flirted with you,” Jake stammers.

“You said like five words to me and your face was as red as a tomato,” you shake your head, leaning into the banter you’ve come to enjoy with the boy you’ve come to love.

“Well it was nerd flirting, you know what I mean?” You let out a laugh that makes his stomach flutter and his heartbeat soften, and he wishes that that very sound could suffocate him in the morning dew and evening light.

“You’re the stupidest person ever when it comes to love,” you gasp as his hand finds the dip of your waist, pulling you closer into him, “even though you may be slick sometimes.”

“I sure hope so, because I didn’t do all that research on the dark web for nothing.” His fingers knead your skin absentmindedly over the fabric of your summer dress.

And suddenly, while he stares at you under the midnight sky, he just can’t take it anymore. He wants more, more than just looks and brushes of arms and legs and the stupid endless flirting. He wants to taste your lips and your neck and your cheeks and everything, to run his hands through your hair and feel the electricity of love rush through him as he has read in all of the books in his life. Jake wants to pull you in and never let you go.

“Kiss me,” you whisper and that was all it takes for him to kiss you like every fibre of his being was dying, and you were his medicine. 

You’ve never lost yourself in a kiss, you’ve in fact never experienced a kiss like this; pure psychedelic inebriation instead of just lips against lips. And it felt like transcendental metamorphosis as Jake licks the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of passion before delivering it back to you, over and over again.

Jake places his hands on either side of your face, and the room falls away, the space between the two of you explodes and his heart keeps missing beats, hands unable to bring you close enough to him. Jake tastes the skin of your lips and realizes that he’s been starving, his lips leaving your lips to place chaste kisses at your neck.

In that very moment you believe that his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over you like stars.

It leaves both of you panting and wanting more as Jake traces tiny little circles on the lines of your palms, heat of the moment evident through the red tips of his ears. And Jake thinks that he’s found his new obsession and he can pen it down in his notebooks that his favourite hobby would now be kissing you, holding you close, feeling your lips touch his and your limbs wrapped around him.

“Can you also read palms or something?” You ask, breath heavy as you almost shiver from the delicate dancing of his fingertips.

“I actually can,” he admits, chest heaving in similarity to you, his signature lopsided grin on his face.

You raise your eyebrows with a gentle smile, he’s so weird, you think as you play along.

“What’s does my future look like?”

And you swear, Jake’s eyes light up like a thousand fireflies, he takes in a deep breath before he speaks without hesitation, with certainty.

“It looks like us.”

It’s three in the morning and you’re laying in Jake’s arms, the warmth of his arms draped over the curve of your hips and under your head as he can’t stop placing chaste pecks around your face and down into your collarbones. 

“Jakey, it’s three in the morning, please go to sleep,” you almost have to beg your boyfriend, your eyelids heavy as the still energetic boy who has your heart doesn’t stop at your command.

“Did you know that kissing was invented from Hindu Vedic Sanskrit texts from over 3,500 years ago and was described as inhaling another's soul?” Jake whispers, trying to keep his voice down, his lips continue to press kisses along your jaw, tongue occasionally darting out to place sloppy kisses.

“You’re like a dog,” you mutter, eyes prying open to be met with Jake’s mop of bessy bed hair and glowing skin.

“You dog at least?” he tries and his heart does a victorious pump of its fist when you hum in agreement, too tired to coax him.

“You know you’re so pretty,” he sighs, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck.

“Jakey,” you murmur, and his head leaves its place of comfort to look up at you in attention, “I’m going to inhale your soul if you don’t sleep right now, not the kiss kind.”

Jake gives you a guilty grin and it follows with moments of silence before it breaks again.

“One more thing, since we’re on the topic of dogs, would you ever adopt a dog and call her Layla?”

“Jake.” You say and he gives in at the mention of his government name, telling himself that he’ll ask you tomorrow instead when you aren’t so sleep deprived.

And unfortunately for you Jake doesn’t forget, constantly in your ear about getting a border collie with white and golden fur. “She can be our child, you know co-parenting. You could be a mom and I could be a dad, we’d be dog-married.”

“Dog married? Jakey, are you dog-trapping me?” You suggest and he shrugs, lips jutting out in habit — the type of expression he has when he wants something really bad now amplified on his face.

