#height predictor

[drpedi07]

Height Calculator

Free calculator to predict the adult height for children based on the linear regression analysis method as well as convert height in different units.

[ohtobeleah]

Was It Over? // Jake Seresin

-> Chapter Thirteen: [Panic Room]

Summary: Jakes darkest fears come to fruition when surgery doesn’t go as planned and the months to come bring a new reality he never saw coming.

Warnings: MAIN CHARACTER DEATH Sick!reader. Breast cancer diagnosis. Jake Seresin x F!reader. Angst, hospital & medical inaccuracies. SLOW BURN ROMANCE/ Inaccurate medical information. Relationship turmoil. Mentions of religion.

Word Count: 5.5k

Author Note: A big show of appreciation and love to @a-reader-and-a-writer (Vee) for constantly being ready and willing to help me with my writing. You have been the backbone I needed to get this done!

You guys will never know how much this series means to me. And in the same breath, you guys will never know how much your support truly means. Merry Christmas Eve Eve 2024 ya filthy animals.

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Researchers say the average length of a dream is two to three minutes long. But many people experience their dreams as hours, days, or even years if they can remember them at all. 

The science of dreaming has been questioned for hundreds of years. Some hypothesise that dreams are our way of processing real events that occur when we’re awake. They also serve as an outlet for repressed hopes and desires. Neuroscientists introduce a new theory every few years. But honestly, no one knows why we dream. 

Or why we have nightmares. We just hope that after the dream, we wake up. 

“We’ve gone over all the risks, weighed up all the possible outcomes, dotted I’s and crossed T’s. Today is the day, Mrs. Seresin.” Doctor Morrison was hopeful in his consultation. The white coat-wearing man reassured you as he placed your chart back where it belonged. “How are you feeling?” 

The question went unanswered for a moment or two. You felt like you were in a state of shock. Unable to truly express how you felt just hours before going into what could be life-changing surgery. You were giving everyone in the room a thousand-yard stare. Mentally and physically, you had checked out. Like you’d been stuck in a nightmare that wouldn’t stop torturing you. 

“We had some bad news last night. A close friend passed away unexpectedly,” Jake answered on your behalf. “Is there any way–” 

“We need to do this now, Mr. Seresin, or we won’t be able to revisit this for a few months,” Dr. Morrison explained with an emphasis on the matter of now or never. “I understand personal circumstances may have changed. However, knowing everything you know about risk and recovery and survival rates after double mastectomies, I recommend we stick to the organised care plan.” 

“Can we have a moment alone?” Jake asked cautiously as his hand came to rest gently on your shoulder. You hadn’t moved from what could only be described as a catatonic-like state for the entire duration of the conversation. 

“Of course,” Dr. Morrison nodded. “I’ll come back after I’ve checked in on a few patients.” 

It didn’t take long at all for the oncology crew to exit the room. But the second they did, you felt like you could breathe again. 

“I can’t go through with this surgery Jake,” you begged. Fear of the unknown had taken over your entire being. “I can’t do this,” 

“You are the strongest person I know, honey, the kids and I really need you to do this.” Jake tried his best to comfort you as well as remind you why this surgery was so important. “We need you, yeah? We need you to stick around and this fucking cancer, this disease, is trying to cut that time short.” 

“But Jensen–” 

At the height of the Great Depression, Harvard scientists started tracking students in hopes of discovering the key to a long and happy life. They looked at participants’ mental and physical health over seventy-five years. It’s the longest study of happiness to date. Seventy-five years and all they did was confirm what we’ve known since the beginning of time. 

The most powerful predictor of health and happiness is the quality of our relationships. 

Strong relationships protect us. Loneliness on the other hand…can be deadly. 

“Would want you to keep fighting and have this surgery.” Jake could have said he thought Jensen was a coward. He could have said how angry he was at that fucker for leaving you alone in this world with no one to confide in who knew the struggle, who knew the feeling of being told you’re sick and need to get sicker in order to get better. 

Jake could have told you how he wished Jensen had survived so he could kill him himself. Jake could have responded with the fact Jensen was terminal and there was nothing on this earth that could have saved him from his illness. 

Jake could have told you that Jensen thought you hung the stars and the moon in the night sky every night just for him…but then Jake would also have to admit to himself and you that maybe, just maybe, you should have moved on. 

“What would he say right now if he was here?” Jake settled on that question just to keep himself sane. He didn’t want to open yet another can of worms right before your surgery. This was all one big giant nightmare already, he didn’t want to make it worse. If anything, Jake kept pinching himself in secret just hoping that maybe he’d wake up on the couch and this cancer saga would all be some sadistic subconscious dream of his. 

He’d always been deathly afraid of not being good enough for you. 

“He’d tell me to do it,” you sighed as you let your head rest against the upright bed. “He’d tell me to be strategic about the battle, the war is the endgame.” 

“Exactly, one battle at a time, step by step,” Jake agreed with a cheeky smile. That signature Seresin smile you so effortlessly loved. “You’re not gonna hand in the white flag before the battles even really begins, are you?” 

“Kinda want to if I’m being completely honest with you,” you responded knowing Jake would appreciate the honesty. “But I guess you and the kids really need me to stick around, huh?” 

“Oh, I can’t even begin to explain how much we need you to stick around, honeybee.” it was as honest and as sincere as Jake could be. He wore his heart on his sleeve for you. He exposed every nerve he had just so you could dance your feather-like fingers across the tender strings that made Jake, Jake. 

“I’m so scared of being alone in the operating room,” you admitted as Jake leaned in to leave a gentle kiss on your forehead. “I’m so scared they won’t see me as a person,” It was an explanation that broke Jake’s heart even though he believed his heart couldn’t be broken any more. “That they won’t remember I’m me, that I have a life and a family and people who will miss me.” 

Over the course of our lives, our relationships ebb and flow. We get together, break up, move away, or fall out of touch. It’s prolonged periods of loneliness and toxicity that wreak havoc on our health, our brain function, and our longevity. 

“You’re never alone,” Jake replied softly as tears threatened to spill over his waterline. “I’m always with you, the kids are always with you, Jensen, your mum, everyone will be with you during that surgery, we’re gonna be waiting on the other side.” 

“I love you so much, Jake Seresin,” you smiled brightly through a tight-lipped smile Jake wished he could save in his mind’s eye forever. “Let’s win this battle.” 

“And the war too,” Jake replied as he reached for your hand, gave it a soft squeeze, and brought your palm to his lips. “Let’s fucking do this, Y/n.” 

*************************************

Jake sat waiting by the vending machine as he picked at the small single service-sized packet of original Lays he’d nearly had to beg the machine to drop. His watch told him it was almost nearing the end of your surgery. He wasn't stressed, not when your surgeon had been so hopeful and calming. Jake had spent far too much of his time recently worrying about the what-ifs. He wanted to focus on the now. And that now was the fact you would have been nearing the end of your surgery. Which meant soon enough he’d get to see you again. 

The only thing that kept Jake on his toes was the ever-looming doubt that perhaps the treatment plan wouldn't be enough. He hoped that you had enough fight in you to make it through the journey. He needed you to have enough strength to fight. 

“She should be coming out of surgery soon–” Jake explained as he held his phone up to his ear and tried not to chew so loud. “The kids know that Rooster is picking them up to bring them home to Grandma Maz’s house?” 

“Yeah, Mum’s not too happy about it but she won't keal over about it,” Jasmine replied as she watched her brother's kids play with hers in the backyard she and Jake used to make mud pies in. “Rooster messaged about an hour ago saying he was close, he shouldn't be too far away now.” Jas continued in her own little world. Jake was used to not being able to get a word in with his youngest sister. “I can't believe Y/n has fucking cancer–does her side of the family have a history or…?” 

“Not that we know of, it's just really bad luck, Jas,” Jake sighed as he let his head fall back against the wall his chair was pressed up against. “But hopefully with this surgery and the chemo, she’ll be able to beat it.” 

“Well, you tell her that I’m pissed she gets a boob job before I do,” Jasmine tried her best to keep the situation as light-hearted as possible. “Make sure she gets a good rack, not too small or too big, like a good handful that's just right.” 

“I'll be sure to let her know,” Jake smiled, he really could count on his sister for that. “Oh, I gotta go, I see Y/n’s surgeon.” Jake sat up in anticipation as anxiety flooded his nervous system. “Tell the kids we love them for me.” 

“Have been every day,” Jasmine replied quickly knowing her brother probably had his phone down from his ear by now. “Bye.” 

Jake was quick to pocket his phone and wipe the crumbs from his shirt as he stood to greet your surgeon. However, something seemed off about the man who had seemed so confident before your surgery. 

“Mr. Seresin–” 

“How is she?” Jake asked. He didn't mean to interrupt, but he needed to know first and foremost before any medical mumbo jumbo. “My wife, how’d the surgery go?” 

There was a very telling pause that accompanied the sober look that Doctor Morrison wore, but Jake tried not to read into it all that much. He knew you would be fine. 

Right? 

“Mr Seresin, your wife's heart was weakened by the stress of her recent stroke,” Doctor Morrison began to explain as Jake stood there expecting good news. “She, unfortunately, went into a cardiac arrest–” the air around Jake disappeared. Almost instantly, he felt as if he were floating in space. “We tried to revive her for the better half of twenty minutes while she was on the table,” There was a pause. A telling moment where reality and fantasy were trying to battle it out. Who’s version of events would win? When Doctor Morrison saw Jake’s mind short-circling with an inability to process the magnitude of information, he felt as if he needed to continue explaining the severity of the situation. 

