#i like Structure but also its like weeks until the semester starts so we got time. im just a lil nuts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rubyinasnuggie · 3 years

Text

Random Headcanons No One Asked For:

-Both Ruby and Weiss are left handed

--Yang was 100% prepared to tease them about it when Blake very pointedly uses her left hand to write something

--Blake is ambidextrous

--which makes Yang the only right-handed one on the team

--until the fall of beacon oops

-Ren is fully color blind

--once baby Nora figured that out, she made it her mission to explain to him what colors are based on other sensations (sue me I love this trope)

--she describes pink as the quiet comfort they share in each other's presence

--Ren finally sees color for the first time when his semblance upgrades, and he can finally see the pink petals with Nora

-Blake likes to climb on things and find random nooks and crannies to read

--it turns into a game of reverse hide-and-seek when someone needs her: depending on how urgent it is the entire squad will drop everything and look for her

-team STRQ won the Vytal tournament their first year, specifically Summer was the champion

--Yang was more upset about the disqualification than she'd ever admit, because she secretly imagined Summer was out there somewhere watching the tournament, proud of her babies

-Tai pulled himself out of his depression by gardening: having a routine helped him, so he encouraged baby Ruby and Yang to get similar gentle hobbies

-Ruby raises chickens at home

--she very lovingly feeds them corn and calls them her ladies

--Yang affectionately calls them creatures and cluckers and other such rude things to get a rise out of Ruby

-Ruby deeply wants a cow

--this is her one and only retirement dream

--although honestly she can never imagine herself living past her 20s

-Yang struggled with picking a hobby, she gets bored easily and hates the expected

--its only post-Beacon that she understands the benefits of a routine

--thats why she ends up with a ton of chores, just some structure to help her through the day

-Ruby will drink any type of milk, but Strawberry milk is her favorite

-Sun is allergic to bananas but he doesn't know

--he thinks bananas are supposed to be spicy

-Weiss loves sour apple

-Pyrrha loves chocolate almonds

-Yang thinks fish are creepy, she just generally doesn't love the ocean

--she thinks Neptune is a little clown though

-Oscar gets dressed by putting on his left sock, left boot, then his right sock and right boot

--RNJR made it their mission to interrupt him during this just to see him walk around with one boot on

-Ruby likes to bake, it's one of the few solid memories she has of her mom

--one night Weiss was feeling homesick and Ruby taught her how to make mug cakes

--"its probably not that good compared to your cake butler, but it's pretty simple, and I like them!"

--Weiss secretly makes them at least once a week, even back home in Atlas

-Weiss has taken flight lessons, at one point Ironwood really pushed for her to become a pilot in the military

-Blake has a field journal of the different types of Grimm she's encountered

--team RWBY & JNPR have spent several nights sitting in a circle talking and adding to the journal

--while traveling across Anima, Ruby sketched and took notes on all the Grimm she saw, just in case she ever found Blake again

-Weiss collects rocks

--no, not crystals. actual rocks

--shes rarely spent time in the real outside, but whenever she has, she picks up little rocks and puts them in her pocket before anyone can see

-Jaune never actually stopped writing left and right on the bottom of his shoes actually

-Weiss had never been allowed to paint her nails as a kid, she'd always get weekly French manicures instead

--by the second semester at Beacon, Ruby, Weiss, Nora, and Ren would have weekly manicure nights where they'd paint each other's nails

--there were several times they'd rope the rest of the teams into it, especially during the Vytal tournament where they'd write team names on their nails

--during the singles round they'd write Yang on one hand and Pyrha on the other

--"we couldn't make it fit without cutting one of the R's!"

