#i actually did so much research for this art man I'm so tired

[itsbaku]

“The moon bleeds for our losses, and they shall return with the essence of the mourned.”

That's a title lol

Anyways I managed to finish my Dia De Los Muertos art for this year. This is also a redraw! I'm honestly so proud of this, I wanna just look at it all day.

I love how much detail and work I put into this one. Like seriously, the face paint designs, the blood moon, everything. I worked so hard man. This has to be one of my favorites!!

Anyways here's the old one!

I smell improvement! Still kinda shit at drawing humans but I'm getting better!!

[hobiespick]

Sam Winchester x reader headcanons

a/n: if you thought I only made shitty Sam headcanons, WRONG‼️ cuz I also made a shitty moodboard (i'm extra like that yeehaw)

- Takes notice of the books you read, that is if you don't give him recomendations bc if you do that boy has a whole ass notepad and is a fast writter so try him.

- "Y/n would like this" "Y/n would probably know" "Y/n was right"- Dean gets seriously tired and makes jokes about how often Sam talks about you

- you think he's joking untill Sam isn't glaring daggers at him- but instead he starts blushing and straching the back of his head like a damn schoolboy.

- reads your body language very well- "What's wrong?" Sam asks putting all of his attention onto you. "Nothing" You shrug it off (you're not slick at all). "Bull." Sam chides still looking at you hoping you'll tell him.

-literally the happiest when you sigh defeated and tell him what's wrong but shakes it off to actually listen to you.

- uses the soft tone he talks to victims with on you- not because he thinks you're weak or fragile

- you're a badass and he knows it

- you complimented him once on it (his voice) saying he is good at comforting and how no wonder people open up that easily when he talks like THAT to them.

- "Miss, when was your neighbour killed?" All puppy eyes furrowed eyebrows and soft tone almost sticking his chin to his chest + that fake ass FBI badge, You: "Yes-"

- Sam probably met Jess through the art courses he took I'm sobbing-

- I watched that episode and I had no idea (I'm so happy google exists) what he was talking about and I'm damn art student jesus christ

- "It's good for meeting girls." So good- SHHSAJGSS I'M FOAMING AT THE MOUTH SAM PLEASE

- Artsy Sam save me, Please Artsy Sam

- So touch starved, hug this man PLEASE

- If you're an artist yourself and draw, sketch, paint whatever, he'll want to see it

- even teach him some stuff, LAWD

- researches stuff abt you when he can't get you out of his head- for example : the meaning of your name, your zodiac sign, which celebrity you share your bday with, etc (he can't help it)

- reads banned literature (isn't he so dreamy? 💞)

- his favourite movie is the notebook or pride and prejudice (and book!) because I said so

- Unconciously mirros your movements or tics, for example if you rub your nose with your wrist, he starts doing it too (it's contagious)

- Dean points it out but Sam wasn't raised to be fair so he justifies himself by saying he had that tic first and YOU are the one who started mimmicking him

- it's an ongoing war for some time but beacuse the system's corrupt the bastard lawboy Sam wins

- you two share an interest? HE IS SO HAPPY

- oh no! His t shirt accidentally made it's way into your bag! How did that happen? (It's him officer, that is the loverboy take him away)

- Alexa/google play good old fashioned loverboy by queen

- really likes earthy smells (freshly cut grass, pine trees and so on)

- Dean when he says your instead of you're

- love language is definetly quality time and touch

a/n: it took alot of self encouragement to post this so feedback would be very much appreciated<3! And for every person who voted "YEAHHH" on the poll, I hope your pillow is cold tonight 💞🫶

[marblecakemix]

Welcome to my humble domain!! 🫧✨

Hi, you can call me Marble (this is my internet nickname), a lesbian in her early 20s from Poland. Just vibing here on Tumblr from time to time. If you want to look into my post/reblogs read my takes on #talk tag.

*I'm an adult and I post things for adults. I don't have time to block minors, feel warned!

You can ask me anything you want. I won't shy away, but remember that I'm not your therapist and all my opinions are biased forward women!

More information about me under the cut! 💕

If the part has * in front of it that means I changed something in the text and/or my views are different than before.

*I'm still quite new to radical feminism and I'm trying my best to learn how to take action. In short, I fight for women's rights and freedom from sex-based oppression. *I'm looking into different ideas too, but this blog is mainly focused on radical feminism.

I desisted in the middle of 2023. I used to be a non-binary/agender and asexual individual for around 3 to 4 years, but I understood all of that was because of internalized misogyny and homophobia and I actually wanted to have my boobs intact and I did like being a woman before I was introduced to the trans community. (For clarification, I didn't take hrt or have any surgeries done. I've only transitioned socially, thank goodness.)

I'm an ex-Christian, now I probably would call myself a spiritual person, researching my Slavic roots at the moment. I have a complicated relationship with faith, so nothing in this department is set in stone.

I believe in critical thinking and triple-checking facts. Everyone can have their opinions, but actions should have a base in grounded reality and unbiased scientific research. Read those books ladies!

I'm mostly talking about my experience as an ex-TRA, a lesbian, a woman, someone who lives in a misogynistic/conservative family and a country that has yet to legalize same-sex marriage, but you can safely transition here even as a minor.

*I'm a trans identified men hater. I don't care. Fuck all men, I don't care anymore. Gender dysphoria or perversion (autogynephilia) in males should have never been "solved" with a surgery and/or irreversible drugs/HRT. No other mental illness has permanent body modification as its treatment, same should be for gender dysphoria. The trans movement (men's rights movement in disguise) is the most harmful thing that happened to homosexual youth and I'm so tired of seeing more people being pushed into it just because they are themselves and aren't scared to dress unconventionally!

I gave up on men. I don't believe men can change, at least not in the closest future. I will probably never trust a man again with anything. The stakes are too high and my life is more precious. I believe that women don't need men, period.

I make mistakes! I'm just a human being and, naturally, I will be in the wrong sometimes. May it be because of the language barrier or me just not thinking things through, doesn't matter. I will try to acknowledge my mistakes and say sorry. I'm still learning and there isn't a better way than through your own downfalls!

I don't block people, unless they're insufferable. We can have different opinions, different lifestyles, different views, but if you're annoying I draw the line there.

I also draw sometimes (I don't have much time for it right now, bc I'm in the middle of my academic years), you can find my work under #my art.

Nothing here is set in stone. As I grow as a person my views will probably change. If you have any questions, just ask them! I'm happy to answer all of them ❤️

Last update: 6th August 2024

[pancake-breakfast]

Took me longer than anticipated to get back to this. Let's see how far I can get through Volume 3 tonight. Hopefully, I'll at least pass Puppetman up....

Archive

Trigun Volume 1: Covers + 1-3, 3 Detailed Thoughts, 4, 4 DT, 5-6, 5-6 + DT, 6 DT, 7-8, 9-10

Trigun Volume 2: Covers + Extras, 1, 1 Supplemental Research, 2-4, 5-6, 7-8

TriMax Volume 1: Covers + 1-2, 2 DT, 3-4, 3 DT, 5-6

TriMax Volume 2: Covers + 1, 2-4, 5, 6-7

TriMax Volume 3: Covers + 1-3

Stream-of-consciousness thoughts for TriMax Vol. 3, Chapters 4-5 below.

Chapter 4: Emilio the Player

Oh, hey. We're starting back with Brad instead of with Vash or Wolfwood or the girls.

"Something must've happened to them." Do I want to know? I probably don't want to know. Am I gonna find out anyway? Of course I am.

I still don't know who Emilio is. But it just occurred to me that "player" can also mean "actor," and Puppetman thinks of what he is doing in terms of a play, so that might be it.

Puppetman is talking about winning, but Vash has already lost. He has lost so much already. This isn't a fight where Vash comes out on top. It's one where he tries to survive while somehow keeping the core of his being intact. But I'd hesitate to call the bare basics of getting through this a true "win" scenario.

Ugh, Vash with the girl he accidentally shot. I love how his coat is just... going nuts behind him. What is physics? It doesn't matter anymore. Coat is now a part of him and it reaches out both like a defensive shell and like grasping claw, ready to tear apart whatever threatens them next.

Oh, good. I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't know who the heck Emilio is.

LOL, NOBODY knows who Emilio is.

Dude. Did Vash just get in Puppetman's brain??

Ooh, Puppetman didn't like the name Isabel. What's more, Vash knew he wouldn't like it, and deliberately paused before delivering it.

Puppetman's having a meltdown. Good for him. Please melt more.

VASHU ZA STAMPEEEEEEDOOOOOOO!!!!

🎵 It's raining men! 🎵 🎵 Hallelujah, it's raining... wait, those are just doll parts. That's not as fun.

"Why are there so many?" Please, Brad. Stop asking questions neither of us want the answer to.

Mmm, that's bad. Looks like maybe Puppetman got the doc. Oh, gods. Just thinking about what the equivalent would be in Stampede makes me want to curl up into a little ball and die.

I wonder if in all this, some part of Vash wished Wolfwood was just a bit closer to speed things along. Then again, I don't think Vash would linger on such a thought. Not while cradling a girl he accidentally shot in his arm. Not when Wolfwood might make a similar mistake with a far greater chance of fatality.

Oh, so Emilio doesn't know he's Emilio. Dang. NO ONE. NO ONE KNOWS WHO EMILIO IS.

LOL, he forgot about his little doll boy whose name I already forgot.

Is... Puppetman melting? I thought Ninelives had the monopoly on self-inflicted body horror this round.

Where'd the girl go?

Did... Vash set off the sprinklers?? With a Molotov cocktail???

Tasty shot of Vash silhouette in the sprinkler rain. Pure art, this.

Six miles of string? That's too much string.

Wet, angry Vash!

Don't grind your teeth until they crack, kids. You need your teeth for the rest of your life.

RIP Puppetman's hands. I bet he wasn't a fan of his own blood circulation, anyway.

Wet, tired Vash. Someone get this man a warn towel and a hot beverage.

Vash isn't doing so hot, is he....

Uhhh, what are all these little cross boxes???

Thank you, Brad, for asking a question that's actually helpful this time.

Oh, that must be Isabel.

Chapter 5: The Long Goodbye

Oh, shoot. She's awake.... -ish.

Ah, let's just upgrade that "oh, shoot," to an "oh, shit." Brad's in, like, the WORST possible place to be right now.

Eyyyy, it's my boi Wolfwood! He looks tiiiiiired. But maybe Ninelives is out of lives? Maybe? Possibly???

Ew, he has PEOPLE in him!

LOL, Wolfwood just punching the shit out of the weird little people. I don't blame him, TBH. I'd have had enough of this creep show already.

Strangling the old man-baby thing.... As priests do....

GoshDARNIT, this thing won't DIE!!!

Ms. Bingo?? I don't know if that's supposed to be her name or if Brad's making a pun on how she's the thing they needed to find in all this.

Oops, Puppetman knocked over all his precious boxes 'cause he was pissed at Brad.

Ah, that box does not, in fact, appear to be full of doll. Brad's reaction to its contents is... reasonable.

I know Brad is kind of a jerk, but I do hope he gets out of here ok. I'm glad he's keeping his head about him in spite of everything.

Ok, I don't know what's going on here. The... ship is... coming apart... I think??

Ah, yeah. There goes a chunk.

Puppetman, saved by his strings.

Wait, Vash!? Ugh, babygirl....

Messy-haired Vash! Messy-haired Vash!!!

Yeah, there's a reason we don't tie MILES of string to our fingers. You can take a little physical pain to your hands, Puppetman. And losing your doll lady, too. I'm cool with that.

WTF, now there are mini-puppets? And they're attacking Vash?! No! Go away, mini-puppet!

I guess that's one way to commit suicide.

Wolfwood, behind you. WOLFWOOD, BEHIND YOU!!!

AAAAHHHH!!!! GIrls! Milly looks like she's having a blast. I'm so proud of them!

LOLOL, Wolfwood is shook.

And Vash is here, too! The party is back together! Hooray!

I mean, THAT sure went from agony to pure silliness fast.... I might need a moment to process....

[movietonight]

without fuss, like children's blood for the director's cut!!

Thank you!

without fuss, like children's blood is my 'Hawkeye goes to the MoMA and sees Guernica' fic. It originally was meant to be about an entirely different Picasso painting though: Massacre in Korea

I couldn't figure out in which museum it was at the time I wanted the fic to be set so the painting is instead only referenced:

“Have you seen the one Picasso did about Korea?” the woman standing next to him asks into the room. “Yes,” Hawkeye lies and turns around to leave.

The painting Guernica refers to the bombing of Gernika. I studied this painting in one my Hispanic Studies classes and knew a little about it's history and use in anti-war art during Vietnam. Another reference to Spanish history is the title, from the poem 'I explain a few things' by Pablo Neruda. In it, the Chilean poet talks about his time in Spain and the beginning of the Civil War and the lines

Bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood

Have been haunting me for years now.

One of the main aims of the fic, apart from giving Hawkeye an art-related breakdown, was exploring a future version of the character who is still very much himself but also just infinitely more tired. There are several instances in the fic where I thought that Hawkeye in the show would have acted differently, or talked differently - all jokes and outrage and rebellion and sarcasm - and chose him to outwardly act differently. Just for you I'm even throwing in the fact that there was a bit of an inspiration from prelude/angry young man.

I've only ever been to one academic conference and that one was online but I walked past some while living next to the conference hall of my dormitory so all of the conference stuff was based on those experiences. I'm attending my first real conference next month (I'm entering a poster) so maybe I'll have to revise some things. The line about arterial bypass surgery is based on me trying to Google what kind of research was going on at the time and having obviously no background in medicine just picked something that sounded cool. Mt Sinai was picked because I googled something like "famous hospitals East Coast". I'm amazing at research.

Guernica was actually housed on the third floor at the MoMA and was in Boston for a while before that.

I can't think of any other general comments unless anyone has any specific questions about this or any other fic :)

[momochiiee]

I was about to ask about Gale, and then I saw your banner, and went like "What kinda disgrace has the man in the banner gone through, to be the main figure in the _three of swords_?"

... So the lattter's my current question.

Hahahhaha I'm glad chicken nugget Kenji got your attention!

Tbh, this art was a sort of activity check for the pokemon gijinka RP group he was originally created for, and while he didn't do anything specifically awful by himself, he got caught up in some dire circumstances and his choice weighs heavily on him

One of his regrets being he's an asshole apologizer

And that's why little sapling me choose this card for him

So, let's put this into some context!

Kenji's setting is a zombie apocalypse, and he's down bad for the idiot that though himself a great leader and overestimated his own qualities, habilities and knowledge. To sum it up, this asshole sent half of the townspeople to die horribly at the hands of the wave of zombies that washed through their tiny town

Now then, said idiot is now severely traumatized and the weight of his errors will be something he won't forget anytime soon, but Kenji still stays by his side and makes sure his crush doesn't do anything stupid

But Momo, this is not Kenji's regrets! What in blazes has this chicken nugget actually done?

Well well well, would you argue with your best friend, to the point of forcing him to ditch you, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, because your unrequited trashy crush is having it rough? Would you stay in a lost cause of a barricade just because the local entitled asshole happens to be your crush?

Have into account they were threatened by a growing horde of zombies trying to break down their defenses and get to them, as they had an almost unresponsive man lying on the floor out of pure shock, while they were arguing

His friend didn't want to die protecting that asshole, that's for sure. And he had his fair share of reasons to do so

But this is about Kenji rn, let's leave his friend for whenever he gets the spotlight

All in all, that's Kenji's problem, and what he regrets most, but still, he won't leave his crush side, no matter how unrequited his affection is or how much he misses his dear old friend

Love makes one do some dumb shit, and maybe one day I'll actually let Kenji have a happy ending

Once I grow tired of tormenting him, his crush and his friend, of course >:'3c

What do you think, my sweet anon fruit? Does the card suit him or would you have chosen some other card instead?

I'm not very familiarised with tarot cards past some general basics, and while I did do a lil bit of research, namely, we were given some basic prompts to slightly understand the cards, and looked up a tiny bit more, it wasn't super extensive as it's been quite some years, probably almost a decade by now. More than 5 years for sure, maybe 7? Time is weird for my mind sowwy ahdhshfhdh but the point is, I was just a naïve young sapling and didn't realise there could be more to learn 👀

[idy-ll-ique]

Art.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x F!Reader

Genre: Fluff, little bit of Angst

Warnings: jealousy and insecurity

Requested: nope

Summary: In which Steve is into art but Y/N is not.

Author's Note: Hiya peeps! Haven't got anything to say specifically so,,, enjoy the fic! Hope you like it!

[Y/H - Your Hobby]

---

"Oh my God, this is awesome!"

"It is, isn't it?" Y/N smiled softly, staring at the pure joy on Steve Rogers' face as he stared at the beautiful painting in front of him. "So much! Ah, realistic paintings, they're always so amazing. Do you like them?" he grinned, putting an arm around her shoulders. "Sure, they look cool," Y/N shrugged, not really understanding the painting. It was aesthetically pleasing, though.

Well, anything to make her boyfriend happy. They were at an art gallery in Brooklyn, which Steve loved to visit. Y/N, knowing how much Steve liked art, and her, always accompanied him. Steve and Y/N had been dating for nearly a year now. "Yeah! I know you aren't into art, but thanks for coming."

Y/N scoffed, burrowing closer to him. "You're my boyfriend, bro, anything for you." She giggled when he gave her a playful shove, immediately pulling her back to him. "Don't call me that, I'm your boyfriend," he chided jokingly, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Sure you are." Steve laughed, ruffling her hair.

"We've been together for a year." They stood in front of an abstract painting. Just as Y/N was about to retort, they heard someone clearing their throat. Turning around, they saw a woman standing there, smiling at them. "Hello, I'm Tiffany! You're Steve Rogers, if I'm correct?" she addressed the man.

"I am, and this is my girlfriend, Y/N Y/L/N," Steve answered with a polite smile, unconsciously pulling Y/N closer to him. He didn't like the way Tiffany was looking at him. "This is my painting, do you like it?" Tiffany asked. There was something off about her... "Ah, sure sure, it looks really good." Even though he didn't trust Tiffany, he couldn't lie about the art.

"Thank you! What do you think about it, Y/N?" Tiffany turned her smile unto Y/N. The woman blinked and glanced at the art. "It's nice," she shrugged truthfully. "Ooh, I'm so glad! The meaning is truly wonderful, I worked hard on it," Tiffany clapped her hands. "Yeah… the meaning…" Y/N cleared her throat, looking away from her.

"If you wanna see more of my art, you're very welcome to check it out! This one is on sale, actually, if you would consider," Tiffany offered, looking directly at Steve. "Oh no, not here to buy anything, just to admire," Steve chuckled, waving his arm in dismissal. "Okay, okay, but if you want to ever talk about art, you can give me a call. Toodles!"

With that, Tiffany handed Steve a business card, turned around and left. Steve stared at the card he involuntarily accepted, scrunching his nose. "Oh God, that—" He cursed, throwing the card into a nearby trash can. "What about her? I think she was lovely," Y/N lied, giving him a quick smile.

"She was clearly condescending! Ugh!" Steve rolled his eyes, "Anyway, we don't wanna ruin our day. Let's continue with the art!" Y/N's mind wandered as she casually latched on Steve's arm, ignoring the words he was saying to her. She couldn't help but think about Tiffany and how it was clear that she was hitting on her boyfriend.

To be honest, Tiffany was kind of better than her. Steve and Y/N had no common interests, why was he even interested in her? Why wasn't he into Tiffany? Steve's main attraction was art, he loved it more than anything else in the world and yet he continued to be with a woman who had absolutely no curiosity in said thing.

Why?!

Y/N softly groaned.

Oh no, this was gonna be a problem.

Which she was gonna fix.

---

Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial...

Y/N blinked and yawned, throwing her phone on the bed. "Ugh! Why is art so fucking boring and frustrating?!" she moaned, rubbing a hand over her face. She sat up all of a sudden, squinting at the clock in the corner of the room. It was 4:56 am. "Or maybe I'm just tired…" She lay back down on the bed and kept her phone away.

