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eldritch-horror-from-the-void · 7 months

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YAY! Requests are open! 🥹

Ooooh Savage Opress and a fem reader who has bad periods to the point of not wanting to eat the first day. I mean on Dathomir the males and females are separate so I wonder what he will think about it? Imagine him like sensing or detecting the aroma of blood first thing and going all- ACT FIRST…ask questions…maybe?😂 in the typical savage fashion

AHHHH! Thank you for sending this! As someone who’s suffered from heavy PCOS symptoms, I can pull from personal experience.

Enjoy our sweet, big yellow Zabrak!

︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

You walk into the living room where Savage is sitting.

You had slowly, painfully, pulled yourself out of the bedroom because obviously you wanted some attention from your favorite Zabrak, it was going to be a long day.

You just got up hardly 10 minutes ago, only to find you started your period. You were already prepared. Physically, anyway.

Of course, despite Savage being busy with a datapad, he knows you’re there, he’s just distracted.

It takes a whole 3.4 seconds max for him to smell the blood from the distance he’s at, then shoot up from his seat.

You jump back, because wtaf? You weren’t expecting that-

He basically stomps towards you in a panic, looking you over for any clear Injuries.

“Are you hurt? I smell blood, I’ll get the medikit-“

Before you can respond, he’s already sprint past you, and you have to follow his ass into the bathroom.

You lean against the door frame, already exhausted. You definitely didn’t want to chase around a man who’s at least 2 full feet taller than you are.

He’s scrounging around in a panic for a medikit, barely noticing your presence.

You interrupt his scrounging to explain that you’re just menstruating, and that you came out for comfort, and attention. Not because you were dying.

He stares at you totally blank because what in the Sith Hells is “menstruation”?

Whatever that is, Zabraks don’t have the same functions. Even if they did, how would he know?

The word sounds roughly familiar. Did he read about it somewhere?

You roll your eyes at his dumb expression, and go to lay down on the bed. You definitely don’t have energy for this.

It takes way too damn long for him to piece it together, it’s like a bad comedy skit.

When he finally comes into the bedroom, he gently asks, “Do you want something to eat, or drink?”

You’re tempted to ask for food, but right now it just doesn’t feel right. Pain, nausea, or an upsetting mix of both stop you from asking. In any case, eating sounds like a death sentence.

You grumble out a “No. Not feeling good.” before getting more comfortable with the blankets.

Savage thinks for a moment. You’re clearly in pain, and when he’s in pain, he usually meditates if he’s not being tended to by a droid. Right now might not be the best time for that…

He comes to the conclusion that cuddles are a necessity.

He doesn’t even ask you if you want to cuddle, he just climbs in.

You’re annoyed because why the hell is he bothering you?

You stop your wordless complaining when he snuggles you from behind, and brings one of his huge hands down to your abdomen.

This man is like a 7-foot-tall, walking, talking heating element. He feels so good.

Despite not wanting to move from the cozy position you’re already in, you shift around to snuggle him back. Warmth envelops your body, and you can’t help but relax.

That’s when the purring starts.

And damn this whole man is like a massage chair given life.

Content enough to grow tired, you drift off.

When you wake up a couple hours later, you notice he’s not in bed.

Looking to the other side of the room, he’s standing there, stretching.

It takes him a moment to notice you.

“Oh- I was going to make you something, you have not eaten yet today. Sorry if I woke you…”

He literally sounds so sweet, and genuinely upset with himself just for waking you up.

“No, it’s fine.”

A soft grunt, “Is there something you want to eat? I can make it for you.”

You think about it, still unsure, but the offer is so kind, it’s hard to refuse.

You tell him what exactly it is you want.

It takes a while for him to finish, but by the time you hear the clanking of dishes die down, you know he’s almost done.

Like the sweetheart he is, he comes back into the bedroom with a smile on his face, food in hand.

To say the least, Savage is a damn good cook.

I hope this fit the bill, anon! 💗

#savage headcanons #savage opress x reader #savage opress #star wars x reader #answered asks #I could have just made a whole proper fic for this lmao but oh well

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lhoandbehold · 10 months

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What Does a 100 Hour Work Week in Animation Feel Like So I saw (and commented on) this post remarking on the working conditions on the new Spiderverse film which were less than stellar. I'm not surprised, I was literally talking to animator friends about how it seemed like it was a tough project even as the trailers were coming out. But I think we see news like this break all the time - ah a game got delayed. Don't worry. "Oh the dev team is working 90 hour weeks until it comes out". Red Dead Redemption infamously had a manager brag about 100 hour weeks. Some members of the team on Sonic the Hedgehog did 120 hour weeks to update the model to something with much less human-looking teeth. It's all very abstract. So I thought I might provide a little insight into how different workweeks feel for me. For context, I am an able-bodied high functioning person who is, by all accounts neurotypical, but who still struggles with overstimulation and needs a lot of therapy. If I feel this way, then imagine how someone disabled is faring under the same conditions, and consider how much of a barrier of entry this really is to the industry. Disclaimer: I'm going to be describing a not great work/life balance from a practical point of view. I work a lot. I try not to. I don't always get it right. Please don't think of what you're about to read as how you 'should' be working in the industry. Whenever possible, insist on your rights to rest and live a life outside work.

40hr week - What would be considered a standard workweek. Animation is a thinking heavy job, so I’m usually tired at the end of the week, but I do still have energy to see friends, do personal work, go for walks, work out. I would prefer a shorter week but it’s doable.

50hr week - Probably my personal average if we’re being honest. This is not always due to the animation job itself - for financial reasons, I usually have small sidejobs next to full-time employment and the hours add up. This week works alright so long as I plan them well. Mealpreps, using google calendars to make sure I'm carving out time for workouts, cleaning and a bit of rest.

60hr week - I have spent a lot of months this year pushing 60 hour weeks and let me tell you, I don't like it. I'm tired. Social life and personal projects go on the backburner. I'm less delighted, less inspired. I still work out, but less. Wrists begin to tingle, shoulders sometimes get more sore than I like. If I fail to mealprep I end up spending so much money on prepackaged lunches. I'm processing stress in my dreams, so I often wake up in the middle of the night and lie awake. Light brainfog starts kicking in. I'm more sensitive to things not going my way because I just don't have much energy left to problemsolve anything that isn't work.

70hr week - This is when I personally start considering a schedule to be 'crunch'. For some the number is higher and for some lower, but for me, a 70hr workweek starts to really fray me at the edges. I have time for work, the commute and sleep, and not much else. I try to get in workouts where I can, to avoid my RSI flaring up too badly. I am no longer seeing friends. I am no longer drawing for myself. I'm not reading books. Maybe I watch a youtube video over dinner. It's not a state I can (or should) sustain for very long. 80hr week - This is where I'm hitting my ceiling. I have done this on rare occassions. My personal max is 85 hours of work in a week, and the personal record of maintaining it was 4 weeks, and those weeks were a shitshow. Cannot recommend. Towards the end, my shoulder was on fire and I had recurring headaches. I was doing all of my stretches and still managing the gym, and somehow it was never enough to soothe the RSI symptoms I can otherwise usually manage. The should injury I got during that month still haunts me to this day.

And I cannot stress enough, I never made it to those famed 100 hour weeks. I honestly don't know how anyone manages anything above 60 for an extended period of time. I know people sleep under their desks to avoid commuting time cutting into work hours, but i just feel like the brainfog would render me incapable of making anything good or even passable.

#lho rambles #about the animation industry #tw: overwork #this is not a manual #please don't work like this if you can avoid it

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sterlingarcher23 · 1 year

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Love confessions - Lumax & Elmax

Lucas confessed first by telling Max that he loves her:

"I see you." - That's Lumax love.

And Max needs to reply this love confession...

Besides it is the adult way of a love confession and not a "ILY", just saying the words doesn't mean a thing as it was clearly showcased by Mike's "love confession": "ILY" is regarded as a silly, mediocre way by the Duffers. So, Max repeating/mirroring Lucas's words, that's love having true meaning and goes so much deeper.

Something along the lines of "[...but] I see you too." would be the only appropriate answer for their love story from a storytelling perspective. And, they wrote this dialog and the passing of notes, or Lucas begging Max "Look at me" for a reason in this fashion: they cut them off from love by blinding her but because of these lines and scenes, because of the binoculars pattern, the movie date, they intend to give Max back what she lost: love.

El confessed later, when she first held her hand and then revived her using her heart hand, the right onr. For Max then, placing her own left hand, coming from the heart, on El's right side of the chest and/or taking her hands and pulling them to her chest to feel her, would therefore be a logical choice for Elmax to have both knowing what they feel. Literally.

How El confessed:

Removing these abilities from Max has the same narrative function as giving it back or give her a substitute: as a writer you create a problem that you intend to solve.

She couldn’t feel El's hand in the Void (she held her hand as she died), nor could she see Lucas in reality. - She wasn't alone but she couldn’t sense their love.

This is similar (and actually blatantly copied) to what happened to Korra by the end of Season 1: her bending abilities were taken away by Amon. The writers made the mistake of giving her the abilities back right away in Season 1 instead of making it an issue for the beginning of Season 2 at least. The question in these cases from a writers perspective is never IF but HOW. And what does it mean in the narration.

It is not a question if Max can see or feel anything again but how. And how will it change her. It's closely related to the question how she will get out of the coma. Through a sacrifice...

The relation to Legend of Korra isn't just a pure comparison, the series was in parts an inspiration and still is, so getting back on her feet, getting these abilities bestowed as a gift, that's part of a healing arc, especially an emotional healing ... Only with these abilities, Max can receive and give love, only then she'll be able to open up her heart because that's what it was all about: heart.

That's why hers stopped - as a metaphor. Cut off from love.

That's what this is all about: finding love. And sacrifice. That's El's sacrifice for Max, for Lucas. She's meant to give. Bringing Max back and share, bestow, give... Isn't this the ultimate love confession? To give up something for the one you love?

Yes, El's sacrifice. However, it's the only way this can actually work. It's made explicit that Max may never wake up, that El can't contact her in her traditional way... El needs to fly. Not literally. Brenner was talking in metaphors (and the writers in references). It's also symbolism for how queer love can only be in a society that is full of bigots: in your dreams ; it is also symbolism of how queer love can actually be healthy... can heal. - Sounds a bit weird? It actually isn't. We've seen glimpses of that in Vol2 how it can and will work. "Dream of me." it says in the captions, and El's and Max's actual love story started then: In Max's mind. And the script tells us that you can actually split consciousness from the body - problem in this case is that sending a person back in this specific case will need someone to "let go of his/her mortal shell":

It's a symbolic writing gesture so to speak, a way to communicate that you cherish what's been given to you as a sacrifice: use it well, don't ignore or push away those that love you, Max.

And she will...

Someday love will find you

True love won't desert you

You know I still love you

Though we touched and went our separate ways

So, how will things happen exactly? I don't know, however what I described is based on the pure fact that they like to mirror moments and scenes and it is very logical that they will mirror these moments /but in a positive way.) Something like that will happen. Even though that all magic comes at a price.

All I want to point out is how this works from a narrative perspective - will Max's vision be different? Likely. I have an idea how but it's more of an educated guess that would make sense.

What I could see as an additional gesture of their love is that after using the binoculars again, Max wants to give them back to Lucas but he just says "Keep them."

PS: I want to mention that if you look at the killing scenes then all victims have white eyes as soon as Henry goes into the second phase of his ritual ; Patrick's eyes aren't even bleeding, the others only a little bit. In comparison El's were bleeding badly and her's are fine because Henry didn't get to stage 2. In other words, Max being blind isn't an injury and only obscured as such, but it's part of what One does as Dr Brenner explained earlier, which was put in as a dialog for this very specific reason, a removal of the ability to see... this Stranger Things can (and will) do something about. - And even real injuries don't seem a big deal? Or did Hopper only forget his broken ankle?

#max mayfield #elmax #elmax nation #elmax supremacy #stranger things #elmax my beloved #el hopper #elumax #elmax is real #lumax

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smrtoglavec · 1 year

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i speedrunned the shroom event story for the whole night stopping only to write this. at first i planned to write something more like pwp but realized my vocabulary is lacking. so. g or pg-13 max.

sleepwalking.

Little Layla.

That’s how Lady Yae called her. Those words sounded bittersweet, said with that charming voice of her. She managed to present herself as a living work of art so effortlessly. She was immaculate. And Layla was a mess, barely functioning, striving for better but failing because either nature or stars decided to play a cruel joke.

Layla saw Lady Yae in her sleep. It felt so real. She could even feel her faint smell of sacura that would enwathe you with her every move, see little strands of fur on her ears, flawlessly lying down to one another. And of course Lady Yae was smiling with her condescending (or sly?) smirk.

It was strange, that feeling inside Layla’s chest. Somehow fizzy, sour, but still pleasant, like one of those summer drinks you can get in Sumeru City as a refresher. And that feeling didn’t go away for some time already. Layla couldn’t tell when exactly it started, but it lasted and became stronger in Lady Yae’s presence. Admiration, perhaps? Yes, it has to be it.

It was such a pleasant dream. And, most importantly, it was not real.