“It was catastrophic, and I'm afraid we've lost her.” Doctor Morrison had told far too many loved ones over the years that they had lost family members, but never in all his years had he ever seen such immediate denial written in the lines on someone's face. “Mr. Seresin, your wife has died.” The words Doctor Morrison was saying were not sinking in as Jake stood there completely blind to the reality happening around him. “I’m so sorry for your loss–” 

“Uh–” Jake frowned as the confusion kicked in. “I'm sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone else. My wife was fine before she went in for surgery, she was fine.” 

“Yes, yes, your wife was fine, yes–” Doctor Morrison tried to keep his composure, but even after all these years the losses still hurt. It made him feel human to experience the emotions alongside the family members, but in the first few seconds of watching Jake Seresin spiral into a hole of denial that you were, in fact, gone, Doctor Morrison, knew this particular loss would haunt him for the rest of his career. 

Speaking slowly, Doctor Morisson tried once more to explain what had happened in a way that Jake would understand. “The stress of the surgery along with her recent stroke…her body just couldn't handle the stress. Her heart experienced a cardiac episode and we unfortunately couldn’t revive her.” 

The immediate silence between the two men was all-consuming as it was telling. Jake’s heart was breaking in two. 

“Is there someone I can call for you?” Doctor Morrison tried to be as empathetic as he could be, this part of the job was never easy. The part where he was tasked with telling loved ones that the people they loved had passed on his table. They were few and far between, but the people he did lose would forever haunt him. He could name every single one and their family’s name too. Jake Seresin would be a name Doctor Morrison would remember for the rest of his life and into the next. 

“Are you out of your mind?” Jake pushed back almost immediately as he tried to wrap his head around what he was being told. This didn’t make any sense, you were just here. You were fine. 

“No, Mr. Seresin I–” Doctor Morrison tried to explain again, but it was to no avail.

“I–Okay, I think you must be mistaken,” Jake wiped his hand on his jeans as he stepped back. “I just need to ge–”

“Mr. Seresin, please.” Doctor Morrison tried to stop Jake from leaving the waiting area, but Jake just stepped further back with a frown of disgust and grief. He was still holding his packet of Lays. 

“No, no can you just, can you back up?” Jake nearly growled. “Can you leave me alone?” Jake looked around as he tried to remember how to breathe. People were staring at him like he was in a zoo. A caged and cornered animal begging to be left alone. “Can somebody get this person to just give me some space please?” It was as heartbreaking as it was cruel to watch Jake walk down the hall towards where he knew your hospital room was. 

“Y/n?” He called out hoping you'd be back by now. “You won’t believe this guy, honey. He just–” The moment Jake rounded the corner and saw your hospital room empty with no sign of you, he stood still. All the air had been sucked right from his lungs as his eyes scanned the room. Your Christmas lights weren’t flashing, your bed wasn't made, and your laptop sat open with a black screen, but just where you’d left it. You weren't back. 

“Y/n?” Jake whispered under his breath as his eyes continued to scan the empty hospital room just waiting for you to appear from out of the bathroom or sneak up behind him. But Jake knew you weren't about to appear even though he wished for nothing more. 

“Oh–” One step, two steps, three steps, four. Jake didn't know where he was but he was on the move. He couldn't stay here looking at an empty room. He had to find where you were. “Oh god, no, no no no no no, please no don’t take her away from me.” 

“Jake!” The woman's voice Jake had come to know over the last few days broke through the fog that was clouding Jake's mind. He continued to stumble blindly down the ward. “I just heard,” Lydia explained as she rushed up to the man who she had come to know as your husband. “I'm so sorry, I wasn't expecting this to happen. I thought–” Lydia quickly reacted when Jake's knees buckled underneath him. 

“Woah! I need a little help over here!” Doctor Morrison was quick on the draw as he made his way over to where Jake now kneeled on the floor unable to breathe. 

“My wife–” Jake tried to talk as he hyperventilated. “Y/n!” he cried out for all to hear. “Y/N!” 

“She's gone.” Doctor Morrison had to make sure the fact was sinking in. 

“Oh Jake, I’m so sorry–” Lydia tried to console the six-foot-something man who had crumbled to his knees. “Your wife was an amazing woman.” 

Jake still couldn't believe it, he didn't believe it, and he wouldn't. The pain he felt inside his chest, the burning hot sensation was excruciating. He’d never felt such a feeling of grief mixed with denial and so much love. You couldn’t be gone. He was having a nightmare, wasn’t he? This wasn't real. He was dreaming. This was all one big dream. It had to be. It had to be a nightmare his subconscious had concocted. A nightmare where Jake lost it all. His biggest fears were realised. 

“I need my wife, I need Y/n,” Jake sobbed as Lydia kneeled on the ground in front of him just assessing his current state of shock. “I can't, she can't–no no no she's fine, please tell me she's fine.” 

“I'm so sorry, Jake,” Lydia confirmed what Jake wished so desperately wasn’t true. “She’s gone,” Lydia’s voice became distorted as she held the broken man in her arms. “You need to wake up before it's too late.” 

************************

Bradley Bradshaw was accustomed to losing the people he loved the most in this world. He’d lost his father, his mother, and his grandparents. For a while there he’d lost the only man who had ever slightly filled the shoes his dad left behind. But the loss of someone who was still there was something he’d never had to handle before. 

“Nat, he hasn’t gotten out of bed in days,” Bradley groaned as he cleaned up the kitchen. “The kids already lost their mother,” Bradley tried his best to keep his voice down, but the way little Lennox clocked Bradley from where he was sitting at the dining table made him realise he wasn’t one to talk on the quiet side. “They don’t need to lose their dad too.”

Jake stood just outside of Bradley’s eyeline, but he could hear everything the giant overgrown bird was saying. He couldn’t hear what Phoenix was saying but there was enough back and forth on Bradley’s behalf to easily fill in the gaps. 

“No. No, he hasn’t been down since the funeral.” Jake forgot how to exhale at the mere mention of your funeral as he hid in the hall. He couldn’t remember ever getting ready or speaking at your wake. He couldn’t remember who drove them or if the kids cried. He couldn’t remember hugging your mother or shaking your brother’s hand. Jake couldn’t remember any details about the flowers he’d organised or the people who were there. 

The anti-depressants weren’t helping. Nothing was. Nothing would. 

Until today, Jake couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed. Without you, there was no point. He was begrudgingly okay with living a life in a world where you were still in it. But living in a world where you were no longer present wasn’t something Jake was willing to do. The kids would be fine with their grandparents. They’d be fine with Uncle Rooster. Lennox and Lucy and little Sammy didn’t need him. How was he supposed to look into their eyes and know he could never see the twinkle in yours ever again? 

“I’m really worried about him, Nat,” Rooster sighed as he held his phone up to his ear with his shoulder. He was working on making little Samy some banana pancakes. “As much as I want to, I can’t stay here forever, but he needs someone.” 

“No one is asking you to babysit me, Bradshaw,” Jake replied to the statement Bradley wasn’t expecting an answer to. “You can leave, trust me, I can drop the kids off with my mum.” 

Bradley stood stunned into silence as he watched Jake round the corner and into vision. He reluctantly reached for his phone and hung up as Phoenix questioned what was going on. 

“Hey man,” Rooster finally broke the silence as he watched Jake walk closer and closer to where Sammy sat in his high chair. “How you feeling today?” 

“Well, my wife’s still dead, so that’s something,” Jake replied with a sigh as he picked up Sammy and placed him on his lap. Lennox could see the look of pure admiration in his younger brother’s eyes as Jake hugged the smallest of the Seresin kids. “Seriously, you’ve done enough for us, I got it from here.” It was the biggest lie Jake had ever tried to tell not only himself but his best friend. 

“Uh,” Bradley wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure? I mean–I wanna stay as long as you need man,” Bradley tried to plead his case as Jake went about his business with Sammy. The business being nothing. Jake stood somewhat dazed and lost in the middle of the clean-ish kitchen. A kitchen he knew where nothing was. It wasn’t his. It was yours. 

“I think the kids should come back to North Island with me,” Jake opted to ignore what Bradley was saying. Instead, he decided to continue with a vague plan for what the future holds. A future he didn’t want to have with you. A future he didn’t care about. 

“You want the kids to uproot everything they know?” Rooster frowned as he looked over to where Lenny sat watching on. The kids were down, to say the least. Bradley could recognise himself in the permanent pout that had taken shape across Lennox’s face. The puffy eyes and saddened expression really tied the whole look of mourning together. They were just kids, they didn’t deserve any of this. “I don’t think you should be thinking about coming back to work anything soon either.” 

“I don’t need you micromanaging me,” Jake hissed as he held onto his youngest son, all the while his eldest watched on with concern for his dad. “I need you to go home, Rooster, we’ve got it from here.” 

“You don’t got anything, Seresin. Are you kidding me right now?” Bradley didn’t mean to come across as so defensive. But he’d seen Jake in this grief-fueled spiral long enough to know that his destructive and depressive mindset would end up causing more distress for the kids than intended. Jake was a good dad, that had never been questioned. Until now… Bradley wasn’t sure if his best friend could handle parenting three small children without a village to back him up. “The kids haven’t seen you in days–” 

“Would you rather them see me at my worst or not see me at all?” Jake’s grief was eating away at him. So much so that Jake began to wish each time he closed his eyes he’d get to stay with the version of you his mind had envisioned. “I’m fine, I’ve got it from here,” Jake sighed as he hugged little Sammy with all the strength that he had. “I wasn’t, but I’m fine now and I just wanna spend time with the kids.” 