“Perchance, is it working?” Jake wonders aloud and you chuckle, throwing your legs over his under the shade of your designated palm tree. It seems like even during your day off, some things never change; you’re still with Jake, you’re still at the beach, and you’re still entertained by his antics.

Jake takes your legs, palms caressing over your summer skin and you sigh in relief. “Maybe, we’ll see.”

Your boyfriend takes it as a win, a goofy grin spread across his face. The checklist he made in his mind almost fully ticked, the only thing left unchecked being the part about getting married but he’ll get there, Jake’s extremely confident because he’s if he’s managed to bag the prettiest girl out of his league, even flying cars would be possible in his books.

“You’d be an amazing dog-mom for our dog-child, dog-daughter to be exact, and I’d be the best partner dog-dad. We’d be such good dog-parents, our dog-baby would look up to us.”

“Babe, it’s a pet, let’s not get carried away.” But Jake does get carried away, imagining the moments where he’d dress your joint dog-baby — Layla in accessories and clothes, pamper her with you, do everything together with the two of you. “And stop dreaming of dressing our dog-baby up in spider man accessories.”

You know him so well. 

“Have I ever told you I love you baby,” Jake tries, fingers skillfully massaging your leg.

“I love you too Jakey,” you reply, leaning forward to place a kiss on his lips. Jake leans into it instinctively and sighs in contentment. 

“So what do you think of a spider-dog, or should I call her dog-women– dog-girl? With a mini cape and all.”

“Jake,” you deadpan and he slouches in defeat, unable to fight the use of his government name. 

“Fine, no dog-hero,” he sighs and pouts.

Three months later, you appear at Jake’s doorstep with a dog in your arms, the shiny new collar embossed with the name ‘LAYLA’ in bold, the white and golden furred border collie wearing a red mini cape. 

That night, Jake kisses you just like every other night, whispering unbeknownst dog facts that you don’t question how he knows because that’s your boyfriend — Jake in his geekish walking encyclopedia thoughts and talkative mannerisms, the most beautifully loserish nerd you’ve ever laid your eyes on who can recite the periodic table by heart but can’t seem to follow a pancake recipe, who has now chosen to abandon the spiderman plushies on his bed whenever you’re around to hug you to sleep instead, who you love with your whole heart.

Jake, though, swears it’s statistically impossible for you to love him more than he does you. Just because he gives you more kisses and in his words, kisses are the measurement units for the metric system of love, whatever that means.

You proceed to tell him to shut up (endearingly, of course) and he does, only to come back to you at the end of the week with a comparative affection count in the form of a double bar graph. It's so dorkish you can't take it seriously, making up for your loss in percentage of kisses by peppering him with more on the spot.

© SJYUNS

[teambyler]

Let's talk about #WallGate

The Upside Down appears to have been created the night Will went missing. I just read a theory from @MarianDalton on YouTube that Will has powers and in 1983 he created an Upside Down version of Hawkins because he wanted to get back home...

Whether or not that's exactly it, there's SOME connection between the Upside Down and Will. And destroying the Upside Down and saving Hawkins might be directly connected to Will.

Remember the lyrics to "Heroes" about forbidden love and kissing at the Berlin Wall?

Well, it now looks like the Upside Down has a wall:

It's possible that the Upside Down's wall maintains its structure, and destroying it is key to ending the UD and saving Hawkins. Since the Upside Down and Will are likely connected, what if the UD is connected somehow to Will's psychology and his likely coming-out arc this season? A place he created to wall himself in, a seemingly safe place, but also where he's closed off from the world because he can't be his true self? (His CLOSET?)

Ross Duffer has said about season 5, "This emotional arc for [Will] is what we feel is going to hopefully tie the whole series together."

One theme of the show has been the prejudice and fear of Hawkins. What if the physical wall parallels the metaphorical walls in Hawkins? After all, "conformity is killing the kids." We have an episode titled "Escape from Camazotz" which in A Wrinkle in Time was a hive-mind planet...

And what if the key to Vecna's power over Will is the fact that Will never thinks he'll find love? The show establishes that love is what frees people from Vecna.

Will and Mike are standing by the wall in the UD, and Will is about to use his connection to the UD to destroy it and save Hawkins, but he has to destroy himself along with it. He tells Mike to leave or he'll die, which he refuses to do: Mike had promised Will they'd be a TEAM. Finally, Will, to explain himself, makes clear he loves Mike, and he couldn't go on if Mike died (my own favorite theory... mine lol). Mike says NO: he will die with Will.