“Lady Yae,” Layla spoke softly and Yae set eyes on her. “I will miss you. It’s silly, but somehow… You make me feel special. That… That feels nice.”

That smile on Lady Yae’s face. A smile of a predator, a smile you don’t usually expect from such a beautiful being, but it looked so natural on her face. You could see a faint glimpse of her canines, a little too big for a regular human.

“Little Layla, don’t be sad. You study the stars. Didn’t they tell you that it’s only the beginning of all the fun that awaits you?”

“It doesn’t work this way,” Layla smiled, not with the usual small tired smile, but broadly, “Stars rarely tell you something about a single insignificant person, but predict events, impacting the world as a whole.”

“You are too serious, little one. Do you read books for fun, not for studying? They would suggest to you how things work. Smart, diligent and kind people usually make some great main characters. I would say, you fit that description perfectly.”

Layla laughed. Laughing in a dream is always nice, you don’t feel your battery draining with every little cackle.

“I’m not the main character, Lady Yae. They are always full of energy, ready to save the world. I don’t really fit, if you think about it.”

“Because you’re overthinking it,” Lady Yae covered her mouth with her hand, laughing softly. “I will order someone to send you some of our best-selling books. Maybe, it will help you figure out that sometimes the plot is not revolving about saving the world and similar stuff.”

Layla didn’t answer, just stood and listened, bewitched by… By everything as a whole. By Yae Miko and her kind words, by the way she moves, by the quiet jingle of her exquisite jewelry, by the sour fizziness inside. And then Lady Yae caught her gaze and Layla quickly realized that she stopped talking and just looked back, somehow crawling under her skin.

She could feel her blush. But it’s just a dream. Just one more dream, too realistic, yes, but still.

“I want to hug you,” Layla spoke softly.

“Then go on,” Lady Yae gracefully spread her arms and Layla leaned forward, embracing Yae, clenching the thick fabric of her robes, hiding her face in that little spot under the ear. She could feel the silky touch of Lady Yae’s fur, the warmth of her body, even how her rib cage moves with every breath Yae takes.

Layla slowly moved her head, kissing Lady Yae’s jaw. Her skin was so hot, so smooth, she wanted to touch it again, but couldn’t move. Lady Yae moved herself, rubbing her cheek on Layla’s and then suddenly she could feel Yae softly breathing in her ear.

“Wake up, little Layla.”

And the reality ceased to exist. She still could feel Lady Yae in her arms, but her own body suddenly became so unbearably heavy that her legs gave way and she surely would have fallen if not Lady Yae's grip, somehow so strong.

“What… What happened?” Layla's voice was no longer confident, but weak and shaky again, just like the rest of her. Her head was spinning and her heart was beating so fast she was scared that it may just rip apart, like a poorly made soft toy.

“Apparently you were sleepwalking, little Layla. Let me take care of you,” Lady Yae helped her to stand straight again. She was smelling like sakura and smirking the way you could see the glimpse of her canines.

#genshin impact #genshin #genshin fic #genshin fanfic #sumeru #genshin layla #genshin yae #yae miko #layla #yae #layla genshin impact #yae genshin #yae x layla #layla x yae #if you see you see #it's SUBTLE

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blakegopnik · 2 years

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THE FRIDAY PIC is “Comparative Juxtaposition, Nine Objects, Each with a Different Function” (1961–72), from the stunning survey of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I just reviewed it for the New York Times, making the argument that the Bechers’ orderly inventories of industrial life actually point to the fractures of an industrial order that was fading in their day. (Read on for the full text of my Times piece, pasted at the end of this post.)

Newspaper writing didn’t give me room to touch on something else that struck me about the Bechers’ work. I believe, as is often claimed, that it echoes the great earlier “inventory” compiled by the Bechers’ predecessor August Sander in his "People of the 20th Century,” mostly worked on between the two world wars. But that echo doesn’t come from a shared interest in accurate inventories and orderings, which is the usual claim about these two bodies of work, but from the way both Sander and the Bechers reveal failures in ordering structures.

Just as the Bechers’ orderly photos wake us up to industrial order at the moment of its collapse, so Sander was pretending to catalog the German people when the smart thinkers of his era (e.g., John Dewey) were calling the whole idea of a “people” into question. As I argued some years ago, Sander’s supposed catalog of Germans quite deliberately fails to be a true catalog: He happily used the same friend of his to play several roles in his supposed inventory of distinct types; the categories he sorts people into can be arbitrary to the point of absurdity; his photos can be entirely unrevealing as to who their sitters are and what they do. Sander’s project, I once claimed, “implies a full repudiation of the kind of social sorting that led to the Nazis. It doesn’t merely ‘humanize’ that sorting, as the standard Sander cliche proclaims.” I’d say that the Bechers’ photos, following on from Sander’s example, imply a similar resistance to the industrial order that they’ve often been thought to embody.

(Image courtesty Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher, represented by Max Becher; via The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

And here’s my full Times story on the Bechers:

Photography’s Delightful Obsessives

The Met surveys Bernd and Hilla Becher, who turned Machine Age monuments into alluring collectibles.

By Blake Gopnik

July 28, 2022

One wall is gridded up with photos of industrial cooling towers, portrayed in wildly detailed black-and-white.

Another gives us 30 different views of blast furnaces, at plants across Western Europe and the United States. You can just about make out each bolt in their twisting pipework.

An entire gallery surveys the vast Concordia coal plant at Oberhausen, in Germany: Teeming photos present its gas-storage tanks, its “lean gas generator,” its “quenching tower,” its “coke pushers.”

These and something like another 450 images fill “Bernd & Hilla Becher,” a fascinating, frankly gorgeous show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met’s curator of photography, Jeff Rosenheim, has organized a thorough retrospective for the Bechers, a German couple who made some of the most influential art photos of the last half century. Bernd (1931-2007) and Hilla (1934-2015) mentored generations of students at Düsseldorf’s great Kunstakademie, whose alumni include major photographic artists like Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer.

But for all the heft of the heavy industry on view in the Met show — it’s easy to imagine the stink and smoke and racket that pressed in on the Bechers as they worked — you come away with an overall impression of lightness, of delightful order, even sometimes of gentle comedy.

Wall after wall of gridded grays soothe the eye and calm the soul, like the orderly, light-filled abstractions of Agnes Martin or Sol LeWitt. The very fact of gathering 16 different water towers, from both sides of the Atlantic, onto a single museum wall helps to domesticate them, removing their industrial angst and original functions and turning them into something like curios, or collectibles. A catalog essay refers to the Bechers’ “rigorous documentation of thousands of industrial structures,” which is right — but it’s the rigor of a trainspotter, not an engineer. Despite their concrete grandeur, the assorted water towers come off as faintly ridiculous: Whether you’re collecting cookie jars or vintage wines — or shots of water towers — it’s as much about our human instinct to amass and organize as it is about the actual things you collect.

Consider the 32 Campbell’s Soups (1962) that launched Andy Warhol’s Pop career, which are a vital precedent for the Bechers’ ordered seriality. You can read the Soups as a critical portrayal of American consumerism, but a catalog of canned soups also reads as a quiet joke, at least when it’s presented for the sake of art, not shopping. Ditto, I think, for the Bechers’ famous “typologies” of industrial buildings, presented without anything like an industrial goal.

Indeed, the one thing you don’t come away with from the Becher show is real knowledge of mechanical engineering, or coal processing, or steel making. In long-ago student days, I cut out and framed a wallful of images from the Bechers’ glorious book of blast-furnace photos. (Their art has always existed as much in their books as in exhibitions.) After living with my furnaces for a decade or so, I can’t say I could have passed a quiz from Smelting 101.

Early coverage referred to the Bechers as “photographer-archaeologists” and the Met’s catalog talks about how they revealed the “functional characteristics of industrial structures.” There are certainly parallels between the preternatural clarity and unmediated “objectivity” of their images and earlier, purely technical and scientific photos meant to teach about the constructions and processes of industry. The Bechers admired such pictures. But however systematic their own project might seem, its goal was art, which means it was always bound to let function and meaning float free.

I think it’s best to imagine that they cast a doubting eye on earlier aspirations to scientific and technical order. After all, the Bechers hit their stride as artists in the 1960s and early ’70s, at just the moment when any aspiring intellectual was reading Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” which pointed to how the sociology of science (who holds power in labs and who doesn’t) shapes what science tells us. The French philosopher Roland Barthes had killed off the all-powerful author and let the rest of us be the true makers of meaning, even if that left it unstable. European societies were in turmoil as they faced the terrors of the Red Brigades and Baader–Meinhof gang, so brilliantly captured in the streaks and smears of Gerhard Richter, that other German giant of postwar art. The Bechers were working in that world of unsettled and unsettling ideas. By parroting the grammar of technical imagery, without actually achieving any technical goals, their photos seem to loosen technology’s moorings. By collecting water towers the way someone else might collect cookie jars, they cut industry down to size.

Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Ensdorf Mine, Saarland, Germany, in 1979 (artist unknown). Their camera’s lens, facing Hilla, has been raised higher than the film plane that’s facing Bernd, a trick that lets them capture the tops of tall structures.

The Bechers weren’t the only artists working that seam. Their era’s conceptualists also played games with science and industry. When John Baldessari had himself photographed throwing three balls into the air so they’d form a straight line, he was simulating experimentation, not aiming for any real experimental result: The repeated throwing and its failure was the point, not the straight line that could never get formed, anyway. When the Bechers’ friend Robert Smithson poured oceans of glue down a hillside, or bulldozed dirt onto a shed until its roof cracked, he was mimicking the moves of heroic construction, not aiming to build anything.

What made the Bechers different from their peers is that they did their mimicking from the inside: They used the language of advanced photographic technology to inhabit the technophilic world they portrayed. Their photos are almost as constructed as any “lean gas generator” they might depict. The just-the-facts-ma’am objectivity of their images is only achieved through serious photographic artifice.

Take the Bechers’ four-square photos of four-square workers’ houses. Several houses are photographed from so close that, standing right in front of them, you’d never take in their entire facades at one glance, as the Bechers do in their images. It takes a wide-angle lens to allow that trick, and only if it’s installed on the kind of technical view camera whose bellows lets lens and film slide in opposite directions. That’s how the Bechers manage to line up our eyes with the top step on a stoop (we see it edge-on) while also catching the home’s gables, high above.

The preternatural level of detail on view, and its glorious range of grays and blacks, require negatives the size of a man’s hand, a tripod as big as a sapling, lens filters and an advanced darkroom technique. And the couple were relying on such labor-intensive technology at just the moment when most of their photographic peers, and millions of average people, had moved on to cameras and film that let them shoot on the fly, in lab-processed color. With the Bechers, the “decisive moment” of 35 mm photography gets replaced by a gray-on-gray stasis that feels as though it could last forever — as though it’s as immovable as the steel girders it depicts.

But in fact those steel girders were more time-bound than the Bechers’ photos let on. “Just as Medieval thinking manifested itself in Gothic cathedrals, our era reveals itself in technological equipment and buildings,” the Bechers once declared, yet the era they revealed wasn’t really the one they were working in. In many cases, their factories and plants and mines were about to close when the Bechers shot them — a few were already abandoned — as Western economies made the switch to services and design and computing. The outdatedness of the Bechers’ technique matches up with their subjects. Both represent a last-gasp moment in the “industrial” revolution, which is why there’s something almost poignant about this show.

One of its most revealing moments involves a film, not a photo, and it’s not even by the power couple. The Bechers’ young son, Max, who has since become a noted artist in his own right, once captured his parents in moving color as they set out to document silos in the American Midwest. Max filmed Bernd and Hilla unloading their heavy-duty equipment, still much as it was in Victorian times, from a classic Volkswagen camper of the 1960s. It was an absurdly underpowered machine, but who could resist its colorful paint job or its mod lines and stylings?

To get the full meaning and impact of the Bechers’ Machine Age black-and-whites, they should really be viewed through the windows of their Information Age orange van.

Bernd & Hilla Becher. Through Nov. 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 535-7710; metmuseum.org.

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spontaneousmusicalnumber · 2 years

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I’ve had a sucky week. I know you might not see this for a while but can I please have some weird animal facts when you get a chance to answer? :]

I’m sorry your week sucked, have some TURTLES.

Behold: one of nature’s best examples of min-maxing.

Armor plating isn't uncommon in vertebrates. Pangolins, ankylosaurus, armadillos, and placoderms all share similar stat allocation to name a few.

Some, like pangolins, just throw all the keratin they can into their skin and end up with tough scales. That's the same stuff fingernails and hair are made of, and also the stuff that makes our skin waterproof. Others, like ankylosaurs, also grow little bits of bone into their skin. A bunch do both. These are common, efficient, easy-to-evolve traits that occur multiple times in history.

Turtles said fuck all that.

I'm doing it my way.

(Well not ALL that, they do still have keratinized scaly skin on their limbs, but still)

They took their rib cage, sternum and spinal column- you know, things that normally go inside your body, and put 'em on the outside instead. Shoulder blades and hip bones grow inside the rib cage, too. Then, as if that wasn't enough, they covered the whole deal in keratin scales. Some turtles even have a hinge on their belly (plastron) that lets them close up completely. I promise, there's a turtle in there.

