#but I also realize the importance of what we’re getting NOW and acknowledging this isn’t a show about me. snd that’s okay

[shenglingyuan]

title: a lesson in adolescence (ao3) pairing: togame jo/sakura haruka summary: “So, what was your problem this morning? Did you get sick?” “I think so. I never experienced it before.” Sakura’s fist curls at the hem of his sleeves, obviously having a hard time disclosing his concern. “This morning…when I woke up…my…down there…” Down there?! Togame chokes on air, belatedly realizing the issue at hand. “Don’t laugh at me!” (Sakura learns an important lesson every boy usually does in their teenage years.) *** explicit content: hand job (an attempt to write it, at least...)

Nirei Akihiko: Today 10:31 AM        Togame-san! We need your help! 10:31 AM        Sakura-kun isn’t in class this morning. 10:32 AM        He hasn’t answered our messages and our calls so we’re worried! 10:32 AM        But we still have classes, so maybe you can drop by his house to check on him?

Togame’s phone is bombarded by consecutive messages from one of Sakura’s friends in the middle of a Friday morning. After the big fight, the smaller boy – Nirei – had also asked for his contact number in case of emergencies. Turns out, it’d be useful now that he and Sakura are a thing.

10:33 AM        [Location pin sent] 10:34 AM        Please update us! Unit 201. 10:34 AM        Thank you, Togame-san!

The boy didn’t even wait for Togame to confirm if he can go or not. But it’s not like not going was a choice in the first place. Togame likes the message as acknowledgment and hurriedly makes a quick trip to the grocery store before heading for Sakura’s place. It's a good thing he isn't busy that day.

He later arrives at a rundown apartment. It looks barely livable that he almost thought he got sent the wrong address. But Nirei had even told him Sakura’s unit which he easily spots from the gate. He takes the stairs and walks towards the door of what should be Sakura’s place.

Before he can even knock, the door opens, and the familiar black-and-white hair pops out from inside.

“The heck?” Sakura’s eyes are wide in surprise, “What are you doing here?”

“Nirei messaged me. Did he tell you I’m coming?”

“No, I could hear your footsteps from the stairs.”

“They were worried since you didn’t go to school today.” Togame shows the plastic bag of food he brought with him. “Have you eaten? I got food here.”

“I’m fine.” Sakura looks away. A tinge of red stains his cheek. “Just had a problem this morning.”

At this point, Togame is already used to Sakura reacting like this. He just needs to prod a little bit more. “You can tell me about it, you know. I’ll help you with it as much as I can.”

Though they’ve made great progress in their relationship, Togame notices that Sakura still keeps a lot of things to himself. Not that he wants to pressure Sakura to tell him everything, but he hopes that more than a fighting body, Sakura can also rely on him with more personal matters.

“Well, I guess if it’s you, you would understand.” Sakura finally says. “Do you wanna come in?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

The room is small and severely unfurnished. It’s been a few months since Sakura has moved to town, but it doesn’t seem like he has made a home out of his apartment yet. There isn’t even a dining table or a chair. At least there was a small stove he spots on the limited kitchen space. He places the bag of food next to it.

“That Nirei, always sending people here for no reason.” Sakura grumbles.

“Can’t be helped if you’re giving them reason to be concerned – hey, Sakura, do you just wear that when you’re at home?” Togame finally notices that Sakura only wears a boxer with his shirt, baring his legs in plain sight.

“It’s just me here, anyway, why bother with pants?” Sakura crosses his arms across his chest defensively, “Besides, I do wear something when people come around.”

“Ah, so this is a special treatment for me then?”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“So, what was your problem this morning? Did you get sick?”

“I think so. I never experienced it before.” Sakura’s fist curls at the hem of his sleeves, obviously having a hard time disclosing his concern. “This morning…when I woke up…my…down there…”

Down there?! Togame chokes on air, belatedly realizing the issue at hand.

“Don’t laugh at me!”

“I wasn’t!” Togame coughs to clear his throat, gathering his thoughts as he did so. “You know, Sakura, that’s something that happens to almost every boy. It’s normal.”

“You think I’m an idiot?” Sakura snaps, his forehead contorted in a frustrated frown. “I know it can get hard in the morning! It’s different this time…it’s…it’s wet. Of course, it’s not piss!”

Togame freezes. Sakura just had his first wet dream, and he didn’t even realize what it was. He runs a hand down his face, feeling the colossal weight of the situation. “Do…you remember what you were dreaming about before you woke up?”

As if on cue, Sakura’s whole head turns to a deep shade of red. Even if he is unable to answer, Togame gets an inkling of what and who it was about. A small grin can’t help but form on his lips.

“Ah, how do I say this…at times, when you get a lot of pent-up emotions, and you don’t release it in any way, the body conjures up this dreams forces you to release those pent-up emotions while asleep.”

“What do you mean pent-up emotions?”

“Have you been thinking too much about me the past few days?” Togame asks teasingly.

“You!” Sakura jumps at Togame at an attempt to hit him, but Togame easily catches is fist with a laugh. “It’s your fault! You’re the one in my dream!”

“Heh, should I teach you how to deal with it, then?”

“You know how?”

“Of course, I’m older than you, remember?”

Suddenly, Sakura is genuinely curious, pulling away his hand to listen. “Tell me.”

“Hmm, it’s not that simple. You’ll have to let me touch you so I can show you how.”

“Let you touch me?”

Togame uses the term Sakura did. “Down there.”

“Ha?!” Sakura’s hand flies over his crotch, shielding it from whatever Togame is thinking about.

“It’s just a suggestion,” Togame shrugs. “You can say no.”

For a moment, Sakura’s eyes dart between Togame and his own hands, like a million thoughts are running through his mind and he can’t grasp a single one of them. Not wanting to stress Sakura even further, Togame resigns to ruffling his hair.

“Don’t think about it anymore, yeah? I’ll send you something later you can check in private.”

To his surprise, Sakura suddenly grabs his wrist, his expression turning persistent. “No, show me now.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s…it’s something couples do, right?”

“Well, yeah, normally, if they’re both comfortable with each other already.”

“Then it should be fine.”

Togame scratches the back of his head, suddenly feeling like he bit off more than he can chew. But since he’s the one to bring up the idea anyway, and not to mention that he’s the reason for Sakura’s dream, he should at least take responsibility.

“Okay then, let’s go to your room?”

Without further delay, Sakura leads them to his bedroom.

It’s as bare as the living room-slash-kitchen, with a single futon on the middle of the floor. Fortunately, there are curtains at least that can give them privacy. Togame draws them to a close, dimming the surroundings, only the minimal daylight illuminating the room through the flimsy curtains. He then sits on the futon and pats the spot right in front of him, motioning for Sakura to sit. Sakura follows without complaints, already used to claiming the space in front of Togame’s body with his, and sits with his legs crossed. In this position, Togame both has clear access to Sakura and an unobstructed view of his face.

Most boys learn this part with their friends, or in the privacy of their own rooms as they explored the internet or whatever. Sakura had neither until recently, so Togame would ideally want to take this slow and let the experience at least be good and educational for him.

“You can tell me if you don’t want it anymore, okay?” Togame puts a hand on Sakura’s waist reassuringly.

“Just get on with it.”

Taking it as consent, Togame slides down a hand towards Sakura’s crotch and feels his length on the fabric of his boxers. Sakura’s breath hitches, the hand he rested on Togame’s thigh curls, and his body’s reaction is almost instantaneous. Togame pulls down Sakura’s boxers to let his cock free, already half-hard.

Carefully, Togame wraps Sakura around his hand and starts stroking, slowly at first, getting a feel at how Sakura reacts to his touch.

“When you do this, think back to the dream you had.” Togame instructs in a low voice, his lips mere inches away from Sakura’s ear. “You can close your eyes; it helps in imagining things.”

Sakura obediently follows his advice. His body relaxes as he did so, his lips parting open slightly, and his breathing picking up. Togame starts varying the rhythm of his strokes then, responding to Sakura’s own movements. Sakura bucks his hips in instinct, meeting Togame’s strokes halfway. And with his movements comes the sound —

Sakura is, surprisingly, quite loud.

His whimpers easily fill the small space of his bedroom and drills their way inside Togame’s mind, stirring at the pit of his groin. Togame pumps harder as pre-cum leaks from Sakura, wetting his length. Sakura’s jerks become even more erratic, his legs spreading fully, his body leaning back completely onto Togame as Togame holds his waist for support. The futon is not made of the softest material, yet Sakura doesn’t seem to mind, his hips lifting up, hitting the wooden floor underneath with a light thump at each contact.

Sakura’s almost there, Togame can tell, with the way his whimpers turn to whines, and his fingers and nails dig into Togame’s thigh. Though the apartment complex looked empty when he arrived, Togame doesn’t want to play it too safe. In anticipation, his hand that was on Sakura’s waist comes up to cover Sakura’s mouth —

Sakura becomes undone under Togame’s touch, his loud moans muffled underneath Togame’s palm. Sakura spills onto his thighs and sheets, arching his back, then slumps onto Togame, limbs twitching from the sensation he has just experienced.

For a moment, their ragged breathings are the only sounds in the room.

Naturally, Togame is affected, too. His own dick is hard underneath his loose pants, demanding to be attended. But Togame endures, willing himself to calm down. This moment is about Sakura, he can deal with himself later.

With his clean hand, Togame strokes Sakura’s hair gently, letting him take his time to recover. He also takes the chance to grab the soiled sheet and wipes himself and Sakura clean. “You okay?”

Sakura nods, still panting hard. “Does…it always feel this…good?” He asks hesitantly, their eyes meeting. His cheeks are flushed pink, quite different from all the times he gets flustered. Perhaps it’s the lingering sensation from the orgasm, but Sakura’s expression looks so alluring right now. It takes all of Togame to not jump on him right then and there.

In the end, he resorts to leaning down and planting a kiss on Sakura’s cheek. There’s always proper timing for everything.

“Yeah, but don’t do it too much, okay?”

(Togame wakes up the next morning to a phone call from Sakura, “Can you come over?”

“What’s the problem?”

“Can…can you do it again?”

Ah, he might have started something that can’t be stopped anymore.)

[cross-my-heartt]

Crosshair’s ‘rise and fall’ in the Empire

Episode one: Aftermath

I’ve been seeing some takes in the fandom regarding Crosshair’s time in the Empire and considering it’s been a while since season one, I wanted to do a little retrospective analysis and compare it to his situation in season two. Because the two are very very different.

The takes in question are that Crosshair was naive or foolish to trust the Empire and I think that way of seeing things doesn’t do his character justice. And by this I mean it disregards the fact that his perspective is limited and doesn’t take his personal experience into account. So let’s delve into that for a bit…

(Bear in mind, this isn’t an analysis of Crosshair’s morality but rather of the practical motives behind his decisions.)

As this is going to be an episode by episode analysis, we’re of course starting with Aftermath. Aftermath is an episode that doesn’t shed much light on what the batch stands to gain from siding with the Empire but is more about the risks they face in going against it.

That being said, even though the episode shows us why the Empire is worse than the Republic and has the characters acknowledge that, we are also given some clues that it’s not all too different from its predecessor, at least from the batch’s pov.

Later on in its run, the show makes a point of showing us the derisive attitude the ‘nat borns’ and some officers have towards the clones. But Aftermath indicates that this isn’t an attitude the batch are unfamiliar with. The mess hall scene aside (it being the most self-explanatory), there are other smaller moments sprinkled throughout.

And it’s an attitude that we’re given to understand extends to the officers as well:

A mission’s a mission. The batch are used to facing unfavorable odds (in TCW Hunter asks Cody what ‘suicide mission’ he has for them) while serving under officers with a less than kind disposition. The Empire is worse than the Republic but its attitude is not entirely unfamiliar.

What the batch does object to is the Empire’s distinct disregard of morality but if there’s anything we learn about Crosshair down the line, it’s that morality often takes a backseat to his batch’s safety.

Another thing Aftermath emphasizes is that the Empire seems stronger and more dangerous than the Republic.

But even more important than that, is that we witness what happens when the batch fail to achieve their objective.

As we all know the consequences of that are immediate and severe and something that Crosshair will personally make a point of reminding Hunter of, not just in this episode but in others to come.

Keep in mind that his violent reaction, though it could be in part explained by the chip, is also understandable when you realize that the batch are an experimental unit that has never once failed in achieving their objective before. Even if they didn’t always follow orders in getting there, we know that they had a 100% success rate until Onderon (or technically, until Kaller).

They’ve never faced the consequences of failure before because they’ve never had to – completing their objectives in order to survive as a squad, whatever that may mean or whatever they take that to mean, has always been a fact of their existence and it’s the same thing the Empire is offering now.

To cut a long story short, the batch’s situation after the Empire takes over is not entirely uncharted territory. It’s somewhat familiar and navigable terrain. The Empire is worse in many regards but it is also stronger and disobeying it has dire consequences.

The observations Crosshair makes in Aftermath (because we know that clones retain their memories from the time their chips are active, regardless of whether their perception of events is skewed at the time) will later lead him to the conclusion that the risk that comes with obeying the Empire is lesser than that of opposing it.

We also see the Empire make promises in this episode. And at the very end we even get a glimpse of what fulfilling that contract looks like. The first glimpse of Crosshair’s ‘rise’ if you will – Crosshair with his newly enhanced chip is released from custody and decked out in new gear (which, since we’re given to understand the Empire’s inventory is new and improved and we later learn that Crosshair’s squad is considered elite, is probably new and improved as well).

In conclusion, Aftermath sets the stage and introduces us to an environment where success, and by extension survival, is difficult but not impossible to achieve. This is the situation Crosshair will navigate seemingly successfully until the very end of season one where his circumstances will start changing for the worse.

Until then however? Crosshair has plenty of reason to believe that taking their chances with this new regime are better than what’s in store for them if they don’t.

And remember: we’re limiting ourselves to Crosshair’s perspective here. As the audience we have both hindsight and additional insight on our side – something that characters shouldn’t be faulted for for lacking.