“I don’t believe a word you’re saying right now man,” Bradley replied as he caught sight of Lucy coming down the hall. She’d been sleeping much like her father was. Great, all three Seresin children were present for their father’s impending breakdown. 

“Get the fuck out of my house, Bradshaw.” This hadn’t been the first confrontation Jake and Bradley had gotten into while Bradley had been staying in Rhode Island as the Seresin kid’s personal live-in nanny. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last. It was becoming an almost everyday occurrence. The only difference this time was the kids were here to witness it. “I don’t need you here–”

“You aren’t thinking straight, just–how about the kids and I go for a walk or something and you sort yourself out? Have a shower? Shave? Drink something other than alcohol for–” Before Rooster could finish his sentence, Jake was placing Sam on the kitchen floor with a haste that didn’t sit right with Rooster. Lennox was the first to move from his chair. He was the spitting image of his father. 

“I don’t fucking care, Rooster!” Jake shouted at the top of his lungs. So loud and with such rage that the veins in his neck were popping as his skin turned a nice shade of ruby red. He took fast strides across the kitchen until Jake was standing toe to toe with his best friend. The very friend who’d been taking care of his children since before your passing. “I have to live the rest of my fucking live without the woman I love, so, cut me some godman slack before I knock your smug ass head from your shoulders.” 

Bradley didn’t move. He didn’t retaliate. He watched over Jake’s shoulder how his three children all cowered on the kitchen floor, scared of how their father yelled. Jake was oblivious to his surroundings. He couldn’t see the kids were struggling too. 

“Jake?” Bradley sighed as he placed his hands on either side of Jake’s face. “When the fuck are you gonna get through all this?” Braley asked softly as he remained calm. “When are you gonna wake up?” 

“Wake up?” Jake repeated as he pulled his face from his best friend's grip. “Wake up? Bradshaw, I died with my wife! There is no waking up from any of this!” 

“Maybe–” Bradley shrugged as he walked over to where the kids had been huddled together. It was only as Jake followed Bradley’s trajectory that he realised how much he’d scared his children. Something he never wanted to do. “There's always hope though.” 

“Kids,” Jake sighed as his tears began to fall. He dropped to his knees right then and there in the kitchen he wasn't familiar with. In a house that was now cold and dark without your constant radiating light to keep it warm and bright. “Guys, I'm sorry, huh–Dad didn't mean to raise his voice, he’s just–” Before Jake could finish his sentence, little Lennox was finishing his father’s sentence for him. 

“You’re just sick, dad.” 

“What?” Jake frowned as the kids made their way over to where Jake was kneeling on the tiles. 

“I said you’re just sad, Dad,” Lennox replied once more as he gave his dad a hug. “We’ll take care of you.” 

************************

December 31st 

Jake Seresin tried his best to hide the wet tears that fell down his cheeks as he sat with his kids on the lounge of the home that he had tried his best to keep as tidy as he could. There was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of frustration, a lot of fear and unbelievable sadness that surrounded Jake and your three small children. The unknown was truly tragic, terrifying and treacherous, but Jake wasn’t about to let his kids see the way he so desperately wanted to cry. 

Things had changed since Jake fell mind, body and soul into an unimaginably deep hole of depression. So much so that days had become to feel like one long dream. A paradox of grief and manic love. Your mother had told Jake to feel every ounce of emotion he had locked away. Maz had told him that grief was just someone’s residual love with nowhere else to go. 

Once Jake was able to understand that the pain of losing you was his love for you, he understood why it hurt so deeply on a cellular level. He understood why it hurt to look at the children he’d created with you. He understood why the kids had wanted to sit and open the small, still-wrapped Christmas present Lenny had found in Jake’s bag when he was looking for his dad’s wallet. 

Because it was one of the last things you ever gifted someone. It was one of your last acts on earth. 

“What did Mum get you for Christmas, Daddy?” Jake held the small present in the palm of his hand, the present he had yet to open. The present he wasn’t sure he wanted to. It felt like something he’d held before, the weight felt all too familiar. It haunted him the more he carried it around, held it in the palm of his hand and contemplated the inevitable. 

“I dunno buddy, you reckon I should open it?” Jake asked as he kissed his son's head. “S’not Christmas anymore.” The Naval Aviator had recently shaved his head, it had been the closest to a number one he’d ever had. It was in solidarity, union. A decision he made in the blink of an eye but one he did not regent or ever would. 

“We haven’t taken the tree down yet,” Lucy added her two cents into the conversation as she laid her head on her father’s thigh. “Mum would be upset if you didn’t open it, Dad.” Jake knew that much was true, you probably would be pretty bent out of shape if he never opened it. 

“Alright, I’d better open it then huh?” Jake shook the small perfectly wrapped box he could hold in the palm of his hand. He heard what sounded like a rock rattle inside. His heart nearly exploded inside his chest. 

Fuck….Jake knew what it was and he really didn’t want to open it. 

“Hey, Dad?” Lucy’s voice sounded completely different to anything Jake had ever heard before. She was looking right at him yet her eyes were trained on something one hundred miles away. 

“Yeah, sweetheart?” Jake replied just as he was about to open the present you’d given him before his life was turned upside down. 

“You need to wake up now,” Lucy’s voice sounded familiar, but it wasn’t her own. “You’ve had enough time here,” 

“What are you talking about Lu?” Jake frowned as he looked at his daughter. An extension of himself and you. “Lucy? Are you feeling okay?” 

“You’ll be a good dad soon,” Lucy smiled as she unwrapped the small ring box in Jake’s hand. The ring box that held what Jake assumed to be your engagement ring. But as little Lucy opened the wrapping, a blinding light burst through the cracks. A light so bright it forced Jake to squint. 

“Please wake up, honey,” Jake heard your voice clear as day as Lucy opened the ring box to send a piercing white light into the living room. Jake was completely captured by the light around him. So much so the entire room was drowned in a light so pure it was crystal clear. He couldn’t see a single thing beyond the all-encompassing white. 

“Please wake up for us,” again your voice was the only thing Jake could hear in the void he found himself in. 

“Y/n?” Jake called out into the void around him. He could feel his ribcage breaking like he couldn't breathe. Every breath he took was agony. “Hello?” Yet he could hear your voice. A voice he longed for. A voice he had to get back to. Jake had to get to you. 

“I’m here, you’re alright,” Jake once again heard your angelic siren song. His head began to throb. The feeling was agonising. Like there was no more room for swelling. 

“Where are you?” Jake called out as he stumbled in the light. The smell of burning flesh mixed with jet fuel overcame Jake’s senses. His need to get to you was more powerful than the deep bone ache he could feel in his legs. There was nothing on earth or beyond that would stop Jake from getting to wherever the hell you were calling him from. His entire body ached with a pain so unimaginable it sent him to his knees. Crawling, Jake cried out for you just one more time. 

“Y/n!?” Jake called out once more in a desperate attempt to find you in the void. “Kids?” 

“Here he comes,” Bradley’s voice echoed out as Jake looked up towards where he assumed the sky would be. The glare was too much. Jake placed his forearms over his forehead to soften the brightness. “Come on Hangman, don't leave us out to dry.” 

Some people spend their whole lives trying to make a dream come true. They set a goal and make a plan on how to achieve it. It works for some people. But for others, it’s not so easy. As hard as they work toward the dream, it can feel like the whole world has plotted against them. 

As someone gets further and further away from the dream, people begin to cling to any sign of hope. And the longer it takes and the more it costs…you start to consider whether you should give up. Do you find a new dream? Or do you stick to the one that started you on this journey in the first place? 

For Jake, things weren’t as black and white. 

As Jake closed his eyes and took one painful last breath in, he felt as if he’d fallen from cloud nine. When he opened his eyes, the light was still there….But he wasn’t.

Jake’s eyelids fluttered, the faintest hint of light creeping through the haze of his mind. He tried to move, but his body felt foreign as if it wasn’t entirely his own. The weight of unconsciousness clung to him, reluctant to release its hold. Slowly, he became aware of the sounds around him—

“Jake, It’s me, can you hear me?”

**********************

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[casscainmainly]

I may be stupid, but I js realized that like. Okay, so yk how people defend the undertones of cass being short because she was homeless for a couple of years and malnourished? Didn't the pit like, undo Jason's malnourishment, and that's kinda how he went from scrawny teen to behemoth?? And Cass, who has been dipped in Baja blast, would have also gotten like, un-malnourished???

Like i love the visuals of small character beat up a bunch of people no sweat as much as the next guy, but. Look at those genetics!! she's meant to be a tall girl cmon guys

It's 6am and i haven't slept sorry if this makes no sense

I honestly didn't realise people thought Cass was short because she was malnourished, I thought it was because she's a) drawn short usually I think and b) Asian 😭😭😭. BUT she is half-White, so I guess that doesn't matter. I actually have no idea whether the Pit reversing Jason's malnourishment is true; I think it's non-canonical, and just a popular fandom thing??? Idk a Jason expert can say if it's a real thing or not.

Anyway, I don't think the Pit would've made her taller to be honest (though I love the way you called it Baja blast 😭😭😭😭). But I wouldn't mind that becoming a fanon hc for her, yeah why not she's just really tall now. (I will admit I'm a firm tall Stephie B truther so I like Cass being shorter than her, but if you prefer tall Cass that is ALSO valid).