When Will doesn't understand why Mike's doing this, MIKE KISSES HIM.

The key to tearing down the wall is that Will sees he is loved. The wall is about to fall.

But they don't know that yet; they kiss and hold each other tightly because it's their last moments alive. The lyrics to "Heroes" suddenly become perfect:

Standing, by the wall And the guns, shot above our heads And we kissed, as though nothing could fall And the shame, was on the other side Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever Then we could be Heroes, just for one day.

-teambyler

P.S. See my follow-up post about a behind-the-scenes photo corroborating this theory!

[mariasont]

can you please write Spencer and shy!reader for valentine's day? 💕💝💖💖💞💝💖 I love them so much and I love you more

Lover Girl - S.R

summary: spencer has a hypothesis about love on vday & it’s not something you agree on pairing: post!prison!reid x shy!medialiaison!reader warnings: r going crazy over something spencer said hours ago (get a grip girl), r kinda goes out of character, spencer being the sassiest human alive wc: 1.9k a/n: thank u sm for requesting i love this and i love you even more ✨💖

The draft on your laptop was starting to look less like a press release and more and more like a psychological cry for help. Words sprawled like abandoned thoughts, entire sentences had been brutally sacrificed to the backspace key, and you'd rewritten the same transition phrase so many times it no longer felt like a real word. The whole thing read like the work of someone who had just sustained a minor head injury.

Objectively? It was bad.

Subjectively? It was an unmitigated disaster.

You blamed Spencer. Or maybe you blamed yourself for still thinking about it, for letting his words linger in your head like an incorrectly formatted footnote that you couldn't stop rereading.

You had never been a hopeless romantic, exactly, but you liked the idea of it, the structure of it. Believed it was more than a sum of its parts. More than just wires crossing in the brain and pattern recognition.

And yet, he had discarded the notion so easily, reducing love to a series of neurochemical reactions misinterpreted as emotional depth, something logical and completely stripped of any sort of real feeling.

He hadn't meant it cruelly, but his voice carried a kind of detachment that made you want to launch your coffee at his ridiculously well-structured face. It shouldn't bother you.

It really, genuinely, in no universe, should not bother you. It wasn't like you had a chance with him, so why did it matter what Spencer Reid, certified romance cynic, destroyer of sentimental ideals, and casual heartbreaker, thought about love?

If anything, his lack of belief should make it easier to kill this absurd crush before it spiraled into something unmanageable.

You squared your shoulders and looked back to the screen, back to the carefully worded Bureau-approved phrases meant to sound polished and agreeable.

Strengthening community trust. Bridging the gap between law enforcement and the public.

Meaningless, hollow, designed to be palatable without saying anything real. Blah. Blah.

I mean, did he really think that love was like an outdated scientific theory? It was Valentine's Day, for crying out loud — if nothing else, wasn't that proof of its existence?

You had considered the possibility that he had stopped believing because he had to. That prison had stripped the softness of him, turned love into just another abstract concept that didn't hold up under scrutiny, like time, like trust, like freedom.

Or maybe (and this was the more infuriating possibility) he had always been like this, too pragmatic to believe in something he couldn't technically hold in his hands.

You groaned under your breath, rubbing at your temple like you could physically press the words out of your skull, like they were just another headache waiting to pass. Why were you still thinking about this? It was stupid. He was stupid. You were stupid of caring.

Except he wasn't stupid. He was obnoxiously brilliant, the kind of smart that made other geniuses insecure, and that was the problem. Because if someone that intelligent didn't believe in love the way you did.... did that mean you were in the wrong? Had you been naive this whole time, blindly buying into a romanticized fantasy while Spencer had long dissected it and found it lacking?

The knock on your office doorframe startled you so badly that your entire skeletal structure attempted to evacuate your body, knee jerking up, colliding with the underside of the desk with an unforgiving whack.

You barely had time to wonder if you'd just concussed your kneecap before you looked up and — Spencer. Standing in the doorway like some cosmic punishment for thinking about him too hard.

Heat flooded your face like an admission of guilt, because why, why, did it suddenly feel like you'd been caught red-handed?

"Hey," he said, tilting his head. "You okay?"

No, you wanted to say. Not at all. Because what were you supposed to do when they very subject of your over analysis materialized in your doorway, looking at you like he could see every freaking unspoken thought folded between your ribs?