But anyway I hope you enjoyed and welcome any and all feedback! The next episode we’ll be looking at is episode three and I’m quite excited for that one.

(Also anyone who wants to be added to a taglist for this series, please let me know!)

[thisaintascenereviews]

Zach Bryan - The Great American Bar Scene

There’s no artist like Zach Bryan, especially with his meteoric rise to fame within the last couple of years. I remember hearing his name back in 2021, but he was an underground artist. Now that everyone knows about him, what happens next? Since Zach Bryan is arguably one of the biggest artists in the world, he can do whatever he wants at this point. His self-titled album from last year was his stepping stone, and it was the album that catapulted him to the stratosphere of country music. Hell, he dropped an EP just a few months later, which boasted features from Bon Iver and Noah Kahan.

He’s been teasing The Great American Bar Scene for awhile now, but we finally got it a week ago (as of writing this, anyway). I loved the self-titled, as it was in my top three albums of the year for 2023, so expectations were high. Fortunately, I’d say this record is quite good, and it’s still one of the best of the year, but it doesn’t top the self-titled. If anything, The Great American Bar Scene is starting to show the cracks of Bryan’s formula that originally worked quite well (and still does, frankly, at least to a degree, anyway), and I don’t know how much longer his formula can hold up without people finally getting sick of it or realizing what it is.

Zach Bryan’s formula is pretty simple: he’s a singer-songwriter that blurs the lines between folk and country, his lyrics are usually very honest, and he has a very “authentic” persona that a lot of people find interesting. That’s why he got big in the first place, because people have been vying for an authentic country artist that goes against the mainstream, especially the bro-country and pop-country eras within the last decade. Bryan’s biggest problem is that a lot of his music is the same. Even as a huge fan, I can’t deny it. I’ve gone on record many times saying that I’m mixed when it comes to artists who keep their sound stagnant, because it depends on the artist and what their sound is. If a sound works for me, it works, but I’m picky about it.

Bryan’s sound has worked for me for a long time, whether it’s for his voice being good, his lyrics being well-written, and knowing how to write some catchy songs, but he doesn’t know when to cut himself off at times. His albums end up becoming self-indulgent and running way too long, and that might be why my favorite project of his will always be 2022’s Summertime Blues. It’s a brisk half hour and has some of his best material, but his albums are always overstuffed, even if they’re not necessarily bland or bad. Hell, 2022’s American Heartbreak is two and a half hours, and it didn’t need to be that long, The self-titled wasn’t too bad, but The Great American Bar Scene is a little over an hour with 19 songs. If that isn’t self-indulgent, I don’t know what is, but I still quite enjoy it.

The Great American Bar Scene is very much in line with Zach Bryan’s sound, but that’s also its biggest issue — it’s just a typical Zach Bryan album, which is great for diehard fans, but for those that want some variety or something new, you won’t get it. I love his “typical” sound, so I’ll eat this album right up, but I can also acknowledge it’s got some problems. I don’t know if we’re getting a diminishing return here, because this record has some of his best songs. The price of admission alone is worth it for “Purple Gas,” “Pink Skies,” and with what I think is the most important moment of the album, “Sandpaper” that features The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen.

To some, that feature may not make sense, but this album is Bryan’s Nebraska (which is Springsteen’s 1982 acoustic solo album that’s the outlier of his work, as well as his darkest, lyrically speaking). This album doesn’t have anything as dark as that album, but it’s a basic singer-songwriter album in the same vein, and he uses the album as a way to tell stories about various people, whether it’s himself or another character. Having The Boss himself is a big moment for any younger artist; The Gaslight Anthem had him on their comeback album from last year, although I felt The Boss was a little phoned in on that album. He sounds a lot livelier on this record, thankfully.

Aside from that, though, this record is standard Zach Bryan, but there is a lot to really appreciate, which are the still the trademarks of a typical Zach Bryan album, so it’s kind of two-fold. This is a great ZB album, and diehard fans are sure to love this to the moon and back, but I can see fans and the mainstream being more apprehensive towards this, minus a few big singles. Bryan’s voice sounds fantastic, the storytelling and the lyricism is rich and beautiful, and even the songs themselves are written well, despite becoming meandering or derivative after a certain point. I love this record, warts and all, and you’ll certainly see it somewhere on my yearend list.

[tkblythofficial]

SUBMITTED BY 🎉 ANON

TAROT READING ON R’s HEALING JOURNEY

🎉 Anon:

ok here’s my rachel healing journey reading

so what i got just reading it is just this feeling of exhaustion and fatigue

like she isn’t doing any work rn but still tired

she’s at home all day and even if she sees friends and her bf/family she still doesn’t feel as fulfilled going home

like a hamster on a wheel who still feels she’s still going

i can feel she probably isn’t sleeping well or eating enough or the right nutrients

a burning bowl/basically just a symbolic ending to her past full of hate, like she can chapter off this new era and acknowledge but let go of all the hate she got

deep breaths whenever she gets anxious or her panic attacks/going manic on soc med, a good massage for self care and meditating

she seems like a manifesting girlie so she probably knows this but the energy i get is she keeps delaying/procrastinating

acceptance and patience is important for her rn to make any progress in healing

acceptance - learning things she cannot change but also taking accountability on what she can change

to stop crying over spilt milk but deal with what she can change NOW

patience- in divine order, for her career, for everything she shouldn’t rush and be impatient because it’ll just make her more frustrated and possibly push good things that could be good for her (like how she nearly gave up thg a role that imo saved her career and public opinion)

expanding inner power- most powerful when creativity is given a voice, when she does something for her enjoyment not just work. like her writing songs is a good start, being creative

expressing free will- my choices determine how brightly i will shine; communication, blue is the colour for throat chakra too so using her voice not just singing but speaking and talking to a circle of friends she can trust is nice

unhooking the past- there’s nothing to regret when i learn from my past; i know her past has been painful with the hate, but it’s a good time to maximize and try not to give haters something they can use. don’t give them any ring they can use against her, to stay offline i think is a good lesson for her and her well being and also her public image

“your body is pissed at you -get the f outside. move your ass” probably hasn’t been as active with exercise as she usually is (i know she usually wears her gym fits when she works out but i haven’t seen any posts of it recently so i think that might help the funky energy from the emotional mess

“Thoughts can be sneaky, lying bastards - don’t believe every shitty thought you have” she’s an overthinker we know, but she doesn’t have to entertain every doubt she has.

“get after that shit. the world has your back - that project that person that idea is waiting” can be on a project or person she wants to work with or has thought of being with. she has some dreams and she may be doubting herself but she should take a chance and do it

“you are being shady - watch out shit could get ugly” i laughed reading this but part of her being shady and childish like this is making it worse for her and hinders her from really healing and being emotionally free. she needs to stop this behaviour and step back and realize how ridiculous she looks

amaryllis- determination and creative achievement (do something creative, for her own achievement and not always for a job or an award)

red rose- hidden secrets, keeping secrets from people around her and lying to herself and others will just bite her back

My reply:

I think everything tracks to what we’re seeing. Exhaustion and not being able to move on from the past. She entertains every negative doubt and we’re seeing the fallout from it. She’s stuck in her house with her phone and nothing to do. She needs a hobby and to be blunt, a life!

Honestly as I was reading, I know a lot of this is not going to happen any time soon.

Thank you for sharing! :)

[caracuuw]

Hey, so, what if. Writing snippet based off of some of what Viking was talking about in his “what could have been” stream last night. Obviously, this isn’t finished, but I’m happy with it as is, and I think it’s easy enough to follow! Also, if you’d prefer to read it over on ao3, here is the link :)

“I thought you didn’t have enough diamonds for the ritual yet.” Taneesha said, slowly.

“Turns out,” Viking shrugged. “I did.” He tossed in another armful of eggs.

“Alright…” Taneesha eyed him as he went back and forth. “What about Legs’ IOU, then? What are your plans for that, if you don’t need him to get the diamonds?”

“Oh, this?” Viking shuffled around in his pocket for a moment before procuring a small, leather bound book that Taneesha was fairly certain she had watched Viking give back to Legundo after calling in his favor. “Eh, it can go in here too, I suppose.” He dropped over the edge of the hole, with seemingly a complete lack of care and consideration.

“Woah, woah, woah—” Taneesha protested, but it was far too late by the time she had even processed what was going on; the IOU was long gone, now. “Hey!” She shouted. “I worked hard for that! You worked hard to get me to give it to you! Just because you don’t need it for the diamonds doesn’t mean it isn’t still useful! You— you can’t just throw it away like that!”

“Ehh…” Viking trailed off. “I wouldn’t get too upset, if I were you. I mean, it only means as much as Legs’ “”word“” means, which is to say, it means literally absolutely nothing, apparently, so… into the void it goes too! Buh-bye!”

“I— what?” Taneesha started. “What do you mean, ‘too’?”

“I mean… the void is hungry, and this ritual needs a lot to feed it, so…” He was already back to grabbing as many things as he could hold from the chests along the wall to also dump into the void. Taneesha couldn’t help but notice the severed and frayed leads laying in a pile in the corner. Viking must have already sacrificed any… live offerings… he had down there, at this point. “Of all the people here, I’d expect you to understand that the most,” Viking commented. “You’ve had your fair share of experience with the void, you know how these things go.”

Taneesha closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Viking hummed in acknowledgment of this, but didn’t bother continuing on, which was… unhelpful.

“Viking,” Taneesha started. Now that she was really taking a good look at him, she could see how… unkempt he looked, compared to usual. Something about him, he didn’t look entirely… he didn’t look particularly well, she guessed. “What- what is this about? Why are you doing this right now?”

Viking shrugged again. “I have everything I need. Why not, huh? Why not do it now?”

“It’s just— you seemed pretty particular about it all being in order when you were telling me about it. This seems… this feels pretty spontaneous. And I thought I was supposed to help. Are you— is everything alright?”

“Oh, yeah, everything’s just fine.” Viking said with unsettling nonchalance. “And you are gonna help!” He was in front of her now, grabbing onto her shoulders, just tight enough to be uncomfortable, and looking her directly in the eye. “You’re gonna jump in with me, right, Taneesha?” Taneesha pulled back in surprise as she realized— Viking’s eyes, they—

“Viking,” Taneesha said in a low voice, stepping out and away from Viking’s grasp. “What happened to your eyes?”

“What do you mean?” Viking asked. There was no confusion behind his voice.

“Your eyes are both blue.”

“Okay… and yours are purple.” Viking said that as if that was supposed to somehow make her observation any less concerning.

“Viking, why are your eyes both blue?”

Viking shook his head, turning back to the chests. “I dunno,” he said. He wasn’t even trying to hide that he was obviously lying. That almost worried Taneesha more than the eyes themselves. “It’s not important. Here come help me with this stuff.”

“Viking, what is going on?”

“We’re going to get our memories back, Taneesha! I don’t understand what’s not to get here! You’re going to jump in with me to complete the ritual, and then we’ll have our memories back! Now come on, give me a hand here!”

“Viking—”

“Taneesha.”

“What if— what if I don’t want to, anymore.” Viking froze. “What if I don’t wanna do this right now?” She amended the sentence.

There was an agonizing pause. “That’s ridiculous. You and I both know that’s bs, right?”

“No, Viking. I don’t— I don’t like this. What is happening here? What happened to your yellow eye? And what—” She looked him over for a second time. He did not look well. “What happened to your compass?”

Viking scrunched up his face in a sour look and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them. He made what Taneesha guessed was supposed to be a forced grin, though it looked a lot more like a snarl. “Y’know,” he began. “You really can’t trust anyone around here to get anything done for you, can you? Not even if you have their word, not even if you have a wish, not even if you believe that they are the one person who might understand, who might get it—” He let out a pained bark of laughter. “Hell, you can’t even trust your own self to get things done for you!”

There was a beat, and then another. Taneesha swallowed. “What did you do, Viking?”

“I did exactly what had to be done.”

[girl4music]

JACK: “He didn’t listen.”

VIC: “Yeah, we know.”

ANDY: “And why is that? Because our Captain put you out in the field with someone who recently smashed your face in.”

MAYA: “That’s my call. I stand by it.”

ANDY: “You stand by it? Vasquez could be dead right now, and you stand by it?”

MAYA: “They said they could work together.”

ANDY: “But, Maya, you’re the Captain. You decide who can work together, not the other way around.”

MAYA: “Herrera.”

JACK: “Andy!

*Andy turns to see Jack shaking his head to tell her not to say another word*

This isn’t her fault.”

ANDY: “Everything is the Captain’s fault. Good or bad, that’s the job.

*Andy turns to Maya and points*

The job that you wanted. The job you fought for. The job you took!”

MAYA: “That’s right. It’s the job I took. You have all been disrespectful and insubordinate. You have questioned every single one of my decisions, which costs us lives and costs us time. You don’t like that I’m your boss now? Request a transfer. But every single one of you needs to get in line or get the hell out of my station. Are we clear?”

VIC: “Yes, Captain.”

TRAVIS: “Yes, Captain.”

JACK: “We’re clear.”

*Maya looks to Andy and Andy nods*

“Herrera, contact Rigo’s wife. Gibson, try to get me an update. The rest of you get back to work.”

Look, she’s not going about it in the best way, and I acknowledge that because she wouldn’t based on how she feels, but Andy is right. Maya should have all eyes and ears on everything that’s going on all the time as the Captain. Now she only has one pair of eyes and ears so the only way she can do that is to get her team to do it with her. And she’s not doing that. She’s making them do as she says rather than as she does. She’s not thinking like a leader who knows how to delegate tasks to her team. She’s thinking like an individual team member that has to do everything and get everything done, leaving her team to figure out what to do for themselves when they need guidance.