Okay but to do MATH according to fandom wikis David Cain is 6' 2" and Lady Shiva is 5' 8". Apparently the best predictor of a child's height is adding the mother's and father's height, adding 13 cm (5 inches) for boys or subtracting 13 cm (5 inches) for girls, and then finally dividing by 2. So for Cass it's ((6' 2" + 5' 8") -5") / 2 = 5 feet 8½ inches.

So Cass, if she hadn't been malnourished, would likely be 5 feet 8½ inches!!! (Assuming I did the math right 😭)

[utilitycaster]

some more WBN fireside excerpts that are some good thoughts re: TTRPGs and actual play; these are from the chat for episode 38, Abassin:

On planning:

Taylor Moore Let's talk. Let's talk about it, baby. Let's talk about planning because it fucking sucks.

Brennan Lee Mulligan It absolutely sucks. But the issue is you don't get the emotional heights of this episode without the plan. It's like, imagine a heist movie that just starts in the heist and they get the money and they go, "Boy, all that shit worked!"

(and a little later; I've edited out some good comments elsewhere that spoil the episode)

Brennan Lee Mulligan I think that what a lot of DMs too often do is punish planning and look for ways to make a PC's plan not work. What that does is it arrests your collaborators in a cycle of fear and basically going, any good idea I have is going to be twisted against me. As opposed to doing it like, the complication will come from the things you didn't plan for, which in this case was the nat one luck check that they were attacking earlier than expected. But you don't fuck with [spoiler re: the plan Aabria made]. That's the cool idea your PC had. If they worked to make it happen, let it work.

------

another good note:

Brennan Lee Mulligan Coming back around to the end where it— by the way, that thing of confusion as the brother of death when the stakes are this high is not only about being routed, which is the ultimate horror in a military situation. It's also about the only times I have ever experienced TPK in home games and things like that, are when the party starts to get confused about what they're supposed to do.

Aabria Iyengar Yes, ooh the spiral.

Brennan Lee Mulligan The spiral. Someone says, "Okay we are dying. We need to get out of here. I'm going to run." The next person says, "Okay, I'm going to run too but I just want to see if I can get this thing with a bonus action. Oh, I failed. Oh no, they got an attack of opportunity? Okay, I'm grappled." Next person says, "I'm going to hit the person that's grappling them. Oh, I missed." Other person says, "Okay, I'm going to run." "No, you should try to free them! Wait okay, now two of us are running. Okay, but it'll be your turn."

Brennan Lee Mulligan It's that moment of split purpose is the ultimate predictor for total party kill, of people are not on the same page...[rest has mild spoilers and is an illustrative example]

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs & Heteromorphobia (Arcs VI - X , Hero Killer to Provisional License Exam)

(This post will also cover the bonus chapter “Tsuyu's Ribbity Diary.”)

Thank you all for your amazing response to last week's post, my goodness! I thought I'd found about all the audience I was likely to get for my harping about heteromorphic discrimination, so I was delighted to see a number of new names!

I do have to warn you all, if you haven't done much looking into my archives, that I'm pretty critical of BNHA these days, especially of the ways it insists on holding up individualistic solutions to problems clearly established as systemic in nature. That will become more apparent when I get into the post-war material, as the endgame is absolutely rotten with it.

This week, though, we'll start by getting out of the school to get a look at signs of and contributors to heteromorphobia in the wider world.

The Vs. Hero Killer Arc (Chapters 45-59)

Chapter 45:

Mina’s preferred alias, Alien Queen, in reference to the Xenomorph queen from the Aliens franchise, is turned down by Midnight.  The reason for this is never made especially clear.  Class 1-B gets away with a number of villainous or monstrous hero names, like Phantom Thief and Gevaudan, violent ones like Battle Fist, even an animal reference in Jack Mantis.  But Mina, for whatever reason, gets pushed towards the indescribably twee Pinky instead.  Does Midnight the R-rated hero not think girls should get to have hero names with some edge?  Surely not; her entire persona is based on titillation.  Length is clearly not a factor, given that Midnight personally approves Can’t Stop Twinkling. I don’t know exactly what went down here (from a Watsonian perspective, that is; the Doylist guesses are readily apparent and all eyeroll-inducing), so I will simply point out that a non-baseline gal wanted to name herself after a famous monster with acidic blood and was pressured into going with something cutesy based on her skin color instead.  Bakugou’s choice gets turned down as well,[1] but he actually has “murder,” like, right there in the name; Alien Queen is quite roundabout by comparison!

Chapter 48: 

Introduction of Uwabami, the Pro Hero gal with the head snakes.  She’s a bit of a weird case.  Given that all we know she does is find hidden people using the snakes’ keen senses, do they have some self-awareness that makes them able to communicate with her—a case somewhat like Tokoyami and Dark Shadow, perhaps?  Does she just tap into their senses at will rather than being able to speak to them?  Or are they rather just extensions of herself, with no particular consciousness of their own, and they function like what must be a fairly dizzying array of extra-sensory perception that she receives at all times?     Whatever the case, she’s a model and celebrity, and thus our first clear example of a heteromorph who doesn’t seem to suffer for her looks. Her looks are, of course, quite accentuated, given that her hero costume is a low-cut evening dress with a slit in the side up to her hip.  Other than the hair-serpents, she’s a baseline woman who checks all the boxes for modern beauty standards; she will serve in this fashion as a good predictor of other highly ranked heteromorphic Heroes.

Chapter 51+55:

Endeavor, as will be made clear in Chapter 55, doesn’t really have any idea what the Noumu’s deal is.  As far as he knows, it’s just like any other villain—and yet in Chapter 51, he opens up with an attack that bathes the Noumu in flame anyway, and comments in 55 that he’s never known anyone to remain conscious after such an attack.  While I think this mostly speaks to the general brutality with which villains are treated by heroes—much different from standard police practice in real-life Japan!—it’s nonetheless notable that the Noumu he attacked with such casual ferocity certainly doesn’t look very baseline to the casual eye, between the exposed brain, the significant height, and the crawling movement.

Chapter 56:

Midoriya is startled by Chief Tsuragamae’s “woof” interjections.  He doesn’t comment on it out loud, so I’m not inclined to hold it against him (not like someone else I’m about to bring up), but it wouldn't be the first time he’s come across this kind of vocalization: Tsuyu makes ribbit noises pretty frequently.    

Tsuragamae notes that the authorization of a certain class of people, called “heroes,” to weaponize their quirks against others was initially a heavily criticized decision, one which only garnered public support because those original heroes were careful to always obey the laws dictating the circumstances in which they used their quirks.  He goes on to say, of using one’s quirk to inflict harm without explicit instruction from the powers-that-be, “Such action would represent a stunning breach of law.”  Like Thirteen before him, he completely omits any mention of how such laws disproportionately affect heteromorphs, who can’t turn off a permanent physical trait, and, particularly in cases of people whose entire bodies are divergent, have little choice in whether or not to use their quirk in any sort of physical altercation that might lead to harm.    

Shouto, angry over what he perceives as punishment for a good deed, calls Tsuragamae a mutt.  The chief doesn’t react particularly strongly to this, but as the chief of police, you have to imagine he’s pretty used to the slings and arrows of public opinion.  The incident passes without comment, but it will not be the last time we hear a Todoroki derisively referring to another human being as an animal.

There are some sweatdrops and exhortations to get the kid to cool it, but those were ongoing before the animal words came out.

Chapter 57: 

Gran Torino notes that the age they live in, for better or for worse, is one of suppression, and that the situation with Stain and the League will draw people out who are influenced by that ideology.  Gran doesn’t elaborate on exactly what sorts of people he has in mind—All Might says only, “Then heroes will deal with them,”—but it’s an early hint that there are people in this society who feel unjustly suppressed.  Crucially, Gran Torino doesn’t even necessarily think those people are wrong; he just thinks it’s a necessary evil.  But what, exactly, is it that he’s grudgingly accepting as inevitable for the sake of maintaining the status quo?  And how might his circumstances need to differ for him to have a different opinion?    

In Chapter 27, we learned that producing support goods requires a government license; here we find out, courtesy of Giran, that dealing in and producing support goods without such a license is a major crime.  So if you, for any reason, failed that “rigorous examination” to get cleared for support goods for quality-of-life reasons, you’re unlikely to find someone who’ll just provide them to you out of sympathy provided you keep quiet about where you got them.  Instead, you have little choice but to turn to black market brokers—all because the government doesn’t think your quirk is affecting you negatively enough to qualify you for support equipment.     Again, this isn’t specifically about heteromorphs, but someone having an emitter quirk they can’t control well who needs the support item because they are choosing to pursue a career requiring them to learn that control is a very different case than someone who needs government support because of an immutable, always-on physical trait.    

This chapter contains the first appearances of both Gigantomachia and Spinner, both fairly extreme heteromorphs: Machia for his size and rocky hide, and Spinner for animal traits considerably more prominent than e.g. Tokoyami’s bird head or even Tsuyu’s conglomeration of mildly froggy traits.  Indeed, Spinner’s heteromorphic traits are so much more prominent than something like Jirou’s earlobes that it hardly seems accurate to even categorize their bodies the same way.    

The sidebar for Daikaku Miyagi, the anchorman with the quirk that gave him two big horns who amputated one so that it would be less in the way during newscasts and other things that required there to be a camera on him.  This in and of itself wouldn’t necessarily be notable, save that the same extra goes on to describe how the decision garnered some backlash from “a certain human rights group” who said that decisions like his fostered discrimination and were linked to the rejection of quirk-based society on the whole.  Horikoshi further notes that he enjoys thinking about the lives and stories behind minor characters—even this far back, then, three and a half years before the introduction of the CRC, we have concrete evidence that the author was thinking about quirk-based discrimination and the politicization of heteromorphic features.