You swallowed, forced yourself to look anywhere but directly at him, because everything about this, about him, felt like some kind of cruel irony.

"Uh, yeah," you croaked, voice pitching embarrassingly high. Great. Perfect. Totally normal human behavior.

Spencer's brow furrowed, his head doing that thing he did when something wasn't quite right. But miraculously, he didn't say anything about it.

"I was just...," You gestured to your laptop.

Spencer nodded slowly, either accepting your excuse at face value or deciding it wasn't worth the effort to call you out.

"Right. I was just going to ask if you had finalized the press release for me to proof."

Your stomach lurched, a sharp drop like missing a step in the dark. Finalized. Bold of him to assume you'd done anything besides stare blankly at your screen for the past fifteen minutes.

"Oh! Yeah, of course," you said, throwing out the words with a half-hearted smile as if that would seal the lie. "Almost done. Just... you know, making sure it's perfect."

Spencer stepped inside, moving just past the threshold. His expression changed. Less neutral. More aware.

"You're acting strange."

Which was unacceptable, because if anyone in this scenario should be acting strange, it was him, standing there like a walking contradiction.

"I — what?" The laugh escaped before you could trap it behind your teeth, jagged and surely unnatural.

"You're tense. And you don't usually second-guess yourself this much. If it was almost done, you'd just say so." His eyes flicked to the laptop. "Did something happen?"

Your face went nuclear, looking away, hyper focused on the edge of the desk like it was the most fascinating thing you'd ever seen. "I don't know what you mean. I'm acting normal."

Spencer made a thoughtful noise. "Denial first. Then contradiction."

"I —"

"Oh, and there's the hesitation. That usually happens when you're trying to figure out how to backpedal without making it obvious."

"Do you always do this?"

"Only when people are lying about something." He squinted at you. "And you're a very bad liar."

He tapped a finger a finger against his arm in a way that made your nerves itch, before stepping forward and sinking into the chair across from your desk.

"Huh."

You frowned. "What?"

"You're doing the same thing you did earlier," he said matter-of-factly. "Avoiding direct responses, looking everywhere but me, shifting in your seat."

His gaze lingered, and then — Gods, help you — his lips curved, just slightly.

"Almost like the conversation was bothering you then, too."

Oh. Oh, this was bad. He was trying to talk about the one topic you'd spent the last twenty minutes trying to erase from your brain.

"I just, well, it's not that I had thoughts or feelings on it or anything, I just didn't, well, I mean, I just didn't want to be in that conversation, you know? Not that it was bad. Just — not my thing."

Spencer's eyebrows lifted. "So you disagreed with me?"

"I — I did not say that."

"No, but you just said everything but that." He leaned forward. "So tell me. What was it?"

You finally look at him, actually looked at him, and immediately regretted it.

You tried to gauge if there was any chance you could turn this conversation in your favor.

Nope.

"I mean, I wouldn't say disagreed, per se, I just... thought maybe your take was a little—," you sighed, "dismissive."

"Oh? And what exactly am I dismissing?"

You hesitated. Not because you didn't have an answer, but because you had too many. Love wasn't just science, romance wasn't just a byproduct of biology, that it meant something. It's real. It matters. It's— "You're dismissing everything beyond your own reasoning."

You waited. For the rebuttal, the deconstruction, the inevitable moment Spencer laid your words bare and left you scrambling to rebuild them. But this time there was nothing. He just sat there. Looking at you. Like he was waiting for something else.

You fidgeted. Crossed your arms. Uncrossed them. "What?"

"Nothing. Just... thinking." A pause. "You clearly have an opinion on this, just trying to figure out what it is."

Your lips pressed together, your brain begging you to let it go, to shut up before you started. But the words were already forming, bubbling up too fast to stop.

"Okay, look. I get it. I get the science. I get that love can be explained in chemical terms."

Spencer nodded, like you were finally seeing his point.

"But that doesn't mean that's all it is," you said, sitting up straighter. "Love isn't just an instinct. If it was then why do people stay in love when it doesn't make sense? Why do people wait years for someone who might never come back? Why do people hold on to feelings they know won't be returned?"

You inhaled sharply, only to realize what you had said felt a little too personal. Heat flared to your toes. "I just, uh, you're looking at it like it's an equation when it's more like, like art. You can break down why a painting is visually appealing, but that doesn't explain why it moves people."