The worst decision Maya made was to put Vic in danger in agreeing with her to clamp that gasoline pump so that the vehicle with the fuel tank attached that was irresponsibly left by the driver and was generating heat from the burning gasoline was less likely to cause an explosion. And because she was overseeing that site all the time she was unable to keep an eye on Gibson and Vasquez in the other site, who she paired up together, probably in the effort to have them work out their differences and giving them an opportunity in which to do that. It was admirable to put that trust in them but not sensible because she couldn’t be sure what was going to happen with them without her there to actually oversee the same site. All she could do was trust that they could work together. Putting that trust in them blindly in something as important as a call was also a bad decision given how Gibson wouldn’t leave Vasquez alone and Vasquez was prone to violence which distracted them from dealing with the small fires and resulting in Vasquez not listening to Jack and in a critical health condition.

Andy was right to immediately assess the situation to figure out what they were actually dealing with which is something Maya should have done the moment she stepped on to the scene because decisions cannot and should not be made until they knew what situation they were actually dealing with. She said to let Search and Rescue figure it out. Andy realized that it can’t be an aircraft explosion because there was no aircraft there which was an obvious tell it was something else entirely that was going on. That’s why an assessment had to be made before they did anything to work on the situation. The leftover debree Andy picked up instead were parts from a rocket and so she knew immediately from that that the situation was much worse than they originally thought it would be when the call came in. That it was a terrorism attack they were dealing with and the vehicle with the fuel tank attached was left on purpose to supersize the explosion. Andy never questioned Maya to start with, she was just simply giving her information that Maya should have been listening to and taking into consideration. She only started questioning Maya’s decisions because she knew those were not the right decisions to be made after the assessment she made of which Maya completely ignored because her distrust in Andy made her refuse to take her concerns and complaints seriously, resulting in not knowing what was really was going on and therefore unable to prevent the critical damage that was caused from not listening to her team and not delegating her team.

Andy’s emotions are running high. She feels angry, she feels betrayed and she feels like she’s being overlooked. But despite all of that she’s still able to assess what’s going on even before the Captain does. The fact Maya didn’t delegate tasks to the people she had with her that she knew the tasks would be best to be delegated to and she didn’t immediately assess the situation they were in before they started working on it is what cost them lives and time, not the fact they were all questioning her because her decisions were questionable, and if they weren’t questioned even more things would have gone wrong and even more lives and time would have been lost. In actual fact, the questioning was necessary to prevent the situation of a premeditated terrorism attack from being even worse than it should have been with them there.

I’m no firefighter and I’m certainly not a firefighter Captain but what I believe Maya should have done was split overseeing duties between her and Andy. She should have let Andy oversee the site with Vic and Travis since Andy was the one to assess the situation and figure out that the fuel tank was left there on purpose, and then went over to the other site herself and maintained eyes and ears on Jack and Rigo to see if they could work together as they said they could and they would have avoided all the critical damage.

Simply put - Maya is too inexperienced, too hot-headed and too impulsive to be Captain at this point. She should step down and let Andy or Jack take over because she really doesn’t know how to be a Captain and she’s letting both the pressure and her pride get in the way of doing what’s right by the team and by the general public of which the team is there to protect. A lot of lives and time are going to be lost under her rule. As an individual team member, or a lieutenant, she’s always fine because delegation isn’t something she needs to think about. But as a Captain, it absolutely is, and she doesn’t have enough experience in doing that and in thinking that way. Andy does even when she doesn’t have to and she makes it a priority to step in and delegate and give out orders if it’s necessary to. And it was necessary then because Maya didn’t know how to do the former and she couldn’t admit to it. She couldn’t admit to her questionable decisions and to making mistakes and to not listening to her team. She’s acting as the boss of her team without being a leader of and to it because she doesn’t have the experience or the knowledge to see the difference.

Andy is picking up on very important things that Maya is not even thinking about looking for in the first place even when Andy is going through a really tough time - proving that she can work just fine being as under pressure as a lieutenant as Maya is as the Captain and the answer as to why is obviously because she has much more experience and knowledge as a leader. Andy doesn’t get stuck in one place thinking about only one thing. She pays attention to and focuses on the big picture, swapping her position and her mindset according to what’s happening as a whole. Somebody that can do that should be in charge of the entire team that’s obligated to take on that objective. Leaders don’t and can’t act and think as an individual member when they’re responsible for a whole team.

Maya is not a leader. I’m not saying she can’t learn to be a leader, but her disposition at the moment is somebody that does not act or think like a leader despite being the boss because she can’t get a handle on what to do when she needs to be more than that. Meanwhile Andy just instinctively goes there. Falls into that state and position of a leader naturally. It’s actually infuriating for me to watch this show right now when I’m noticing Andy showing so many leadership skills and qualities, 100% knowing what she’s doing at any given moment and Maya does not. It really does show you how easily teamwork fails when the people in the team are not in the right roles.

A lot of it has to do with Andy and Maya’s individual pasts and backgrounds. Andy has spent her whole life watching her father be a great Captain for many years and Maya has been brainwashed by her father to put herself first above all no matter what. Instinctive and natural disposition is based on their individual pasts and backgrounds with their fathers for the most part, but the other percentage of it is in how they’re trained. Maya and Andy have been trained no differently. The only difference is Andy has had more time and opportunity to act as a Captain would than Maya has so Andy can spot discrepancies Maya misses because she doesn’t know that she needs to look for them and she won’t communicate properly with Andy, who can teach her all of this if she was willing to listen to her.

It’s not entirely Maya’s fault that so many things go wrong under her rule, I can see that. It’s mostly just inexperience. The narrative is showing us Sullivan was wrong in choosing Maya as Captain because you should always choose the person with the most experience and that is willing to listen and learn.

[sunflowersanddaydreamsingreen]

Rest

It occurs to me that once the punches slow, maybe it’s time to catch my breath and to write again. I haven’t updated in forever. I forgot I had something to say. I forgot what I had to offer. That’s how it goes isn’t it? We forget who we are and our deities bring us back to our own heart time and time again — if I let them. (And I don’t always let them)

I may give an overview of what’s happened since I’ve not been updating, but right now I feel it’s so important to talk about rest. It’s winter here and in NE Ohio, that means dreary weather, no sun which means drastic drops in vitamin D, seasonal depression, grey skies during the day, and early night and late morning. I’m eager for spring, but it also occurs to me that maybe I’m not ready for spring.

Since Christmas Eve, there has been one breakthrough after another after another after another. I’m exhausted. Even healing is hard work. At the time, I was high on the spiritual experience. I was high on prayer and companionship with Spirit and my ka-tet. I knelt in prayer and wept and I stood and I felt better. Sometimes I would sit in the shower under the hot water and cry and pray. There was always an answer, and usually one I didn’t expect or one that caught me by surprise. It was the great purge, cleansing and packing the wound so it could heal and the healing has been coming in waves. And now, I’m tired.

The thing about any high, spiritual or otherwise, is that we have to come down eventually. I keep my head in the clouds, but it’s time for my feet to return to the ground. The last month may have revolutionized my heart and mind and spirit, but I still have to cook dinner, and go to work and doctor’s appointments, and pick my daughter up from school, and all of everyday life.

For the last week or so, I’ve felt like I’ve been doing something wrong. I didn’t feel the 24/7 spiritual connection, my prayer has been falling away, I don’t feel like I’m being propelled forward by some unseen hand. The answers aren’t strong and punchy and life-altering. They’re quiet now if they come, like whispers instead of screams. Well I assumed that was because I wasn’t listening hard enough. I was distracted. I wasn’t praying enough or praying wrong. What happened? Where did God go? Where did my deities go? What did I do wrong and how do I get it back? Sound familiar?

I was laying down wrapped up tight in a blanket the other day just paying attention to my breathing and thinking of the morning I had spent with my friend. We had tea and breakfast together and then prayed and meditated together and it was wonderful, the recalibration that I needed, but it still wasn’t *the same.* I hadn’t had any earth-shattering realizations, hadn’t cried in a while. I felt that my healing had stalled — then I realized… this was my chance to breathe. I had been begging the Universe for weeks to slow down and give me a chance to catch my breath and I’m usually given what I ask for. The problem is I don’t always recognize, acknowledge, or accept when it comes.

So perhaps I don’t need to pray in such a prescribed and structured way multiple times a day at set times, pouring my heart out with my face pressed to the ground right now. Maybe it’s enough for now to keep Spirit on my mind and say a prayer of thanks and ask for direction. Right now I don’t need to figure out who and what I am on this side of all this healing. I don’t need to plan my life, define my vision, implement strict spiritual routines, and generally be ON all the time. I asked for a chance to catch my breath, and here it is.

So I’m going with it, or doing my best. Rest takes practice just like anything else, especially in this American capitalist dystopian nightmare where we’re brainwashed into believing that we’re only of value when producing. Anything else is a waste of time, we’re taught. I’m a rebel though, so I take naps. I take bubble baths. I read for pleasure. I cuddle my wife and friends and just exist. Rest is a rebellious action, and somehow knowing that makes it a little easier to justify to my brain.

I haven’t given anything up. I’m still studying and praying and doing magic and lighting candles and all, but I’m doing it in such a more gentle way. Instead of trying to work myself into a perscribed structure, I let the patterns work themselves out around me. They’re still forming and falling into place. Some will stick and some won’t and that’s ok. I don’t need all of that to be “spiritually successful” whatever the fuck that means. If my deities and my God have not left me these last 33 years, they’re not going to leave me if I take a nap after work instead of praying.

I’m telling you, listening to your body is rebellious. If I’m tired, I sleep, so much as I am able. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I feel a little lost, I pray. When I need comfort, I ask for it. I make time to play. And I have faith. I have faith that my deities don’t have to be in my face in order to be present. I have faith that if I reach out to them at any time, that they will still be there. They aren’t going to leave me. In fact, at a time when I didn’t have to capacity to commit to my deities, Loki and Sigyn committed to me. Sigyn told me shortly after starting to work with them that there was no place I could go, no distance that I could run that they wouldn’t find me and bring me home. I needed that then, so so much, and I need it now in a different way. It gives me permission to take a break and just breathe.

I may drift a little off course, but I’m not going to fall off the edge of the world, back into the darkness and emptiness. I’m just — I’m floating. That’s what I’m doing. Ok let me explain that. My family camps at a nearby lake over the summer and we do a ton of swimming. There’s a bunch of little cousins splashing around in the water, some of the older cousins on the boat deck grilling and drinking beer, or sitting in the water gossiping. Now, I do love to swim, but I don’t breath well and I get tired easily. My *favorite* thing to do is to swim out a little ways from the group and lay on my back with my eyes closed and float on top of the water. Sometimes a small wave will wash over my face and I’ll sputter and stand up, but I wipe my face and go back to floating. On occasion, I have to come up to make sure I’m not drifting too far from the group, or far enough out that I can’t safely swim back. But I just love the peace of hearing the water and the birds and the laughter and feeling the sun over my body while I float on top of the water.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take a break from the deep diving that wears me out so much and I’m going to take advantage of the dark, sleepy, dreary time and the snow and cold that drives us inside, and this time when nature is resting and waiting for green and sun again, and I’m going to float and rest and breathe and have faith that my deities will hold me in that safe place.

🙏🏻

Here is a poem I wrote in the shower last night

Prayer

This poem is a thank you.

Thank you, Spirit, for turning me upside down.

It’s easier to write about love now

than it is to write about fear,

easier to write about mending hearts

than old scars.

Everything I once held near

seems so far removed now,

flung out into the depths of the cosmos,

beyond the stars I still cannot dream of reaching for,

farther than the east is from the west.

It will never be fully gone,

but it doesn’t gut me

every time I take a step forward anymore.

Still, I forget to pause and thank you.

See, I’ve always loved circles.

I love how they have no beginning and no ending,

no corners to try to peer around in the dark,

no jagged edges to make me bleed.

Everything is laid out bare, right in front of me

over, and over, and over,

and over, and over,

and over again, so it’s no wonder

how I got trapped in them for 33 years.

I’m still running in some of those same old circles,

afraid to cut ties, because if I cut too many of my heartstrings

I may just unravel again

and I’m tired of surviving my own heartbreak.

I don’t know who I am anymore,

but I know this freedom is well worth

the uncertainty of identity.

Thank you for turning me inside out,

that is to say everything inside me

that I kept tucked away

is now on display for the world —

my face, my song, my stance, my poise,

my bright eyes and covered hair,

an open hand pouring out.

Everything that once shielded me

has been brought back inside for healing.

These brick walls have been disassembled.

I’m using the old stone to build bridges and platforms now.

This poem is the closest thing I have to a prayer, so thank you.

Thank you for holding my hands

while my beloved and I searched for the right words.

In church as a child,

they taught me to talk to God

like he was my best friend,

but I don’t know how when my best friend is a stranger

wearing 7.8 billion of their favorite masks

as we all fumble along to their music in the firelight.

This poem is the closest thing I have to a prayer,

so please, take it and take *me*.

I don’t know who or what I am anymore.

I’m okay with that most days,

but it means that I don’t know what to offer you

because I don’t know what I’m made of.

This is the closest thing I have to a prayer.

I know it’s really just a poem,

but at least we got a couple of the letters right.

So take it, and take me.

Wherever you’re going, I will follow.

[chidoroki]

Tokyo Revengers S3EP7

aka: "let's get ready to rumble"

Damn, Izana beating up every big name gang leader, even that one Ikebukuro dude who oversaw the Valhalla vs Toman fight.. up until Kazutora knocked him out anyway.

So Shion’s responsible for sending Mitsuya and Smiley to the hospital.. how rude of you sir. Also kinda bummed that happened of-fscreen, I was sorta looking forward to see Shion fight a little bit finally.

Oh I just noticed Koko standing around nearby too in his new Tenjiku coat.

Aw the poor boy, look at him all hurt still. At least he didn’t look too thrilled to be there.

Sanzu! Another one I wanna see fight so badly! Show me why the fandom adores you!

Oh I bet all the Ran fans went nuts over that close up zoom of him.

For a brief moment, I thought Toman was pulling up wearing some huge sunglasses til I realized that’s just some serious looking shadows over there eyes.

Now I understand the gang driving up to the pier was evident at the start of the OP, but was including Mikey and Draken towards the end just there for theatrics or are they really gonna show up later on after losing Emma?

