#check out those people if you want a doodle for your vote!

[dawnanddorisqna]

Hey, thanks for putting up an ask blog! Don't know if tumblr is the best place to put it for social media engagement, but then again Neil Gaiman seems to be enjoying himself so who am I to judge?

I have a whole bunch of questions, and I'm not sure if it'd be annoying to flood your inbox with them, so feel free to pick and choose any of these to reply.

Questions for Dawn: who would you consider to be the animated 'it' girl right now?

What do you think about the recent trend of 'fleshwashing' that Disney has been pushing when it comes to remakes? Is this part of a bias against toons when it comes to casting?

In your opinion, who do you think is the best 'old-school' toon who still actively performs? Questions for Doris: Has toontown managed to avoid the plague of gentrification that hit a lot of other older neighborhoods in LA?

Is there a union for animated actors? If there is, how effective is it in your opinion? Have things gotten better or worse for animated actors over the years?

Did you ever get to know your animator? If not, would you have wanted to know them?

We should probably get a reddit at some point. Everyone on tumblr has been amazing though. We do have an instagram, @dawn_doodle and @dorisdoodle_toon.

There's also a fanmade discord! One we need to check on more after we're done...preparing some new things.

Who do I think is the current it girl of animation? It changes so fast, but my vote right now is POMNI! Who doesn't feel like Pomni like daily? Also, indie!

Check back in a month when my answer may change again!

What do we think of all these live action remakes? I still don't mind them too much, but Avatar on netflix might be unnecessary. I'm starting to wear thin. Doris gave a rambling answer on this before and I don't think her opinion has changed.

Best old School toon still in business? I think we actually have an agreement on this one and that's this 2D Girl boss!

Was Toon town able to avoid any gentrification? Here's Doris with a history lesson:

As some people know, ToonTown was left to the toons, and that was great. We could vote for changes in the town and run it ourselves, but that didn't mean we were separate from California and certain laws. So it was devastating when it was decided that the land we lived on wasn't fully ours and the decision to build a freeway system was still being considered. This was in the 50s and I had already moved out of ToonTown, but I heard about the protests and letters written to Earl Warren.

None of it helped, and in 1956, Eisenhower signed the highway act and a freeway was constructed. So the town wasn't as saved as the movie "Who Frames Roger Rabbit" lets you believe.

Since the toons owned ToonTown, they couldn't just completely destroy it. We were just told to move. So the town is split up into districts. There's one near Disneyland, another a few streets from Universal. Always near studios. They like keeping an eye on their assets. So at least we got to keep the town in some way.

Is there a union for toons? There have been attempts. But in the end were considered intellectual property of the studios. fully owned and by contract from the moment the first line is sketched. A lot of older toons have a little more freedom from those contracts. By older, I'm talking Bugs Bunny and the Peanuts kids. That's starting to get harder though as studios are stating to hold a tighter grip on animation. It's less a creative thought process and more business. Doris says it's colder in a behind closed doors way. I say that cold is starting to leak into the outside. So yeah, no union, especially for newly drawn stars, and well...things aren't exactly getting better.

Did we get to know our creators?

Doris did!

We all do I guess while being drawn. but it's not as personal now. I was kinda made through a committee. So there are artists who really care and I would've wanted to get to know them, but there are also execs, studio owners, managers, all hovering around to check on their investment. And once approved, you are under studio control. It's nice if the artists can stick around at the studio, but most times they're laid off once the creation is done and they need to go work at another place. This goes into that whole colder thing. From what Doris has shown me, it was a little more fun before. Animators and toons would just hang out I guess.

They would even have fun with their voice actors.

Today, studios want big celebrities to give us our voices. So they usually come in to lay down the track and then leave with the paycheck. Not all though, I heard Jack Black like to see the characters he's given a voice too. It just doesn't happen often.

Sorry it took a while to get to your question! We're trying to get a few things going right now so our timing is way off.

Also, a list of questions is always good, keep em coming!

[bellybiologist]

Streaming Tomorrow! Friday at 5pm PST!

I owe two rewards this week! The polls are pointing heavily towards 1pm being the preferred stream time. I want to let the polls go on for a bit longer before making a final decision, but if a majority prefer the earlier stream time, then I'll just permanently stream at 1pm every week. Those of you who prefer the 5pm time gotta show the fuck up if you want the time to be available! The turnout of this 5pm stream will def be taken into account, cuz even if like 20 people voting for 5pm streams exist means jack squat if none of em show up! like, c'mon. :P

=====

It will be in my discord server (+18 only!), and the discord invite code is: KUYJwJW

The code is also always in my pinned post alongside my commission info, and you don’t need to be or stay a patron to join!

For More info regarding these goals and my situation, read here!

To help fill stack these offerings:

-Ko-fi -Commission form (Still Open! Feel free to get on the list again even if I haven’t gotten to you) -Patreon -Paypal.me

Only those who support me financially can leave suggestions for the stream drawing! If you want to add a suggestion to the random stream doodle pool, you can leave it in the note on a Ko-fi or Paypal donation, on the final question of the commission form when ordering a commission, or by replying to the monthly stream reward post on patreon after becoming a patron!

Check out this Doc if you want to see what’s in the pool and what has been drawn!

Thanks everyone for your continued support!

[dreamdreamqp]

dream 09.10.22

i was rushing a sorority and it was a mostly black sorority sometimes. at one point we had to vote for people to be chairs of things for the big rush party. so like if someone wanted to be the chair of music, to the marijuana chair. but if you nominated yourself then you had to pay $25 but that would go toward your eventual dues anyway. also the event was happening in this rental venue/house that is always the rental house in my dreams. anyway at one point i was running around trying to take a shower and change into my outfit (funky capris with a green crop top and thick sandals) and all the bathrooms were taken. and this house has so many bathrooms. but after trying my fifth bathroom i was like “this is a dream i can just be showered and changed all of a sudden” and so i was. then my friend sierra from college saw my random leg tattoos and was like “i love the portrait of the woman with flowers” and then showed me her leg tattoos that were meat diagrams of sausage links and stuff. (sierra is vegetarian in real life). then the sorority announced the party was starting and that if we needed weed at any time, there would be 2 people manning a table where you could come with cash or check and they’d call the weed delivery guy for you. but they didn’t take “bicycle checks”. 

then in the banquet hall it was really random family (jeff bridges was someone’s dad) and a few sisters and by the time i got up the stairs, they were cheersing with pink rosé but i couldn’t find my seat or a clean flute. a lot of people were outside and there were huge bins of garbage under the tables. i saw my other freshman roommate and sat next to her and one of the sisters was like “the next sister who comes on…. don’t ask her her name, she’s lady gaga.” and then this woman comes out singing a gospel song with the most awful warble-y off key voice and grace and i are trying so hard to contain our laughter. then i notice there are bibles strewn about and i’m like oh it’s sunday. so a man with a mic comes out and he’s a rapping pastor (white guy). and he has barack obama’s head airbrushed on the back of his jacket. and he brings out a bunch of HUUUUGE muscle dudes with those terrible tattoos that young rappers get now where it’s just a color doodle here and there. and i guess they’re supposed to scare us… christian? but i just keep making fun of the guy at our table. and then i think that’s when i woke up. also i spent a lot of the dream replacing lightbulbs on a string of christmas lights. 

[mewberii]

Streamer!Scaramouche AU

i feel like he’d be one of the biggest streamers on his platform- probably one of those that everyone has heard of even if they’re not into watching livestreams and all

but between those who do know who he is, they either love him or hate him. no in-between

it’s kind of understandable because his attitude is not suited/can be handled by anyone

he’s brutally honest even when his opinion may be seen as rude (to him he’s just saying the truth so he doesn’t mind if people get offended)

of course he doesn’t try to be rude on purpose but i mean it as in he’ll say what he thinks

imagine he’s playing a game and he doesn’t like a certain mechanic, or he isn’t enjoying the story;

he won’t say the game is bad but he’ll openly say he doesn’t like it/it’s not for him. it makes him seem strict but tbh he’s not that hard to please and even when he complains about one or two things he still enjoys the game

he usually gives every game a chance even when from what he’s seen it doesn’t sound like a game he’ll like. if he turns out to be right he just won’t play it again and if he’s wrong he’s a little too prideful to admit he spoke a little too fast but in the end he will admit the game is good or he’s having fun

probably the kind that just knows so much about all games and all the creators and all the game-making engines and is up to date with every single news of everything video-game + streaming-related,,, how does he do it, i don’t know,,,,

and also since he’s so popular he probably gets packages from game developers with limited edition stuff or merch from different games soooo often

and he placed the ones from his favorite games in his setup room and it looks INCREDIBLE he has so much stuff

he did a room tour stream once talking about all he has, where he got everything, from his monitor to every complement of his computer and like,,,,, the cost of his setup,,,,,,, some people already know they’ll never be able to afford that in their entire life

and he already had a great setup before he even became big as a streamer so people can already guess he’s fairly rich 

also i feel like he would have started his career as a streamer without using a facecam and even like that, he already managed to get very popular because of his professional commentary of game dynamics/playability + you can tell that he’s passionate about this and also he’s very funny without even trying??

he says some stuff so casually that he doesn’t realise how funny it is

probs showed his face after he hit a very important milestone

he never considered showing his face that important but he understood why people would want to see his reactions when playing games (even tho he warned them he’s not the most expressive/dramatique person in the world and they know by now) and would want to put a face to the person who entertains them so much with his streams

and when he does show his face people go absolutely cRAZY BECAUSE he is crazy good looking (if you don’t think he’s good looking i’m sorry for your eyesight. jk i’m sorry in general i just really love him)

some people who didn’t watch his streams will even check them out because of that but literally if you come for the visuals only you won’t stay for long because as i said not anyone can handle his personality

if he sees people being superficial about him too much instead of paying attention to what’s happening in the stream, he will immediately turn the subs mode on in the chat (if he didn’t have it on already)

being rude, being disrespectful/saying discriminating stuff or anything of that sort won’t be tolerated and anyone who does it will be banned instantly

without even interrupting what he was saying before he saw the comment, he’ll just type the ban to whoever said that and go on

and his mods do the exact same. they are just as strict as him

if it ever got too much of course he wouldn’t be afraid to speak up about it and tell his chat to stop that behaviour or else, as they should already know, he won’t be afraid of banning them even if they’ve been subscribed for months or years

ANYWAYS

why do i feel like he has a super organised chat— as in instead of spamming 5 emotes per comment they all send just one and it looks so tidy and perfect

literally other streamers would be jealous of how not-messy his chat is even when he has thousands and thousands and thousands of viewers all the time

also i have this idea that maybe any of his fans would have designed him as a genshin character (which would be the design of the scaramouche we know (?))

and the little pop-ups (i don’t know the name in english rIP) thingies that show up to notify when someone subscribed or donated would be lil chibi art of that design

it’d be really cool

and since i also doodled what a stream of his could look like (i’ll show it in the future when i’m done!!) i thought that way it’d be more recognisable that the streamer is scaramouche

99% of the people who have seen him irl found him too intimidating to go ask him for a picture or tell him anything

he’s not a huge fan of taking pictures anyway + is more on the introverted/reserved side but he wouldn’t mind if someone went up to him (if he’s not busy with something) to tell him something or say they enjoy his streams

i feel like in a couple occasions he would have played a game with some subscribers and he’d like to tease them speaking with his usual tone and face (in case they’re watching the stream as they talk) so they think he’s serious

“did you watch my 12 hour stream the other day?”  -scaramouche

“ah,,,, i-” -the sub

“think well of what you’re going to answer.” -scaramouche

“i-i couldn’t watch the whole thing,,,” -the sub

“ah, is that so…?” -scaramouche 

he’ll pretend to sound disappointed but at one point he just can’t help but smirk and hold in a chuckle before telling them he’s not serious

(he literally doesn’t know how the hell he survived that stream himself because he isn’t one to stream for that long)

i feel like deep inside people who know him would know he wouldn’t say such things seriously/wouldn’t be disappointed in anyone for not watching every single minute of his streams or not even all his streams

but he says all that so seriously that it’s,,, intimidating and they’re lowkey like “god but what if he’s not joking-”

he’d play games with the other streamers sometimes but i feel like most of the type he’d play more single-player games

it’d be so funny if he plays among us with others and for example one of those others it’s childe

both of them would always be suspecting of the other first/bickering, especially scaramouche

and if one game turns out they’re both the impostors… people would know right away

like, if any of them tried to defend the other, everyone else would be like “!?! what is this? scaramouche and childe defending each other? scary”

they’d vote one of them (maybe scaramouche) out because they started guessing + saying proof of how both of them could be the impostors (but the biggest proof is them not coming for each other’s throats sNKJFNGKJS)

scaramouche would have to resist the urge to S C R E A M

needless to say he doesn’t like when he has to be impostor with childe

and unfortunately for him, fate makes it happen considerably often

i feel like at least one time scaramouche would kill next to childe and then report it and literally blame childe

and childe would be like ?!?!?!?!?? WHAT- NO- (struggles bc his brain instinct is to say ‘it was you!’ but they’re both the impostors??? how-)

and then they’d eject childe,,, and then people wouldn’t suspect of scaramouche for most of the game because ? why would he- blame his partner---

well he did it with no regrets and at the end when they all found out they found it very funny (except for childe, but even he ended up laughing in the end because what a mean strategy sjkfhdsgkj)

i have this feeling that even though they bicker so much and for any strangers it’d seem like they hate each other, when scaramouche does play online games, many times it’d be with childe?

ik they aren’t supposed to get along but for the sake of it being a modern au i don’t want bad vibes between any of the characters pls-

and everyone enjoys their dynamic and those streams always get a ton of viewers sjfhdsgkj and i’m sure both their chats would be good friends (most likely one’s fans would also be a fan of the other too)

very very very rarely (because he prefers just playing and talking while playing) he’d do streams where he doesn’t play anything but just talks with the chat, watches videos that they send him, looks at the fanart they make, just talks about games,,,,

it’d be super chill and the perfect streams for people to be doing homework/work/play games/draw or do basically anything while they listen to his stream in the background

he’d also be answering some of people’s questions about him or about his favorite games, or if he’s playing this new game that came out earlier this week,,,

“will you play ‘it takes two’ with childe?” -someone in the chat

“absolutely not. i won’t play a co-op game with him”

not even 5 days later, tweet from childe saying “streaming in 30 minutes! Scaramouche and I will be playing It Takes Two on my ch---”

anyways this will be all!! (for now?) i obviously knew genshin before this but, yesterday i could finally start playing it myself! so i feel like if not now, soon i will also write headcanons of him playing genshin! i don’t take requests but if you guys have any ideas or anything you want to say about this AU, send me an ask!! i’d love to talk about this and about genshin in general!

also, i was very inspired to write this by @baeshijima​ ! so thank you very much to her for her wonderful streamer AUs and if anyone reading this hasn’t read hers already, go check them out!! they’re amazing!!

[velvetgoldzine]

a decadent spiral has received an incredible sixty responses to the interest check!!! thank you so much, everyone- your feedback is incredibly valued. we averaged a 4.7/5 star rating for interest in either participating or buying!

charts, descriptions, and notes under the cut. 

RESULTS

[image description note: all graphs/charts have the same background, a picture of the sky at nighttime with stars visible. the top of the image is a deep navy blue that fades to a purple, magenta, then peach as the sun rises. on the horizon, there are black silhouettes of plants. end note.]

ZINE PRODUCTION.