Chapter 59: 

All Might drops some exposition about the Advent of the Exceptional, during which we see an image of a crowd full of implied-quirkless people holding up signs proclaiming their humanity and the monstrosity of those with quirks.  Conversely, three of the four quirked people we see have obvious physical divergence from baseline human appearance.  So from early on, that “monster” turn of phrase was heavily associated with changes in the physical appearances of those with special abilities.  Later on, the PLF advisor at the hospital will tie these two things together explicitly.

   

The Final Exams Arc (Chapters 60-69)

Chapter 61:

Ectoplasm’s character sheet.  The teeth are creepy no matter which way you cut it, but they look much more profoundly unsettling when they’re right there on his unmasked face, as opposed to behind a black cowl, where you can let your eye fool you that they are in some way part of its design.  His hero costume, naturally, includes the cowl, but his daily clothes do not—I wonder if he ever tried to have a gentle talk with Shouji about why Shouji wears the mask even in his downtime?  I wonder even more how much the teaching staff in general, and Nedzu and Aizawa specifically, actually know about Shouji’s history.     o It’s also noted that Ecloplasm looks scary, but has received continued support after coming back to the job after losing both legs in a fight with a villain—we see this same pattern with Jeanist after Kamino.  No word on how regular his support was before the traumatic double limb loss, though.

Chapter 66: 

Nedzu, we find, was “toyed with by humans in all sorts of ways in the past.”  Nothing we know about him suggests that he has any particular longevity, but his dynamic with Endeavor,[2] many chapters down the line, does suggest to me that he was at least on the staff when with Endeavor was at UA some thirty years ago.  Thirty years is within the span of All Might’s career, well after society began to stabilize with the formalization of the Hero System.  And yet, despite that, a sentient being, one with human—above human!—intelligence, was mistreated badly enough that he bears a grudge to this day.  Nedzu is, again, not in precisely the same situation as a human heteromorph, but he serves as an indicator of what humans have, even in the age of heroes, been willing to do to those they think of as “animals.”    

A shot of Koda and his mother, who look much alike.  Interestingly, the biggest difference in their appearance is that she has horn-like protrusions that her son lacks.  We’re a long way from the first quirk evolutions, and even farther from Koda’s quirk evolution, but we will later see Koda’s mother specifically tie those horns to her animal communication quirk becoming more powerful.  This makes for another good piece of evidence towards Horikoshi having a grasp of heteromorphobia from early on, as the evidence is pretty good that Koda-mama got those horns as a result of a quirk evolution of her own, and those don’t happen under normal, non-stressful circumstances.  More on Koda’s parents in a bit, as they're a pretty stand-out case in another way that isn’t immediately apparent here.

Can we call it foreshadowing for Koda defending Shouji at the hospital that Koda is wearing the same scarf as the main character in Horikoshi's Oumagadoki Zoo? Hmm. I'll leave that one to codenamesazanka.

Chapter 67: 

A flashback panel to Mineta’s days in middle school.  While I don’t doubt that there are P L E N T Y of reasons Mineta would be unpopular with the girls in his class, it is nonetheless notable that the popular boy getting showered with attention is perfectly baseline, while Mineta and his friends are not.

Note also that the cute heteromorph girl has long-ish ears and no other obvious divergent features.

Chapter 68: 

Shouji and Iida are specifically called out to at the mall, trying to attract them as customers with claims that whichever storefront employee is hailing them can help them find anything they need.  Midoriya mutters to himself about the difficulties of catering to everyone, given the many different types of quirks scattered across multiple age groups.    

Crowd scenes at the mall show scattered numbers of heteromorphs, a somewhat higher number than usual for such civilian crowd scenes.  The Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall is noted for being the biggest and trendiest in the prefecture, with a variety that attracts lots and lots of people, so perhaps it’s no surprise to see somewhat more heteromorphs than usual there.

   

The Forest Training Camp Arc (Chapters 70-83)

Chapter 70: 

Introduction of the Wild Wild Pussycats.  A team of three Emitters and a Transformation-type, none of them in the slightest heteromorphic (give or take Tiger’s permanent :3 mouth), they nonetheless theme themselves after cats, including fake tails, big costume paw gloves, and cat-ear-esque headsets.  It’s cute and unobjectionable in and of itself, but I do wonder what people like e.g. Officer Sansa think of it.

Chapter 71: 

Shouji is missing from the hot springs scene.  It doesn’t hugely stand out in the moment because Aoyama and Sero aren’t there either, but it does read a bit differently with the benefit of hindsight.  Given the strong possibility that Aoyama is off doing Traitor Activities and Shouji is avoiding any possibility of having to torpedo the hot springs fun-times with an explanation of that time he was savagely beaten by people in his hometown right in an open street, it kinda leaves Sero as the only one who maybe just skipped for normal reasons, like that hot springs would gunk up his tape or something.

Chapter 73: 

Bakugou addresses Ojiro as “Tail”—referring to him by his heteromorphic trait.  He’s not even particularly angry at the moment; he’s just still nursing a grudge about Todoroki’s underwhelming performance in their Sports Festival match and wants to swap partners for the Test of Courage.  Early Bakugou is very much a “judge a person by their quirk” sort.    

Pixie Bob ushers Tsuyu and Ochaco into the woods for their turn at the Test of Courage by referring to the latter as Uraraka-kitty and the former as Ribbit-kitty.[3]  While in the English, this reads as a baseline woman in a cat costume referring to the heteromorphic student by her animal-themed verbal tic and the baseline student by her actual name, uraraka is a fairly onomatopoeic way to say bright and cheerful.  I would guess that Pixie Bob is probably referring to Ochaco’s personality here, which makes it somewhat less egregious.  It won’t be the last time someone refers to Tsuyu via the frog sound instead of her name, though.

Chapter 75:

Mandalay telepathically compliments Spinner, calling him both cool and handsome.  While I doubt he’s the only person in the world who’d react the way he does—he blushes, gets flustered, and missteps, giving Mandalay an opportunity to attack him—the moment does get some new context when you consider how everyone called him “the lizard freak” in his hometown.  Approximately zero people calling him cool and handsome back there, one imagines!  Having it immediately turn out to be a ploy likely informs some of the outraged anger in his response.

Chapter 81: 

Mandalay points out that Spinner never used his quirk during their combat, implying that she doesn’t think just his lizard-like appearance or his claws “count.”  Chalk another one up to the classification problems of “heteromorph” as a descriptive term.  This will turn out to rather neatly illustrate one of the issues I’ve been talking about with regard to the way heteromorphs are unfairly disadvantaged by the current laws about public quirk use.  Remember, a “Villain” is someone using their quirk illegally.  So if Mandalay doesn’t think Spinner used a quirk here, and since he has no record, why does he get categorized as a Villain instead of just a garden variety criminal?     Now, one could say that by associating with the League of Villains, Spinner is rather claiming the designation for himself, and we don’t know how the legal system will technically classify him, when and if he ever actually faces trial.  To that, I would say to hold the thought, because Skeptic will eventually back me up on the, “Heteromorphs are unfairly targeted by Villain designations,” claim all but word for word.    

BONUS CHAPTER 1: Tsuyu’s Ribbety Diary

We meet Tsuyu’s family, all various froggy types.  They’re a cute family, but the husband and wife both being froggy kind of raises some questions about pressures that might exist about marrying your same “type,” or at least refraining from marrying anyone too obviously not.  I’d be more willing to wave it off if not for two things.      First, we get the same sort of scenario from Spinner’s character sheet, that his is “a family full of reptilian quirks.”  Second, there are very few romances in the series between someone close to “baseline” and someone with a more extreme heteromorphic appearance.  The most obvious, clear-cut, canonical example is Koda’s parents—his dad has slightly weird hair but is otherwise entirely baseline; we see him defending his wife from other peoples’ mockery.  That, of course, is a single panel limited to a flashback inside a flashback, so not exactly very visible to the reader!  The next-most significant one I can come up with is Natsuo and his mouse girlfriend, who has likewise been seen in one (1) panel, had no dialogue, and whose appearance and identity were so incidental the anime deleted her entirely.     Who’s next?  Well, if you assume all those No Comments from Kamui Woods and Mount Lady about their relationship are indicative of a relationship between them, they’d be another, though we don’t actually know what Shinji actually looks like under his mask, only the implication that it’s divergent enough that he prefers to cover his face.  Next up on my tally would be Thief Takami and Tomie, but since the sum total of Takami’s animal traits are tiny little elbow wings, you can see how fast the drop-off is there.     Compare this to the number of pairings/families we have between people of like type: Bakugou’s parents, Iida’s, Jirou’s, Aoyama’s, Tsuyu’s, Ochaco’s, Shouto’s, Toga’s, Spinner’s, and Tomura’s whole family on both sides.      Then you get the ship-teasy stuff that’s more about crushes, people dating, or hints that are perceived as pointing towards epilogue romances: Deku and Ochaco, Jirou and Kaminari, Shindo and Yo, Gentle and La Brava, Miss Joke’s flirting with Aizawa, and Toga’s variety of crushes (among which Tsuyu is the most distant from Toga’s own body type).[4]  I think Kirishima and Mina are right on that borderline, with Mina having a normal body type but a collection of minor but highly visible divergent traits.     So like, the vast, vast majority of the romantic relationships in the show are between relatively baseline people.  In that context, it sticks out like a sore thumb to me that Tsuyu and Spinner are both explicitly said to have the same type of animal heteromorph quality on both sides of their family tree.  It’s not an incest concern or anything, just that I wonder what the pressure is on cross-type couples, or what social circles look like post-graduation.    