Pfftt wait a damn minute, Koko has cuts and bruises on his faces a little while ago, but now when we’re taking a look at everyone lining up, his face is all healed? What witchcraft is that.

For real, Kisaski sitting back all the way high up on the containers.. c’mon down and fight ya coward!

Yo yo hold the fuck up.. there’s that many Tenjiku members?? They’re like ten times the size of Toman here. Good lord..

Oh if they’re starting one vs one with Shion, then Angry has gotta take revenge for his bro. I’d say Hakkai but he got enough attention last season.

I’ll be damned, it’s Peh who stepped up!

Ain’t no way he took out Shion with a single punch?? I mean I’m thrilled if that’s the case but the dude was talking such big smack and got knocked out so quickly?? Hilarious!

Pfftt leave it to Takemichi to headbutt a guy first before even thinking of using his fists.

Peh is basically using Tenjiku’s men as weapons the way he’s flinging them about!

Hakkai punching ‘em down head first all the way to the ground as always. Ya love to see it.

Chifuyu being best boy and coming in with a swift kick to save others.

Even Izana is acknowledging how weak Shion is. That must hurt.

Holy hell.. I should’ve expected Izana to also have fearsome kicks like Mikey. He sent Peh flying.

Damn straight Chifuyu!! I was waiting for him to come kick the shit outta Mochi!!

Oh boy, Ran vs Hakkai and Rindo vs Angry. Let’s go y’all!

Of course that leads Takemichi to face Kakucho. We saw this coming. Though I haven’t a clue on who Sanzu and Mucho will spare with. Inui and Koko are probably gonna throw hits at each other too.

Okay, yup, there he goes getting a surprise hit on Inui. And Koko’s face is shown to be all beat up again like that one scene from a while ago didn’t exist.

Wait, Akane? Who might that be? And why are they important to Koko to need so much money?

Koko has to accept that Inui isn’t Akane..? Surely we’ll get more of this backstory next ep.

[234df6sdk5y]

I am processing a lot rn and need a space to work out messy things and it’s honestly for the best i’m not on twitter where you cannot do that.

Also in doing shadow work i learn that the only way to integrate trauma and accept darker parts of yourself is not possible in the framework of what society considers acceptable for trauma healing, so extracting yourself from that is necessary for processing.

The more you realize that until you accept morality is subjective, we choose (and don’t, it’s complicated) our suffering, meaning is only what we decide to assign to a situation, and making repressed + dark parts of yourself conscious (usually through creative expression, therapy, acknowledgement) and embracing them instead of feeling shame and guilt, then you cannot begin to truly heal. Basically until you acknowledge we enjoy fucked up experiences on some subconscious level and until the collective owns that, it’ll rule our lives and we’ll wonder why the world is so cruel.

It rly makes me think abt how pro//ship started around that radical acceptance but nowadays it seems pro//ship is like,, about how you have to always morally posture how what you like in fiction isn’t an irl desire, which, while yeah, holding that these interests and fascinations even in a fictional setting are not a part of urself does a disservice. You have to own these things to have control over them.

Like I had a theory that humans on some level understand they manifest their realities so

The collective unconscious fears the darkness because they fear that by thinking about or acknowledging it, it’ll become their reality (a lot of law of attraction stuff seems to function in this reductive understanding that any thought is inherently a manifestation which is like a big middle finger to neurodivergent ppl too lol), but in reality by thinking about and owning it, it doesn’t get pushed to the subconscious to manifest beyond your awareness, and when you are consciously aware of it, you get to CHOOSE to manifest it or not.

A lot of anti beliefs stem from this idea that acknowledging darker aspects will make “thought crime” happen where it becomes a desire but thats the opposite, that thinking stems from keeping us unconscious by being made to fear our own power that we are creator beings. Because people are terrified of having so much power a single “bad” thought can manifest. But in actuality our manifestations are still things we can choose once we’re aware of our shadow selves to say “i see these darker parts and accept them as part of me and now have power to decide what to do with them”. Its no longer a subconscious thing we are ruled by. Which!! By denying these shadow aspects they will feel like they rule you as they manifest unconsciously so “thought crime” becoming real life actions or desires is less likely to happen because consciousness is power.

I always knew there was smth rly important abt the art I drew and way I expressed myself and I realize its so important now than ever. Keeping societies “shadow selves” private does not help the collective process shit. We need more openly freaky means of expression that force darkness to begin being integrated. Lest you follow false light.

[kendrixtermina]

On Emotional Awareness – The Revenge of the feels.

I hadn’t put these on tumblr & it occurred to me that I probably should  

General points.

Overall it tends to be generally assumed that ppl know and can express or tell you their feelings since we’re bombarded from all sides by displays of such if we turn on the radio or TV or just listen to our friends & family expounding upon whatever is, but if you’ve picked up any self-help or couples advice book, or indeed gotten into typology, you’ll find that this is not always self-explanatory.

Now, I personally have never had this problem, but it's worth noting that, though this is not always acknowledged or given its due weight, learning to interpret/ map your feelings is an actual skill that ppl need to learn. All people.

A baby/toddler doesn't know what's happening to them at all - they just start bawling & throwing a tantrum once a certain threshold of distress is reached - if you have younger siblings or cousins you may have oserved that sometimes babies get really cranky in the evening cause they can't yet distinguish anger/irritation from tiredness.

This is where the parents are supposed to come in and help you learn, for example, by mirroring your state back to you – first, through their reactions & responses such as comfort, eye contact, touch, and sympathetic reactions.

You might also notice that sometimes mothers will narrate what the baby is doing - (‚Are we sleepy/grumpy/excited today?‘)

This gives the child some vocabulary to describe their experience & a chance to associate their inner states with words. Paying attention to the child’s feelings also signals that this is important, salient information, just like pointing out colors and shapes teaches a baby to pay attention to colors.

Once the child is a little bit older and has picked up some words, the parent can then ask the child about their feelings, for example by asking them why they engaged in some bad behavior, encouraging the child to reflect on their own motivations.

Eventually a feedback loop arises and the child becomes able to self-regulate.

If you are a parent, this is part of your job as much as potty training or teaching your kids to speak and bathe themselves –

Books or TV shows geared at small children also feature narration explaining the characters’ feelings for this reason.

But sometimes the parents just want the kid to shut up & don't make noise so rather than doing any of the above things they just say „shut up!“ or dole out harsh punitive measures.

In that case, the above learning doesn’t really happen; What the child learns instead is, at best, to shut up, and at worst, that the parents are to be feared.

In some western cultures (founded as they are on the patriarchal and discipline-heavy roman civilization) even well-meaning parents do this because of bogus cultural values like "girls don't fight" or "boys don't cry" etc.

In particular we seem to think that boys don’t need crucial life skills like self-regulation (or cooking or cleaning.)

& due to the bias of male hyperagency even nominally ‚feminist’ sources often phrase this as being about making sure the boy doesn‘t grow up to exploit or be a jerk to his girlfriend.

He may be a lazy jerk if he chooses to do so but most crucially, if your son leaves your house without important life skills you have failed him as a parent – thats why you see so many dudes shooting themselves after divorces or work-related failures.

Obviously some personality type combinations are going to be more or less "talented" at learning emotional awareness (eg. a Fi dom 4 is going to pick up awareness of their feelings even if the parents are horrible and ignore them completely cause this is where their attention constantly goes. Which isn't necessarily a blessing, since they'd mainly be noticing how awful they feel about being ignored by their parents and be stuck constantly "looking" at that pain.)

Even so it’s important to realize that this is a learnable skill that can be practiced & learned despite different talent levels. (with the caveat that there might be conditions such as autism, depression or ptsd creating extra difficulties for some)

Everyone who can do it learned it at some point and if you’re lagging behind you can teach yourself, if not quite with the effortlessness of a well-cherished toddler.

So I’d like to encourage you to think of feelings detection hangups less as something specific to particular types (like, say, the competency triad) and more as yet another fixable self-awareness deficit – though type may of course influence level of talent as well as the particular ways such feelings detection deficits might manifest.

Still if you read or listen to ppl’s experiences on the internet you will find examples of low awareness individuals of almost all types.

Like with the detecting shapes example, not everyone needs to be a master painter or tell apart 30 shades of purple, but everyone ought to leave kindergarten with enough understanding of basic shapes & colors for the needs of daily life.

An interesting contrasting example is the Inuit culture – outside visitors often find the ppl there remarkably even-tempered. That is because there is culturally a great taboo against yelling at children & a big emphasis on teaching awareness of feelings – one example is that if a child misbehaves, the parent might ask at a later point in time why the child doesn’t do the bad behavior – eg „why don’t you hit me right now?“ Usually the kid won’t want to do so when they’ve long since calmed down, which makes them notice the difference between the current calm state & how they were angry during the acting out.

Type-specific hangups.

1 – the chief issue here is that 1s constantly evaluate everything including themselves. Is this the correct feeling for this situation? Is this the appropriate amount thereof? There can be the concern that feeling the „wrong“ thing to an „excessive“ amount could make you biased, „selfish“, „out of control“ or „bad“.

In the extreme you might be clamping down on any impulse no matter what it is before you have a time to „sample“ it – though, even if it doesn’t get that far, pleasure & anger in particular can be treated as suspect unless „justified“. Plus there can be a tendency to convert other things into anger or frustration (that last bit being somewhat common to all the impulse types)

2 – generally a high expressiveness type, but also a positive one. There is a tendency to cultivate positive feelings towards oneself and others (reminding oneself of positive, loveable qualities of either oneself, if criticised, or those one wishes to keep the peace with) so that feelings perceived as „unappealing“ like anger, frustration ambition or need can be repressed out of awareness.

Anger, resentment and disappointed expectations are common candidates… until it can’t be repressed anymore and the person hits the line to 8 and goes poof.

3 – probably the one that most commonly reports/ struggles with getting somewhat numbed out, either because they’re too focussed on the ‚social‘ emotions they’re supposed to be performing, or sort of put them off because there’s always stuff to do. Whereas 1s clamp down on already existing reactions (which is only possible to a limited extent) and 5s try not to get worked up in the first place (but once a reaction is there, its there), 3 is the one type that can really „flip a switch“, that is, squeeze all the attention into the compartment with the planning & impulses. But the „stuff“ is never far behind since one always has to leave one figurative toe in the dominant center (through which one is percieving the environment) so this often leads to busy compulsive activity and a „flight“-style adversity coping style.

Since the heart is in its own „compartment“ there can be the impression that making time for feelings means paralysis – plus, the more counterdependent 3s might see it as a liability/vulnerability or think showing struggles make them unappealing or „weak“.

4 – overall the least likely type to have this problem since its attention pattern is one of constant interpretation of one’s inner experience, (rather more likely to over-focus on one’s feelings), but there can still an issue of disowning or dismissing sentiments that seem too simple, banal or generic, like harmless silly fun or being upset over an everyday triviality. It might help to look for the reasons for your upset in the recent past & everyday circumstances. If anything else, those are more easily solveable. Also, even if you happened to like the same problematic elf as half of tumblr and are somewhat embarassed of this, sometimes authenticity means admitting that. And at least refusing to touch the most popular ship or universally accepted headcannons for him

5 – tends to be inattentive toward and uncomfortable with physical experience, and hence not very plugged into the sort of body sensations that are of course one possible ways to track your feelings. Also, due to a fairly neutral base mood and an not entirely conscious avoidance toward anything that’s distracting or exhausting there isn’t always something to notice, so it doesn’t take that lacking an environment for one of these to make it to adulthood without cultivating much of a sense for this, though it’s by no means universal (outward expressiveness or comfort with talking about stuff being separate variables - Plus on the lower levels most feelings that did happen would center on their pursuits or inner fantasies rather than being invested in external objects or people.)

6 – another type that can easily have low awareness – they’re wired to first look for the source of problems in the external world. Buying a car with a high safety rating as response to feeling scared checks out, but suspecting your gf is cheating just because you feel jealous doesn’t – in that case the cause is internal, it’s just your jealous feeling. But as the thinking can be disconnected from feelings or impulses the person may not realize how they’re influenced by feelings.

Also if they do notice their feelings, they might then endlessly second-guess the feelings and their perception of them or wonder if the feelings are morally correct or „weak“.

Some 6s very much desire to appear (or even suceed at being) stoic & in-control, though warmth, panic or anger are seldom too far from the surface. The more controlled/„rigid“ 6s in particular can sort of the prototypical person that’s calm on the surface but has a lot of passion underneath.

7 – 7s tend to mostly externalize their feelings, expressing them outwardly right away rather than inwardly processing them, plus the heart is their least used center. Normally this mostly means that their feelings tend to be a bit ‚diffuse‘ with not very differentiated labels & distinguishing but a few states. (especially the ExTPs/ Fi polRs) – However they can have a particular avoidance of & sometimes refusal to acknowledge fear & sadness, leading to a constant activity/ „flight“ pattern of avoidance & when the heart gets like really shut down on the lower average levels you do see individuals reporting some rather empty, numb or restless states where nothing quite seems to get them the satisfaction they seek (this is also probably how depression would show in one of these)

8 – Sort of similar to 7 as the other „heart last“ type in that inner perception tends to be somewhat ‚diffuse‘ even in average ppl, and that lower health states can involve feeling restless and numbed-out. Though the most avoided or repressed feelings are rather emotional hurt and genuine attachment or desire for it. (as that could be „exploitable“) and its not avoided through flight behavior but rather drowned out through intensity seeking(„fuck the pain away“), vented through punitive „acting out“ (ie. Covered by anger) or flat out denied.

9 – another one where low feelings awareness is not uncommon, particularly on the individuals that go so hard on the „best not to think too much about challenging things“ assumption to the point that it leads to little follow up questions or introspection. Also 9 tend to sometimes diffuse their impulses somewhat (so that helpful hints like „i want to punch that bastard!“ dont always appear in consciousness), are sensitive to strongly agitated states (like big feelings) and defense wise tend to to calm themselves down „hardware side“ in response to them, using creature comforts, which might be reasonable for short term or genuinely unfixable issues but may prevent the dots-connecting, processing and addressing on issues that should & could be solved.