What could go wrong reverse-engineering an exoskeleton onto a vertebrate?

Turns out, a lot.

Take a nice deep breath in, and exhale it out. Can you feel your ribs move? Feel them expand and contract, working with your diaphragm muscles to pull large quantities of air into your body?

Show-off.

Yeah, when all your ribs are fused into one big dome it turns out you lose a lot of lung function. The good news? With your body fully enclosed and stabilized in bone, it's not like your abs and obliques are doing anything now. Might as well put them to work pumping your lungs. Except, not directly. Some muscles pull on the liver, which attaches to the right lung. Other muscles pull on the stomach, which pulls on the left lung. It’s pretty inefficient all around, so you may not get enough oxygen exchange to be a marathon runner, but as long as you don't have to worry about predators you know what they say about slow and steady.

However that's not always enough. What if, say, you did have to worry about predators a little. What if, hypothetically, you took a few points away from pure defense and gained a little more swim speed and mobility? You, like many semi-aquatic turtles, would need a backup source of oxygen. A breathing plan B.

In turtles, plan “B” stands for Butt. Some turtles (lots of freshwater semi-aquatic ones) can pump water in and out of their cloaca, which is sometimes enlarged and lined with specialized membranes that maximize surface area for gas exchange. Basically, improving any part of this fucked-up breathing apparatus is so difficult that it’s evolutionarily better to evolve proto-gills in the ass.

I was going to make a different joke here but these turtles are literally called “Northern Red-Bellied Cooters” and I really can’t top that

Turtles are cold-blooded, which of course means they don’t do shit in the winter. Turtles who are unfortunate enough to live in places that get winters bury themselves in the mud in a type of hibernation called ‘brumation’. You may wonder, how do they breathe THEN?

Easy, they don’t. They slow down their metabolism a crazy amount and spend the winter months doing anaerobic respiration. We can do this too, it’s why your muscles burn after working out. If your body doesn’t get oxygen, your cells can still burn fuel much less efficiently and produce a lot of lactic acid as a byproduct. Turtles can counteract the extreme acidity, buffering it and sequestering it with the bone in their shell. Literally, they leach calcium and magnesium out of their bones to prevent their acidic blood from killing them over the winter.

Just waking up from the winter, chock-full of acid and ready to snap.

The most infuriating thing, personally, is that all of this bullshit min-maxing works. Turtles are the longest-lived land vertebrates. The oldest recorded one lived to 187. There’s a little box turtle at my workplace that’s almost 90. This isn’t a glass cannon like a horse is, this janky tank build WORKS.

#my posts #biology #turtles #ecology #evolutionary bio #science #vertebrates #all the images are from Wikimedia commons btw #50 #100 #500 #1k #5k

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writemarcus · 3 years

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HITTING NEW HEIGHTS

BY MARCUS SCOTT

ORIGINAL RENT STAR DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA TAKES YOU INSIDE THE IN THE HEIGHTS FILM

Qué quiere decir sueñito?” The disembodied voice of a girlchild ponders. “It means ‘little dream,’” responds an unseen authoritative figure, his feathery tenor with a soft rasp and tender lilt implying there’s more to the story.

Teal waves crash against the white sand coastal lines of the Dominican Republic and a quartet of children plead with the voice to illuminate and tell a story. Usnavi de la Vega (played by Anthony Ramos), sporting his signature newsboy flat cap and full goatee, begins to narrate and weave a tall-tale from the comforts of his beachside food cart: “This is the story of a block that was disappearing. Once upon a time in a faraway land called Nueva York, en barrio called Washington Heights. Say it, so it doesn’t disappear,” he decrees.

And we’re off, this distant magic kingdom ensnared within the winding urban sprawl of farthest-uptown Manhattan, the music of the neighborhood chiming with infinite possibilities: a door-latch fastening on tempo, a ring of keys sprinkling a sweet embellishment, the splish-splash of a garden hose licking the city streets like a drumstick to a snare fill, a manhole cover rotating like vinyl on a get-down turntable, the hiss of paint cans spraying graffiti like venoms from cobras and roll-up steel doors rumbling, not unlike the ultra-fast subway cars zigzagging underground. So begins the opening moments of In the Heights, the Warner Bros. stage-to-screen adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical by composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) and librettist Quiara Alegría Hudes (Water by the Spoonful) that is set to premiere in movie theatres and on HBO Max on June 11, 2021.

This stunning patchwork of visuals and reverberations combine to create a defiant and instantly memorable collage of inner-city living not seen since Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic The Warriors or West Side Story, the iconic romantic musical tragedy directed on film by Robert Wise and original Broadway director Jerome Robbins. With Jon M. Chu at the helm, the musical feature has all the trademarks of the director’s opulent signature style: Striking spectacles full of stark colors, va-va-voom visuals, ooh-la-la hyperkinetic showstopping sequences and out-of-this-world destination locations.

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A Kind of Priestess

Joining the fray of proscenium stage vets in the film is Broadway star Daphne Rubin-Vega, who originated the role of Mimi in the Off-Broadway and Broadway original productions of Rent. She returns to major motion pictures after a decade since her last outing in Nancy Savoca’s Union Square, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011. When we caught up with Rubin-Vega, she was hard at work, in-between rehearsals with her In the Heights co-star Jimmy Smits on Two Sisters and a Piano, the 1999 play by Miami-based playwright Nilo Cruz, a frequent collaborator. Rubin-Vega netted a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as the enraptured Conchita in Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics; that same year Cruz was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making him the first Latino playwright to receive the honor. Despite significant global, social and economic disruption, especially within the arts community, Rubin-Vega has been working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People around me have [contracted] COVID… My father-in-law just had it. I’m very fortunate,” Rubin-Vega said. “This collective experience, it’s funny because it’s a year now and things seem better. Last year it was, like, ‘Damn, how inconvenient!’ The one comfort was that, you know, it’s happening to every one of us. That clarity that this is a collective experience is much more humbling and tolerable to me.”

The last time Rubin-Vega graced Washington Heights on screen or stage, she acted in the interest of survival and hunger as a probationer released after a 13-year stint in prison and given a new lease on life as an unlicensed amateur masseuse in the basement of an empanada shop in Empanada Loca, The Spalding Gray-style Grand Guignol horror play by Aaron Mark at the LAByrinth Theater Company in 2015. In In the Heights she plays Daniela, an outrageously vivacious belting beautician with a flair for the dramatics, forced to battle a price-gouging real estate bubble in the wake of gentrification.

“She’s like the deputy or the priestess,” Rubin-Vega said. “Owning a salon means that you have a lot of information; you’re in a hub of community, of information, of sharing… it’s also where you go for physical grooming. It’s a place where women were empowered to create their own work and it is a place of closeness, spiritual advice, not-so-spiritual advice. Physical attention.”

She said, “Daniela also being an elder; I think she’s not so much a person that imposes order on other people. She’s there to bring out the best—she leads with love. She tells it like it is. I don’t think she sugar-coats things. What you see is what you get with Daniela. It’s refreshing; she has a candor and sure-footedness that I admire.”

With the film adaptation, Chu and Hudes promised to expand the universe of the Upper Manhattan-based musical, crafting new dimensions and nuances to two characters in particular: Daniela and hairdresser Carla, originally portrayed as business associates and gossip buddies in the stage musical. On the big screen they are reimagined as romantic life partners. Stephanie Beatriz, known to audiences for her hilarious turn as the mysterious and aloof Detective Rosa Diaz in the police procedural sitcom romp “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” co-stars as the fast-talking firecracker, Carla.

It’s been a year waiting, you know. It’s like the lid’s been on it and so we’re just so ready to explode.

Where Is Home?

“Well, Quiara and Jon really expanded on what Lin and Quiara originally created and now they’re partners—and not just work partners, right? But they’re life partners,” Beatriz said at a March press event celebrating the release of the film’s two promo trailers. “What was so gratifying to me as a person who is queer is to see this relationship in the film be part of the fabric of the community, and to be normal, and be happy and functioning, and part of the quilt they’ve all created.”

She continued, “So much of this film is about where home is and who home is to you. And for Carla, Daniela is home. Wherever Daniela is, that’s where Carla feels at home. I thought that they did such a beautiful job of guiding us to this, really, you know, it’s just a happy functioning relationship that happens to be gay and in the movie. And I love that they did that, because it is such a part of our world.”

Rubin-Vega said she had no interest in playing any trope of what one might think a lesbian Latina might look or act like, noting that the queer experience isn’t monolithic, while expressing that the role offered her a newfound freedom, especially with regard to being present in the role and in her everyday life.

“Spoiler alert! I felt like not wearing a bra was going to free me. Did I get it right? Am I saying that gay women don’t wear bras? No, it was just a way for me to be in my body and feel my breasts. To feel my femaleness and celebrate it in a more unapologetic way,” she said, laughing. “To be honest, I was really looking forward to playing a lesbian Latina. It’s something that I hadn’t really explored before. Latinos [can be] very homophobic as a culture, and I wanted to play someone who didn’t care about homophobia; I was gonna live my best life. That’s a bigger thing. It’s also like, maybe I’m bisexual. Who knows? Who cares? If you see that in the film, that’s cool too, you know?”

Stand-out performances abound, especially with regard to the supporting cast; newcomers Melissa Barrera (in a role originated by Tony Award winner Karen Olivo) and Gregory Diaz IV (replacing three-time Tony Award nominee Robin de Jesús) are noteworthy as the aspiring fashion designer Vanessa and budding activist Sonny. Olga Merediz, who earned a Tony Award nomination for originating her role as Abuela Claudia, returns to the silver screen in a captivating performance that will be a contender come award season. However, Rubin-Vega may just be the one to watch. Her performance is incandescent and full of moxie, designed to raise endorphin levels. She leads an ensemble in the rousing “Carnaval del Barrio,” a highlight in the film.

Musical Bootcamp

“We shot in June [2019]. In April, we started musical bootcamp. In May, we started to do the choreography. My big joke was that I would have to get a knee replacement in December; that was in direct relation to all that choreography. I mean, there were hundreds of A-1 dancers in the posse,” Rubin-Vega said. “The family consisted of hundreds of superlative dancers led by Chris[topher] Scott, with an amazing team of dancers like Ebony Williams, Emilio Dosal, Dana Wilson, Eddie Torres Jr. and Princess Serrano. We rehearsed a fair bit. Monday through Friday for maybe five weeks. The first day of rehearsal I met Melissa [Barrera] and Corey [Hawkins], I pretty much hadn’t known everyone yet. I hadn’t met Leslie [Grace] yet. Chris Scott, the choreographer, just went straight into ‘let’s see what you can do.’ It was the first [dance] routine of ‘In The Heights,’ the opening number. He was like, ‘OK, let’s go. Five, six, seven, eight!’”

Rubin-Vega said that she tried to bring her best game, though it had “been a minute” since she had to execute such intricate choreography, noting that they shot the opening number within a day while praising Chu’s work ethic and leadership.

“There was a balance between focus and fun and that’s rare. Everyone was there because they wanted to be there,” she said. “I think back to the day we shot ‘96,000.’ That day it wouldn’t stop raining; [it was] grey and then the sky would clear and we’d get into places and then it would be grey again and so we’d have to wait and just have to endure. But even the bad parts were kind of good, too. Even the hottest days. There were gunshots, there was a fire while we were shooting and we had to shut down, there was traffic and noise and yet every time I looked around me or went into video village and saw the faces in there, I mean…it felt like the only place to be. You want to feel like that in every place you are: The recognition. I could recognize people who look like me. For now on, you cannot say I’ve never seen a Panamanian on film before or a Columbian or a Mexican, you know?”

Another Notion of Beauty

Rubin-Vega’s professional relationship with the playwright Hudes extends to 2015, when she was tapped to [participate in the] workshop [production of] Daphne’s Dive. Under the direction of Thomas Kail (Hamilton) and starring alongside Samira Wiley (“The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Orange Is the New Black”), the play premiered Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center the following year. Rubin-Vega also starred in Miss You Like Hell, the cross-country road musical by Hudes and Erin McKeown, which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2016 before it transferred to The Public Theater in 2018. With her participation in the production of In the Heights, she is among the few to have collaborated with all of the living Latinx playwrights to have won the Pulitzer Prize; Hudes won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful, while Miranda took home the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Hamilton. Speaking on her multiple collaborations over the years, Rubin-Vega also acknowledged having known Miranda years before they would join voices.

“Lin to me is like a little bro or legacy; he’s a direct descent to me from [Rent author] Jonathan Larson, which is a bigger sort of all-encompassing arch,” she said, though she stressed that she auditioned like everyone else, landing the role after two or three callbacks. “Quiara and I have a wonderful working and personal relationship, I think. Which isn’t to say I had dibs by any means because…it’s a business that wants the best for itself, I suppose. […] So, when I walked in, I was determined to really give it my best.”