[image description: a pie chart of varying shades of blue titled “zine production.” it is split into three: for-profit has 5.1 percent of the vote, no profit has 6.8 percent, and free pdf + paid physical items has 88.1 percent. end description.]

a decadent spiral will have free downloads of digital files– i am currently planning on both EPUB and PDF formats being available. any printed books and merch, however, will be sold for profit for charity- this will be the cost of printing + shipping, and then a markup. a donation will be made to an lgbt charity (still to be decided which) when the sale period ends.

FORMAT.

[image description: a vertical bar graph titled “format.” there are fifty-two votes for digital files, and forty-five for a printed book. end description.]

we have more than enough interest to plan on distributing a printed book along with digital files! i'm currently in the process of finalizing formats and choosing a printer.

CONTRIBUTOR INTEREST.

[image description: a horizontal bar graph titled “contributor interest.” there are four rows: thirty people have marked an interest in contributing as an artist, thirteen as writers, nine as moderators, and forty-seven as potential buyers. end description.]

my original stretch goal for contributors was fifteen, and there are more than double that number interested!!! on a slightly less professional note, when i saw this i quite literally screamed. this is so exciting 🥺

depending on the number of people that actually apply, we may have to send out rejection emails so the project doesn't get incredibly overwhelming for the mods to organize.

and the fact that nearly fifty people are interested in seeing the finished product isn't something i'd even begun to imagine!

MERCH.

[image description: a horizontal bar graph titled “merch.” there are six rows: forty-eight people are interested in posters or prints, thirty-five in buttons, twenty-four in pins, twenty-two in keychains, sixteen in digital merch, and six are not interested in merch at all. end description.]

people are definitely interested in prints and buttons, so we'll likely prioritize those (and maybe stickers as a bonus?) as they're relatively straightforward to produce- enamel pins, keychains, and the like tend to take a lot of check-ins and test copies ordered.

SHIPS.

[image description: a pie chart of varying shades of purple titled “ships in the zine.” it is split into three: no ships has 1.7 percent of the vote, not the main focus has 37.9 percent, and yes ships has 60.3 percent. end description.]

the vast majority of people voted to allow ships, so they'll absolutely be allowed in the zine- creators will have free choice over whether their piece focuses on the relationship between two characters or not!

CHARACTERS.

[image description: a horizontal bar graph titled “characters.” there are five rows: jack fairy has six votes, the flaming creatures have three, curt wild has six, arthur stuart has three, and mandy slade has two. no other characters are listed. end description.]

this option is not indicative of the only characters that will be included in the zine- it's more of a guide for which characters we should make sure are featured in at least a few pieces, so if your faves aren't on here, don't worry! they'll still be in the zine. jack, mandy, and the creatures will finally be getting the attention they deserve though <3

INFORMATION THAT'S NOT IN CHARTS / GRAPHS.

SUGGESTIONS!

a playlist to go along with the zine

nonfiction pieces - on characters and their real life counterparts

gerard way

to respond:

i absolutely love the idea of a playlist! it will probably be a lower priority on the to-do list, but i think it'd be cool if each contributor picked a song or two to accompany their piece.

nonfiction pieces about characters will definitely be allowed. i'd like to discuss with a few other people if pieces about real-life counterparts should be allowed as fics about real people are definitely not- this will be clarified when guidelines are posted later today or tomorrow!

and to whoever wrote that they wanted to see gerard way- i will put a doodle of him in there somewhere i prommy.

[childrenofmeyneth]

Machina-centric Sea-faring based AU

I'm doing a little exercise where people voted on what kinda AU I should make, and I make an AU based on it! It's an AU that'll basically be f2u if you see it and like the concept a lot and wanna expand in your own way, I guess is a way to put it?

Let's go, then, under the cut. Starting with: basic lore of this AU

The world is set in an endless sea, one people are slowly starting to explore more. There's only two known actual land masses, but also a bunch of artificial ones set up by Homs.

Homs and Nopon are naturally land-based, while High Entia and Machina are sea-based

High Entia are merfolk -- instead of headwings they have headfins!

Machina are deep sea monsters, bioluminescent the lot of them. Think... sea serpents but make them mermaids.

Machina also have full-on sea serpent forms and fully humanoid forms. Usually, they take on the merfolk-like forms, however!

Machina are huge. Like. Big Enough To Constrict and Break Your Ship Huge

Both Machina and High Entia can breathe out of the water, but are more comfortable breathing in the sea

Similarly, Nopon can breathe in either but prefer the feeling out of water most of the time (those that prefer breathing in the sea often move to Alcamoth).

Homs, however, cannot naturally breathe underwater. A kiss from a High Entia or a Machina can allow them to breathe underwater, a bit uncomfortably.

High Entia are more likely to do this, as they can have children with Homs. Machina only do it when necessary to save lives, as Homs are often afraid of their appearance.

Face Pilots equivalent in this are Homs who are cursed to turn into sea monsters similar to the Machina whenever submerged in water.

Meyneth is the Goddess of Darkness, Zanza is the God of Life. This is reflected in where their creations live (Homs/Nopon/High Entia live above sea/places in the sea where sunlight reaches. Machina live in the depths of the Endless Sea)

The curse affecting some Homs has unknown uses, though it was definitely made by Meyneth. The reason for it has been lost to time.

Machina seem to see this as more of a blessing, when not forced on someone and instead something chosen by the Homs

One of the real pieces of land houses Frontier Village, the other a Homs colony. Underwater both Alcamoth and Agniratha exist!

Agniratha is full of lights, for the sake of Homs who were too injured to be taken back to the surface. Machina can survive on the low light they generate, but Homs cannot.

Homs often travel the seas in ships with crews, setting out to see how far they can travel through the sea. Nopon often join them on their journies.

Pirating has become quite the norm, due to cutthroats being the type to often venture out further. High risks, high rewards, and all that.

These wrecks are often where both High Entia and Machina find Homs that they kiss and take to their cities.

Now some general plot things:

Land is limited, and it's a problem. There are resources underwater, and tech to look down there is becoming more common... But that leads to High Entia and Machina being more known.

High Entia are more easily accepted by Homs as they look a bit more Homs-like... Machina are terrifying, though.

Agniratha is basically in danger because of this. High Entia never liked them much, anyway, so they aren't much help.

This is where the curse comes into play. It started popping up around the time Homs started pushing against the Machina. Homs think it's a trick of some sort by the Machina to scare them away.

This just makes tensions Worse!!!

Now to get Machina focused!:

Egil is the reason the curse started going off like it does. The other Machina are not pleased with this and it puts tension between them all.

Egil believes it must be done, to show them they are not threats like Homs think. Why else would Meyneth leave them this curse?

Vanea, meanwhile, is having a crisis of faith. She believes in Meyneth with all her heart, she really does... But why would their kind goddess leave a blessing that can so easily be turned into a curse?

She pulls away from people a lot because of this. This sweet girl known for always checking on others pulls in on herself a lot, studying texts left by Meyneth.

She often argues with Egil, tries to make him step back. He accuses her of not knowing what Meyneth wants and it makes the crisis... worse!

These siblings are not alright and the rift grows more and more the more Egil uses the curse! :,)

On the other end of things, Linada is starting to question her job as a doctor. More and more Machina are getting hurt by Homs...

She wonders if there's much of a point, wearing herself so thin like this when she just can't keep up with the injuries and illnesses. But she can't stop -- they need her.

Radzam, meanwhile, is keeping things as calm as he can between the Homs living in Agniratha and the Machina.

If they start pointing fingers at each other, things will get worse for all of them, right?

In my hc these two are cousins, so that carries over here, too. Both are stretched thin, but only Radzam seems to want to do something about it.

Linada and Radzam act as confidants for Vanea, often trying to counsel her through her crisis of faith and her issues with Egil, to varying effects.

Meanwhile, they butt heads with Egil. He's making their job harder but he believes this is the only way to make Homs understand. Linada nearly strangles him at some point.

At the very least, the latter three can keep Egil from outright attacking Homs directly. Egil takes chances inflicting the blessing-slash-curse on drowning Homs, instead.

Linada specializes in helping these Homs adjust to this change in their life if she's able to get her hands on them. Radzam supports her however he can.

Vanea blames herself a bit because guess what! She gave Egil the needed text to understand the curse! Oopsie doodle!

[your-denki-kun]

The Past Should Stay The Past

Kirishima x bakugou

Warning: Suicide attempt, negative thoughts, mentioning of voices, angst, mentioning of bullying, depression, deep thoughts, shitty writing

What: Angst with good ending

A/N: So fun fact I first wanted this to be a story in Bakugou’s point of view, but then I got the idea to make it like a diary thing and ended up making this. I hope you guys enjoy and feel free to make requests, I don’t do smut.

~???? pov.~

It happened three days ago. No one saw it coming and yet it didn't come as a surprise. Funny how those things work from time to time. We hadn't seen Bakugou in about a day and started to get faintly worried, because no matter what he did to Midoriya in the past he's still our classmate. The reason we got worried is because Bakugou always leaves his room at least once a day.

We voted on who was going to check and it had been me, when it comes to Bakugou it's almost always me. So I went up to his room, not really bothered by having to check up on him because I'm worried and sometimes I hear strange sounds coming from his room when it's silent in mine. I had knocked on his door only for it to stay silent.

After a bit I knocked again, yet I didn't get an answer. I told him I was coming in and tried opening the door, but it was locked, so I kicked open the door. That's when I saw it. He was laying in the middle of his room, on the floor with foam escaping his mouth as he was trashing on the floor.

''BAKUGOU!!!'' I had yelled as I ran over to him and pulled him onto his side so he wouldn't choke.

I remember screaming for someone to call and ambulance. Sero, who had followed me up, glanced inside the room confused and quickly called an ambulance as he told everyone else to stay away from the room. It didn't take long for the ambulance people to come and take him with them.

That brings us to now, three days after that. School has been canceled for the rest of the week for us to recover from the shock. This is my first day back at the dorms, seeing I have been with Bakugou since he got brought into the hospital. I'm in his room now, looking for clues as to why. Soon I find his diary and after contemplating for a bit I open it and start reading.

'Okay, I ain't going to make it sappy and write all the classic shit, I'm just going to write down my fucking thoughts or whatever. I read it worked on the internet. So....It's been a few weeks since everything started. Random extra's have been whispering comments about me to each other while giving me disapproving glances and glares. I don't fucking get why it's getting to me but whatever.

I've also been noticing the shitty extra's from the squad have been distancing themselves from me. They no longer want my help studying and more often than not they hang out without me. For some shitty reason it makes me feel really shitty. God this shit is stupid.'

I read on the first page. My eyes tear up as I flip to the next page.

'Been about four days since I last wrote in this shitty thing. Today shit got physical. This bitch purposefully bumped into me and then kicked me before laughing and walking off with her shitty friends. Fucking bitch.

Shit is becoming weird when I'm alone. I will hear these shitty voice that tell me fucked up things, it leaves when I have others to focus on. No one wants to fucking be around me however, so that is shit. I hope these shitty voices will leave before I go fucking mental. I think I might be writing in this shitty thing again because it makes my chest feel lighter for a bit or some shit.

God I sound so fucking sappy right fucking now. Guess that's what happens to people when you get emotionally overwhelmed.

The shitty extra's have stopped talking to me. I removed myself from the shitty group chat. Life has become so fucking dull now. God I hate to fucking admit it but I miss them. God I really am turning into a fucking sap. This shit is stupid.'

I feel a few tears falling as I read what he wrote. I'm glad that even when he writes he's vulgar, because that means he was still feeling like himself somewhat, but what he writes is so sad and depressing. The page beside it has random doodles on it which I can't really make out, so I flip the page and start reading the next one.

'Welp, I'm writing in this thing again. It's been, uhm. three weeks I think since the last time I wrote in this. I should really put dates on these pages, but I'm to tired to do that. Sleeping is hard for me the last three days. Every time I close my eyes I see bad memories of the past. Deku, if you ever read this, I'm so sorry for what I did.

I could never say that to you in real life, because that means showing you I'm defeated. That's right, I'm defeated. I'm slowly breaking and no one sees. The last week I cried more than I have in all the time I’ve been alinve. I cry myself to sleep and no one notices. Guess that's my fault though, I’ve always been a distant person.

I'm glad concealer was invented, because it helps me with hiding the bags under my eyes. I can't hide the deadness of my eyes however, but it's not like anyone notices so what's there to hide? The voices are wining, slowly. It's becoming harder to fight them and they pester me every minute of the day.

The shit I doodle on the side of my note books and papers have also taken a dark turn, just like my mind. Yesterday I drew a black figure hanging from a noose that was attached to the ceiling. A chair was on the ground. The figure was tired of everything, just like me. Funny how something as simple as words can change a person.

Sometimes the voices tell me to end it. I won't. Not yet at least. And I already established that if I do end it, I won't hang myself. It's too slow and painful. I think I'll either slit my wrist or OD. It feels weird writing that down. God I really hope no one ever reads this shit.

I've been silent in classes, barely talk anymore. The only times I talk is to answer a question from a teacher. My classmates don't talk to me anymore, not even when we're teamed up during hero training. It's weirdly lonely, which is new for me. Guess I deserve to be alone however, so I don't really deserve to complain about it.

How did Dek Izuku deal with my shit for so long? I can't even deal with it for four shitty months and he dealt with it for eleven years. I really am weak, just like everybody always tells me. Even the hag thinks I'm weak. Can't disagree anymore though. I wonder if any noticed how silent I've become. Guess they don't, but still. This is stupid.'

Tears stream down my face as I read what he wrote down. It takes up about two pages of the diary and it's breaking my heart even more than it's already broken. As I read a few more pages I notice how every thing is becoming more depressing and depressing. One page catches my attention however.

'Izuku told his friends about what I did when we were younger. Uraraka told the others and now I really don't have anyone left. I deserve it though.

The voices are annoying as hell and won't stop degrading me and telling me to end it. In a way I get where they're coming from. Guess this is what you get for bullying your childhood friend.

Is loneliness supposed to hurt so much? Don't know. Can't really ask anyone either. Guess I'll be pondering about that for a while now. The voices will probably tell me this is nothing. Guess it isn't. God I should be stronger. What the fuck am I doing here?'

I flip the page and read a few more before another one catches my attention.

'It's decided. The day after tomorrow I'll OD, cutting hurts too much and is too slow. People could find me easily when I cut myself. If I OD it isn't very painful, but not painless and it will be quick. It will end my misery fasted, yet still a bit painful.

I drew another suicide drawing. In this one a black figure is standing on top of a building, an empty bottle behind them on the roof and foam spilling from their mouth. The figure is half leaning off it, arms spread as they're just about to fall. I drew one after it, the same figure, but now on the ground surrounded by blood as their body is broken and bloodied.

I’m gonna stop writing in this now. The only things I'll be writing is letters to the people I care about. This is stupid.'

I drop the diary and wipe at my eyes, trying to get a clearer view before getting up and stumbling around his room to find the letters he was talking about. As I open the drawer of his desk I see one single envelope with my name on it. I grab it with shaking hands before turning it around and opening it. I pull out the papers with writing on it and start reading.

'Hey Kirishima,

No idea if you'll even read this, but deep down I hope you do. The only hope I have at the moment. I don't know if you've noticed, but the past half year I’ve been getting bullied. People will beat me up, call me things and talk about me as if I'm not there. I know I shouldn't let it get to me, but I'm not as strong as Izuku.

I have never been. That's why I bullied him, because even though he didn't have his quirk back then, he was still better than me and I hated that. I thought that if I bullied him it would stop and he would break and I would be better, but it didn't work. The reason I wanted to be better is because people told me I was better than him.

