#and learn how to take the measurements and eyeball if something will fit me

[velocitic]

something on my mind lately that i'm not sure entirely how to phrase is like - this is mostly targeted at white trans influencer types, but i find something very grating on the kind of body negativity posting i see in relation to dealing with body dysmorphia. now, body dysmorphia/dysphoria are something that anyone can experience, and not everyone does, and it's different for different people. however, i take issue with the content made around learning how to "pass" by hiding your body, and specifically the language used for it. primarily i see this around "wide hips", and i do see the need and/or want for clothing tips that help people feel comfortable in their bodies, and i don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with this content's primary goal. however, as trans owned/focused fashion brands are becoming more in number, i'm finding that the representatives i am seeing for these brands are overwhelmingly white, skinny, transmasc individuals. and the language used to market their products is one that is, i think, meant to be addressing dysphoria, but it comes across to me as a narrowly defined negative view. as someone with a larger chest and a larger/stockier frame, all of the tips about "hiding" my wider hips can do nothing tangible for my appearance. you cannot hide genuinely large/noticeable features of your body; trust me, i've tried for years to do so, and sometimes i still try in vain to wear the straight jeans and the special cut tee shirts, and it just leaves me feeling worse because i am not the target audience of these tips. i am not skinny. i also do not think i subscribe to this belief that wide hips are a "dead giveaway" that will prevent you from passing; i think that (and other such beliefs) honestly is rooted in bioessentialist beliefs that i wish we would all unpack and be a lot better off without.

it is not to say that skinny trans people's issues with their bodies are not valid or not okay to talk about. but i do think that rebranding body negativity into the language of progressive thought is unfair and cruel whether it is shaving razor ads telling women that they are beautiful no matter what but that doesn't mean stop shaving, or if it is a skinny, flat chested, white trans person telling me that all trans people are wonderful but more importantly how much their wide hips bother them - and how a product can "fix" both of these issues.

and how am i meant to feel about this whole thing, anyway? if this skinny person's hips are too wide, then what the hell is wrong with me? there is inherent comparison in self hate. putting yourself down will only lead to holding bias against those who are "worse" than you (whether you're aware of it or not) & broadcasting to all the other people with the feature you hate about yourself are surely also ugly or inferior in the same way you believe yourself to be. i don't think body dysmorphia should not be talked about. i do think that talking about it in the language of product placement and brand marketing is doomed from the start. when a skinny person says that their hips are too wide, their jaw is too soft, they hate their nose and with a chest like theirs they'll never pass, i earnestly have no idea what to possibly say, because in their self hate they have entirely vilified me. i am short and stocky with muscle and my jaw is soft and i have acne and wide hips and a large chest. how am i meant to feel safe with those who believe my features to be their worst nightmare? how can i build community with you when i can imagine how you preen in the mirror over your 110 lb build and how awful it is?

this is what is meant when we talk about self love as a form of resistance. you cannot expect to be a safe person as long as you hate yourself for being human.

[nuvomica]

Fam like this has zero hate in it but how is gender affirming surgery any different from the ones you hate? It's literally purging the parts of your body that you or society can't accept and it's kind of just as devastating and sad. I agree with you that people should do whatever they want with their body but also like it's kind of awful to see someone suffer so much that they have to go to surgical solutions.

This is why it's so interesting to me!! And this post is super rambly with no clear answer because I'm me and I'm learning all the time!!!!!!

Your opinion is yours, but it is super interesting that upon the topic of surgery, your mind goes to 'purging the parts you hate'. Gender affirming surgeries aren't always 'cosmetic', aren't always found through suffering. Who am I to draw lines and cast aspersions? To me, it feels like as much of a grey area as most debates are, especially as I try to stay aware of my own inherent biases vs my personal issues with gender and appearance.

For example, breast surgeries. Done to combat cancer. Reductions because of back pain. Reductions for convenience. Implants for gender affirmation (for trans and cis ppl). Implants because of previous medical reductions. Or literally any number of reasons.

At what level is it 'okay' to get something done, if in my opinion, there is a level of 'not okay' at all? 'Okay' being a loose term as it is, because I certainly don't mean morally, but as a point of, say, condemning societal pressures on people. It would be presumptuous of me to ever look at something someone does for themself and say, "well that's not okay."

Is convenience a medical reasons or a cosmetic reason? Or is it neither. Is it that there is not enough clothing and aid out there for someone who is inconvenienced by large breast size? Is it that there isn't any clothing that fits cutely, that t-shirts stretch, that lingerie doesn't come in that size? Or is it inconvenient enough that it either causes their back to ache if they're too active for too long or with chronic pain that doesn't ease at all?

What about those who get surgery on their tubes or uterus, not for 'medical' reasons, but for comfort? For taking control back? For (here it is again) convenience? For gender transitioning? How could I ever hate a surgery like that?

Meanwhile, in my personal view, seeing someone get a nose job for purely cosmetic reasons is sad to me. Why did they feel they have to do that? What sort of pressure have they face throughout their life to take them to that point? But what right do I have to judge? None, other than that I am a part of the same society that made them feel their nose was not acceptable. I do not have a broad, hooked, high bridged, or flat bridged nose, so what standing do I have to judge at all?

What about someone who loves plastic surgery as they love art? For whom body modification is a joy, or as I said before, is about control. Should I be pitying them? I don't, right up until they change something I personally view as 'sad' to change. Isn't that strange? Where did I find this moral high ground from which to look down and feel pity? What arbitrary measure have I developed for what parts of the body are 'sad' to alter?

I wouldn't go up to a stranger in public and say, "I'm so sorry you got your nose done." So why do I feel comfortable pitying the actress who had a face lift? (Rhetorical, I know the objectification of celebrities is a core reason here, but it serves my point).

It goes further. At what point is a surgery 'just' a body mod? Someone getting an ear piercing to combat headaches or allergies. Someone getting their ears or genitalia taken off so they just have a hole. Someone gets bottom surgery. Someone getting their earlobe pierced. Someone getting their eyebrows tattooed because theirs don't naturally suit their gender expression 'right'. Someone getting the name of a loved one on their arm. Someone getting laser hair removal. Someone getting their eyeball tattooed. Getting their incisors capped to points. Veneers. Tongue splits. Acrylic nails. My view is already biased by a Eurocentric upbringing and the conservative nature of my town, so.

With my own biases, I do feel a hate for buccal fat removal. I do feel a hate for cosmetic nose jobs. I do feel a hate for brow lifts. I do feel a hate for hair transplants. I won't deny that. You're right, I do feel shitty that gender is so ingrained in appearance and the value therein that trans ppl can feel so devastatingly unhappy about their own bodies. At the same time, I don't feel someone getting top or bottom surgery is 'wrong' in doing so, and I do not pity them.

Oh not to even bring up teeth. This debate starts all over again at teeth. Cosmetic, comfort, medical.

My original post and my continued thoughts are never a condemnation of the individual undergoing a surgery, only on the pressures of industry and society. It's my frustrations with sexism, racism, transphobia, and fatphobia.

Gender affirming surgeries happen all the time for cis people, including very invasive ones, and I just want to be extra aware of the hypocrisy and more intense scrutiny towards trans people getting similar surgeries, you know? Especially as someone who experiences dysmorphia but not gender dysphoria.

It just comes down to all these questions, and then further still down to personal philosophy. As is the case for most of my personal philosophies, I find it hard to make blanket statements set in stone, because there's always context. There's always further understanding to be gained, if not in my own, then in hearing of how others understand.

What right do I have to feel sad? To hate?

Where is the defining line between cosmetic, comfort, and medical, if there is one?

[mysewingadventures]

Making an early 1900s corset cover

Hey everyone, I’ve been absent for so long and that has many reasons, my studies are definitely taking up so much more time than I had anticipated. I feel like I should mention that I am not studying dress history, so like I always say - costuming is a hobby of mine but please be aware that I might not always be 100% correct about things. But I am minoring in art history where we do occasionally talk about costumes so... it’s something? Anyways, a while ago I made a corset cover that I forgot to take pictures of when it was finished, so now I’m doing that. But first, this is what I was roughly going off of:

Having made some more complex things before I thought hey, this can’t be that hard? It’s basically just a bodice shaped piece of fabric with ruffles on. And surprisingly, I wasn’t that far off from the truth. I still severely underestimated the time that it took to sew all of those six pieces of ruffles on. That being said, here’s where I started:

Please excuse the fact that it’s not ironed, I was making it kind of in a rush.

I did make a mockup first that I tried on and made sure everything fits, but didn’t take a picture. Here you can see the mock up parts cut out of fashion fabric. I got out my french curve for the first time and was totally expecting to fail but it worked out really well! I used it to draw in all the curved lines. The reason only the back is curved and not the front is because I wanted the back to sit flat while the front would be gathered with a string and tied in the front, to help create that pigeon breast silhouette without having the back be puffy as well. As you can see, for that to work I’ve had to adjust the length of the side edges in the front so they had the same length as the curved ones.

So then I sewed all the edges together and cleaned them up right after so I wouldn’t have to do that later when it’s done.

I then cut out some rectangular strips for the ruffles and folded over and stitched all edges but one - the one that would be ruffled. Instead, I did a running stich that I could pull on to gather it, and then machine stitch it to the rest. Here’s where I began to struggle: I didn’t really know how to attach the ruffle so it would look nice. I didn’t necessarily want the stitches to be on top, so I initially stitched it upside down to the fold it over but that didn’t work at all, so I had to take it all out again and just stitch it down normally.

I kind of just eyeballed where I wanted the ruffles to go, used a ruler to rougly make sure the ruffled pieces are the same length and tried putting them all about three centimeters apart. I do like how the ruffles curve up on the sides, I thought the finished piece looks so much better like this.

Like I said, I wasn’t super happy with the top stitching, and since I had some white ribbon left I used that to cover it up.

Then it was time to insert the string, aka that same white ribbon. I originally wanted to add a separate channel for that but I thought maybe I can just use the cleaned up edge for it. I used a bobby pin to get that ribbon through this makeshift channel but it worked.

So then I added the buttons and made little “buttonholes” out of thread and sewed five buttons in place.

Here’s the finished piece. And you know what the ironic part is? It doesn’t fit me over a corset. And I have nothing but my own stupidity to blame. Thing is, I made this in order to wear under a dress that I’m going to make at some point, and I’m not really planning on wearing a corset with it (I want to modernize it a little), so I wanted something to help with the silhouette. So I never took my measurments in a corset, and I thought if I leave a little wiggle room it’ll be fine. No, learn from my mistakes and take your measurments! It’s not that big of a deal though because I did make it specifically with that dress in mind and having it fit over a corset would’ve just been a nice plus. And if I really try I can make it fit, it’s just a tiny bit small.

So, long story short, corset covers are great and not hard to make if you don’t make these obvious mistakes.

[wereshrew-admirer]

do you have any advice on how to get better at backgrounds? I’ve always really loved how you do them (particularly ones in natural settings with lots of trees and foliage and whatnot—I remember being so impressed when you were posting wips of your hieron art for the f@tt pinup zine because you were painting individual leaves)

I struggle with them so much that they’re not fun, and I’m never motivated to practice because, well, they’re not fun 😅 I think my biggest problems are making characters look like they’re actually In An Environment, and knowing how much detail to include or leave out, and you seem to be really good at both those things. I would take literally any advice about any aspect of bg painting that you might have though, even if it’s just like. pointing me to a book or a youtube tutorial lol

i think... the most accessibly practical suggestion i have for putting bodies in environments is to draw in layers - as in, if part of a body is hidden? draw it. make sure you're accounting for every limb even when you can't see it, and while you're doing that, think about how something would feel rather than what it would look like.

i see a lot of advice that's "think about how it looks and not how it works" and maybe that is better for composition (i have NO art education, no qualifications to speak on that) - but i suggest thinking about how things feel, physically. you don't have to know about all the bones in a body, you just have to think about how it would feel to be in that environment and in that position.

i want to put a body at x angle, and it looks fine… but what's that hidden arm doing? does it have enough space to fit comfortably between those bodies or against that rock? could i hold my weight up like that? how long could i hold my weight up like that? if im trying to depict a relaxed scene, then thinking about how comfortable something is is essential - environmentally that includes … how many sticks are on the ground? sure the pose would work inside, but would there be rocks or sticks that suddenly make putting weight there painful? if yes then i need to either change the pose or set up the environment in a way that justifies it (and so i have to think, are they on moss (and if so then now i've got to set up an environment where thick moss might grow) or are they in a sheltered place that would have less fallen sticks (now i have to add overhangs or visibly cleared ground or or or)?

other than that.. trial and error. measure twice cut once? eyeball it and cut ten times and by the end of it you'll have a decent understanding of what range of measurements work and why.... i'm the artistic equivalent of those (bad) jokes about men never asking for directions, so unfortunately i don't have any easy resources (i'll google when i can't figure out how to get something to work in a program (and then inevitably learn that i've been doing things a roundabout hard way the whole time) but that's about it).. both while making the art and how i'm existing in space… if i hadn't put myself in so many uncomfortable situations i wouldn't know how painful it is to sit against a rigid curved surface, how likely i was to slide down a hill with x amount of leaves on it, etc etc)

[journalxxx]

By Hook or by Crook (7)

“So! How does it look?” Toshinori asked, with a booming voice and his best hands-on-hips pose to kickstart the endeavor with a healthy dose of enthusiasm.

He wasn’t particularly successful. 

“Daunting. Impossible. Like I’m gonna die of old age before I’m anywhere close to making a change.”

“A little optimism goes a long way, you know?”

“...I may not die before I’ve lugged away some of this.” Midoriya amended tentatively, scanning the extensive length of garbage-filled beach stretching before them. “And… what doesn’t kill me will make me stronger?”

“That’s the spirit!” Toshinori gave him a pat on the back, strong enough to make the boy stammer forwards. He walked around the back of the truck and started unloading the few supplies he’d brought.

“Wear these.” Toshinori threw him a pair of work gloves. He hoped he’d eyeballed the size right. “I trust you’re up to date with all your vaccines.”

“Uhm.”

“Hopefully no one’s dumping organic waste in here, but I’ll bring some traps if you see any rats. They won’t solve the problem, but it’s better than letting them scurry around freely.”

Midoriya’s eyes darted between the gloves and the beach with muted horror. “R-Rats?”

“Scared of rats?” Toshinori couldn’t help but tease. “Did I mention that I had to wade through the sewers for half an hour before finding you and the sludge villain the other day?”

Midoriya instantly looked mortified. “I-I’m sorry-”

“Not your fault! Don’t apologize!” Toshinori tossed his hands in the air. This kid desperately needed to learn the basic mechanics of humor. “I’m just saying that heroes can’t be squeamish! Rats come with the job, as well as a variety of nasty stuff and filth.”

“Right.” Midoriya followed him as Toshinori, cooler in one hand and bag of papers in the other, sat down on the last steps of the stairs. He picked an egg sandwich for himself and fished a folder out of the bag, opening it on his thighs and starting to read it.

It took him a few seconds to realize that Midoriya was still staring at him, as if awaiting further instructions.

“Well? Have at it!” Toshinori gestured widely at his new playground.

“Oh, uhm, okay.” The kid donned the gloves and took a single step towards the piles before pausing to look at Toshinori again. “I thought you wanted to ask me… stuff.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure you can handle working and talking at the same time without building up some stamina first.” Toshinori answered, eyeing the boy’s scrawny frame critically. “We’ll talk while you’ll be taking a break to catch a breather, which is probably going to happen sooner rather than later.”

“Oh… All right.” Midoriya turned away, his arms hanging limply from hunched shoulders as he muttered to himself.  “...Where do I even start...?”

“From the small things. Working your way up to the heavier objects.” Toshinori explained patiently, then gave him a pointed look. “I get the feeling you’re procrastinating.”

The boy approached the closest stack… and did nothing. Was he ever going to stop waffling and get cracking? “Meanwhile, you’ll just, uh… do your own thing?”

“Surely you don’t need me to guide you through the elaborate process of moving objects from point A to point B, do you?” Maybe the kid detected the hint of annoyance in Toshinori’s voice, because he finally, finally set to grab the closest piece of junk- “...Oh. Okay, that’s not a great start.”