All of these come with the big blinking neon arrow caveat that generally Fi types in the mbti will have more feelings awareness than others of the same enneagram type. This is because the Fi function gets it „straight from the source“, as in, the brain regions that show high activity in Fi users are known to be directly connected to the midbrain where feelings „come from“.

So, Fi users will typically know their feelings, likes & dislikes unless they’ve been subjected to extreme neglect.

Especially what is said here about 9 or 6 must be read as „...unless they’re a high Fi type.“

This doesn’t go for Fe users to the same extent as Fe users can tend to suppress inner reactions to produce „appropriate“ ones.

Strategies for improvement.

It might help you to find some more emotionally aware ppl with the same wing combo or similar mbti type and ask them how they "track" it as the same method is likely to work for you - there are probably multiple possible methods.

The first step is not to pressure yourself with expectations – sometimes there might genuinely be not much going on, you might not have a reaction where others do or the reaction you find might not per se be the same as others, & that’s by design after all your feelings are part of your individuality.

If your issue is mainly judging particular types of feelings as „bad“ or „selfish“, it might help you to read up on the concept of Radical Acceptance. (I can picture this being helpful for superego and/or positive folks)

Alternatively, you might have the concern that it might be vulnerable, „out of control“, or „too much“ (an issue you might see for, say, 8, 3 or 5) First becoming aware of your sensitive side all at once as an adult can be a handful, especially if you worry that it might change how you think about yourself or you find that there’s quite a bit of touchyness in there.

It probably helps to remind yourself that noticing doesn’t mean you have to act on it or do anything compromising as a result, especially if its just you in your room. It’s just extra information that, if anything, might help you make more informed choices.

Somatic support or self-soothing techniques might also be helpful like hugging yourself, stroking your cheek as you might for a baby who cant speak yet or ye goode olde deep belly breaths.

Finally, there’s the issue of ppl who are strongly extroverted and not used to introspection (7, 3 or 2) and might have a marked aversion to „stopping“ – something that reportedly works is limiting the timeframe like beginning with shorter meditation sessions of just a few minutes.

Other approaches are trying to „triangulate“ it using outer-directed methods, like looking for clues in your behavior, wondering what you might say to someone else in your situation, or writing letters in roleplay scenarious(„Dear Feelings…“ and then trying to reply back in a sense)

For some types like 6 or 9 it might also be helpful to have a ‚projection space‘, like writing a story about some character you relate to or who is in a similar situation.

Some types like 3, 2 and 9 might also benefit from making a point of thinking over life decisions on their own.

Alternatively if the problem is not so much dealing with it but that you can’t even locate the stuff in the first place, there are multiple approaches for that, too.

One might be trying to pay attention to physical sensations, like just trying to sense into your body at random times of the day or in meditation – I know of one person who napped their writer friends’ thesaurus for describing feelings to triangulate their own feelings.

Alternatively you could go a more direct route and try journaling – if nothing pops up, you could just freeflow ramble/ dump for a page or so and see if you notice tendencies,

Or you could get out one of those feelings wheels come journaling time or when you notice you're having some sort of reaction and try to name it up front You could also try meditating & trying to focus if you sense anything - again, keeping n mind that it's perfectly normal if a lot of the time there isn't anything necessarily aside from maybe some vague background anxiety.

The goal is, in the short term, to get some information about what things or people have which effects on you, and in the long term, to build up & reinforce an intuitive sense of associating sensations with words.

This is totally feasible, the neocortex is a wonderfully adaptable thing - ppl have taught themselves to "see" from having a "picture" shown as pressure points on their skin or to sense magnetic/electrical fields by implanting a magnet in their finger & learning to interpret the subtle shifting sensations it makes. And these are completely new things that humans were never "designed" to do, whereas you should have preexisting circuitry for tracking your feelings even if mom & dad didn't train you to use it just as they should've taught you to recognize shapes colors or animal noises.

A case study.

Something that struck me as interesting to think about while pondering the material for this post is:

How exactly DID I learn to do it as a toddler/ child?

Because I definitely did learn it but I wouldn't have had conscious memory of it or the ability to reflect on it yet.

But I am probably using an old, deeply embedded algorithm every day that I first learned as a baby, much as I do for walking or interpreting what I see - and I would have needed to expand it come puberty when sexual desire first came into the picture.

I'd say I'm pretty aware of and even welcoming of my feelings (even negative ones) so long as it's on a level of intellectual processing, but if it ever gets to a level where there is a physical response strong enough for me to notice, which isn't often, thats exhausting & unpleasant.

Though I've only been recently aware of that distinction if you'd asked my teen self she would've told you that she's all for feelings & given you a big rant about how no one wants to give sadness it's proper space nowadays and everyone wants it all to be pretty presentable & superficial, (like no points for guessing the heart fix) and I would have characterized myself as very feelsy sensitive & artistic & shit, even if I still "want to make decisions on logic"- cue rant about the whole romanticism vs enlightenment contrast as a cultural phenomenon & how feelings and reason are not opposites at all.

I suppose this awareness is because it was mirrored to me by my mom I guess. She is very enthusiastic about small children and when we were babies she would talk to us alot and narrate what we were doing. (adorable ld home video where she is commenting on one of my sisters doing typical baby things and enthusiastically ‚conversing‘ with her in a sing-song voice) And she would say stuff like, "soandso has fine, sincere feelings" or tell how she had to explain to me about recycling cause I was so upset that we were throwing the poor poor milk cartons in the trash. If she had said "shut up and dont make noise" instead of giving attention to my being upset, I probably would have turned out quite differently. Especially since I don't even remember this incident.

If anything it is my occasional lack of outward expressiveness that I was kind of in the dark about, or I just counted experiences related to that as me being "bad with people" or others "misunderstanding" me. My family is all head types except for our token 9 so I suppose they didnt find anything missing so long as I expressed myself verbally.

I'd like to stress that my awareness of physical sensations is very much piss-poor and that I find them rather uncomfortable when they do break into consciousness. I very much fit the typical "resents having to have a body" stereotype. Like feeling the blood pounding in my temples when I'm really, really angry sometimes freaks me out a little bit. - in a lot of books you read ppl, especially type 9 book authors, describing fine gradations thereof, whereas I only really notice when it's something really obvious like crying, sweaty hands etc.

I don't very much associate/ connect my feelings with physical sensations at all. If I notice the sensation at all its more like an additional thing.

I'd say my primary mode of noticing my feelings is by my thoughts or intuitive associations. That's also how I would show it if I was writing a story - if the Pov Character is scared then they would be thinking of the bad concequences that will happen if their fear comes to pass, if they have a crush they are thinking about the person alot and wanting to know more, if they are sad they are thinking about all that they have lost, its implications, everything you can now no longer do because of your loss, feeling betrayed is shown through thinking of the discrepancies & contradiction between what the person said vs what actually happened etc.

In a way that’s kind of the most „practical“ thing to do since my attention is normally on them anyways.

i guess reading and creative pursuits is also something that is shown to lead to greater awareness of feelings & empathy toward others if one does it as a child.

Heck, some of the time I even notice being hungry through finding myself thinking about food or that I'm sleepy cause my concentration begins to slip.

Though maybe its easier to build the association between the two if having a 4 wing gives you a bitty bit of "direct" access to feelingsland.

I suppose in my case it also helps that I am not 9 fixed - if impulse-based thoughts pop in your head like "I want to punch that person" or "I want to run away and lock myself in my room", that's a hint, to say the least. For 1 fixers they would be more filtered/processed already like "this is wrong!".

[corbosieu]

The WoW case study

I’m a wow player, I’m also a product designer. As such, I have a tendency to over study everything I encounter. In these posts, I’ll try to explain why world of Warcraft is, in my opinion, one of the best UX case study one can imagine and how it’s story is questioning what makes a good cultural product.

Lets dive in.

Wow is one of a few games that you can play as « vanilla » or with the latest expansion, allowing us to try, test, and spot things that differentiate these two versions to a point where they’re not quite the same game anymore.

On Aug. 27th 2019, Classic world of Warcraft (a reboot of the game as it was in 2004) finally came live in America, Europe, Oceania and Asia. This event happened after many years of lobbying from Blizzard’s fans – that for many of them had quit the game long ago – asking them to re release the game in its early stage. For a long period of time, Blizzard executives and creative team in general were not very fond of that idea, arguing that players didn’t know what they were looking for in the first place (« You think you do, but you don’t »).

This brings an important question, and that question will guide this entire thread : is it possible for a more evolved product to be *less* attractive than an older version of itself?

Of course, looking at this now, the answer feels obvious : products evolves, it should be trivial to say people can like their first iterations more than their current state. But we must remember we’re talking about a digital product, something that can be seen as (and that mainly is) a software. A software that get updates that are supposed to fix what couldn’t be fixed before. Updates that are supposed to enhance, bring more details to stuffs that weren’t implemented for various reasons (lack of time is a big one).

Is it possible that updates were changing the very nature of what they were supposed to enhance to a point were the game wasn’t the game anymore (Theseus ship)? Was Blizzard right when saying people *thought* they would love to play vanilla wow again but, as they would start to play, they would quickly realize how broken the game is, how it is lacking essential features?

« You think you do, but you don’t » is, to this day, the symbol of a huge judgment mistake, of an entire team thinking they knew what their users were looking for, yet they were mistaken.

Blizzard was wrong, Classic wow launch has been a major timeframe in the afterlife of world of Warcraft, bringing hundreds of thousands of players to play the game once again. Sure enough, the executive team acknowledged that. Maybe vanilla wasn’t a relique from the past after all? Maybe the game created years after years, expansion after expansion, wasn’t suited for all players, and those players were legions. Maybe it wasn’t only nostalgia but real game features that made vanilla wow so unique.

Maybe the life of a product isn’t as limited as we think it is. Take expansions for example, new content is always enjoyed by players, it brings cycling in the gaming experience, new frontiers, new challenges, the feeling of empowering. But the story has told us it wasn’t sufficient to make people stay. Everybody knows how Blizzard stopped sharing subscribers figures to the public after Wrath of the Lich King. And as many are pointing the next expansion – Cataclysm – as the culprit, I personally think we have more to learn by looking at Wrath.

Despite being known as the players all time best expansion, Wrath is also the first expansion to implement *many* modern wow features, such as heirlooms, heroic raiding difficulty, achievements, dailies progression, battlegrounds and pvp rework, leveling rework, etc. Looking at the list, vanilla wow was already put on the side when Wrath came out. After The burning crusade had brought flying mount into the world, after the tendency to forget “old” world content was introduced, Wrath was, in my opinion, the angular stone that set the game in its current development state : another year, another expansion, another zone that instantly outshines the rest, new daily mechanics that brings artificial engagement, new PVE content. In that, with such a method, the game was set to last long – and it did, but not as the same product. The game that players were looking for on Aug. 27th stopped existing in 2008, between The burning crusade and Wrath of the Lich King.

This is the first of many posts I will make about this topic. In the followings I’ll go more in depth about game mechanics and how they conflicted with the game’s original design principles (a design method that Blizzard seems to have used again recently around Classic development, but that’s a story for another post).

[rhymaes]

I’m like. Saying this as a lesbian—sometimes you just have to realize that not every piece of media is going to be made for you.

[eyesanddragons]

Winter and his Relationship with Martydom and Trust.

CWs for: Familial Abuse, Self-Hatred, Death, and Discussions about Assisted Suicide.

When talking about Winter's character usually one of the first things people think of is his relationship with his abusive, controlling, family is, a family that Winter doesn't want to let go.

Oh yeah, Winter vaguely acknowledges they are hurting him, he's bitter about it, he constantly snarks and thinks about how they would act if they were there with him, but still, Winter doesn't want to let them go.

In page 46 of Winter Turning he talks about how his parents made him strong and dangerous, and how they are perfect, Winter sings his parent’s praises even though there horribly abusive, he thinks about how he’s better because of them, how much stronger he is because of the abuse he suffered from there hands. Winter is unwilling to accept his parents harmed him, even though we are aware his parents actions are cruel.

He also constantly tries to defend Icicle, even though we know that Icicle doesn't treat him well and even says Icicle isn’t evil, and he is right, she isn’t, she’s a murderer and a terrible sister but she isn’t evil, she’s desperate, and while it makes sense Winter would be in denial about her being a murderer, he’s also reluctant to accept she has hurt him, repeatedly, Winter puts the blame on himself for not being good enough, even though we are aware that Winter did the Right Thing when he saved Starflight and that Icicle actions in the past we’re unnecessarily cruel.

And then we have how he views Hailstorm.

I feel like an often ignored moment whenever talking about Winter is this moment in the prologue.

"He could see that the only way to make Winter leave was to be as cruel as possible."

Hailstorm is currently insulting Winter, calling him "completely useless" and saying "nobody back in the Ice Kingdom would care whether they ever saw him again." and how "Nobody wants to watch you pathetically flail around and then die pointlessly"

Now, these are terrible things to tell anyone, Especially your brother and that's the point, Hailstorm wants Winter to get away and he's doing that by making Winter hate him.

But, as we know, Winter feels awful for abandoning him, and while a lot of that was his entire kingdom telling him he was disappointing for leaving him behind and he should of stayed back and fought like a Real Icewing, even though he was 3 and A Child at the time, he genuinely cares for Hailstorm, even though from his perspective Hailstorm revealed that he actually thought Winter was also a disappointing Icewing Prince who could never do anything good in his life.

And Winter doesn't know Hailstorm was lying here, and I don’t think he ever realizes this, in Page 179, Winter Turning:

"He'd never forgotten Hailstorm's last words to him. Had he truly meant them? Had he always been disappointed in his little brother."