The thing is, ever since that one visit to the art gallery, Y/N's little confusion about Tiffany and Steve had turned into the biggest insecurity of hers. Since that time, she had been limiting her meetings with Steve, as was she learning more about the thing that made Steve most happy: Art.

Steve hadn't questioned her as of yet, which was good. He didn't suspect a thing. She knew he didn't like Tiffany, given how he had called her unsavory things and also immediately threw her business card in the trash. Y/N just couldn't help feeling like she didn't belong with Captain America, Steve Rogers.

Steve, meanwhile, also awake, was sitting on the balcony in his room, thinking about his girlfriend. Why had she been acting so weird for the past one month? Absolutely refused to be around him for more than half-an-hour, sounded tired every time they talked and knew surprisingly a lot about paintings.

How? And why? He sighed and got up, stumbling into his bedroom. A little talk tomorrow won't hurt, right? Running a hand through his hair, he plopped down on the bed, lay down and finally decided to sleep.

---

"Y/N? Sweetie, can I talk to you?" Y/N glanced at Steve. "Yeah, what happened?" she smiled when he sat next to her, putting an arm around her. "Is everything okay with you? Lately you've been… kind of strange," he whispered. "I'm fine! Just having trouble sleeping, that's it," Y/N muttered, resting her head on his shoulder.

They were sitting in his room at the Stark Tower. "No, it's something else. I've known you for a year, my love, tell me. I'm here for you," he assured her, brushing her hair with his fingers. "Fine! It's Tiffany! She got into my head," Y/N groaned, burying her face in his neck. "Her?! That— sorry," Steve blushed when Y/N gave him a pointed look.

"Look, I get it, man. You're Captain America, you're America's hottest man or something and women literally flock to you all the time but she— she likes art. Just like you do. You both know so much about it, it's insane! I'm only thinking, why am I with you? I've never been interested in art, and Tiffany actually seems like a fun person to be around."

"So you got a little insecure?" Steve teased, pressing his lips to her temple. "I haven't slept in a month! Why do you think I know so much about art all of a sudden?" Y/N huffed, looking away from him. He froze. She gave up her sleep just to make sure she was… worthy of his affections?

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying. I slept at 6 am yesterday. Today, technically speaking. I had to be at my job at 8, and I got half an hour of sleep all because I was researching impressionist art— Why are you looking at me like that?" Y/N deadpanned. Steve continued to stare at her, a look of disbelief and incredulity on his face.

"I want to tell you something very important." He pulled away and turned to sit face-to-face with her. "What's that?" she mumbled. "I love you. I love you so much, Y/N, you're the most gorgeous woman I've seen, we are happy together and I like that. We have different interests, of course I know that, but it doesn't matter."

"Why doesn't it?"

"Because when we're together, next to each other, I have the best time of my life. Everything is blissful when you're with me and it's… it is euphoric. You don't need to learn about art just to hang out with me, I like rambling to you! Unlike artists, who would most definitely interrupt me at all times, you listen. And I like that. I also love listening to you talk about Y/H."

Y/N teared up at his words. "Thank you," she managed to blurt out, sniffling when Steve laughed and pulled her into his arms. "Off the bat, I knew what that bratty woman wanted. But I didn't want it because I already have it better," he chuckled, rubbing her back in soothing motions.

"I love you too," Y/N mumbled into his shoulder, smiling softly when she felt him pressing a kiss to the top of her head. All of a sudden, there were knocks on the door. "Come in," Steve called out and Sam poked his head into the room. "Steve, we have a meeting in 15 minutes, just a heads up. Hi Y/N!"

"Hi Sam!" Y/N greeted enthusiastically. "I see you're doing better now," Steve smiled, wiping her tears away when Sam left. "I needed to talk and we did, I'm… I'm not insecure anymore," Y/N admitted, playing with the hem of the t-shirt she was wearing. "I'm glad we could sort this out. I gotta go now, talk to you later?"

"I'm not going anywhere. Bye!"

She smiled when he leaned over and gave her a chaste kiss. "I love you!" he called out when he left the room. "I love you— close the door, you turd!" She laughed loudly when he turned around with a raised eyebrow. "I love you too, Steve," she grinned cheekily, bursting into boisterous laughter when he closed the door behind him.

Outside, Steve only smiled, happy that his girlfriend was doing much better.

See, a little conversation didn't hurt.

---

A/N: Hope you liked it! Leave a like if you did, thanks for reading!

[aphrodite-would-be-proud]

🕯Anon said : Can I request headcanons with a Modern Au Teacher!Erwin and his s/o is a slightly famous artist like a painter that’s always in the basement. Maybe have a moment where the art teacher begs him to bring them to the school when they find out who Erwin is with. ? 🕯

Teacher!Erwin brings you, a famous painter, to work.

{ Erwin x Reader | tw:none | fluff, suggestive kiss | modern }

{ "Leisurely Sunday in the Villa Comunale in Naples" 1993 by Francesco Tammaro Born in 1939 }

Grassy fields surrounded the old big building as the trees undressing of their leaves onto the sidewalks, currently being swept away by the janitor.

Students were filling the halls, the sound of chatter and laughter following after. Outside in the yard, the whistle of the gym teacher could be heard following by heavy footsteps as the football team started their morning practice. Not long after the bell rang, the halls were empty again only for some crumbled papers and snack covers left behind.

"Pigs, all of them. There's a trashcan right there." Levi scrunched his nose at the smell of axe spray and deodorant near the trophy cases. "Tell Miche to spray his running monkeys with soap every once in a while."

"Now now, what got you so grumpy this early in the morning?" Adjusting the lab coat on their suit, Hange replied. "Oh cut the kids some slack, their big game is coming soon or something."

"And he's been implenting a more strick hygiene policy." Said Erwin, holding a plastic binder with a stack of exam papers, mostly marked red. "He's trying to convince the principal to ban deodorant during practice because it's making his nose burn."

Huffing in response, Levi crossed his arms. "Yeah because the principle will definitely listen to him after that whole sniffing people scandal- Hey! Brats, don't you have classes"

As Levi went to scold the two students currently hanging a handmade poster for the upcoming game on the wall, a couple of students came up to Hange, looking in a hurry as they explained the Science lab was locked and they're getting tired of sitting on their backpacks outside.

Soon after, Erwin too made his way to class.

Upon entering the room, the talking quieted down as the squeaking sound of people going back to their own desks followed. Walking upfront, Erwin dropped the binder on his desk beside the empty mug, a couple of groans filled the room as the students realised what it was.

"Mr.Smith, didn't we just take the test yesterday? Shouldn't you like...I don't know double check or something? Maybe you rushed grading them?" One student called from the back as some chuckles and agreement followed from the rest.

Taking the stacks of papers out, Erwin made his way between the students, giving each on their graded paper. "I don't know Connie, maybe you should've double checked your answers instead?"

The playful atmosphere of the classroom was cut short as the door slammed open, making everyone freeze in their seats, none other than the art teacher walked in.

Nile Dawk, current art teacher who fails at least a quarter of his class each year. Who has oh just the most swell relationship with Erwin and anyone can tell you that.

You see, Erwin adored art, both the classic and the modern. Nile admired history and knew just how each art era had its link to a historical event.

And the pair couldn't stand each other.

Crossing his arms, Nile said "Erwin, you have explaining to do." Before dropping a newly printed magazine onto his desk, 

Its cover, showing a brand new art museum that just finished construction and is hosting a lot of different paintings from unrecognised underground talents. 

"Nile, I think you misunderstand. I teach history, I'm not an architect." He said raising an eyebrow, before tilting his head as if he's deep in thought, "or do you want me to explain what a museum is?"

Sneering at his remark, Nile flipped through the pages till he reached a certain one. It depicted a one of the paintings that will be displayed in the museum, a portrait of a blond man with broad shoulders and sharp blue eyes seemingly distracted from reality by the book in his hand.

The soft glow of the fireplace next to the red armchair he sat in, adding a certain orange hue to his light complexion. His long fingers holding the leather book as a glass-stained maroon vase sat on the small table behind him, containing a single red rose.

It's clear from the details poured into his eyes and the shading for each strand of his hair that whoever made this painting, held a great affection for the man.

"Now Mr.history teacher, care to explain why your face is on this painting? By one of the few promising artists of this useless generation?."

Hushed murmurs filled the classroom as students took out their phones googling the name y/n, showing each other the said painting while staring with wide eyes at Erwin.

Rubbing his temple with his fingers, Erwin frowned at the scene the other was causing. Knowing very well it won't take long for this fire to spread, he decided to add more fuel to the flames.

He took a long breath, before telling the class to quiet down with a stern expression. 

"Mr.Dawk, are you really asking me why y/n, my love, the person I'm married to, paint me?" He said facing the other, looking directly into his eyes. "Maybe you should ask y/n instead if you're so insisting on forcing yourself in my private life."

Narrowing his eyes, Nile snorted. "You know what Erwin? Maybe I should.

And that's the story Erwin told you while having dinner that day.

He looks at you with pleading eyes as if to silently apologise for dragging you into this mess, his plate still half full and drink untouched.

Please reassure him that it's alright, you don't mind taking a day off to visit his work

He'll reach out to gently squeeze your hand in his, whispering a small thank you as his thumb rubs against your skin.

He also says he'll do the dishes that day, you can go rest and he will join you in bed after a while, a relieved smile on his face.

The next day, as he wakes up early like usual. He makes sure to wake you up with a kiss, stroking your face before murmuring "good morning" against your lips. 

He knows because of your work you don't wake up early, so he's really patient and understanding if you happen to get grumpy for a while.

Handing you a warm drink to help wake you up, he'll make sure you eat something before changing and heading out.

You're not surprised to find him already done and dressed himself.

Hair as perfect as usual.

On the drive to school, you'll feel the cool morning air against your skin while your head leans back into the seat, eyes fluttering shut.

You can have your mini nap, Erwin will make sure to wake you up when you arrive.

When arriving, he made sure to open the car door for you. The fresh air and green scenery surrounded you both.

When arriving at the teacher's lounge, you're almost surprised to see two people already there from how early it was.

The first was sitting on the old black couch near the window, his dirty blond bangs covering his eyes. The second you could see making tea on the other side of the room Where the kitchenware was.

Both of them glanced up when Erwin called their name, staring at the way he had an arm wrapped around your waist while introducing you.

It was Miche who came first, standing from the couch you noticed just how tall he was. Offering your hand for him to shake, only for him to pull you into a tight hug instead.

He pulled away, tapping his nose before a smile slowly formed on his face, nodding in approval

The second was Levi, who ignored your offered hand only to sip on his teacup, assessing you up and down.

Not too long after, a person with a messy ponytail and a colorful lab coat arrived.

They took one glance at you, then the matching wedding rings on yours and Erwins fingers before taking an immediate interest in you.

Hange asked questions faster than you can answer them, with sparkling eyes and a wide smile.

At the first sign of you being uncomfortable, it was Levi who stepped in to tell Hange to tone it down before apologizing to you.

And it was Miche who got you some snacks from the teacher's secret stash after.

You've heard stories and one sided phone calls about them from Erwin, yet it still didn't prepare you for actually meeting them.

While overwhelming at first, the more time you spent talking as Erwin reassuringly sat beside you, you noticed how genuinely interested they were.

Levi, while seemingly cold, was actually the most considerate and paid the most attention to you. He'd step in whenever things got too much and would be really polite despite having a colourful language. By the end of it he even made you some tea, something that seemed to surprise Erwin and the rest.

"It's just...he never trusted someone this quickly before."

Hange was genuinely interested in you, having researched you and your art beforehand. They really were eager to hear even the most boring details and were capable of understanding your way of thinking. They even gave you a small rubber frog they carried around in their pocket to hand out. It would've been cute wasn't for the fact immediately after they mentioned the real human skeleton they have pinned to the lab door.

"His name is bean! I've been actually investing into getting him a human heart for Valentine's day, but all the ones I've found so far were in jars."

The most quiet of them was actually Miche, although he'd smile at you whenever you looked his way. Despite his intimidating size you learned how harmless and easy going he is, the most chill out of the three. He did mention knowing Erwin for the longest time out of them, having been childhood friends even. He promised to tell you all the embarrassing secrets Erwin tried to erase from existence as he added his number on your phone.

"He ain't as proper as he looks, I got the dirt on him."

You saw Erwin's jaw tightening before he changed the subject quickly, giving the side eye to Miche who only smiled back.

The rest of the day went by smoothly, Erwin didn't leave your side for one minute and made sure to check on you constantly. 

He introduced you to the rest of the teachers and seemed only amused at any teasing he got from students passing by.

By the end of the day, as the sun began to set and the students already done with their clubs, you and Erwin had one final place to go.

The art classroom.

"Just one more thing before that" he told you, guiding you into an empty classroom.

You saw his desk, the mug you gifted him on father's day as a joke sat on his desk, several paper sketches you made were framed next to it.

It was his classroom, with only you and him, the door open.

He closed it.

You stood against his desk as he moved closer, arms circling you, not breaking eye contact.

"May I?" He whispered, licking his own lips.

As he got your permission, he pressed his lips against yours, arm stroking your back before pulling away after some seconds.

He rubbed your swollen bottom lip with his thumb, a small smile on his face before pulling away.

Your heart was still fluttering against your chest as you left the classroom, while Erwin seemed to be smiling at nothing with a slight curl to his lips, steps more lighter than before.

Right after that he took you to the art classroom. The smell of oil paint and sound of brushes scratching against paper filling the air.

Stepping inside, the scratching sound stopped as a certain black haired man stared at you, eyes wide and lips parted.

Disbelief clear in his face, Nile was quick to mask his emotions as he noticed the smugness Erwin was in.

"Nile, I'd like to introduce you to my lovely darling, y/n." There was a chipper to Erwin's voice as he leaned in to kiss your cheek. 

[honeytea8]

Dearly Beloved • Kars/Reader

A/N: Did an art-fic trade with the lovely @sammystep​! So, here’s some Kars fluff with a sprinkle of angst for ya. Reader is gender neutral as always, enjoy!

Word Count: 1.3K

Summary: With your species on the cusp of war, all you desire is the right to remain at your lover's side—to continue to be his dearly beloved.

Warnings: None!

By midnight, Kars had searched almost everywhere for you. But it should have come at no surprise to anyone, least of all him, that you would be found in your secret spot. 

The subterranean cities built underground far from the sun's rays are where you and Kars had grown up, and spent much of your formative years. It was only when the sky faded to dusk, and the shadows grew long did any one of your people dare to venture out into nature. 

You, ever curious, took to exploring as much as you possibly could before the sun came back up, and you were forced to retreat underground again. It was in these nightly adventures that you discovered this obscure little pocket of bliss that seemed cut off from the rest of the world.

When Kars had found you, you were tucked away in the shelter of an alcove where you spent your nights' painting or carving away at the stone walls. You liked to call it your 'workshop.' In actuality, it was a small cave with odd-looking columns and pillar structures made from limestone.

Kars knew if left up to your own devices, you would remain there until daybreak; this place always gave you a kind of peace you just didn't receive anywhere else. The air there was always tinged with sweetness since you often ground wild berries to use as pigments for your artwork. The cave was usually quiet, save for chirping cicadas, and rustling leaves in the distance. Or even Kars’ footfalls  whenever he would come searching for you. 

With the way you were hunkered down in a corner, he might not have seen you at first glance. Fortunately for him, he had excellent vision and perfectly honed sensing skills. You, on the other hand, were sorely lacking in the latter. As it took him placing a gentle hand on your back for you to finally tear your attentions away from your little project.

"Kars," you murmured, "What are you doing here?"

The man would've chastised you for your overly casual greeting, but was more intrigued by what you were working on this time. Kars rather enjoyed your creative side, and it pleased him to see you devote yourself to something you were passionate about. He was of a similar temperament regarding his research. Your art was the only thing he was willing to share you with.

Kars knelt at your side, picking up one of your handmade brushes. By its smoothness, he could tell it was goat's hair wrapped in twine and reinforced with bull's hide. He silently commended your choice in material. It was nicely crafted.

"I came to see what has been occupying your time, beloved."

A smile broke across your face at the sound of your favorite pet name falling from his lips. It was always beloved this, and darling that. Sweet was not ever something you could describe him as. Whenever Kars was like this, it usually implied something...a little less than sweet. Finally setting aside your tools, you allowed yourself to lean back against his solid frame. 

You would never speak these words aloud, but Kars was your anchor. He kept you grounded, especially when it felt like you'd be swept up in the storm. He would loathe hearing you say it, for in his eyes, you should stand on your own feet. Kars wanted you strong—to fight along with him like the warrior he knew you to be.

In these times of social unrest, the war between your people was as inevitable as the sun on the horizon. Your brethren did not agree with Kars' ideologies, seeds of discord were sown, and it was only a matter of time before serious conflict broke. Bloodshed and death were imminent figures looming in the distance.

"Will you continue to keep me waiting?" he asked.

You shook your head, not trusting your own voice to remain firm in his presence. Instead, you took his hand in yours and kissed it. His palm first, then each knuckle one by one. This man of great pride and ambition yearned only to purge his clan's fears, so they may reign supreme like gods. There would never come a day where you would not align yourself to him. 

Words need not be said. He understood your convictions and was pleased to have someone like you in his corner. Kars gathered you into his arms, adjusting himself so that you sat in between his legs. His grip was loose around you but comforting. You fit perfectly against his body like you were made for one another. 

Whenever he held you close like this, there was always an air of protection and security, a comfort given your tendency to overthink. Everything about your lover set you at ease, even his very smell. A spicy aroma like cinnamon or clove with sweet undertones that were a cross between vanilla and honeysuckle. You couldn't quite distinguish it, but you basked in its familiarity all the same.

His intoxicating presence only served as fuel to your growing attachment. You could feel the press of his nose against your hair. His calloused hands along the flesh of your thighs—even the deep rumble in his chest as he hummed. 

His lips grazed the base of your throat, brushing softly against your pulse. Somewhere in the distance was a bird’s crowing, the morning call and the sign of a new day approaching. The sun would be up soon.

Kars gave you a tight squeeze before releasing you altogether. You frowned a little, wondering why he had to let go right as you were enjoying his touch. Kars hadn't even given you the chance to question him before he scooped you in his arms and carried you bridal style, heading in the direction of your personal quarters.

"Don't pout. You aren't a child." 

He was amused as he chided you, a rare thing, but you could tell by the teasing lilt in his voice. Your face was pressed against his chest, so it muffled your reply.

"I'm not pouting."

"Indeed." he held you closer to combat the chill. "You are not pouting, but brooding. Tell me, darling, will you throw a tantrum like Esidisi?"

He was met with petulant silence.

"I hear it helps," he murmured into your hair.

In response to his provocation, you nipped at him, sinking your blunt teeth into the junction between his shoulder and neck. Two could play at that game, you mused. Your silly action had the desired effect, as Kars adjusted his grip, then swung you over one shoulder, giving your ass a sharp smack.

"Behave," he warned. But honestly, it sounded like he didn't want you to behave at all.

This game continued until you reached your shared room. Kars tossed you carelessly onto the nest of plush furs and animal pelts before following suit. Sleep wasn't necessary for your species, but it was not uncommon for you to just relax in bed on occasion. 

"I'm not very tired," you said, causing Kars to smirk.

"Nor am I."

You shifted and placed a hand on his cheek. "Well."

"Well, what?" Kars was giving you a lazy, half-lidded stare. 

Deep within the dredges of his gaze lay a subdued want. It spurred you to lean forward and peck the corner of his mouth briefly, and then fully press a kiss to his lips. Kars was quick to thread his free hand into your hair while setting a proper rhythm. His other hand dipped lower down your back. 

There was something incredibly intimate about having his open mouth against your own. It was almost like you shared in his every breath, granted yet another avenue for deeper connection. 