Two classmates talk about how it’s hard to tell what Tsuyu is thinking; one of them says, with her eyes hooded and a kind of cool expression, “That expression of hers never changes.  Maybe ‘cuz she’s a frog?”    

Tsuyu tells us that she never really made any friends; while some of this may simply be because Tsuyu didn’t have much time to socialize, between hero training and looking after her family, it’s also true that all of her classmates that we see have baseline appearances.    

This lasts until she starts getting stalked by a snake-headed heteromorph girl named Mangusu Habuko—a fellow loner.  Tsuyu is initially frightened by Habuko’s behavior, but has an intuitive sense for what the deal is, that Habuko wants to be friends but is awkward and doesn’t know how to broach it.    

When asked if she wants to be friends, Habuko flips out.  She calls herself treacherous and untrustworthy; she calls Tsuyu a foolish frog and says she must be joking, and that she should choose her friends more carefully. She then immediately dissolves into tears.  Somehow, I doubt all this self-loathing about her innate nature manifested out of thin air!    

The Hideout Raid Arc (Chapters 84-97)

Something that’s observable throughout this arc is that we’re in another sequence, like the Sports Festival, where the percentage of people with heteromorphic features in the crowd shots tends to run a bit higher than the norm of the series to date.  Unlike the Sports Festival, though, these crowds are just civilians, not heroes.  So what’s the difference between Kamino and the earlier on-the-street crowd scenes?     Well, the neighborhood the Noumu warehouse is in is a somewhat rougher area.  Part of the visual shorthand for that is people in edgier clothes, stuff that’s indicative of districts with bars, clubs, sleazy hangout spots, and so forth, but another shorthand is an increased number of heteromorphs.

These panels are respectively from Chapters 87 and 92.

Chapter 87:

The character sheet for Kamui Woods notes that the story of his early childhood is “grand and compelling,” and that his story was made into a documentary.  That, to me, has Inspiring True Story written all over it.  Probably not coincidentally, Kamui Woods is another character whose face we’ve never seen.  As more pointing in the direction of him having a childhood marked by severe discrimination, he’s not sure of his age—it’s given as “29 since he started counting.”  So was he abandoned as an infant for his weird face?  I could come up with other explanations, all equally over the top (extreme confinement, for example, that left him unable to properly mark the passage of time), but the fact that he can’t e.g. look up a birth certificate for himself suggests that whatever went so wrong for him, it happened very early.     …Though I suppose there’s the possibility that he’s not human, but rather a tree that manifested a quirk.  As documentary-worthy origins go, though, that feels less Inspiring True Story and more Educational Biopic About Rare Phenomenon.    

The Provisional Hero License Exam Arc (Chapters 98-121)

Chapter 99: 

Shouji’s room is shown, all but barren.  He says that he doesn’t care much about owning things, but knowing what we come to know about his history, it’s easy to wonder if he really doesn’t care about owning things or if this is rooted in a childhood in which it was believed that anything he touched would be polluted.  Not a situation that led to him being given much of his own, one suspects!

Chapter 103:

This chapter introduces Yokumiru Mera, from the HPSC, who gives an opening statement that has some very interesting ruthlessness lurking in its subtext.  Particularly relevant to our current topic is his comment that in the modern era, the time it takes to resolve a given incident is incredibly short, so the test that year will be prioritizing speed.  Prioritizing speed (wouldn’t want some other hero to get the metaphorical kill first, after all!) is a surefire way to guarantee that heroes are not taking the time to really examine all factors in a situation or make any attempts whatsoever at calm, considered de-escalation, but rather are just making snap judgements based on their biases and gut reactions.  Guess what group of people that’s going to disproportionately impact?        o Now, it’s notable that Mera says the test prioritizes speed, but the conclusion many others come to is that the test only pretends to do so; that actually, it prioritizes care and information gathering.  Indeed, we find a few chapters later that the actual priority is teamwork, as requested by police higher-ups—the idea is to fill in the gap left behind by All Might with hero squads that work well together.[5]   However, while the intention may be to gather those good at teamwork, it certainly doesn’t stop people like Shouto and Inasa from cruising through—and, in any case, whether the groups learn teamwork or not doesn’t take away from an HPSC rep telling them to their face that speed of incident resolution is one of the most important things to a modern hero and never following that up with any kind of amendment or clarification.

Chapter 107:

Introduces the HUC, or Help Us Company, professionals trained to act as victims in disaster rescue exercises.  Given that context—what they’re communicating to students training to understand what “victims” look and act like—it’s extremely worth examining what they, well, look like.

God, this is so Yikes.

And having asked that question, we find that the only people in this group that might not be baseline—the ones with short, childlike statures—are dressed to emphasize that stature.  The end effect is a crowd of “victims” with not a single heteromorphic representative.

Chapter 109:

Shiketsu’s class rep, Mora Nagamasa—the extremely hairy one—approaches Bakugou to extend an apology for Shishikura’s behavior during the exam.  It’s noticeable here that, having matured somewhat since Early Series Bakugou, and having been approached in downtime in a reasonable manner, Bakugou manages to refrain from coming up with any demeaning nicknames centered on Mora’s appearance.  Kirishima remarks internally on all the hair, but only internally; he’s much too polite to say anything out loud.

Chapter 110:

A big splashy introduction for the man ranked #3 in the Heroes Who Look Like Villains ranking, Gang Orca.  He’s at the test to play villain and is, just as noticeably as all the play-victims are baseline, a heteromorph.  At the time of his introduction, he’s ranked Number 10 in the Hero Rankings, but will be bumped out later on.  This does, however, make him the highest-ranked known heteromorph who doesn’t have a human face,[6] with the possible exception of Kamui Woods—who, like Shouji, covers it with a mask.

Gang Orca’s character sheet notes that, while he’s a popular guest at aquariums, his intimidating face and “stony personality” always result in weepy children.  He apparently finds this relatively upsetting (“lots of angst”) but, unlike Shouji or Kamui Woods, has not taken to wearing a mask, nor trying to tone down his personality on any level—to the contrary, Present Mic suggests much later on that he exaggerates it.

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

Next time, I'll cover from the Shie Hassaikai arc through the end of Joint Training. Thanks for reading!

--------------------- FOOTNOTES ---------------------

[1] Initially.  He sticks to his guns long enough that he gets away with it in the end, though.

[2] The big tell is that Nedzu addresses Endeavor as Todoroki-kun rather than Todoroki-san or simply by his hero name, but his observation that Todoroki-kun has “matured” (literally in the Japanese, “become an adult”) doesn’t hurt, either.

[3] Kerokero neko and Uraraka neko.

[4] You can get further out there with this, but by the time you get to e.g. Shouto and Momo or Ojiro and Hagakure, the ice is definitely getting thinner on whether you’re seeing groundwork for future wedding bells or just reasonably close male/female friendship.  Your mileage may vary depending on how tightly attached your shipping goggles are or how cynical you are about shounen authors’ tendencies towards timeskip marriages.  Also, I can’t be bothered to dig up and list out the crushes or shipping patterns among the Class B kids. Koroiro likes the mushroom gal?

[5] Note that Mera phrases this as being merely a stopgap until they find the next All Might.  The HPSC is not so eager to change the methods they’ve come to rely on over the last thirty some-odd years!

[6] We don’t know enough for me to say for sure whether Wash is a heteromorph.

[tikitania]

playing young masha as a junior (especially as a first-year) is very exciting of course, but like you said, isn't a predictor of becoming a prima - it is sometimes simply an indicator of who's the oldest kid in the year lol. in the dance of the little swans' kids' year, the three who were chosen to be little masha in first year were valiullina, sharova, and karamysheva - all three born near the start of the age cutoff and hence the furthest along in their physicality, stronger, and likely with more experience en pointe. koshkaryova who ended up graduating at the top of the class is one of the youngest in her year, and was "only" chosen to be little masha in her second or third year. and i don't think kuprina was chosen at all, though that might have been due to height.

half a year or one year can make a huge difference at that age, and given that the first-year vaganova kids can have a pretty wide age range (10-12, a few outliers even being 9 like batoeva), a lot at that point comes down to how much time they've had to learn and grow. like you mentioned, they all catch up around the middle years anyway.

there has even been a kid who was little masha in first year and expelled by fifth year. that's a very quick turnaround. (and of course you more frequently see the opposite, a kid being chosen for nothing in the beginning and then excelling by the end!)

Exactly! It’s more circumstantial than anything else! Maria Koshkaryova is more of the exception than the rule:

[texasthoughtsaboutnothing]

Heathcliff/ Canto VI Stuff from the Event!

We got a setup for Canto VI much in the way I think we expected. IIRC in the source material, Heathcliff just kinda shows up out of nowhere, but here he's been explicitly invited to Wuthering Heights. The changes the nature of the story a bit and frames Heathcliff in a fundamentally more sympathetic light, we'll see where we go with it especially with Isabelle and the generational revenge part of the story. We do now know Cathy is alive (or at least Heath thinks she is), and we are for sure going to T Corp. We can assume the Lintons can afford colors in T Corp's Nest, I wonder if they'll play with that and only buy specific colors.