While he is questioning his last words he still does thing he meant them, and Hailstorm and him don’t have time to talk about this so it’s a huge possibility that Winter never found out Hailstorm didn’t mean any of that, to him Hailstorm hated him like how everyone else, but, Winter is fine with that as long as Hailstorm is alive

I think it’s easy to think that Winter's main goal is to be accepted and that’s it, and that is partly true, he does want to be loved and accepted, he wants his parents to be proud of him, but I don't think that’s his main motivation, I think what he really wants is the people he cares about to be okay, regardless of his own wants, their wants, or, if it endangers himself.

Winter consistently view himself as expendable, in his mind he isn't that important at all, and a good example of that is when Turtle reveals he’s an animus.

Winter immediately gets angry at Turtle for not using his powers to help his kingdom, Peril, rightfully, gets angry at him for getting angry at Turtle for not wanting to be a weapon (an idea Peril has a lot of trauma related to it) This scene is interesting for two reasons.

Winter Turning has moments when Winter thinks about the war and how much he wishes they had animus magic so they could of "won" the war but notably his focus is always on the people that died in it.

Page 237-238

If they still had animus dragons they could have won the War of Sandwing Succession in no time at all, and then all the territory Blaze had promised Queen Glacier would now be theirs. More important, no Icewing soldiers would have had to die...and Hailstorm would never have ended up as Scarlet's poisoner

(...) When he thought of the Icewing lives lost in the war, and for nothing in the end, he wished he could climb back through time, find an animus Icewing- maybe the one who wasted her gift on defense- and force her to make something that would wipe out all the Nightwings at once.

Uneasiness whispered through his bones at that thought...a thought he had hundred of times before. But now he could picture the Nightwings in their ramshackle rainforest village, trying to rebuild after the horrors of the volcano. He could remember the shivering dragonet in the wingery and the protective parents he'd scene, including Moon's mother.

It was actually completely terrifying to think that any dragon with magic could easily wipe out an entire tribe with just one enchanted object.

Winter, especially post-Winter Turning Winter, is actually against using animus magic to make giant death weapons.

Second thing, Turtle is a Seawing, why would he get angry at Turtle for not using animus magic as a weapon in the war if Turtle is a Seawing? More Icewings would of died if Turtle used his magic, but Winter is upset because in his mind this means Turtle had the ability to help but chose not to.

Now, while Turtle has zero obligation to become a weapon of mass destruction, Winter often ignores his own safety and happiness to focus on helping the people around him, if Winter was given animus magic before the events of Winter Turning he would of gladly given himself up to Glacier to use as a weapon, Winter is projecting, and this isn’t a ”Icewing Kingdom Only” thing, it is stated and shown multiple times in the text that Winter would go out of his way to help anyone. Like in page 136, Winter Turning, where Qibli and Winter have this interaction after Winter saves Qibli from a bunch of Scavengers.

“Well,” Winter said, ”I would of done the same thing for anyone, you know.”

“I know,” Qibli said. ”I like that about you.”

And this was said before in page 118, Winter Turning

“You seem very sure of certain things about me,” Winter said. ”That I would never hurt a dragonet. That I would never kill Queen Glory. That I am somehow honorable and brave.”

“I am,” said Moon. ”I am sure of those things. Even when everything else inside you is confusion and mirrors and pain, those things are true.”

Winter wants to protect people, it’s stated multiple times that he wants to protect people, and while that goal is incredibly heroic one, the way he goes about fulfilling that goal causes him to martyr himself for people that don't even care about him, he completely discards his own needs because to him his needs aren't as important, but going further his fervent belief that his needs do not matter exist because he is guilty for even existing in the first place.

Icewing society is very cutthroat, and the actions of one family member drags down the entire family, meaning Winter not moving up in the rankings/doing something that goes against what a "Proper Icewing" should do, endangers his entire family's quality of life.

Winter knows that if he "fails" again everyone is going to suffer. He's told that he's the one at fault for staying alive when the good son who could support and help his family could of came home instead of him, the son that could of supported the family on his own.

The worst part is this is really what Winter's family thinks of him, they do think of him as an worthless son who is dragging them down by existing.

Page 25:

He could see their faces so clearly - that look they got whenever he did something wrong. The look that said, if only we’d lost you instead of Hailstorm. If only you met any of our expectations, If only you were everything an Icewing should be.

And since Winter spent his childhood constantly listening to them talk about how much better his siblings are and how bad and useless he is, he believes it, he trusts there opinion of him, trusts there judgement, trust that what there saying is the truth and that he really is a worthless boy who can't do anything good.

While Winter doesn't trust easily when he does trust someone that trust should not be doubted, he will stand by that person, even if he thinks there doing something incredibly bad, dangerous, or stupid, he is willing to go through hell for the people he cares about. Even if there the reason why he has to go through it in the first place.

Who cares about him, after all? They shouldn't care about him, he doesn't want there concern, he doesn't want there love, they should worry about there own business while he worries about them and tries his best to do what he thinks is right for them. He doesn't deserve to be cared about, they can hate him for all he cares as long as there safe, and maybe it's safer if they stayed away, he doesn't deserve them. So he'll drive them away, usually not on purpose but he's fine with that, it's better this way.

At least, he was fine with that.

The Diamond Trial is messed up, to win you have to kill the other dragon you came with, and Winter's parents waited Hailstorm to win so they told Hailstorm how to win and not Winter, letting Winter be unaware of what's to come, and even then Winter, probably wouldn't of killed him, even if Hailstorm insisted Winter wouldn't of done it.

Hailstorm could though, Hailstorm, the tired, broken dragon who just wants his old life back. He could do it, his parents thought.

I think if somehow Winter found Hailstorm before the events of Arc 2 and this still happened, Winter would of offered himself up to Hailstorm to be killed no questions asked, he'd insist on it even, he wouldn't of budged no matter what, after all, who cares if Hailstorm hates him after this, or is in pain and wracked with guilt, at least he's alive, and Winter is sure Hailstorm can do better than him, Hailstorm could pick himself up and become the true Icewing he was meant to be, he certainly can't and he knows this, no matter how hard he tries to delude himself, he will never be a True Icewing.

In book he does tell Hailstorm to kill him, he waits for the fatal blow, (page 283 Winter Turning) but when Hailstorm refuses, he doesn't push, he tries to find another way, and while this is still rooted in his martydom issues because he found other people he wanted to protect and treated him way better than his family, but he's progressing, he's getting better, and, he's finally acknowledged he doesn't want to be a True Icewing.

But Winter doesn’t stop struggling with this lack of self-respect, he throws himself at Peril, he offers to throw himself at Darkstalker, he consistently argues with the rest of the group about there safety, acting cold and harsh because, again, it doesn’t matter if they hate him as long as there safe, and also cause that’s the only way he knows how to act, he throws himself into the Icewing-Nightwing battle to defend his family who did nothing for him, and also throwing himself into the battle even though he knows the battle isn’t really worth it and will do more harm than good, and he’s not doing to to get his status back either, he’s doing it because he doesn’t want to see more of his people die, he declines the offer to go back to Jade Academy because he doesn’t want to cause more tension and take someone else’s spot, Winter consistently picks the most selfless, harmful, acts, and that’s incredibly interesting from a character perspective.

Anyway yeah Winter has Issues and I love him.

[makeste]

“but I thought about how I needed to say this”

a.k.a. yet another meta dissection of The Apology. I actually wrote most of this up on Friday night based on the original Japanese (@pikahlua​ has an excellent translation up here, and I also used @hanashimas’ translations as a reference as well), but I wanted to wait until the official release, though that turned out to be a mixed bag to say the least lol.

I would also recommend reading @pikahlua​ and @class1akids​’ breakdowns of this scene (here and here, respectively), because they are excellent, and because if any scene deserves to have as many meta breakdowns written about it as possible, it’s this one.

anyway so here goes.

Caleb did a more accurate job with this than the fanscan, even if he did try his best to take us out of the seriousness of the moment by throwing in that swiss cheese line lol. anyway so there are two things I want to talk about here. the first is the line about Izuku not remembering, which I thought was a nice touch. of course he doesn’t remember what Kacchan said back then. he wasn’t exactly in the soundest emotional state after seeing one of the people he cares about most taking a near-fatal blow that was meant for him. I’d be shocked if he remembers anything about the aftermath (including the way he flew into a mindless rage afterwards) right up until the point when he entered the OFA Interstellar Party Void with Tomura. anyway, so I thought that was a nice callback.

and speaking of emotional states, the other thing I wanted to talk about is the part that Caleb got right which the fan scanlation didn’t. “but I had more to say.” in other words, “stop trying to win on your own” wasn’t just a one-liner; it was meant to be the beginning of a much longer speech. “there were other things that I needed to say.”

like, can we just stop and talk about that for a second. because basically what this means is that in that instant, when Kacchan pushed Deku out of the way and got impaled, his one and only thought was that he needed to apologize to Deku. his life was presumably flashing before his eyes, he had no idea if he was going to survive or not, and the only thing on his mind was how urgently he needed to make things right with his former childhood friend.

moving on!

so I have a confession to make, which is that I am relieved to see Katsuki describing this as the reason why he bullied Deku, as opposed to Horikoshi trying to retcon it into some sort of “secretly he was just trying to protect him and keep him out of harm’s way because he was worried” thing, which ngl would not have gelled very well with me. the thing is that I’m really not a fan of the whole “Kacchan Did Nothing Wrong” mentality that some fans seem to have. like, I have seen all sorts of convoluted attempts to find excuses for Katsuki’s shitty behavior, but in my view those attempts undermine what I love about his character in the first place. Katsuki is such a great character specifically because he is not perfect. his redemption arc is so compelling because he was such a giant asshole at the start. he was completely at fault, and he acknowledges this, and takes full responsibility for it. and that is fucking fantastic.

his arc is so great because it doesn’t rely on garnering sympathy by giving him a Tragic Past, or by trying to foist the blame for his behavior over on someone else. it’s an arc that acknowledges that redemption isn’t something you achieve by making people feel sorry for you; it’s something you have to earn by actively working to change and do better. and by forgoing the “misunderstood/tragic past” route, Horikoshi is making a statement that anyone can go down the wrong path, but that more importantly, anyone can also choose at any time to turn away from said path. there is only one requirement for doing so, and that is realizing that you’ve done wrong, and deciding that you want to change.

anyway, so in chapter 284 Kacchan of course had that whole speech about Deku not taking himself into account, and mentioned how that made him want to keep his distance. and a good chunk of fandom took this to mean that Katsuki’s bullying was actually a misguided response to Deku’s reckless tendencies -- sort of an “if I show him how weak and powerless he really is, I can get him to accept the reality that he’s quirkless, and that being a hero will just get him hurt or killed” type of thing. and I won’t lie, for a good while I was wondering myself if Horikoshi was really going to go down that route. and like I said, I am honestly relieved that he didn’t. not only for the reasons stated in the previous paragraph, but also because the message that would have sent -- that there are certain circumstances in which bullying can almost be excused because the bully had Good Intentions and was just trying to save the other person from themselves, and so it Wasn’t That Bad, Actually -- is all kinds of fucked up to say the least. so yeah, I’m glad we ended up steering well clear of that.

(ETA: this post was long enough already so I edited out the 3 additional paragraphs I originally wrote analyzing the dialogue from 284. but just to be clear, I’m not trying to imply that Kacchan worrying about Deku’s recklessness is a retconned thing that Horikoshi only threw into the story recently, because there are multiple instances throughout the story where he clearly is worried and in total denial of it. but I firmly believe those feelings are not what led to the bullying. they’re two separate things. Kacchan worrying about Deku is what prompts him to yell at him in chapter 1 when Deku comes to save him. but it’s not what incited him to burn his notebook and taunt him earlier in that same chapter. that action had a much meaner and more selfish motivation behind it, and I’m glad Horikoshi didn’t try to change it up last minute, because it wouldn’t have felt right.)

thankfully as of this chapter I think we can safely cross that out as a possibility, as we’re given the true explanation straight from Katsuki himself. and the truth is that he bullied Deku out of insecurity and jealousy and fear and intolerance. there was nothing noble about it. there were no good intentions concealed in his actions. there are no justifications given, no excuses offered, and no mitigating circumstances to be considered, other than the fact (which neither he nor Horikoshi bring up) that he was and is still a child, and that children make mistakes.

it’s an explanation that challenges many of fandom’s ideas on who is and isn’t eligible to be redeemed. there is no Ozai in Katsuki’s backstory. there’s no great tragedy that he spent a lifetime trying to rise above. the only villain in Katsuki’s story is Katsuki himself. the only darkness that he has to overcome is his own. and it’s challenging, because I think many people believe the only way someone can be redeemed for doing bad things is if bad things happen to them in return. but what Horikoshi is saying here is that that’s not the case. bad doesn’t erase bad. and the one and only way to truly earn redemption is by doing good.

and that’s what makes this such a phenomenal scene for me. by not shying away from Katsuki’s flaws and failings, and having him take full responsibility for them, Horikoshi keeps the apology from being self-serving, and underscores the true depth of Katsuki’s character development. the level of self-awareness he has here is something most people can only dream of. which is very fitting, as that’s perhaps the most important takeaway from his character arc -- that it’s only by acknowledging your own weaknesses and flaws that you can learn to overcome them and reach your full potential.

one last thing to point out here, which is that in the panel where Katsuki finally acknowledges his terrible treatment of Deku, Deku is not even visible. instead, Horikoshi drew the panel from a perspective that makes it appear that Katsuki is addressing this particular line not just to Deku, but to all of his classmates.

again, he shows him taking full responsibility and admitting his wrongdoings in front of the people whose opinions and approval he cares about most. and just to clarify in case there’s any confusion from Caleb’s translation, Kacchan’s wording makes it very clear that he wasn’t just “mean” to Deku, but that he full-on bullied him (he uses the same verb -- “ijimeru” (苛める) -- that he did back in chapter 284). there’s no attempt to downplay his actions here.