If you found this you've been looking around my room, I don't blame you. I have a feeling you found my book in which I wrote first, seeing it was pretty much out in the open. No one would have found it, but I know you did. You know my room better than any one else because you've been here the most.

If you've read it you know why I did this, if you didn't read it.... I OD'ed because I didn't see the point in living. The voices in my head have been telling me to do this for a long time. I finally decided to give in. And here we are.

On the one hand I hope someone finds me and is able to safe me. On the other hand I hope no one finds me until it's too late. I can't take this anymore and I know that makes me weak, but I've already accepted I’m weak a long time ago. Well....Not that long, but for about four months now.

Don't be sad. Please don't be. There is no point in being sad. I....Well, I didn't deserve to be here in the first place, at UA. For some fucked up reason I got accepted however. I got kidnapped and ended All Might, I ruined everyone's lives and got us all in trouble. I guess that was the time shit changed.

I got kidnapped and ever since things have been going down hill. The hag called me weak, you guys had to safe me because I couldn't safe myself, I ended All Might, got you all in trouble, failed my provisional license exam, got into a fight with Izuku and got us on house arrest, I almost lost you.

That really hurt me. When they told me you had gotten hurt while saving Eri. I think that's when I realized what you are to me. That must confuse you...Let me explain. Ever since I met you you have always wanted to be my friend. I still don't know why you wanted to be my friend, but I'm glad.

Maybe that's why I got into UA, to meet you. Anyway, I'm getting side tracked. At first I hated you for wanting to be my friend, I didn't see the point of having any. Soon you showed me that having friends is great however. You and the others were never too bothered by my behavior and stuck with me.

No one has ever stuck with me for as long as you guys did. My past friends just used me for a good image at school. Soon you became my best friend, after the sport festival to be precise. You are my first best friend after Izuku. You stuck with me, made me laugh and smile. You were always there for me.

When you reached out to me that day I knew you'd always have my back. And then you got hurt. You were unconscious and in the hospital. It was then I realized I love you, Eijirou Kirishima. So, so much. I snuck into your dorm and stole a hoodie which I put around a pillow and hugged every night until you were back here at the dorms.

But all good things must come to an end. You realized how I truly am and decided that that is not what you want as a friend. I understand that, I do. Don't feel bad for leaving me behind, never ever feel bad about that.

Like the stupid audio I used to listen to says; I'm used to it. I'm used to people walking out of my life, I'm used to people talking bad about me, I'm used to people pretending to be my friends, I'm used to being let down, I'm used to being lied to, I'm used to being heartbroken.

You didn't let me down thought. Never did you let me down. God, you exceeded all my expectations. Don't ever change yourself, no matter what people say. Because that's the biggest mistake of my life, changing because others wanted me to. I hope that when you read this letter you understand I'm not the vulgar person I let everybody believe I am.

I'm actually a kind, caring person. But because of my quirk people expected me to be different, so I changed so they wouldn't be let down. I care a lot about what others think and being angry is my mask. When I'm angry people won't notice I'm hurting or happy or anything. They just see me being angry.

This is a long letter, sorry about that. I just wanted to get everything off my chest even if no one ever reads this. You are the best friend I could ever hope for so continue being a great person, become the best hero out there. Make me proud. Well, I already am so proud of you, but make me even prouder.

I love you, Eijirou Kirishima.

Yours truly, Katsuki.'

Tears stream down my face as I collaps to the floor and sob. That's all I can manage to do except for clutching the letter to my chest. I sob and sob and sob until I feel arms wrap around me. I glance up and see gold hair. I clutch onto Kaminari as I sob into his chest. He simply rubs my back as he holds me.

I don't know how long we sat there, only that it was a long time. When I finally manage to calm down I break my hug with Kaminari and wipe at me face, getting rid of all the snot and tears. I look at Kaminari with what I can only imagine, red puffy eyes as he looks at me worried, but also a bit confused.

''What happened?'' Kaminari asks softly, almost as if he's scared to speak up.

''B-Bakubro...He......He left me a letter.'' I whisper back, voice hoarse from crying.

''I see...What was it about?''

I silently hand him the letter. He takes it gently and reads it. I just watch him as different emotions show on his face as he comes to different parts of the letter. When he finishes he looks at me with tear brimmed eyes. His hands are shaking as he looks so sad and conflicted. I simply take the letter for him and place it on the ground beside me.

''Yeah...'' Is all I manage to mumble as I look back up at him.

''He...He was hurting so much....How..How didn't we notice?'' Kaminari stammers in disbelieve.

''Like he said...He hid it.......I....I’m gonna go.'' I mumble as I get up and walk out of the room.

I walk downstairs and out of the dorms, ignoring the worried questions form my classmates. I get onto the buss and ride it to the hospital. As I arrive I silently walk up to his room. I hesitate before walking into his room. I stare at the door for a while before slowly opening it. The room is empty except for Bakugou's bed and the machines he's hooked up to.

'His parents must have left.' I think as I walk over to the chair beside the bed. I sit down on it and take Bakugou's hand in mine. It's warmer than when he got here, but it's still cold compaired to how warm they usually are. I stare at his hand as my eyes tear up once again. With my free hand I wipe at my eyes.

''Wake up...Please...I need you.'' I sniffle as I feel more and more tears streaming down my face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I slowly open my eyes when I feel something shift. As I sit up I groan and rub at my burning eyes. I hear another groan and look at the source wide-eyed. Bakugou has a troubled look at his face as his head moves from side to side, mumbled words and groans leaving him. I jump up and push the alarm button that's attached to the bed.

''What's wrong?'' A nurse asks as she walks into the room.

''He's stirring and groaning.'' I explain with wide eyes as I look at her.

''I see, that must mean he's waking up.'' She states as she walks over and checks the machines and his IV drip.

''So it's a good sign?'' I ask with a hopeful glint in my eyes

''Yes.'' She chuckles.

As if on cue Bakugou's eyes shoot open and his whole body tenses up. The nurse gently removes his mask before rubbing soothing circles on his shoulders, trying to get him to relax. Slowly it works and his eyes go back to normal as he relaxes onto the bed. Slowly he moves his head to look at the nurse who's smiling gently at him.

''Who found me?'' He croaks out as he winches slightly.

''This young man did.'' The nurse says as she looks at me.

Bakugou turns his head to look at me. As soon as our eyes meet his widen in shock as mine tear up for the millionth time this day. I jump up and hug him tight, being mindful of all the wires, and sob into his shoulder. He just lays there, staring at the ceiling as he's frozen in his spot. I can hear the nurse excusing herself before she walks out.

''I'm so sorry! I shouldn't have left you behind! Don't ever do this again! I'm sorry!'' I sob as I hold him tighter.

''Kirishima......You..You found me?'' Bakugou asks in a weak and shocked voice.

''Yes! We were worried and I went to check up on you. You were shaking and foam was coming out of your mouth. I was so scared...Sorry.'' I say, voice getting weaker the longer I talk, as I break the hug and look at his face.

''The letter.''

''I found it and read it. I love you too, so don't do this again. Please.''

''I...You love me?''

''Yes. Of course I do silly. Promise me that you won't do this again. Promise you'll come to me when you feel down. Please, I can't loose you.'' I beg him.

''....Promise.'' He whispers, the look of shock still not leaving his face.

''Good. This is going to be shitty timing, but.....Will you be my boyfriend?''

''Yes.'' He whispers, a glint I can't place in his eyes.

I smile and hug him again, nuzzling my face in his neck and placing a small kiss on it. Katsuki slowly wraps his arms around me and holds me close with the little strength his body holds right now. I instinctively hold him tighter when I notice just how little strength he has. Katsuki chuckles in respons.

''I love you, Katsuki.'' I whisper against his neck.

''I love you too, Eijirou.'' Katsuki whispers back.

[honeyhan-123]

The Artist ~ I

Summary: When Steve meets the reader at an art class he immediately becomes enticed and maybe, just maybe, she can help heal his wounded heart.

Warnings: None for this chapter but smut will be present in later chapters

Pairings: Steve x reader, Steve x Bucky

AN: I meant to post this tomorrow but I realised today was Chris Evans’ birthday as well as @jtargaryen18​ who inspired me to start writing so I decided to post it early in celebration. This is also the first chapter of my entry to @that-damn-girl​ pride writing challenge. I would like to say a massive thank you to @imanuglywombat​ for the absolutely stunning moodboard and @magdaleneruth​ for being an awesome beta! 

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He couldn’t believe it. 

Even watching the flyer hang from the board on the wall with his own two eyes, Steve could barely remember the conversation with Nat that led to this moment as he was sat on a bench outside a classroom for the first time in eighty years. 

He hadn’t drawn seriously in decades, probably since before the Battle of New York. The rest had just been little doodles, here and there. Nothing really came from it. But here he was  standing in the doorway of a studio, ready for a life drawing class. 

Steve couldn’t understand the nerves racking his body—he was Captain America for crying out loud, he’s been in far worse situations than attending an art class. 

Why on earth couldn’t he bring himself to walk through a silly little doorway? He was pulled from his thoughts by a soft delicate voice. 

‘Excuse me...’ He was pulled from his thoughts by a voice, soft and delicate. His head snapped to the left, his jaw drifting slightly ajar as he took you in. ‘Are you headed inside?’ You were dressed casually, a warm jacket over what was clearly a man’s button down shirt and your jeans had little doodles on the rough denim canvass. Little splats of paint here and there coated the entire look.  Steve didn’t know quite why, but he was immediately enticed. 

‘I - uh, yeah. I am, sorry I’m in your way.’ He hastily moved out of the doorway, gesturing for you to enter first but you didn’t make a move as your eyes clearly sized him up and he was thankful he had pulled the dark blue baseball cap low over his brow. It wasn’t much in terms of a disguise but that paired with the thick beard that coated his jaw made it harder for the average person to recognise him.

‘Is this your first drawing class?’ You framed it as a question, but it was clear you already knew the answer.

He nodded a little sheepishly. ‘How could you tell?’

‘You just seem a little nervous. Don’t worry, though. It’s really not as scary as it might seem. I remember when I first signed up, I was terrified that someone would say I wasn’t good enough for the class. I could barely keep my hands steady. So, naturally, that turned out to be one of the worst drawings of my life but no one said a word. You have nothing to worry about - you don’t need to prove yourself here.’ 

‘Anytime, but if you are going to come in I suggest you do it sooner rather than later. Madame Maxine absolutely hates tardiness and it’s nearly seven.’ You gave him a small but genuine smile before you excused yourself, your hips swaying slightly as you walked through the doorway and over to an easel. 

He let out a sigh of relief when you’d left - it gave him some privacy to hype himself up and quiet the inner critic screaming his anxieties.Taking a steadying breath, he followed your footsteps and headed for an unclaimed easel towards the back as the rest of the class made idle chit chat, clearly all familiar with one another as they readied themselves for the lesson.

He rolled out his shoulders before sitting on the small stool, pulling his sketchbook and set of charcoal pencils from his satchel. It was a mixed media class and Steve watched in awe as some people set canvases up on their easels, their palets already covered with various colours of paint. 

He felt woefully underprepared with his worn leather bound sketchbook and collection of pencils, but it was how he had always drawn. His mother had barely been able to afford the splurge for real drawing pencils, nevermind paints or canvases. 

There was a portly man standing in the corner of the room stretching his muscles this way and that, and he figured this must be their model for the day. Most of the drawing Steve had done in the past few years had been of inanimate objects, it was much easier than asking one of his many busy friends to sit still for a few hours as he drew them. If he’d felt more in the mood for a portrait, he generally used photographs as a reference point, so having a real live model would be a nice change.

A few more minutes passed before an elderly woman entered the room. Her hair was grey and her curls frayed out in every direction from the messy bun she has tied it in. She wore a green and yellow bandana around her face keeping her hair away and a matching flowy dress with a dark blue half apron tied around her waist. Immediately, Steve knew this woman had to be Maxine. 

She clapped her hands together, drawing the class’s attention as she neared the front of the room. ‘Good evening, I am Maxine Winnefred and I will be your instructor over the next few weeks as we explore the human form. I recognise some of you from my Summer course focussed on the true form of still life in fruits and flowers, and I would just like to say it’s lovely to see you all again.’ She smiled as her eyes rested on those who must be the familiar faces. 

‘To the new faces in the room, there are a few things you should know about me.While I do understand everyone has lives outside of the art world, tardiness remains unacceptable as a hard and fast rule–especially where live models are concerned. Secondly, whether about your own piece or someone else’s, I will not stand for any negative thoughts. We are all here to learn and the only way you can truly achieve that is with a positive mindset. If you feel negatively about a particular piece of yours, you must think of it as a stepping stone. What did you do wrong? What can you improve on next time? The human form is incredibly complicated and it may take a while getting used to if you’re not familiar with it.’

‘Since you have all elected to pay for the entire course, if for some reason you are unable to make it to a session, I also run a Thursday night class. You must call me and let me know that you will be attending that class as I will need to make sure there are enough easels and stools. I will hand out my number at the end of class. Are there any questions?’ 

Although it had barely been five minutes, Steve could already tell he would enjoy this class, especially being under Maxine’s tutelage. She had a no nonsense air that was rare to find in the art world and despite this being a fairly casual, once a week type of get together, Steve knew she took her work seriously. She wanted all of her pupils to be their best. 

The room fell into silence as her eagle eye flickered around the sea of faces. When moments had passed in silence, she continued. 

‘This is Jerry,’ she held her arm out, becaning the man over. ‘He will be our first model. We will be drawing him for the first two weeks, once with clothes and once without, we will then move onto our next model and the same process will follow.’ Everyone nodded their heads in understanding but Steve felt his cheeks flush slightly. He had known that there would be nude models and he knew that it was all purely professional but still… the small kid from the forties never would have even thought about doing something like this. 

‘Right. Jerry,’ she clapped her hands again, eyes locked on just where her model would go in the scene. ‘If you could please get into position A, we can get started. To the class, we’ll have him sit for an hour and twenty minutes. Then another hour after that with a break in between. Somewhere in there we’ll have a vote on whether or not we would like to see a new pose or the same.’ Maxine checked the time as Jerry found his seating on the lone stool in the front of the room. Once he was in position, she prompted the class to begin.

Although he’d been wanting to avoid detection, Steve was deeply regretting choosing a seat so far from the front. On the surface level, his better than average eyesight would be acceptable - and yet, being the perfectionist that he was, he wanted to get up and close with Jerry. He wanted to be able to mark every tiny blemish on his skin, every line of sadness or laughter.

Steve sighed to himself before he picked up his HB pencil, getting to work on his main outline. He hadn’t been working long when he felt a presence at his shoulder, peering over at his work. He’d just finished the vague outline of Jerry’s clothes and the stool beneath him when she spoke. ‘Back in my day, it was considered rude to wear a hat indoors, Mr…?’

He had to at least try and hide his smile over her words, being at least forty years her senior. 

‘Just Steve.’ Quickly he swiped the cap from his head, placing it down in his satchel on the floor. ‘I’m sorry ma’am.’

‘That’s okay son, just don’t let it happen again.’ She gave him a small smile before setting off, perusing the pieces of the other artists and Steve got back to work. 

+

His neck ached from the awkward position it had been contorted to for the past ninety minutes. He could feel the muscles in his hand beginning their protest. It had been a long time since he’d drawn so intently and he wasn’t used to it quite yet.

He stood from his stool, stretching out his back as he did so, wandering over to the small table of refreshments after a few moments. He swiped a lemon biscuit from the tray, catching sight of you from his periphery. You were gesturing wildly as you chatted up an older fellow. Your face was the picture of sincerity and Steve couldn’t help but smile as he eavesdropped. 