“What?” Midoriya stopped halfway through picking up what was probably the first electric fan ever invented, all the way back in the Iron Age. “I haven’t even done anything yet!”

“Bend your knees, not your back. Otherwise you’re going to- do you really not know this? Isn’t the correct way to lift weights Household Chores 101?”

“Oh, right, I know.” Midoriya rearranged his stance in a way that was less likely to earn him a slipped disk within the next two hours. “Do people really lift things like this though? It’s… a lot harder than the normal way.”

“For your legs, yes. For your back, no. You’ll thank me when you’ll be old enough to realize you aren’t made out of rubber.”

Toshinori munched slowly while he watched the kid carry his first loads to the truck. That act alone seemed to distract Midoriya to an amusing degree, his gaze often flicking to meet Toshinori’s eyes for just a moment before shooting back in front of him with blatant self-consciousness. Toshinori allowed the boy a few minutes of warm-up, just the time for him to finish his sandwich and sip a small cup of apple juice, before deciding to kick things into proper gear.

“Running from the truck to the heaps and vice versa would help you gain some endurance too, rather than leisurely strolling back and forth.” Toshinori commented as Midoriya walked past him. 

The kid stopped in his tracks and regarded him with a mix of horror and aversion that vaguely reminded him of death-row inmates when faced with their executioners.

“What?” Toshinori went on, unperturbed. “Are you expecting to get fit without getting tired?”

“No, of course not-”

“Besides, you’ll need to keep a swift pace if you want to clear the whole beach before the admission exam.”

“Wha- All of it?! Before the…” Midoriya sputtered, arms wrapping more tightly around the broken chair he was holding as if that was supporting him instead of the other way around. “Y-You never said…”

“But of course! They don’t do things by half measures in U.A., so why should you?” Toshinori grinned. “Plus Ultra, am I right?” 

Midoriya let out an incredulous chuckle. “You’re kidding, right? There’s no way I can do something like that...”

“Depends on how much elbow grease you’re willing to put into it.”

Midoriya’s expression shifted minutely as he caught onto Toshinori’s seriousness. “But… but that’s impossible! No matter how hard I work, I can’t- I can’t move stuff like that!” He griped, pointing at the wrecked husk of a van half-buried under a mound of assorted refuse. “Even if I do my best-”

“And pray tell, what’s your best?” Toshinori stood up and walked to the kid, ditching the whimsical demeanor. If playful cajoling wasn’t enough to stir him, maybe it was time to bust out the big guns. “What’s the heaviest you can lift? The fastest you can run? The hardest you can push yourself? When’s the last time you actually tried your very best, and how did it fall short?”

Toshinori was already well and truly spent for the day, but he let the provocation and drive in his words stoke the fire within him, and it flared. The Symbol of Peace broke out of his diminutive shell among dramatic wisps of steam, ready to bestow his wisdom more effectively than his rickety counterpart ever could.

“Do you know what’s the only way to gauge your limits? Reaching them. And the only way to get stronger?“ Toshinori held out his arm between them, and clenched his fist resolutely. He relished the sensation of unyielding muscles tensing and bulging under his skin, tangible proof of the truth of his assertions. “Gritting your teeth and smashing past them! Little by little, but constantly!”

Midoriya had only witnessed that transformation once, poorly and by accident, and it showed. The chair had slipped from his hands without him even noticing, and now lay forgotten at his feet on the bare sand. The kid was gawking at him with wide eyes and mouth agape, the very picture of spellbound rapture. It was far from an unfamiliar reaction from whoever was graced by the Symbol of Peace’s presence, and yet it was still flattering, every time.

“You’ll never improve if you keep dwelling on what you think you can do now. Focus on what you want to do next. Visualize it as a clear goal. Build an image out of it, and then carve it in reality. If you really want that van to move, then it will move. If you really want this beach to be clear, then it will be. But you have to put your back, sweat and heart into making it happen!”

All Might captivated his one-man audience with the usual effortlessness, boisterous showmanship and honest positivity deeply intertwined in a way that boggled his detractors’ minds, but that felt so natural and appropriate to Toshinori. He’d made an art out of it, down to the rumble of his voice and the firmness of his gestures and the levity of his attitude, the art of highlighting and displaying the very best parts of himself so that they could resonate louder, better, brighter.

“So what will it be, young Midoriya? Will you clean up this place within the next ten months or not?”

“Y-Yes. I will.” That had done the trick. It was obvious from the way Midoriya’s back straightened and his expression toughened. It was obvious from the spark kindled in his eyes, a reflection of Toshinori’s own passion, still lacking in heat but full of potential.

“Then you’d better get down to it!” The hero sealed the deal with a radiant smile and a thumbs up. “Time’s a-wastin’!”

“Yes, sir!” Midoriya picked up the chair and dashed towards the truck to unload it there, then he immediately bounced back down the stairs and towards the nearest heap of waste. Toshinori observed the boy’s next rounds with his unwavering smile and few approving nods that kept the kid a bit lighter on his feet.

How much easier it was for All Might to touch people’s hearts. How much easier to inspire, to reassure, to nurture. How much easier everything was for All Might, really. If only that shining beacon of hope wasn’t shackled by the whims of a withering body, how much richer society at large would be for it. 

Toshinori let out a deep exhale that took more than just air out of him, and the flame settled down to a low glow. He couldn’t hold back a few wet coughs, and he promptly turned his shrunken back on Midoriya’s concerned glance to sit back on the cool steps.

Unfortunately, there was a lot more than motivation to strength training. Right off the bat, Toshinori could tell that Midoriya wasn’t going to last twenty full minutes of workout. He honestly didn’t know that an ostensibly healthy individual could reach the ripe age of fourteen with such poor body awareness. The boy had coordination and balance on par with a toddler’s: he stumbled on his feet, he tripped on sand, he nearly fell off the stairs twice before realizing that trying to climb them while his view was obstructed by the very items he was carrying might be a less than optimal solution. He seemed to be unaware of the existence of entire muscle groups, and Toshinori had to physically get up and mime movements for him to understand how to exert force more efficiently. Not to mention that he needed incessant needling lest his sprints quickly devolved into lax jogs. 

This whole training thing was going to be… an interesting experience, Toshinori could already tell.

Exactly sixteen and a half minutes later, the boy all but collapsed on the stairs beside Toshinori, gasping for air and wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

“B-Break?” He pleaded, quite redundantly. 

Toshinori took pity on his plight and pushed the cooler in his direction. “Have a drink.”

“Oh, thank you…” The lack of polite refusal made Toshinori suspect that Midoriya had forgotten to bring his own water. 

“There’s sports drinks and fruit juice in there too. Save the snacks for after you’re finished, food and heavy workouts don’t always agree with each other.” Toshinori had packed food primarily for himself, expecting their after-school meeting to last long enough for him to slot in one or two meals in the meantime, but he had taken care of adding a few extras for the kid. A good idea, because the possibility of Midoriya face planting on the ground halfway through out of sheer exhaustion seemed more and more likely by the minute.

“Thank you, you didn’t have to…”

“I promised bribes, didn’t I?” 

Midoriya flashed him the tiniest smile, and eagerly drank some water while Toshinori retrieved a small journal and a pen from the other bag. He skimmed through the list of preliminary topics he’d scribbled on the first page under Tsukauchi’s advice, wondering which one he should tackle first.

“All right.” Deciding to follow his instinct in spite of basic common sense, Toshinori decided to begin from the end. “These phone calls of yours. Give me an idea of what they’re like. The last one you had with your father was on April 1st, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it. Everything you talked about, as precisely as you can remember it.”

The good thing was that Midoriya’s memory was very accurate, and he was able to recall the whole conversation basically step by step. The less good thing was that said conversation was largely commonplace and unremarkable, consisting of very ordinary small talk and inquiries about school, grades, news, local events-

“Quirks?”

“Mh-hm.” The boy nodded. “We always end up talking about quirks, in one way or another. Quirks and heroes. It’s always been… a common interest.”

“Always, uh?”

“Yeah, we’ve been doing it since… forever, really. I’ve always found quirks fascinating, and he has lots of great insight to offer.”

“I can imagine...” Toshinori mumbled. Asking who had initiated that habit was probably pointless, it sounded like it had started too early in the boy’s life for him to remember - or even to understand if he had been deliberately led to develop that interest. Some intriguing nature-versus-nurture speculations could be made on the matter, but they weren’t likely to aid Tsukauchi’s case. “And in what way do you talk about them?”

“We… analyze them, discuss them. What is known for sure about a certain quirk, what can be deduced from footage and descriptions of its use, what its unmentioned limitations might be, how it could be further developed… You saw my notebook, right? Basically the kind of stuff that’s in there.”

“Wait.” Toshinori blinked. Could he have already stumbled into a treasure trove of All For One-certified information? “You mean that all that’s written in that notebook was dictated by your father?”

The kid almost choked on his next gulp of water, and shot Toshinori an almost offended look. “No! No, no, it’s all stuff I found out on my own! Well, almost all of it, there are some additions of his here and there, but… Uh, I’d say at least 90% of it is mine, and 10% of it is his… Actually, more like 95% and 5%-”

Well, that sounded less promising, but it was still a lead. “So he’s been basically teaching you how to conduct your own quirk analyses?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say teaching. I wish our school teachers were that engaging...” Midoriya let out a small sigh. “But I guess we do go about it a little like with school essays. Research, deadline, discussion and all that…”

“Pardon?”

“Well, every month we decide which heroes or quirks we’re going to talk about the next time - back in March we chose Hawks, Kido and Snatch for last month’s call, for example. During the rest of the month we gather information and draw our conclusions, and then we compare them during the next chat.”

“You’ve got quite the well-oiled routine going on there, haven’t you?”

“Actually, I think it’s just to give me a chance to make my own deductions with a clear head instead of on the fly.” Midoriya scratched said tousled head in embarrassment. “I bet he doesn’t even need to do any research, he’s always on the top of his game. I’ve never been able to, uh… one-up him, you know? He always knows what I’m driving at, and somehow he always brings my hypotheses two or three steps further than where I stop.”

Toshinori answered with a non-committal hum. No surprise there, the man was a living quirk storeroom complete with its own self-congratulatory, sentient database. “You don’t seem too bothered by it though.”

“Oh, I’m not. It’s not like he’s ever… disappointed or angry or anything, even if I don’t get stuff. He just enjoys chatting, I guess.” That he surely did, Toshinori grimly thought. Way too much. “And I do too. It’s kind of like a game. Or a challenge.”

“A challenge?”

“Yeah, uh… How can I explain…?” The boy drummed his fingers on the bottle as he collected his thoughts. “Okay, for example: one of the first things dad asked me about Hawks was what shape his wings are, and what I could deduce from that about his flight capabilities. Which was a trick question! I knew it as soon as I heard it, because I’d already figured out the real answer during my research.”

“Ah.” Toshinori blinked. “And… how is that a trick question, exactly?”

“Because Hawks doesn’t actually fly! Not like a bird, at least, so his wing shape doesn’t matter!” Midoriya beamed, and suddenly Toshinori realized that that was the first real, genuine, enthusiastic smile the boy had given him since they’d met. And, without exaggeration, not crying, panicking or grimacing made him look almost like an entirely different person. “He simply can’t! Humans can’t fly even if you stick a pair of wings to them, they’re just too heavy! Other heroes who can fly properly are mostly transformers, like Ryukyu - their whole bodies change when they shift, bone structure and all - but Hawks’ body is entirely human if you exclude his wings.”

Midoriya reached for his backpack and drew out the same charred notebook Toshinori had signed days earlier. An item so vital to the kid’s daily life that he always had it with him, apparently, even more essential than beverages during a workout session. A peculiar, if questionable, trait.

“What Hawks actually does isn’t flying, it’s levitating!” The kid held the notebook open before Toshinori’s eyes on a spread page dedicated to the hero in question. “He uses the second facet of his quirk, the telekinesis that allows him to control his feathers singularly! That also explains his incredible speed, which is completely unjustifiable if you only take into account normal bird flight aerodynamics. His propulsion is powered by his feathers - and each of them is quite speedy and powerful on its own, so it stands to reason that he would be lightning-fast when his wings contain so many of them pushing him in unison!”

Toshinori politely elected to wait for the onslaught of words to subside on its own, although he already suspected that it was a little like standing right under a waterfall and waiting for someone higher up to turn off the faucet.

“That said, that doesn’t explain everything about his quirk… For example, a single feather of his is capable of lifting and transporting an adult person, that has been extensively documented. Yet, he loses the ability to levitate relatively soon after dispatching too many of them - he becomes unable to float even when he still has at least several dozens of them attached to his body. We couldn’t figure out why that happens with the information we have. Maybe it’s harder for him to apply his power to himself, that is often the case for emitters. Maybe it messes with his proprioception, and he can’t control the feathers he hasn’t detached as finely as all the others…”

If there was one thing Toshinori was absolutely certain of at this point, it was that the kid wasn’t short on breath any more. “And this is the part you inferred on your own.”

“Yep! And dad agreed with all of it!” Midoriya’s smile grew even wider. It was astonishing how much it didn’t look like dad’s deranged, shark-like, nightmare-inducing sneer, and Toshinori could only send a quiet thanks to the heavens for that. “This is all guesswork though. Do you… by any chance, do you know if we were on the right track? I’d be really curious to know…”

“Ah, I can’t help you there, kid.” Toshinori felt suddenly on the spot. “I’m not acquainted with Hawks, nor do I know more about his quirk than the average person.”

“Oh, I thought… Since you’re both- I mean, I thought All Might may have met him during the billboard chart events, what with them both being in the top ten.”

“We passed by each other, yes, but we were never properly introduced. He wasn’t particularly interested in rubbing elbows with the old guard, I suppose.”

“Oh. Well, that’s his loss, for sure.” Midoriya, funnily enough, pouted. “Pity, I was wondering… Even if he doesn’t fly, he does flap his wings in a way that resembles a bird’s. I wonder if that’s intentional, to mislead opponents and prevent them from figuring out how he actually moves. Or maybe he does it subconsciously…”

“I’m afraid I really don’t know…” Toshinori had never met Hawks on the field either, it wasn’t common for accidents to require more than a single big-name hero to intervene these days. Especially if one of them was the number one, who often showed up first and invariably solved any incident in mere minutes-

Toshinori suddenly came back to himself and almost facepalmed in frustration. Why was he letting himself be interrogated about completely irrelevant hero trivia? He was the one asking questions! God, he was bad at this. “And your father had nothing to contribute about all this?”

“Not about this specifically, but he did raise a point I hadn’t considered.” Midoriya looked up at the sky, once again lost in his very wordy, very deep lucubrations. “Hawks has an astonishing control on his quirk. He can use his telekinesis to move hundreds of feathers at once, to sense his surroundings, he can even harden them and turn them into weapons. He made Fierce Wings into an incredibly versatile ability, and he’s so young too… And yet, there’s no record of him attending any hero school or training facility in Japan, nor abroad. He claims to be self-taught, but… admittedly, it is hard to believe. One would think he must have had some excellent education and tutoring to make it into the top ten when he was only eighteen…”

Toshinori didn’t reply. Midoriya looked back at him when the silence stretched, and whatever he spied on Toshinori’s face made him immediately backpedal. “I-I mean, it’s odd, but, uh… not suspicious per se, nor a sign of anything… weird or bad about him. There are many heroes who, ehr, prefer to keep their personal history private, especially geniuses, and that’s fine! They have all the right to! Same goes for their quirks, it makes total sense-”

Toshinori massaged his left temple slowly. Right, better just nip this topic in the bud before it got irredeemably out of hand. 

He peered again at the notebook in Midoriya’s hands. So All For One had been imparting occasional, amicable quirk analysis lessons to the kid for a good decade, which sounded suspiciously like the kind of knowledge a potential underling or successor might use. On the other hand, Toshinori could think of a million other ways for the Symbol of Fear to instil skills in his son - all of them remarkably more efficient, safe, manageable and ruthless. The whole thing was contradictory in a way that didn’t sit right with Toshinori.

“Mind if I take another look at that?” Toshinori had been in a bit of a rush the first time round, and he’d only taken a cursory glance at the contents of Midoriya’s notes. But if there was a chance of those pages containing words uttered by All For One himself, a more thorough examination was in order.