Further speculation considering the nature of T Corp, I wonder if they might incorporate a time loop to more accurately recreate the events of the book? Like, Heathcliff can't marry Isabelle nor can Edgar meaningfully isolate Cathy from Heathcliff without getting into months of time, and using fucked up time technology can get around that. I expect the Lintons and/or the Earnshaws to be major families invested in T Corp, maybe similar to Sinclair's family they'll have the L Corp branch right in their basement.

This Canto will also get into territory that I feel will be a predictor for later Cantos. There's a lot of children in Wuthering Heights who unlike Pip are the children of main characters. How is that going to be handled? They might incorporate the time technology but part of Heathcliff's redemption (kinda sorta not really) is leaving the kids alone after all else goes wrong. Cathy dies in giving birth to her daughter, also named Cathy (this will not be confusing I'm sure) and Heath spiritually dies with her, and we need that guy to stick around to do dailies. He will need to have a reason to continue with the company, and I think it would be weird if he abandons some kids (or worse they get killed off) so he can continue with us. I have faith it will be handled well though, and I'm probably overthinking it.

[prettyflyshyguy]

I'm choosing 16 and 17 for both Roy and O'Byrne, which is to say I'm choosing violence. 16. What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head? 17. What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

You want violence I'll give you violence!

-Ask my OC's some hyper specific questions-

16) What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head?

O'Byrne has arguments with a fake Roy in her head, that never happen. Because he perpetually surprises her with how completely disconnected he is and despite her best efforts, she cannot piss him off when she actively tries to.

So when he does snap at her it's a complete shock and she's unprepared for it - very funny. She crumbles to dust each time.

Roy I don't think is much of an internal-argument predictor, but he does it with himself. He'll argue internally over his situation, talks to himself, has a lot of mirror pep talks, or working through a problem verbally by himself. This can be an argument, made up, as he tries to tackle a problem from multiple angles especially if he's conflicted about it (which is often)

17) What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

Themselves and others, both: their height,

Themselves: what they've each lost.

I'll give you a hint at what I mean by that 2nd bit:

[kingwuko]

I started thinking about wuko's hand size difference and almost cried what are your thoughts

So when I first read this ask I was stupidly trying to figure out if I was missing a double entendre lmao THEN I went through all my screenshots to see if I could get a good canon comparison of their hand sizes. I couldn't, so I googled predictors and correlations of hand sizes 🤣 Height is correlated to handsize… so objectively Mako probably has larger hands, but I doubt by much. Mako's not that much taller than Wu. I think Wu's fingers are more slender (just like the rest of him). Basically I started thinking way too hard about it logically. Lets just talk about their hands from a romantic standpoint!!!

I think the big deal with their hands is the texture of their skin... Wu's hands are without a doubt, incredibly soft. Perfectly manicured.

Mako's hands are rough, he's been doing manual labor since he was eight years old. And I think his scar extends up to his hand too. And I think Wu would love it if Mako would agree to a manicure or even putting on some lotion everyday, damnit. But Mako doesn't really do that stuff. So Wu just likes to trace the lines of Mako's scarring and Mako likes the feel of Wu's soft hands.

[themanycouples19]

Grey's Anatomy monologues 20x02

At the height of the great depression Harvard scientists started tracking students in hopes of discovering the key to a long and happy life, they looked at participants mental and physical health over 75 years it is the longest study of happiness to date 75 years and all it did was confirm what we've known since the beginning of time , the most powerful predictor of health and happiness is the quality of our relationships, strong relationships protect us , loneliness on the other hand can be deadly.

Over the course of our lives our relationships ebb and flow we get together , break up , move away or fall out of touch. It's prolonged periods of loneliness and toxicity that reek havoc on our health , our brain function and our longevity, sometimes being alone can be so terrifying that we trap ourselves in harmful relationships, but in order to really thrive you've got to be willing to cut and run your life just might depend on it.

[earthworms-worm]

Here is the information card for Meadow Dwellers! (Aka big dumb lovable and cuddly)

More information and art will follow soon! Next will be the Forest Dwellers. Eventually I'll get to writing the lore and magic system for this world but for now please enjoy this snippet!

-

Meadow Dwellers are the tallest of the dwellers, towering above the fields they so often reside in. Their height makes it easier for them to both look out across great distances and their tall legs also aid them in walking through tall grass and crop fields.

Normally Meadow Dwellers grow to be between 8ft and 8ft 6in, although the tallest one to ever be recorded was 9ft 2in. Their height makes them excellent for wading through anything effortlessly (or stepping over things so as to not accidentally stomp on them.)

Their colouration usually changes throughout the seasons, and they can change colours depending on what field they like residing in. Typically, those that live near farms or farmland will have a yellowy colouration to blend in with the fields (even if they do tower above everything).

While friendly in nature, Meadow Dwellers are also empty-headed. They are always confused about one thing or another, their minds are a bit slow and while well meaning, you do have to explain to them things at least three times before they understand what you were trying to tell them.

They are very helpful to farmers, as their appearance within the fields often signals for a good harvest. And they also make excellent weather predictors! You see, Meadow Dwellers do not particularly like rain, they take a long time to dry if they are caught out in a storm, and so when a large rainstorm is about to arrive, they seek shelter inside barns or farmhouses.

Friendly as ever, they also make excellent caretakers for cattle and children alike. If a child is ever lost in the fields while playing, they can look for the tall Meadow Dwellers and said Dweller will guide them home or stay with them until their parents come and find them.

Cattle are also very keen on staying near Meadow Dwellers, whether that is because the grass always grows greener and much tastier around the Meadow Dwellers, or simply because the Dwellers give them lots of cuddles and head pats.

Meadow Dwellers stand out from the fields, almost like scarecrows (another reason why farmers like having them around!) and while they don’t do much to scare away birds or mice (if anything the animals love them), but the benefits of having Meadow Dwellers about is far greater.

During summer while the crops grow, the Meadow Dwellers will be found wandering around the fields and farms or simply just standing still in the middle of a random crop field. After the harvest is concluded in the autumn the Meadow Dwellers return to the meadow fields around the farms and don’t come back until next summer.

They stay in the meadows during winter and come spring, they make everything flourish with life.

[hellobloger0000]

How a Child Growth Calculator Supports Early Childhood Health Monitoring

In the early years of parenting, understanding how well your child is growing can feel overwhelming. Are they gaining enough weight? Are they too short for their age? While physical milestones differ from one child to another, a child growth calculator offers parents a data-backed method to answer these questions confidently. It not only provides reassurance but also flags potential developmental issues early on.

This blog will explore the functionality, benefits, and advanced insights of using a child growth calculator, along with related high-volume search terms to support search engine optimization (SEO).

What is a Child Growth Calculator?

A child growth calculator is an online or app-based tool that uses standardized growth data to assess a child’s height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) based on their age and gender. It then compares this data to global percentile ranges, giving parents a clear picture of where their child stands in terms of physical development.

For instance, if a 2-year-old boy weighs 13 kg and is 90 cm tall, the calculator evaluates whether these figures align with expected ranges for that age group. If not, parents can seek early intervention.

Unique Fact: Growth Can Be Influenced by Parental Sleep Patterns

A recent study published in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology found that parents’ sleep schedules can influence a child’s growth hormone production, especially in toddlers. Inconsistent parental routines often lead to irregular sleep patterns in children, impacting hormone release tied to growth. This suggests that optimizing family sleep hygiene is a subtle yet powerful contributor to healthy development.

Benefits of Using a Child Growth Calculator

Here’s why more pediatricians and parents are turning to child growth calculator tools:

Real-Time Monitoring: Instantly track whether your child is following a normal growth trajectory.

Early Identification: Detect abnormalities like growth hormone deficiencies or early-onset obesity.

Custom Growth Charts: Tools are often tailored based on global and regional standards.

Data-Driven Parenting: Get quantitative insight instead of relying solely on physical observation.

Integration with Health Apps: Many calculators sync with apps that also track nutrition and vaccination schedules.

Related High-Volume SEO Keywords

To improve the visibility and reach of this blog post, the following high-volume keywords are strategically included:

Pediatric growth calculator

Baby weight and height chart

Growth chart for kids

Infant BMI percentile

Toddler height calculator

WHO child growth standards

Healthy growth in children

Growth percentile chart

Baby development tracker

Age-based child height predictor

Using these keywords not only helps educate readers but also aligns with popular search terms used by parents worldwide.

How Often Should You Use a Child Growth Calculator?

A child growth calculator is most effective when used at intervals that align with pediatric checkups:

Birth to 1 Year: Monthly

1–3 Years: Every 3 months

3–10 Years: Twice a year

10+ Years: Annually, or more frequently during puberty

This regular use helps establish a consistent growth pattern and avoids surprise findings during pediatric appointments.

Common Metrics Measured by the Calculator

Weight-for-Age: Tracks whether a child’s weight is appropriate for their age.

Height-for-Age: Evaluates linear growth over time.

BMI-for-Age: Detects potential obesity or malnourishment.

Weight-for-Height: Important during the early toddler years.

Head Circumference (for infants): Vital for monitoring brain development.

Each of these metrics is plotted against standardized growth charts using the child growth calculator, giving you a clear overview of your child’s physical well-being.

Limitations and Considerations

While extremely helpful, a child growth calculator should not be used in isolation to diagnose health problems. It’s a screening tool. Always consult a pediatrician to interpret percentile rankings in the context of:

Genetic factors (tall or short parents)

Premature birth

Chronic medical conditions

Nutritional habits

Ethnic background

This reinforces that the calculator’s data should complement, not replace, medical advice.