Life During and After Rent

Rubin-Vega has built an impressive resume over the course of her career, singing along with the likes of rock stars like David Bowie and starring in a multitude of divergent roles on Broadway and off. From a harrowing Fantine in Les Misérables and a co-dependent Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire to a sinister Magenta in The Rocky Horror Show, her evolution into the atypical character actor and leading lady can be traced back 25 years to January 25, 1996, when Larson’s groundbreaking musical Rent, a retelling of Giacomo Puccini’s 19th-century opera La Bohème, premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop. On the morning of the first preview, Larson suffered an aortic dissection, likely from undiagnosed Marfan’s syndrome and died at the age of 35, just ten days shy of what would have been his 36th birthday.

On April 29, 1996, due to overwhelming popularity, Rent transferred to Nederlander Theatre on Broadway, tackling contemporary topics the Great White Way had rarely seen, such as poverty and class warfare during the AIDS epidemic in New York City’s gritty East Village at the turn of the millennium. Rubin-Vega would go on to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her role as sex kitten Mimi Márquez, an HIV-positive heroin addict and erotic dancer.

The show became a cultural phenomenon, receiving several awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Rubin-Vega and members of the original Broadway cast were suddenly overnight sensations, recording “Seasons of Love” alongside music icon Stevie Wonder, receiving a photo shoot with Vanity Fair and landing the May 13, 1996 cover of Newsweek. Throughout its 12-year Broadway run, many of the show’s original cast members and subsequent replacements would go on to be stars, including Renée Elise Goldsberry, who followed in Rubin-Vega’s footsteps to play the popular character before originating the role of Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

When the screen adaptation of Rent hit cinemas in 2005 under the direction of Chris Columbus, Rubin-Vega’s conspicuous absence came as a blow to longtime fans. The confluence of pregnancy with the casting and filming process of Rent hindered her from participating at the time. The role was subsequently given to movie star Rosario Dawson.

“First of all, if you’re meant to be in a film, you’re meant to be in it,” Rubin-Vega said. “That’s just the way it goes. It took a quarter of a century but this [In the Heights] is a film that I wanted to make, that I felt the elements sat right. I always felt that Rent was a little bit darker than all that. Rent to me is Rated R. In The Heights is not. It’s also a testament. Unless it’s sucking your soul and killing you softly or hardly, just stick with it. This is a business and I keep forgetting it’s a business because actors just want to show art. So, it’s really wonderful when you get a chance to say what you mean and mean what you say with your work. It’s a really wonderful gift.”

Rarely-Explored Themes

Like Larson’s award-winning show and the film adapted from it, In The Heights is jam-packed with hard-hitting subject matter, addressing themes of urban blight, immigration, gentrification, cultural identity, assimilation and U.S. political history. When Rubin-Vega’s character Daniela and her partner were priced out of the rent for her salon, most of her clientele moved to the Grand Concourse Historic District in the Bronx. Her salon, a bastion of the community, is met with a polar response when she announces she’s joining the mass exodus with the other victims of gentrification who were pushed out by rising rents. The news is met with negative response from long-time patrons who refuse to take the short commute to the new location. Daniela counters, “Our people survived slave ships, we survived Taino [indigenous Caribbean people] genocide, we survived conquistadores and dictators…you’re telling me we can’t survive the D train to Grand Concourse?”

The question is humorous, but also insinuates a more nuanced understanding of the AfroLatinidad experience in the Western world. The film also looks at the American Dream with a naturalistic approach. Leslie Grace, who plays Nina Rosario, a first-generation college student returning from her freshman year at Stanford University and grappling with finances and the expectations of her community, noted that while her character “finds [herself] at some point at a fork in the road,” she may not have the luxury to be indecisive because of the pressures put on by family, community and country.

“The struggle of the first-generation Americans in the Latino community is not talked about a lot because it’s almost like a privilege,” Grace asserted. “You feel like it’s a privilege to talk about it. But there is a lot of identity crisis that comes with it and I think we explore that.” Speaking on the character, she elaborated: “Home for her is where her heart is, but also where her purpose is. So, she finds her purpose in doing something outside of herself, greater than herself and going back to Stanford for the people she loves in her community. I really relate to where she’s at, trying to find herself. And I think a lot of other people will, too.”

Worth Singing About

For Miranda, a first-generation Puerto Rican New Yorker that grew up in Inwood at the northernmost tip of Manhattan before attending Wesleyan University where he would develop the musical, this speaks to a larger issue of what defines a home.

“What does ‘home’ even mean? Every character is sort of answering it in a different way,” he said. “For some people, home is somewhere else. For some people, home is like ‘the block’ they’re on. So, that’s worth singing about. It’s worth celebrating in a movie of this size.”

Given the current zeitgeist, it’s no wonder why Chu, Hudes and Miranda decided to pivot with adapting the stage musical for the big screen, leaning in to tackle the plights and predicaments of DREAMers [children of undocumented immigrants seeking citizenship] stateside. In one scene, glimpses of posters at a protest rally read “Immigrant Rights are Human Rights” and “Refugees Are People Too.” Growing up in a multicultural household as a Latina with a Black Latina mother, a white father and a Jewish American stepfather, Rubin-Vega said she was used to being in spaces that were truly multiracial. Nevertheless, there were times when she often felt alien, especially as a du jour rock musical ingenue who looked as she did in the mid-1990s through the 2000s.

“Undocumented people come in different shapes and colors,” she noted. “To be born in a land that doesn’t recognize you, it’s a thing that holds so much horror… so much disgrace happens on the planet because human beings aren’t recognized as such sometimes.”

The film “definitely sheds light on that, but it also talks about having your dream taken away and its human violation—it’s a physical, spiritual, social, cultural violation,” Rubin-Vega said. “There’s a difference between pursuing dreams and being aware of reality. They’re not mutually exclusive. What this film does, it presents a story that is fairly grounded in reality. It’s a musical, it’s over the top… but it reflects a bigger reality, which is like an emotional reality…that people that are challenged on the daily, have incredible resolve, incredible resoluteness and lifeforce.”

She said: “Growing up, looking like me, I got to ingest the same information as everyone else except when it came time to implement my contributions, they weren’t as welcomed or as seen. The dream is to be seen and to be recognized. Maybe I could be an astronaut or an ingenue on Broadway? You can’t achieve stuff that you haven’t imagined. When it talks about DREAMers, it talks about that and it talks about how to not be passive in a culture that would have you think you are passive but to be that change and to dare to be that change.”

Dreams Come True

Dreams are coming true. Alongside the nationwide release of the much-anticipated film, Random House announced it will publish In the Heights: Finding Home, which will give a behind-the-scenes look at the beginnings of Miranda’s 2008 breakout Broadway debut and journey to the soon-to-be-released film adaptation. The table book will chronicle the show’s 20-year voyage from page to stage—from Miranda’s first drawings at the age of 19 to lyric annotations by Miranda and essays written by Hudes to never-before-seen photos from productions around the world and the 2021 movie set. It will be released to the public on June 22, eleven days after the release of the film; an audiobook will be simultaneously released by Penguin Random House Audio.

Hinting at the year-long delay due to the pandemic, Rubin-Vega said, “It’s been a year waiting, you know. It’s like the lid’s been on it and so we’re just so ready to explode.”

Bigger Dreams

“Jon [Chu], I think, dreams bigger than any of us dare to dream in terms of the size and scope of this,” Miranda said. “We spent our summer [in 2018] on 175th Street. You know, he was committed to the authenticity of being in that neighborhood we [all] grew up in, that we love, but then also when it comes to production numbers, dreaming so big. I mean, this is a big movie musical!”

Miranda continued, “We’re so used to asking for less, just to ask to occupy space, you know? As Latinos, we’re, like, ‘Please just let us make our little movie.’ And Jon, every step of the way, said, like, ‘No, these guys have big dreams. We’re allowed to go that big!’ So, I’m just thrilled with what he did ’cause I think it’s bigger than any of us ever dreamed.”

Speaking at the online press conference, Miranda said, “I’m talking to you from Washington Heights right now! I love it here. The whole [movie] is a love letter to this neighborhood. I think it’s such an incredible neighborhood. It’s the first chapter in so many stories. It’s a Latinx neighborhood [today]. It was a Dominican neighborhood when I was growing up there in the ’80s. But before that it was an Irish neighborhood and Italian. It’s always the first chapter in so many American stories.”

#Marcus Scott #MarcusScott #Write Marcus #writemarcus #Encore Monthly #theatre #Theater #Musical Theatre #musical theater #daphne rubin vega #rent #rent musical #Jon M Chu #lin manuel miranda #in the heights #Anthony Ramos

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tv-fanfic-archive · 3 years

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Body Swap Quirk

Tamaki Amajiki x Reader | Masterpost | Ao3

Suneater and his sidekick get hit with a body-swapping quirk!

Word Count: 5422

Tags/Warnings: NSFW, dream sex, dry humping, premature ejaculation, non-penitrative sex, aged-up characters, crushes, body swap

During a robbery, you and Suneater were hit with a body-swapping quirk. They didn’t expect the villain’s quirk, it wasn’t on any register. Both recovered and apprehended the villain, but he refused to tell the two heroes how to reverse the quirk.

“We should stay close in case there are side effects.” Tamaki in your body says.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want you doing anything weird with my body, Suneater.” You joke

Your body’s face flushes and Tamaki stutters “Y-you know I wouldn’t uh, do anything bad.”

“I was joking, bud.”

To all around the sight of Suneater’s body bouncing around and yours hunched over is a drastic shift. You and your mentor’s dynamic had always been full of clashes, sunny and gloomy, shy and extroverted, night and day really, but you’d met Lemillion, Tamaki just seemed to have a thing for the happy and shiny people of the world.

“Let’s go clock out, then we can chill at my place till this wears off.” You say

“I need to change as soon as possible.” Tamaki tries to wrap your cap around your costume.

Made so your quirk could function without hindrance, your costume was as skimpy as you could legally get away with. Your quirk turned your skin into a dazzling disco ball you used to stun your opponents, you needed all the skin you could get to max out your effectiveness, but now it was backfiring for poor Tamaki.

You pulled off the cloak from his costume and tossed it at him. He wrapped it around his front in cooperation with your costume’s cape covering his back.

When you got back to your studio above your family bookstore, you dug around for sweats and a t-shirt for Tamaki. You tossed them to him. You unclip and dump the utility belts and skirt from his costume on the floor, leaving you in the bodysuit. When you’re done you look up, expecting him to have changed into the new clothes, but he’s just standing there, red in the face, clutching the outfit.

“I don’t think I should, um, change actually.”

“Why not? You should be comfortable if we have to deal with this the whole night.”

“I-It’s not appropriate for me to see any of this.” He waves up and down your body.

“Ohhh.” You laugh “How about I turn off the light? Or what about you close your eyes and I’ll do it for you?”

He frowns. You get up and turn the lights off, but your body starts to glow.

“W-what’s happing?” Tamaki gasps

You know how he’s feeling. Your quirk makes your body warm all over. It took you years to learn how to control it so it didn’t turn on automatically in the dark, let alone not to give you buzzy tingles all across your skin. You flick the switch back on and go over to him.

“Plan B, close your eyes.” He does.

You unwrap his cloak from the front of your body, then your own cape. You slide the t-shirt over his head and slip your hands under it to unhook the glittery sequin top of your hero costume. Tamaki shudders when your cold hands ghost over his spine to reach the hooks. The top falls to the ground. He shivers again when your body’s nipples touch the t-shirt, you’d always been sensitive, poor guy. Next, you can’t quite figure out how to get his shorts off without making him uncomfortable, so you just grit your teeth and just pull them down.

“Wha-?” Tamaki gasps and reaches down to cover your crotch from the AC, then yelps and throws his hands up.

You forgot you didn’t wear underwear with your costume today, whoops. You feel something warm in your stomach at the sight of your body standing half-naked in, completely coincidentally, a Suneater promotional T-shirt. If your bodies were normal and Tamaki was seeing this, he’d probably just up and die.

You put his feet through the bottoms of the sweats and pull them up. When you stand up straight you realize the warmth in your stomach was stirring of a boner at the sight of your own ass on display. Talk about self-love, right?

“Ok, open your eyes. Sorry about that.”

His face is beet red. You grab his hand and sit down on your futon. Tamaki keeps his hands covering his glowing red face, literally glowing actually, once again a thing you had to learn to control, at least his quirk doesn’t just activate for no reason. For one second Tamaki uncovers his eyes and looks over to you, seeing the bulge in your pants.

“This is so weird.” He groans

You cover with a pillow and look away.

“Sorry, this is too weird, I shouldn’t have undressed you. Why don’t we just,” You stand up “go to sleep and when we wake up maybe we’ll be normal again!” You haul Tamaki up and pull down the futon into a bed and flop down.

----

Tamaki’s mouth ran over your neck, leaving little bites and licks as it traveled up, eventually dipping to kiss your mouth. You closed your eyes as you pushed your chest up to Tamaki’s, moaning into his kiss. His hand dropped to your crotch, rubbing over the front of your sweats. His hips rolled on your stomach, you ground your center on his hand, your hips moving furiously.

“You’re mine.” He growled

Then you woke up.

---

When you open your eyes, you’re glad to be seeing out of your own eyes, but you have a new problem. Tamaki’s body is pressed up flush against your own, one arm thrown over your side. You never took him as a cuddler, but things change. Sadly, as much as you would love to be held by this man, now is not the greatest time.