“Not at all! But, uh…” Midoriya was fast to hand out the item, but his eagerness to assist was even faster to dampen. “Are you going to retain this as evidence too?”

“Mh, I don’t think that will be necessary...” Right, the poor kid’s house had probably been ransacked even further after Toshinori and Tsukauchi’s first pass. No wonder he was worried about losing this prized possession too. “But if it will be, I can make a copy of it for you to keep, so you won’t lose all your, uh, data.”

“Oh, thanks! That would be great!” The kid perked up instantly. He was so easy to please. “Although… I guess I should make a copy of it myself anyway. It’s already kind of… unrecoverable. I could detach the pages with All Might’s sign and preserve those separately, and just photocopy everything else…”

Toshinori’s imagination mercilessly supplied him with the picture of a new addition to Midoriya’s bedroom decor, his five-second poorly-made signature hung to a wall in an elegant frame. He repressed a groan, deliberately neglected to point out that he could simply provide as many new authentic signs as needed, and directed his attention back to the scorched edges of the notebook. “Right… What happened to this thing, anyway? Did someone put it in a toaster?”

Midoriya let out a totally not nervous chuckle as he wrung his hands in a totally not nervous fashion. “Oh, uhm... You know…” Toshinori didn’t, actually, but the kid didn’t elaborate either. 

Well, he was allowed to have a modicum of privacy, still. Toshinori let the issue drop, and nudged the boy with his foot. “You seem well rested. Back to the trash you go.”

Midoriya shuffled to his feet less than enthusiastically, and resumed toiling away at his task. While still checking on him often, ready to poke and prod at the first hint of sluggishness, Toshinori browsed through the kid’s notebook. While the contents were indeed worthy of attention, they were scarce in quantity. It must be rather new, since less than a quarter of the pages had been filled. However, the promise of more material to be discovered made Toshinori withhold his judgement on the matter for the time being.

Once that was done, he continued his perusal of the few files Tsukauchi had already put together about the Midoriya case. Toshinori had practically begged his friend to let him have an active role, any active role in the case: he simply couldn’t bear to twiddle his thumbs until someone else kindly pointed him to All For One’s hideout for another overdue thrashing. He simply needed to be involved, or he’d probably start crawling up walls within a week.

Questioning the kid was pretty much the only suitable occupation for him, currently… Well, it was either that or questioning Mrs. Midoriya, and Toshinori was fairly sure that his brain would leak out of his ears if he heard any more details about All For One’s romantic escapades. He wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to investigative work, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he was going to spare no effort to earn some results. If that meant poring over reams of police reports in the hopes of spotting some helpful clue, so be it. At least it would keep him busy, and busy was good, especially in trying times.

He’d applied the same logic to Midoriya, in a sense. The boy seemed the kind of person who’d very easily overthink himself into a negative spiral, even in less dire circumstances than the messy family drama he’d found himself into. It would do him good to focus on a better future, rather than on his depressing present. Giving him a goal to set his sights on would keep him going more smoothly. 

At first Toshinori had thought to motivate him towards his dream career, but it turned out that the boy’s strategy about the admission test was… nebulous at best. Not that he could truly blame him for it: fourteen-year-old Toshinori didn’t exactly have a multi-step plan towards becoming the Symbol of Peace either, one couldn’t help being somewhat scatterbrained at that age. 

The illegal dumping site had been a serendipitous discovery, and cleaning it up was the perfect type of goal to incite the boy towards. It was very obvious and straightforward, and required no intricate planning: he simply needed to roll up his sleeves and buckle down. And the muscle he’d build while doing it would serve him well for heroic purposes too, so it was a win-win on all fronts. Not to mention that some good old physical exertion would help him sleep at night, which he was still struggling with, if the persistent bags under his eyes were of any indication. Toshinori dearly missed the times when that trick still worked on him too, when driving himself to the brink of exhaustion was a guaranteed one-way ticket to restful and regenerative dreamland. Nowadays, if he accumulated even a sliver of excessive fatigue, all he got was… well, fatigue. And a metric ton of unrelenting body pains and lasting debilitation.

The rest of the afternoon went by smoothly and unremarkably. Midoriya drudged through many rounds of garbage disposal with decreasing energy and verve, but that was to be expected. Toshinori collected more barely relevant and generally useless information, but that was to be expected too. They were both in for the long haul, there was no point in getting upset about it. Eventually the sun started to set, and Toshinori beckoned the boy back to him with a handwave.

“You have more of these?” Toshinori said, tapping his index on the big 13 on the cover of the notebook still on his lap.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Could you bring them with you next time?”

“All of them?” Midoriya seemed frazzled. 

“If you still have them, yes. Would that be a problem?”

The boy scratched his head as his cheek reddened slightly. “N-No, not a problem, but some of them are really… I finished the first one when I was seven. They aren't just outdated, they’re… ehr, childish. Just doodles and misspelled ramblings.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not like I’ll be grading them.” Not yet, at least. Toshinori smirked at his own private joke. Maybe he should grade them, as a small practice run. “I just want to give a quick read to a few things here and there.”

“O-Okay…”

“Good. Well, I think we can call it a day.” Toshinori rummaged in his cooler to fetch a chocolate energy bar, and tossed it to the exhausted boy. “Catch.”

Despite the warning, Midoriya did not catch, and the snack bumped against his chest and fell to the ground with a sad clack. Reflexes were MIA too, apparently. What a rare specimen of a prospective hero Toshinori had crossed paths with.

“T-Thank you!” Midoriya immediately picked it up, unwrapped it and shoved it into his mouth as he hopped into the passenger seat of the truck. Whether it was real hunger or fear of passing as rude, Toshinori couldn’t tell.

The drive to Midoriya’s house was brief. The boy was too tired to chat - as if they hadn’t already had their fill for the day. When they arrived and Midoriya climbed out of the vehicle to be on his way, Toshinori finally addressed one last pressing issue.

“Tomorrow your father is going to call you.”

“Yeah.” The kid’s eyes dropped to the ground. Maybe Toshinori should have brought it up sooner. Way to end the meeting on a sour note.

“How are you going to handle that?”

“I’m not.” The boy shrugged. “Mom will tell him I just got my tonsils removed. It's… safer for now. I think.”

Toshinori nodded. “Let’s take a day off then. Even if you can’t speak, he might want to say something to you, and it would be strange for you not to be at home while recovering.”

“Okay.”

He looked so very small, and so very young like that, bathed in the warm hues of sunset, but with no real warmth to his eyes and demeanor. He was too small and too young to be dealing with this shit. No one was old or big enough to deal with any of All For One’s shit, really. Toshinori would have to make sure no one would have to ever again.

“Thank you for your help today. It’s very appreciated, believe me.” Toshinori offered, with his most sincere smile. “Feel free to text me or Tsukauchi if anything comes up, you should be able to reach at least one of us at any hour of day or night.”

“Okay. Thank you. Have a good evening.”

“You too, kid.” Toshinori watched him until the door of his house closed behind his back, then he drove off.

[passivenovember]

Walking Home (v)., the  Tourniquet

For you @thursday-knight. Lysm

They’re going to let Billy out of that horrible, gray padded room on Tuesday, which Steve snorts at over the phone. 

“What, you think that’s fuckin’ funny or something?”

“No, It’s just.” It’s kind of funny. Steve wraps the phone chord around his hand. Nice and tight, like a tourniquet. “Tuesday’s weird.”

“Tuesday’s...weird?”

“Yeah.”

Steve can hear something, like. The clack of a pen. It’s a common nervous tick, a way to cope, but. Steve’s never seen any one hold a bic the way Billy does. 

Barrel in his palm. Clicking the register with his pointer finger, like. He’s pressing Reagan’s Big Red Button. The one to blow up the world.

“What’s so weird about a Tuesday release, man?”

“Ruining the start of a week by spending it in the hospital and then having to use the rest of it adjusting to life outside?”  Steve shrugs, remembering that Billy can’t see him. “They could at least give you a Friday. Then you’d have the weekend, right?”

Billy’s grin is somehow manifested in the honey drip of his voice. “Been locked up for six months, Harrington, what’s two more days?”

And that could be true.

Steve doesn’t feel like so much time has passed. The rise and fall of the moon, the turn of the seasons, the way Billy has to wear fuzzy socks with those little grips on them to stay warm in beige corridors, have been lost on Steve. 

Tainted. Wrapped in paper the exact shade of survival. Surgeries and afternoons carpooling the kids to Hawkins general, paying Barry Mildred to do Billy’s algebra homework for him, and. 

Convincing everyone.

Himself, too.

That Billy would be alright. Steve had to do everything he could to get Billy ready for the world, or.

The world ready for him.

“Has it really been that long?” Steve wonders.

And Billy laughs. “Maybe not for you, King Steve. Some of us had to spend the whole of it in one room.” It doesn’t sound as painful as it usually does.

Steve just nods again. To himself.

He remembers the leaves changing around the time Billy learned to walk again. Halloween. Bringing left-over contraband to spoil Billy’s strict diet of organic bullshit while his body healed itself. Amber leaves complimenting blue eyes as they made unsteady laps around the courtyard together. 

Steve holding his arm out time and time again, and. Billy taking it. 

Christmas. Snowball fights with the kids, crystals on long blonde eyelashes while that stubborn mouth fought to return every smile Max threw his way. Those very same lashes, wet with tears, when Billy opened a vintage copy of Cider House Rules, on Christmas Eve. 

All, you really shouldn’t be spending the holiday in a psych ward, Harrington.

But they held hands for the first time that night. Steve said, where else would I want to be?

And Billy, just. Took what he could get--nothing more.

Steve remembers a lot of things. Happiness. Rocky, at first, unearned, a slide into friendship which turned into peachy cheeks that rivaled the setting sun.

Summer, Fall, Winter, and.

February.

Steve must have missed it. All of it, while he was busy being grateful that Billy was alive. 

He checks the calendar.

“You’ll be out in time for Valentines,” He says. Because that’s important, somehow. “Got any big plans?”

“Oh, for sure.” Billy clicks his pen. One-two-three. “Got a girl waiting for me on the outside, thought we could catch a movie.”

Steve knows. 

He knows it isn’t true, that Billy’s just yanking his ridiculously short chain, but. Steve’s heart beats in time with the click of a pen. Advancing and overtaking the tempo to orchestrate a symphony of worry.

Of fear.

It used to taste like copper. Black slime and dirty snow, but now it tastes like mashed potatoes served on a hospital lunch tray. Contraband sweets. Change and forced endings and--

Steve chokes on something. A laugh that falls wrong halfway through, like a sob colored to fit summer days. “What are you doing after?”

The clacking stops. “Just fucking with you, Harrington.”

“I know.”

“Was a joke, I’m not.” Billy clears his throat. “Everyone who matters came to see me while I was here.” 

Steve just nods. Frantically, because he hears words that aren’t there. Meaning that couldn’t possibly color his life in broad strokes. He thinks about what Billy’s saying, what he really means. 

Everyone who matters.

“Where are you staying? Like, when you get out,.” Steve mutters. The chord is wrapped around his hand again. He leans against the wall, wincing as the pins from his bulletin board pinch his shoulder blades. “You got a place to crash?”

Billy doesn’t say anything. 

Steve clears his throat. “You aren’t going back, right? You’re not going. Home?”

“To Neil’s?” 

And Steve gets the distinction. Feels it settle like an axe between his first three ribs. “Yeah.”

Billy sighs. “No, fuck that. Figured I’d ask around. See if there are any beds open at RCA.” Recovery Centers of America, that’s. 

“That’s in Indianapolis.”

“Yeah,” Billy says flatly. Steve thinks, distantly, that he sounds almost. Annoyed. “Owens says there’s a car. It’ll take me wherever I want, long as I stay in State.”

“You want to go away?”

“Sure,” Billy says bluntly. “Wouldn’t hurt to leave this place behind, you know. Maybe go somewhere new--”

“Stay with me.”

Steve’s heart is beating in his eyeballs.

The world falls silent. Only for a moment, for as long as it takes for Billy to drop something on the ground and then swear under his breath. His voice shakes, like strands in the wind. “What?”

“At my apartment,” Steve clarifies. He untangles the phone chord which has somehow worked its way to his elbow. “It’s small and shitty, and the couch only has three legs, but.”

Steve closes his eyes and hopes against hope, praying to every god who has ever existed since the beginning of time and everyone who will come after, that Billy can hear every meaning, every hidden word.

“You could.” Steve says softly. “If you wanted to.”

The clacking starts up again, slow and measured. Steve can hear Billy’s breath. The ragged intake of air that sounds painful, like a boy clinging to life in smoke filled memories. Holding on to his hand, saying, I don’t want to die, Steve, please.

It plants Steve’s feet in an ambulance. It tips the string of a tourniquet, bloody and wet with slime in his hands. It makes him remember. 

Pull it tighter, kid, come on.

And.

He’s losing a lot of blood.

And.

Steve, we’re losing him. 

And.

Kid, step away from the body.

Billy clears his throat. “You mean it?” He asks, and.

Steve lets go of a breath. “Of course I do.”

“You’ll get tired of me.” Billy’s voice, it sounds like shattering windows. Steve doesn’t say anything. Can’t respond, because. Nothing in life is more impossible. 

The world falls silent.

Only for a moment, as long as it takes for Steve to close his eyes. “I can’t watch you get in that car and walk away, Billy.”

It’s nothing. Only a part of how he feels. Only a drop of what he wants, but. It sets things in motion again. 

Billy clears his throat. “Alright,” He says. “Give me the address.”

--

Steve wants it to be something other than what it is.

He buys new sheets. Fern green satin, five-hundred thread count and worth a third of what he has in savings. 

They aren’t what he’d usually go for, color or texture, but. The lady at the department store says muted colors are good for preventing overstimulation after trauma and satin is gentle on the skin. Warm, too, which is always a good thing.

Billy says it feels like winter, now. All, I’m a goddamn human snow globe.

Buying sheets on Valentines, it.

Makes Steve hope that this is something else. 

That Billy will insist on putting his new sheets on Steve’s bed instead of the couch in the living room. That they’ll sleep together here, just how they always did in Billy’s hospital bed. 

Chest to chest. 

Billy’s head tucked under Steve’s chin, but.

Mostly Steve being eaten alive by the guilt.

For feeling like this is the start of their lives. That everything before now--living with his parents, fighting monsters, feeling useless in every sense of the word...

All of it was a dream. 

Preparation for the day he would open the front door and find Billy there, waiting.

Steve takes the sheets back to his apartment. He makes up the living room, rearranging the furniture so Billy can have his own space. The couch as a bed and the coffee table as a book shelf.

Billy has a lot of books.

More than anyone Steve’s ever met, more than Robin and Nancy Wheeler combined and Steve doesn’t own any books himself, or. A place to put them. His apartment is the size of a shoebox.

He’ll get rid of the stuff he doesn’t use anymore. 

He’ll make room. 

In his apartment, in his miniscule life, so that Billy has something of his own. 

And maybe after they’re settled in and the bills are paid for the month, Steve will pick up extra shifts at the video store until he can afford buy one. 

A nice, big oak bookshelf for Billy to house his favorites. 

--

He locks himself in the bathroom an hour after moving in.

Which, you know. Throws the evening for a loop. 

He seems happy when Steve opens the front door, dropping his box of books by the shoe rack and toeing his boots off with a grin. 

His body is loose, and. Open, Like he’s comfortable. Billy pokes around the apartment, making fun of the weird shit hanging up on the walls while Steve cooks dinner.

“You gotta get some real art in here, man.” Billy says. It sounds like he’s by the record player, digging through the stack of vinyl's Steve keeps in a shoe box by the T.V. “And some real music, holy shit. How have you been living like this?”

“I’ve been living just fine, fuck you very much.” 

“You have three copies of Waterloo,” Billy snorts. As if that proves something.

He’s crouched by the mosaic of finger paintings left by Holly Wheeler, studying a particularly abstract piece when Steve hands him a glass of sparkling cider.

“Everyone’s gotta have their backup copies of Waterloo, you know, extra in case you gotta dole them out to strangers.” Steve clinks their glasses together. “Cheers.”