‘One of these days you have to teach me your shading technique, Albert. The way you make a simple shadow have so much depth and colour is incredible,’ you gushed.

‘So long as you teach me how you do the detail work around the eyes. Whenever I try, they just come out looking blank!’ he shot back with a smile on his lips. 

‘It’s a deal.’ You held your hand jokingly Albert took it, shaking it vigorously as you chuckled. Feeling his eyes on you, your head quirked in Steve’s direction and you quickly excused yourself.

Steve tried to busy himself and pretend that he hadn’t been caught awkwardly staring at you but your footsteps were growing closer by the second.

‘So? How are you feeling, newbie? Not as daunting as you thought, huh?’ There was a small teasing smile playing along the corner of your lips and Steve couldn't help but laugh along with you. 

‘I really don’t know why I was so nervous, but what you said… Well, it really helped. So, thank you for that. I assume you took Maxine’s summer course?’ he asked, trying to make conversation.

‘Yeah, it was a fruit and flower class, plus I also took her winter human form class before that. I fell hard for portraits, so I just knew I had to take it again this year.’ Steve nodded in understanding, taking a class this way was the perfect opportunity to work on portraiture. ‘And what about yourself? I may have snuck a peek at your easel. You have an incredible eye from what I can tell. How did you capture such detail in only pencils?’

Steve felt his face heat as he took your compliment. ‘I’m honestly not quite sure, but I’ve had a lot of practice. Growing up, I was bedridden more often than not and my best friend used to come over and sit with me for hours. I probably know his face better than my own.’ He felt the familiar pang that echoed around his heart every time he thought of Bucky and those days that stretched into nights when all he would do was stare at the other man, trying to capture his beauty on the page. Steve forced himself to shake off the memories to try and keep his tone light. He hadn’t intended on saying something so personal but there was just something about you that made him want to let down his guard and that was dangerous. 

‘Really? You were bedridden?’ Your mouth gaped slightly and Steve couldn’t help but notice the way your eyes danced slightly down his body. ‘But you look so perfect now - I mean, uh. You look… You look very healthy.’

He smiled, trying not to laugh as dread coated your face. He’s reminded so much of the man he left behind all those years ago…the boy in the back of the car, driving through Brooklyn, although he had to admit, you were far cuter than he had ever been.

‘How long have you been painting for?’ Steve tried to brush the conversation away, he liked talking to you just as a fellow artist and he wasn’t ready for you to recognise him. ‘You’re very talented.’

‘Oh, it’s just sort of a hobby that I do in my spare time. I went to uni and got an Arts degree, but you know how it goes. It only gets you so far in the real world.’ 

‘If you’re not an artist, what do you do for a living?’

‘I’m a secretary at a law firm.’ He nodded trying to maintain control of his thoughts. Being a secretary wasn’t a filler job for a woman any more. Not like it had been in his day. ‘You?’

‘Oh…’ The question took him completely by surprise and his mind went blank. He needed to think fast. ‘I uh… I work for Stark Enterprises. I’m on his PR team.’ Steve tried to justify it in his mind as it wasn’t a complete lie he was a part of the PR team. Plus, he couldn’t have said he was a scientist or something. It would have been clear he was lying if you asked him any type of even remotely science question. 

‘Ah, maybe that’s why you look kind of familiar. Are you a part of his press conferences?’ 

Steve nodded, feeling his throat start to tighten. He wasn’t ready for this to end. Call him selfish but he didn’t want this to end. For someone to treat him as he was, rather than who he was. He hadn’t felt so at home with himself, with someone else, in a long time.

He was saved from further interrogation by the chime of a bell. The ten minute break was up. The group had already opted to keep Jerry in the same reclined pose, so he quickly found his position and the class returned to their sketching. 

While Steve tried to keep his eyes focussed on his drawing, he couldn’t help the constant flicker of his eyes over to where to sat, paintbrush in hand, looking like one of the Greek Muses. 

He only prayed you were one of the merciful ones. 

+

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[trashfor-imagines]

If There’s Light There’s Hope | 3

Bakugou x Fem!Reader (BNHA)

Summary: U.A. High School was your dream. You wanted to save people. You never expected how wild your journey would be and you certainly never expected a hot headed boy to play as large of a role as he would. Warnings: Swearing

[1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5] | [6] | [7]

-

Mr. Aizawa and All Might arrived at your parent’s home a few days later to discuss students moving into dorms on campus. It was a little embarrassing to have these Pro-Heroes over. Your parents weren’t very wealthy so your home was quite sparse and simple. Your mom was always worried about money, your dad was constantly overworked. To your relief, your parents didn’t put up any kind of a fight. They had been pissed that as regular civilians they couldn’t keep you from sneaking out and getting involved in that mess. Your parents figured that living under the watchful eye of Pro-Heros would be more affective in keeping you safe.

It didn’t take long to move in three days later. Bakugou hadn’t spared you a single glance since he arrived. In fact, when you took a step toward him to just say “hi,” he walked off, moving to stand further away. You had to meet with Aizawa and the rest of your class where you were given a terrifying speech about being on the verge of expulsion before being given room assignments. When Aizawa was done, you immediately headed in, not bothering to see why Bakugou pulled Kaminari aside after the meeting.

You were one of the first ones to finish unpacking and you were relaxing in the common room after having showered, dressed in black high waisted leggings and a super cropped peach colored hoodie with the kanji for PLUS ULTRA on your chest. You had slipped your feet into a pair of cute fluffy bear slippers your parents got you as a moving present. It was thoughtful and it wasn’t often they could afford to buy you things. Most of your money came from saving up on your birthday or other special holiday occasions; sometimes you sold little handmade items at markets and worked different odds and ends type of jobs. The slippers really meant a lot to you.

One by one, your classmates started coming in to the common area, joining you. Kirishima plopped down beside you and struck up conversation with the boys. Soon after, the girls arrived and Ashido made the suggestion that we should show off our rooms. It was interesting to see everyone’s personality shine in how they chose to decorate. Soon it was turned into a competition and you were instantly disinterested.

Last to show for the girls, you felt a bit burdened by having to do this, but it was too late to back out now. Opening the door, you took a step back, letting your classmates file in.

Your room had a white, peach, and golden color scheme. The most notable thing in your room when you first walked in was the large half-cork / half-whiteboard mood board you hung on the left wall near the door. It was filled with ideas and inspiration, motivational quotes, newspaper clippings, hand written notes and cards, pictures, and doodles; every item placed aesthetically. Below it was a low traditional white coffee table with a cute assortment of succulents and some magazines on top of it; plush pillows were tucked neatly underneath it for seating purposes. The walls had fresh white paint and on the floor you had taken a large light grey rug and pieced it carefully to act as a soft and fluffy carpet. Actual carpet would have been insanely complicated to get installed.

Past the coffee table on the same wall, your bed was pushed against the far left corner with the foot of your bed against half the large sliding glass window so you could still lay in bed and look outside if you wanted; you made sure it didn’t block the other half of the window that slid open so you could go out onto the shared balcony. You had hung soft white curtains so that during the day the sun could still light up your room. 

Across from the bed, in the far right corner, there were cute succulents and little snow globes carefully placed on the very full book shelf and a comfy large velvety peach armchair close to the sliding glass door so you could read by the window. There were string lights strung up along the ceiling that gave your room that soft golden glow. Cute clips were used to attach polaroids of you with your family and friends to strings carefully draped and pinned to the wall above your bed in place of a head board and on the walls above your armchair and book shelf. Next to your reading area, since you had minimal clothing, your clothes hung on a fashionable garment rack with wheels and shelves for your shoes; you kept your underwear and other personal items tucked away in the sliding drawers under your bed. There was also a large full length mirror against the wall beside it.

After removing the rod in your original closet, you placed your desk in there, keeping the shelf for storage. Your reasoning for this was so that you could close the doors when you didn’t want to look at your work space. Sometimes studying gave you anxiety and you just wanted to relax after being at school all day. On the space above your desk hung a white board calendar and cork board, cute polaroids pinned to it. One of your favorite pictures was taken by Todoroki. At the end of your internship you submitted a written request to Endeavor for a photo with him. It had been pure dumb luck that his publicist had been there at the time and got him to agree with it.

“(Y/N) your room is so cute!” the girls squealed in delight.

“The string lights really make it romantic!” Uraraka chimed in.

The girls turned to the boys, waiting to hear their input. Mineta seemed to be sweating up a storm, but you refrained from asking if he was ok. That boy was certainly never ok.

“It’s lovely.” Todoroki spoke up plainly.

Kaminari and Kirishima slung their arms around each other and enthusiastically voiced in unison, “If we had girlfriends we’d hope their rooms looked like yours!”

Jirou and Hagakure quickly bonked them on the heads.

“It is certainly sweet,” Tokoyami agreed.

“How did you get so much done so quickly?!”

With a blush, you scratched your cheek, embarrassed. “Thanks, everyone.”

When it came time for voting you definitely voted for Satou. He’d been so sweet to make that chiffon cake for the whole class. Just as you headed for bed, Uraraka stopped you and the others who had gone to save Bakugou and led you outside to meet Asui. She made such a confession to you all and spoke from her heart about how she felt regarding the incident. It was touching and you all reassured her. You might not have been as close as you could be with your classmates, but you promised to keep out of trouble - for their sakes.

Time seemed to move on without much disturbance after everyone moved into the dorms. You developed a Super Move, upgraded your costume, and you were all off to the Provisional Hero License Exams.

Mr. Aizawa had a huge hand in helping you develop your move, Finale. Its goal was to focus the explosions repeatedly on the same spot instead of being so scattered. You also figured out a way to propel yourself through the air from being grounded by using your quirk, but because you had to use maximum energy stored up, it wasn’t useful in combat, just for retreating.

Your hero costume originally consisted of a weather and heat-resistant catsuit with light armor and accent panels. You asked the Support Department to see about developing a way for you to store the excess energy you absorb, that way you wouldn’t be stuck in a “use it or lose it” situation or having to carefully ration it ever again. Additionally, you requested the soles of your boots to be equipped with minimalist air thrusters to help you stay airborne if the occasion called for it.

During the Provisional Hero License Exams, despite how much the other schools were gunning for U.A., you gave it your all.

Reflecting back on the exams, you blushed, recalling when you all originally arrived. Yo Shindo from Ketsubutsu Academy was extremely charming, grasping your hands and being extremely forward with you.

“I remember you from the sports festival. You’re quite beautiful and strong too! I hope you don’t mind, but I’d love to talk with you more after the exams,” he confessed, smiling. There was something odd though. You had the feeling there was an ulterior motive. Before you could respond, Bakugou elbowed you, drawing Shindo’s attention to him. That was the first time in weeks he acknowledged your existence.

“And Bakugou, it must have been hard for you what with that whole kidnapping incident. You have an especially strong will don’t you? Today I’m going to do my best to learn from you. I really hope you don’t mind.” Shindo extended his hand.

His hand was met with a slap as Bagukou showed his disinterest and turned away. “Stop pretending. What you say doesn’t match the look in your eyes.”

Aizawa ordered us to go get ready and unexpectedly, Bakugou grasped your wrist, leading you into the building and away from the Ketsubutsu student.

There had been several other moments after that, encounters while surviving the exams that seemed to mean something more. You wondered if all those times Bakugou had stuck his neck out to help you impacted his own results. 

Shaking your head, you took a deep breath to clear your mind. It wasn’t your fault he didn’t pass anyway. According to Kirishima and Kaminari he was sorely lacking in empathy and didn’t have that delicate touch necessary for saving bystanders. He really did need to work on keeping his temper in check; maybe if he had been more level headed he wouldn’t have fought Midoriya and gotten slapped with 4 days of house arrest.

Speaking of Midoriya, you smiled as he ran out the front door with Iida and Uraraka. Quickly, you packed up your lunch as well as a second bento and headed to class. You met up with Hitoshi and walked the rest of the way to school with him; the second bento was for him, which he gratefully accepted. Most of the conversation was spent chatting about the license exams and what happened. You smiled, observing him carefully. He certainly was dedicated into getting into the Hero Department and it was admirable. You couldn’t wait for him to join you.

When lunch time came around, the girls asked if you’d go to the cafeteria with them. Apparently Lunch Rush was trying something new for the menu today.

Laughing awkwardly, you waved them off. “Sorry ladies, maybe next time, ok? I brought lunch again.”

“Well if there’s a good dessert, I’ll be sure you get you one for after school!” Asui exclaimed sweetly.

“I’d love that, thank you.”

Opening the classroom window for some fresh air, you took a seat on the deep window sill, bento box in your lap, chopsticks in one hand and a book in the other. You wanted to get some extra studying in for the Heroics class. Despite it having been a couple of months, you still hadn't fully caught up on some things from transferring departments late.

Some point after eating, as no one else was in the room, you shifted to sit with your feet on the sill as well, knees bent to prop your book against. It was much more comfortable and it was easier to concentrate when your back wasn’t hurting anymore. The sound of the door opening disturbed your focus. Glancing at your watch, you noted it had only been 20 minutes. There was still another 25 minutes before you expected Midnight to show up and another 5 before students would return from lunch. Looking up from your book, you gasped, floundering slightly at seeing a pair of intense red eyes staring you down.

“Bakugou what-”

“What’s your deal? I don’t give a shit or anything, but you always turn down any opportunity to get to know everyone in class. They’re trying to be your friends. Or do you think you’re better than them or something?” His voice was rough as always, but there wasn’t that underlying threat or bite to his words you’d come to expect. Was he truly curious?

Slowly, you marked your page and closed your book, setting it aside. You shifted, crossing your legs and pulling your skirt back down. At the right angle anyone could have seen up your skirt and from the tinge of pink on his face you were pretty sure he got an eyeful just a moment ago. With a deep breath, you confessed, “I want to be friends, but I’ve got to focus on my studies more than anyone else in 1-A. I missed almost the entire first term and I’m seriously behind. I’ve spent the entire time playing catch up. It took an all nighter to score as well as I did on the first term final exams, but even then it’s not like I fully retained the material past exam day. U.A. claims it allows its students to overcome their placements and transfer into a different course. I can’t speak for the other departments, but General Education had only brushed on a lot of these topics that you guys have learned in depth. They’re set up for totally different playing fields. So yes, I do want to become friends, but I can’t mess up this opportunity.”

Stepping forward, he only stopped when the front of his legs pressed against your own. It was startling, but you refused to let him see how it affected you. Your breath hitched as he leaned forward, lowering his face to your own. The heat was unbearable as a flush bloomed across your cheeks and to your ears. As you leaned back in response, he followed until he hovered above you, his hands flat on the window ledge on either side of your hips. It was like a rubber band, the tension between you.

Stretching.

Stretching.

Stretching.

And then...

Snap.

Your leg shifted upward in an instant, kneeing him in the gut. Your goal wasn’t to hurt him, just to snap him out of it. The shocked expression on his face clearly said he hadn’t expected that reaction from you. It took him a moment, but he recovered. Instead of the expected reaction of lashing out physically, yelling, and explosions, he simply looked more pissed than usual, trudging over to his seat and plopping down. Your heart raced erratically. Whatever that was, it certainly was a close one. He ignored you the rest of the day and for that you were thankful.

After school, the girls caught up with you, walking back to the dorms together. Asui, as promised, got you a cute fruit tart from lunch. It was so sweet and you couldn’t help but think back to conversation you’d had with Bakugou during lunch about making friends. Another blush crept up your neck as you recalled the rest of that encounter.