You were entirely unprepared for the force of Kars' passion, the desperation behind his kiss so sudden, you could've snapped under the pressure. It was like he was sharing with you, for the briefest moments, the burden he carried—tenderness and strength in tandem.

Only when he released you, were you able to look at him in all of his glory, as the person you'd fallen in love with.

“Promise me, that no matter what happens, we’ll be together.”

He cupped your cheek, passing his thumb against your bottom lip. “Without question.”

[ivory-sunflower]

Arty Art Things ✨

Hellooo!

I've decided to post some of the arty things I've done either recently or in the last few years, well the pieces I'm somewhat proud of at least. All my posts tend to be a lot more wordy than they need to be but hey it's what I do here!

Conchúr White

Anyone one who's been on this blog for a bit will have probably have seen me talk about this lovely Irish fella. The pencil drawing is actually a year old as of yesterday, I only know that because screenshots of me flipping out about Conchúr following me on twitter popped up in my memories yesterday. I think I'd sent it to him at about 3 in the morning (I was not in a good head space at that point in time), so probably not what he was expecting to see when he opened his phone in the morning aha

The biro version is much more recent: I got bored while sat at my desk and doing research about university courses, saw a biro, saw my old drawing of Conchúr, had an idea. I revisited my GCSE art techniques and here we are. Again, I put this up on Twitter and now (at the the time I'm writing this) when you google "Conchúr White" it's the third top image of him which is a bit mad really. I think I spent all of about 20 minutes on Conchúr but another 45 minutes on the words behind him. The words are the names of the songs on his EP 'Bikini Crops', he doesn't just really love the idea of Channing Tatum driving him around at night in a daisy print bikini... Well maybe he does but what he does in his spare time is none of my business...

TechDif

So I mentioned that the pencil drawing of Conchúr came from a rough patch in my mental health and this one is no different! In fact this one came from an even worse circumstance so we love to see it. I had a bad, bad time in July and this started as a way of distracting myself from what was going on in my head. Without it, I can't honestly say I'd still be here so even if the final product of this had been a terrible mess I would still love it for keeping me alive. However, it did not turn out to be a terrible mess!

Now that the origin of this is out the way, where do I start with TechDif? Unlike Conchúr, I haven't really talked about them on here (unless you count one brief post about Citation Needed) before so I guess I'll do it here. The Technical Difficulties are a wonderful group of 4 British fellas who have had their fair share of fun online and even before. They did a radio show at university together, which went on to become their Reverse Trivia Podcast, later moving on to a panel show called 'Citation Needed': and a game called 'Two of These People Are Lying'. All of which I would thoroughly reccomend, they're one of my go to things when I'm having a rough time. All 4 of them are excellent! Tom Scott (red top, blue jeans on the picture) has his own YouTube channel which does content aside from TechDif. If you're quite nerdy and like science, linguistics, computers, or any number of other things you may enjoy Tom's channel. He is probably best described as "The Moderator" of the group, much like a tired teacher he tries desperately to keep everyone on track with what they're meant to be doing, but usually it does not end well for him. Then we have Matt Gray (space top, holding an ice cream) who also has a channel away from TechDif stuff, he does techy electronic things and has a series called 'Will it Soft Serve?' where he puts all kinds of strange things through a soft serve machine. Matt brings a very specific energy to TechDif and I can't fully describe what that vibe is but I love it. Matt and Tom also share a YouTube channel where TOTPAL is posted and they had a series called 'The Park Bench'. Moving on to everybody's favourite Gary Brannan: Gary Brannan (SATIRE hoodie, glasses) and can I just say, what a fella he is! He's just excellent! He is the one that will argue and rip into Tom the most (not in a malicious way) and hilarity ensues. There are some episodes where he is absolutely on it, getting all the points and others where he very clearly has no idea and that's where some of his funniest quotes come from. Given how badly I was doing at the time I made this, his response to it on Twitter was so so lovely. I specifically remember one tweet where he said I'd made him happy and although it was probably a flippant comment, it just made feel alright for a bit. Yeah I might be feeling awful right now, but I've made someone else happy so that's a nice feeling. Then last but certainly not least, we have Chris Joel (buffalo check shirt, beard)! I would be lying if I said he isn’t my favourite... His sense of humor is the one I vibe with most, he can get rather dramatic in parts and can chat bollocks like a champion. He has absolutely no online presence away from TechDif and, like Rens from Temples, I fully believe he’s a cryptid and lives off in a tree somewhere. 

The picture took me about 4 days to complete, well 4 nights because I did most of it between the hours of 12 a.m. and 7a.m. - I remember watching the sun come through my window each morning. It’s made up of lots of little pieces, all cut out and stuck on; even the sky and hills are made of separate pieces of paper. Nothing was actually drawn on the piece of paper it’s all stuck on, it’s not how I usually do things but if I messed up one little but I could just redraw it rather than ruining the whole thing. The most tedious parts to make were Chris’ shirt because I had to draw each square individually and then join the as well, and cutting out the ban-hammer in the bottom right was surprisingly hard. Every single detail of the picture is a reference to the podcast/shows, I still have the plan sketch and reference list knocking about somewhere. I listened to a lot of true crime videos while making it to the point that certain parts remind me of different cases: the brandy now reminds me of Peter Tobin, and the big spiral thing reminds me of Tim McLean (very harrowing case) - sorry that fact is a bit morbid but interesting nonetheless. 

I did post this for a little bit back in July, but I received some rather awful messages so I took it down. Generally, Tom Scott/TechDif fans are lovely but there’s been a few that have taken a disliking to me for some reason so I’m hoping they don’t resurface again. I’m in a better head space now though, so even if they do I’m more equipped to deal with it this time.

Hozier

This was a quick sketch I did in April, I was getting bored with lockdown and decided to summon the bog man himself. There’s not really much more backstory than that, no poor mental health story, no fun twitter story - he’s just here. He’s vibing. I will say I’m particularly proud of his nose, I just think it’s one of the best noses I’ve ever drawn. His hand is okay, but I think that the hands on my Conchúr drawings are better. So there is the Hozi-Boi...

The Corpse Bry

I’ve talked about Bry on here before as well, I love him, he’s excellent, top lad. He is a living Tim Burton character, he’s 6′6, very skinny, and his legs are longer than my will to live. I was watching ‘The Corpse Bride’ a few weeks ago and suddenly had an idea and so ‘The Corpse Bry’ came to be. I gave him a little panda friend because the panda has always been his animal - he used to wear a panda beanie all the time and his album had a panda on the cover. Again, there’s not really a fun story behind this one, I guess it’s somewhat fun because it’s the first art I made after finishing my psychology exams in October so it was nice to actually have the time to draw.

James Bagshaw

Ginger talking about Temples for the third post in a row? it’s more likely than you think! I did this one last week, I’d had a bit of a wobbly day and had group therapy on Teams in the evening and I just couldn’t concentrate on what was going on and I ended up doodling Mr James E. Bagshaw, the glitter crying fraggle man himself. It’s a bare-bones drawing that I could definitely work into more but I’m happy with it as it is to be honest. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit and add the individual bits of fringe to his jacket, just thinking about doing that makes me tired. Maybe I’ll get around to drawing the whole band at some point...

Alice in “Wonderland”

This one is from about 5(?) years ago, it’s not my typical style and was a “study” based on another artists work (basically i just had to copy this fellas work). I’ll be honest, this one has a sketchy backstory that I won’t go in to because it’s not exactly a nice one, and because of that I also won’t say who the artist is that it’s based on. Despite this, I’m still really proud of this one and I’m so sad that I never got this piece back after I got taken out the class. I’ve considered trying this style again, I’ve even joked about doing another Conchúr drawing in this style as a nod to my progression through GCSE art, eventually leading to Conchúr drawn in ink on music manuscript and stained with neon paint and dyes - it would be quite the project!

So this has been quite a lengthy post so apologies about that but life goes on. Similar to the vinyl post, I’ll probably add to this as and when I make more art. Even if no one is reading these posts, I’m enjoying making them so that’s the main thing. It’s just nice to document things and the feelings that go with them. 💕

~ Love Ginger xx 

29/11/2020

[goldgalaxytea-fanfics]

The heart wants what it wants

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi

Fandom: Sally Face

Relationship: Travis Phelps & Reader, Sal Fisher/Travis Phelps (one sided), Sal Fisher/Reader (one sided), Ashley Campbell/Reader (one sided), Ashley Campbell & Sal Fisher

Characters: Reader, You, Travis Phelps, Sal Fisher, Ashley Campbell

Additional Tags: Female Reader, lesbian reader, Unrequited Crush, Complicated Love Square, love square, Crushes, mlm/wlw solidarity, Useless Gays, Swearing, Travis is terrible at handling emotions, Wingman Reader, Reader is a useless lesbian, Travis and Sal throw hands

Words: 1,198

Summary: 

Love is a tricky subject. It's a class one could study for hours upon end and still fail spectacularly. There were no equations to memorize, no set rules to follow, no way to cheat off of others; only lessons to learn as you travel the winding and intricate path to a person's heart.

Notes:

FOR: Anon

REQUEST: "Hey I had a oneshot/imagine idea?  It could be a Travis x Sally x reader Travis and y/n are best friends and only y/n knows Travis’s secrets(crush, dad, sexually, esc) and she’s his wing woman in his love for Sal. Meanwhile, Sal has a crush on reader but is too shy to talk to her so he tries to annoy Travis to get a rise out of him so that y/n will come help defuse the situation not knowing y/n is trying to set them up.  Extra credit if y/n is a lesbian(maybe likes Ashley👀) Just an idea tho lol"

Hope you enjoy, Anon! ^-^

Love is a tricky subject. It's a class one could study for hours upon end and still fail spectacularly. There were no equations to memorize, no set rules to follow, no way to cheat off of others; only lessons to learn as you travel the winding and intricate path to a person's heart.

Love is also something you can't control, no matter how hard you try. At least that's what you constantly told Travis when he struggled with his feelings for a certain blue haired boy.

The blonde suffered from internalized homophobia due to his shitty father; one of the many weights crushing the young man. You fear one day he'll eventually be flattened by the burdens he bears, yet you reassure yourself that he'll always have you to help carry his heavy chains. You were best friends after all.

By some miracle you had befriended Travis during your freshman year at Nockfell High School, two paths that would have never crossed if not for random chance. The teacher had assigned you and the boy as partners for an English project; somehow an essay about a 500 year old book turned into an unlikely friendship between the class's most despised jerk and most beloved sweetheart.

Every student knew of Travis's quick to anger attitude and so they avoided him. No one wanted to press the big red button that would set off the bomb impatiently waiting for any reason it could find to explode.

Likewise they knew of your kindness to everyone, including those that didn't deserve it. Before the assignment you had only spoken with Travis a few times. He had thrown hateful insults at you while you reflected them with kind words. Your unwavering sweetness only angered him farther, leaving the teacher to break up the dispute.

By some means, between boring research and endless typing, a bond had formed. He was still rough around the edges and rude towards you but he no longer held any actual malice.

After the project the two of you had refused to part ways, always eating lunch together in the cafeteria and hanging out after school. Gradually your kindness broke down his walls while his brashness broke down yours.

The two of you would lay on the roof of your house and stare at the stars while you swapped secrets that had never seen the light of day. He learned of your struggle to confide in and get help from others. How you felt like you always had to be okay and help others even at the expense of yourself. In turn you learned of his father's cruel ways, his crush on Sal Fisher and his struggle with his sexuality. You held him as he cried about how his feelings went against everything he was taught and he would burn in hell for them. You reassured him there was nothing wrong with him; it was completely normal, there were lots of people like him. You confided in him that you also had no interest in the opposite gender.

Despite that fact many people at school seemed to believe you two were a couple. Rumors spread like wildfire in High School and his lack of mean words towards you fed the flames.

Somehow those rumors persisted all throughout high school and were now a pain in the butt even in 12th grade.

Ashley Campbell, your crush, a girl as kind as she is pretty with a love for the arts. You met her on accident while breaking up a fight between Travis and Sal about a year ago. She helped Sal up while you held back Travis. After that you would stare at her with heart eyes whenever you could, making up dumb excuses just so that you could chat with her. Being around her make you act like a useless gay; your face burned while your head emptied and you made a fool of yourself. Lucky for you she never seemed to mind your awkwardness.

You could never work up the courage to out right flirt with her but you tried your best to drop subtle hints here and there. Either you were too subtle or she was oblivious for she never seemed to realize you were flirting with her. So you just hopelessly continued to pine after her in silence, slowly working up the courage to confess your feelings to her.

○○○○♡○○○○

Travis is your best friend yet even you get tired of his horrible way of handling his feelings. Instead of expressing them in any form of healthy way he uses his fists and insults to lash out. The most frequent victim of his fits was Sal. You didn't know the blue haired boy well, having only talked to him occasionally during classes and when you broke up the fights between him and Travis. You could see why Travis liked him so much, Sal was kind and didn't care what others thought about him. 

The poor boy didn't deserve Travis's wrath, yet despite your best efforts to prevent their daily brawls they were only getting worse.

Today you held back the urge to scream as you pried Travis away from Sal for the 3rd time today. Ashley gave you an apologetic look while Sal refused to meet your eyes. Meanwhile Travis continued to seethe with rage.

"Fuck you, Sally Face! I'm going to-"

"Please calm down, Travis." You pleaded as the blonde struggled to break free from your grasp.

"No. He fucking started this fight and I'm going to end it."

"What? Sal would never-"

"Actually, he did." Ashely confessed. Sal's eyes widened comedically as he desperately tried to silence his friend.

"Ash-"

"I'm sorry Sal, but this has gone on for way too long." Ashley turned to face you. "Sal has a crush on you and has been picking fights with Travis as an excuse to talk to you. I told him it was a terrible idea but he wouldn't listen to me.

The loud bickering was quickly smothered out by the awkward tension filling the hallway between the four students. Your grip on Travis vanished along with his fight. Eyes wide you stared at Sal like a deer caught in the headlights, struggling to find words.

"I'm… lesbian…" You finally got out.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know!" Sal was quick to apologize. "I-"

"It's okay, I'm not upset!" You reassured "I-"

"Are you kidding me? I've been crushing on you since freshman year and you like my lesbian best friend?! Have you not noticed how she's head over heels for your friend?" Travis spat, glaring daggers at Sal as he gestured wildly at Ashley.

"W-what?! I didn't know-" 

"Holy shit!" Ash cut off Sal, mouth open in shock. "You were flirting with me?! I've been trying to set you up with Sal!"

Your face mirrored Ashley's. "What?! I've been trying to get Travis and Sal together this entire time!"

With all their secrets out in the open all they could do was wait for someone to make the next move. No one wanted to break the awkward tension or figure out how to fix this absolute shit show.

Love was certainly a tricky subject, huh?

[nad-zeta]

Hi, hi! I'm not following you for long, but I already love here! ♡ Can I ask a HC? Suddenly, I've been thinking about Yukimura, Ieyasu and Mitsunari, more specifically their lack of experience with women. I believe they've never been with a woman before MC, because of reasons (two tsunderes and too focused on work, respectively). So I'd like to ask for their first time with MC, if that's ok. Maybe forget they did it in their route? Sorry if I wasn't very clear, English is not my native language♡

Hehehe, thank you so much for the request, love! I could feel myself blushing the entire time while writing this lolz. I had to ask my brother what it’s like for a boy’s first time, so yeah, that was a strange conversation. Anyways here you go love, I hope you enjoy it!

It’s noting to NSFW but lolz I don’t know, I guess I would rate this read at own discretion lol PG13 

First Time HC with Yukimura, Mitsunari, Ieyasu 

Yukimura

So its no secret this boy has like 0 woman communication skill, he has basically spent most of his life training and fighting battles

But that all changed when he met you

You were the first woman he has ever been in a relationship with or even loved for that matter

Your relationship with this boy officially started when he kissed you on new years eve while the fireworks were going off

That was the first time he had ever kissed well anyone in his life, and after he thought darn why haven’t I done this before its great.

The two of you were starting to get really serious and you have been dropping hints like mad to take your relationship to the next level.

Yukimura knew you were dropping hints and during you intimate cuddle sessions he would always look for an excuse to delay doing THAT

Lol it was time to get some expert advice

He went to Shingen bright red, and before even opening his mouth, Shingen knew what was up

“So my little boy has finally decided to become a man, I’m so proud” Shingen said as he used his hand towel to dab the fake tears in the corner of his eyes

“I knew this was a bad idea,” before Yuki could leave Shingen grabbed his shoulder and sat him down

By the time Shingen was done with his explanation this poor boy was so red, and he felt like he was going to melt in a puddle of embarrassment

He left Shigens room in a daze, Sasuke saw his friend and instantly knew what had just gone down.

It was now Sasuke’s turn to impart knowledge, halfway through the explanation Kenshin walked into the room. Lol even he had some words of advice for Yuki. “Wait, but I thought you hated women.” To that Kenshin simply rolled his eyes and left giving one last final piece of advice

Today was the day, Yuki was 100% determined

The two of you are laying together in bed as you’ve done a 100 times before

Yukimura is overwhelmed with the overload of the advice and you can definitely tell something is up

You peer into his eyes asking him what is wrong

He covers his face with a pillow muttering into it that it’s his first time and he is a bit nervous

You take the pillow off his face and gaze into his amber eyes reassuring him, you now were also a blushy mess cause it was your first time too

Yuki immediately propped himself up on one arm and looked at you a little shook, “wait, really.” “yeah dummy so let’s figure this out of together okay”

He smiled and nodded

There was a lot of fumbling and awkwardness at first and both of your faces were red AF

In the beginning, there was lots of laughing at how nervous both of you were

Yuki kissed and touched you softly, loving and unhurried.

Each touch was tender and warm

As nervous as the two of you were, you wanted to take your time and make the experience last, taking your time exploring, touching and loving one another

Yukimura moves slow and lovingly, making sure you are comfortable and okay the whole time

His face will be close to you’re the whole time, either resting his forehead on your or kissing you, cause it is his first time he wants to take in your beautiful face and perfect body. 

He honestly can’t help but get lost in your beautiful eyes

This boy worships your body thanx to all daddy Shingen’s advice

Loves your soft moans, it definitely gives him the confidence he needs to keep going

The whole affair is very awkward, loving and gentle

Once he has reached his orgasm, he will keep going until you reach yours, Shingen didn’t raise no selfish boy

When both of you are tired and spent from the hours of lovemaking, he will clean you up and give you some tea or water. Will cuddle and snuggle the shit out of you whispering how much he loves you (Thanks to Kenshin’s softie boy advice). Watches you fall asleep while stroking your hair. Will fall asleep while hugging think about just how much he adores you

Mitsunari

The two of you have been together now for quite some time

Mitsunari has definitely been feeling an unknown feeling lately when the two of you are cuddling together

The poor little angel is so confused about what is going on with his body

Will go talk to Hideyoshi about it, and Hideyoshi will basically give him a crash course about everything he would need to know. 

Mitsunari still feels like there is more to be learned on this subject at hand

And what does Mitsunari do when he knows limited knowledge about a subject, jip research

Basically becomes a sex scholar now, he will learn everything and anything he can, even consulting some of his warlord friends

When the two of you are cuddling while reading together as you’ve done many nights before, he can’t help but start kissing your soft skin

He looks all cool and calm on the outside, but this boy be nervous

You look up into his Amathist eyes and see something you haven’t yet seen, desire.

This ain’t your first rodeo, and you have been waiting for the moment that Mitsunari would want to get a bit more intimate.

Mitsunari confessed to you that it was his first time, you reassure him by telling him, you will teach him everything you know

He starts by running his fingertips along your body, just savoring the the feeling of your soft skin

Mitsunari wants to take his time getting to know your body and finding all those spots that would bring you immense pleasure

He will kiss every inch of your body until his lips feel numb

He wants you to convey just how much he loves you through the gentle touches and kisses

Will spend most of his time pleasuring you, he has discovered that he LOVES eating you out!