Billy swishes the drink around with a lift of his eyebrow. “You trying to get in my pants, Harrington?”

“It’s not alcohol.”

“Why is it bubbly?” Billy accuses, lifting the glass to sniff at it suspiciously. His nose wrinkles, like a bunny rabbit. 

Steve laughs. “It’s sparkling cider. Cherry flavored.”

“Cherry?” Billy snorts, his cheeks glowing pink like little love hearts. “That’s definitely a sex flavor.” 

“It’s a celebration flavor, you dick.” Steve chuckles again. He files through the records he does have, selecting one he thinks Billy can tolerate. “What do you think of Rumours?”

Billy’s wandered to the kitchen. “Hate the activity, dig the album.” He calls.

The sound of cabinets opening and slamming shut echo through the space while Steve figures out the settings for this vinyl, fiddling with the tiny knobs until Songbird filters through at a pace that seems right.

“Ice is in the freezer,” Steve announces, and.

Billy rounds the corner with a bag of chips, happy little smirk on his face. Steve frowns.

“I’m fixing dinner--”

“I haven’t had Doritos in almost a year, Harrington.” Billy says roughly. He rips open the bag, collapsing next to Steve on the floor by the music stand. Billy takes one and licks the cheese dust off the chip, holding the bag out, like. “Want one?”

Steve face hurts from smiling so much. “Nah, I’m good.”

Billy leans back against the wall, rolling his eyes. “What, don’t eat carbs after four p.m. or something?”

And Steve filters through a million answers, all of which make it sound like he’s trying to get laid, so. He settles in next to Billy, letting his eyes fall closed with the sway of the music.

“No, just. Don’t wanna ruin my dinner.”

Billy snorts, bag crinkling loudly as he dives in for another handful. “I could eat twelve bags of this shit and still go ape on whatever rich boy thing you whipped up.” Billy asses him, head cocked to the side. “Bet the cheese makes you fart.” He concludes.

Steve blinks at him. “You’re disgusting--”

“Processed cheese makes everyone shit their pants, man, that’s like.” Billy wipes his hands on Steve’s leg. “Common knowledge.”

Steve makes a noise like a runover chicken, wiping frantically at the trousers he bought at the Goodwill, just for tonight. 

He wets his fingers with spit, wincing and scrubbing at the bright line of orange nacho cheese that stains his corduroy flares. 

The shape of Billy’s fingers is unmistakable. “I’m starting to regret asking you to move in.”

“Thought I was just crashing here until--”

“Now that you’re here I’m no letting you leave,” Steve smiles at him, the weight of it softening when Billy’s cheeks glow pink again. He knocks their shoulders together. “You’re stuck with me.”

Billy falls silent after that.

Shoveling in handful after handful of Doritos and crunching so loudly that Steve can’t get wrapped up in the bass line on the Chain. 

“Dude, you gotta chew so loud?” Steve asks, shoving Billy’s hand away when he reaches to smear nacho dust down the length of Steve’s neck. “My god, you’re a menace.”

“You love it,” Billy giggles, and.

They stare at each other for a moment. Sort of watching the brush of eyelashes against cheekbones while the music plays. 

A backdrop to the start of something Steve doesn’t have a name for.

--

Night falls and Billy doesn’t come out of the bathroom.

The food has been stored, the dishes put away, but the light which escapes like neon strips of gold to kiss the mouth of the hall carpet never flicks off. Never giving way to rest.

Steve thinks about waiting for him. 

He thinks about going to bed, jiggling the handle to make sure Billy’s okay, breaking the door down when two hours turns to three but that seems intrusive. 

If Billy wanted company he would ask. And if he wanted to come out he would, right?

Steve feels like an idiot. 

Pacing back and forth between the living room and the hallway, trying not to make it obvious that he’s right in the thick of gut-wrenching worry. Violent, intrusive images of brain splattered tile fill his mind. 

Billy could be hurt, or. Asleep in the bathtub. Maybe he slipped out the bathroom window while Steve was turning down the couch for him, making the space comfortable.

Maybe he was never here to begin with. Maybe Steve dreamt him up.

Steve paces back and forth, back and forth, wrestling with the urge to call Dr. Owens and ask what he should do, until the clock above the stove reads 11:34 pm and he has no choice but to call it a night.

His knuckles sound like a machine gun when he taps on the door. 

From behind the oak barrier, Billy makes a noise like he was startled out of sleep. Steve can hear him moving around, when he asks, “You okay? Been in there for a few hours.”

Billy opens the door.

His eyes are red and puffy, cheeks a little flushed, like.

“Have you been crying?” Steve doesn’t want him to cry. Tears and hallow feelings, they have no place in the stretch of nightfall that Steve has built for them. 

He feels himself reaching for Billy on impulse, trying to pull their bodies together, but Billy steps back. 

Away. 

To make room for Steve in the bathroom or to make a run for it, Steve isn’t sure. He knots his fingers together for safe keeping. 

“Of course not, don’t be fucking.” Billy’s voice cracks right down the middle, like. A loaf of bread that has been in the oven for far too long. His eyes are glassy when he looks up, and.

Distant.

Steve feels like an asshole. He leans against the door jam. “I can call Dr. Owens, if you want.” 

Billy stares at him. “Why would I want that?”

“You just seem--”

“I seem like what, Steve?” Billy spits. “You gonna psychoanalyze me too, huh?”

Steve grits his teeth against the urge to. Fight back. “It’s just when I started getting the couch ready, you seemed.” Steve runs a hand through his hair, choosing his next words carefully. “Nervous? Afraid, maybe, just a little. Which is alright. It can be scary sleeping alone in a new place, and--”

“I’m not five years old, Harrington, I can handle a sleepover at my friends house.” Billy snarls. He pushes against Steve’s chest until there are rivers between them. Mountains and oceans.

It’s the first time since Starcourt that Billy seems.

Like himself.

The old self, the one that used his fists to keep wandering eyes from getting too close. Figuring him out. If Steve were a younger man he’d fall for it, hook and line, but. 

He knows better.

Six months and a lifetime with Billy Hargrove have taught him a thing or two. He nods, stepping back down the hallway. 

Billy’s eyes track him. Wide and nervous and so, so blue. 

“‘M going to sleep, dude.”  Steve waves a thumb over his shoulder, taking a deep, needed breath. He calls over his shoulder to give Billy some space. “Come to bed when you’re ready. I’ll leave the light on.”

Billy’s footsteps don’t pass his bedroom door until Steve is settled under the covers.

--

He’s starting to think Billy won’t show.

The t.v. is on in the living room, tinny sounds of Yogi Bear filtering through the wall and Steve wonders if he made a mistake in assuming, that.

Look.

Just because they slept together, like, actually slept together  while Billy was in the hospital doesn’t mean anything. 

Maybe Billy is just scraping the bottom of his energy reserves. Maybe he’s getting to the end of the rope when it comes to his friendship with Steve, and didn’t want to move in but had to.

For lack of better options, and like. 

Income and shit--

“Scoot over.” Billy says.

Steve jumps, poking his head out from under the covers to glare wildly at him. “When did you--”

“Move over.” Billy insists, eyes burning like flame in the darkness.

Steve does, all, “Jesus Christ, you’re just a little ray of sunshine, aren’t ya?” But there are butterflies in his tummy. Gently flapping wings that turn into stinging wasps when Billy manhandles his way into the bed, yanking one of the extra pillows out from under Steve’s legs to punch into shape on his side of the bed.

Steve squawks. “I was using that.”

“It was under your knee caps, dork.” Billy mutters, bullying his way into Steve’s space like he did so many times on warm summer nights at Hawkins General, stiff as a board on his government issued mattress.

Steve’s bed isn’t anything like that, it’s like. A marshmallow. Swallowing the two of them whole when Billy presses his face into the length of Steve’s neck, legs coming up to pin him in place.

“I got weak ankles.” Steve pouts. 

Billy doesn’t say anything as he goes limp and heavy on top of his human pillow. Steve instantly feels like he’s over heating; the guy’s a fucking furnace, but.

Billy’s eyelashes are tickling his collar bones.

His breath fans out over Steve’s skin, like cool breezes on summer nights, and. When he starts crying Steve is there.

Like always, Steve sings him to sleep.

[dngrcpckwithmurdericing]

Disabled sewing - YMMV

I watch a lot of what seems to be affectionately known as "costube" and I make a lot of my own clothes at this point, which is !!!!! to me, since it was always a dream of mine when I was a kid. I found costube invaluable to me to explain how garments piece together - which is the first thing I have realized about my "disabled sewing".

I have read SO many books and purchased SO many patterns, only to give up in frustration, but actually watching someone piece together a garment from start to finish (and not in the Project Runway sense) made my ADHD, visual learning brain go: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

(Not sure why that surprised me, since "watch one, do one, teach one" is how I learn the best and always has been.)

Modern sewing is pretty focused on sewing machines, and I have had many in my life (starting with one from the 1950s set into a wooden table that folded up to have a glass top !) but I find it difficult and confusing to keep track of what I am doign with a sewing machine. Hand stitching, just because of what it is, forces me to slow down and focus on one seam at a time.

But my hands cramp and have tremors and that does not seem to be the case for the folks who film their sewing adventures.

I have learned to use a long needle. This goes against most hand sewing advice for clothes, because a short, small needle gives you lss of a "puncture" through the fabric and more "cntrol", but a longer needle, as long as it is slim, can still fit throug the weave of the fabric instead of puncturing it - especially with how loosely woven modern fabric is - and since there's more room to hold it, I can switch ff which fingers hold it, change the shape of my hand as it is holding it, and also don't drop it when my fingers tremor.

In hand stitching garments, if you read manuals - especially historical ones from the Victorian era - and sometimes in the "costube" videos - there's focus on making tiny, neat stitches. Well. First of all, the interior of your garment is your own, so if you are doing a back stitch, your garment will pretty much stick together, and no one will see. But also, I learned (I think from something Matthew Gnagy said in one of his videos) that modern fabric is so much more loosely woven than historical fabrics that tiny stitches can actually make your garment LESS structurally sound, rather than more. Since I learned that, I stopped feeling bad about not being able to make my stitches one mm long, and started focusing on getting the stitching done in a way that does not hurt/exacerbate my hand, finger, and wrist problems. I usually end up with 2 stitches per cm, or 4-5 stitches to an inch.

Yes, this is drastically fewer stitches per inch than you'd get with a sewing machine, and it might not work for something like a kirtle, where the stitches are taking the full weight stress of the garment, but you know what? If I were making a kirtle, I could just do TWO LINES OF STITCHING and then I would have 10 stitches per inch, and that measure can take about 50 lbs of stress (per sewing machine guidelines), which would be fine. (Although there is a 0% chance I will ever make a kirtle, since I can't wear tight things and couldn't button the sleeves up anyway!)

I mark out my stitch lines with pencil or pen (I don't use fancy fabrics, so what do I care if there's a pen mark on my cotton until it's washed?), and am very careless with seam allowance. As long as the seam allowance exists, the vagarities don't really matter - and cutting in a straight line is a no-go because of my hands and wrists, so not having to worry about cutting along a seam allowance line is great.

And then I often take a bright cheap polyester thread and baste. I can't sew in a straight line. I literally cannot draw a straight line with a ruler. But that actually rarely matters! If there's a running stitch every inch or so, I can eyeball it enough to get a decent enough seam. If someone is looking so closely at my clothing that they can see the side seam or the hem is a cm crooked, they are frankly standing way too close to me and should step the fuck away.

One thing some costubers do that I thought would be helpful but turned out to not work for me personally is pin the end of the fabric to a tailor's ham, or pillow, to help keep the tension. But it may work for some folks.

Finally, the last thing on my list is that due to my migraines, I have a hard time stitching in natural sunlight. However, I've found that my seasonal affective disorder sunlamp, which has brightness levels and can be situated into the exact position I want, make stitching a lot easier! And also can be used at any time of day, so if I want to sew at 7 pm, I don't have to worry that I am losing the sunlight, I can just adjust my lamp that does NOT trigger migraines, and sew for a half hour that way.

Lots of breaks are also crucial! Every 15 minutes or so, I give my hands and eyes a rest, and move around as much as I can to stretch out, just like when I'm working on the computer. Or, like, how I try to do when working on the computer and fail because I'm too hyperfocused on what I'm doing.

\o/

What are your disabled sewing tricks and tips?

[theassthatquits]

Blupjeans Week Day 2 - Ghost

Lup Taaco founded the premier science camp for teens - Camp Rocks! - this side of Faerun almost a decade ago. She did it by herself (mostly) and has the awards, articles, and accolades to prove that it’s a success.

So where does Davenport, her investor, get off going behind her back and hiring someone new without consulting her? Sure, enrollment has plateaued in the last couple of years, the main complaint being that they needed to shake up their staffing and curriculum, but she had it handled. She could take care of it herself, this was just a bump in the road. She didn’t need the help of some fancy doctor, this ‘Dr. Hallwinter’ that Davenport worked with at the university.

Lup scoffed while thumbing through his resume and cover letter. Top of his undergrad at Neverwinter U, a triple major in chemistry, astronomy, and physics. A brief stint working at a funeral home - a little weird, but everyone goes through a quarter life crisis, right? Returning to school a couple years later to get his masters and PhD and now taught at the same university while simultaneously doing interplanar research with Davenport. At the bottom of his resume with “related skills” he put ‘huge nerd’, as if that wasn’t obvious enough.

“Well, at least he knows what he’s talking about,” she muttered to herself as she threw the papers aside. There was no use fighting it now, she had spent weeks arguing and it wasn’t getting her anywhere. And it wasn’t like this was a bad idea, it just wasn’t her idea. This was her camp, after all.

---

Okay, maybe this Dr. Hallwinter guy wasn’t such a bad fit. They got off on the wrong foot, having a couple of heated discussions (fights) about things that she could barely remember. But now, she was standing in the corner of the pavilion, watching him give a very animated lecture on stars and planets. Angus McDonald, one of their first campers and the only one who came every single year, kept raising his hand to ask new questions and Hallwinter loved it. The two of them could go back and forth for hours, talking about theories and experiments and life itself. Angus had signed himself up for all of Dr. Hallwinter’s classes for the summer and loved every minute.

And he wasn’t so bad to look at, she supposed.

Lup was snapped out of her reverie by the class laughing very loudly at some Fortnite reference he made. Without realizing it, she smiled too. Dr. Hallwinter looked up at that moment to see her and his grin grew even bigger. With their eyes locked together, he dabbed and the class lost it all over again. When she giggled at that, she could have sworn he was blushing.

---

Every year towards the end of the summer the staff throws a “spooky soiree” to celebrate the end of camp. Everyone dresses up in a science-themed costume, they use the different things they have learned to create gruesome and cool decorations and effects, and they end the night with a ghost story bonfire. It’s easily Lup’s favorite night of camp. She loves amazing all of the younger kids with the cauldrons of “witches brew” (just dry ice in some punch) and grossing them out with the “eyeballs” (peeled grapes). This year she sewed some LEDs into her black vest, creating stars and constellations. Lup glowed in the dark and she fucking loved it.

She was in the middle of a (spooky) explanation of the witch's brew when she caught sight of Dr. Hallwinter walking up to the party. He was wearing a white shirt with lines drawn across it like a measuring cup and a long red robe over it. She was pretty sure he was wearing a graduation cap, too, which would mean…

“Holy shit you’re a graduated cylinder!” Lup shouted at him from across the way.

Immediately squeals of “language, Miss Lup!” began in front of her and she apologized to them as Dr. Hallwinter walked over with a smile on his face.

“Sure, am! This is pretty much my only Halloween costume, but I do love it.”

“Well, it certainly works for you, Dr. Hallwinter.”

He blushed before saying, “Lup, please just call me Barry. We’ve been having this discussion all summer. The only other person who calls me Dr. Hallwinter is Angus.”

As if to prove his point, Taako swooped in at that moment in a chef’s costume with the letters “FE” written on his shirt and yelled, “Excellent costume, Barold! You look even more like a nerd than usual and that’s saying something.”

Barry laughed. “Thank you, Taako, or should I say Iron Chef?”

Taako bowed deeply. “At your service, sir.”