"So love is art then?" A small smirk tugged at his lips. "That would mean it's subjective. That one person's version of it isn't the same as another's."

"Well, yeah, that's my point." You nodded. "Everyone experiences it differently. That's why it can't be reduced to formulas. You can recreate the exact conditions of a moment, use the same words, set the same scene but it won't feel the same to someone else. Because love isn't about external factors, it's about who you're with, how they make you feel."

"That sounds dangerously close to saying it's entirely irrational."

You exhaled. "If it is, then I guess that means you'll never understand it."

Spencer pushed himself to his feet, adjusting his cuff like this was just another conversation and not something that had you actively fighting for oxygen.

Then, with an infuriating self-satisfied smile, he murmured, "Well, maybe I just need the right person to teach me."

You nearly choked on air.

And with one last glance, he grinned and said, "Happy Valentine's Day, lover girl."

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[ontonix]

On Physical Processes, Complexity and Dynamics of Information

There exist numerous types of physical processes. They involve interactions and transformations of matter and require energy as well as certain conditions, such as pressure, density or temperature, in order to take place. Some may include changes in chemical composition. While some are reversible, some are not. The list below provides a short description of some of these processes. Coalescence…

[dduane]

Okay, here’s a new one.

In a new paper published in Physical Review D, the researchers propose a new model for the origin of the Universe - claiming that its formation is the result of a gravitational collapse that generated a massive black hole, followed by a ‘bounce’ inside, which means that our universe may have emerged from the interior of a black hole formed within a larger parent universe. They are calling the new model the ‘Black Hole Universe’, offering a radically different view of cosmic origins which is grounded entirely in known physics and observations The paper suggests that rather than the birth of the Universe being from nothing, it is the continuation of a cosmic cycle - one shaped by gravity, quantum mechanics, and the deep interconnections between them. While the existing standard cosmological model, based on the Big Bang and cosmic inflation, has been successful in explaining the structure and evolution of the Universe, it leaves some fundamental questions unanswered.  Professor Gaztanaga said: “The Big Bang model begins with a point of infinite density where the laws of physics break down. This is a deep theoretical problem that suggests the beginning of the Universe is not fully understood.  “We’ve questioned that model and tackled questions from a different angle -  by looking inward instead of outward. Instead of starting with an expanding Universe and asking how it began, we considered what happens when an overdensity of matter collapses under gravity.”

(See also "Kicking The Can Up/Down The Road", Universe Creation variant...)

[el0wyn]

Dude, dude.. do you think we're the only sapient mammalian species in the universe?

Do you think the asteroid that hit our planet is an experience no other alien species has had to endure?

Correct me for any misguided information, I am in no way an anthropologist or paleontologist; but imagine if we were the only planet to have had such a catastrophic event like a massive asteroid hitting us and surviving? Back then, when dinosaurs still roamed, everything was absolutely huge. Ancestors of animals we know today like bugs, alligators, sloths, etc were 10x the size of their present descendants. And that's suspected to be because of the extra oxygen, caused by the additionally supersized plants.

But the asteroid wiped all that out. Its impact killed all the large plants and animals, reducing the oxygen levels and driving smaller creatures underground. Including our mammalian ancestors, which is what makes us so small and probably has affected our crappy physical evolution as creatures that thrived above-ground reduced to adapting to the underground.

Theories were made of what the world would be like if the asteroid never struck. If we would be much larger due to the oxygen, if we'd share the planet with other intelligent creatures, if dinosaurs would still walk the earth. But the most likely probability is that we wouldn't come to exist in the first place. The asteroid was our chance to expand our numbers without the dominant species keeping down our populations. With massive reptiles dominating the world, it's likely mammals would've never had the chance to develop intelligence like humans have- or maybe we would've been killed to extinction first. And what'd take our place would be the evolution of intelligent reptiles instead.

Imagine what this would be like for aliens, if they have planet structures similar to our own. They'd probably be dominated by evolved reptilian-like species too. Maybe they have endangered mammals, or maybe they're completely extinct on their planets because of the similar faults of nature and are regarded as ancient species. Maybe seeing such small, unstable, oddly evolved creatures having survived this long because of a massive catastrophe that should've wiped out our planet would fascinate them. Maybe it'd terrify them. That we have gotten to our current state by sheer luck and force of will. Who knows. But I doubt our experience would be considered the norm amongst space.