“Ooh is that a blush?!” Hagakure and Ashido swooned.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Who are you thinking about?”

“Do you have a crush on someone?” Asui asked sweetly.

“Uh... I-”

“It’s Bakugou, isn’t it,” Yaoyarozu surmised, as if she’d suddenly solved a riddle. Jirou and Uraraka gasped before fawning over you.

“What?! You girls are crazy! Who’d like him?!” you expressed, speed walking your way out of that conversation as fast as possible. It wasn’t until you slammed your bedroom door shut that you grasped at your heart. There was no way. You did not like that short fused maniac. 

Grabbing a cropped tank and jogger pants, you quickly headed to the showers to clear your head. Thirty minutes must have passed by the time you emerged, feeling fresh, clean, and serene. Fluffy bear slippers on your feet, you made your way to your room without being noticed and sat down to study for a while. After an hour, you realized you weren’t going to accomplish anything. As soon as you stepped out of the shower thoughts began bubbling up to the surface of your mind, crowding up your headspace.

Friendship. It was decided then.

Picking up your phone, you sent out a group message.

(Y/N): If it’s ok, I’d like to make dinner tonight for everyone. Uraraka: That’s so sweet! Kaminari: Alright!! What’s on the menu?! Ojiro: Thanks (Y/N), can’t wait! Mineta: IT’S MY LUCKY DAY!!! A MEAL MADE BY A GODDESS! Sero: Mineta! Chill out before she takes it back! Kaminari: DON’T RUIN THIS MINETA!!! >:(

There were a series of other responses that made you chuckle. Well that settles that. Making your way to the kitchen, you pulled on a cute apron, tying your hair up into a bun on top of your head.

Kirishima and Bakugou soon arrived. With their sweaty demeanor you guessed they’d gone to the gym for a work out. That was usually the norm. Sometimes the other boys would go with them. The redhead spotted you and quickly shuffled up to the kitchen island.

“Hey (Y/N)! What did you decide to make?” he asked, grinning brightly.

Glancing up, your eyes briefly met Bakugou’s before connecting with Kirishima. Your expression seemed delayed, but you smiled honestly. “I’m making two types of gyudon: normal with beef and a vegan version for Koda.”

His eyes lit up brightly and he swooned, claiming he couldn’t wait and rambling on about how he loves meat. More boys started hovering around, making you nervous, until Iida finally appeared, yelling at everyone to get cleaned up and to study while you worked. You had never been so relieved before, silently thanking Iida. By the time 6PM rolled around, you’d just finished. For dessert you even made manjū that looked like cute bunnies.

“Wow, (Y/N)! You don’t look like you even broke a sweat!” exclaimed Sato.

Simply smiling, you fixed Koda’s bowl specially. “Here Koda, I know you don’t eat meat so I made you a tofu version. I hope you enjoy.”

“More please!” Kirishima and Kaminari chimed in suddenly, their bowls already clean.

“More? Uh, sure guys.”

“Yeah! This is so good!” Kirishima exclaimed.

“You’re a great cook! Better than my mom - but don’t tell her that,” Kaminari laughed nervously, a large smile on his face.

It warmed your heart to hear that everyone had something good to say - that is except for Bakugou who’d been silent the whole time. You noticed that he always ate spicy foods, so you made sure to add a spicy sauce to his. Maybe it wasn’t good. Glancing at him, you watched him eat before looking down to your own bowl, finishing your meal.

After dinner, you grabbed your Heroics class book from your room, returning to the common area. You curled up on one of the couches with a pen, some different highlighters, and removable adhesive tabs in multiple colors. For whatever reason, the background noise of 1-A chatting and hanging out seemed to help you study. Maybe you just had enough of the silence and needed this change of scenery. Soon enough, you moved on to history and then mathematics.

Time had passed quickly and you hadn’t noticed at all. You were thirsty and looked up to see that everyone had cleared out. Getting some water, you returned to your spot focusing on your math homework. This was definitely one of your weakest subjects, the worst being Chemistry. Luckily the questions on the handout were multiple choice so the answer was staring back at you...somewhere.

An arm reached forward from behind your head, pointing at the worksheet. Tilting your head back slightly, your face turned red, eyes widening. Bakugou leaned over you from behind the couch, his chest so close to your head that if you tilted your head back any further you’d make contact.

“It’s B.”

“I... Thanks,” you replied breathily. Seconds seem to tick by as you watched his face. His gaze was focused on the sheet in your hands.

“You’re not really good at math, are you?” he asked. If it wasn’t for the serious expression, you would have felt mocked.

Biting your lip, you shook your head. “Not really.”

“Get your shit,” he grunted, walking toward the girl’s dorms.

“What are you...?”

“Hurry your ass up. I’m not helping you if you take too long.”

Hesitating for just a moment, you quickly gathered your things and met him at the elevator. Hitting the button, you waited patiently, your hands feeling clammy. Getting in, you stepped forward to hit your floor number. Stepping back, it felt like electricity shot up your spine as you backed into Bakugou who grabbed your shoulders, steadying you.

“Oh, I’m... I’m sorry,” you managed out before a soft gasp escaped you as his hands gently ran down your arms, lingering, before dropping to his sides.

Ding!

Quickly, you headed straight to your room. You wondered if it was a mistake letting him in. Stepping inside, you sat down on a pillow at the low coffee table, putting your things down. Glancing up at him, you felt another blush crawling up your neck as he stood there, looking around your room. His gaze finally landed on you.

“Cute,” he grunted, dropping down to directly beside you. He leaned on the desk, head propped up by the palm of his hand. His body was shifted toward you and he inched a bit closer.

“Bakugou,” you started, not really sure what you wanted to say.

“Look, just solve the next problem and if you get stuck and don’t know what to do, tell me.” He seemed so bored when he said it.

Holding your breath, you turned to the work sheet and started working out the next problem. You got through the next two problems with no issue. As you worked on the third, your pencil stopped. The answer you came to wasn’t any of the choices. Furrowing your brows, you tried it again, this time managing to get yourself lost in the steps.

“I’m sorry, I messed up somewhere. Can you look at...” your voice trailed off as you turned to look at him, seeing how close he had managed to physically get to you.

His gaze moved from your face to the work sheet, pointing at the equation. He began carefully explaining each step to you, before pausing. “You’re going to want to write this down.”

With a silent gulp, you began writing everything he said, focusing on his voice. Biting your lip, your body seemed to become hypersensitive to his presence. The rumble of his voice felt closer and closer as he spoke until you reached the end of the equation and suddenly his voice stopped. The tip of your pencil snapped; you felt your heart leap into your throat and tiny colorful sparks emitted from your finger tips as his breath suddenly caressed your ear. 

Snapping out of it, you shut your eyes tightly, pressing your hands to his chest and pushing away. His hand grasped your wrists, holding them to his chest firmly.

“Bakugou! What are you doing?”

Opening your eyes, you saw his expression was serious as he looked you in the eye. He didn’t speak until you relaxed.

“Why did you try to save me?”

[halfgclden]

And Now We Weed

characters: Caspar, Jordan, Tai

date: May 16th

summary: after a night of karaoke-ing, the boyz decide to use up some of Tai’s fight night prize together. drunken contests ensue.

Jordan struggled to unlock his door but finally managed and threw it open. He held a finger to his lips and looked at Tai. "Is Faye home?" he asked in a loud whisper.

"I dunno," Tai whispered back, just as loudly. He leant against the door to hold it open. "Should we check?"

Caspar tip-toed into the apartment and past Tai holding the door open. He tried to be as quiet as he could after seeing Jordan give the 'quiet' sign. "Will she be mad if we wake her up?"

Jordan snickered. "Yeah, I'll go stand in her room and scream her name over and over and if I'm still alive after we know she's not home." He stepped in and kept his voice fairly low.

"Might not be a great idea, mate," Tai said in a regular volume to Jordan, already given up on whispering. He wasn't at the point of being full on drunk, but his head still swum pleasantly from the shots and drinks from earlier. "We can head to my room?"

Caspar shook his head, stifling a snicker. "I'm okay with hanging out in your room," He shrugged in response to Tai. "Then we can leave figuring out if Faye's home or not for if we get too rowdy." He suggested.

Jordan pointed at Tai's door and had to remind himself not to just teleport over. He ran over and opened it, and when he walked in, he rested his hand on the large raccoon statue's head. "Hello Big Spence. Hi Mac, Cheese."

Tai loped along after Jordan to get to his room, sitting on the edge of his bed and resting a hand on the top of the bird cage. "Hey, fellas. Rowdy night tonight." He leaned down to pull out the doll from underneath his bed. "Kinda creepy, keeping it in here, but." He didn't finish the sentence and shrugged as he opened it up and handed it to Jordan before motioning for Caspar to come in and shut the door.

Caspar padded into Tai's room after shutting the door and made a point to stop by the raccoon statue. He smiled. "You're looking mighty fit tonight, Big Spencer," He booped the statue on the nose and then turned to plop himself down in the small armchair. "Do you know how to roll, Jordy?" He asked.

Jordan pulled his hat off and set it down on Big Spencer's head. "Uh... I can? I watched a video on it before." He looked at the doll that Tai handed him and took a seat on the floor. "Do you think it comes alive at night and watches you in your sleep?"

Tai blinked a few times then laughed, flopping onto his side on his bed. He grabbed a pen from the tray and started to doodle on the whiteboard beside his mattress. "Nah, mate, it's made of wood. It's only the china ones and furbies that do that."

Caspar leaned forward and rubbed his hands on his knees. "That's too creepy to think about..." He commented with a shake of his head. "How much did you win again?" He asked Tai.

Jordan grinned at both of their responses and sat cross-legged. He opened the doll and pulled out the baggie. "You have a grinder, Tai?"

"Nah, but we got one of those..." Tai mimed grinding something with a stick. "Bowls with the heavy thing in the kitchen."

Jordan snorted. "A pestle and mortar? Honestly, that might work better than my shitty grinder. What if I get both and we race to see which grinds weed faster?"

Tai was already on his feet. "I'll zoom back." He left the room.

Caspar was grinning at the competition his friends were brewing between them. "My vote is with the mortar and pestle." He moved and sat on the floor by Jordan.

Tai came back in a few seconds and blinked down at Jordan, then laughed. "I thought we were racing to get them too," he explained, putting the mortar and pestle down on the bed before leaving to go get Jordan's grinder as well.

"Oh!" Caspar remembered something and so he pulled himself back up so he was standing. "You wanted to listen to more music, right?" He stated and clumsily pulled out his phone as he went over to turn Tai's speaker on.

Jordan looked up at Tai and laughed. "Oh, nah. Oops." He looked at Caspar and then smiled, then bobbed his head. "Yeah!" He leaned back on his hands. "This was such a cool party. I loved your guys's songs. Thanks for letting me tag along with the whole thing."

Caspar synched his phone. "Thanks, mate. I had a great time too. I loved your dance moves. You were the life of the party," He grinned as he attempted to choose a song. "I'm glad we all went together," He added and pressed play on a particular song (setting it so shuffled afterward too). He sat down on the floor and crossed his legs again. "I wanted you to hear this remix once I saw you enjoying the original so much."

Tai came back into the room with Jordan grinder now and passed it to him, sitting down on the floor since everyone else was doing it. He picked up the mortar and pestle, nodding his head along to the song.

Jordan smiled widely at Caspar calling him the life of the party, since both him and Tai were the people he thought were the coolest at the party. "Me too. It gave me some cool new threads." He looked down at himself and laughed, then drew his knees up as the song started playing, somewhat touched that Caspar remembered him jamming to the song. He accepted the grinder from Tai and took two buds out of the baggie from the doll. He put one in the mortar and pestle and broke one up to put in his grinder. "Alright, on your mark..." he told Tai as he prepared to grind weed as fast as humanly possible. "Go!"

Tai grinned at Jordan's comment about his clothes. "If you ever wanna borrow those other choices, mate, they're all yours." He took one of the buds, broke it in half, and dropped it into the mortar. Waiting for the cue, he started grinding it down as fast as he could, laughing the whole time.

"Uh, don't really fill 'em out the same," he said with a chuckle, then started off grinding with his plastic grinder. Jordan must have been somehow too enthusiastic about the whole affair, since at one point, he twisted the top half of the grinder clear off and across the room, spilling weed in front of him. "Fuck!" He said in a loud-whisper.

Tai stopped as the top flew away. "Oh fuck!" he whispered, staring at the weed now scattered across the floor. He put the mortar down and started helping Jordan pick it up. "I'll take a pause 'til you can start again."

Caspar watched as his two friends starting grinding weed as fast as they could and couldn't help but flinch and then laugh at Jordan's mishap. "Just a little technicality..." Cas pointed out with a smile still as he begun to pick some of the weed bits up that were close by him.

Jordan cackled and teleported the cap back in his hand before he put the grinder down entirely and leaned forward to help scoop up some of the weed himself. “My bad. I think this might disqualify me.”

“Nah, man! I paused so we can keep going if ya want.” Tai poured some of the weed back in from his hands. “Or I can do it all, I’m easy.”

Jordan smiled and shook his head, pinching up fingerfuls of weed and returning them to the grinder. "We might be smoking some lint tonight, boys." He looked at Tai and raised an eyebrow. "Ready?"

Tai picked up the mortal and pestle again. "Readysetgo!" he said in a rush and started grinding again, trying and failing to blow a piece of hair away from where it had fallen in front of his face.

Jordan twisted his grinder back and forth as quickly as he could, looking up at Caspar as he did. "I really like the cover! It's, like, chilling." He smirked. "Chill."

Caspar snickered at the lint comment but sat back as he watched the other two scramble to grind weed once again. He was still amused and raised his brows when Jordan brought up the cover. "I'm glad you enjoyed it," Caspar replied. "Chilling, chill. Two very different meanings," He mentioned with a smile and then wondered something aloud, shifting his eyes to Tai and then back. "Wait, am I supposed to say 'stop' at some point so we can judge the amount? Or are you both just grinding all the weed?" He chuckled again. "And seeing who did the most at the end?"

Jordan nodded at Caspar, still twisting his cheap grinder. "I think chilling would be way more right. I like it though." He smiled, then looked to Tai and laughed. "I dunno what the plan was! I think it was for all of it? Was it not actually?"

Tai paused when Caspar spoke and looked down at his hands. “Shit, uh.” He broke into laughter, leaning his head back. “I didn’t think about that! The end goal never bloody came to mind.” He put the mortar and pestle down, still laughing. “How much is all of it? Is that too much? You blokes know more about this than me.”

Jordan shook his head. "Let's just do all of it. That way it'll be ground up if you want it, right? And this is fun. It's too much to smoke right now, but we can roll a few joints for later if you want." He continued to grind.

Caspar laughed at Tai and them shifted his eyes to Jordan. "I always go through already ground up weed so much faster," He confessed with a smile and casually nodded along. "I can get started on one for us now though, but I'll definitely help roll a few too," He explained and moved to grab Tai's papers. "If you want us to," He shrugged. "It's nice to have pre-rolls." He said and, with the weed that had been recollected from the spill, got to work with rolling a joint.

Jordan smiled easily at Caspar and finally stopped grinding the weed. He opened up his grinder carefully and held it out to show Tai so they could compare how much they'd each ground. "We can also just work with what we have, so you don't have to wait for us or anything." He looked from the grinder to the mortar and pestle. "Who do you think won? If you pick Tai, I will claim that you are biased."

Tai put the pestle down to hold the bowl out next to Jordan's grinder so Caspar could see. He laughed loudly at what Jordan said, then remembered they were supposed to be quiet and clapped a hand over his mouth. "Yeah, go for it, mate," he said to Caspar between his fingers. "If that question was at me. About the pre-rolls." He laughed again, quietly this time.