“Dr. Hallwinter, sir!” They saw smoke before they saw Angus and Lup was a little alarmed before she realized that it was part of his costume. The boy had dressed up like a volcano with fake lava and smoke coming out of the top of it. “Look, it works!”

“All right, buddy!” The pair high fived and a weird fuzzy feeling struck Lup while watching the two of them.

“I think they’re about to start the scary stories over by the bonfire, are you coming, sir?”

“Pshh am I coming? Miss Lup asked me if I could host the festivities. Now you go get a good seat and I’ll be right over to start us off.”

Angus saluted him and ran off, eager for the frights ahead.

“Hosting the ghost stories, that’s a big deal Barold. Lup has hosted the bonfire herself for the last - oh, I don’t know, 2 decades?”

Barry turned to Lup, confused. “Is that true? I don’t want to impose or ruin any traditions.”

She waved him off. “Nah, it’s fine. We got off on the wrong foot, think of it as a peace offering.” Stepping closer to him and putting a hand on his shoulder, her voice got quiet. “You’re a member of this family, Barry.”

It was a good thing it was so dark, otherwise she would have seen his face turn a deep red. “You said my name.”

“Yeah, yeah, go get ready to spook some kids, Bluejeans.”

“Bluejeans?”

“You’ve worn the same blue jeans every single day since you started, even when we do activities by the lake. I’m absolutely convinced that you only packed that one pair for the entire summer.”

He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, you’re not entirely wrong.”

“Barold. My dude. You only packed one pair of jeans, no shorts, no swim trunks, for an entire summer at a camp?”

“There might have been a slight mishap on the way here in which I lost my shorts, swim trunks, and half of my underwear.”

No one moved or said anything for a second before Taako finally said, “Barry, you know we go into town once a week to get food for the camp, right?”

Barry just stared into space, regretting all of his life choices that led up to this moment. Lup busted up laughing, harder than anyone had seen her laugh all summer. As she wiped a tear from her eye, she patted his shoulder and said, “Well, I guess you know for next year, right?”

He raised an eyebrow playfully. “Next year, huh?”

“Well, I guess I shouldn’t make any promises until I see how well you do at our bonfire fright fest. Speaking of which, we should definitely be heading over there. I am a little nervous to see how Magnus has been keeping the kids occupied.”

---

Lup stood in the back of the crowd, letting Barry take over the hosting responsibilities of the bonfire. It was one of her favorite parts of camp, but it felt right to let him do it. He was doing really well, enhancing his performance with shadow puppets from the fire and interspersing the scary parts with science puns to ease the nerves of the younger kids. She found it absolutely adorable.

“I think Barold is giving you a run for your money, Lulu.”

“He’s better than I expected, that’s for sure.”

“I’m glad you gave the guy a chance. He’s a good dude.”

She smiled. “He is, isn’t he?”

Taako took a moment, watching his sister watch Barry. “You have the hots for him, don’t you? Jeezy creezy, I should have seen this coming. Those arguments you two had at the beginning were spicy.”

“What?!” Lup said, a little too loudly, face flushing. “I do not have the hots for Dr. Bluejeans. He’s just funny and good with the kids and very smart and looks good in jeans and oh my god I have the hots for Dr. Bluejeans.” Her eyes got wide and she clutched Taako’s arms. “Taako what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Lulu, I say this with all the love in my heart: don’t follow your instincts. Right now, your instincts are telling you to let him walk away tomorrow and not say anything, and they are dead wrong.”

“Ughhh but what if he doesn’t feel the same? It ruins the professional relationship we have and then I have to ban him from the camp and then Angus will hate me and we will lose our best customer.”

“Something tells me he also feels the same way.”

“But how do you know that?”

30 minutes earlier

Lup went ahead before the boys to make sure that Magnus hadn’t started a revolution of sorts and that left Barry and Taako to quickly clean up the food before following. Barry’s eyes lingered a little too long on Lup as she was walking away.

“Barold. Are you checking out my sister?”

“What?! No, what makes you think that?”

“I rolled a Nat 20 on perception, Barold. Legally you cannot lie to me. Now tell me: do you have the hots for my sister?”

Barry covered his face with his hands. “Maybe? Yes. Absolutely. Completely. As soon as she called me a poorly-dressed poser on my first day I was done for.”

“Rad. You should do something about that.” Taako started walking towards the bonfire, witch’s brew in hand.

“What, like tell her?”

“Tell her, kiss her, fight her, just something so I get to stop looking at you two making eyes at one another,” Taako yelled back without stopping.

“What - we don’t make eyes at one another, that’s not…she makes eyes at me?”

“Yeah, I think you’re good, my dude.”

The kids started clapping, signaling the end of the story that Magnus was telling.

“All right, thank you Magnus. Very scary, that story about zombie dogs. I think next up we have everyone’s favorite camp director, Miss Lup!”

The kids cheered and Lup had to pull herself together to nail this story that she was definitely going to pull out of her ass because she most certainly hadn't prepared anything.

“Are you kids ready to get the pants scared off of you?”

They screamed enthusiastically.

“All right, this story is about our very own Lake Igneous here at Camp Rocks. Legend has it that there was a woman who used to live in these woods by herself, not letting anyone else get near her. She refused help from anyone that came by, wanting to do everything alone and remain independent. The campers nearby could hear her blowing shit up in the woods and they knew to steer clear. One day, a man stumbled into her home, lost and confused. She lit off several explosions in an attempt to scare him off but he didn’t want to leave.”

As she talked, her eyes found Barry’s.

“He saw how lonely she was and helped her blow shit up. Eventually she grew to really like the man and really enjoyed blowing things up with him.” Barry laughed at that. Lup, suddenly remembering that this was supposed to be a scary story, abruptly tore her eyes away from his.

“They thought it would be a good idea to light some fireworks on the lake, so they took a boat out to the center and created the biggest and most beautiful explosion known to man, taking both of them out. They sacrificed their lives for the dopest light show, and sometimes, on a very clear and quiet night, you can see them in the lake, hand in hand.”

Lup bowed to signal that the story was over and she took her place back next to Taako.

“Lup, that was...pretty rough, not going to lie. Not your best work, that’s for sure.”

“I just got so distracted looking at his dumb face.”

“Yeah, that whole story was glaringly obvious.” She glared at him.

“I just need to get through this night without further making an ass of myself.”

He snorted. “Good luck.”

--

After the bonfire had wrapped up and all the kids were sent to bed, Lup sat at her favorite spot down by the lake to stare at the stars. She always sat here on the final night, reminiscing over the summer.

“Mind if I join you?” Barry’s voice came out of nowhere, but she would be lying if she said she didn’t expect it. Lup didn’t respond, just patted on the ground next to her. “So, your story was -”

“It’s okay, you can say it was shit, because it was. I definitely did not prepare this year like I usually do.”

“-good. I really liked it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Especially the part where they die a fiery but beautiful death.”

She snorted and he took the opportunity to move closer to her, their shoulders touching.

“Thank you for letting me join the team this summer.”

“I would say you’re welcome, but I honestly didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“I know. Thank you for giving me a shot.”

“Again, not much choice in the matter.” He laughed. “You turned out alright. Better than I was expecting.”

“High praise from Miss Camp Director.”

“Would you be interested in coming back next year?”

“Absolutely. Pretty sure Angus would boycott if I didn’t show up.”

“He would just show up on your doorstep. Expect a lot of emails this year. So I’ll see you next summer, then?” He hesitated. “Unless you already have other commitments, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Lup, I’ll definitely be here next summer. I was just hoping that maybe we could see each other a little sooner than that. Like maybe this Saturday, dinner?”

She smirked. “A little forward, aren’t we, Dr. Bluejeans?” His face dropped.

“Oh, God. Did I totally misread this situation? Fuck, I am so sorry, I am going to just walk into this lake and never come back -” Barry started to get up, mortified.

“Barry, stop.” He looked at her, eyes wide in embarrassment. She shifted so her face was directly in front of his. “You didn’t misread this situation.” And then she kissed him.

@blupjeansweek2021

[sweetdejun]

medical!au x nct 127

I was reading a post about a doctor!doyoung and was inspired to do this... if nct 127 were workers in the medical field, I think..

taeil would be a pediatrician. he seems like he would be very good with kids, and I could see him distracting a patient with like funny voices and shit while he gives them a shot. when occasionally, a child is being fussy, he proceeds to sing to them, and that distracts the kid to a whole other dimension (as it does for the most of us lmao). he also seems like he’d end the day by giving his patients those big ass stickers. the kids love him, because he’s not scary, the parents love him because he’s amazing with their kids and he loves his job as a pediatrician.

honestly, taeyong gives off dietician vibes. yeah, I see him coming into the office, telling his patients like, “it’s true, an apple a day really does keep the doctor away,”. when he calls his patient into his office, he has like a food scale and measuring cups and shit and he’d show his patients like comparisons of how much the average person eats versus how much the average person is supposed to eat, and he uses sugar cubes to measure grams of sugar in front of his patients and he just LOVES the look of astonishment on their faces when the realization dawns on them.

it’s fitting to see yuta as a dentist, because in all my visits to the dentist, they’ve always had a shining smile, which is exactly what yuta’s patients see as soon as they walk in. he understands that some people are afraid of the dentist, so to ease their nerves, he tries to make them as comfortable as he can. this includes him cracking jokes, singing, but most of the time, he’s usually telling stories about his crackhead friends and how in college, they’d draw dicks on his face when he was asleep, or embarrassing stories of his assistants (who don’t mind because it’s yuta, c’mon). 

I think johnny would be a obstetrician-gynecologist. I say this because he just feels like the doctor who’d say reassuring things during important things like ultrasounds for pregnant women, or just women who come by to get check ups. again, the patients he sees, especially those coming to him for the first time or after a long time, are coming in super nervous. so he finds ways to calm their nerves: maybe by talking about what books he’s reading currently or a little “segment” he has called “johnny’s fashion evaluation” and the patients really seem to enjoy his comforting persona. perhaps that’s why he’s usually the most requested doctor in the department.

doyoung as an otolaryngologist is something I feel like we’ve all known indirectly. I think I would see him taking that career, if he wasn’t a singer, tbh. like when patients come and sit, and they tell him about a pain in their throats, he’s able to deduce the symptoms down to two or three diagnoses, and once he takes a peek in their throats, he’s got it all figured out. the same goes for the nose and the ears. the patients are always so shocked, wondering how he figures it out right away, and doyoung is filled with joy as he tells them it’s his privilege, and loves his job. and he’s honest every time he says it, because he really does love his job and it’s unconventional, but it’s him.

but yoooo.... jaehyun as a neurologist... can you imagine him analyzing brain scans, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose and twirling a pen between his fingers in his hand? wow. no but seriously it’s his passion to understand how all sorts of things can have an impact, large or small, on the human brain. he’s worked with big people, which has given him opportunities of recognition and he’s spoken at medical schools (and he gave a ted talk that had assloads of comments talking about how hot he is ok i’ll stop). he doesn’t really know what else he sees himself doing, if he wasn’t a neurologist.

it almost felt instinctual for me to see winwin as a pharmacist, because that’s the kind of job that requires a lot of knowledge and patience which I firmly believe winwin has. he just has this constant curiosity of knowing what medicine cures what, or at least lowers the symptoms for a certain illness. he’s so interested in them he’s learned all and every detail about what his pharmacy sells, and he can even eyeball the right dosage without having to use a scale (of course he still uses one just to be sure) and that always leaves his coworkers so dumbfounded. the job fills him with a sense of pride, that he’s confident he doesn’t wanna ever let go of.

maybe it’s because he’s such a fragile-looking squish, but I see jungwoo as an anesthesiologist. that is a stressful ass job and trust me, jungwoo definitely knows that. but it’s just one of those things, you know how some people work really well under pressure? yeah, that’s what it is for jungwoo. he performs his best under stressful conditions and when he knew he wanted to do something in the medical field, he knew that this was the job for him. he doesn’t have to worry about being the person that operates, and all he does is make sure to maintain the correct amount of anesthetics based on whatever’s happening in the surgery.

mark matches being a physical therapist the best to me. I’m pretty sure mark would be the kind of physical therapist that’s like buddy-buddy with his younger patients, like the teens. he’s always making tik tok references and always does his ‘let’s get it’. they think he’s pretty cool, and they all only ask for him. he’s just that good, too, like he doesn’t want to let the patient go until they’ve shown a sign of improvement. he keeps track of all his patients, and remembers all their details each time they come for their appointments. once they’ve completely healed, he also provides his patients with prevention tips, and always urges them to stop by and say hi. and they do; after all, he helped them do what they love again.

last but certainly not least, I see haechan as a surgeon. I know that sounds like some crazy shit, but I have always felt that he’s very meticulous about certain things, and he’s very precise. not only that, he’s always been very interested in the human body, and how if something’s wrong on the inside, how can it be fixed? haechan always loves seeing the expression on people’s faces when he meets them for the first time, and he tells them what he does. when he asks why, they say, “you just seem so young, and you don’t seem like someone who would enjoy the job.” but it’s very much the opposite. he loves what he does, and the fact that he’s also helping people? what other job can offer him the same, if not more, satisfaction? he has yet to find it.

a/n: lmk if y’all want a scenario or something based on one of these! I’d love to write them!!

[becky-helene]

I’m taking a mild break from continuing to resume work on Take Me to Church thanks to dbh muses deciding to birth out something directly related to Detroit Evolution.

*sighs in beleaguered fanfic writer* lol

Anyway, so what started out as being Gavin and Nines just talking about zen!Gavin, has kind of ~expanded~ (but, hopefully unlike my other recent fic “expansions” this manages to stay. a. freaking. one-shot. *glares at muses*) into a little exploration of them learning/individually reflecting on giving the other the things they need (ie Nines learning when to push or back off taking care of Gavin, ergo Gavin learning when he could actually do with a little pushing and it’s okay; Gavin learning the difference between Nines being too helpful in cleaning or reorganizing etc, versus just keeping himself busy, etc etc).

And it made me think of other times they might work together to fit with what each other needs/wants. Hence this lil fluffy headcanon that likely isn’t going to be what I’m writing since I don’t really have a place for it to fit:

-Nines cooking meals for Gavin.

-They do the whole cutesy “have a taste off the wooden spoon while I’m in the middle of cooking” thing,

-Gavin tastes it and notes though its almost there it needs a little more salt/random herb/paprika/whatever and he eyeballs sprinkling in more.

-Nines tries to figure out what’s the right amount for the future, and asks what measurement Gavin is using.

-Gavin’s like “I don’t know....you just....feel it, I guess?”

-Nines points out that (due to analytical/left brain thinking *shout out to Maximilian’s tweet talking about why Nines was left handed*) he can’t just ~feel~ the right amount like that.

-Gavin having a ‘oh....yeah....’ look, and (perhaps prompted by Nines seeming to have an insecure/“not enough” look at that gap in his knowledge) is later on found actually measuring out his preferred amount of salt and other stuff in order to jot it down for Nines benefit.

***I’m just now realizing that hey, Nines did know how much sugar/creamer to put into Gavin’s coffee, so he obviously already knows the right amount of things Gavin prefers. But ehhh I’m thinking that knowledge was born out of observation: he sees Gavin put in 1-2 packets of sugar, knows how much is in a packet, ergo knows okay Gavin likes x amount of teaspoons. Same for if observing him pour in y amount of lil creamer cups if Gavin grabs coffee while they’re on patrol/stakeout/what-have-you. Later, when faced with a full container of creamer, he knows the right amount to use. But he’d probably be a little lost without observing a measurement reference to jump off from.***

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Can I just say oh my god please yes read spinning silver!!! It’s so good and so thought provoking and the bits that unflinching examine the Jewish experience of always side-eyeing a non-Jewish neighbour when they’re looking for a scapegoat were stunning and really informative (I’m not Jewish and it was such a learning experience actually). Also!! What’s your favourite bit of astolats Witcher fics? You mentioned them and no one I know has read them ☹️ so pardon my excitement) anyway

That sounds EXTREMELY GOOD and also my beautiful, amazing, wonderful partners bought me nothing but books for Christmas, I have all of the Lotus War books and Akata Witch and the first and second Children of Blood and Bone AND they also got me Kindle Unlimited which means that.  I am about to make some very questionable decisions about how to use my time.  