Who knew this angel could be so naughty

This boy has discovered the art of teasing, will find each of your sweet spots and exploit them

He wants to feel you shiver beneath him, he loves you so much and wants to know that you want him as much as he wants you

This angel boy will legit give you his most innocent angelic smile while teasing the shit out of you- seems like he consulted with Mitsuhide

His actions are slow, soft, gentle and teasing

He is making love instead of merely just having sex

Will whisper the sweetest things in your ears the whole time

Will give you constant compliments, as well as ask you if you would like him to do anything, he will follow each one of your instructions to a T

Will gently clean you up afterward, he is really attentive and super sweet afterward, He just wants to love and hold you.  Angel boy will be pressing soft kisses into your hair, while spooning you from behind. He might even read you a sweet story to lull you into sweet dreams

Ieyasu

This tsundere boy has never found anyone who could love his fluffy contrary ways, until he met you

Gosh he loves you so so much

One day you went to his palace to visit him, the two of you had been in a relationship for a super long time now.

You guys were just chilling and having tea when all of a sudden it started raining

It was getting pretty late, and as the day progressed it seemed to get colder

Ieyasu went to light the fireplace and sat next to you wrapping a warm blankie around the two of you

Honestly, he has wanted to go down on you and is constantly desiring you, he is just super good at hiding it but now thanks to the rain, the mood and atmosphere was perfect

He doesn’t waste a moment he immediately reaches for you and starts kissing you softly, slowly moving down your neck

He picks you up and gently put you down on his futon, he is looking at you questioningly, you nod and give him the go-ahead.

The rain creates the perfect dim lighting

He hovers over you for a few moments just taking in your pure beauty

He will take his time enjoying the feeling of your soft skin under his calloused palms

Ieyasu is a fast learner even though it is his first time he will gently kiss and touch you all over finding all those little spots that makes you moan and scream out his name.

 After a while, he will know exactly which spot to nibble or touch to make you shudder

This boy loves kisses and will legit kiss every inch of your beautifully soft skin, he might just leave a few love bites in its wake

He will move slow, soft and lovingly, every kiss and touch will be gentle and feather-light  telling you exactly just how much he loves you and how much you mean to him

The boy is very vocal

Every moment is filled with sweet whispers, of him telling you how breathtaking you are, how much he loves you and how perfect you are

Softi boy will make sure both of you are completely satisfied

He loves touching your face and staring into your beautiful eyes

Afterward, he will clean you up and spoon you from behind, while drawing soft circles on your bare skin for hours. You are the only one he will show weakness to. He will whisper to you afterward that you were actually his first, poor boy will be blushing the whole time. Aftercare with Ieyasu will consist of the sweetest softest snuggles, soft words, and sweet endearments

I hope ya enjoyed it, love! ❤❤🔥🥰

[livelovelaug-h]

Irreplaceable you pt 2

Sam x reader

Warnings- cancer: sad times. Angst. :(( Grab the tissues still.

"So I decided to cut out gluten. That was like the first thing that I did. I would just like wake up in the morning and feel like totally fatigued. Just like, "eh."

You laugh. This could be good. Next girl.

"You know, um his job he doesn't really like talking about it." She laughs. ?

Next girl. "You know what's funny I have a cat named Sam."

"oh okay."

"yeah." Nope. "Thank you."

You're writing down on some papers a few notes notes: too slutty. Too needy. Too freaky. Too neurotic.

Next girl.

"So it says on your online profile you were Phi Beta Kappa?" You ask.

"I had no life in college." You laugh.

"And now you're a researcher for the National Institute of Health?"

"Yes. Still have no life. I'm just... I'm just tired of being alone. I'm where I want to be career-wise, and I really would like to settle down and have a family."

She adds: "sorry, Natural caretaker. Also overbearing neurotic."

"I'm the same way." You say. "Um... Let's set up a date."

"Okay. Um, just... If I could just be honest with you, um, I just don't quite understand why a man would send his assistant to pre-interview women. I just... I don't get it. "

"Yeah, um... Here's the deal." She could tell by your face.

"Sally! Please don't hold it against him!" She starts walking away.

"This is the craziest thing like ever!"

You started picking up the papers to go catch the girl but you ran into in the waitress. "Oh, shit. Oh, sorry! I'm sorry! "

"No, I got it."

"It's kind of a long story."

"I... I think I heard it. I mean, I know I shouldn't, but spying on the customers is like the only thing that makes this job halfway bearable. You are way more interesting than most. "

"I know, it's unusual." You say.

"Yo, dude, I think it's awesome. Like, my mom died seven years ago. I was in high school. And after she passed, my dad spent every night alone. And I tried to tell him, "Go out. Live life. Find someone." But not just anyone. The right person. "

"Exactly. Which is hard."

She laughs "Right. imean, do you have any like friends or anything that could like take him off your hands?"

"Yeah his brother but not anyone that would get this girl stuff."

"Right. I mean, the thing is, finding the right one is actually about volume. You should host a mixer, like, invite some people."

"Yeah, right. Nothing says "fun" like a mixer hosted by your dying girlfriend."

"I mean, I'm having an art opening... at this gallery space on Friday. you could use it as a front.You, like, wouldn't even need to be there. And... And an art opening could bring together some really interesting women. Like the right types. Not that there wouldn't be some people there with like interested in the free snacks, but... "

"I wouldn't want to..."

"No, honestly, dude, you'd be doing me a real solid."

you laugh. I'm y/n.

"I'm Mira."

~~~~~~~~~

"A hundred and fifty dollars? This place is a rip-off. I could make this myself one week tops." Myron says.

"Focus, please. We just need to freshen up Sam's look a little."

"Why is that again?"

" Trust me. Any woman that meets him

is gonna want to shop for him. The wrong one will put him in these. He wears all plaid all the time"

"What are you doing?" You ask myron.

"What?"

"You're the only one who gets to make bad decisions because you're dying? Terminal cancer. Put it on my bill. "

"You're just so cool with everything. I'm not cool with any of this.

"I've been dying longer than you have. You get better at it. "

"How?"

"Well, it's like this vest. At first it's, "Why is that old man wearing that horrible vest? Pretty soon I become the vest guy. After that, you realize that you'd hardly recognize me without it. I look comfortable in it. It's a part of me, so... you accept it. "

"I don't think I can ever accept you in that vest."

"No?" He asks.

"Try this on. I want to see what it'll look like on Sam."

"Okay."

"But let me pair it with some skinny jeans."

Laughs.

"Okay. I look three days younger. "

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

"These... Oh! They're cutting off my circulation. Seriously, my ankles are tingling, my feet are asleep."

"You look hot!"

"It's just... Can I ask what this is about?"

"Just some retail therapy. "

"Right. And where am I supposed to put my phone?"

"Now... Okay, this jacket is dry clean only. Which means, if I'm not around, do not put this in the laundry."

"I know what that means y/n."

"Oh. Shit. Laundry. All right, so... In here." You walk to the washer and he asks:

"Really?"

" Okay, so... "

" I know how to turn it on."

"Yeah, but colors, whites, delicates."

".. Right."

"The dryer sometimes gets stuck, so, uh, you just give it two kicks. you kick it twice Right here. Like that. And it will generally unstick itself."

Sam kicks it twice.

"Exactly."

"Uh, this dial is the minutes. It tells you how much time you have left.......... um, If the time runs out..... before the clothes are ready, you just... turn the dial."

"Hmm. Wait." You say feeling uneasy.

" What?"

[groaning] "are you okay?"

You start coughing and head towards the sink. You start throwing up.

"yeah I have that effect on women." You both laugh. "Too soon...?"

You say "yeah too soon."

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

Her and her nightly what ifs. It was adorable though.

"What if I had run away and joined a cult?"

"I guess I would have to join too."

"What if relationships between cult members was frowned upon?"

"Like an asexual cult?"

"Yeah. And you couldn't do an intervention and get me out because I was totally brainwashed."

"Hmm. Well, I guess I would have to become a rival cult leader, re-brainwash you. according to my philosophy, and then steal you away into my cult, which would be a sex cult."

You start dying with laughter.

"What if I were exactly like me, except I had really terrible halitosis. I would get you a mint. Or I would destroy the olfactory receptors in my nose so that I didn't care."

....."What if I die?

"I would...

never recover." You guys cuddle and go to bed.

~~~~~ the next evening~~~~~~

You Sam and Dean are all In the same room.

"Should I be able to tell that you're circumcised in those jeans? 'Cause I can. And there's not a lot of, uh, room for imagination or your penis in those pants." You says.

"I don't want to go to this. I don't... I don't know anything about art."

You: "Yes you do. Would you relax? She just wants people there."

"Is she hot?" Dean asks.

"Trust me, Dean it will be a target rich environment." Sam answers.

"See? Come on, man. Free food, cute girls." Dean says.

~~~~~~~~~

"Come on, let's do this. " you say.

"How exactly do you know this artist again?"

"We met randomly at a cafe, and we really bonded and...

" When?"

' I... I don't know. I just... I don't want to disappoint her.

"Are you sure you can't come?" He asks you.

I- I don't feel up to it. Trust me.

"Okay. W... Well I'll go, just as long as you stop touching my hair.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey. "

'You're adorable." You say and he huffs a laugh. "Stop that!"

"Oh, he can move in them!"

"No, not really Dean."

Sam to Dean "you know i got a ring right before she told me she was 'pregnant and then now cancer."

"I didn't. You know you could still ask her."

"yeah she'll love that." he says sarcastically.

"it might give her some hope."

"yeah, maybe."

~~~~~~~In The car with myron outside the art meeting ~~~~~~~~~~

"Is he mingling?"

"He's admiring the art."

"Sam doesn't care much about art. Nah, he's just hoping if he keeps himself occupied with an activity, no one will actually talk to him."

[Myron] He's very good-looking.

Can I say that and not be awkward?

"Uh, yeah that's my whole point. What about you and your wife? How'd you two meet?"

"At a party."

"We were in college. We got hitched three years later. "

"That's it? No story?"

"The story came after. Getting married. Life. Building a home. Kids, grandkids."

"Sorry".

"It's okay. I won't know the difference, I guess."

"I just want those things for Sam."

"I have to hand it to you." Myron says.

"What?

"You are stubborn. This might be the worst plan in the world, but you're committed to it, and I like that."

"Yeah, well, don't be too impressed. Hasn't worked yet."

"I don't know about that." He says looking into the binoculars.

"What?" You look into the building.

"Let me see that." Sam is talking to Someone. "No, that's just the girl whose show it is."

[Myron] "So?"

"So she's just doing this as a favor to me. "

"So?"

"So, she's not his type."

"Yeah?"

You: "Oh, no. Don't do the snorty laugh.

"Ugh! He did the snorty laugh. Oh, he does that when he's... "

Myron : "When he's nervous."

"Happy."

"Here. Estelle's hot chocolate." Myron says ans hands you a coffee cup. "It cures whatever ails you. Except cancer."

He cheers "to the things we do for people we love."

~~~~~~~ bedtime ~~~~~

Sam walks in your shared bedroom. "I know you're not really sleeping. Because I know how your breathing sounds when you sleep. Which is something you don't even know about yourself."

laughs

"I know everything about you, y/n, But I have to say, you still know how to shock the hell out of me."

"What do you mean?"

"The clothes. The mixer. "

" Sam... "

"For the record, I am not a dummy. I know what's going on. And I went along with you trying to help me because I know it's helping you. But setting me up? Are you serious?"

"Please. You spend your life fighting monsters and researching all the time. Also always Looking after people."

"Sam, most people don't find what we had... have once, much less twice in a lifetime."

"What we have? You mean, a relationship where one person is... is lying, and sneaking around, and manipulating?*

" It's for your own good!"

"You just tried to manipulate my life! Or you mean a relationship where you have such a low opinion of me, that you truly believe that nobody else on the planet would ever fall for me."

"Obviously not. But that's the whole point!" You're gonna get swarmed, and it's gonna be impossible to find the right person!"

"I already found the right person! Or I thought I had." You

"Y/n/n's, I didn't... You know I didn't mean that. Hey, come here. are you okay?" He hugs you in the bed.

~~~~~~~~~ Sam and Dean sitting in the kitchen~~~~~~~

Sam: "What is she thinking? Does she think I'm completely clueless with women?"

"Dean?"

"No."

"Yeah? No.

" Wait, what?"

"you've just never seen me in action."

"Hm no, no and I never want to."

"What do I do?"

"Look, all you can do is be there for her, however you can. i mean, look, she's got to be scared out of her mind. And right now she needs to know that the worst thing happens.... That you are gonna be okay."

You and Myron go out bird watching. He speaks up : Are you ready to drop this mishigas with Sam?"

"You think I should?"

"Here's what I know: You don't have as much time as you think you do.*

" I don't?"

"No."

"What are you trying to say?" You ask heart racing.

"I'm not saying it, the Buddha did."

"I didn't realize you were Buddhist."

"I'm not, but it stuck with me. And it's true for you. It's true for every person on the planet."

[Myron] I need some snacks. Could you...

Oh. I can't believe you eat those things." You say handing him a bag of cheese curls.

"They're tasty."

"The chemo has clearly destroyed your taste buds."

"Try one".

"They're disgusting."

"Keep going. You get to tasty."

[crunches]. "The second bite is actually not as bad."