Supporting Tools and Platforms

Popular digital platforms offering child growth calculator tools include:

WHO Anthro: Ideal for international standards

CDC Growth Chart Tools: U.S.-based percentile guidelines

BabyCenter and WhatToExpect: Parent-friendly mobile apps

UpTodd Smart Growth Monitor: Integrates nutrition, sleep, and growth in one dashboard

Choosing a platform that suits your region and healthcare preferences will improve the calculator’s accuracy and usefulness.

FAQs

Q1: What percentile range is considered healthy? A: Children in the 5th to 85th percentile are generally considered to be within a healthy growth range.

Q2: What does it mean if my child’s growth percentile drops suddenly? A: A rapid drop may indicate a nutritional or health issue. Consult your pediatrician immediately.

Q3: Do boys and girls have different growth charts? A: Yes, growth standards vary based on gender and are accounted for in most calculators.

Q4: Should I measure my child at home or rely on doctors? A: Home tracking is helpful but should be supplemented by professional measurements for accuracy.

Q5: Can I track growth using just BMI? A: BMI is useful but should be combined with height-for-age and weight-for-age data for a complete picture.

Conclusion

A child growth calculator is an indispensable tool for modern parenting. With access to accurate, real-time data, parents can better understand their child's developmental progress and identify issues early. When paired with consistent nutrition, physical activity, and pediatric care, it forms a robust strategy for raising healthy children.

Incorporating this tool into your regular parenting routine not only enhances your child’s well-being but also empowers you with data to support medical decisions confidently. Make the child growth calculator a part of your child’s growth journey—because informed parenting is smart parenting.

[darkmaga-returns]

Patterns of abdominal fat accumulation in children from birth to age 10 can predict early cardiovascular and metabolic dysfunction, with rising waist-to-height ratios linked to elevated disease markers by elementary school.

The study identified three trajectories — two-thirds of children had stable measurements, but 15% with a "slow-rising" ratio showed high blood pressure, insulin resistance and inflammation, while 18% with a "rising-and-stabilizing" pattern had moderate risks.

Waist-to-height ratio is a better predictor of metabolic risks than BMI, as it directly measures dangerous abdominal fat, which correlates strongly with future heart disease and diabetes.

Childhood obesity is no longer seen as harmless; early fat patterns are now recognized as critical health indicators, with modern lifestyles accelerating metabolic dysfunction in kids.

The study urges integrating waist-to-height measurements into pediatric care, promoting parental education on diet/activity and prioritizing early intervention to prevent lifelong disease risks.

[ramputras]

🧠💍 Does Being Married Change How Money Relates to Having Kids?

Just ran a moderation analysis using the NESARC dataset to see if marital status changes the relationship between personal income and number of children under 18 in the household.

Here’s the TL;DR:

💡 Main finding: Income is (still) barely related to number of kids. BUT—if you’re married, the pattern shifts just a little.

📉 For non-married folks: Higher income is very slightly linked to fewer kids. (We’re talking fractions of a child per $10,000...)

📈 For married folks: That negative trend basically flattens out. So among married people, income doesn’t really predict number of children at all.

👫 Also: Married people, regardless of income, tend to have more kids than non-married folks. No surprise there, but it’s nice to see the data back it up.

📊 Here's the math-y part (if you're into that): We ran a regression model including:

Income (S1Q10A)

Marital status (MARITAL)

And the interaction term (Income × Married)

📍The interaction was statistically significant (p < .001), but the effect size? Tiny. Model only explained 4.2% of the variance in number of kids. (So yeah, life is more complicated than one variable!)

🤷‍♀️ In short: Marriage nudges the income-kid link around a bit, but money still isn’t a strong predictor of how many kids you have—married or not.

So if you’re thinking: "Do rich people have fewer kids because they’re rich?" or "Does marriage make income matter more for family size?"

The data kind of shrugs and says: "Not really."

In case you want to try out the code: ----------------------------

import pandas as pd import numpy as np import seaborn as sns import scipy.stats import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import statsmodels.formula.api as smf

Load the data

data = pd.read_csv('nesarc.csv', low_memory=False)

Convert to numeric properly

data['CHLD0_17'] = pd.to_numeric(data['CHLD0_17'], errors='coerce') data['S1Q10A'] = pd.to_numeric(data['S1Q10A'], errors='coerce') data['MARITAL'] = pd.to_numeric(data['MARITAL'], errors='coerce')

Drop rows with NA in either of the two columns

data_clean = data[['S1Q10A', 'CHLD0_17', 'MARITAL']].dropna()

data_clean['Married'] = data_clean['MARITAL'].apply(lambda x: 1 if x == 1 else 0)

Scatterplot

sns.lmplot(x='S1Q10A', y='CHLD0_17', hue='Married', data=data_clean, palette='Set1', height=6, aspect=1.2) plt.xlabel('Total Personal Income (USD)') plt.ylabel('Number of Children Under 18') plt.title('Income vs Number of Children by Marital Status') plt.show()

Fit linear regression with interaction term

model = smf.ols('CHLD0_17 ~ S1Q10A * Married', data=data_clean).fit()

Output regression summary

print(model.summary())

plt.figure(figsize=(8,6)) sns.regplot(data=data_clean[data_clean['Married'] == 1], x='S1Q10A', y='CHLD0_17', label='Married', scatter_kws={'alpha':0.3}) sns.regplot(data=data_clean[data_clean['Married'] == 0], x='S1Q10A', y='CHLD0_17', label='Not Married', scatter_kws={'alpha':0.3}, color='green') plt.xlabel('Total Personal Income (USD)') plt.ylabel('Number of Children Under 18') plt.title('Income vs Number of Children by Marital Status') plt.legend() plt.tight_layout() plt.show()

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

[guiasmaternos]

Child Height Predictor Calculator: Find Out How Tall Your Child Will Grow

Have you ever wondered how tall your child will be when they grow up? This is a natural curiosity for many parents. Although we cannot predict the future with absolute certainty, science offers reliable methods to estimate children’s adult height with a relatively small margin of error. Our Child Height Predictor Calculator uses mathematical formulas based on scientific research to estimate the…

[controlgrubsinyouryard]

How to Control Grubs in Your Yard: Proven Tips for a Healthy Lawn

A lush, green lawn is the pride of any homeowner—but nothing can ruin it faster than a grub infestation. These tiny, white beetle larvae may be small, but they can cause serious damage to your grass roots, leaving behind brown patches and thinning turf. If you're wondering how to control grubs in your yard effectively, you're in the right place. This guide will walk you through what grubs are, how to spot them, and the best methods—both natural and chemical—for getting rid of them and keeping them away for good.

What Are Lawn Grubs?

Lawn grubs, also known as white grubs, are the larval stage of various beetles, including Japanese beetles, June bugs, and European chafers. These pests live underground and feed on the roots of grass, causing sections of your lawn to wilt and die.

Grubs are most active in late summer and early fall, which is when you’re most likely to notice signs of damage. Understanding their life cycle is key to learning how to control grubs in your yard effectively.

Signs of a Grub Infestation

Before you treat for grubs, it's important to confirm they're actually the issue. Here are some telltale signs:

Brown Patches: Irregular dead spots in your lawn that don’t green up even with watering.

Soft or Spongy Turf: Grass feels loose and lifts easily, almost like a carpet, due to root damage.

Increased Wildlife Activity: Birds, raccoons, or skunks digging up your yard may be hunting grubs.

You can also do a quick grub check by cutting out a 1-square-foot section of turf and peeling it back. If you see more than 5–10 grubs, it's time to act.

Best Ways to Control Grubs in Your Yard

There are several effective methods to control grubs in your yard, ranging from organic treatments to chemical applications. The best approach often combines prevention with timely treatment.

1. Use Beneficial Nematodes (Natural Option)

Beneficial nematodes are microscopic worms that hunt and kill grubs without harming your lawn or beneficial insects. They're a great organic solution and can be applied using a sprayer. Apply in late summer when grubs are most active.

2. Apply Milky Spore Disease

Milky spore is a bacterium that targets Japanese beetle grubs. It’s safe for humans and pets and provides long-term protection as it multiplies in the soil. However, it can take a season or two to build up effectiveness.

3. Try a Chemical Grub Killer

If the infestation is severe, a fast-acting chemical grub killer might be necessary. Look for products containing carbaryl or trichlorfon for curative treatment, or imidacloprid for preventive care. Be sure to follow label instructions carefully.

4. Maintain a Healthy Lawn

One of the best long-term strategies to control grubs in your yard is to create an environment that’s resistant to pests:

Mow regularly at the proper height.

Water deeply but infrequently.

Fertilize in spring and fall to encourage deep root growth.

Healthy grass can withstand minor grub damage and recover more quickly.

When to Treat for Grubs

Timing is everything. The most effective time to control grubs in your yard is in late summer or early fall, when the grubs are young and close to the surface. Preventive treatments should be applied in mid to late spring, before beetles lay their eggs.

How to Prevent Future Infestations

Controlling grubs is only part of the solution. Prevention is just as important:

Avoid overwatering, which attracts beetles to lay eggs.

Aerate your lawn annually to improve soil health.

Keep an eye on adult beetle activity in midsummer—it’s a good predictor of potential grub issues later.

Final Thoughts

Grubs may be a hidden threat, but with the right knowledge and tools, you can take back control of your yard. Whether you opt for natural solutions like nematodes or use chemical treatments, acting at the right time is crucial. Pair treatment with consistent lawn care, and you’ll not only control grubs in your yard but also enjoy a lush, vibrant lawn all season long.