(I’m going to try and get the entire Witcher series.  That’s what I’m doing.  But I’ll add Spinning Silver to my list once I’ve made that initial sally.)

AND MY FAVORITE PARTS OF ASTOLAT’S WITCHER FIC ARE ALL OF THE PARTS.

In all seriousness, the conversation between Geralt and Emhyr at the end of Cursed is the funniest thing I’ve ever read in my life (“Would you like to be imperial consort?” “WHAT?” “Would you like me to take you to bed immediately?” “….yes??????”).  And I was on a bus full of people during the siege planning/battle scene in Misethere and l almost vibrated out of my skin with Thwarted ADHD Stim Energy.

I just live for good battle scenes, holy shit, the calm measured assessment of “Of course they believe this is the entire Nilfgaardian army, because as far as they know, it’s impossible for anyone to be here, so since we’re doing the impossible we might as well have brought everyone” was so amazing.  I have read entire books for the promise of a good battle scene and Misethere delivered in spades (obviously, I mean, I’ve read Temeraire).  I live for a good cavalry charge, especially when combined with the trope of “this character renowned for their cold heart and tactical brilliance is doing something kind of stupid for someone they love” and getting to see both Emhyr and Ciri go full throttle on that was a reverent joy.

Also my secret favorite trope in any universe with magic is “love potions but make it complicated” (the affected person doesn’t change their behavior because they’re in love/they actually for real fall in love during the potion’s effect/they did it to their own self because they were eyeball deep in their schemes and forgot that feelings exist) so Misethere also really treated me right on that.

Honestly if I had to pick a favorite romantic dynamic, “gruff loyalty-driven secretly brilliant lionheart/cold merciless Machiavellian king” would be an incredibly strong contender (other things that can fit at least part of that definition: Hawkeye/Mustang, Vasya/Morozko, Sarah/Jareth, Damen/Laurent, etc).  And (spoilers for the show) Emhyr and Geralt are both Ciri’s dad but in wildly different contexts, a father who can give her an empire but hasn’t been there, a father who can’t give her anything except protection but who’s been right there when she needed him, and I’m hysterically invested in Geralt and Ciri’s relationship, so……

Yeah, I’d have gotten to Emhyr/Geralt on my own free time but goddamn do I appreciate being spiked down the line to “actually this is THE ship I care about” so quickly.

[mobius-prime]

199. Sonic the Hedgehog #131

Deep breaths, guys. I know what the cover page says. I know. We'll get to that. Just hang in there. I think you might like what I have in store.

Home (Part 2 of 4): The Gathering

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Ron Lim Colors: Jason Jensen

So not much actually happens in this installment of Home other than the various characters talking to each other about and preparing for the upcoming battle. Since Sonic has been gone, a new Freedom Fighter Special has been constructed that can cut travel time dramatically around the globe. A journey that in the Tornado or on foot (in Sonic's case) would have taken up to two hours can be completed in a mere half hour now, thanks to Rotor's engineering prowess. And thus, Sonic and Tails head out to Old Megaopolis to stop Eggman's twin nukes from launching, along with an… interesting backup team, to say the least.

Man, remember Fiona? It's been ages since we've seen her! It appears that while Sonic was in space, she joined up with the crew in Knothole and has been helping them fight Eggman. That's definitely a better life for her than to be running with the likes of Nic the Weasel, eh? Meanwhile, Knuckles, Julie-Su, Amy Rose, and the other two (active) members of the Chaotix head to Fort Acorn, where General D'Coolette is giving a speech to the soldiers under his command. We've never even heard of this fort before, but according to the general it's been here for ten years, keeping a forward watch on Robotropolis, and this watch has been maintained even after Robotropolis' destruction in case of just such a situation as the current one. With their reinforcements from Knothole, the crew at the fort prepare to defend the city against a massive swatbot assault to lower the forcefield keeping the radiation in check. Back in Knothole, extra measures are being taken to make absolutely sure that even if the worst happens, the citizenry will be safe.

Station Square, for their part, has sent a squad of GUN commandos to help in the battle at Old Megaopolis. The commander of the military is baffled by this decision, wanting to send in their full fighting force, but the president instead opts to trust his allies from Knothole - though just for insurance, he's sent one of his own operatives along for the ride…

Now that's what I like to see! It's about time Rouge got herself some proper screentime. As all this is going on, Eggman waits aboard a docked battleship in the harbor of Old Megaopolis with his assistant M, and orders A.D.A.M. to begin the missile countdown. However, almost immediately, the sound of a biplane puts them on high alert, and Eggman is shocked to see Sonic and Tails bearing down on his location, not having expected them to be able to get here nearly so fast. See, Eggman, this is why you resist the siren call of your ego and keep your damn plans to yourself. All you did was give your enemies ample warning to prepare to foil your evil plot, you idiot!

Mobius 25 Years Later: Prologue

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jensen

Okay, guys. This is it. We've reached the most Penders thing of all time. This is something that has been hinted at here and there from all the way back in the Sonic In Your Face special to now, and we're finally seeing the culmination of all of that buildup. All the intricate worldbuilding, all the complex character arcs, all the intrigue and political spider webs and back to back wars and everything that the world of Mobius has been through up until now - there's so much to explore, so many directions it could have gone. We're about to see what this world might look like twenty-five years into the future, and with so much rich history to draw from, what might you imagine this story might look like? What genre might it fall into? Well wonder no longer!

It's a drama. It's a teen drama.

There's a reason that Mobius 25 Years Later is widely considered to be one of the worst parts of the comic. The tone of it is just so far off anything else we've experienced so far that it clashes horribly with what we've come to expect. It's not some masterful subversion of expectations or something - in a lot of ways I consider it to be a genuine insult to the rest of the preboot's material up to this point. It's painfully and immediately clear that this is a story Penders has wanted to tell for a while, but, not being able to fit his "middle-aged adults adulting everywhere and being so adult-like while ignoring the feelings and difficulties that ordinary teenagers face" plot anywhere into the rest of the comic, he's opted to just fire the world a couple decades into the future, pair all the major characters off into weird and oftentimes arbitrary heterosexual marriages, give everyone 2.5 children and a titanium picket fence, and then throw in some allusions to the old "war against Doc 'Botnik" here and there lest we forget, entirely understandably at this point, that we're reading a Sonic the Hedgehog comic here. This thing goes on for nineteen whole issues, taking up each subsequent issue's backup story, and ultimately has no real impact on the actual story involving the characters we already know and love. However, this is technically canon, or at least a version of canon (as when you play with alternate realities and multiple timelines, futures are bound to get mixed up here and there), so we're gonna be covering it - all of it. I wouldn't be tempted to skip it anyway, as by delving into each chapter in this trainwreck, we can actually explore why this whole thing fails so hard, and why it's therefore so loathed in the fandom. Plus, I do recognize that some people actually do enjoy this arc for various reasons (one of my close friends does, and has a whole AU of her own relating to it in fact), so I do plan to at least try to be fair in my review - but I really can't hide that I find this whole affair boring as hell, often downright offensive, and ultimately completely out of place. With all that in mind, let's dive in!

We begin with a full page of exposition delivered to us via high school lecture, because everyone knows the best way to establish your worldbuilding is by infodumping it directly into your audience's eyeballs. Apparently, over the last twenty years, Angel Island has been heavily developed into its own independent republic, with a new city, Portal, acting as the center of trade between the island and the mainland below. We're once again introduced to Lara-Su, who, instead of being the badass time-traveling young adult whom we followed before, is now an ordinary teenager taking ordinary high school classes among a bunch of ordinary high school echidnas.

One of the biggest failings of this story is that Penders writes every teenage character how he thinks teenagers act, from his point of view as a middle-aged adult. This becomes abundantly clear the longer you read, as every teenager is a hormone-fueled, authority-defying, entitled, whiny, fickle child who just doesn't understand how the real world works, while every adult is a wise, experienced, and highly logical individual who always knows more than their younger fellows and refuses to pay attention to the whims of mere children. Like, I'm not even exaggerating here - I'm going to be pointing out every instance of this kind of behavior over the entire rest of this arc, and you can't stop me, so nyah nyah. Penders shows so little respect for the mere concept of teenagers, which is a terrible attitude to have not just in general, but especially if you're one of the head writers for an entire series about teenagers saving the goddamn world! Anyway, case in point: the teacher, instead of admonishing Rutan for being a bully, merely snaps at Lara-Su for not acting enough like a "young lady" and tells her to stay after class. Ugh.

Later that day, Rotor arrives on Angel Island as a liaison for the royal ruling couple, Queen Sally and King Sonic, because yes, Sonic literally becomes king in this timeline. He catches a ride from Harry - hey, good to see our favorite dingo still doing well for himself at least - and meets with Espio, who is now apparently Knuckles' secretary or something. At least, that's all I can assume from this weird-ass conversation.

As a matter of fact, yes, Sonic and Sally are bringing their two children, Sonia and Manik, to the family dinner! How very mid-70s domestic family unit of them! Espio informs Knuckles of this over a television screen as the latter broods around in some kind of high-tech facility. Unlike what we've seen of Espio, the years have dramatically changed Knuckles' appearance - his right eye is missing, replaced with a mechanical one, and he sports the cowboy hat that Hawking gave him in the past (you know, the one we never saw again after he received it). While I actually quite like the idea of a main character in the comic losing something as important as an eye, I feel like there's a huge missed opportunity here - instead of just thrusting us into an alternate future where everything is fine but one character is inexplicably missing an eye, how about actually showing us the story of how that eye was lost? Show us a Knuckles who's learning to cope with the loss of an important body part, and having to adjust to his mechanical prosthetic! Go into his feelings about the subject, as someone who has so long been opposed to a faction that thrives on mechanical prosthetics, instead of just skipping over what has the potential to be the most interesting part of this story! Ugh, sorry, there's just nothing that gets to me more than a missed opportunity like this. Knuckles and Espio exchange some tortured small-talk about their kids for a little while, with the only interesting part of the conversation being their discussion of Rotor's arrival and how he's likely here to see someone named Cobar, with whom he apparently has a history. More on that later. Knuckles excuses himself from the conversation, as he has to be home in time for his daughter's "Unveiling" tonight, and as the call ends we zoom out to see that apparently nowadays, the Master Emerald is hooked up to all sorts of technology in this facility, presumably maintaining everything automatically. However, this story isn't done throwing weird curveballs at us yet - it's time to see what our former villains are up to in this future!

There is so much to unpack here. Dimitri, feared overlord of the Dark Legion, is now an amiable cyborg-head-in-a-bubble. Lien-Da, the treacherous second-in-command who regularly spoke of betraying Dimitri and taking the Legion in her own darker direction, is now apparently a single mom who's embraced the domestic life, taking care of her rowdy teenage son while, predictably, complaining about the behavior of kids these days. And weirdest of all, apparently everyone is just fine with these literal former terrorists living in their midst and doing ordinary mom and grandpa things, with Lien-Da even apparently amenable to the idea of trying to make up with Julie-Su because "they're family," despite her history of, you know, erasing Julie-Su's memory multiple times and killing her biological parents as revenge for her birth. I mean, is this what Penders thinks adulthood is? Is he even entirely sane? Does he know the definition of terrorism?

Any-goddamn-way, Knuckles arrives home to his eerily sterile-looking steel-plated mansion that looks more like the lobby of a pharmaceutical laboratory than a place where people live, and greets his loving housewife Julie-Su, who's gained a cute giant ponytail but lost absolutely everything else that made her unique, including her own cybernetic parts and just her personality in general. She informs Knuckles that Lara-Su has locked herself in the bathroom and is having herself a mighty tantrum, refusing to come out to get ready for her Unveiling ceremony, which is apparently the equivalent of a Quinceañera for echidna girls. Knuckles, instead of doing something reasonable like asking her why she's upset, starts aggressively demanding that she come out of her room this instant, while Lara-Su repeatedly yells about how she doesn't wanna. Ugh, teenagers, amiright?

Seriously, I just can't get over how little respect Penders has for teenagers in his writing. Like, yes, I acknowledge that teenagers aren't always the most logical of beings, but they're also not goddamn three-year-olds either. They're old enough to articulate their desires and express their unique opinions, and often do so in very mature ways, especially if they're raised well and treated with the same respect you'd afford any adult. I should know, I was one myself. I would have assumed Penders was one as well at some point, but perhaps he just popped into the world one day as a fully-formed 43-year-old, full of disdain for those younger than himself. It would certainly explain everything we're seeing here.

Anyway, it turns out that the reason Lara-Su is upset is because Knuckles refuses to train her to be a Guardian, and so she whines and yells about it from behind the door like a petulant child as Knuckles continually refuses to actually give her a solid reason why he won't let her be one. When Julie-Su basically forces him to calm the hell down and explain himself, he reluctantly explains that since all the duties of a Guardian have by now been taken over by other functions of their society, he feels there's no longer any need for one, himself included. This is apparently enough to make Lara-Su immediately happy enough to burst out of the bathroom and grab her father's arm, suddenly totally excited to go to her Unveiling as long as Knuckles promises her the first dance. Ah, the fickle mind of a silly, silly teenager!

Kill me.

[wheretheheckismyjello]

A CEO and His Secretary

SYNOPSIS:  Kageyama Tobio has done nothing but make sure to achieve perfection. Now, as the CEO of a very successful sports agency, he continues on his ruthless stomp to success. Which is about to be slightly hindered by his new secretary: one very annoying, very stupid, very adorable Hinata Shoyo.

A/N: Okay yeah, hi, I'm late to the Haikyuu! Bandwagon, but I've drunkenly jumped on and will not be letting go. Enjoy my crack version of the good old 'Boss and Secretary Falling in Love' story.

PART 2 HERE: https://wheretheheckismyjello.tumblr.com/post/186637908894/a-ceo-and-his-secretary-ch-2

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!"

Kageyama Tobio stares blankly at the mop of orange in front of him. He can't fathom how someone with a Carrot-Top even got an interview at his company, let alone actually hired as his secretary's assistant.

He glances at Kiyoko, who knew him so well by now that she instantly read his incredulous face asking a silent "This guy?" She responds with a sickeningly sweet smile.

"We are really lucky to have you, Hinata-kun," Kiyoko says, patting the young man on his back. "I'm sure Kageyama-san would agree."

Head still bowed, the new hire misses Kiyoko shooting a cold glare at Tobio.

"Mm," Tobio grunts noncommittally.

Carrot-Top-Hinata Shoyo-finally raises his head, giving Tobio a blinding, toothy grin. Tobio jerks back at the sheer brightness of it. His assessment of the man's face didn't end there, noticing Hinata also had large brown eyes that seemed to take up half of his face.

Right. The new guy is 50% eyeballs, 50% smile, and 100% not going to last. After all, Tobio had already driven three prospective assistant secretaries to quit just this past month.

This new one, short and puppy-like, didn't look tough enough to handle the terms and conditions one emphatically ignores when downloading a new app, let alone the complicated, multi-million dollar contracts that Tobu negotiates.

"Okay," he says, after a moment. "I'm sure Shimizu-san will show you everything."

"Oh! Yes, sir!" Hinata answers enthusiastically, bowing again.

Tobio gives a dismissive wave and walks back to his office, still slightly unnerved by Hinata's excessive cheeriness.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Still thinking about his tall, taciturn CEO's lukewarm welcome, Shoyo asks, "Is he always like that?"

"Like he's got a permanent stick up his ass?" Kiyoko replies as she settles behind her desk. "Yeah."

Shoyo splutters, "I-I didn't mean it like that…"

"It's fine, Shoyo," she says with a roll of her eyes. "He prides himself in his stick-up-his-assholish-ness. Thinks the only way to rule is with an Iron Fist. That's why…"

Here she lowers her voice, eyes scanning the reception area, "...everyone calls him King Kageyama."

Shoyo giggles. "That's kind of an awesome nickname."

Kiyoko shakes her head. "Never let him hear you say it."

After a pause, she regards Shoyo with a somber expression.

"He's a good man, you know," she says. "Just...a little hard around the edges."