Myron: Good for you, too.

~~~~~ later at night~~~~

"Okay. Someone... who hikes." Sam says randomly.

"What?"

In the future, if I ever did this again, which I probably won't, but if I did, and if it makes you feel better to know, it would be with someone who hikes."

" We never hike."

'Because you hate it."

"That's not true."

"We took that one hike up Bear Mountain Six years ago, you complained the entire time."

"That's because hiking is boring. It's basically walking. And walking is something you do to get somewhere. Hiking from your car up a hill and then back to your car is totally pointless."

"Okay". he laughs.

"Duly noted." You say. "Hiking.

"Thank you."

"What else?"

" I like dancing." You scoff.

"I would like to try ballroom dancing classes. You know, like the fox-trot or the waltz, even though... "

"It's lame."

" I know you think it's lame."

''The fox-trot? Seriously?''

" Yeah!"

"How about something just moderately nerdy like swing."

"Is this person for you or for me?

"Okay.".

" Good. I get it. I'll update your profile.

"What profile?"

"This profile."

"God."

"You're welcome".

Next morning on a walk--

"So you've been pretending to be me?"

"you're sick you know that?"

"so?"

"okay so how do you like this profile picture?"

"you took a picture of me sleeping??"

"hey come on I've worked really hard on this. No? You don't okay fine. Want to take another one?"

"yeah let's take another one."

"Okay" he sits down on the bench and smiles. You press the button and bammm.

"what do you think of that?."

"oh it's good!"

"uh huh."

"do it in black and white."

Sam: "are you coming to bed?"

(glass shatters) "oh."

"y/n??" He walks in the room. "Y/n what is it?"

"It's broken."

" Oh, shit."

" It's broken."

"It's okay. We can just... We can get another one. It's fine."

'No, we can't! You gave it to me when we were kids.." you cry but he picks you up and takes you to bed. He holds you all night and lets you cry. He knows this can't be easy.

To be continued

[the-mira-life-project-mtf]

The Art Of Trying To ‘Pass’ As Female (My MtF~HRT Research)

Just as Krista described her need to change her face in order ‘just to leave the house,’ most of the 28 patients with whom I conducted interviews and observations, and the many others with whom I shared casual conversations, explained their desire for facial transformation in order to carry out everyday activities. As much as patients might want to be beautiful women after surgery, their primary desire was to walk through the world being recognized as women—which, in a sense, meant not being recognized at all. But just as physician discourse often conflated or collapsed the biological category of the female with the aesthetic category of the beautiful when describing the aims of feminization, so too did patients draw on both of these notions when communicating what their goal of being a woman actually means.

Woman is difficult to define as a surgical category precisely because it is difficult to define as a social one. Not surprisingly, patients had different ideas (and ideals) in mind when they imagined the kinds of transformations that would allow them to be the kind of women they wanted to be. When I asked Rosa if she had a particular idea of what she hoped to look like after surgery, she immediately said, “Yes,” and reached into her bag. She pulled out a stack of papers wrapped in plastic sleeves and held together by a binder ring. She shuffled through the stack, unfastened the ring, and put a page on the desk in front of me. There were three photographs that had been clipped from magazines and pasted to a sheet of white paper. As she began to talk I was not sure which one I was supposed to be looking at. “I want to look like a woman,” she began. “I want a face that a man falls in love with. Like an angel. Innocent. You are a man. You understand. Look at her [pointing to an image on the page.] What do you feel? Body is nice, but look at her face. In that picture you can’t see her breasts, but you can see her face. She’s beautiful. You feel inside something like love. I want a face that a man sees and it makes him turn red.” Rosa was not sure what her particular features would be when all was said and done. She did not expect Howard to replicate the model’s face onto hers. She did, however, expect that her face would be one that would do something for others and, in turn, do something for her. Rosa described the changes she was after in terms of how particular aspects of her face evoked gendered attributes.

When our conversation turned from the effect she desired to the precise means of achieving that effect, she gave an inventory of her face and the multiple ways that it works against her. The bone above my eyes gives me an aggressive look. I have dark, shadowed eyes. If you see that actress Hillary Swank, she has this. Something doesn’t match on her face. Nose, obviously. My nose is male. Upper lip. I can’t wear red lipstick. If I wear read lipstick it makes me look like a man in a dress. When I watch videos of myself, my expressions never look happy. I look angry.

Rosa was confident that following surgery she would ‘feel more sure of [her]self.’ It was this confidence that made women beautiful. Just something about them that had such power and sex appeal. Women, in her telling, were not aggressive or angry; their faces are built to be adorned. Though she knew that Howard could not necessarily make her beautiful, she was confident that he could make her a woman. For her, that was enough.

Gretchen had much more modest desires. Her hopes for surgery were less about eliciting a particular response, than avoiding a reaction altogether. Just…I hope that I won’t have this kind of jerk that was sitting just to my left on the plane this morning who was seemingly horrified by seeing this (gestures to her face and body). He was probably having the idea that I was fantasizing about him or something. I just hope that next time, he won’t think about it twice. ‘Yes, I’m sitting beside a girl. So what and that’s all.’ End of story.

Pamela expressed her desires this way: I'm doing it (having FFS) so I will feel that I "pass" (making air quotes). Whatever that is. And of course the operative word there is ‘feel.’ I'm tired of thinking, is that person reading me? No? Well how 'bout that person? I want to think about something else as I walk down the sidewalk.... Like, say, what a nice dress in the window. Maybe that's it. Going unnoticed is a thing that most people take for granted.

Erving Goffman (1963) called those who do not draw unwelcome attention from their bodily appearance ‘normal’s.’ Normal’s, Goffman argues, simply cannot understand how it feels to be the object of derisive looks and hostile attention from complete strangers. To be a member of a stigmatized group is to be the object of distain. When some aspect of your physical body is the source of that stigma, there are, according to Goffman, two possible responses. You can come to terms with the fact of your stigma and attempt to ‘normificate’ it by acting normal, as though the stigma did not exist. Or, you can normalize it by making a conscious effort to correct it. Though ‘norming’ surgeries are sometimes the objects of ethical debate, the validity of the desired outcome is hard to dispute.

In an article entitled, ‘Self-Help for the Facially Disfigured,’ Elisabeth Bednar put the matter simply. Whether we are shopping, riding the subway, or eating in a restaurant, all of which are casual day-to-day social encounters, there is the initial stare, then the look away, before a second, furtive glance inevitably puts the beheld immediately in a separate class. For those who experience this discrimination, the question of the moral justification of surgery to increase societal acceptance...

She pointed out photographs in Howard’s book in which surgery did not necessarily improve a patient’s attractiveness, but it did change her sex. When referring to before and after photographs she said, “See this is an ugly boy and this is an ugly girl, but it is a girl. Other doctors can’t do this.” 

There can be no greater wish than to melt into the crowd or to walk into a room unnoticed (Bednar 1996:53). The patients and surgeons with whom I worked, referred to the fact (or fantasy) of going unnoticed as ‘passing.’ The language of passing is contentious for some transpeople because it can be read as implying a sort of deception; being taken as a member of a group to which one does not really (where really refers both to an ontological truth and to the rightful membership based on it) belong. This deception is also often marked by a supposed opportunism; passing is really only considered as such when a person passes from an undesirable group and into a desired one (Gilman 1999). It therefore frequently carries a connotation of a strategy to access particular forms of privilege. Many transpeople object to the language of ‘passing’ because, they argue, to say that one passes as a woman is to acknowledge that woman is not a category to which she rightfully belongs.

As Julia Serano insists, “I don’t pass as a woman. I am a woman. I pass as a cis-gendered woman” (by which she means a woman who has never changed her gender). These sorts of concerns about what it means both politically and ontologically to pass, were only voiced by two of the patients with whom I spoke. Despite their reservations, they, like all other patients I met, held the desire to pass as an incredibly important and explicitly stated aim. As historian of medicine Sander Gilman explains, ‘The happiness of the patient is the fantasy of a world and a life in the patient’s control rather than in the control of the observer on the street. And that is not wrong. This promise of autonomy, of being able to make choices and act upon them, does provide the ability to control the world. It can (and does) make people happy’ (1999:331-2).

Like language, social roles do not exist in isolation (Wittgenstein 1953:§243); they are by definition shared properties conveyed between people in given social group. A person’s individual conviction that she is a woman is not enough to maker her a woman in any social sense. To be a woman requires not simply the conviction that one is a woman, but the recognition of that status by others.

FFS is a surgical recognition that how one feels about and lives their sexed and gendered embodiment is not a private, psychic reality, but is the product of social life, of living with others. Passing is not a subjective act; it is a social one. Nearly all clinical literature as well as most popular literature on transsexualism suggests that transsexualism is a property (and problem) of an atomized and bounded individual. This focus on the individual and psychic nature of the bodily dissatisfaction that characterizes transsexualism is named explicitly as well as through the invocation of metaphors of isolation, internality and invisibility. While an individual body may be the site of the material intervention, the change enacted in FFS takes place irreducibly between persons. The efficacy of FFS is located not in the material result of surgery itself, but in the effect that the surgical result will produce in the perceptions of imagined.

Other writers argue that the goal of ‘passing’ not only obscures but effectively forecloses any possibility of a trans- specific radical political subjectivity (Bornstein 1994, Green 1999, Stone 1991). These writers insist that living as out trans-people is the only way to call attention to the oppressive gender system that devalues and delegitimizes trans-lives and bodies, among others. This kind of visibility can come at the great cost of personal and emotional safety, leading to a conflicting desire to be a part of the solution while maintaining ones safety and sanity (Green 1999). Perhaps nowhere is this made clearer than in the imaginary scene through which Howard explains the goal of his surgical work:

If, on a Saturday morning, someone knocks at the door and you wake up and get out of bed with messy hair, no makeup, no jewelry, and answer the door, the first words you’ll hear from the person standing there are, “Excuse me, ma’am….”

This incredibly powerful scene was a staple of Howard’s conference presentations, and was repeated in slightly altered and personalized forms by many of the patients who had selected Howard as their surgeon. Through this turning outward—and the making of femaleness at the site of the exchange with a stranger—FFS reconfigures the project of surgical sex reassignment from one rooted in the private subjectivity of the genitals, to one located in the public sociality of the face. Time after time, patients told me that their primary desire was to go through their daily lives and be left alone, without thinking about what others may see when they look at them.

Krista rode the city bus on the day before our interview. On that day, for the first time in recent memory, she did not prepare extensively before leaving the house. “I didn’t have to worry about having my bangs just right, or having just the right pair of glasses on. I just got on the bus and thought, ‘Wow, this is cool.’” Although her face was covered in bandages, sutures, and bruises, and people on that bus were undoubtedly looking at her, Krista found joy in the certainty that whatever they might have seen when they looked at her, the did not see a transwoman. The stuff of her maleness was gone. It was a novel—but so, so welcome—experience. It is important to remember that the stakes for passing are often quite high, often quite serious. The desire to pass does not only exist for the gratification of personal goals, but also achieves a mode of physical and emotional safety. It is crucial to remember that trans-people are disproportionately incarcerated, unemployed, and lost to suicide and other violence. I make this point not to hold counter discourses hostage to its message— as in an accusatory stance from which any divergence is a de facto support of transphobia or worse—but to tell the complete story of the context in which these procedures become objects of desire, and accomplish practical goals sometimes on the measure of life and death.

THE FULL FACE

Facial Feminization Surgery includes interventions in both the bone and soft tissues of the face. In general, the procedures involved in FFS are aimed at taking away or reducing particular features of the bones and soft tissue of the face. This focus on reduction and removal is based on a fundamental assertion that males are, on the whole, larger and more robust than females.

This assertion applies both to the bony skeleton and to soft tissues such as skin and cartilage. Whereas the modification of the facial bones are guided, at least in Howard’s case, by numerical norms, most soft tissue procedures are not. (The exceptions are the height of the upper lip and of the forehead; these assessments are guided by numbers and measurement). Instead, soft tissue procedures are often oriented toward and aesthetic ideal of feminine attractiveness.

Below are brief descriptions of the surgical procedures organized under the sign of Facial Feminization. Not every patient undergoes all of the procedures described here, though some certainly do. In Dr. Howard’s parlance, a patient whose surgery includes all of these procedures gets, ‘The Full Face.’

While one of the fundamental goals of this dissertation is to trouble the claims to absolute difference that often animate FFS, in the following descriptions I make use of the dichotomous distinctions that doctors use when characterizing the masculine features of patients’ skulls.

Bone Procedures

Brow Bossing and Frontal Sinus:

The prominence of the brow is one of the most distinctive and recognizable aspects of a masculine face. Some reduction of the brow can be accomplished through burring down the bossing (the thickness of the bones) just above the eyes. In other cases the anterior wall of the frontal sinus (the empty space just above and between the eyes) is removed (“unroofed”) and set back. The reduction of the frontal sinus is considered the most aggressive of all procedures involved in Facial Feminization Surgery (see Figure 1.7).

Rhinoplasty (internal reshaping of the nasal bones):

Rhinoplasty involves the fracturing of the nasal bones as well as the removal of cartilage. More radical bone fracturing and removal is required when frontal sinus reconstruction is performed. When the forehead is ‘set back’ through this procedure, the bones at the nasion (the depressed area between the eyes just superior to the bridge of the nose) must be reduced in order to create the desired relationship between forehead and nose.

Malar (cheek) Implants:

In order to produce the desirable oval shape of the female face, implants may be placed over the malar bones to enhance the fullness of the cheeks.

Genioplasty (chin shortening):

Based on the claim that female chins are shorter than male chins (as measured from the top of the bottom teeth to the most inferior point of the chin), a wedge of bone can be removed from the chin, and slid forward. Moving the bottom section forward also results in creating a more pointed chin.

Reshaping mental protuberance (chin):

A pointed chin is recognized as feminine, whereas a square chin is masculine. In combination with the advancement of the inferior portion of the chin, contouring is also done to enhance this characteristic.

Reduction Mandibuloplasty (jaw bone):

Alterations of the mandible focus on the undesirable squareness of the masculine jaw. This squareness is attributed to two aspects of the mandible: mandibular angle and mandibular flare. The mandibular angle describes the angular value of the posterior and inferior portion of the jaw. The more acute the angle, the more masculine the jaw. This is best seen from profile. Mandibular flare describes the extent to which the squareness of the jaw extends toward the lateral sides of the face. This squareness is best seen when looking at a person from the front. In both cases, bone can be removed in order to reduce the appearance of masculine squareness.

Soft Tissue Procedures

Scalp advancement:

By severing the tissue that connects the scalp to the scull, the scalp may be brought forward toward the face to help a patient compensate for a receding hairline. Excess tissue at the top of the forehead is excised. Scalp advancement as well as hairline reshaping and eyebrow raising all occur through the coronal incision (from ear to ear just behind the hairline) required to alter the bony contours of the forehead.

Hairline Reshaping:

In addition to bringing the hair-bearing scalp forward, the hairline itself can be reshaped. In this procedure, the M shaped male hairline is rounded out to reduce (if not eliminate) temporal baldness caused by a byproduct of testosterone.

Eyebrow Raising/Crow’s Feet Reduction/Forehead lift:

As noted above these procedures are performed at the site of the coronal incision after the bone work on the forehead has been completed. When tissue is excised during scalp advancement, the position of eyebrows is raised up higher on the forehead. This is described as a feminine characteristic. The appearance of the eyebrows is also changed as a result of the changes to the bones of the brow and forehead beneath them. The pulling of the skin of the forehead generally produces the addition (and typically considered beneficial) result of eliminating the wrinkles around the eyes often called crow’s feet. During this procedure, surgeons have access to the internal muscles of the forehead and may choose to perform a perforation of those muscles; this procedure is typically referred to as a forehead lift.

Rhinoplasty (reshaping of the cartilage and tip of the nose):

The tip of the nose is given its shape by internal cartilage. After the bone modifications have been made, the cartilage can be reshaped in order to achieve a ‘more feminine’ nose.

Upper lip shortening:

According to the surgeons with whom I worked, males have a longer upper lip (distance between the bottom of the nose and the vermillion part of the upper lip) than do females. This distinction can most easily be seen by observing how much of the upper teeth are visible when a person’s mouth is slightly open. This measurement is referred to as ‘tooth show.’ The length of the upper lip can be reduced by excising the desired amount of tissue just beneath the nose, raising the upper lip toward the nose, and applying sutures in the crease just at the base of the nose. This also results in increasing the amount of vermillion visible in the upper lip.

Lip Augmentation:

Lips can be augmented through a variety of procedures including the injection of pharmaceutical products (such as Botox and Restylane) or fat taken from other sites in the patient’s body. More permanent augmentation can be achieved by placing some of the tissue excised during the scalp advancement into the tissue on the underside of the upper lip.

Reduction of the thyroid cartilage (“Adam’s Apple”):

The Adam’s Apple—or more properly, the thyroid cartilage—is considered to be one of the clearest indicators of maleness. Thyroid cartilage removal is often referred to as a Tracheal Shave (or just trach shave) despite the fact that it is neither the trachea being altered, nor a shaving motion used to reduce it. While a relatively simple procedure, the thyroid cartilage reduction carries significant risks. An inexperienced surgeon may remove more tissue than necessary, and inadvertently alter the site where the vocal chords insert. This can result in a radical modification of vocal pitch.

CLINICAL EVAL

Clinic One -- Dr. Howard

Upon entering his office from the hospital corridor, one enters a warm but unremarkable waiting room: carpet and walls in shades of neutral brown, upholstered armchairs separated by low coffee tables offering a selection of news and fashion magazines.

In addition to personal and administrative offices, the practice has three small examination rooms, each equipped with a large examination chair (somewhat like a dentist’s chair, it defaults to an upright but gently reclining position), a rolling stool (on which Howard sits during most of the exam), a small side chair (where I sat while observing exams), and a counter at the back of the room that contains a hand-washing sink and a light box for illuminating x-rays.

There are few decorations in the exam room dedicated to initial consultations and pre-operative appointments. To the right of the patient seated in the exam chair, a silver and bronze toned image of a naked and reclining woman hangs on the wall. Her long hair flows down her back and shoulders but leaves the side of her breast exposed. On the wall facing the patient—and so behind Howard as he conducts the exam—is a magazine rack that holds several fashion magazines.

When I entered the room, Tracy was seated in the reclining exam chair, hands folded in her lap and looking nervous. Howard urged her to keep her seat as I introduced myself and shook her hand. With Tracy, as with all other patients whose consultations I observed, Howard began the appointment with a few minutes of friendly conversation. He inquired about the Canadian city in which she lives. As a person who has done a considerable amount of traveling throughout the world, Howard often has a personal story to tell about the patient’s hometown.

Though he tends to speak rapidly as a norm, these exchanges do not seem to me to be perfunctory or rushed; people’s stories sincerely fascinate him. After having seen this routine enacted a number of times, it is clear that Howard uses these first moments to establish a friendly rapport with new patients who are frequently very nervous—and in some cases could be best described as star struck. While this moment may be the culmination of many months or years of a patient’s personal and financial work, for Howard, this is another day in the office.

After the brief exchange of pleasantries, Howard moved into questions about Tracy’s medical history: height, weight, medications, prior surgeries, and so on.

When Tracy stated that she was actively losing weight and would like to get down to 180 pounds, Howard made his first recommendation of the appointment. “I’d like to see you down to 160,” he said. “The best results I see—not surgically but in terms of overall femininity—are in patients who get down to a female weight for their height. When you get down to 180, just keep on going.” While completely unrelated to the craniofacial surgical consultation underway, Howard’s recommendation on “overall femininity” signaled his understanding of FFS as both part of a larger goal of corporal feminization, but also as just one part of achieving that goal. In addition to signaling a holistic understanding of the project that brought Tracy to his office, this shift from conversation to recommendation marked the beginning of the exam; he is the expert with information to give.

Howard did not ask why Tracy was in the office to see him. He did not ask what her goal was for surgery. He assumed in Tracy’s case and in all other consultations I observed, that a person whose paperwork indicates that she has come to the office for an FFS consultation is doing so because she wants to have her face reconstructed to take on female proportions. I have not heard this assumption corrected. It is with this assumption that directly following the medical history, he began making measurements on Tracy’s face.

Clinic Two -- Dr. Page

Page’s office, located in an office park in an affluent suburb of a major West Coast city, shares a building with accountants, attorneys, and dental offices. The Ambulatory Surgical Clinic where he performs most of his operations is attached to his office, though it has a separate entrance at the back of the building. In the waiting room, leather armchairs and a long couch are arranged around a low coffee table covered in fashion magazines. The walls are covered in an ivory-toned wallpaper that in combination with the light coming in through a large window makes the space bright, though somewhat impersonal.

The dominant feature of Page’s waiting room is a mirrorbacked, top-lit curio cabinet featuring branded cosmetic products such as Juviderm and Botox, the presence of which makes it impossible to forget that this is not a neutral space; there is something for sale here. The reception desk is located in the front waiting room and is staffed by a few different young women.

On two occasions the stillness of their faces and the shape of their lips have made me quite aware that they have ‘had some work done.’

The two exam rooms in Page’s office are considerably larger and more brightly lit than those in Howard’s office. Here too, the reclining exam chair is the largest and most central object in the room. A small chair (where I sat during observations) is positioned just to the right of the exam chair, and a full-length mirror hangs on the wall next to it. A counter with a small sink occupied the left wall of the room. A model of a human skull sat on the counter, looking directly at the exam chair. When Page invited me in to observe the consultation, Leanne was seated in that chair.

Leanne was one of the few patients I encountered during my fieldwork who arrived for an FFS consult in what was referred to in both offices as ‘man mode’ or ‘male mode.’ She had taken the opportunity to visit Page’s office while traveling through town on business and looked every bit the businessman: short-cropped sandy blond hair graying at the temples, a crisply pressed pale blue shirt, navy blue necktie, grey trousers and black oxford shoes.

Page habitually opens the conversation by asking patients how they heard about him and his practice. This sets the tone that the patient is a consumer who has shopped around, and it helps to identify him as a businessman who is eager to grow his practice. After a bit of small talk about Leanne’s hometown and learning that this was her first visit to the region, Page began the exam not by taking a medical history, but by prompting a personal conversation.

“Tell me about yourself, about your transition.” An examination is frequently understood to consist of two parts: the history taking and the physical examination (Young 1997:23). It is immediately clear that though Howard and Page each ‘take a history’ from their patients before beginning the physical exam, what constitutes relevant history is different for each of them. Howard asks his patients about what are traditionally understood to be medical issues: their height, weight, current medications, previous surgeries, and overall physical health. This information helps him to assess whether the patient is physically well enough to be a candidate for surgery. It also signals that his primary interest is in the physical properties of the patient’s body, an interest that is born out in no uncertain terms in the examination that follows.

Page, on the other hand, does not ask such questions of his patients during their initial appointments. Instead, he elicits a ‘history’ of the patient’s feelings about herself and her transition, more generally. Because the appointment begins with the disclosure of personal—and often quite emotional—information, the examination that follows is framed as one directed toward the realization of personal and emotional goals more than physical ones. As the consultations progress, the distinctions between Howard and Page’s approaches become clear. Howard’s meeting with Tracy appears in the left-hand column below. Page’s meeting with Leanne appears on the right.

Clinic One -- Dr. Howard

Howard: “Now I’m going to take some measurements and we’ll look at your x-rays.” Howard washed his hands and came back to sit down in front of Tracy. She was sitting in the exam chair and he rolled up to her on a small, wheeled stool. He took a small white flexible plastic ruler from his coat pocket and measured the distance from the cornea of her eye to the most forward prominence of her forehead. “Your brows are down a little bit.” He felt the brows and temples on both sides of her face using both hands. He pressed the sides of his thumbs up under the bones at the top of her eye sockets in order to get a sense of the shape of the bone. “Look at the top of that light switch.” Howard directed Tracy’s attention to the switch on the wall directly in front of her. Looking at this object helped to make her head level. “Open your mouth just slightly.” Howard measured the distance from the bottom of Tracy’s nose to the inferior ends of her front teeth. “Bite down on your back teeth.” Howard bit exaggeratedly on his back teeth to show her what he meant. Looking away, he felt the muscles on either side of her jaw with his hands. He turned to me and explained to the patient that we had been talking earlier about how he decides whether or not to remove some masseter muscle when he does jaw tapering.

Talking to me: “She has a fairly prominent jaw, but the muscle is not that large. I won’t even consider removing any muscle on her.” Howard runs the pad of his thumb up and down the center of Tracy’s throat. “Have you got one of these things?” Settles on the patient’s Adam’s Apple.

Howard: “If you have this done by someone else don’t let them put a scar at the middle of your throat.” Tracy lives in a country that has a national health service and Howard makes explicit reference to this since he knows that by using that service Tracy could save a considerable amount of money on this procedure.