You were about to try to escape from his arm and get to the bathroom to take care of yourself when movement from behind you made you stay. Tamaki was rubbing his face over your hair and rocking his hips against your ass. He let out a moan of your name then the hand on your side gripped your hip, hard. You closed your eyes and arched your back to press your ass to him. You moved your hand down under the waistline of your sweats to rub your crotch. You feel his breath on your neck. His hips still, pressed up hard against you, lets out a deep groan, then he jerks up and rolls away.

You hear a thump when he falls off the futon and onto the ground.

“Good morning, Suneater.” You poke your head off the side of the bed and smile.

Tamaki seemed to be trying his hardest to disappear under your futon.

“Why don’t you go clean yourself up. I’ll make some coffee.” You hardly finish your sentence before he’s let out a strangled whine, bolts up and slams the bathroom door. You run a hand over your face, sighing. What a way to wake up.

#tamaki amajiki #tamaki amajiki x reader

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dangermousie · 3 years

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Heelo mousie! Love your blog! Do you mind recommending some of your favourite Chinese BL novels or shows?

I've seen the untamed and read it. I'm currently reading heaven's official blessing and I saw the donghua. Anything other than these two?

Awww, thank you!

Novels: I am gonna be lazy and literally copy/paste the entire danmei section of my top 10 web novels post (except MXTX’s stuff since you are already reading it.) Let me know if you need help finding any of these.

Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)

Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is also finding the middle path between their two very different philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”

Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.

To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant, sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two take up farming, get involved in the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.

Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.

The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.

Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!

The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.

The Wife is First - OK, this one did not make my top 10 web novels but it’s a sweet, fun gay cottagecore fest. Our ML, a royal prince, and his spouse, a smart if delicate aristocrat, keep house, eat noodles, play with their pet tiger, make out and spoil each other rotten, while occasionally fighting battles and outwitting their court enemies. It’s so very mellow. That couple redefines low drama - they are both nice and functional and use their brains. It’s as if a nice jock and a nice nerd got together and then proceeded to be wholesome all over the place.

I mean, the set up could be dramatic - our ML the prince, lost his fight for the throne and is about to be killed. The only person who stayed loyal to him is his arranged husband the aristocrat guy who ML never treated nicely since he resented marrying him (marrying a man in that world is done to remove someone from the ability to inherit the throne.) And yet the husband stood by him not out of love but beliefs in loyalty blah blah. Anyway, he transmigrates back into the past right after their wedding night and is all “I got a second chance OMG! I don’t want the throne what is even the point? I want to live a good long life and treat the only person who stood by me really well!” And he proceeds to do so to the shock of the aristocrat who had a very unpleasant wedding night and generally can tell the man he just married would rather eat nails than be married to him. But soon enough (no seriously, it’s not many chapters at all) he believes the prince is sincere blah blah and then they get together and they pretty much become cottagecore goals.

In terms of dramas, I only do period dramas (or novels) so I am not the person to be able to recommend any modern BLs. There is a flood of upcoming (hopefully) period BL dramas but it’s relatively thin on the ground now. The two I will recommend is Word of Honor (which is AMAZING) and Winter Begonia (which I just started watching but which owns me already.) I have a tag for both - the one for the former is huge and I cannot recommend either strongly enough. I’ve heard good things about The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, but I am not big on mysteries so haven’t watched it for myself.

In terms of the upcoming BLs, the ones I am most looking forward to are Immortality and Winner Is King, but The Society of the Four Leaves also looks promising.

#asks #cdrama #cnovel

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imagines-mha · 4 years

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class 1-B and night routines

Monoma: if monoma doesn’t annoy at least 2 people per night he simply will not sleep. Wears the comfiest pyjamas- like a 100% cotton top and plaid pj bottoms and everyones so fuckin jealous. He tells everyone he has a 16 step self-care routine he does every night but he really just brushes his teeth and then sits on his phone for like 2 hours? Ike what do you GET out of lying???

Tetsutetsu: he thinks going to bed after 11pm is criminal. Literally doesn’t understand the cryptidcrew™️ who DONT MF SLEEP. Works out before bed which is 👌🏻👌🏻 OOF. Aw hes the type of friend to make everyone tea and toast and send them asmr videos if they cant sleep i love him. He usually spends his night dancing around with pony and working off all his ENERGY

Kendo: “yall im turning into bed i’m too tired for this shit” “kendo it’s 7pm”

My girl will retire to her room as early as she can (usually with the rest of the girls) and she just RELAXES. Like self-care to the max: paints her nails, watches tv, plans her tomorrow, showers. She’s usually asleep at 10pm and wakes up the next morning full energy I want what she has

Awase: he has the WORST sleep schedule like fr. Literally sits up on tiktok until 3am and he’s just like “oh shit i’m up at 7…” *continues scrolling* like bro GET UR ASS TO BED U HAVE TRAINING AT 6AM. His night routine ain’t anything special- he sleeps in sweats and always keeps his window open (although someone told him about banshees once and now hes lowkey terrified lmao)

Kaibara- the type to fall asleep on the sofa and wake up at 4 in the morning to find tsuburaba in the kitchen eating a full course meal and he just SIGHS and goes up to bed in the worst mood bc why tf are his friends so WEIRD. Likes to watch the stars and edit pictures before he sleeps- its so therapeutic to him and also productive so he’s winning

Rin- he drinks coffee every night after midnight and then goes “oh my fuck shit i just drank coffee why am i like this” like congrats u fuckin dumbass now u ain’t gonna sleep. And he never fuckin learns. Always does his hw at like 11pm, Also stays up way too late binge-watching star wars smh

Tsuburaba: he gets up every night and treats himself to a three-course meal in the kitchen no cap no sound awareness my man will be blending shit full blast at 2 in the morning. Usually falls asleep sitting at the kitchen table and he 👏🏻 needs 👏🏻 a 👏🏻 chiropractor 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. Also always forgets to do his homework until everyone’s packing up to go to bed and hes like “please,, anyone,, the math?”. Shoda wants to punch him so bad

Ibara: the most well-structured person in the entire building. At 7pm she has her shower, at 8:30pm she goes to pray, at 9:30pm she journals and draws to calm her mind, and at 10pm she meditates until she falls asleep- which is usually 10:20pm.. Everyone wants her self control and independance like damn how does she FUNCTION. Also queen of vegan self-care remedies

Pony: girl is chaotic as fuck it’ll be like 10pm and rin’s like “yo pony can i copy the hw??” And shes like “WHAT HOMEWORK.” . *cue two idiots freaking tf out*. She’s always wearing matching pj sets and fluffy socks and loves sliding around in them like a dork. Dances every night before bed to tire herself out like shes just in the lounge deadass vibing to taylor swift and a new person joins her everytime . people would be dead without her

Kodai: movies every night or she won’t go to class the next morning. Shes always just sitting on her phone w earphones in like she has absoloutely no time to deal with monoma’s shit so she just peaces tf out of existence. Cutest pyjamas ever i love her pyjama queen. The go-to girl for homework she just leaves her bag open, as long as u return it shes cool

Tokage: oh my god shes so CRYPTIC and FOR WHAT. Pranks pranks pranks pranks pranks. everyone hates her for it and she loves it so bad. Like she has the balls to prank kamakiri and that TAKES BALLS LET ME JUST SAY . she’ll just leave her body parts in people’s beds and its SO annoying. They usually just pick up her stray arm and fling it at the wall in revenge then act confused the next morning when she complains abt the bruises

Komori: cryptic as fuck. Does she sleep? Why is she always sitting at the table? What is she doing? . Closes her tabs whenever someone comes into the dining room and just stares at them til they leave again like :)). In the garden every night til she can’t bear the coldness- watches the stars and makes flower crowns and worships the moon i love her

Kuroiro: nighttime is the time he just evaporates like where tf is he like 🙄🙄 reel it in randy from monsters inc . Hiding in the walls and listening to everyones conversations and secrets is his only skill in life . Everyone thinks he doesn’t sleep and just wanders around (he does, he just likes to have an edgy reputation)

Kamakiri- did you hear that?? oh its just kamakiri fistfighting monoma in the hallway again. Fr takes no prisoners he needs his beauty sleep (or idk do bugs sleep lmao??). If you’re in his way while he’s RAMPAGING to his room youre dead bro when i say he takes bedtime routines seriously i MEAN it. He does self-care and tells NOONE but its lowkey cute idk lmao why do i have a crush on a bug lemme call my therapist real quick

Bondo- 9pm. Wind down time. A good book is all my mans needs and he’ll be out for the count in absolutely no time at all. Fukidashi will die jealous and bondo fucking loves it. Milks tf out of it too he’s like YAWN I AM SO TIRED OFF TO BED NOW TO SLEEP PEACEFULLY GOODNIGHT and everyone who WISHES they could sleep as early as that wants him to choke

Manga- king of never having hw done until 1am at the earliest 🤡. He lives on 1 hour sleep most nights and his speech bubble just says “no <3” until like 11am. Its cus of his crippling hyperactivity he’s running the halls at 3am practicing the entire mamma mia choreography ffs fukidashi U HAVE A CAREER AHEAD OF U

Reiko: energy drink addiction 101 if she doesn’t drink monster every night before bed she’s convinced she’ll die. “I sleep all day and party all night” she says, crying over math hw at 2am. Plays music too loud and has LED strobelites on ALL NIGHT. Shes deadass doing witchcraft in the lounge w komori all night during finals week she doesnt give a single fuck x

Shishida: another reader,, mans will finish an entire book in a night by the force of sheer willpower alone. Takes a bath every night and it makes his fur so fluffy and smell like apples smdnwjdnwd. Perfect snuggle buddy for wintertimes (pony LOVES HIM) and he’s that good man who carries tsuburaba to bed when he falls asleep at the kitchen table

Shoda: “please don’t speak to me while im doing my homework im 👌🏻 this close to having a mental breakdown and all it takes is a single poke to reel me over the edge.” Complains all day about being tired then goes to bed at 2am?? Like no shit ofc ur tired bitch . Always up for a deep talk at night he knows EVERYTHING abt EVERYONE and hes so trustworthy hed never tell a soul

Honenuki: he meal preps and does yoga before bed 🤢 like WHO HAS THAT MOTIVATION. Irons and sets his uniform out for the next day before getting his homework FINISHED by 9pm . He’s pretty flexible w what he does at nights it 100% depends on his mood. Usually he’s helping Tokage with pranks or working out w tetsutetsu tho. Used to annoy people who were up doing hw after 11 like “really tsuburaba? You should be ashamed”. Shoda almost DECKED him once for it tho and he was #traumatised and never did it again

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homesteadalternatives · 3 years

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A LETTER FROM LAURA: STRESS, WALKING, AND HOMESTEAD.

Dear Friends,

“Stress will kill you,” said his doctor, this story recounted to me by a close friend long before COVID made anxiety the proverbial elephant in the room.

For me, a Type A personality to the max, stress manifests in my sleep cycles. I wake up at 4:00 a.m., my mind racing. I know to meditate, get exercise, and have come to find Homestead Alternatives Hemp helps.

But, yes, chronic stress is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, poor immune function, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression — pretty much everything bad in the modern world. It hits us all, whether you are a “type A,” an extrovert, an introvert, or wear no label.

I was particularly interested to find a peer-reviewed journal article which detailed one of the physical ways stress impacts our bodies at the cellular level, by reducing telomere length. The link to the article is here, showing that telomere length indicates cellular age, rather than chronological age. So shortening end caps on your chromosomes, telomeres, is directly tied to the warning that “stress will kill you.”

I don’t want to go before my time, so I try to do the whole program: walking at least 3 miles every day, getting my heart rate up with a short fast run, and now that I’m vaccinated, rejoining my yoga class. (Zoom just wasn’t the same.)

I’ve also come to rely on Homestead Alternative Full-Spectrum CBD for sleep. While it’s not perfect, I’ve found it helps, as have many others.

Walking in nature helps, too. Later this spring and summer, I’ll be inviting customers of Laura’s Mercantile to come take a walk with me on the farm. We might even do some yoga under the oak trees at the Homestead Log Cabin!

In the meantime, if I can get my husband to quit snoring, I’ll sleep like a baby!

As always, thanks for being a friend of Laura’s Mercantile, and supporting Homestead Alternative products.

Fondly,

Laura

#stress #the homestead #stressors #anxiety #sleep #hemp #hempcommunity #hemp health #hemp benefits #cbd #cbd health #cbd oil #cbd wellness #cbd benefits #walking #walking benefits

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entropychanges · 4 years

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Tell me what you’ll do, please

So, Michael, dripping like a wet mop on the restaurant’s tile floor, stood silently as he looked between the sister of the girl whose murder he covered up only two months ago, and his lover who would rather be sent off to war than be with him. Great. He swallowed, figuring he may as well break the silence.

“Sorry, I wasn’t sure if-”

“The kitchen is closed,” Liz interrupted, looking him up and down before saying, “but you can stay until the storm lets up.”