"Whoa, hey," Caspar told Jordan. "Wait a sec, mate," He was grinning and shook his head in protest. "I don't think I ever agreed to judge a winner," He chuckled, but couldn't help looking at the amounts of weed that had been ground up anyways. He sighed and then pointed at Jordan's amount. "Although, it looks like you did just a bit more." Cas admitted and then frowned at Tai. "I'm sorry! I was really rooting for the mortar and pestle."

Tai tried to frown back at Caspar but couldn't last more than a second. He laughed instead and clutched his chest as he tipped backwards to lie on his back. "I dunno, Cosmo, I don't think I can be friends with you anymore." He grinned up at the ceiling.

Jordan grinned and pumped his fist in victory. "Hell yeah!" He jabbed at Tai's leg. "Don't be a sore loser, I hardly ever lose." He looked back at Caspar and flashed a smile, then held out the grinder. "And now, we weed."

"Nooo, no," Cas complained but was still chuckling as he reached out and jostled one of Tai's limbs. "Spirit, stay with me," He expressed with a jovial tone, but then looked over at Jordy's fist-pumping while straightening back up. He was swiftly presented with weed and, in return, Caspar held out the single joint he'd managed to finish rolling for Jordan to take. "We weed!" After the little swap, he idly and happily began rolling some more.

[hqsloane]

hello !! it’s ally back at it again with another muse !! for those of you who don’t know, i also play violet ( the taylor hill fc ) !! but this is a very new muse that i’m v excited about, so if you want to plot just like this post & i’ll slide into your dms <3 

chicago’s very own sloane windsor has been spotted on madison avenue driving a rolls-royce dawn , welcome ! your resemblance to charlotte d'alessio is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twentieth birthday bash  . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re insatiable , but being gregarious might help you . i think being a libra explains that .  3 things that would paint  a  better picture of you would be designer sunglasses disguising bloodshot eyes , vintage abba records , a room full of first place trophies. ( i just got out of rehab for a drug addiction ) & ( cisfemale + she/her  ) +  ( ally , 21 , she/her )

full name: sloane ( warrior ) madeleine ( of french origin woman meaning ‘ woman from magdala or high tower ’ ) windsor ( english last name ). nickname(s): s, princess. age: twenty. birthday: 3 october 1999. zodiac: libra. gender: cisfemale. pronouns: she / her / hers. sexual orientation: bisexual. languages spoken: english & french. hometown: buckhead, georgia. occupation: vlogger. parents: darcy sinclair ( rachel mcadams ) & spencer windsor ( jon hamm ). siblings:  two older brothers. pet(s): forrest ( golden retriever ) & jenny ( border collie ). religion: southern baptist. drink / drugs / sex: yes / yes / yes. height: 5′5. right/left handed: left handed. tattoos: a rose on her hip ( x ), this on the back of her right elbow, & a quote on her ribs ( x ).  positive traits: gregarious, discerning, tender, impartial, dignified, courageous, independent, empathetic, & audacious.  negative traits: covetous, controlling, aloof, rebellious, daunting, compulsive, tactless, vain, cunning, obstinate, & snarky. hobbies: photography, traveling, procrastination, meddling, partying, late night instagram live streams, dancing on tables well past last call, visiting art museums, & video editing. habits: tying her hair up in a loose ponytail when she’s stressed, fleeing the country on a whim, chewing the insides of her cheek in order to hold back what she truly wants to say, chewing the ends of brightly colored pens, binge drinking, & doodling. labels: the catalyst ( the independent one ), the doctrinaire ( the perfectionist ), & the aesthete ( the muse ). aesthetics: cat eye sunglasses shielding emerald hues, mascara tear stained cheeks, shattered trophies, polaroids, disposable film, late night notifications, hiding any ounce of emotion behind a camera, paint splattered jeans, parisian architecture, sunday brunch, missed phone calls, & the longing for her mother’s approval.  style inspo: nicola peltz, bella hadid, kendall jenner, rosie huntington whiteley, meghan markle, & alexa chung. here are just a few examples of her wardrobe !! ( x x x x x )  muse inspo: monica geller ( friends ), caroline forbes ( the vampire diaries ), serena van der woodsen ( gossip girl ), lydia martin ( teen wolf ), peyton sawyer ( one tree hill ), nancy wheeler ( stranger things ), & emily fitch ( skins ). net worth: 30 million.

background ;;

before spencer & darcy got married in 1989, they knew all they wanted was one child: a girl. yet, their life did not go according to plan. after they welcomed their first child into the world ( a boy ), they figured that the next one would be a girl. they of course loved their son more than anything in this world, but they knew they wanted a daughter to complete their growing family. however, when darcy discovered the sex of their second child was a boy, she knew she wouldn’t stop having children until they welcomed their perfect girl into this world.

soon after the birth of their second son, they discovered they were expecting again. this time, with the daughter they had always wanted !! sloane was born on october 3rd, 1999 in a wealthy suburb of atlanta, georgia. & from the day she was born, an enormous pressure was put on her.

what you need to know about the windsor family ( other than their strong southern roots ) is that they’re extremely rich. they are high key based off the carrington’s from dynasty bc i’m #trash. buttttt what you need to know is that they own a multibillion dollar international oil company called windsor industries ( formerly known as windsor petroleum group ). 

if you aren’t familiar with oil conglomerates, all you need to know is that windsor industries are responsible for literal power. they are one of the leading producers for oil & gas in the world which is why they have offices all over the country. & let me tell you, they don’t conduct business ethically !! they are notorious for fracking & their continuous use of fossil fuels. when people talk about climate change, they constantly bring up windsor industries & how much they have contributed to global warming. & to make matters worse, spencer & his eldest son put millions of dollars into the pockets of politicians to get them to support their cause & vote against climate change regulation. so if we all burn up one day, you can blame them !!

the windsor family has lived in georgia for generations ( big yikes ) & that’s where they started the family business in 1942. spencer’s grandfather came from a long line of prominent politicians in state politics which is why his family was ready to disown him when he decided to go into business over politics. but when his business took off & he was making more money than everyone else in his family by the age of twenty-two, they quickly shut up & started supporting him.

since then, windsor industries has been passed down from generation to generation. spencer was handed the business on his thirtieth birthday ( twenty years ago ) & has been dominating ever since. once his eldest son turned eighteen, he quickly got him involved & he is expected to take over the family business one day.

as successful as his business is, spencer is known as the bad guy in america. he is a billionaire who doesn’t know what it’s like to come from humble beginnings. he was literally handed a multibillion dollar business & the rest was history !! he definitely is a bad guy since he doesn’t care about the environment or anything else. all he cares about is making money no matter who gets hurt. he was even considered to work for trump at one point but quickly declined !! he just wrote him a big ass check instead bcsjkhdfs

but he does love his family. he would do literally anything for his family despite his tough love approach to his two sons. but when it comes to sloane, he is a complete softie. she can literally do no wrong in his eyes which is why they have such a great relationship !!

darcy, on the other hand, did not come from a lot of money. like her husband, she’s also from georgia but she’s not from a rich suburb. she is from a rural town where she literally grew up in a trailer. & from an early age, she always knew she wanted more. she was always ungrateful for her life & could have cared less about how hard her parents worked to support her & her three other siblings. 

things for darcy changed by the time she was eighteen !! she became miss. america which isn’t that big of a deal for most. but she took pride on receiving that title after years of competing in local pageants. despite not coming from a lot of money, she always knew how to fool the judges & everyone else for that matter. she really could have cared less about school, all she cared about was winning pageants.

so when she made it into miss. universe, she thought her life was going to be complete !! yet, it didn’t go according to plan. darcy lost the competition & her short lived media coverage quickly died. no one knew who darcy sinclair was until it was announced that she was marrying one of the heirs to windsor industries. 

the reason why darcy wanted a daughter so bad was so she could also be a pageant contender. she didn’t want her daughter to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, or anything else for that matter. all she wanted for sloane from the day she was born was to be a pageant queen.

by the time sloane turned five, her mother had already registered her for her first pageant. & unlike the ones darcy used to compete in, this was prestigious. her entire childhood consisted of tap dancing classes & pageants taking priority over school. & because her parents pride themselves on their southern values, they really could have cared less about their daughter attending school. so it came as no surprise when she started to slip up !!

& of course, they bribed her school to fix her grades. from the outside looking in, everyone wanted sloane’s life. she had it all: money, family, looks, everything. but in reality, her mother was working her like a dog. she would be practicing for pageants seven days a week with little to no breaks. but once she was crowned little miss georgia, they knew she was destined for greatness. 

the older she got, the more pressure her mother would put on her. & sloane took that pressure extremely seriously. all she ever wanted was to please her mother, so she would strive to be nothing less than perfect. & in order to keep up with the strict demands of her mother & her life, she started turning to drugs. at first, she would start taking adderall to have more energy that way she can cater to her hectic schedule. 

even sloane will admit that her high school years were a blur due to her growing drug abuse. the only thing holding her together was her growing addiction to pills. her mother knew. she saw the empty pill bottles lying around her bathroom & there was even a late night where she had to call 911 after finding her only daughter unresponsive. but she never told anyone. she never even asked sloane if she was okay or if she needed help. she only cared about her daughter becoming miss. universe since that was a title that she was robbed of.

all her life, sloane has tried to please her mother. everything she has ever done has never been good enough for her. so by the time she was a senior in high school, she decided the only way to escape her life was by going to college. she knew she didn’t have the grades to get in anywhere far enough from atlanta, even if her parents ensured her transcripts were nothing short of flawless. but when she sat her parents down & told them that she wanted to attend college, she was surprised by their reactions. her father, who has always supported sloane, was willing to do anything she wanted even if that meant delaying his wife’s plans for her. & even her mother came around on the idea after she promised her that she would go back to training for miss. universe once she finished college.

& following her graduation from high school, she packed her bags & went to the university of chicago. she figured that this was a school far enough away from her mother which is why she told her father this was the school of her dreams. sloane never questioned anything during her applications process. all she knew was that she needed to leave her mother’s grasp & learn to live life for herself.

at college, she had decided to study photography soon realizing that is one of her passions in life. & she’s damn good at it too. & even though sloane started living life in college, her drug addiction only worsened. there, she was introduced to even more drugs & the craze of combining uppers & downers.

things started to get crazy last year during the college admissions scandal when it was revealed that spencer & darcy had paid to get sloane accepted into the university of chicago. the school agreed to allow her to finish the semester before they would ultimately expel her due to the negative press coverage. & of course on her last night at school, sloane ended up in the hospital.

after combining far too many uppers & downers at a frat party, she overdosed. this was not the first time she landed up in the hospital after a night out, but it was the first time her father found out. & once he found out, he ensured that she would seek the help she needed.

so that’s where sloane spent the entire summer !! in a private rehab center seeking treatment for drug addiction. however, her family could not afford anymore scandals. so they quickly buried any stories about their youngest child’s overdose & told the media that she was traveling the world with friends this summer. sloane’s scandal is something that they are without a doubt ashamed of despite how many times her father has insisted the opposite. they are willing to do anything to bury this secret, no matter the cost. 

now, she’s twenty years old & living in new york. following her discharge from rehab, she wanted to move as far away from chicago as she could. she knows she can’t enroll in college anytime soon given her family’s involvement in the college admissions scandal, but she is wiling to do just about anything to avoid moving back home.

nowadays, you can find sloane vlogging !! she has a v successful youtube channel that is similar to matt king’s ( if ya’ll know who that is ily ). but all you need to know is that she is a daily vlogger with an artsy style & she definitely does q & a videos & all that fun stuff. she is still very dependent on her father’s money but she is making a lot of money off youtube.

personality & misc ;;

personality wise, i’d say she’s pretty easy going. her taste isn’t the usual which i’ll probs go into a little bit, but that doesn’t mean she’s not approachable unlike vi.

truth be told, she’s all over the place & has a lot of depth. she has the ability to light up any room she walks into but that doesn’t mean she lets people walk all over her. after dealing with darcy sinclair for eighteen years, sloane knows when to fight back & channel her rich bitch side.

she’s also really fucking smart despite her fuck ups & she would know her true potential if she just stopped getting fucked up all the time. even though she went to rehab, she isn’t clean but that doesn’t stop her from telling her dad she is.

has never had a serious relationship tbh

instead, she’s had flings that are like relationships without the title.

she may act like an independent bitch but she is also a 100% a daddy’s girl & calls him up for money every other week

very artistic 

aside from photography, she is great at painting & drawing & you can find dozens of sketches lying on the floor of her room ( you can also find baggies on her desk tbh )

extremely possessive of her family despite her relationship with her mom. she won’t let anyone else insult her other than her.

hella impulsive

speaks fluent french

also has an apartment in paris that she visits all of the time

tbh, she’s just in love with art. you will always find her at a museum just gazing at art for hours

she’s also constantly leaving the country for vlog material

doesn’t want to think that she has an accent but low key does

even though she’s a huge perfectionist, her room is literally always a mess but she doesn’t let just anyone see that

overall, she is a perfectionist art h*e tbh

if you made it this far ily. here’s her pinterest board if you want to take a look !! it’s v late for me rn & i have to get up early tomorrow so i don’t have any wc listed out but i promise i will bombard you all with plot ideas okay ily

[madfantasy]

Dear Blogging

Hello, dears, been awhile. Hope this finds you well~

A lot have happened/ still happening, I think it's going to be a long one and probably be all over the place because God I'm sorely tired.

★-I was getting ready to leave drawing for a good chunk of time, a month was what I plan to spend away from everything that had to do with it— including social media. But luckily for drawing I found a mystifying ad that spoke directly to me. " Are you an artist that creates characters and uses digital media? Join this local contest that is looking for talents to support! And guess what! We added extra time just because we believe you can do more, people!". So you can imagine me slumped on my bed, in my worst cases ever, barely awake, eyes sore from lack of sleep raising slowly as I read and reread it to make sure it wasn't a mirage. Suddenly I had a reason to live, apparently.

So I spent the last 10 days drawing like Mad, I wasn't ready, I didn't have ideas and certainly wasn't in any fitting state to do anything. But time was running, alongside it was my motivation, thankfully. I desperately needed a new pc, a reliable one. I have a couple of hundred saved up from commissions but they are hardly enough to buy a better quality than the one I already have.

I even did this excuse of a portfolio that took me ages for the contest:

https://madfantasy.wixsite.com/portfolio

Eventually, I made this; my precious Qarqa'ah and his precious Ghalli.

I sent it and finally breathed deeply. Not until I reread their rules I was a bit concerned. They say the prize is a support plan for the winner, so there aren't any actual specifications. Besides that, by applying I give away the rights for my piece, they can do anything with it basically, and it has to meet their standards, etc. They said the judging will start next month and they'll contact me if I got qualified. If I did, another month of voting than after another to declare the winners. It's a fairly big contest..

Pray for me :'

★-I was feeling detached from Severus, the last drawing of him hugging Harry and crying was a direct junction from how I was feeling in general... And one can possibly say it could have acted as an end to my Sevy art, as a goodbye.. but happy to say it's not going to be. I wasn't able to draw him at all recently. And seeing my older art of him made it worse, to be honest. I was feeling I ruined him and constantly reading around that the fandom is dying, and not seeing my favorite people around anymore was solidifying that feeling. So trying hard to fix him and sharing sketches didn't seem to have a point anymore, considering it takes me so much time to make art and my speed can’t keep up.. not to mention my seemingly unprogressive artistic direction that keeps peering at me from every angle..