Howard: As he describes the potentially problematic placement of some other surgeon’s scar, he draws a line across her thyroid cartilage with his index finger to mark the cut. “If I do it I’ll put the scar up here…” He draws his index finger just under the point of her chin to indicate where he would place the scar. …so no one can see it. “Plus if you put the scar here [in the middle of the throat] it can stick to the cartilage and then it moves every time you swallow. It looks like the dickens. Let’s look at your x-rays.” Howard walks to the light box behind the exam chair and invites Tracy to join him. They stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the light box looking at the cephalograms that Tracy brought with her to the exam. “First I look to see that you’re brushing your teeth, and it looks like you are (laughs). When I was measuring here before…” Uses his finger to show the measurement he took from the forehead to the cornea. “…I was looking at the maximum prominence of your forehead to the cornea of your eye. In you it was 15mm, which is average for a male of your height. As far as I know, this measurement is not taken anywhere else in the world. It is not a standard measurement. Once I am in there and I begin to contour the forehead, I can’t tell where I am. This measurement helps me locate myself in space.” By this he means that because the cornea does not move as a result of any bone reconstruction in FFS, he can use it as a constant reference. He took a handheld mirror from a small drawer and handed it to her. She sat, holding the mirror, looking at her face as he spoke.

Tracy is being educated about what Howard will do and why it is the best approach.

Tracy: “How far can you go back?”

Howard: “The most I’ve gone back is 9mm.”

Tracy: “Let me rephrase. How far can you go back safely?”

Howard: “I could go all the way back here.” Pointing to the posterior wall of the frontal sinus on the cephalogram.

Tracy: “What happens to the sinuses?”

Howard: “They go away. As far as we know.” He indicates with his fingers where the sinuses are located on the cephalogram. “…is to reduce the weight of the skull. Now, the jaw.” Howard looks at Tracy’s jaw, and then down to the x-ray. “Do you grind your teeth?”

Tracy: “I know I used to.”

Howard: “You’ve got some wide angles here. Feel your jaw.” He places Tracy’s hand on her jaw. “Feel how it flares out? We can get rid of the bowing that males have in the mandible that females don’t have.”

Tracy: “How do you do that?”

Howard: “We use a bur instrument on the sides here…” Indicating anterior portion of the lateral mandible on his own face. “…and then we have an oscillating saw that we use to take out the larger parts of the bone here...” Indicating posterior section on his own face.

Tracy: “You actually take out parts of the bone?”

Howard: “Yeah.”

Tracy: “Okay.”

Howard: “Can I borrow a finger?” Howard reaches down and grabs the index finger of Tracy’s left hand. He places it on the side of his face in the medial section of his mandible. “Feel my teeth?” He presses her finger into his cheek and moves it back and forth so she can feel the texture of the bone below his bottom teeth. “Feel that ridge? That is what we take away. For some people, a thin layer of blood that forms on the bone becomes bone. I am one of those people. I was hit in the head with a golf ball when I was 13 and I got this big bump.” He feels the bump on the top of his head. “I’ve still got the bump because the blood that formed there turned into bone. If you look at an x-ray you can see it plain as day. If you are a person like that—and I don’t know how to know that in advance—it is possible that some of that ridge may come back. But it won’t all come back. The chin. I measured from the top of your bottom tooth to the end of the bone and that is 50mm. That is average for a male of your height. I want to take out 8 mm of chin height. I can’t do that by shaving it off the bottom, because then the muscles and tissues that attach to the bottom of your chin have nothing to attach to and they just sag down. Instead, I take out a wedge of bone that is 8mm thick, and stabilize the bone with titanium plates and screws.” Howard explains that medical grade titanium comes from recycled Russian atomic submarines. He makes a joke that the addition of this Russian material may make Tracy fond of vodka after surgery.

Tracy: “You cut a wedge out of the bone and then rotate it up?”

Howard: “Yeah. Have you seen my book? Maybe you want to buy one. There is a lot of information in there about all of this stuff. And some stuff that you don’t need. It can answer a lot of questions. We want to get ride of the sublabial sulcus at the base of your chin. I think of this as a very male feature. Now, what to do. The brow. Right now the distance from your brow to your hairline is 7cm. I want 5.5cm. The average male has a distance there of 5/8 of an inch longer than the average female. This is the case in 16-year-old males, even before they’ve experienced hair loss. You have a type III forehead. We talked about that. We’ll do your nose—if we do the forehead we have to do the nose. Do you remember Dick Tracy? His nose went straight out like a shelf? You probably won’t like that. Upper lip. Now your upper lip has a vertical height of 2.5mm and drops 2-3mm below your upper teeth. If you look at me when I talk, you don’t see my upper teeth unless I smile. He smiled to demonstrate. Women show their upper teeth when they talk. We’ll want to move you up to get some good tooth show. So. We’ll do your chin, your lower jaw, the thyroid cartilage. If I do all this at one time—and most patients choose to do that because it saves them a lot of time—I know this will take almost exactly 10 ½ hours.

Tracy: “Everything?”

Howard: “Yes”. Howard went on to describe the risks associated with these surgeries, the recovery process, and necessary preoperative preparation. When he’d answered Tracy’s questions, he led her down the hall to talk money with Sydney.   

Clinic Two -- Dr. Page

Leanne: “I began dealing with my gender issues at 50, when my wife and I became empty nesters. I have already been cleared for hormones but I am waiting to take them until after my daughter’s wedding in a few months. I am a manager—I mean, that is what I do for a living but that is also who I am. I like to have everything figured out before I start. That is why I am here. I don’t really know how hormones will affect me and what changes they might make to my face, but I do know that the face is the most important thing to me. I can do things with clothes, but I can’t hide my face.”

Page: “Making changes to your face can make you more feminine appearing.” As she spoke, he sat quietly, almost motionless. Like a practiced interviewer, he allowed her short silences to linger unfilled, and it turned out that she had a good deal to say.

Leanne: “I know that if I proceed with this my marriage will be over, and I understand that. My wife didn’t really sign up for all of this and I can’t force her to feel better about it. I am here because I want to manage my expectations; I need to know realistically where I might end up, instead of going forward with all of this and then finding out that you can’t do what I think you can do. I don’t want someone to give me all of the classic female things. This is a clear reference to Howard’s approach. I was interested in talking to you because you said that you work with features not totally remake them. It is not a clean slate. Given the face that I have, I want to know what to expect. Right now, I don’t look like a woman; I look like a man in a wig. I haven’t gone out much; I only wear women’s clothes when I go to counseling. But when I go out I worry about my face. I just don’t want to attract attention. I want to fit in.” Page did not verbally respond to any of Leanne’s personal and emotional disclosures; he simply began the physical assessment of her face. 

Page: “We’ll start at the top and work our way down. These are only suggestions, to let you know what is possible, and how I think of things. We think of the face in three sections: forehead, midface and lower face. One of the most feminizing effects happens in the forehead. We can move the hairline forward. Bone work is required to make a feminine skull.” Page rolled his stool backward to retrieve the model skull sitting on the counter behind him. He held the skull in his left hand and used the index finger on his right hand to show Leanne how the frontal bone could be reduced. “By burring down this area [above the eyes] instead of removing the bone, we can retain the angle from your forehead to your nose. Patients with ‘the works’ often look worked on. That is not what I want to give you. When you lose the natural transition from the forehead to the nose you don’t look good as a man or woman.”

This is a direct defense of his surgical approach against Howard’s more aggressive style. Page runs the pad of his thumb across the orbital ridge above Leanne’s left eye as she looks at her face in the mirror. “Reducing this will give you the feminine appearance. It gives you sex appeal. That’s the approach we’re going for. Passing as a woman takes more than what I do: it’s about hormones, behaviors, dress, makeup, voice. What I do is just one piece of the pie. Now, when I’m in doing the forehead contouring I can remove some frown muscle, which would be nice for you. At the same time I can take away the peaks at the hairline.” Page uses the wooden handle of a long cotton swab to trace along the temporal baldness of Leanne’s hairline.

Leanne: “I’ll need a wig anyway. I had hair transplants all through there but they failed.”

Page: “This dark space is the frontal sinus.” He points at the sinus on the x-ray using a yellow wooden pencil. “In my mind, the most desirable female forehead is convex horizontally and vertically; it is not vertical. I could take you back 8mm. The 15mm you currently are minus 8 equals 7mm. That is where I want you. If you had an x chromosome rather than the y you were born with, that is where you’d be. You got this…” indicating the brow prominence of the frontal sinus “…when you were 14, 15, 16 years old. You have what I call a type III forehead.” Explains how he’ll remove the frontal wall, and form patches to wire back into the exposed sinuses. “When taking out the frontal sinus you have two holes left: if you sneeze you make a bubble and if you sniff you make a dimple. That is good at the first cocktail party, but not the second. I take the bone I removed and make two small patches and wire them into place to close those sinuses. If someone just burred this down, they could only go about .5mm to 1mm.” This comment acknowledges the common approach by other surgeons to burr the bone rather than unroof it. It is both descriptive and defensive.

Page: “Okay. Your nose is really necessary to do. We can take the hump out of the dorsum and decrease the projection some. The upper lip could be shortened. That is really common in feminization surgery. It’ll be like when you were younger.” Page presses the wooden handle of the cotton swab just beneath Leanne’s nose, causing her upper lip to rise on the surface of her teeth and allowing more tooth to show. “In terms of the jaw, I would leave it alone.”

Leanna: “Really?”

Page: “Beautiful women have a strong jaw line. For you, brow lift, cheek implants possibly to give you some more fullness in the midface, and nose for sure. If you’d like to see what this would look like, we can image you and give you a better idea of what I am talking about.” Page led Leanne to a small, dimly-lit room attached to the exam room. There was space for only two distinct positions in this room, so I observed in the doorway, looking over Page’s shoulder as he worked. Page was seated at a laptop computer equipped with a special trackpad that allowed him to move a stylus along the pad controlling the computer display. His laptop was connected to a digital camera mounted on an adjustable stand. Leanne sat at the opposite end of the room in front of a grey backdrop. Page took six digital photos of Leanne’s (non-smiling) face: (1) looking straight ahead at the camera; (2) turning her whole body such that her face is in ¾ view; (3) profile; (4) ¾ view facing the other direction; (5) opposite profile; (6) facing forward but looking straight up, a ‘worm’s eye view’. Page invited Leanne to pull her stool up beside his so that she could watch as he altered the photos he just took.

Page: “I try to do things with imaging that I can do during surgery so that it’s not unrealistic. One thing would be to decrease projection. Come over here and I’ll show you what I mean.” Leanne got up from her seat in front of the drape and sat beside Page in front of the computer. Using the stylus on the trackpad, Page selected the areas that he could reduce: frontal bossing, orbital bossing, and nose projection. He circled each of these areas on the profile image because this image produces the most noticeable contrast. Once these areas were selected, Page drug the stylus back and forth across the trackpad. As he moved from left to right across the pad, the nose, forehead, and orbital bossing all reduced in unison. As he moved back to the left, they ‘grew’ back to their original (current) size. Leanne watched this in silence for a few seconds. It was clear that she was not seeing all that she hoped to see. Page was quick to step in. “I am kind of limited in what I can show here. I mean, you have to imagine what it would look like once your facial hair is gone [she had a day’s growth of beard]. You’ve also got some skin damage that you should really work on. I’d say the most important thing you can do for yourself between now and any surgery would be to start a skin-care regimen. Work on that sun damage and some of the brown areas, the wrinkles around the eyes.” Page indicated these problem areas on the computerized image of her face. “I work with an esthetician right upstairs. I can set an appointment for you if you want. I really do think that is really important. You know, beautiful women have beautiful skin.”

Leanna: “Yeah, I spent almost 20 years in Arizona. I have a lot of sun damage.”

Page: “Here are some other patients I have operated on. Maybe these will give you a better idea of the changes I am talking about.” Page opened a file on the laptop with several pre-op and post-op images of his patients. He flipped through the images, describing the procedures involved. “Here you can see I did the nose…Here you can see the reduced bossing; that really opens up the eyes… Here you can see the difference that a brow lift really makes. She looks great…” This didn’t seem to alleviate Leanne’s sense of disappointment with her own images.

Leanna: “These people look much more feminine than what I see when we look at me. I have my wig with me. Can I put it on and you can take the pictures again? That might give us a better idea of how this is going to look.” She crouches down and pulls her wig out of her briefcase. It is a bit disheveled and needs brushing. Leanne does her best to place the reddish-brown shag cut wig on her head, but there are no mirrors in this room. In addition to the contrast produced by her businessman’s attire, the wig is not quite on correctly. To my mind, this photo session has just changed quite radically. Page appeared somewhat reluctant, but he agreed to take a new profile photo on which to make the digital modifications. One of the qualities that made the wig desirable is particularly problematic during the photo shoot: it obscures her forehead and brow.

Page: “Could you pull your hair back so I can see your forehead?” Page took the photo. Leanne resumed her seat beside him at the computer and watched as he made the same alterations to the new photo as he had to the previous set. The addition of the wig did not produce the effect she’d hoped for. Page reiterated the importance of starting a skin-care regimen and beginning electrolysis on her face. “I think those changes could make a big difference for you. Let’s go talk to my office manager, Hannah. She can give you a better idea about prices and we can look at some more images.” The pair left the room and began flipping through a photo album in Hannah’s office.

Leanna: “Do you think I could ever look this good? I’m worried about going through all of this and looking as ridiculous as I do now.”

It is clear from these two representative appointments that though these doctors punitively share a common goal—the ‘feminization’ of their patients—what ‘feminine’ means to each of theme is quite distinct. Their approaches to the project of ‘feminization’ determine both what each doctor identifies as the problematically ‘masculine’ and the desirably ‘feminine’ and how they do so.

SURGERY DAY

For most patients I interviewed, the anticipation of and preparation for surgery had given significant shape to their personal, professional, financial and emotional lives for many months. For others, many (many) years. By the time they’d made the trip to the surgeon’s office, they had come to think of Facial Feminization Surgery as the event that would mark the difference between the life they had and the life they wanted.

It would, they hoped, be the end of a deep longing for transformation. Structured by the future goal of surgery, for these patients the present had collapsed into a seemingly interminable time before surgery. It was a continuation of the past experience of bodily dissatisfaction and disaffection into the almost, the can’t wait, the before to which every day following surgery would be the after. 

Dr. Howard pointed to a chair in the hallway outside his office. “I’ll walk by that spot at exactly 7:25am. If you’re there, you’re welcome to join me in the OR. If you’re not, you’re not.”

Patient: Rosalind

Rosalind, whose surgery is described in the interstices of this prose—had traveled from Wales to undergo surgery with Dr. Howard. When we met on the afternoon before her surgery, she was feeling very anxious. When I asked her about the source of her anxiety, she said that it was not the operation itself that worried her. Rather, she was nervous about the postoperative recovery period.

“I’m scared to death. A week before my plane ride I started praying for British Airways to go on strike. I saw a patient at the Cocoon House [Howard’s private recovery and convalescent facility, all gendered and natural metaphors intended] all bruised and bandaged and I’ve been walking around trying to think, ‘Why am I doing this?’”

 Rosalind had hoped to make this trip five years before, but financial issues had delayed her plans. For her, as for all patients who shared their stories with me, arriving in this office was the culmination of a long process of self-discovery.

“At 25 years old my hair started to fall out and I thought, ‘Oh no! I haven’t decided whether I want to transition!’ I tried topical creams and things to try to keep my hair and I became pretty obsessed with it. Then I started thinking, ‘Wait, is the problem that you’re going bald or that you’re transgendered?’”

She began feminizing hormones in 1999, and hoped that their effects would be enough to ease the anxieties she had about her appearance. She was not ready to commit to surgical alterations at that time because, she explained, she simply could not accept the idea that she was a transwoman.

“I still thought I could cure myself of being transgendered,”

In spite of this desire to be ‘cured,’ she began taking tentative steps toward ‘accentuating the feminine in [her] face.’ She underwent facial electrolysis that had produced permanent pockmarks on her cheeks and chin, only exacerbating her self-consciousness about her appearance. In 2002 she had surgery to remove her thyroid cartilage (Adam’s Apple) and, shortly thereafter, a surgery to reduce the size of her nose.

“That only made my brow look bigger,” she lamented. “My brow is my major concern. I need my nose to match my brow. I have a kind of Neanderthal brow. I want to do my jaw too, but I may have to skip that for now depending on whether I can get the money together. I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t say that I needed to do my jaw, but I know it needs to be done.”

Rosalind knew that her decision to have surgery would cause complications in her work and family life. She presented as male at work and at family events, and planned to continue doing so at least until her elderly father passed away. The thought of disappointing him with the fact of her female identity was unthinkable to her. She worked in the building and construction industry in a fairly small town and, for her, living full-time as a woman was simply not an option. Worries about work and personal consequences had kept her from making many changes both to her life and to her body, but she had finally decided that such concerns could no longer determine her choices.

“If I have to think too much about what others think, I’ll never do it. I have to do this for me. I’ve spent 25 years of my life thinking about not looking like I do now. I want that to go away. Constant thinking about that ruins the mind. After this I’ll be able to think of other things, everyday things.”

Rosalind told me, as did many patients, that it was during puberty that she began to hate her face. As she watched her ‘button nose’ give way to the oversized nose of a pubescent boy, she taught herself how to wash her face and brush her teeth in the dark.

“My mum would go into the bathroom after me and always wonder why the blinds were closed.”

It was easier for her to re-learn these daily habits than to deal with the look of her changing face in the mirror. This was the beginning of the long story that brought her all the way from Wales to have surgery with Dr. Howard some 25 years later.

I was tired and anxious when I joined Howard the next morning. We walked briskly down the hallway to the surgical wing, he in a shirt and tie covered by his long white coat, me in my canvas jacket and shoulder bag. I saw the loafers on his feet and felt like an idiot in my running shoes—I thought they’d be best for endurance.

After so much discussion of looks and numbers and desires and abilities, it is in the operating room that faces are reconstructed. It is here, as they say, that the rubber meets the road. While for surgeons the operation is an event that has been routinized and repeated hundreds or even thousands of times over, for the patient, the operation is something absolutely singular—assuming all goes well. Over the course of the surgery (up to nearly eleven hours in the case of a “full face” operation), the patient’s skin, bone and cartilage is pushed, pulled, burred, sawed, cut, cracked, tucked and sutured. In the end a strikingly new face may emerge; one whose production is guided by the hope that its new form will enable a coincidence of the patient’s self and body for perhaps the first time in a very, very long time.

Facial Feminization Surgery is guided by a hope for phenomenological integration—the creation of a body that (re)presents the self. Though the technical work of surgery is something that patients do not experience in real time, its effect animates their anticipation of a better life through the body as a better and truer thing.

He brought me to the charge nurse’s desk. I was to register my name in the vendor’s logbook. Dr. Howard offered me a pen. “You can keep it,” he said. “It’s got my name on it.” I signed in quickly and was given a sticky nametag. I followed Howard into the physicians’ locker room where I was shown for the first—and last— time where to find the supplies I would need to enter the OR. I slid my bag and jacket into an open locker.

For those who desire physical transformation, the operating room is place that symbolizes corporeal change and all the attendant hopes of what that change will bring. In addition to the physical transformations enacted here, the operating room is also the scene of an encounter between patients and surgeons that is structured by a common conception of the body or, more specifically here, the face. For these two people in this place, the patient’s face is a material thing. It is not the irreducible site of personhood, the distinct shape of which makes us individuals; it is a series of structures whose problematic characteristics can be rectified.

These structures do not necessarily map onto or even remotely relate to the social or personal identity that the face is typically taken to be. That is just the point: this face is not her face. Not yet at least. The preoperative face is simple, disinterested material for the surgeon who cuts into and reshapes its parts, and it also is this for the patient whose experience of her face as something disloyal—as non-coincident with her self—has motivated her arrival here.

This is a distinct vision of the body shared between the surgeon and the patient, two people who have arrived together in the operating room precisely in order to alter it. We grabbed blue paper caps from a shelf near the door to the hallway. He folded the bottom rim of his cap upward in order to pull it down snugly before tying the white paper straps behind his head. I did the same. We were ready. Howard swung open the door and we headed to OR 3, his regular room. He  handed me a surgical mask as we walked through the scrub room and into the OR where Rosalind was laying on the table being prepped by the Circulating Nurse (CN).

Dr. Howard went immediately to greet the patient. He caressed her forearm and assured her that everything would go well and that she would look beautiful. I! couldn’t stop staring at her fingernails: cotton candy pink against the blue and white striped blanked that covered her. Howard stayed by her head until she was under anesthesia. The moment the patient was unconscious, the feel of the operating room changed. With the presence of a guest no longer observed—I certainly did not count  as such—everyone in the OR began their tasks in haste.

“This is Rosalind Mitchell, 37 years old. We’re doing her forehead and nose today. She wanted to do the chin and jaw but her credit card didn’t come through. Says she’ll be back for those in the fall. This should take four and a half hours. She has no allergies and is on no medication.” Confirming! that all parties were in agreement, he began to prepare the first site: the forehead. Sitting on his stool at the end of the table, he began to comb and gather Rosalind’s long hair in rubber bands. Once the site was isolated, he shaved a one inch wide track through her hair, combed out the loose pieces and dropped them into a biohazard bucket. He injected the incision site with local anesthetic and then left the room to scrub in. While he was out, the CN sterilized the forehead site with soap and water and then with iodine that dripped in deep brown yellow drops through her hair and into towels on the floor. The doctor returned with his clean and dripping hands held at chest level. The CN helped him into his gown and gloves

The process of making a masculine face into a feminine one only rarely involves addition (of bone substance or implants). Instead, making feminine is almost always a process removing that which is masculine to reveal the feminine beneath. The masculine is a problem of excess: the jaw is too wide, the forehead too long and too prominent, the chin too square, the upper lip too long. Whereas genital sex reassignment involves rearranging and repurposing body parts in order to make new ones, like mastectomy for female-to-males, Facial Feminization Surgery is essentially about taking parts of the body away.

For this reason it can quite literally be read as carving away the outer unwanted body to reveal the self within. The metaphorical representation of “a woman trapped in a man’s body” is, in other words, rendered quite literally here. In this OR scene, the ontological and phenomenological statuses of the body and self are radically uncertain.

The surgeon further isolated the incision site by draping sterile blue towels over the patient’s hair and securing them in place with skin staples. Fully draped from head to toe, only the patient’s face was showing. One stitch was placed in each of her eyelids—sutures are necessary to keep her eyes closed (and thus moist) because her face will be tugged and moved quite a lot throughout the procedure. All was ready to proceed. Dr. Howard announced the time of the first incision; the CN recorded it on the whiteboard on the wall, and the operation began.

To reduce the frontal sinus that accounts for the ‘male brow,’ an incision is made beginning at each ear and meeting at the center of the head, just behind the  hairline. The skin of the forehead—from hairline to orbits (eye sockets)—is folded down over the eyes, revealing the smooth and very white frontal bone below.

The long, thin wooden handle of a cotton swab is broken in half, dipped in methylene blue and used to mark the frontal bone on either side. The periosteum (a membrane that lines the outer surface of bones) is cut at these lines and scraped forward into the orbits at the top of the nose bridge. Glancing at the cephalograms illuminated on the wall\mounted light board, the doctor marks the frontal bone with a yellow wooden pencil.

The burr tool whirs like a dental drill as it grinds off the undesirable bony prominence's above the orbits. Bone particles fly off the burr as it spins. They catch in the cloth and paper that covers the patient and in the folds of my scrubs as I lean in. By the end of the procedure they will become dry chalky dust. An oscillating saw blade replaces the burr tool and a cut is made along the pencil drawn lines. The cut bone is pried up out of its place, making a dull cracking sound as it is dislodged from the skull. The Surgical Tech (ST) collects this irregular oblong piece (about two inches across at its widest point) and sets it in the white plastic lid of a sample cup for safekeeping. The frontal sinus is revealed. Everyone’s frontal sinus (95% of us have one) is structured differently. Rosalind’s is internally asymmetrical, divided by thin walls of bone into three distinct cavities. Frontal sinuses are usually empty, but sometimes brain matter has protruded into them. “Is that brain or sinus? Not sure. Let’s go slow.”

A yellow pencil marks the location where corresponding holes will be drilled in the frontal bone and in the bone patch. Stainless steel non\magnetic wires are placed and spun down tight. The ends of the wires are trimmed and turned inward. The bone work on the forehead is done. Rosalind’s forehead has been set back 5 millimeters. 

The anesthesiologist leans over and speaks loudly in Rosalind’s ear: “You did a great job. Surgery is over. Just relax. Let us move you.”

RECOVERY

When a patient first encounters her new face after surgery, it is covered with bandages and dressings. Much of the skin that is visible is taut, swollen and discolored. Her nose may be packed and casted. There may be drains pulling blood from around her newly contoured jaw. She must suction saliva from her mouth because the throat pack placed during surgery will make it uncomfortable to swallow.

For the first several days following surgery she may need to manually stretch the muscles of her jaw to keep them from clamping tight in a gesture of defense. Even if the procedure is considered medically successful—in that the surgeon was able to meet the goals that he set for himself and there were no compromising complications—there is no way to know how well the surgery went, or whether the desired effect will actually be produced. That effect is, after all, not a property of the face itself. It is, rather, a response that the face will (hopefully) elicit.

Such a measure of success cannot be clinically assessed, nor can it be known right away. Depending upon the particular procedures performed, it may take up to a year for all of the swelling to subside and for the face to ‘settle down,’ as surgeons say. Though new structures of bone and soft tissue were created in the event of the operation, the face itself is never a fixed and stable thing; it is always a thing unfolding in time.