Or, in which Michael gets caught out in the rain while sleeping in his truck, and ends up taking shelter in the last place he wants to be.

also on ao3

title (from phoebe bridger's demi moore) precedes the lyric "I dont wanna be alone" which is kind of a central theme in Michael's mindset in this fic

warnings for mention of Michael's injury, very brief and vague mention of toolshed incident near the end, lots of talk about rosa's death and liz's mourning, michael has self worth issues, michael and alex say mean things to each other bc they’re sad and scared and just like a lot of angst

(3054 words)

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

When Michael woke from his drunken nap, he sobered up immediately at the feeling of his blankets being drenched and the sky being far too dark for his liking.

He knew it was going to rain that night, and had even felt it in the joints of his mangled hand. What he didn’t predict, however, was that he was going to sleep for a few more hours than he intended, waking up in the middle of a storm rather than to the late afternoon desert sun.

“Shit, shit, shit!” he hissed, scrambling out of his truck bed and attempting to gather his linens. As he piled the soaked pillows and blankets he realized that he’d stupidly kept his bag of clothes beside him as he slept, leaving him with nothing dry to change into. He shoved his belongings into a sopping pile on his passenger seat before rushing to the other side of the truck cab and turning on the ignition with shaking hands.

Safe from the weather outside, Michael cranked up the heater and stripped off his shirt, huddling against himself for warmth. He ran his fingers through his curls in an effort to squeeze the water out, but to no avail. He sat like this, shivering and pathetic, for about 20 minutes before deciding that he needed a plan B. He didn’t have enough gas to use his heater for any extended period of time, and he wouldn’t have enough money for a refill until Sanders paid him for his work that week.

So, he decided to head into town to see if he could find somewhere that would let him stay inside for the duration of the storm without expecting a dime out of him. Normally he would try the library, but that closed at 8 and according to the clock on his radio, it was around 11 pm. Damn it. Hardly anything in this sleepy town was open past 10 on a weeknight other than the bars, and the storm wasn’t helping his chances.

Monsoon season was probably the most detrimental time for his beloved old Chevy that he called home, and tonight was no exception. He could hardly see through his windshield with the mix of dust and rain smattered across it, the high-velocity winds forcing his wipers to barely keep up. He was able to see enough to drive, though, as well as to recognize the signs on the shops and restaurants. They were almost all closed, as he’d suspected, except for one - the Crashdown still had its lights on and as he pulled into a parking space in front of it, he could see two figures inside. Liz Ortecho was wiping the counter as she spoke to the person in front of her, whose back was turned to Michael.

Only a few months ago, Michael would be too embarrassed to walk into the Crashdown at half-past 11 looking like a drowned rat and ask for a favor from his academic competitor. Now, though, Liz was going through her own living hell, which Michael felt partially responsible for, and had no room in her life to pity some punkass kid that lived in his truck. So, he swallowed his guilt and pride and shame and made his way out of his car and into the pouring rain. Without giving himself a chance to rethink this decision, he threw open the diner’s door, bringing attention to himself far too dramatically.

And, well, shit. Maybe he would’ve been better off using his fake id to spend his night with the racist alcoholics at the Wild Pony.

The first thing he noticed was that Liz looked rough. She clearly hadn’t been sleeping, as her eye bags were dark and evident, and her skin was paler than usual. She stood stock still at his cinematic entrance, her face full of annoyance and exhaustion. She no longer looked like the nerdy girl-next-door that Max had a crush on. She looked older than her age, and, in a sense, she was. She was going through more sadness than most had in their entire lifetimes, and that thought sent a spike of pain in Michael’s chest.

It reminded him of that selfish anger he’d been repressing since that night; anger at Isobel for killing the girls, anger at himself and Max for covering it up, anger at whatever entities left the three of them on this planet in the first place. He usually tried to shove those thoughts down before they ate away at him, but that was impossible when the consequence of their actions was quite literally staring himself in the face.

He glanced at the figure sitting on the stool across from Liz and his stomach dropped. Of course, it just had to be the very person Michael had been avoiding for the past two weeks.

He watched as Alex’s face morphed from confusion, to brief concern, and finally an annoyance that rivaled Liz’s. The last thing Michael wanted was to relive the fight they’d had after Alex told him he was enlisting in the air force.

Alex called Michael a violent alcoholic that was wasting his life.

Michael compared him to every birth and foster parent who had abandoned him.

Alex said Michael was no better than his abusive father.

Michael said that was funny seeing as he was following in his daddy’s footsteps.

It wasn’t pleasant.

“Sorry, I wasn’t sure if-”

“The kitchen is closed,” Liz interrupted, looking him up and down before saying, “but you can stay until the storm lets up.”

Michael nodded, flinging water from his hair. He sat in the nearest booth, looking at his hands. He didn’t exactly have a plan for what he’d do if someone were to let him in. Maybe he could sleep? He didn’t think Liz would appreciate having to wake him up to kick him out once the rain stopped, but making conversation didn’t seem like much of an option.

When he looked back over to see that Liz had bent down to clean below the counter, Alex was still staring at him. Michael glanced back down at his hands, but it was too late. Alex approached the booth and stood over him.

“Hey, Alex.”

“What happened?”

“I fell asleep and when I woke up it was raining and all my shit was wet,” he said, still looking down.

Alex furrowed his brows. “It started raining around 8.”

“I guess I went to bed early.”

“Is that your way of saying you passed out drunk?”

Michael raised his gaze to glare at Alex. Alex glared right back.

“Can we not do this right now?”

Alex huffed a sigh and sat across from him. Michael leaned back and turned his head, watching the downpour out the window. They sat in silence for a minute until Alex spoke up.

“You need to change your splint.”

For someone that “wouldn’t be Michael’s medicine”, Alex sure liked to act like his doctor. But, he wasn’t wrong. Michael’s splint was soaked, making it functionally useless.

“I have some gauze in the truck, I’ll fix it later,” he replied, still staring at the rain.

“Just grab it now, I’ll help you do it.”

Michael turned back to Alex. “What? No, I-”

Alex stood up. “Get the gauze and I’ll meet you upstairs.”

As Alex turned away, presumably to ask Liz if she was cool with him bringing the personified version of a stray dog found in the gutter up into the small apartment she shared with her grieving father, Michael conceded and ran back to his truck to grab the gauze. He could never really say no to Alex. He rushed back in, covering the gauze with his body to prevent any rain damage and, with a quick “bathroom’s on the right” from Liz, he ran up the stairs to meet Alex in the tiny restroom that Liz used to share with Rosa. Used to. Michael shuddered at the thought. He was too sober for this long night.

Except, Alex wasn’t in the restroom. He was nowhere to be found. Regardless, Michael closed the door gently and began peeling the gauze off his hand, the feeling not dissimilar to applying a strip of wet paper-mâché to a surface. He winced at the pain, which he’d been ignoring until then, and wished he had some acetone to take the edge off.

He glanced at the medicine cabinet. Maybe…He opened the cabinet and there it was, half a bottle of kroger brand nail polish. Jackpot. Once he finished his second swig, the door handle started twisting. Shit. He used his telekinesis to put the bottle back in the cabinet and close the door, all while rinsing his mouth to cover the evidence. He didn’t want to think about what Alex’s reaction would be to finding him drinking Liz’s nail polish remover straight out of the bottle. “Seriously, Guerin? Alcohol not enough of a buzz for you anymore?”. Alex always called him “Guerin” when he was disappointed or mad at him. Lately, that seemed to be more often than not.

Alex peeked his head in slowly, as if to give Michael privacy, which was frankly adorable, seeing as how many times they’d seen each other at least partially nude. When he saw that Michael was decent, he opened the door completely, revealing that he was carrying a pile of clothes and towels.

“Here, change into these,” Alex commanded, handing him the clothes. His clothes. Michael’s ears turned red against his wishes at the thought of wearing Alex’s clothes.

“”You always have a stash of clothes at the Ortecho’s, or is this just my lucky night?” he asked, removing his wet t-shirt. Alex turned away, making Michael roll his eyes.

“I would usually come here when things got ugly at my place. Arturo didn’t mind me sleeping on Liz and Rosa’s floor, so I kept some of my stuff here. Tonight I’m here for Liz, though,” Alex explained.

Michael removed his pants. “You know you don’t have to turn away when I’m changing, right? We’ve seen each other naked, like, a hundred times.”

Now it was Alex’s turn to blush. “I think a hundred is a little hyperbolic,” he said as he turned around to face Michael.

Michael ran the towel down his body before finally ruffling his curls dry. “Well there was our first time... “

“Obviously.”

“And the time in the cab of my truck just a few days later…”

“That was just uncomfortable.”

“And then a week later when we had that picnic out in the desert at midnight…”

“Ugh, that was just gross. Do you know how many spiders and scorpions are out there? Definitely wish I’d kept my pants on for that.”

“And then add a few more in the back of my truck and that should add up to one hundred!”

“Still a hyperbole. I’d say that’s 8, total. The rest at least one of us kept our pants or shirts on.”

“Sorry, I forgot to add the ones from my dreams.”

“Oh god, please shut up,” Alex said just a little loudly, making Michael snort and put a finger to his lips.

“Shh, Alex, c’mon. No need to wake up Arturo by discussing our epic sexcapades.”

Michael was now fully dressed in Alex’s clothes, wearing a burgundy sweater that felt softer than anything he’d ever worn before and black jeans that were just a little too tight. He looked at himself in the mirror and cracked a smile.

“Maybe I could pull the emo look off, huh? What do you think, darlin?” He added the “darlin” as a test. When Alex was actually pissed, the pet name only ticked him off even more. When Michael was starting to get back on his good side, he brushed it off and pretended he didn’t like it, even though he definitely did.

Alex suppressed a smile. Score.

“I think you’re ridiculous. Now lean against the sink and hold this washcloth.”

Michael raised an eyebrow but did as he was told.

“Here, hold the washcloth like this,” Alex said before gently moving the fingers on Michael’s left hand around the cloth. It hurt like hell, but Michael did his best to hide it. He didn’t like Alex seeing him in pain, especially when he knew Alex blamed himself. Michael didn’t want him to have another reason to feel guilty.

“It’s good of you to come over here and be with Liz. She seems…” He trailed off, not sure of what he was planning on saying. She seems, what, bad? Exhausted? Depressed? Like she’d just had her favorite person in the world taken from her, and now the entire town was spreading lies about her? He just let Alex finish his thought.

“It’s just what friends do. She needs support right now,” Alex murmured, wrapping the gauze around Michael’s fingers. “She’s leaving town, too, soon. Which is a good thing, I think.”

Michael stiffened at that. He already knew Liz was leaving, of course. He was just as responsible for that as he was for Rosa’s postmortem defamation. It’s that “too” that hits. Maybe it was the buzz from the acetone or the thrill of Alex watching him undress, but either way Michael was able to forget for a second about the coldness that had been between them just a few minutes ago, and the reason for it being there. That little word, “too”, was a painful reminder that hurt just a little more than the feeling of his disjointed bones being squeezed too tightly by Alex’s makeshift splint. Michael inhaled sharply to indicate this.

“Shit, sorry, let me make this a little looser.”

Michael looked down and shook his head a tad bit too violently, trying to indicate that he didn’t give a damn about the stupid splint.

“What? What is it Michael?”

Michael squeezed his eyes shut, knowing he was diving headfirst into the argument he was trying to pretend had never happened.

“You can’t go.”

Alex dropped Michael’s hand, which he’d just finished putting the last piece of tape on.

“Goddamn it, Michael, did we really not spend enough time talking about this already? I’m sick of my father looming over me, and, let’s face it. I’m not like you. I can’t just waste my life in this garbage town forever, sustaining myself on whiskey and bar fights.”

Michael opened his eyes back up and realized he had tears welling up. It wasn’t because of what Alex had said, words and insults didn’t phase him anymore. It was that his deepest anxiety was becoming his reality. Michael was going to be left behind, yet again.

He was used to pushing his fears down, but right now he didn’t want to repress. He wanted Alex to understand exactly how he was feeling, no matter how childish or pathetic he sounded in the process.

“I don’t want you to leave me. I don’t want to be alone.”

He looked up to meet Alex’s eyes. The other boy’s face melted from the defensive hardness he’d held before to something much softer. It wasn’t piteous, it was just… sad.

“I don’t want to leave you Michael. I definitely don’t want you to be alone. You’re the only reason I’ve ever even considered staying.”

Michael looked down again. His words were sweet, but they held no meaning. It didn’t matter how much Alex cared about him, he was still leaving.

“You know this doesn’t have to be goodbye forever, right? I’ll be coming back after basic, and then I’ll be coming home on leave whenever I can.” Alex cupped Michael’s face with his hands, forcing him to look up at him. Memories flooded in of their first kiss, when they cradled each other’s faces in the UFO emporium. Michael mirrored the movement and leaned in to Alex’s space, but didn’t close the gap. Instead, he watched Alex closely, reading the earnesty in his eyes. It seemed like he truly believed they could still be together, even through hell.

It was Alex that made the move, pressing Michael into the sink behind him and tenderly kissing his lips. Their movements were slow and gentle, much different from their usual sexual intensity. This was a different kind of intimacy. They touched each other lovingly rather than lustfully, their focus not on rushing to make each other come, but instead on patiently memorizing every detail they could. They were so enraptured with their shared space that the outside world seemed to melt away, including the door that was being pushed open behind them.