But I had a dream of Severus one day, as odd and incomprehensible as dreams can be, it was amazing to see him again. He was chewing gum, that all I can safely say 😹 I can't stress how weird it was, I woke up feeling like Alice in Wonderland. I love it.

I thought maybe I should visit him where I first met him, so I watched a play-through of HP 1 PS1, it was everything I ever loved. I reread the book, & was so happy to have felt exactly the same as the very first time I wanted to get to know Sevy. Even more thrilled that I started to draw him naturally on the side of reading, without even thinking. I have a habit of pausing to draw my reaction on things I read or draw the scene I liked itself. At that moment, nothing seems to matter but putting those wonderful words I just read into a viewable form.

This, this captured moment of timeless pleasure, this what matters to me. To make these little moments to vibrate as candles, lighting in a row, one by one along the pathway, uplifting and even musing the spirit to do anything, even just to dwell in the blissful nothing, away from what heavies the hearts. Even if nobody found it so, even me. I still want to make them.

Just for funsies, I like to show you how much construction lines I need on Sevy compared to the ones on Harrison, alot. Also, you can check those doodles and more I did last night  (here) 🙊

★-On a more silly note; I have matched my medical glasses to sunglass's general shape that I like to wear- round. I don't wear them unless I absolutely have to, so it was a bit of a surprising luxury to do so. I come to quickly find that red glasses frames are unbelievably rare, leaving alone that I wanted them round. So we settled on the lighter shade— pinkish gold.

The minute I wore them, Mother started to call me Harry Potter Harbi* (My last name*), which was amusing considering that I wore round shaped glasses all the time anyway— but not transparent.

The guy who made the lenses must have showered with his perfume before, because I couldn't get the scent out of my glasses, as if it was impeded in the frame. That fondly reminded me of the times I used to make sure to spray my perfume on a tissue and slide it into the file containing my drawings. Because my favorite person at the time did showered with her perfume and every time I got her file— when we secretly switched, and she noted it felt like I was actually there with her, it was nice. (We were in different schools and whatever)

Let us hope for the best, my thoughts always my dears, with you. And thank you.

Bless your days⭐

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE EFFORT THAT GOES INTO LOOKING PRODUCTIVE IS NOT MERELY A USELESS METRIC, BUT POSITIVELY MISLEADING

Some investors want to know what your valuation is before they even talk to you about investing. It's more straightforward just to make the team, and if not it doesn't matter whether you fund them, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going in one direction if there weren't powerful forces pushing you in another.1 You may be wasting your time, but you're not idle. In big companies there's always going to be more politics, and less scope for individual decisions.2 Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. I knew intellectually, but didn't really grasp till it happened to us.3 It's a consequence of the tree, you're going to have to think about the upper limit is, we are clearly not meant to work in the pure, intellectual world of software, not deal with customers' mundane problems.4 Obviously one case where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that. If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been ok if he was content to limit himself to talking to the press, but what if he wanted to have a co-founder.

Ideally this meant getting a lot of people, and promoted from within based largely on seniority. The numbers on the Y axis will take care of itself. Comments have much more freedom. Like the time the power went off in Cambridge for about six hours, and we made the mistake of trying to start a new company using Lisp. Let your idea evolve. So orange usernames won't be back.5 You may be wasting your time. In nearly every startup that fails, the proximate cause is running out of room.

If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been. Europeans didn't introduce formal civil service exams took years, as prep school does today. There are two major types of problems a site like Hacker News needs to avoid: bad stories and bad comments. The reason tablets are going to be more than a couple hours, and we made the mistake of trying to make credentials better. Eventually we settled on one millon, because Julian said no one would invest in a company with a valuation any lower. I don't know if I could only keep one.6 I've learned about dilution is that it's not that high a cost. That plus the inexperience card should work in most situations: sorry, we think you're great, but PG said startups shouldn't, and since they're the customer you can take their word for it. Probably because the product was a dog, or never seemed likely to be done, or both. We've now funded so many different types of investors, you should get all the users, and the latter is not simply a constant fraction of the probability that the company will die or at the very least people will have to be a hot deal—they can pretend they just got distracted and then restart the conversation as if they'd been anointed as the next Google?7 That depends.

Ideally you want between two and four founders. But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for saying that the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us, why is it so common? What cram schools are, in effect, an annuity. But just two companies, Dropbox and Airbnb, account for about three quarters of it. I was saying. But by works I mean something more subtle than when they can get away with it. These are the only places I know that have the right kind of place for developing software. But how do you know it's not 70%?8 The record labels and movie studios used to distribute what they made like air shipped through tubes on a moon base, though.

We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. It felt as if there was a bug, and then come back to work.9 Individual performance is hard to measure in large organizations, and the most common question people ask is how many employees you have. Some investors will try to seem more corporate, corporations will try to invest at a lower valuation.10 David Filo's title was Chief Yahoo, but he was proud that his unofficial title was Cheap Yahoo. Usually you want to sell, they take the meeting. When you start fundraising, your initial plans are almost certain to be wrong; be confident enough to tell them to get lost.11 This essay focuses on phase 2 fundraising consists of presenting a slide deck in person to collect a check.

For example, working for a big company is like high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated vegetable oil. This is already clear in cases like GPSes, music players, and cameras.12 Miraculously it all turned out ok. We had office chairs so cheap that the arms all fell off.13 Instead of sitting in your grubby apartment listening to users complain about bugs in your software is what will make you successful—making things and talking to users, we understood online commerce way better than anyone else. Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell a company run by marketing guys.14 I'm going to give you a termsheet.

Notes

You know what kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they use; if there were about 60,000 sestertii e. No one seems to pass so slowly for them. There are titles between associate and partner, which is all about hitting outliers, are not the sense that if colleges want to start some vaguely benevolent business. But this is mainly due to the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we used to do better, and a few old professors in Palo Alto, but he turned them down.

17. No big deal.

Most of the growth is valuable, and for filters it's textual. Once the playing field is leveler politically, we'll see economic inequality in the Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and those are usually obvious, even if it's dismissed, it's a harder problem than Hall realizes. When a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this theory is that they use; if you have a single cause. As well as problems that have little to bring corporate bonds; a vogue for conglomerates in the Baskin-Robbins.

The nationalistic idea is bad. People who value their peace, or b to get good grades.

This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow. Xenophon Mem.

Why go to a car dealer. You have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take Abelson and Sussman's quote a step later in the right way. Microsoft than Netscape was.

Your teachers are always telling you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. What Is an Asset Price Bubble?

If a company he really liked, but getting rich, purely mercenary founders will seem dumb in 100 years ago, and it would annoy our competitor more if we couldn't decide between turning some investors away and selling more of it, and Fred Wilson to fund them. Which is precisely my point. At any given college.

Maybe that isn't what they'd like it takes a startup to succeed in business are likely to coincide with mathematicians' judgements. Now to people he knew. It was harder for you, however. So although it works on all the potential series A termsheet with a face-saving compromise.

This is the most useless investors are just not super thoughtful for the popular vote.

It's not simply a function of revenues, and it would take their customers. 66. Though most VCs are only locally accurate, because even if they make money, the assembly line, the same way a restaurant as a constituency.

To talk to mediocre ones. 4%, Macintosh 18.

Mozilla is open-source browser. If you freak out when people are immune to the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors. Sofbot.

What made Google Google is much more attractive to investors, is deliberately vague, we're going to use some bad word multiple times. With the good ones, and logic. Ironically, one variant of the optimism Europeans consider distinctly American is simply that it would do fairly well as good ones don't even want to impress are not in the US, it seems. The two are not written by the customs of the latter without also slowing the former depends a lot cheaper than business school, because despite some progress in the general manager of the funds we raised was difficult, and Smartleaf co-founder before making any predictions about the size of the grad students they admit each year are long shots.

Thanks to Geoff Ralston, Robert Morris, Joshua Reeves, Sam Altman, and Jackie McDonough for putting up with me.

[clonerightsagenda]

This was last minute but I'm a grad student so I was mostly drafting from life anyway. You can tell I was losing steam by the end though. All the library details are from my uni library, although I have never seen any dead Union soldiers, or any other ghosts for that matter. The creepy grad cages are my favorite part of giving tours.

 tuesjade prompt: school

The third floor of the library is so quiet every keystroke echoes. Last time you heard someone walking through, it was the security guard on their hourly late night round. You picked this spot for its isolation.

The door leading out into the central stacks creaks open, and you listen for the student's footsteps passing by. Instead, the curtain between your carrel and the stacks twitches back, and you squint out to see Jade waving at you from the other side of the grating. "I like your shower curtain."

"You would. School mascots are just anthro with a veneer of plausible deniability.”

You don't mention that the curtain is on your side of the door, which means she's pulled it backward (and tied it up with businesslike lashwork) with Space powers instead of with her hands. There's no one else in here, and the security cameras can't pick up that level of fine detail.

"Don't science students have their own library?" you ask. Wait shit, it sounds like you're trying to get rid of her. Which you're not, exactly, although if you wanted company you'd be doing research in your apartment. Still, when it comes to people it's safe to be rude to, even after all these years Jade Harley doesn't make your list.

If she takes offense, she doesn't say so. "They do, but a few of my theoretical readings have mentioned Foucault, and I think I've gone as long as I can pretending I know who that is."

"Yeah, you'll get random Foucault encounters in unexpected disciplines. If it's not him it's Derrida popping out of the tall grass of the lit review. Philosophers were never meant to escape."

"You would know." She glances at the shelves nearby. This section is materials so old they're still in Dewey instead of Library of Congress - another reason you preferred the spot. No one needs this stuff. "How many libraries do all your programs fit into?"

"A couple, but this is the best one." You've got a pretty good setup here, if you say so yourself. Books stacked up on the makeshift shelving unit, your own modem wired into the wall to make up for the library's spotty wifi, and a mini microwave tucked under your feet. Home away from home. "None of the others let you rent carrels."

"Is that what they're called? They look more like spooky library jail cells."

"Some undergrads passed through a few hours ago while I was typing and I heard one whisper, ‘I think there's a graduate student in there.’ They screamed and ran when I sneezed."

She giggles. "They thought you were a ghoooost."

"If anywhere on campus were haunted, this would be it." The third floor stacks are perpetually poorly lit. Thanks to later additions to a library building only Escher could love, the arched windows on the far wall open to nothing but brick. In Roxy's words, "it’s where you go to get some serious ass studying done or to share a hip flask with a Civil War ghost.”

"Actually, I asked Aradia, and she said it's clean. The chancellor's house, on the other hand, definitely registers as harboring some kind of otherworldly presence. We haven't determined whether it's the chancellor yet."

"Take a look at some of the desks and tell me this place isn't possessed by demonic energies." Graffiti springs up faster than the staff can afford to replace furniture, and when the wooden desks are too choked with pen doodles and carved Greek letters, people move to the walls. If they're not sharing their phone numbers, they're swapping insults with rival frats. You take anthropological interest in this detritus, although one time you'd tried to decipher a Sharpie scribble, made out "We fucked here ;)", and speedily left the seat.

"Rose says the building appeals to your Gothic sensibilities."

"If she compares me to Lord Byron, tell her those are fighting words."

Jade peers in, and you make a halfhearted effort to push the clutter of Monster cans and energy bar wrappers out of her line of sight. "How long have you been in there?"

You stretch your legs as far as they can go, which isn’t far. "I can still feel my feet, and if I have circulation that means it's been under ten hours."

She purses her lips. "Dirk..."

You gesture toward your open PDF files. Several are still waiting for you to review their footnotes. "This dissertation isn't going to write itself."

"It won't write itself if you're dead either."

"Overwork is neither Heroic nor Just."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm confident on a philosophical basis."

She shakes her head. "I know I'm up a little late too. I had a night class on campus, and then I had a bunch of grading to do… You know how I lose track of time when I'm working sometimes." When you'd all lived together, both of you would get lost in projects and miss meals, only noticing the time when someone showed up to drag you out of your room. Jade had started setting timers for herself. She recommended the habit, but you hated having a buzzer interrupt your thoughts. Things take the time they take.

"I've heard rumors about your grading." You may not have a vibrant social network, but you keep your ear to the ground on social media. There's a waiting list for section 4 of Physics 1000. If you weren't long past gen ed credit requirements, you'd take it yourself. "Everyone thinks you'll be a soft touch."

You couldn’t teach. It still takes effort for you to spit out “Good job” to a friend. Your brain, conditioned by years of self-criticism, jumps over congratulations to what’s next and what they could do better. If a three-year-old presented you with their fingerpainting, your first reaction would probably be to tell them to wash their hands. No one deserves to be subjected to that. Isn’t Dave living proof?

“They have to learn,” Jade says. She doesn’t love it when people can’t keep up either, but she, unlike you, has historically been able to slow down and let them catch up without beating the lesson into them. "I let anyone who wants come into office hours. We'll walk through the concepts together and then they can resubmit. It's not my fault if they don't want to try. But anyway, I don't make a habit of all-nighters.” There she goes, picking the thread of the conversation back up again. She’s always been good at that, no matter how much people try to dodge. “They're not good for you. So how about once I finish looking up whoever this very important French guy is, I take you home?"

"Isn't that out of your way?"

She snaps her fingers. "The teleportation express runs 24/7 and omnidirectionally."

"Shit, I should have asked you for a ride here. On the shuttle I got stuck between some guy dumping his date over the phone and an octogenarian professor who might've died while we were in traffic."

"Ask me any time. I'm glad I ran into you tonight though, and not just to rescue you from dying in the depths of Web of Science. Jane wanted me to pass on that your resolution for the graduate assembly got voted down."

"Another one for the garbage, huh?" You click out of the open PDFs and drag them into your 'To process' folder. As much as you’ll never admit it, your blood pressure drops along with the number of tabs open. "I've given them the opportunity to be relevant on this campus, but if they want to keep kissing the administration's ass, that's their business."

"It's hard to challenge the people giving you funding. I'm writing grant applications for the lab this semester, believe me, I know."

Money. That’s an aspect of civilization you hadn’t missed growing up in its waterlogged ruins. For an institution allegedly devoted to higher knowledge, this place is obsessed with it.

"Speaking of which,” Jade continues, “Jane also said if you try anything else the board might pass a new resolution to stop letting you submit resolutions."

You snap your laptop shut. "This is homophobia."

She snorts. "I won't be long, I just need to track down a selected works book. Then I'll come back and we can get out of here."

" I can't be held responsible for any losses to scholarship." You stand up and stretch. Something in your back pops, and your head swims. Ok, maybe you've been sitting here too long.

"I'll take the blame from the academy. Just get tidied up while you're waiting." She looks critically at your collection of Monster cans. "You can recycle those, you know."

By the time Jade gets back with a thick-spined book on philosophy, you’re out of your carrel and have brushed most of the crumbs off yourself. The recyclables have been scooped up and dumped into your backpack’s outer pocket. It’ll be a sticky mess later. “Are you ready to go?” she asks

“Sure.” It’s not even one, which makes this the earliest you’ve gotten home all week. You’re struck by an impulse to yawn and almost crack your jaw resisting it. For fuck’s sake, it’s only November. You’re not allowed to get tired until March at the earliest.

Everything flashes green, and before you have time to rub your eyes, you’re standing outside your front door. Part of you expects to walk through together, but you don’t all live under the same roof anymore. Growing older changes things, even for gods.

“You’re coming to the group dinner next weekend, right?” she asks.

You dig in your pocket for your key. There must be some sort of interdimensional portal in there, it’s fucking ridiculous. Roxy probably knows about eldritch creatures that eat housekeys, that’s got to be within the Void’s purview. “It’s at Jane’s place this time, right?”