moving on now, this chapter also reaffirmed another thing about Deku and Kacchan’s relationship which I was glad to see revisited -- Kacchan’s unwavering belief in Deku’s ability. this is one of those paradoxical things about their relationship which I’ve always been fascinated by, but which is also kind of hard to explain, because I don’t want it to come off like I’m trying to put a positive spin on something which was unequivocally awful. like, please don’t think I’m trying to say that Katsuki’s bullying of Deku was in any way a good thing. but that being said, there’s also a strange irony at play here, which is that Katsuki’s jealousy and insecurity also betray the fact that even at his very worst, he never once underestimated Deku. he has always believed in Deku’s strength, even when that strength pissed him off and made him afraid and uneasy.

no one else -- not All Might, or even Deku’s own mom -- believed from the get-go that Deku could become a hero. but Katsuki never once counted him out, even when he was calling him a pebble in his shoe. he confesses here that even though he “tried to act superior by rejecting [Deku]”, in truth he was never able to shake the feeling that Deku was above him. long before he ever understood the concept of “win to save”, he knew instinctively that there was a strength in Deku’s heart that couldn’t be measured, and which had the potential to surpass even his own strength. and I’ve always felt that this was so important, because it’s the one aspect of their early relationship that hinted that on some level, however subconscious, Katsuki held the same type of faith in Deku that Deku always held in him. it was one of the few things that hinted at there being a possible path towards reconciliation one day. and it paved the way for the most important shift in their relationship to date, when Katsuki finally realized who Deku got his quirk from, and responded not with resentment or spite, but with acceptance.

moving on, I also really love the way we see them portrayed at the different stages of their childhood throughout this speech, and how it perfectly lines up with the dialogue. from small children (when Katsuki talks about his insecurities first manifesting), to middle schoolers (when he talks about the bullying), to high schoolers (when he talks about the past year and everything he’s learned at U.A.). Horikoshi really didn’t have to go that hard, but he did, and that’s why we love him.

and then we finally get to That Part.

where do I even start with this there are so many things omg.

the bow. this is the one and only time Katsuki has ever bowed to anyone of his own volition as far as I recall. and this absolutely is a bow, just to be clear, even though his form is straight-up garbage (very Kacchan-esque, with his feet and arms spaced apart because he’s still a punk after all). this is Kacchan showing more humility and respect than he’s ever shown to anyone else in his entire life.

regarding “Izuku”, I actually have mixed feelings about this to tell the truth. I think it was a good call here because it was incredibly effective in setting the tone and showing just how serious Kacchan is. however if he continues to use “Izuku” rather than “Deku” from here on out, that would give the impression in hindsight that all his past usage of “Deku” really was meant as an insult, which would undermine some of my favorite scenes. I would really like to believe that since DvK2 or thereabouts, Kacchan has (mostly) been using “Deku (affectionate)” rather than “Deku (useless loser)”, lol. but if he switches to the “nicer” name on a permanent basis following his apology, it implies that the previous nickname was indeed being used cruelly. and so honestly I hope this was just a one-time thing, because I do think that in Katsuki’s mind, the name “Deku” hasn’t been meant as a slight to him for a long time now.

“my truth/this is what I truly feel” -- the word Katsuki uses in Japanese is honne (本音), and if you’re familiar with the concept of honne/tatemae, that’s the same “honne” he’s talking about here. it means that he’s casting aside all of his walls and facades and expressing what he truly feels. and of course, one of the fascinating things about Katsuki’s character is that he’s the exact opposite of most people in that he chooses to put his meanness on full display to the public, and ironically it’s the kindest parts of himself which he tends to keep the most carefully guarded and hidden away. this also means that while his rage and anger are very often insincere and put on just for show, those relatively few occasions where he lets his humanity truly shine through are pretty much 100% genuine, as is the case with this one here.

and Deku’s face says it all when it comes to how powerful those moments can be as a result.

and this, right here, is why it wasn’t enough for Katsuki to atone solely through his actions, and why he needed to actually say the words as well. it’s not that the words are more important; obviously the actions are far and away the most important part, and carry far more meaning. but the reason why Katsuki needed to say the words as well is simply because Izuku needed to hear them. needed to, and deserved to, because this is one of the most important people in the world to him.

and so he deserves to know that the relationship isn’t just one-sided, and that he is just as important to Kacchan as Kacchan is to him. he deserves to know that Kacchan understands how horribly he treated him, and that he’s sorry for it. and he deserves to know that Kacchan, without any expectation of it changing their relationship -- meaning that he will continue to feel this way regardless of what Izuku says or does from here on out -- cares about him. now more than ever, with AFO out there doing everything in his power to make Izuku feel as alone as possible, this is something that he really, really needed to hear.

so this part has some interesting wordplay which neither Caleb’s translation nor the fan scanlation was really able to get across. basically, in the Japanese version, when Katsuki talks about “those ideals”, Horikoshi uses the kanji for “ideal”, but pronounces it as “All Might.” obviously the meaning of this isn’t too hard to decipher, as we all know how much both boys admire All Might. to them, he absolutely is synonymous with the Ideal. so this is a way of showing that respect they both have towards him, even as Katsuki goes on to point out the one fatal flaw that All Might was never able to overcome.

and speaking of interesting wording, as others have noted, at this point in his speech Katsuki switches from “temee” (which he was using earlier during the “your strengths and my weaknesses” part) to “omae” (“omae” being a less insulting word for “you”, though still very manly and tough-sounding), which is definitely a big deal. though fwiw this is not the first time he’s used “omae” for Deku (he switches to it briefly right after DvK2, when he tells Deku “you had the strongest guy lay the groundwork for you -- don’t lose”, and then later when they’re walking back to the dorms and he says he’ll learn and get stronger by watching everyone around him just like Deku did). it’s definitely a good choice on Horikoshi’s part though, as it makes this last part of the speech sound more earnest and sincere.

just a quick note, he does indeed use a plural pronoun here, as in “the obstacles that you can’t overcome, we will overcome.” but as @pikahlua​ pointed out, the “we” here is ambiguous -- it could either mean “we” as in class 1-A -- “we will overcome them for you” -- OR it could mean “we” as in all of them -- class 1-A and Deku. “we will overcome them together.” idk about you, but I know which one gets my vote.

anyway, and so this is the line that finally wins Deku over and allows him to let go of his fears, however briefly. what I love about this is Kacchan’s utter conviction. one thing that Caleb’s translation doesn’t quite get across is Kacchan’s use of the word morenaku -- “without exception” -- when he talks about how they’re going to save everyone and win. it echoes that same sentiment he showed back during the Joint Training arc -- that it’s not a perfect victory unless they save everyone. every last person. and he explicitly lists Deku among their number, just so there can be no doubt.

and Deku’s response to this (or at least his thoughts, since he’s not really able to get many words out) pretty much brings everything full circle here.

he acknowledges that everyone else has gotten ahead of him. which is especially meaningful given who he’s standing directly across from. because for most of the series, as we all well know, it’s been Kacchan who was woefully lagging behind Deku in the character growth department. but now Deku himself is acknowledging that not only has Kacchan finally caught up at last, but that he and the others have surpassed him. which is only temporary, I should add, as I have zero doubt that Deku will catch up again soon. but the fact remains that just as Deku’s rapid increase in strength and skill left Kacchan scrambling to keep up earlier in the series, Kacchan’s extraordinary character development has now left Deku in that same position. as All Might once put it, “when he’s starting at level one, and you’re already at level 50, it’s only natural that you’ll be growing at different rates.”

and what’s so wonderful about this though is that the two of them are finally approaching that point where they’ve both caught up to each other and are finally starting to level out. Deku is a full-on badass, and Kacchan is out here talk-no-jutsuing with the best of them. the two of them have been chasing and chasing after each other this entire time, and now they’re finally just about ready to meet in the middle at long last, with each of them fully embodying both of those two crucial aspects -- win, and save.

just about. because Deku still needs some help catching up. but seeing as help has already been offered -- and accepted -- I can’t imagine it will be very long now, and I can’t wait to see him finally overcoming those fears and doubts with his friends by his side. it’s going to be such a powerful moment.

and last but not least,

or, as I prefer,

you had one job, Caleb. flkjsdlk.

but at least this provides a good opportunity to note that unlike the “we’ll help you handle it” line earlier in the speech, here the phrasing is left up to interpretation, as he doesn’t use a pronoun. so it could be “we know”, or, as the fan scanlation put it, “I know.” or it could be both. regardless, it’s good stuff.

anyway, and so Deku passes out, and in the process Horikoshi gives us one last parting metaphor, just in case anyone still thinks Kacchan is all talk because they haven’t been paying attention for the past 322 chapters (more likely than you think). once again, Katsuki’s actions speak louder than his words (even his nice words) ever could: he is literally there to catch Deku when he falls.

so that’s it! my sincere thanks to anyone who actually read through all of my endless ramblings about this scene which I have been waiting for since day one. props to Horikoshi for taking on an impossibly difficult task, and pulling it off with all of the emotion and care and nuance that I’ve come to expect from his writing. imo he delivered on every single level with the exception of the aftermath, which I don’t consider to have actually happened yet. Deku’s part of this is definitely a “to be continued.” but yeah, as far as Kacchan’s part goes, 10/10. so fucking proud of this kid.

[itsallyscorner]

hey. can u do part 2 to the’ Being a High School Student on A Marvel Set’? :)

💌

Period Buddies

Pairing: platonic!Sebastian Stan x teen!reader, platonic!Anthony Mackie x teen!reader

Summary: I’m currently on my period so I wrote this to help me cope:) Basically Anthony and Seb being the biggest and supportive guys to you during your period:)

Warnings: Umm not much, some mentions of blood and periods.

Hello my love!💞 Thank you for the request! I was actually planning on making another ‘High School student’ fic with the Marvel cast, so I decided to use that idea for this request! I hope you like it🥰 Also sorry I haven’t uploaded a fic in a while; I was lacking motivation to write and school was pretty hectic😭 Thank you for your patience my loves x

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fluturaș - little butterfly

✧───── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *. ☽.* :★. ─────✧

You were laid out along your couch in your trailer, a fluffy Sherpa blanket wrapped around you and your head resting atop two soft pillows. You were laid on your stomach, the pressure of the couch slightly helping with the stinging pain in your lower abdomen. Your geography teacher was teaching via Zoom, though your laptop was on the coffee table that was inches away from you; knowing you weren’t feeling your best, you’ve decided to stay on the couch for school and moved the table closer to the couch so everything was within your reach. You had been lazily taking notes—or attempting to with the remaining energy you could muster up.

You had been surprised by the devil himself when you woke up earlier today at around six in the morning. You knew your monthly was coming; with the constant cravings, body aches, and the newly developed pimple gracing your face, your period was around the corner. And you were right, a dark red stain was splotched onto your white floral bedsheets when you woke up today. What a way to start the morning.

Yes, no woman ever felt their best during their period. You were always bloated, hungry, and blood was constantly flowing out of you, yet you were still expected to show up to both work and school. Not to mention, the pain you were currently enduring was making it really difficult for you to to focus on anything. Your teacher’s voice seemed to fade into the background as your body was blinded with the stabbing pain in your lower abdomen. You may have been overreacting, but everything just hurt.

Geography was your midway class, meaning that you were halfway through your school day. Which also meant that you were soon to be called to set. You had a lunch break and some time to do your homework, but either way you still had to get to set. Usually you’d be antsy to get the school day over with, practically buzzing to get to get into your costume and do some stunts with your two favorite guys on set. Although today was different, the thought of heading to set and being active felt dreadful. You just wanted to curl up into a ball, snuggle into your Sherpa blanket, and take a well deserved nap.

Your teacher’s voice was interrupted by a knock on your door. Already knowing who it was, you let out a faint “come in” to the two men outside your trailer. A second passes before your trailer’s door slowly opens and Anthony’s head pops from behind it. His sparkling yet dark brown eyes and toothy grin etched onto his friendly features. Sebastian pops up behind him, an equally wide smile on his face as he wiggled a white take away box in the air.

“What’s up buttercup.” They cheerfully greet you.

Though both of the men’s smiles drop once they see you bundled up on the couch. Anthony fully enters your trailer, Sebastian following suit. Approaching your little set up, Anthony glances at your laptop.

“Isn’t your camera on? Did your teacher allow you to attend school like this?” He asks you. He knew you were a responsible kid and had no troubles keeping up with your education. But that’s the thing, you were still a kid. Having kids of his own, he knew how unmotivated children can get in the middle of the school year and the laziness that came along with it. Seeing you lounging on the couch while your teacher was lecturing was just a bit concerning for him.

You stiffly nod, “My camera’s off. I just don’t feel good.”

The last sentence catches both of the grown men’s attention. Sebastian rounds the corner of the coffee table and hovers over you, observing your face. He softly places the back of his hand onto your forehead, checking for any alarming warmth.

“You’re a bit warm, but it’s probably because of the blanket.” He mutters, choosing to sit on the arm rest of the couch. “You alright, fluturaș?” He looks down at you in concern, lips tilting down into a small frown.

Anthony had settled beside your feet, one of his arms using your ankles as an arm rest. Strangely enough his arm brought you comfort instead of adding to the ache in your legs.

“I’m just—I’m on my period.” You mumbled in response. You wait for the awkward tension to build but it never came. You glance at the two men and see the realization settle in them.

“And I have really bad cramps at the moment, that it’s just hard to do anything. So I decided to stay on the couch today.” You explain with a slight shrug. They didn’t understand the pain you were going through, but they understood what you meant. While the both of them had female friends and what not, they were somewhat aware of what you were going through.

Anthony claps his hands to his thighs, “Alright, it’s ok to give yourself some rest. You just relax and listen to whatever your teacher’s going on about.” He motions to your laptop and continues, “Is there anything we can do to help you?”

While taking down notes, you momentarily glance at them, “No it’s fine, you guys already brought me food. Thanks, by the way.”

They didn’t want to leave you alone, you were clearly not feeling well and they both wanted to do something. They couldn’t do anything about the pain from your menstrual cycle, but they can help distract you from the pain.

“No, we’re gonna help you. Have you eaten ever since breakfast? I’ll spoon feed you if I have to.” Sebastian insists. You thought he was joking, but when you looked at his face he was serious.