“Oh shi-” they heard behind them, shattering the moment. Alex jumped away, terror in his eyes. Michael’s heart was in his throat. Of course, it was just Liz, who didn’t actually care about their romantic involvement, just that they didn’t have sex on her bathroom sink. Still, the last time they were interrupted like this wasn’t a night they wanted to relive.

“I just wanted to let Guerin know that it stopped raining,” Liz said, her eyes turned to the floor uncomfortably. This was her polite way of saying “please get out of my home it’s past midnight and I’ve been waiting for you to leave for half an hour”, so he took the cue for what it was and headed out the door with a nod.

“Hey, Michael?” he heard from behind him. He turned back around.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving in a week. I’d like to see you before then, to say goodbye.”

Michael gave another small nod, and headed down the stairs at twice his usual speed, not wanting either of them to hear him cry.

When he got to his truck, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep anytime soon. So, instead, he devised a plan to ensure he wouldn’t be around whenever Alex decided to schedule that goodbye.

And this plan required Kyle Valenti’s hubcaps.

#malex #malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #roswell new mexico #roswell nm #roswell nm fic #liz ortecho #malex angst

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pandawritespoorly · 4 years

Text

A Shy ‘Sparrow’: Chapter 4 - Changes

@starpony999

Author’s Note: Eyy, it's been a while hasn't it? Well here I am! With a new chapter too! I've written more for this story, and I'm getting a better idea of how long it'll be, so I might change the chapter count to a rough estimate once I've posted this.

Chapter Summary: The side effects of a broken miraculous are beginning to catch up with Marinette.

First | Previous | ???

A month since Alya posted that picture, and things aren’t going well. The amount of attacks has almost doubled, and Marinette can’t help but feel that Hawkmoth is targeting her.

If he is, it’s working, because she’s been getting worse, fast.

Alya now shows up at the bakery to walk with her to school each day, because no one wants her to faint in the middle of the street. If Alya is absent, then Adrien or Nino will come to get her.

Her parents have been sending her to a doctor for a while now. She was prescribed something a week ago, and it’ll be starting to take effect properly around… today, actually.

She and Alya arrive at school together as usual. What isn’t usual is that for whatever reason, the school’s population is buzzing in excitement about some girl who transferred in.

“Well, she sounds interesting…” Alya remarks, unsure. The stories seem off somehow.

Marinette hums. She’s not sure about this new girl either.

Her classmates are gathered around a desk in the front. Not tightly, just all facing that way and closer than they normally would be.

“...my sprained wrist hasn’t healed properly, because- Oh! Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Well, I guess you all seem pretty trustworthy,” the girl looks around carefully. She’s dressed in a gray romper with an orange jacket. Her hair is tied into two ponytails in the front. They resemble sausages more than anything.

It’s certainly a… unique look.

“See, I’m actually Sparrow! Chat and I are dating- Oops! We didn’t want that to be public ye-”

“I don’t believe you,” Marinette cuts in. Another wave of dizziness passes over her, and she clutches at Alya gently, swaying.

Crocodile tears come to the girl’s eyes, “H-how c-c-could you say th-that? I work so much for th-this c-c-city, and this i-i-is the th-thanks I get?” Marinette collapses, falling to the floor. Her classmates gasp, and several rush to help her.

“Oh, so now she’s pretending t-to be sick so that y-you’ll all believe her-” New Girl sneers.

Everyone falls silent, processing what the new girl said.

“What,” Adrien snarls. She pales, but attempts to continue.

“W-well, she c-c-clearly is jealous, and is tr-trying to discredit me, and is looking for sympathy p-points by pretending to-”

“Oh, shut it!” Alya snaps, “Mari has been sick for weeks. I have to walk her to school everyday so that she doesn’t collapse in the street, and just because she didn’t believe your frankly outlandish tall tales, you’re saying that she’s faking it?”

“W-well no-”

“Really? Because that’s what it sounded like to me,” Adrien growls.

“I sh-should go. Jag-”

“Just leave.” Nino glares, “You aren’t welcome here.”

The girl makes her escape, and the class turns their full attention on their favorite pigtailed designer.

Max is muttering medical statistics to Rose and Juleka who are doing their best to revive her. Soon enough, she stirs, putting a hand to her head and groaning.

Both girls hug her, and Max sighs in relief.

“Maybe you should head home, Mari…” Alya hugs her.

“No, I’ll just go to the nurse first, if I need to go home, I’ll call Maman or Papa.” Marinette suggests, “You shouldn’t miss class.”

“Alright…”

After everyone wishes her well and she makes her way to the nurse. Of course, then she hears the sounds of an attack.

No break for her, huh?

Hurrying out the door of the school, she ducks into an alley to transform.

“Duusu, Spread My Feathers!”

Instead of the usual warm calming feeling of magic washing over her, it feels like searing fire. Every bone feels like it’s splintering and her muscles tense. She’s stumbling, but that is barely registered amidst the tidal wave of pain she is drowning in. She coughs, choking on nothing as her throat struggles to function.

Her back hits a wall, and she slides to the ground, falling until she’s nothing but a limp body on the ground, spasming occasionally.

She needs to detransform. She needs to detransform right this second.

Just thinking takes immense effort, so talking is out of the question. She’s relieved when she registers the sound of beeping from far, far away.

A voice echoes around her, something blue flying around above her, mumbling about medication.

“Wha’?” Nothing is coming into focus, but at least the pain is fading, even if she feels sore and utterly exhausted,

“I- I didn’t want to say anything, because it wasn’t completely certain to happen, but often, magic doesn’t mix well with medicine…” the blue thing chirps.

Kwami, she can barely understand French words, let alone identify… anything.

“Wha’?” Everything is swimming again, she still can’t move properly.

The blue thing rushes towards her - hiding, she thinks - as something dark lands in the alley.

“Good Kwami, what happened to you Ma- Miss?”

The dark thing crouches near her, and she does her best to repeat the blue thing’s - Duusu’s - words.

“...medzz...bad..reacshhun…” she manages.

“You had a bad reaction to your medication.” He - Chat Noir - repeats, looking for clarification.

She nods almost imperceptibly, trying to move upright but instead finds that her arms give out and she returns to the ground.

“I can take you home.” Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “Uh, where do you live?”

Marinette does her best to mumble ‘bakery’ and hopes she gets the message across properly. She’s entirely spent.

Chat Noir picks her up as gently as possible, and hurries to get her home without jostling her too much. He hands her off to her parents, doing his best to explain what she’d told him.

They nod, and her Papa takes her to bed while Maman calls the doctor. It doesn’t take long for her to give in to the exhaustion, falling into a restless sleep.

She wakes up a few hours later, feeling weak and tired.

“Duusu?” She croaks. The Kwami immediately flies up to her, looking relieved that she’s awake.

“Marinette! How are you feeling?” She’s uncharacteristically uncomposed, flitting around distractedly looking over her holder.

“Just… really tired. My head hurts, I’m kind of sore…?” She holds her head, staring off in space until something occurs to her. “The akuma! I can’t leave Chat alone!”

She stands quickly trying to get to her balcony, only to fall back onto her bed, feeling shaky.

“Marinette, that was hours ago. You aren’t well.”

“What happened?” She can’t really remember anything past transforming.

“It- I’m sorry. The miraculous uses some of your energy to transform, usually it wouldn’t be noticable, but… it’s broken. It’s trying to use your energy to heal itself, but that’s not going to work. The medication blocked that, but by transforming, you forcibly went against that… so it didn’t end well. My last chosen-” Duusu’s voice cracks, and she tears up, “Oh, Emilie, my poor little peachick…”

She shakes herself out of her mind after a moment, “Since you are younger, there was a chance that the medication wouldn’t have done anything, maybe even help, so I didn’t want to worry you…”

Marinette sighs. “It’s alright Duusu, it’s not your fault the brooch is cracked. Though, maybe I should be trying to fix it. How can I do that?”

Duusu pauses to think. This girl has proven to be very capable, and is certainly responsible. She’s ready to know about the Guardian.

“There’s a Guardian of the miraculous. They are responsible for taking care of and protecting the miraculouses. He is in Paris, that much I am sure of. He is the one who gave Chat Noir his miraculous, and he is in possession of Tikki. Together, they would be able to fix it.”

“Great!” Marinette cheers, “So just tell Chat I need to see the guardian?”

“...no. The Guardian is meant to stay a secret and it’s possible that Chat does not even know of their existence. If you were to out them, it would not look good for you. If Chat does know, he’s probably doing his best to protect him as well, given Hawkmoth’s goal. Telling him that you have to meet with the Guardian and Tikki? It wouldn’t be a good look.”

“Especially after I missed an attack…”

Duusu nods regretfully.

“Can I make sentimonsters for searching? To try and track him down?”

“I suppose. Depending on which Kwami they are the holder of it may not be as effective, but there’s no way of telling.”

---

The peahen heroine is transformed, out on patrol. Her sentimonster already healed the minimal damage from the attack. She’d rested enough earlier that she feels comfortable making another.

Touching another amok to her brooch, she allows the sentimonster to take shape. A dark crow forms in front of her, waiting for instruction.

She holds her hands out to let it rest. “Find the Guardian. Find Tikki. That’s all. Do your best,” she whispers, kissing its forehead and letting it fly away.

A Cat hero in the shadows hears the words and frowns.

That’s not right.

---

Author’s Note: Crows are predators to turtles, you know.

Did I come up with some magical nonsense as to why Marinette can't use medication for the sake of angst? Yes. Yes I did.

This story might be moving faster than you were expecting, but I never intended for it to be as long as With Time. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

Stay safe, and have a wonderful day and night! ☀️🌙

#miraculous ladybug #fanfic #a shy 'sparrow'#marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #alya cesaire #Nino lahiffe #lila rossi #hurt marinette dupain cheng #peacock miraculous #peacock!marinette #duusu #side effects of broken miraculous #fainting #i don't usually tag people in updates #but they're the reason i posted today #i had been putting it off #but they were so nice

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randomoranges · 3 years

Text

sometimes you have conversations with your friends and your mind is just boggled.

also it’s @quatschmachen birthday so here, a birthday fic

Shovel

198?/199?

Étienne was comfortably nestled close to Edward, enjoying a rare snooze, when Edward’s body shifted. He grunted and slowly came to, before he opened bleary green-brown eyes. He glared at Edward who was now completely moving away from him and wondered what he had done to deserve such harsh treatment.

“Where’you going?” He slurred. He’d just been about to get into a deep sleep, Edward’s body heat lulling him to it and now it was ruined.

“Figured I’d get a head start on your shovelling. It’s been snowing non-stop.” Edward said as he motioned to the living room window, where snow continued to fall in fat flakes outside of it.

Étienne rolled his eyes and sighed. He was being dismissed for fucking snow. “We’ve been through this before; the city takes care of it.”

“Right, right,” Edward settled back for a moment and Étienne made himself comfortable again. They’d had a similar conversation a few years back. Edward had wanted to help Étienne shovel and Étienne had literally laughed in his face, telling him the city cleared the sidewalks. Edward had – not believed him, until he’d seen with his own eyes the city trucks come by and clear sidewalks and streets alike. He’d been – only a little bit jealous. Not that he’d ever told Étienne.

But then Edward sat up again, “Your walkway. I’ll go do your walkway.”The city didn’t clear that – it was private property and all. Edward made to get up, but Étienne was quick to grab him by the sleeve and pulled him back down.

“Murphy, Christ – I’ll take care of it tomorrow.” He would never understand Edward’s love affair with shovelling snow; especially when he was nice and cozy right next to Edward – and that it was late at night.

“But there’s going to be more of it tomorrow.” Edward believed it was best to shovel a few times, if needed, instead of doing it all in one shot. Especially when it accumulated and there was a lot of it.

Étienne sighed. His friend was dense when he wanted to. “Look – I promise it’ll be done tomorrow. It’ll take me twenty minutes, max. If not, you can berate me all you want. But for the love of God, just – let it be. The world won’t end because you didn’t fucking shovel at midnight.”

Edward opened his mouth to counter-argue the point, but then closed it when he saw the look of pure annoyance on Étienne’s face. It wouldn’t do to get in a spat so late at night – not when it had been such a good day – and night. “Fine; but I was only doing it ‘cause I know how allergic you are to the cold and the snow – I was trying to be nice.”

“Yes, I know, and it’s appreciated, but trust me – I got this.”

“Alright; but if I hear you complain even once about all the snow you need to shovel, I will never ever let you live it down.” Edward finally resettled for good and Étienne grunted in response as he grabbed Edward’s arm and snuggled up to his side.

Edward was sleeping soundly, when all of a sudden; he heard the noise of something wake him up. He rolled over in bed and went searching for Étienne’s body to poke awake to ask him what the hell was going on, but he found the spot beside him empty.

He groggily got out of bed and took notice of Étienne’s radio flashing bright blue lights that read 4h47am. He wondered where his friend was, why he’d been roused at this ungodly hour and headed towards the noise, hoping to find answers.

His feet brought him to the patio door and as he stood by it, he noticed that the lights in the backyard were on and that – there was someone in the backyard – pushing a – snow blower.