"Eh? He looks hard all over," Shoyo says without thinking. He immediately realizes the innuendo in his words and smacks a hand over his reddening face. "I didn't mean-not like that-!"

Kiyoko just chuckles and boots up her computer.

"Careful there, Anastasia," she teases."You wouldn't want him to show you his special playroom, I promise. It probably has an actual Iron Maiden."

Face redder than his hair, Shoyo turns to his own computer as a merciful escape.

"Well, he does look hard all over," a traitorous voice in his mind whispers, "Except maybe that ass. It looks firm, but still very squeezable."

Shoyo shakes his head clear of the lascivious thought.

"No! Remember your HR training on sexual harrassment, Shoyo!"

He dives into the pile of work Kiyoko has started explaining to him, grateful for the distraction.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

By noon, Shoyo has learned why his new boss' nickname is "King Kageyama."

"Although," he thinks to himself with gritted teeth, "Dictator Kageyama is more apt."

Just in the first four hours of Shoyo's first day alone, Kageyama has demanded they promptly respond to hundreds of e-mails, set several appointments with people who seemed to only be free on the same days and times as each other, and locate an endless amount of files for him to peruse.

All without a single "Please" or "Thank you."

"Let's get lunch, Shoyo," Kiyoko said with a sigh. She stretches in her chair and rubs her tired eyes.

"Sure," Shoyo says. "Let me just drop this file off to Kageyama-san."

He knocks politely on the imposing door with a brass nameplate declaring: "Kageyama Tobio." Underneath is his title: "Chief Executive Officer."

Shoyo knocks politely, then opens the door. Kageyama is bent over his desk, scrutinizing a document. He doesn't look up at the intrusion.

"Sir," Shoyo mumbles. "I have the file on Ichiro Suzuki that you asked for."

Kageyama beckons without a word and Shoyo tentatively walks up to place the file delicately on his desk.

Shoyo stands there for a long moment, staring nervously at Kageyama. Seconds tick by until Kageyama realizes Shoyo is still, inexplicably, in his office.

"That's all," he says.

"Umm...well! Sir, I just wanted to say...it's just that..." Shoyo takes a deep breath and then charges headlong, "You see, sir, my Mom taught me to say 'Thank you' when someone does something for me."

The leaden silence that follows must be every living thing waiting with baited breath, Shoyo thinks. It takes Kageyama some time to process what his subordinate just said. When Shoyo's words finally reach him, he furrows his brows.

Shoyo stares back haughtily as Kageyama leans back in his plush, leather chair.

"Probably made to fit to his ass measurements," Shoyo thinks. "Dammit. Don't think about his ass now, Shoyo!"

"Go on then," Kageyama says.

"Sir?" Shoyo's teeth chatter. The room's temperature seems to have dropped ten degrees. Or maybe that was just the cold glint in Kageyama's dark blue eyes.

"You wanted to say 'Thank you' to me, did you not?" Kageyama stares intently at Shoyo. "I personally don't think it's necessary, but go ahead."

A nerve pops in Shoyo's forehead.

"No!" he screeches. "You should say 'Thank you' to me! Idiot!"

The silence before was a cacophony of sound compared to the absolute quiet now. It is so quiet Shoyo can hear his own racing heartbeat, hear Kageyama's jaw drop, hear the wailing cry of an infant in the distance.

On second thought, that might have been his inner voice weeping about his undoubtedly short-lived career at Tobu.

Welp. Shoyo knows there's only one thing for him to do.

He backpedals his way out of Kageyama's office and sprints past a befuddled Kiyoko down the long hallway, fully intending to run to the Eshima Ohashi Bridge and launch himself into the welcoming waters of Nakauimi Lake.

"Oi! Hinata!" he hears from behind him. He turns to see his boss charging after him, absolute fury in his face.

"This must be what the people feel during the Running of the Bulls," he thinks. "Good thing I'm so fast."

He kicks himself into a higher gear and skids in front of the elevator, frantically pressing the Down button.

"GET. BACK. HERE." Shoyo's eyes widen as Kageyama closes the distance, his life flashing before his eyes until-

DING!-like a deus ex machina, the elevator arrives.

Shoyo launches himself into the elevator and mashes the Close Doors button. As the doors slide close, he breathes a sigh of relief.

Until a large, slender hand appears in the small gap still left and forces the elevator doors open. Shoyo's eyes widen in fear as a panting Kageyama looms over him like an Angel of God.

Kageyama stomps into the elevator and places a hand on Hinata's now windblown hair. His fingers tighten around orange strands.

Shoyo gulps.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: Oh wow I really did it, I wrote a whole chapter. Any constructive criticism is appreciated. Or just plain compliments are fine too. Actually, probably just give me compliments. My fragile heart can't take any perceived slight right now. Or ever.

PART 2 HERE: https://wheretheheckismyjello.tumblr.com/post/186637908894/a-ceo-and-his-secretary-ch-2

[theo-loves-broadway]

If You Can’t Stand The Heat, Get Out Of The Kitchen (Tyrus Fanfic)

Hi!! So I was inspired by @scientifthicc‘s headcanons for Tyrus to write this fic! After writing the first chapter, I realized I loved where it was going, and decided to make it a chaptered fic! :D I only have the first one done, but if you could read and it leave me comments/kudos/reblogs/suggestions, I would be so grateful! I’ll post it on here, and the link for the AO3 version, as well!

LINK: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15287934/chapters/35465793

Snowflakes littered the Goodman's front yard as Cyrus watched the little white flecks dance by the window. It was a lazy Thursday morning; the snow fell hard enough the night before that the administration decided to cancel school. Cyrus, of course, was ecstatic when he heard the news, and couldn't go back to bed, so he spent time looking out the window. His mom and stepdad had already left for work, leaving him alone for the day. His mom had left food in the fridge for him to warm up, but Cyrus wasn't in the mood for reheated matzo soup. He thought about texting Andi or Buffy, but remembered that they were away on a trip to Arizona to help Buffy move in, so that was a dud. He took out his phone, and mindlessly clicked on Jonah's number, the cursor blinking monotonously;

[Cy-Guy: hey jonah, wanna hang?]

Cyrus sent the message without hesitation, and drummed his fingers against the table waiting for a response.

“C’mon, Jonah, answer the text,” he mumbled impatiently, “we both know you’re not ‘out with Andi’ today,” he added, mildly defeated. Ever since the Open Mic and Jonah and Andi’s kiss, Cyrus had been a little, err, a lot jealous, even though he tried to smile through it. He’d avoided Jonah for a while, but decided that the best way to handle the situation would be to talk to Jonah, openly and honestly. Why Cyrus didn’t feel as though he was going to faint was beyond him. Suddenly his phone buzzed, and Cyrus opened his text messages with anticipation.

[JoLamaJama: can’t. out with family. won’t be back till tomm. sry cy]

Cyrus sighed, almost in relief, as he extended his legs out over the edge of the couch. “Great, now what?” he grumbled, his stomach doing the same. Oh, shoot, I didn’t eat breakfast, he thought to himself, the house’s deafening silence hurting his ears. He needed to be hanging out with someone, anyone , for that matter. He scrolled through the limited list of his contacts and hesitated on one.

“I know the chance is really low,” he admitted, already typing out a message, “but what have I got to lose?” he added, hitting send, and reading the message he just sent.

[Cy-Guy: hey tj, do you wanna come over? my parents are out and i’m making breakfast, so you can have some too, if you like. if you don’t i get it that you don’t wanna hang out with a loser like me but, whatever]

And after he sent it, he immediately regretted it. “Geez, could you be any more desperate, Cyrus?” he scolded himself, “You were just starting to have TJ not dislike you, and you just send a text out of the blue? This is so sad, Alexa play Despacito,” Cyrus sighed, and the Alexa on the coffee table responded, Cyrus bopping his head to the rhythm. Just as the song reached the chorus, Cyrus’ phone buzzed, and his heart felt like it stopped.

[Not-So-Scary-Basketball-Guy: yeah sure, im down for that. be there in like 10]

“Oh my gosh,” he uttered, almost paralyzed with shock. TJ actually wanted to hang out with him? How? Why? Before he got too lost in his train of thought, Cyrus hurried around the lower level of the house to organize everything a little. He adjusted the pillows on the couch, arranged the chairs in the dining room to be just so, and then advanced towards the kitchen to get ready for breakfast.

“What do sports people eat? Kale?” Cyrus wondered aloud, looking through his fridge as well as his pantry. “TJ’s just going to have to suffer next game because we’re making pancakes,” Cyrus decided, getting out the ingredients for his famous Chocolate-Chip Strawberry Pancakes. He made them every year for his birthday, as well as his parents’ birthdays, and they were always a hit. To speed up the work, Cyrus pre-diced all the strawberries into small pieces, and ate a few in the process. In the middle of his preparations, the doorbell rang, and Cyrus nearly dropped the bowl of strawberries on the floor he was so startled. Wiping his hands quickly on a towel, he rushed to the door as to not keep TJ waiting.

“Hey,” Cyrus said, awkwardness creeping into his voice as he tried to find something for his hands to do. “Come on in, Not So Scary Basketball Guy,” he joked, cracking a weak smile and stepping aside for TJ to enter.

“Oh, so now we’ve added ‘Not So Scary’?” TJ teased, taking off his shoes at the front door, “Thank goodness I’m not terrifying anymore,” he added, flashing a smirk of a grin as he shut the door behind him.

“Oh c’mon, you’re all bark and no bite,” Cyrus reminded him, crossing his arms in defense. His stomach growled and it sounded like there was a dying whale trapped in his gut. “And that means we should start making breakfast,” Cyrus mentioned, mildly embarrassed, as he led TJ into the kitchen. The countertop had all the ingredients for pancakes neatly organized into a small corner, and all the utensils were by them, ready for use.

“I’m really hoping you’re not going to make me eggs or something healthy like that,” TJ warned, taking a seat and propping his elbows up on the countertops.

“Whaaaat?” Cyrus drawled, happy he didn’t find kale in the fridge, “No way...Jose,” he added. Of course Cyrus would quote a musical, being the theatre nerd that he was. “Only pancakes, of course. The breakfast of champs!” Cyrus proclaimed, slamming his fist on the countertop, wincing in pain.

TJ laughed breathily, pushing his blond locks back. “Don’t hurt yourself before the food is made, Underdog. Afterwards, as long as I have my pancakes, you have my permission to roll down the stairs,” he joked, his eyes smiling along with his lips.

Cyrus merely rolled his eyes, putting his hands on his hips. “Okay, okay, I see how it’s gonna be,” Cyrus snickered, his eyes narrowing and his lips pulling into a devious smile, “you want me to slave away and make you pancakes?” he sneered jokingly, nearly dissolving into laughter.

TJ shrugged, looking down at the bowl of strawberries. “Basically,” he replied, popping a few pieces in his mouth, smiling while he chewed.

“Alright, well let’s make this a little more interesting, shall we?” Cyrus suggested, waltzing around the kitchen mischievously. “How about a challenge, oh competitive one,” Cyrus quipped, glancing at TJ, “you and I are gonna have a pancake battle. And if, or should I said when I win, you have to buy me baby taters for a week,” Cyrus said. “You in?”

TJ looked up at Cyrus and smiled, the shorter boy starting to wonder if this was such a good idea anymore. “You know what? Yeah, bring it on,” TJ accepted, cracking his knuckles, “And when I win, you need to come to my basketball games for a week, with those megaphones,” TJ dared, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms and legs. Nevermind the fact that TJ had never in his life cooked anything other than eggs (which he burned, by the way); he wanted to win.

“Deal,” Cyrus confirmed extending his hand for TJ. They shook hands and only then and there did Cyrus realize how soft TJ’s hands were. He didn’t expect from someone who probably lifts weights and handles a basketball all day.

“Alright, Underdog,” TJ started, carefully tugging his sleeves up to his elbows, “let’s do this thing,” he added with his signature smirk, the one that looked like he’d punch the living daylights out of you.

“On your mark, get set, bake!” Cyrus cheered, rushing for the ingredients. He’d made the recipe a thousand times (well, more like 15) so he knew exactly what he was doing, expertly measuring the dry ingredients, and combining them with the wet, tossing in strawberries.

TJ, on the other hand, had literally no idea what he was doing, so he tried to copy what Cyrus was doing. When Cyrus added some white powder (baking soda, he later learned), TJ would try to do the same. What he couldn’t properly see, he would eyeball the amount; unfortunately, this lead to him adding ¼ cup of baking soda. TJ lunged for the flour, accidentally knocking it down in the process, and a cloud of flour formed, looking like it was snowing indoors, as well as outdoors. After the cloud had settled and the boys had finished their coughing fits, they looked at each other and laughed, doubling over.

“You look like Frosty the Snowman!” TJ snorted, ruffling the flour out of his own hair. “Here, let me,” he started, brushing through Cyrus’ hair, Cyrus shutting his eyes to block out the flour, as well as to not embarrass himself in front of TJ. He kept his eyes closed for a few more moments, before opening them, the light a little brighter than he remembered.

“It appears you may not be as talented as you thought, Kippen,” Cyrus chuckled, setting his bowl of pancake batter by the griddle, already smoking from the heat. Muttering something under his breath, TJ grabbed his bowl of what one could consider pancake batter, and set it on the other side of the griddle. TJ’s batter looked much lumpier than Cyrus’s, and it didn’t have as many strawberries or chocolate chips, since TJ ate most of them before he started. Cyrus poured a few ladles of the batter onto the griddle, the sound of them hitting the metal filling the air. TJ attempted to replicate what the shorter boy did, but the pancakes ended up being misshapen, and he burned almost all of them. The boys stacked their pancakes on plates, and set them on the table, both of them looking at them for a while.

“Well,” Cyrus said, feeling mildly bad for TJ, “I, uh, do you wanna try mine?” he asked, pushing the plate towards him. TJ pushed his plate of pancakes towards Cyrus, the look on his face one of fear.

TJ took a bite of Cyrus’ pancake, and you could practically see the serendipity rush into his body. “Good lord, Underdog,” TJ started, finishing the rest of the pancake in one swift bite, “open a breakfast business,” he complimented, grabbing a second pancake. “Now you have to try mine,” he urged, munching on Cyrus’ pancakes.

Tentatively, Cyrus grabbed one of TJ’s pancakes; it was soft to the touch, but one side was almost completely burnt, and it felt quite dense. He took a careful bite and immediately regretted it. Waaaay too much baking soda, he thought to himself, trying to smile. “Mm, it’s uh,” he mustered, faking a smile, “an interesting flavor...and texture,” he added, forcing himself to swallow, shuddering.

“I know that it’s garbage, don’t even try,” TJ corrected, Cyrus immediately dropping the act.

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Cyrus admitted, quickly pushing TJ’s pancakes aside and stuffing one of his own into his mouth, visibly relaxing.

“Guess you won,” TJ muttered, defeated, “just let me know when you want baby taters,” he added, getting up to leave.

“Wait!” Cyrus exclaimed a little too excitedly, grabbing onto TJ’s sleeve to try and pull him back, his face heating up. “I-uh, you know, I could showyou how to make pancakes, you know, better ones?” he suggested, letting go of TJ’s shirt and fiddling with his own.

TJ knitted his brows together in confusion. “You seriously want to teach me , TJ Kippen, kitchen disaster, how to make pancakes? ” he questioned, crossing his arms.

Cyrus felt himself shrink into his own body. “Uhm, yes?” he squeaked meekly, clearing his throat to sound more confident. “Uh, I mean, s-sure, if you’d like to. Anyone can cook. Says so right in the movie Ratatouille,” he mentioned, testing the waters with a weak smile.

TJ thought it over for a few moments, before grinning. “You know what? Sure, let’s make some more pancakes. Anything is better than those ones,” TJ muttered, pointing to the stack of monstrosities that were TJ’s batch of pancakes.

The duo got to work, Cyrus reading off the proper measurements to TJ, and TJ following the directions exactly. This time, thankfully, none of the flour spilled on the ground. By the end, TJ had a luxurious batter ready to be made into pancakes. He spooned the batter onto the griddle, and waited until they were ready.

“Okay, I think they’re ready to be flipped,” Cyrus informed him, handing him the flipper for the pancakes. TJ tried to flip the first one, but it ended up folding in on itself and turning into a pile of batter.