“I had a brownie—wait, aren’t you guys supposed to be filming?” You question the both of them.

“Something went wrong on set so now we have a few hours or something till they figure it out.” Anthony answers, scrolling through his phone. He abruptly stands up to his feet and heads towards the door. You and Seb send him a questioning look.

“I’ll be back.” With that he pulls your door open and jogs out, leaving you and Sebastian in your trailer. You decide to tune back into your class, resuming to take down notes from the slides your teacher shared. Suddenly, a large hand gets in the way of your notebook.

“Gimme that.” Sebastian takes the pencil and notebook from you, placing them on his lap and staring at your screen. His eyes scan the PowerPoint, looking for the part you left off on. He hums when he finds it and began to write the notes himself.

“What are you doing?” You raise a brow at him, scanning his appearance. He was dressed in Bucky’s clothes, minus the black and gold ‘metal’ arm. He was still sat on the arm rest, slightly slouching so he could bend down to use his lap as a table.

“I’m doing your notes for you.” He answers nonchalantly. He motions to the white take away box on your coffee table, “Eat your lunch, I got this.”

You hesitate to sit up, feeling bad that Sebastian was doing your notes. Though, he did insist on doing it and you weren’t feeling your best. After an internal argument with yourself, you decided to let it slide and let Sebastian do your notes. Besides, he looked like he was enjoying taking notes on agriculture regions and the different types of farming.

“Are you sure, Seb?” You ask him again, slowly sitting up on the couch. He responds with a distracted ‘mhm’, his eyes focused on your notebook and his tongue sticking out in concentration. You quietly thank him and get up to use the bathroom.

While you were gone doing your business, Anthony had entered your trailer again. This time he had a plate full of brownies, a medium sized cup of ice cream from the vending machine, and one of those red hot water bottles in his arms.

“Where’s the kid?” He balances the things in his arms while carefully placing the plate of brownies onto your coffee table. Anthony locates your mini fridge and stores the ice cream in the freezer.

“Bathroom.” Sebastian acknowledged, still focused on writing the notes correctly in your notebook. He made sure to write neatly and copy the way you organized your notes. Saving you the hassle of missing out on important parts of the lesson and from decoding his personally sloppy writing.

Anthony empties his pockets to reveal more of your favorite snacks from crafties and the vending machine. “So...what are you doing?”

“I’m in geography class.” Anthony snorts at his friend before taking a look at your laptop screen, “And what are y’all learning in geography class?”

“Pastoral nomadism.” Seb bluntly answers. With his arms now free of the items he brought, Anthony decided to tidy up your couch. He folded your blanket neatly, fluffed your pillows, and made space for Seb to actually sit on the couch.

“What the hell is pastoral nomadism?” Anthony thought out loud.

“It’s when people travel from place to place with domesticated animals. It’s usually practiced in dry land climates.” Sebastian explains, eyes never faltering from the screen or your notebook. Anthony let’s out a sound of approval at Seb’s explanation. When he was done cleaning up your couch, he took the white take away box and headed to your kitchen. Emptying the contents of the container onto one of your plates, heating the food up for you.

You walk into the kitchen section of your trailer, shutting the bathroom door behind you. A delicious aroma lingers in the air, your nose picks up on the smell, sending it straight to your stomach. In response, your stomach lets out a low growl, making Anthony snicker at you.

“I’m heating up the food.” Anthony mentions as you pass by him. You thank him with a small smile as he gently nudges his shoulder against yours.

“Want me to make tea or something? I heard it helps reduce the cramps.” You raise a brow at him amusingly, “Where’d you hear that?”

“I read it on Google. You know, research, gotta make sure our girl’s comfortable.” He proudly tells you. Your heart warms at the fact that both him and Seb were willingly helping you while you were in pain. The microwave dings catching both yours and Anthony’s attention.

As he gingerly takes the plate out he asks you, “You wanna eat at the table or the couch.”

“The couch, I still wanna listen in on the lesson.” For a moment you forgot that you were supposed to still be at school, taking notes, and listening to your teacher teach the lesson. You enter the living room and sit next to Seb, who’s hand was digging into your pencil case.

“Want me to take over?”

“Nah, I got it, I’m too invested to stop. Which one?” He held up three of your highlighters, one was light blue, another was a peachy pink, and the other was a typical yellow highlighter. You grin, picking the peachy pink one. He tosses the other two back into your pencil case and uncaps the highlighter. While your teacher wraps up class, he began to highlight the new terms from today’s class.

“Here ya go.” Anthony sang; grabbing a pillow, placing it onto your lap, and carefully setting the plate of chicken teriyaki fried rice on top of it. You happily thank him and began to dig in. He slumps onto the couch beside you, “Tell me if you need anything else. I’ve got ice cream in the freezer, brownies, a hot water bottle, and a whole box of tea.” He throws his arm around your shoulder, letting it rest against the back of the couch.

You pause your eating, pouting at the two men beside you, “You guys really don’t have to do this. But I appreciate it so much, thank you.”

Seb looks at you over his shoulder, sending you a sweet smile, “Anything to make you happy, fluturaș.”

Anthony squeezes your shoulder, “Anytime munchkin, starting today till you’re not a ketchup packet anymore, Seb and I’ll be your period buddies.”

You snort shaking your head at him, “Again, I appreciate it Ant, but please don’t call yourselves period buddies.”

“What’s wrong with period buddies? You’re on your period and we’re all a bunch of buddies. It makes perfect sense!” Anthony reasoned defensively. Seb looks at the both of you over his shoulder again, “I like period buddies.”

“See! Thank you.” You playfully rolled your eyes at the two. “Fine, period buddies it is.”

Your geography teacher wraps the lesson up and ends the Zoom call. Seb shuts your notebook and puts it to the side. Clapping his hands, he asks you, “Alright, what class do we have next?”

“Calculus.” You smirk, followed by the groans of Anthony and Sebastian filling your trailer.

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[butwhyduh]

Getting tall

Summary: Damian finally hits his growth spurts and the fam have opinions. Some damijon, timkon, jaytemis, and dickori mentioned.

Damian was an adorable tiny murder baby when he first showed up at the manor. Like a feral kitten. Short end of normal growth at 10 years old and thin too, Dr Leslie found. Make sure he eats 3 square meals and snacks when he wants and he’ll be just fine. Alfred had made it his mission, as he had done for both Jason and Tim, to put weight on Damian.

The first family member he outgrew was Cass. She reached over to ruffle his hair only to reach up above her head rather than below it. She didn’t mind. 5’4 isn’t very tall. She’d just have to remember that the next time they spar. Height wasn’t an important factor to her.

It was a few months later that Damian hit a massive growth spurt and grew 4 inches. He passed by 5’6 Stephanie.

“Hey little dude. What are they puttin in your food, miracle grow?” She asked when she noted how tall he was and how big his feet had gotten. Damian was a bit like the giant puppies all gangly. Alfred was adjusting the Robin costume monthly after Damian rushed to put it on for patrol one day and every time he raised his arms he felt his stomach show. Clothes were constantly being bought that met his newest height increase. The Kents were very appreciative of the barely worn clothing Jon got as Damian went through another pair.

“I’m perfectly normal in growth,” he said pulling on the hem of his shirt that was growing shorter by the day. Stephanie eyed him but left it. Tim hated the height jokes they would make when everyone started passing him in height. Nowadays Tim just rolled his eyes and deferred all short jokes to Bart who Damian was now taller than. Bart didn’t care at all because he was short but he was also at least top 3 faster people ever so who cares right?

For a very short time, Damian was taller than Jon. He liked that. Jon thought it was pretty funny.

“D, I’m going to be taller. My dad and mom are both taller than yours. I’ll be taller in the end,” Jon said with a grin before Damian pushed him off the roof. Jon giggled and stared at Damian with obvious heart eyes. The kid was definitely smitten.

Tim was half an inch taller. He didn’t acknowledge it in any way. But it wasn’t surprising. His mother was tiny, his father lower end of average, and Tim probably skipped too many meals with working during an important growth phase while he was becoming Robin. 5’8.5 is a perfectly normal height for a man. He had an easier time with stealth.

Bruce watched as his son grew more handsome and taller everyday. He recognized things he hadn’t taken the time to see with Dick or Jason and had missed completely with Tim. Aftershave, cologne, and deodorant budget went up exponentially and Damian was barred from bringing any of his shoes in the house and his Robin uniform had to double washed occasionally. He spent far longer in the bathroom doing his hair and agonizing over any spot on his face.

Bruce even once caught Damian do the lean on the doorframe while talking to someone they like when Jon visited once. He had to give the worst birds and bees talk of all time. Bruce also noted how Damian had Talia’s nose and his lip curled the same way hers did when he smiled. He stretched when walking to the breakfast table the same way Dick did.

Damian didn’t get another true growth spurt for 2 years. There was plenty of jokes that he jumped up to his height and didn’t move again. Jon was once again taller than Damian. Alfred was ready this time with the massive amount of food the 15 year old could put away and panels in his costume for easier adjustments.

Talia smiled proudly at her son as he grew taller than her. He was turning out handsome like his father but kept her feature and in her mind, that was the perfect combo. She never told Damian because she didn’t him to grow arrogant.

Dick didn’t notice it right away. He was so busy with Bludhaven and the Titans that he didn’t notice Damian had gotten a full inch taller than him. He only realized when him and Damian practiced a complex move that required a taller and shorter partner while training. They paired up as they always did and the maneuver completely fell apart. Dick was mentally putting together why it failed when Damian walked over and it clicked. Little D was not so little anymore.

“You’re taller than me,” he said brightly. Damian immediately grinned.

“So now you’re little D,” Damian said back. Dick laughed at that one.

“Don’t let it go to your head. I can throw you around like a tilt-a-whirl,” Dick warned. Of course, that’s exactly what happened the next time they sparred when Damian tried to use his height advantage.

“I can beat Jason so don’t think you can beat me just by being bigger,” Dick said standing over Damian who rolled his eyes.

Dick had no problem with Damian getting taller. It was his own height he had a complicated relationship with. See, Dick grew up as an acrobat. Being tall is a disadvantage. More weight to swing, more body to move. And his father had told him growing up that almost every Grayson man has been 5’8. It’s a legacy as strong as flying above the circus crowd.

And so when at 15, Dick was very distraught with the fact that he hadn’t stopped growing at 5’8. It felt like a part of his history and family legacy had died. He wasn’t one of the 5’8 Grayson men. He never told anyone beside Kori, late at night where she told him she loved him tall or small. She had already far outpaced Dick and was on her way to being 6’4.

Duke and Alfred and Damian were the same height for a short while. Duke would joke that he could just wear the Robin’s costume since they were the same size. Damian would threaten to disembowel him if he touched it and that made Duke laugh even more.

When he grew taller Duke once again joked with Damian calling him a not so jolly green giant and Alfred considered his nutrition attempt a complete success. Damian went from a tiny kid to a tall strong young man.

Damian and Jon were practically the same size for a while. Jon barely bent his neck to rest his chin on Damian’s shoulder as his partner worked on a complex mechanical part. Then Jon hit another growth spurt to end in his final height of 6’2, same as Bruce and his father. Damian enjoyed having a taller boyfriend for a while but would never say anything. High school dances were nice.

Bruce could see Damian getting taller and stronger and was practically grown. Dr Leslie warned Bruce that growth could continue until Damian was in his early 20s and he could end up a quite tall young man or stop tomorrow.

Jason liked being the tallest and biggest in the family. He had an entire inch in height on Bruce and was at least 20 lbs heavier. He was built like tank. When Jason had died at 15, he was terrifyingly thin. Alfred had tried his best but Jason had suffered malnutrition and hunger from practically birth. He was short and thin and Dr Leslie had told Bruce he probably always would be. And so when Jason came back to life a giant 6’3 and over 200 lbs, it was a shock. It took him forever to accept his size as anything more than an amour to create fear in his enemies. The first time he had accidentally scared a woman walking in the street at night, Jason had hated that he was so big. But within his family, it had become a source of pride. He was certainly taller than Dick and Alfred and even Bruce.

So when he visited Cass’s birthday party and Jason stood next to Damian and realized that the kid was taller than him, he was a little shocked. Damian had reached his final height of 6’4.

“When the hell did you get so big?” Jason asked while cake was being served. Dick nosed in the conversation.

“Little D is taller than you now,” he said with a teasing grin at Jason.

“And yet you insist on calling me Little D,” Damian said with an eye roll.

“I call him Big D,” Jon said with a smile. Dick blanched and Jason coughed out an awkward laugh.

“Good for you, bro,” he said patting Damian on the back. Jon blushed at the sudden understanding.

“No! I mean- he’s taller than me. I didn’t mean- uh,” Jon stuttered. Damian grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him away from his brothers who were laughing.

“It’s weird you know,” Jason admitted, scratching the back of his neck.

“The fact that he is dating Jon?”

“No, they’ve been together forever. That he’s taller than me,” Jason said.

“Are you- does it bother you that you aren’t the tallest?” Dick asked with a gleeful smile.

“No,” Jason said abruptly.

“It could be like how I learned my little brother was bigger than me,” Dick teased. “All of a sudden you were just massive. My tiny little brother was this big dude. Good thing I’m comfortable with my masculinity.”

“Your girlfriend is like 6 inches taller than you. If that isn’t emasculating then there’s nothing I could do,” Jason answered.

“Yeah, she’s always been taller than me,” Dick said with a fond smile. “You can’t talk with the Amazon you’ve been hanging with.” He pushed Jason’s shoulder with a grin.

“We’re just friends-I guess,” Jason said uncomfortable. “That’s not the same-“

“Well at least Tim will always be our little brother,” Dick changed the subject but mentally noted Jason’s reaction to the mention of Artemis.

“Yeah, he’ll always be a shrimp,” Jason agreed.

“Honestly fuck you both,” Tim said from across the room. With Kon standing next to him he certainly looked tiny.

“Hey, it’s my birthday and I am the shortest and I can still kick all of your butts,” Cassandra reminded them both and they laughed but neither corrected her because they knew she was right.