After all of the waiting she has already done—waiting for self-acceptance, for surgery savings funds to grow, waiting for consultations, for travel arrangements—now the patient must wait to heal and find out whether the face she wanted is the face she’s got. Surgery is the quintessential anticipatory regime (Adams, et. al., 2009). It is forward looking, oriented to a future post-surgical life that will be somehow better than the life that would have happened without it. Surgery is about intervention: the imagined and undesirable future can be changed through the event of the operation. Once that event has occurred, there is nothing to do but wait. And hope.

I first met Rachel five days after her surgery. She had her forehead, hairline, nose, thyroid cartilage, and jaw done. In addition, her upper lip had been shortened and enhanced. When I was introduced to her by Heleen, a Dutch attorney who was back in town to see Dr. Howard for some jaw revision work, I had to stifle a sympathetic wince.

Rachel’s eyes were ringed in deep browns and purples, and the sutures beneath her nose drew contrastive attention to the thin red incision line where the length of her upper lip had been reduced. Though the packing had been removed from her nostrils earlier that day, the cast on her nose remained and was held in place by a large X of tape rising up above her eyebrows and down across her cheeks. Her thinning hair and receding temporal baldness left sutures and staples visible across the crown of her head.

I felt sore for her, like neither of us should move too quickly. She, on the other hand, said she was feeling better than she had in days and was light on her feet as she led me to the back garden where we could talk. As Rachel spoke—with the marked accent and dry humor of a life-long New Yorker—she dabbed saliva from the corners of her swollen mouth with a white cotton handkerchief. We talked for more than two hours in the garden behind Howard’s private convalescent facility, with only one break: the unseasonably strong sun was heating the staples in her scalp and demanded that we move into the shade of a leafy tree.

Rachel, now in her mid-fifties, had first decided that she wanted FFS fifteen years earlier, as soon as she saw before and after photographs posted online.

“From the moment I knew it existed, I thought, ‘Wow.’ I knew that I didn’t have a pretty face. I’d get dressed up but I knew I didn’t look like a woman. I could put all the makeup in the world on and nobody was going to mistake me for a girl. Maybe when I was like 16. Essentially, I would say that from the moment I knew people were doing it, I immediately started thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I could do that, too.’”

When I asked her what it was about her face that she had wanted to change, she had trouble locating the problem that she hoped surgery could fix—though she could quickly recount the list of the procedures that had just been performed. “If I was sitting here with a friend and just talking,” she said, “I would say, ‘Beauty is like pornography, you know it when you see it.’ And it’s the same thing with a feminine face: you know it when you see it.” Though she noted that her, ‘rather large nose,’ was ‘a male trait in [her] family,’ the nose by itself was not the problem. Neither, necessarily, was it her ‘fairly prominent forehead.’ It was something greater than these, and something more diffuse.

“I was a handsome man, but I didn’t want to be handsome. I wanted to be pretty. I guess, in a certain sense, I wanted to have all the things that I enjoyed in women that I liked. The way they looked. The way their lips looked. What their hair looked like. How all the features went together. I think it’s kind of a simple answer: I wanted to be a pretty girl. One of the great things that Dr. Howard did was define this whole notion of feminizing in entirety, as opposed to just doing one thing. One thing in and of itself is not going to do it. It’s got to be a holistic approach.”

On account of this ‘holistic’ transformation, Rachel did not really have an idea of what she would look like once her face had finished healing. More than any particular ending point, what she most wanted her face to be was something other than what it had been for her entire adult life: masculine. The particular form that that femininity would take was not something that concerned her.

“[When considering having FFS] I would say to [my friend], ‘Do I really want to do this? Because what if I don’t really look good?’ She would say to me, ‘Well, you know what you look like now. Would you rather go through the rest of your life looking like you look now, or looking like somebody else? Maybe you’re not drop-dead beautiful or even pretty, but you’re not going to look like a man.’ And the answer to that is the latter. I knew how deeply dissatisfied I was. To the point of it being painful what I looked like, and having to look at myself in the mirror everyday. That got worse as I got further into my transition. That just got worse and worse. The disconnect between what I felt and how I looked just became more and more pronounced to the point where I just didn’t want to look in the mirror. I just hated it.… [Someone] asked me, ‘Are you going to look very different?’ And I said, ‘I sure hope so.’ That’s the whole point. It wouldn’t bother me if nobody recognized me. That wouldn’t bother me at all. If I look good. If somebody said, ‘You look fantastic, but I can’t quite place you,’ that would be wonderful.”

Her new face—still tender, bruised and cut—held, under its bandages, the possibility of a radically new identity in which she was not recognizable to anyone she knew. While to me such a prospect seemed as if it might be quite frightening, for Rachel, the potential of this total change was ‘wonderful.’

As Rachel sat healing, she recounted the promise that the facial change would be a total one through a personalized version of Howard’s early morning doorbell scene.

“My goal, my ideal is that I could go out on the street dressed like I’m dressed right now—just a pair of pants and a t-shirt and some sneakers—and no gender markings other than I’d be wearing earrings, which I always wear, and that when I went into a grocery store the person would say, ‘Can I help you miss?’ That’s really what I want. I want to read as, accepted as, and reacted to as a woman. So that is what I was hoping he would say he can do, and that’s what he does say he can do. That is what he promises.”

Becoming ‘accepted as and reacted to as a woman’ would be the actualization of a truth about herself that Rachel traced back to her earliest childhood memories of dressing in her mothers lingerie and heels. Her knowledge of her gender as being somehow ‘not right’ had persisted throughout her life. “I’ve essentially been feeling ashamed of myself probably since I was five years old—or probably more like four,” she said. “Living daily with a sense of shame about who I was. And not only living with it but hiding it, because I was also hiding the source of my shame.” Rachel had undergone years of therapy with various psychologists and psychiatrists.

“I had met someone very early on in the therapeutic process that I interviewed with and he said to me, ‘Look, this is the way you are. You’re not going to change. This isn’t going to go away.’ And I just refused to accept that. I was 20 years old. And out of everybody I saw in all the intervening years, what he said was the truth. It took me 30 more years to accept that.”

Rachel’s feelings about herself as a transwoman changed somewhat unexpectedly. Her mother had become ill with cancer and as the child who lived closest, Rachel undertook what became a very intimate caretaking role during her mother’s treatment. Despite longstanding conflicts in their relationship—many of which were rooted in Rachel’s gender issues—the two grew incredibly close through this ordeal.

“We were spending a lot of time just together by ourselves. And I just sort of let go of any resentment or anger I had towards her, and I really just wanted to make her get well. Having a positive influence on her life kind of opened something in me that I had closed off. When the whole thing was over, I thought to myself, if I can give her this [beginning to cry softly], then why can’t I give this to myself? So, I did.”

Tears welled up and streamed down her bruised cheeks as she recalled the epiphany that had not only enabled her to relate differently to herself as a transwoman but had also revived a loving relationship with her mother.

“What started to happen for the first time in my life, is that I started letting go of shame. I thought: I got my mother through this, how bad a person could I be? So I did start to just let go of feeling ashamed of myself, and feeling all this guilt. And that was a really new experience.”

Her mother’s cancer in remission and her divorce from her wife finalized, Rachel began hormone treatments, the beginning of her physical transition from male to female.

“I had my first shot and it felt fantastic. I felt like Marilyn Monroe. I remember getting on the train going back downtown and I had to remind myself, ‘You still look like a man to everybody.’ That’s how powerful it was. I recognize that it was psychological, but it was also physical, too.”

Though she felt it was likely that she would eventually undergo genital sex reassignment surgery, FFS was her first surgical priority. “The most important thing I could do was change my face,” she explained. It was a change that would free her in ways that, on that sunny afternoon, she could only imagine.

For many patients, a new face promised not only a new life but also a radically new—and uncertain—identity. So long as they would no longer be recognized as men, the particular form of their faces did not really matter to them. For example, Patricia looked forward to the feeling of her new face more than its look.

“I do think it is going to be profound to just get up every morning and look in the mirror and go, ‘Oh my god, here’s somebody who I’ve always known was there but I never saw.’ You know? Feeling is one thing, but seeing is another. That’s kind of the aspect I’m looking for, without any idea of what she’ll look like. Whatever, it’ll be an improvement.”

Some patients hoped that the effects of their surgery would be subtle, simply accentuating the features that they already liked about themselves, while others had a very particular idea of what they thought they would look like following surgery. This was informed by their understanding of what surgical modification could accomplish, as well as their own interpretation of how—and like whom—they looked prior to the operation.

Katherine both wanted and expected to retain her individuality. “I want to be a feminine version of myself,” she said. “Some people just aren’t realistic. If you’ve got a head like a medicine ball and you want to look like Angelina Jolie, you’re going to have a rough time of it. Rather than emulate someone else, I’d rather be an individual.”

Similarly, Brenda—who had consulted with both Howard and Page and ultimately decided to undergo surgery with Page—said, “I guess I want to look like me but more feminine.” Though word-of-mouth, personal experiences and plenty of online research, patients felt confident that their wildest dreams could come true. They had seen the photographs of scores of former FFS patients whose images and narratives of transformation attested to the possibility of total surgical transformation. It is the actualization of this idealized possibility that has earned Howard a sort of cult following, and a legion of fans and defenders.

Jill’s Story

Howard had performed Jill’s ‘full face’ FFS nearly ten years before, and she had been an outspoken admirer and supporter of his ever since.

“I’ve been a Jim girl for a long time,” she explained with a smile. When I first met Jill, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone to show me a picture of what she looked like before surgery. I admit that the difference between the photograph and the face before me was astounding. She clearly took great pride in this fact.

“I don’t reject what Joe was. I don’t apologize for what Joe was. I don’t apologize for what Jill has become. I am comfortable with the unique mutt that I am, which is a combination of what Joe was and what Jill is. I like to think it’s the best of both worlds as opposed to the forces of having to be one or the other.”

The photograph—and her narration of it—was not only an affirmation of her own reconciliation with her past, but a testament to what FFS could do. When Jill first learned about FFS in the late 1990’s, she had already come to peace with the idea that she would never transition.

She had a reasonably successful life as a husband and father, and felt completely isolated in her knowledge of herself as a woman. If she could not be recognized as a woman, then she would have to learn to accept her life as it was. At that time, before the expansion of the internet, she explained,

“There was no validation. There was no hope that we could blend into society and just live our lives. The choices were twofold. One, you accept the fact that you live in some margin—if that was okay. Or you accept the fact that you live something less than a fulfilling life. I was married. I had a son. I had a good career. I had money. I had all of the trappings that society told me that I was being successful, except that I had this secret.”

Jill described first learning that FFS was possible, as a moment that was “very empowering but it was also terrifying. When you become comfortable with the impossible, realizing that the impossible is possible gets scary.” Jill’s initial surgery lasted nearly 13 hours and the recovery, she said, ‘was hell.’ Much like the radical transformation that Rachel envisioned, Jill’s surgery had changed not only her face, but her most basic understandings of herself and her world. Though she had not been politically engaged in her life as a man, since her transition—which began with FFS—Jill found herself confronted with social inequalities that she had never been aware of before.

“As a man, I had never experienced discrimination. Really. Not that I knew of. You take it for granted: you’re white, you’re heterosexual—or perceived to be heterosexual—you’re granted a level of privilege that you don’t know that you have that just comes with your birthright. You’re living in a world that’s oblivious to many of the unfortunate realities that others have to face. To have that stripped from you and see that people can be fired over this, people can lose their housing, to see that people in your community are not welcome in women’s shelters but have too much self-respect to go to men’s shelters and so they freeze to death on a park bench because they can’t get a job and they’re homeless. To recognize that in school people get the crap beat out of them because they’re different. Those things are contrary to everything my parents raised me to believe. So I found that I was given opportunities of making choices.”

Newly empowered by her changing body and newly outraged by an understanding of life that she had not been aware of before, Jill became a prominent figure in transpolitical organizing circles, delivering keynote addresses at national conferences and writing a widely circulated book about her experience of coming to terms with her identity and going through the process of transitioning from male to female. She attributed this radical shift in her life to FFS. “My own involvement never meant to be as significant as it became,” she explained.

“Coming here and meeting Sydney and going through this process was the single most profound experience of my entire life. It remains so. And I’ll tell anybody who asks….

The fact of the matter is that coming here, finally looking in the mirror and seeing somebody who more closely reflected on the outside who I knew was on the inside and watching that person develop—because the person that I was six months after I left here was very different than the person who left here. I never would have transitioned without coming to see him. Coming here was day one. It was a physical change, it was a mental change, it was psychological change. It was the impossible becoming possible.”

Jill was, quite literally, the poster girl for FFS and for Dr. Howard. Her before-and-after photographs are featured in multiple places throughout Howard’s recently published book on FFS and are staples in his conference presentation slideshows.

Not only does Jill epitomize the feminine—both visibly female and normatively beautiful—she also exemplifies the total life changing potential of Facial Feminization Surgery. Hers is a narrative of redemption that emphasizes her own efforts for self-acceptance as materialized by Howard, the person with the unique skills and vision to see in her—and make her into—the woman she knew herself to be. Despite both her own and Howard’s characterization of her surgery as an unqualified success, Jill’s time on the operating table was not done. She was in for some revision surgery on her jaw.

In some patients, the blood that pools around the bone following jaw contouring surgery can later be reabsorbed and turn into bone. When this happens, patients often return for revision in order to recreate the narrowed jaw that the initial surgery produced. This increasingly square jaw is what brought Jill back to the office. No face—no matter how fantastic—lasts forever.

[ladyjaneasher-blog]

Hey I came across Philip Normans book and as I'm not familiar with him I was wondering what was wrong with him as a lot of people seem to dislike him

short answer:

pictured here is philip norman writing anything ever.

long answer:

i honestly don’t know where to even start, dear anon. it would be easier for me to list what isn’t wrong with philip norman. i can’t tell you what people as a whole dislike about him, but i can tell what i dislike about him. my immediate kneejerk reaction to your question was this poem of norman referencing paul published in the sunday times in the early 70s:

O deified Scouse, with unmusical spouseFor the clichés and cloy you unload,To an anodyne tune may they bury you soonIn the middlemost midst of the road.

to paraphrase a comment i read on heydullblog a while ago: nothing like a biographer hoping for the speedy death of one of his (later) subjects. 

it exemplifies my problem with norman: he’s made a living out of holding a grudge for the pettiest reasons. he envied paul, not only because he was “good-looking” (and boy, does he veer off into paragraphes about paul’s “doe-eyes”, “angelic” “delicate features” only “saved” from girlishness by his “five-o’clock-shadow”) but also for his “mounting riches” and his dating of “a classy young actress”. his envy turned into outright dislike for paul. norman saw paul’s failed relationship with jane as his “public sense of duty” weakening; he blamed paul for the end of the beatles, felt that he had turned into a “self-satisfied lightweight” and you can almost feel his satisfied glee whenever he feels that paul’s life veers of its “perfectly polished-rails”.    

i’ve read a few books by norman – most recently paul mccartney: the life – and excerpts of others, and each time i’ve come to the same conclusion: norman comes across as a very peculiar mix of a self-importantance, jealousy and nastiness. much like other authors of his caliber – sounes comes to mind – he seems to have been motivated by these emotions that had left him embittered enough to write books, rampant with confirmation bias, one-sided accounts, mistakes, snipes, digs and disproven or outdated anecdotes, hardly offering any new insights. yet i don’t want to dictate how you think about norman, so i present to you some pearls of wisdom by our dearest of beatles biographers to make up your own mind about how much he’s on the mark – or how far off:

“Barrow later discovered that when they’d signed their management contract, Paul had told Brian that if the Beatles didn’t work out, he was determined to become a star on his own.”

‘[And] unlike John (and Brian), Paul did not seem to have any half-concealed demons to deal with.’

“Over the next six years, Barrow would realise that the inexhaustible geniality Paul showed the world was not always replicated in private.”

“[…] Frieda Kelly[…]” (throughout the entire book, I might add)

“With the Beatles brought a radical change of image, illustrating the vastly altered demographic of those who were now with them. On the Please Please Me album cover, four cheery, unabashedly working-class lads had grinned down a stairwell at EMI’s Manchester Square headquarters, with Paul’s good looks barely noticeable. Now they were shown as solemn, polo-necked faces half in shadow against a plain black background, less like pop musicians than a quartet of Parisian art students. It was an ambience which suited none of them better than Paul, that one-time art student manqué.”

[1968/1969] “John had always been recognised as an uncontrollable maverick, but being a Paul fan involved a strong feeling of proprietorship. Like so many tut-tutting aunts, the gate pickets now observed the change from his former dandified, fastidious self; the bushy black beard, the perceptible weight-gain, the baggy tweed overcoat he seemed to wear all the time. To the fans, it signified how ‘she’ [Linda] had got her hooks into him; what it actually signified was that he was happy.”

[1968/1969] “His [Paul’s] personal life thus replenished and stabilised, he now turned his attention to replenishing and stabilising the Beatles after their ordeal with the White Album.”

“Knowing now just how much McCartney meant to Paul–and feeling a twinge of compassion for one who’d never before invited such an emotion–Ringo talked the others into reinstating its 17 April release.”

In the same week, Stella’s first collection for Chloé was shown in Paris with the help of her ‘mates’ Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Yasmin Le Bon. Paul and Linda were both seated beside the catwalk: he [Paul] in the novel position of applauding someone else, she still with close-cropped hair, the result of prolonged chemotherapy, which gave her face a new gentleness and repose.

The order of [Linda’s] service was as meticulously planned and arranged as a McCartney album tracklist.

However, when the Beatles made the Decca tape, Best had still been with them, so was due a share of royalties from ten tracks used on the Anthology. The first he knew about it was a phone call from the one who’d been so keen to get rid of him [Paul] –the first time they’d spoken since it happened.

all of the above quotes – and keep in mind: these are just a select few that i had at hand from a book that spans around 800 pages of much the same quality of writing – are from paul mccartney: the life, published in 2016(!!!). while norman proclaims to have had a change of heart over the years from his previous assessment of paul in shout!, which he in the very same breath during promotion claims wasn’t really anti-paul:

…it rings hollow. to the point of where i’m not the only one wondering about how much he truly means his words, and how much of it is simply trying to save face in light of his waning monopole on being an authority when it comes to beatles history. he still heavily relies on the same old tired clichés: paul the master manipulator of all around him lacking heart and substance, paul the ambitious starlet ready to sacrifice everything and everyone, determined to make it big, paul the stingy boss of wings, paul the borderline abusive husband to linda’s dichotomy of easy american groupie vs fraught shy housewife trying to escape her domineering husband by way of her career as a photographer and writer. some of them may perhaps contain a kernel of truth, but norman seemingly lacks the ability to acknowledge nuances and the willingness to dig deeper, search for other viewpoints, or consider context. 

he still uses every other opportunity to get his digs in no matter how macabre it may be in the light of events he’s referencing as evidenced by his description of linda’s funeral procession; he, at times, solely relies on people with questionable motives like peter cox for entire chapters without questioning a thing they are saying, or letting the reader hear other voices to provide a more balanced view; he lacks the insight into his subjects as portrayed by his claim that paul’s weight gain and drastic change of looks from ‘68 to ‘70 was brought on by being “happy” with linda or his equally outrageous claim of ringo never having felt a “twinge” of “empathy” for one of his closest friends; paul and john’s relationship is reduced to a rivalry that even to john’s last breath was defined by one-upping each other. although, is it perhaps no wonder considering that paul mccartney: the life seems to be mostly a copy/paste job of his previous books (here a part of shout!, here a part of his john biography).

the less said about shout!, published in the early 80s, the better. suffice it to say that during its promotion, norman titulated john as “three-quarters of the beatles”. yes. i repeat: the less said, the better. it’s only sad that this book helped shape entire generations of authors that would buy into norman’s narrative and perpetuate it decades later.

yet my excerpt of philip norman’s books simply don’t do the man’s tastelessness and scope of grudge-holding justice. for your reading consideration i present you philip norman’s letter to paul from 2005 as well as his obituary for george harrison and his complete dismissal of ringo from an interview in 1987.

to not let this already too long post end on such a note, i feel obliged to throw in this quote by mark lewisohn, who was partly motivated by norman’s… skill, to research the topic on his own:

Mark Lewisohn: “I came to meet Philip Norman. He wanted to meet someone who was a kind of studious Beatles fan, if you like. And when we met it became clear that there were certain areas of the story he was unclear of. There were certain areas that were cloudy. And I said I would research them for him. I was 21 and he said, yes, that would nice. So I still had a job, but in my weekends and evenings I did this research for him. I was so intrigued by the findings, that I just carried on after that. I gave him what he wanted and then carried on researching and I haven’t stopped to this day.”DK: “By the way, what do you think of his book, Shout!? I don’t mean to be putting words into your mouth, but your intent, I think, is to correct a lot of mistakes that have become fact as a result of other people’s biographies of the band. Could you bring that into perspective?”Mark Lewisohn: “Well, when I was less mature, I did want to correct other people’s errors. Errors always offended me, particularly when they resulted from laziness. And I had always wanted to correct other people’s errors. But I’ve grown up, a bit, since then, and with these three books I’m writing, I’m not interested in correcting anything. I’m just telling the story from the beginning. I am starting fresh. And along the way, I am debunking myths right, left and centre. But I am not pointing out what they are, because it is not relevant. Shout!, when it came out in 1981, just after John Lennon was murdered, was the second Beatles biography, with the first being the Hunter Davies biography which came out in ‘68. And it was reckoned by a lot of people to be better than the Hunter Davies book. And because I am in it, and because I was young, and because I was blinded to it, I thought it was a great book. And a lot of people do. It is so stylishly written, and all of that. But the older I’ve got, the more I see where I can no longer agree with my original opinion. Well, Philip Norman came up to me at a recent event and said he professed himself unhappy with some of the things I’ve been saying about his book, so I need to be delicate here. But I do think that it is out of date. It left scope for the job to be done again. That book has had 30 years in the sunshine, but it is in no way the definitive book. I am hoping to write the definitive book that is a lot more comprehensive and is also much more deeply rooted in research.“

mark lewisohn: beatles researcher extraordinaire and classy thrower of shade.

[hamelott]

Title: “Miscommunication” 

Fandom: The Librarians (TNT series)

Notes: It’s flyts week!! So, probably a little known fact abt me: i adore flynnstone and, quite frankly, am dying for more content of this tiny, little spark of a ship. like to be completely honest, this was the number one week I was looking forward to writing for when the shipathon was announced. so, uh, here ya go! 

When Flynn met Jacob Stone, he had a hard time pinning down just how to describe the man.

Impressive would have probably been the most appropriate word, but Flynn was loathe to admit that anyone impressed him. Especially someone who started fights as a hobby.

Although, he reasoned, Jacob Stone had other hobbies that piqued Flynn’s interest. He was probably the most well-read man Flynn had met in a long while - excluding himself, of course. He enjoyed art and history and architecture even more than Flynn at times.

He was also just really...nice, for lack of a better adjective. You wouldn't see it in the way he talked to Ezekiel, but instead in the way he stood up for the younger man when another teammate - namely Flynn - would belittle the thief or his ideas. You would see it in the way he offered up being a punching bag for Eve after a particularly hard day. You would see it in the way he'd stand next to Cassandra in her lab for hours, holding a particular beaker perfectly still as she jotted down notes.

When Flynn had started to see it directed at him, he didn't know quite what he should do with it. Jake would offer to sit down and have a drink with him, and Flynn would babble some obviously fake excuse before disappearing in the Library for hours. Jake would offer to help him with his research, and Flynn would hotly imply that he could do his own work by himself, thank you very much (even if he was finding it difficult to locate the exact book that went into great detail on ancient Mayan culture).

He knew the way he was treating Jacob was rude - harsh, even - but he also couldn't find himself unable to not do it. But Jake being kind to him just made Flynn feel squirmy all over, and he didn't particularly like the feeling.

“It's because you want be nice back, and you don't know the best way to go about it,” Eve had informed him after - being forced into - listening about his woes. She was the one Flynn was closest to out of this new rag-tag team, so she was the one he talked (complained) to on the day-to-day basis.

Flynn scrunched up his nose at that. “Well, on that we’ll have to agree to disagree. Why would I want to be nice back? I mean, of course, I don't want to be rude, but I never care about what others think of me.”

Eve shook her head at that, muttering, “Sure, and your hero complex just comes from nowhere.” When she noticed Flynn’s scowl, she quickly said, “Look, next time just take him up on his offer. You never know, you might actually enjoy getting to know these guys. Stop distancing yourself just because you wanna be the top dog.”

Flynn frowned at that. “I mean, if anything, I’d want to be the top lion. They have a much more interesting dynamic. And, as lead male, I don't have to do any of the work for-.”

“I'm going to go work out, Flynn. Have fun with your problems.” Eve got up, ruffled his hair a bit, and slapped him on the back before exiting the room and leaving Flynn to actually think about what she had said.