“It was the last time I checked.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Then I’ll see you later. Have a good night!” She waves and vanishes before you have time to reply. So instead you turn around, stick the key in the lock, and step inside.

 (Dirk would be one of those zombified PhD candidates who you can find obsessively scrolling through 50-year-old dissertations on microfilm at 3 am. He IS the library ghost. He doesn't attend any committee meetings because he's overscheduled but he does send proxies with detailed questions/comments/concerns for every agenda item. If they knew what he looked like, the other committee members would probably kill him on sight.)

[recesspizza40-blog]

Coffee Cinnamon Scones

If you think scones are supposed to be dry and boring baked goods, you need to let these Coffee Cinnamon Scones change your mind! Perfectly buttery and packed with coffee, cinnamon, and cinnamon chips, you’ll want to start every morning with one of these scones.

Is there anything in life that you really wish you were good at, but you’re just plain not? I legitimately have an entire list, but near the top of that list is drawing. I am ridiculously horrible at drawing, to the point where I don’t even really doodle because it makes me cringe when I see the results of my doodles. If you told me that if I were to draw a little bit each day, I’d eventually be good, I’d totally be practicing my butt off. But at this point in life, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not good at drawing and I never will be and practice will never make perfect because it’s just not how my brain or hands work. I don’t find myself sitting around with paper and a pen much these days anyway, but I still wish I could be proud of my doodles. Sigh.

It’s OK  though because luckily, I’m pretty decent at doing some other things. And for others, I know that lots of practice will eventually make perfect or at least close to it. Scone-making for instance. I’ve been on a major scone making kick lately and each and every time I bake a batch, they’re even better than the previous one. I’m so excited by how these Coffee Cinnamon Scones turned out and I’m already thinking about my next variety. Can we all work together to make scones fun again and not those hard-as-rock dry baked goods so many people think they are?

COFFEE CINNAMON SCONES RECIPE

Scones tend to get a bad name. Lots of people think of them as being dry and flavorless little baked goods that you have to dip into tea or coffee to actually enjoy. I’m here to tell you that isn’t true! Scones should be moist and buttery and flavorful and a little bit indulgent. These coffee cinnamon scones are all of those things and while they do go perfectly with a cup of coffee, you don’t actually need to dip the scone in the coffee in order to make it soft enough to eat.

Another myth is that scones are difficult to make. Nope! They are incredibly easy and only require a few steps. The most important? Making sure your butter is very cold and that you work it into the dough well (you can use your fingers or a fork for this, but I love my pastry cutter [affiliate link]). Also important is making sure your scones are flavored well… I used coffee, cinnamon, and cinnamon chips for these ones.

Once your dough is made, you simply pat it into a round (no rolling pins necessary!) and slice it into 8 wedges.

You can use a knife here, but I think every kitchen needs a bench scraper [affiliate link] (bench scrapers have so many uses! you can also cut your butter with them, move dough, and clean up a flour mess). There’s something so satisfying to me about slicing scone dough.

You’ll brush your scones with a little bit of cream and bake them at 400 degrees for 13-15 minutes, until they’re just turning golden.

But wait, don’t forget the coffee glaze! And a few extra cinnamon chips for good measure.

If you’re not totally ready to say goodbye to summer and jump into apples and pumpkins, cinnamon is a great transitional ingredient. But when you bake these coffee cinnamon scones, your kitchen will smell amazing and you won’t be able to help getting a little bit into the fall spirit.

You’ll also probably want to invite all the neighbors over for a coffee date. Even the neighbors you don’t like. But be careful because they’ll probably reallyyy like you after you serve them these scones.

I’ve decided that if we were all to start our days with a scone and cup of coffee (or tea if that’s your morning drink of choice), we’d all be much happier people. And I’m not saying these coffee cinnamon scones are going to solve all your problems or anything like that, but you do know that cinnamon has all kinds of health benefits, right? It’s packed with antioxidants and may even help lower blood sugar levels and reduce the risk of heart disease (I recommend using ceylon cinnamon for the best health benefits). So, if you’re going to have a morning treat (and you should! you deserve it!), making it one of these scones would be a very smart choice.

My biggest problem with these scones is that I can’t decide how to categorize them. Yes, they make a brilliant breakfast, but I also ate a couple as a dessert. And they are also perfect snacks. We might not really have a formal “tea time” here in America, but you know how when 3:00 hits you suddenly really need a cup of coffee and something sweet? Coffee cinnamon scones to the rescue!

At the end of the day, I suppose I’d rather be skilled at making scones than doodling. Because, I mean, you can’t eat doodles.

What skill or activity do you wish you were better at?

Are you on a scone baking kick like me? Check out my recipes for Cadbury Mini Egg Scones and Eat Your Vegetables Savory Scones!

5 from 5 votes

Print

Coffee Cinnamon Scones

Prep Time

20 mins

Cook Time

13 mins

Total Time

33 mins

  If you think scones are supposed to be dry and boring baked goods, you need to let these Coffee Cinnamon Scones change your mind! Perfectly buttery and packed with coffee, cinnamon, and cinnamon chips, you'll want to start every morning with one of these scones.

Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Cinnamon, coffee, Scones

Servings: 8 scones

Author: Sues

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 Tbsp cinnamon

2 tsp coffee grounds

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, chilled

1/3 cup cinnamon chips, plus more for topping if desired

1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp heavy cream, plus more for brushing

2 large eggs

Coffee Glaze

1 cup confectioners' sugar

2 tsp strongly brewed coffee

Pinch salt

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, coffee grounds, and salt.

Cut in butter with a pastry cutter or fork (or your hands), until pea-size pieces form with some larger chunks remaining. 

Stir in cinnamon chips.

In a small bowl, whisk together cream and eggs. Using a spatula, fold the cream/egg mixture into the dry mixture until just combined.

On a lightly floured surface, gently knead the dough a few times. Then using your hands, form a circle about 3/4" thick. Slice dough into 8 triangles and place on prepared baking sheet. Brush scones lightly with heavy cream.

Bake for 13-15 minutes, until scones are just turning golden around edges.

Let scones cool a bit before drizzling with coffee glaze and sprinkling with additional cinnamon chips.

Coffee Glaze

Put confectioners' sugar in a medium bowl. Add coffee and salt and whisk together until combined. Add more coffee if you'd like a thinner glaze.

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Source: https://wearenotmartha.com/coffee-cinnamon-scones/

[cooperjones2020]

Nobodies Nobody Knows, chp. 6

Summary: She is the lamp in Hero’s tower, the scissors in Delilah’s hand, the blood in Guinevere’s bed. She is a million and one metaphors and all of them are his undoing. (Some of the scenes from Second City but from Jughead’s perspective. More a character exercise than a story.)

A/N: Guys, it’s real intimidating to update on the same day as @lessoleilscouchants and @sylwrites, but, despite being not all the way happy with this chapter, I’m determined to turn this day around.

ao3–>http://archiveofourown.org/works/11434950/chapters/25623927

Nobodies Nobody Knows one / two / three / four / five (ao3)

Second City one / two / three / four / five / six / seven / eight / nine (ao3)

“Any idea why Mary left this on the sink in the bathroom?” He hands Betty a cellophane-wrapped gift basket and an envelope, her name in Mary’s handwriting across the front.

She takes the card out and her face slips into a gentle smile. “A thank you gift for looking after the house.”

The basket is filled with little toiletries, the kind you’d find in a fancy hotel. Betty opens a plastic bottle and squeezes out some lotion. “It smells like a person I used to be.”

He shuffles closer to her so he can smell her hands over the lingering aromas of garlic, tomato sauce, melted cheese. “It smells like Friday nights in the cab of FP’s truck, driving you home.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Then, the scent of the lotion hits him with a wave of memory so strong, for a moment he can taste one of Pop’s cheeseburgers. He can taste the menthol in the lip gloss she used to wear. He can taste—

“Maybe you could stay for a while. We could…watch a movie.”

He doesn’t realize he’s leaning toward her until she speaks and his head jerks back in surprise. “I’d like that.”

She gets so excited when she sees Before Sunrise is on TV that she immediately launches into a viva on why it’s amazing and why he needs to see it and why Julie Delpy is her forever girl crush. And so, he capitulates. He gives up on his campaign for Django Unchained, a modern classic that, unbelievably, Betty has never seen.

He has seen Before Sunrise. Has seen the whole trilogy, actually. He went through a Richard Linklater phase a few years ago, after he discovered Boyhood. But he also saw them in college. A girl he hooked up with had made him watch them, saying they were so romantic. His lack of reaction exasperated her. Now, he wants to give Betty exactly the reaction she is looking for. She assumes he hasn’t seen Before Sunrise, and so he doesn’t have the heart to disappoint her.

Nothing about this day has gone how Jughead expected. He’s normally a creature of routine. He likes the regular pattern of his days, the small undulations of activity. Now, as he sits on the opposite end of the couch from Betty Cooper, and as her bare feet sometimes brush his thigh, he’s thankful for unmet expectations. It’s the cherry on top of what has turned into a surprisingly happy day. He scoots down so he can rest his head against the back of the couch and stretches his legs so one is braced on the coffee table in front of them and the other is extended out toward Betty. If that brings her feet closer to his leg, so be it. It’s a comfortable position, damnit.

His familiarity with Linklater’s canon means his mind wanders in and out over the course of the movie.

When Jesse tells Celine, “You know what's the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you,” he remembers Betty, so nervous and so brave, interrupting him in the basement this afternoon. He’d chosen Leonard Cohen to accompany his work, the low tones just enough to cover the sound of her feet pattering overhead. It did such a good job that he hadn’t noticed her until she was close enough to pitch his heart into a staccato rhythm that momentarily alarmed him.

“Hi, um, are you busy? I wanted to talk to you.” He didn’t think she noticed, but her hands fluttered in perpetual motion—around each other, against the thighs of her jeans, into the hem of her shirt.

“No, not really. What’s up?” He removed his safety glasses and tossed them behind him, leaning against the table and running a hand through his hair.

“I just wanted to apologize to you. About before. You don’t owe me an explanation. You had every right to break up with me. We were in high school. That’s what people in high school do.” Her apology startled him into speechlessness, a rare occurrence in his life. But he knew she was expecting him to respond.

“Thanks, I guess, though you don’t have to apologize. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. I may have had a right to, but I definitely didn’t go about it in a very good way.” It’s not at all what he meant to say. But somehow, it’s what came out.

“Friends, then? I’d really like us to be friends.” Betty extended her hand. This time, he managed to shake it like a sane person.

“Friends. Definitely friends.”

“So…what are you doing?” Mercifully, she landed on a topic he could go on about for days. He showed her his progress and glowed like a lightning bug at her praise and her desire to help. Betty and power tools was not a combination his imagination needed. It was up there with Betty and mechanic tools, a fantasy he only let himself revisit at the lowest of times.

Now, the glory of the moment has passed and all he can do is berate himself for being a yellow-bellied coward. Some people may break up because ‘that’s what people in high school do,’ but they weren’t some people. And Betty knows it as well as he does. But the currency of any relationship is secrets, closely guarded, bartered, traded away.

Later, when Celine says, “If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know it's almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt,” he remembers Betty calling him out for playing with his hair and asking about the whereabouts of his old beanie. He hadn’t been able to help himself from spilling his guts then.

“It’s at home. I don’t wear it most of the time anymore. It’s basically my security blanket. For when I’m feeling off-kilter. I actually didn’t even have it in Chicago with me until recently. I saw it in my room in Riverdale and grabbed it more out of nostalgia than anything.” That wasn’t a thing he needed her to know. Oh well.

Sometimes, being around her is like peering through the looking-glass. She’s simultaneously a sixteen year old girl and the grown-up woman before him. It trips his tongue up. He knows her and he doesn’t. Once, he knew every freckle on her skin, every turn of expression. Every shade in her eyes. When she looks at him, he doesn’t know if he’s falling or floating. But he never wants to stop.

He knew he needed a reality check, so he said, “Can I ask about Hunter?”

“Oh, sure. There’s no big story. It just…wasn’t meant to be.”

His mouth was full of lasagna so he tried to gesture at her so she’d keep talking.

Betty leaned back in her chair and wrinkled her nose, drawing up one side of her upper lip.. “We met in college. For some reason, the editor of the paper wanted me to try my hand at the sports section. So I covered a lacrosse game where he got hit in the face.”

He’d known she was engaged, but had managed to avoid any information about the man in question. He sounded like Archie but with a trust fund. Jughead attempted to cover his reaction with humor.

“Stop it. Honestly, when I look back on it now — he definitely seems more like the kind of guy Veronica would go for, not me. Or Kevin. Kevin definitely had a crush on him for a while when we first started dating. But yeah. I loved him, I think. I just realized I didn’t love him enough to marry him.” It was a story he could have written for himself. No one was enough to fill the Betty-shaped hole in his amygdala.

“Any girls in your life?”

“No one worth mentioning. Not now, anyway.”

He glances over at Betty on the couch beside him. Her legs are curled up like a doodle bug’s. She’s somehow managed to wrap herself up in the throw blanket like a burrito and her head rests on her clasped hands, the pillow discarded near her waist. He remembers the words he’d used to describe her. She is the lamp in Hero’s tower, the scissors in Delilah’s hand, the blood in Guinevere’s bed. She is a million and one metaphors and all of them are his undoing.

Once, she was the cushion that let him be the most broken of his selves.

At some point in the past decade or so of his life, between JB moving home and starting high school, between finishing college and publishing his book, between losing Betty and regaining Archie, he made the decision to just take what he’d been given. Jughead had given up being a misanthrope for Betty Cooper once, he tells himself he isn’t willing to risk giving in to hope again.

When the movie ends, he turns off the TV. Betty rolls herself up to a sitting position, her hair disheveled and her eyes lidded.

“So what did you think? Did you like it? Do you think they come back in six months?” The wine has made her sleepy. Her lips slide off one another and Jughead can’t help himself from wondering, again, what they’d taste like – the oak of the wine or the tang he remembers as Betty. A tang he is no longer sure he hasn’t just made up. He shakes himself out of those thoughts.

“It was cute. My vote is he does, she doesn’t.”

“Interesting. Even though Celine is the more romantic of the two?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to watch the sequel to find out.”

“Guess so. I like that it ends on the ambiguity, that the audience gets to decide. They simultaneously do and don’t. Like Schrödinger’s date.” He pauses and turns to face her, pulling one leg up onto the couch. “But also, doesn’t the fact that there is a sequel indicate that they do come back?”

“No spoilers.”

“Have it your way.” He reaches forward and swipes his phone off the coffee table. “I’ll just look it up on IMDB.”

“Forsythe Jones!”

“Elizabeth Cooper!” Betty leans toward him, so he lifts the phone above her head. It’s childish, but she’s close enough that he can again smell the lotion. Then she gets him right in the ribs, right in the spot he’s most ticklish. He’s surprised for a moment when she plays dirty, but he shouldn’t be.

He repeats himself, “Have it your way then, spoilsport.”

“I am not the one being a spoilsport here. You were literally going to look up spoilers.” She’s so emphatic he can almost hear the italics, so he just laughs in response.

He’ll take what he’s been given. Today, he’s been given friendship. So he makes some noises about having to get home because it’s late. He gathers up his helmet and other accoutrements. Betty follows him to the back door, still wrapped in the throw blanket from the couch. Just before he slips out the door, he pulls her into a hug, cupping the back of her head and pressing his face into her hair.

Scratch that, this is the cherry on top of this weird but wonderful day.