“Told you I couldn’t do it,” TJ sneered, putting the flipper down in frustration. Cyrus walked up to him slowly and took it into his hand.

“Here, let me help you,” Cyrus suggested placing TJ’s hand near his own and walking over to the griddle. Gently, he helped TJ slip the flipper under the pancake, and successfully flip it on the other side.

“See!” Cyrus chirped, not letting go of the flipper, “I told you I could teach you,” he added with a knowing smile. Glancing down at the flipper, he tore his hand away, feeling tingly on the inside.

“Uh-huh, whatever you say, Underdog,” TJ scoffed, placing the flipper down, and breaking the pancake that they had just made in half, handing one half to Cyrus.

“Mm, see? So much better!” Cyrus exclaimed, swallowing the rest of the pancake. “You may not be half bad at this, Kippen,” he chuckled, taking a seat on one of the kitchen stools.

“Mm-hmm,” TJ murmured with a tiny smile, sitting by Cyrus in one of the other stools. The boys ate their pancakes in relative silence, save for the hum of the heater. When they were all gone, the boys leaned back in their seats, letting out simultaneous sighs of satisfaction.

“I, uh,” TJ started, hopping out of his seat, “I wouldn’t want to overstay my visit,” he added, almost inaudibly, but Cyrus caught it. Was TJ actually capable of saying something, dare he call it, polite? Cyrus scrambled to get out of his chair, taking a step towards TJ.

“You’re not overstaying your visit, dude,” Cyrus reminded him, looking up at the taller boy, “ I asked you to come over, remember? I mean, you can leave whenever you want, but I’m not gonna kick you out. Besides my parents won’t be home till late, so you’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” he offered kindly.

“Oh,” TJ said lamely, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “Thanks,” he added after a slight pause, unsure of what to say.

“So, what do you wanna do? We can watch TV, or, I mean, if you’re still hungry we can eat something else. We have leftover matzo soup, but I wouldn’t recommend that,” he suggested.

“TV sounds nice,” TJ agreed, and went to take a seat on the couch, slumping down in his seat and putting one leg over the other. Cyrus made a comment on how that was bad for his back, but TJ just shrugged it off and flicked through the channels, finally settling on watching Family Feud.

“Legs! Just say legs, my gosh,” TJ said exasperated. The question asked about what body parts men might describe as “long” on a woman, and the second person had just said forehead.

“You’re really into this, huh,” Cyrus observed, glancing over at TJ. His face was slightly red from yelling at the TV, his knuckles losing color as he gripped the edge of the couch.

“It’s not my fault I can’t handle their stupidity,” TJ half-joked, before his smile faded, “Can’t even handle my own stupidity,” he added, biting down hard on his lower lip, ignoring the TV for the first time.

Cyrus frowned, feeling his heart audibly break for TJ. They both knew that TJ has dyscalculia, but that didn’t mean that he was any less of a person, or rather, a student.

“TJ,” Cyrus said softly, shifting slightly towards him, “you’re not stupid. So you need some help with math, so what?” he added, TJ’s gaze not leaving the ground. “You’re not stupid, and you never were, TJ,” Cyrus continued, tapping his fingers on the edge of the couch. What had started out as an innocent hangout had turned into a more serious conversation about TJ’s “stuff”. Cyrus hadn’t noticed through all his therapeutic messages, but hot, angry tears were streaming down TJ’s face.

“Stop,” TJ croaked, and Cyrus immediately turned his attention to TJ, seeing how upset he was. “Let’s face it, Underdog,” TJ muttered, his voice breaking when he spoke, “I’m pathetic. I mean, look at me,” he added with a squeak, peering at Cyrus. His face was pale, his cheeks wet with tears, and his eyes were red and puffy. He looked so...defeated.

“You’re not pathetic, TJ,” Cyrus assured him, pondering as to whether or not he should give him a pat on the shoulder, “emotions are normal to have and to show. I am literally a walking sack of emotions,” he joked, earning a small chuckle from TJ. “But seriously, don’t beat yourself up like that, man,” Cyrus warned him, giving a gentle pat on his shoulder to cheer him up.

TJ shrugged, pulling his sleeves down and wiping his tears, trying to make himself look more presentable. “Thanks Underdo--Cyrus,” he edited, smiling weakly, “for not, you know, freaking out and not thinking that I’m stupid,” he added, the episode of Family Feud coming to an end as the clapping faded. Cyrus just nodded, happy that his friend was feeling a little better.

“I actually should get going, this time,” TJ told Cyrus, standing up, “I have basketball practice soon,” he said, advancing towards the door. Cyrus followed him to say his goodbyes.

“So, uh, I’ll see you later?” he asked, unsure if TJ would want to hang out with him again, judging by today’s events.

“Of course, dude. Remember, I owe you baby taters for a week,” TJ reminded him, slipping on his boots. He opened the door and was greeted by a flurry of snowflakes, littering his hair.

“Oh, wait one sec,” Cyrus sputtered, rushing towards the closet and pulling out a black beanie. “Take it...it’s cold outside, and it’s snowing,” he observed, handing the beanie to TJ, who took it and adjusted it on his head.

“Thanks,” he mustered, his smile evident in his crinkling eyes. “I’m, uh, I’m free later today, say around 6?” he suggested, already on the other side of the threshold.

“Yeah, sure! That works,” he chirped, bubbling up inside at the fact that TJ actually wanted to hang out with him again.

“Cool. Thanks for having me. I’ll see you later,” he concluded, giving Cyrus a small waves before heading out the door and braving the cold and the snow. Cyrus watched as the little white speckles dotted the black beanie that TJ sported. Once he was out of sight, he shut and locked the door, and took a deep breath. Today is going to be one hell of a day, he thought to himself, sitting on the couch and watching the next episode of Family Feud.

[lord-covfefe]

White Noise-Chapter 5

Read on Ao3 here

I awoke the next morning alone, rolling over to see some parchment laid on the pillow next to me. Rubbing my eyes, I opened it to see a note in Link’s scratchy but neat handwriting: Here’s to many more rainy nights.

I shifted around in my bed and smiled as the events of the prior night came streaming back into my consciousness. I noted with curiosity that I was slightly sore, my canal drawing a subtle reminder of its recent interactions. I relished in the sensation--though it wasn’t exactly comfortable, there was something secretly titillating about it.

My stomach rolled as I remembered the fullness and thickness of him. The soft, velvety skin of his penis contrasting with the rigidity of its form had never been so vivid as when it first entered me. I was glad that I had a sensation to remember it by in the morning--I wanted his imprint on as much of me as possible.

I laid in bed for quite some time thereafter, drinking in the musk that we had left behind on the sheets and reliving my own deflowering. Looking out the window, I frowned to see a bluebird sky. When can I know him again?

Contentedly, I started to manually explore my own anatomy to learn more about how it fared. Sliding a finger in, I smiled again at the memory of being filled by something much larger.

I then removed it to examine if the consistency of my viscous fluids were the same as they had been before this change. I was shocked to see that there was dried blood on my index!

Sweet Hylia. I suppose I had read something about slight female bleeding the first time…

I pulled back the blankets to see a small spot of blood on my sheets. How mortifying! Hopefully Link had not seen. And, thankfully, I could easily explain it to my chambermaids by saying that my moon’s blood had come in the night.

I was rehearsing that monologue when a knock came at the door. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was well before the usual time Link came to escort me.

“Your highness,” came a woman’s voice from behind the door. “Are you awake?”

Curses. I recognized the voice as belonging to Liesl, my least favorite handmaiden.

“Yes, thank you Liesl,” I answered. “I will be ready to dress in just a moment.”

“Your Father has summoned you, and requests your presence immediately. Today we shall dress you simply, as must needs haste.”

My stomach dropped. There was no way we could have been heard, or seen. Was there? I suppose we left the window open...suppose a guard had strayed close to the walkway outside my room…

I wanted nothing more than to crawl under my covers and never come out. I am quite accustomed to ignoring my own wants, however.

I got up, smoothed the bed as much as possible, and opened the door to let Liesl in.

I cannot know if it was my imagination, or if she peered at my terrific bedhead with suspicious eyes.

I tried to calm my voice and swallowed the lump in my throat. Feigning calm, I chirped, “Do you know what he has summoned me to discuss?”

“He did not say,” she replied, her voice flat and stony. “My orders are simply to bring you to him as quickly as possible.

I took pleasure, for a brief moment, in imagining the terse Liesl running from a flock of cuccos. An incensed flock of cuccos.

Alas, daydreams of loud squawking from both parties would do nothing to stop the wrath of my Father, if he was summoning me for the reason I feared.

Liesl was fastening one of my silk stockings when she stopped, staring at something.

“Your highness, what is this bruise? It looks rather fresh.”

I glanced down, seeing a purpleing mark on my thigh that I knew to be the work of hungry hands. Hands belonging to the wielder of the Master Sword.

I swallowed.

“We rode quite briskly to get inside before the storm yesterday evening. I must have exerted myself a little too hard.”

She took another look at the bruise and continued to fasten the stocking.

“Your highness should be more careful. Perhaps your travel britches allow for too lively a riding style.”

To stop myself from rolling my eyes, I blinked hard.

“I will be sure to be more delicate next time. I do think I can manage that in trousers.”

We remained in silence until at last I was fully dressed in a simple gown fit for every day court life. I practically ran out the door, terrified of the audience with my father but glad to get away from the cantankerous maid.

Walking down the hallway leading to the throne room, I attempted some of the breathing exercises Link had taught me and stared at the scenes on the tapestries to occupy my mind. Each time a menacing what if appeared in my mind I would fixate on some scene, instead mentally reciting the history I knew of each one.

The hero of twilight battling a dragon, high above the ground in a long-lost sky city. A tall sheikah woman atop a horse with the young princess Zelda. Banished...or worse…

I looked down at the crimson carpet below my feet and then back up at the tapestries.

A wild contraption that had been constructed along the ancient sealing grounds that sadly, we no longer know the name for. Another relic lost to obscurity in the harsh sands of time.

Finally, I arrived at the throne room. I did not dally by the door as to not give my worries any more attention than they had already enjoyed. The only way to find out was to find out.

The two guards at the door, seeing my approach, announced me as I walked into the sanctum. The sallow sunlight streaming in from high windows appeared as columns of light thanks to the motes of dust that freely drifted.

I entered quickly, attempting to jostle out my nerves with physical movement.

I saw that Link already stood before my Father and I swallowed, torn between the lurching of my heart at his golden hair and the lead in my stomach at the implications of him being here.

His face was completely blank, not even a drop of anxiety. He rather seemed more resolute than normal, completely prepared to face whatever was coming with honor. He looked at me and crinkled his eyes for just a brief moment, sending me a private message. Sweet Din. How could he be flirting at a time like this?

He was calm and collected, flirting even! Triforce of courage indeed. Meanwhile, I was a quavering bundle of nerves amassing in a being known as Zelda.

The hall finally settled and my Father cleared his throat. The silence fell deeper still.

“Zelda. Link. Young ones,” he boomed. His voice still grated on me with the memory of his dressing down the day before. “These are grave times. The stakes are high, and the price of failure is steep. Omens are everywhere. Just last night the moon seemed to turn a foul shade of crimson and seemed to be casting down an angry look from the sky. Grave times indeed,” he dithered on.

Half of my life had been spent listening to his half-baked proclamations of doom. He churned out several more minutes of self-indulgent catastrophizing when he finally arrived at the point. I tuned back in.

“And so, with all this in mind, I am bitterly disappointed to hear that this Calamity  is not being treated with the gravitas that it so sorely requires.”

My stomach dropped even further. I wished that the floor of the sanctum would split and I could fall down into the ground.

I would take responsibility for it all. I would say that it was all my doing, Link could not refuse me, I was his sovereign, he had nothing to do with it. I opened my mouth to say so--

“I have received information that on your visit to Zora’s Domain, you spent much time tinkering away in Vah Ruta, alone. This is unacceptable. You are not to leave your knight protector’s side, under any circumstances. Your person is the most crucial element in Ganon’s defeat. Sir Link, this is the last time I will say this without consequence--the princess does not leave your sight, no matter how she protests. That is a direct order.”

Link bowed his head.

“Yes, your majesty.”

I felt dizzy and had an urgent need to sit. Thank you Hylia! At least for this!

“Good. It is settled. Now,” my Father continued. “The matter I called you here to discuss. We have received intelligence that several star fragments have fallen in the area surrounding the Spring of Power. I believe this is a divine sign, an indication of the goddess’ presence on those grounds. You two will depart today for the Spring, as soon as you are ready. I expect this task will be treated with respect,” he said, giving both of us the hairy eyeball.

Neither of us said anything, but both offered solemn nods. Well, at least Link was surely solemn. I was still agog and trembling like a deer at our brush with disaster.

We both turned on our heels and left, Link settling into his place three places behind me. I took ten deep breaths, attempting to reclaim some measure of calm.

[thisdorkyblogthing]

Hey Jenny. I know you've been working on losing weight and improving your health for a while now, and I was wondering how you did it? I'm working really hard on myself and I'm just trying to get some motivation and a better understanding of how. Thanks! xx

(okay first off I just wanna take a moment bc I feel all a-flutter about being asked about this, so like, WEE!!)

It’s really boils down to ‘eat less/move more’ for me - though the ‘move more’ part was something I found vastly easier to do over the eating less bit, but I’ve been slowly but surely gotten better over the years. What has helped me getting there has been:

I started off with some simple, but really big for me changes: 1- no more second helpings at dinner(I always took second helpings, like every night, and they weren’t just a few bites either, it was another full plate of food) 2- I gave myself a one soda a day limit(and then I eventually realized I wasn’t even enjoying it anymore and went No Soda At All for like, the third time in my life) 3- I gave myself a no snacks between meals rule (which I’ve gone back and forth on, but I’ve gotten better about snacking with time)

learning to be really, really honest with myself. as in: resisting the urge to not log things I ate because it will put me over my limit. I’m the only one that suffers when I do that! I still ate the thing! the calories still get counted!

but also learning to be forgiving with myself when I do go over my limit (which I have done quite a bit of) and stopping that whole self-hate spiral where I go ‘FUCK IT! I already fucked it up so I may as well fuck it up EVEN MORE!’

finding out what the heck a TDEE(Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is, and calculating what mine is and then basing my calorie intake on that. this is one that I’ve used, but there are like, a million of them you can find on google if you wanna crosscheck it, and keep in mind it’s not necessarily going to be perfectly accurate, but it should at least give you a good idea of where to start and personally I’ve found it to be pretty on the money for me. I just took the number it gives me and subtracted -500 from it to get my calorie intake and go with that, rather than the one calorie trackers tend to give (they always give me too little, and I can never stick with it)

I started using a food scale to measure my portions, which has made things immensely less stressful for me, bc I was really bad at eyeballing my portion sizes and it’s a fucking pain in the ass to use measuring cups, which made my weight start to stall. (also, shout out to cronometer, where every food entry has a measurement in grams)

as far as eating better - it’s been a lot of playing around and paying attention to what makes me feel better. I don’t have a really stellar diet, tbh, but it’s a lot better than it once was. I try to eat as many fruit and vegetables as I can and keep my eye on how much protein I’m eating(keeps me fuller longer) but other than that I don’t do anything super special diet-wise. I tried eating more ~diet-y~ foods before, but it usually left me unsatisfied (and were usually more expensive).

as for exercise, that was super easy for me to get in to. (almost a little too easy, and I ended up getting too caught up in that ‘I worked out so I can basically eat everything in the world, right??’ protip- don’t do that) I just happened to fall in love with fitnessblender’s videos and have pretty much always gone back to them even if I go off and stop exercising for a while or do some other type of workouts. But I’ve also been enjoying some of Millionaire Hoy’s workouts for the past few months (especially his stretching ones). popsugar fitness also has some interesting looking workouts if you’re in to that dancey aerobics class workouts sort of vibe, but there are like, a million different workouts out there now, basically you just have to find something that looks interesting and try it!

OKAY, this has gotten long and rambley, and idk if it’s anything that will even help you, but I hope it does and if you have anything else you want to ask feel free to shot questions at me!