~~~ 

“Do you want to get something to eat?”

Jake slowly looked up from his computer screen, and Flynn could see just how long he'd been sitting there from the glossy look to his eyes and the messiness of his hair. Slowly, Jake frowned at him and tilted his head to the side slightly like a confused dog. “I'm sorry...what?”

Flynn shrugged. “You looked tired. You should take a break.”

Jake snorted at that, and Flynn should've probably hated the sound more than he did. “Coming from the guy who once stayed up for three days straight to figure out the best way to roast a marshmallow through magical means.”

Flynn waved a hand in the air. “That was valid research.” He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly feeling sheepish. “L-Look, it was just an offer. You don't have to take me up on it. I just thought I would-.”

“I'm game,” Jake interrupted him with a broad smile. He got to his feet and threw his jacket over his shoulders. “Where were you thinkin’?”

He actually hadn't thought about it. He'd honestly been expecting for Jacob to turn him down. His fingers fiddled with his lapel as he stammered, “Uh, well, we don't have to go anywhere if you don't want to. The Library has a decent kitchen, and I've been told my cooking skills are nearly on par with my adventuring ones.”

Jake laughed at that, stepping around his desk. “Yeah, let's see about that. Lead the way, man.”

Jacob patted him on the shoulder, and Flynn couldn't help the little excited flare he felt deep in his chest. Maybe he could do this. He could make friends. He wasn't as hopeless as Eve thought he was. He'd be the best damn friend that Jacob Stone had ever had.

~~~

Cooking had been a disaster. Flynn hadn’t even been three minutes into the endeavor when something had caught on fire. Jacob, ever the hero, had jumped up at once and started to beat the flames out with his jacket which, subsequently, saved the day but also ruined his favorite coat.

They were now cleaning up the charred mess that had originally been a pan of garlic; as it turned out, if not prepared correctly, garlic was quite the flammable substance. Flynn was just starting to dump it down the trash when Jacob cleared his throat and said, “Y’know, when you said your adventuring skills were on par with your cooking skills, I thought you were joking. I mean, I thought you could actually cook.”

Flynn turned on him, about to protest sharply, when he noticed the look on Jacob’s face. He was smirking slightly, eyes dancing with mischief; he’d obviously been hanging around Ezekiel far too often. Flynn huffed and shook his head. “My cooking skills are usually fantastic. It’s not my fault the Library has inadequate cooking supplies.”

Jake snorted. “Uh-huh, okay.”

“Look,” Flynn said, dumping the rest of the mess into the trash, “I’m sorry for ruining your lunch. If you just want to get back to work, I completely-.”

“Are you kiddin’ me, Flynn?” Jake said, shaking his head. “I’m still hungry. You?”

“Uh,” Flynn stumbled on his words, “I could, yeah, no, I could eat, sure!”

Jake grinned. “Cool. C’mon, I know the perfect place.”

~~~

A few minutes later, Flynn was stepping through the Backdoor and into a diner. It was an old-fashioned kind of place that reminded Flynn of the 1950s. Jake was already walking past him and up to the counter. He spoke a few words with the waitress there before nodding to Flynn and leading him over to a booth that was tucked away from the main part of the diner.

As Flynn sat across from Jake, he asked, “What is this place, Stone?’

Jake shrugged, but he had a little bit of a grin on his face. “Just a place I like to go to sometimes when I miss home. We’re only a few towns over from where I grew up, so nobody here should really recognize me except for, like, the waitress or something.”

“It’s…cool,” Flynn settled on. He nodded, looking around the place in appreciation. “Yeah, it’s really cool. I like the feeling of it.”

Jake nodded, his grin growing wider. “Yeah, exactly. And, hey, I’ll order for you.” He sent him a wink. “Don’t want you getting any weird food.”

“Oh, I, uh-,” Flynn started to say, but the waitress was walking up to their booth and Jake was already talking.

“Two orders of cheeseburgers, fries, and milkshakes, please.” He glanced at Flynn. “Chocolate good?”

“Uh, strawberry,” Flynn mumbled. He looked at the waitress. “If you have it.”

She nodded. “Yep, no problem. That’ll be out to you in about ten minutes.”

When Flynn looked back at Jake, he found him smiling wide. “Don’t worry, you’ll love their food. It’s classic and just the right amount of greasy to be heavenly.”

“Well, thanks,” Flynn said, giving Jake a crooked grin of his own. He glanced around the diner. “So how often to you come here?”

Jake shrugged. “Maybe once every two weeks, I guess? Not often enough, really, and then missions’ll get in the way or Cassie wants me to go to lunch with her and Ezekiel or something.”

“And you don’t just bring them here?” Flynn asked.

Jake frowned and shook his head. “Nah. Never really felt like it, I guess. Figured Ezekiel would make fun of it, and Cassandra would never want to leave. I think she’d like the food too much.”

“But I’m allowed to come?” Flynn asked, a little hesitantly.

Jake’s smile returned and his eyes squinted from the force of it. “Of course! I think you’re the only one who’ll get it, I guess. I dunno, everyone else seems to despise where they came from. I mean, they’ve all got good reasons to, and I guess I do too, but I still miss it, occasionally. I figured…I just thought-.”

“I get it,” Flynn interrupted him, giving Jake a small smile. “I get being homesick.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah, I knew you would.”

~~~

An hour later, Flynn and Jake were walking back through the Backdoor into the Library. Jake glanced at Flynn and said, “Y’know, you didn’t really have to pay.”

Flynn shrugged. “Of course I did. First of all, I invited you to lunch and then destroyed both your jacket and my attempt of lunch.”

Jake snorted. “Okay, yeah, I guess that’s true.” He squinted at Flynn, uncertain as he said, “But that still doesn’t explain why you invited me to lunch in the first place?”

Flynn felt his heart jump in his throat as he said, “Uh, what do you mean?”

Jake shrugged. “I dunno. You just don’t normally do that kinda stuff. You usually just keep your distance.”

“Yeah, well,” Flynn mumbled, “I guess I gotta fix that, huh?”

Jake grinned. “Sure, man. Sounds good to me. Just, next time you ask me out on a date, plan it out a bit better, okay?”

Suddenly Flynn’s face felt like it was on fire, and he couldn’t help a little squeaked, “Date?!”

Then Jake’s face was flushing too. He raked his hand through his hair as he stammered, “I-I thought-. I mean-. I wasn’t-.” He let out a long breath. “Shit.”

“You thought this was a date?” Flynn asked slowly.

“I-uh-I don’t know, man!” Jake snapped nervously. “I mean, what was I supposed to think? I’ve been asking you out for months, I just thought this was you-.”

“You what?!” Flynn yelped. Jake again froze up, snapping his mouth shut so quickly Flynn could hear his teeth click together. “You’ve been asking me out?”

Jake shrugged and mumbled, “I, yeah, I dunno, I guess so…I thought you knew that?”

“No!” Flynn practically shouted, voice high and pitchy. “I thought you were just being nice!”

“Oh,” Jake muttered. He ran his hand through his hair again, frustratingly grabbing at it. His face was flushed red and he stammered, “W-Well, this has been awful. I’m just gonna, y’know…go.”

“Jacob, wait,” Flynn tried to say, but Jake was already rushing from the room and shutting the door behind him.

Flynn let out a long breath. So much for being the best damn friend he’s ever had.

~~~

“Wait, wait, wait,” Eve was saying. She was sat across from Flynn, who was repeatedly banging his head against the table that they were sitting at. He stopped momentarily to glance back up at her. “You didn’t know about Stone’s huge crush on you?”

“You did?!” Flynn snapped.

Eve shrugged and looked like she was resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “Sure, we all did. He’s not exactly been subtle about it. I mean, c’mon, Flynn. Who’s the number one person who’s always trying to get you to get up and actually do things? Who’s always trying to help you with your work and stuff?”

“I just thought that was Jake being…Jake,” Flynn protested. Inwardly, he was reeling. How could he have missed this? He prided himself on being perceptive, and apparently, he’d missed something so obvious that even Eve I-Don’t-Do-Emotions Baird could figure out!

Eve snorted. “Wow, Flynn.” She stood up. “You need to fix this.”

“Yeah…but how?” Flynn asked, and it must have sounded pathetic enough because Eve actually stopped to consider it.

Eventually, she just shrugged again. “You’re a Librarian, Flynn. Hell, you were the Librarian. Use that brain of yours to figure it out.”

She reached across the table, patted him on the shoulder, and wondered out of the room to leave Flynn to his own thoughts for the second time that day.

~~~

Miraculously, Jake speant the next three days avoiding Flynn. The miraculous part was that there were no missions or anything that would’ve forced the two to talk. Instead, Jake practically fled any room when Flynn walked in. At one point, he’d even resorted to diving through the Backdoor to an unknown location. It’d been risky, but luckily for them, Ezekiel had already had the door set to a nearby coffee shop and Jake had just walked back to the Library.

Now though, Flynn had a plan. He waited until he knew Jake would be on the upper part of the Annex and cornered him there. When Jake noticed him, his face flushed and he looked around. When Flynn realized that Jake was looking at the railing, or more importantly, what was past the railing with rising interest, he knew he had to start talking fast.

“Uh, Stone, I mean, Jacob…er, Jake,” Flynn stammered. To himself, he thought, Great start, Flynn. He cleared his throat. “Can I ask you something?”

Jake still wasn’t meeting his eyes. He just nodded and muttered, “Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Do you wanna go on a date with me?” Flynn asked quickly. Jake’s eyes sharply shot up to meet his, but Flynn plowed on before he could say anything. “I thought we could go to that diner again, if you wanted to. And afterwards, there’s this artifact that I’ve been dying to find. I know it’s around the Library somewhere. We could go looking for it! It’ll be like a little at-home adventure.”

Jake was staring at him, dumbfounded. Flynn quickly got uncomfortable, his stomach churning nervously. “I mean, uh, we don’t - clearly, we don’t have to. I just thought, since what happened last time was so…you know. I mean, I guess-.”

“You planned all that out?” Jake asked. Slowly, a grin was tugging at his lips.

Flynn nodded, grinning a bit as well. “Uh, yeah. I figured things would go a bit more smoothly this time.”

“Well, considering you know it’s actually a date this time, I’d say you’re off to a good start,” Jake said. Flynn was about to retort when he noticed the grin on Jake’s face had grown into a full-on smile. He ducked his head, as if trying to hide the smile, and added, “Yeah, that sounds good, man.”

“Cool, cool, great, that’s awesome,” Flynn said. He gave Jake a thumbs-up. “I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to be a blast – a real great time!”

Jake was still grinning as he asked, “You good, Flynn?”

“Yeah, yes, fantastic!” Flynn nearly shouted. He cleared his throat and, in a quieter voice, said, “I’ll, just, uh, let you get ready. And get ready myself. Meet at the Backdoor in fifteen?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah, can’t wait.”

Flynn nodded back with a big, goofy grin on his face. As he started to back away, he said, “Yeah, no, me neither. Very excited! It’ll be great!”

As he turned away, he could hear Jake laughing softly behind him. It didn’t matter though because he was determined to make this the best damn date that Jacob Stone had ever had.

(Later, Jake would admit that it was a pretty good date.

Flynn was ecstatic.)