Edward blinked and rubbed his eyes, wondering if he wasn’t hallucinating, but sure enough, the figure continued to move, until it brought the snow blower back into the shed. For the briefest of moments, he thought maybe it was Étienne’s upstairs tenant, until Edward remembered that Étienne’s upstairs tenant was a middle-aged woman who had a bad hip and then the person turned.

Edward thought for sure this time he was hallucinating.

There was no way Étienne was actually outside. Or using a snow blower. Or clearing out the snow.

Yet, the figure outside pulled off its jacket’s hood and Edward would recognise that mop of curly hair anywhere. The Étienne-lookalike walked back towards the front door and sure enough, moments later, Edward heard the door open and the same figure from before stepped in.

Edward walked towards the entrance and watched, almost as if in a trance, as Étienne peeled off one layer after the next, until Edward had all the confirmation that he needed that it was indeed Étienne and not some pseudo-lookalike.

He had, so many questions.

“What the hell?” He asked, startling Étienne who hadn’t noticed him all throughout.

“Jesus, are you trying to give me a heart-attack? What’re you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same thing. What gives?”

Étienne walked towards him and Edward noticed his friend’s rosy cheeks and even more dishevelled hair, despite the lack of proper light in the apartment, given the time it was.

“I went to clear the snow.” Étienne answered with a shrug.

“At four in the fucking morning?!”

“Is there an actual appropriate time to clear snow? Are you the snow clearing expert?” He bit back.

Edward rolled his eyes at Étienne’s tone, “No – I just – wasn’t expecting you to actually go out there and do it – let alone with a snow blower.” He shrugged. He’d never really seen a point to one. Shovelling snow by hand was – cathartic. A way of life. A rite of passage. A snow blower was expensive. And bulky. And took up space. And it was noisy.

“Listen; not all of us like to suffer out in the cold and shovel for ages. It took me exactly twenty minutes to do just like I said. This is the sixth time this season it dumps over twenty-five centimeters of snow in one fall and it’s only December – I ain’t got the time nor the patience to go out and shovel every hour because it’s still snowing. Also, I couldn’t sleep and something told me you’d go out and shovel at like seven in the morning like some weird old man, so now it’s done.” Étienne walked past him and started heading back to the bedroom. Edward wordlessly followed him as his mind tried to make sense of everything his friend had just told him and everything else he’d just found out.

“First of all, wow, okay then, second of all – I’m still trying to comprehend the fact that you know how to function a snow blower.”

Étienne shrugged as he got back into bed and under the covers where it was nice and warm, “My former tenant would do it and I’d reduce their rent for it, but my new tenant can’t – someone’s gotta do it. Like I said – it’s faster and easier. I like to enjoy myself when I can, Murphy, we’re not all martyrs like you. I have enough issues with winter.” Étienne added with a grin that had more bite than humour.

Edward blinked. He ignored the jibe made at his expense – for now – and tried to wrap his head around all of this. “I never would’ve expected you to own, let alone know how to use, a snow blower.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just full of surprises. Now, will you actually get into bed or do you intent on staying up to catch the sunrise?”

Edward sighed and crawled back under the blankets. Étienne snuggled up to him and Edward hissed when his friend placed his cold hands and feet against his warm skin.

“You’re a menace.” He said as he tried to push away, but Étienne wouldn’t let him.

“You chose to sleep in my room, let me remind you.”

If Edward didn’t know Étienne as well as he did, he would have thought that he was being serious, but Edward liked to think that he knew Étienne quite well and thus, knew his friend was just teasing him.

“Yeah and it’s a good thing I did – otherwise you’d freeze to death.”

“Exactly,” Étienne chuckled, “Now, come here and let me warm up.”

With a resigned sigh, Edward scooted closer and Étienne wrapped himself around him until he found a comfortable enough position.

“Are you actually going to sleep or will you go out and build a snow fort in the next hour?” He asked, mock-serious.

“If you quit asking me a million questions, I might just be able to get some sleep.”

Edward rolled his eyes, amused, and finally settled in, just as Étienne did the same, all previous thoughts of snow, shoveling and snow blowers put aside. For now.

FIN

#pc: montreal #pc: edmonton #Edward Murphy #étienne maisonneuve #projocanondoko #fic

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mikenewtonhateblog · 4 years

Text

My oc’s aka too long of a gd post

The “BL” Crew (does not stand for boys love I’m just a moron who made that abbreviation before knowing what it stands for). My main crew and main series, a lot is a big WIP right now as I’m slowly redoing the first book and all the lore. Why? I love torture. Book is fantasy type but I won’t specify what.

Lacie, the protagonist. God tier idiot, bisexual bipolar depressed MESS, insomniac, former theater kid, doesn’t know what she wants out of life but currently it is not This(plot of book). Hot headed, impulsive, crude, rude, Mommy IssuesTM, would rather be taking a nap right now, rules are made to be broken, absolutely fucking FERAL, more bags under her eyes than the airport lost and found. 5’5, 130lbs, Aries, age 18, white as shit like literally the whitest human you have ever seen, strawberry blonde hair in a 2011 Hayley Willaims haircut with long bangs, the darkest brown eyes you’ve ever seen that stare directly into your soul. Lanky, no curves, body of a 12 year old boy but works out so she can and will kick your ass and thats a threat. Not human?

Josh. Soft boy, smart, Lacie’s cousin and only friend for like the first 18 years of her life, autistic anxious mess who’s special interest is anchient egyptian history, is in honors classes, despises math, passes out when his girlfriend looks too cute, just needs a hug. Can eat a whole carton of easy mac if left alone, whole wardobe is the same outfit just different colors/hoodies, sensory issues, seriously can someone give this guy a hug. 5’9, 150lbs, Pisces, age 18, mixed (half whatever flavor of white Lacie’s family is [they don’t even know its just some scandanavian shit and irish], and half mexican on his mom’s side), medium olive skin with freckles and moles, dark chocolate brown hair that’s a bit of a 2009 Beiber cut, warm brown eyes, not beefy, a lil thicc and self concious about it but squishy boys are GOOD. Gets bit by a werewolf so now he is one his mood on it is “thats a lot to unpack but let’s just throw the whole suitcase away”.

Zander. There is not one braincell in this man, himbo KING, pansexual dumbass with undiagnosed ADHD, no impulse control, head empty and full at the same time, PTSD, his fashion sense should be an actual crime, gets in fights to feel something, basic requirements for him to be attracted to you: kick his ass. Drinks his respect women juice, sees a folding table and must immediately launch himself on it, chaotic, cannot drive a car and will not, food aggression and eats enough for 3 people but never gains weight which is ILLEGAL, him and Lacie may be a couple.....but in this house we stan slow burn, he talks in caps and every sentence either ends with a question mark or exclaimation point, likes romcoms. 6’2, 190lbs, Sagittarius, age 19, austrailian roots and has the accent but is from [REDACTED FOR STORY REASONS], white, dorito shaped with long legs, blueish black hair that’s long and messy, dark navy eyes that match his hair, bigass neck scar from [REDACTED]. Not human

Peter. Gay dad friend who is TIRED of having to be in charge of a bunch of teenagers, only one with full functioning braincells, lowkey a genius who loves engineering, mixes magical technology with human technology because he likes to play god, is he ever sober? No one knows, will kill for a bottle of single malt, his fashion sense? Tastefully expensive suits perfectly tailored. Likes building his own weapons that no one else knows how to even use, generally non-threatening but can get scary if needed. 6’4, 140lbs string bean man, Scorpio, age 179 but looks early 30s, I know I said Lacie is the whitest human but he’s even paler like a literal sheet of paper with scandanavian roots/ancestors were vikings or some shit, blonde hair styled like 2013 Brendon Urie lmfao, light crystal blue eyes. He’s a vampire and was born one.

Danielle. Tiny, sweet, queen of girls supporting girls, comments on all her friends instagram posts with 20 emojis, LOVES fashion and has a wardrobe that would make anyone jealous, oozes feminine energy, only child and parents are in love still, gets exactly 8 hours of sleep each night and wakes up looking like a disney princess. Just because she is small and cute doesn’t mean you should underestimate her she WILL fuck your shit up. Quiet when angey which is terrifying. Josh is her bf and she loves him so much but also loves teashing the shit out of him. Legally cannot cuss, polite, used her high heels as a weapon once, speaks like 5 languages because studying them is her hobby, gardens, hugs everyone. 5’0, 110, Taurus, age 18, mixed (half french-american, half Korean-american), glowy skin always, PETITE frame aka the friend everyone can pick up when they hug, long past her waist curly brown hair, bright green eyes. She’s not fully human as she has fae blood in her and this gives her the ability to talk to and control plants. Flower crowns for everyone

Becca. Theater kid who would die to sing in Wicked and has the vocal range to do so, cannot wait to graduate and go to her dream college which she got into and a scholarship, closeted lesbian bc her whole giant family is extremely catholic and she feels like not dealing with it, “no boys allowed in bedroom” rule is her favorite joke, chill, middle child of 5 siblings and just wants some peace and quiet for ONCE. Her fashion sense is “I’m dropping subtle hints I’m gay but only to other gays”, has a black belt and took self defense classes. 5’6, 145lbs, Virgo, age 18, Latina (cuban and mexican mix), darker brown skin with light freckles over her nose, athletic build, eyebrows on POINT, bright caramel eyes, short light brown hair cut in a bob, has a tiny nose stud, always wears a blue friendship bracelet her gf made her. Human

Anika. Calling her a bitch/slut is a compliment, bisexual, a bit of a mean girl but she grows out of it give her time!!! Is always Too Much, the horny friend, favorite color is red so thats almost all of her outfits, loves to show off her body as much as she can because she’s hot and knows it and thrives in her own confidence. Her mom is literally like Regina George’s mom from Mean Girls but married a rich man 20 years older than her, Anika doesn’t know her bio dad but thats fine neither does her mom and her step dad is nice and does his best to be a dad. Becca’s gf, always hanging out at her home so Becca can get some quiet because Anika’s an only child and has a pool. 5’9, 135lbs, Gemini, age 18, white, long layered dark reddish brown hair, teal-blue eyes, swimmers body type (I normally do not mention bust size but she would want the internet to know she was blessed with big bahoogles so there you go), can sprint in heels. Half mermaid (boy was that a surprise considering her mom doesn’t know who her father is LOL)

Rex. Nb uses they/them he/him pronouns but honestly will respond to any, goth lite, only attracted to men and ace, can read minds so knows all your secrets, mischevious little shit, great friends with Zander and enjoys his dumbass thoughts and that he’s basically a human version of Jackass, wears too many rings, goth boots for kicking and fashion babey, always has the freshest memes and will not hesitate to roast in the group chat, hangs with the girls most of the time. Chaos god who loves making art, be gay do crime, skateboard and spraypaint. 5’8”, 165lbs, Leo, age 18, Native American, masculine frame, dark brown skin, blue eyes, firetruck red shoulder length hair that’s usually in a ponytail, knock-off gucci sunglasses just for judging their friends. Has magic in their blood so not entirely human and can cast spells and shit (don’t roast me its a wip and I’m doing my research)

Sam. Boho goddess, aromantic, makeup and nails are always instagram worthy, quiet and stoic type but losens up around close friends, Rex is her best friend, has some trauma and doesn’t want to talk about it, emotionally numbed out a bit and wants to purely vibe. Has seen some of the worst parts of humanity and wishes she hadn’t, finds no point in being bitter or resentful though because that won’t change anything, loves cats and once she moves out shes adopting one or three. Has wine aunt energy. 5’4, 200lbs PLUS SIZE QUEEN, Scorpio, age 18, Filipino (her parents are immigrants fun fact!), really olive skin sometimes has a grey/green tinge to it, dark brown almost black shoulder length hair, gold-hazel eyes. Sam’s the victim of a family curse that requires her to consume human hearts to survive, she can transform into a pretty scary looking being and uses this curse to hunt down pedoph*les, r*pists, murderers, and abusers. The less often she feeds the less human she looks, hence the constant grey/green tinge to her skin.

Andy. Baby of the group, must be protected at all costs, 100% didn’t sign up to be in a friendgroup of 90% monsters but highkey loves it, trans, bi, anxiety MAXED, just wants to draw comics and cosplay spiderman, has to babysit his two younger sisters a lot because his parents are....not great, and as a result now knows all the lines to Tangled and The Little Mermaid. Big nerd energy, has to draw on everything including homework, gets inspiration for comics from his friends, awkward and socially anxious, drinks way too much tea and will accidentally steal your pens. Fears include: crowds, thunder, tall angry men, tiny spaces. Just trying his best. 5’2, 100lbs BEANPOLE BOY, Leo, age 16, white (irish and scottish roots), freckles absolutely EVERYWHERE, orangey red hair thats in desperate need of a haircut, chocolate brown eyes, braces, chronic nail biter. Human and kinda wishes he wasn’t.

That’s it for now if you read all this bless u thank u here is my whole heart. Please no discourse, literally these are fictional people I’ll never publish the books they go to.

#no i am not looking for critiques on them #i get my critiques elsewhere lmao #my ocs

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