-Pyrrha and Weiss became each other's default plus one's for fancy events, to the point people began to speculate that the two were dating

--Jaune was somehow jealous of them both and it was very confusing to him since he had poor self awareness

-Yang cuts Ruby's hair, but after she lost her arm she lost the fine motor skills to do a good job, so Blake started to do it

-Blake is always there to help Yang with her phantom pains and residual limb pain

--she helps massage Yang's arm while leaning close and purring

--Yang cried the first time Blake did this because she's not used to being taken care of

-Nora never gets sick and is the designated nurse when a bug goes around the teams

--the electricity incident was the first time Nora has ever been bed-ridden

-Weiss took ballet as a child

-Jaune is actually pretty good at the guitar

-Pyrrha is not musically inclined at all its a miracle she managed to do the iconic JNPR shine dance

--jk but actually she's a decent dancer when she has the steps choreographed for her but she has no natural rhythm

-in the last few months before Pyrrha's death, she and Jaune would waltz on top of the roof together

--there were several almost kisses

--maybe a few successful kisses who knows

-there are occasions (obv extremely rare) when Ren actually takes the bulk of the energy from Nora

--this leads to thrilling game nights where Ren makes multiple 40pt remnant-equiv-of-scrabble plays while Nora naps

-Oscar is the only person who can beat Ren in scrabble, although it's very closely matched

-Oscar is amazing at chess and will play it against himself like a little square

-Yang and Ruby are experts at the tabletop war game they play in the library

--9 times out of 10, the winner is one of them

-Oscar is the only one who also knew about Compost King, which was very exciting for Jaune

--Compost King is a common game night activity while they were in Haven because its so hard to say no to Oscar

-Yang is a straight-A student and has always been

-Blake never had any formal education and she finds a lot of the classes incredibly dull or ineffective at teaching the material

--she's always the one convincing Yang to skip a class and lie in the sun-warmed grass with her

--she still gets Bs easily

-Oscar is a very fast reader and will devour any book he's given

--his aunt would frequently bring home books from town just to keep him entertained

-Ruby has suffered from migraines and nightmares her entire life, post-Beacon they only got worse

-Weiss shops at local dust stores whenever she can, even though she could get shipments for free

--however she does have Ron Swanson's "I know more than you" energy when she's shopping

-Blake and Ren will sometimes take naps together

--not cuddling, just occupying the same general space

--wake them up at your own risk

-if Ruby isn't engaged with something, she can start to scatter and dissolve into rose petals

--its a very slow process and someone has always snapped her out of it before she's fully vanished, but Yang is worried about what would happen if no one caught her in time

-Ren is afraid of horses

-Blake hates being cold

-Yang naturally radiates heat cause semblance duh

-Weiss glued the tiniest gravity crystals to the underside of Ruby's bed to ensure it never falls

-JNPR likes to push their beds all together so they can sleep in one big pile

-Nora can only sleep if she's holding someone's hand

Hope u guys enjoyed! These are in no particular order, sorry that I kinda jumped around a lot 😅

Feel free to reblog and add your own ideas and headcanons! ❤

#rwby #jnpr #oscar pine #ruby rose #jaune arc #weiss schnee #nora valkyrie #blake belladonna #pyrrha nikos #yang xiao long #lie ren #rwby headcanons #rwby headcanon #rwby thoughts #bumbleby #renora #rwby redesign #long post #im sorry

782 notes · View notes

coffeeandcalligraphy · 3 years

Text

A chatty writing update | novels, short fiction, etc!

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I last wrote an update on this blog! I thought it’d be fun to go back to basics, and just talk about writing. This post chats about: new plans for Feeding Habits, my newest novel, my short story goals & growing collection, along with process reflections.

(image description: a photo of green leaves with the text “writing update” in a white font written on top. /end image description)

Post starts under the cut!

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed)

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting, @aetherwrites, @avakrahn, @maisulli

What have I been up to?

For starters, I finished my second year of my Writing undergrad last week and got two of my final grades back today (A+ baby)! For anyone who has taken online university, y’all already KNOW, but this year was so difficult. Would not recommend! Really proud of myself to have gotten through this absolute rollercoaster of a school term and am excited to get into some writing. That leads us to:

What have I been up to (writing edition)?

2021 started off so fast. By the time January hit, I was so consumed in my new semester that I did not have time to write Feeding Habits (my novel). In the first few days of the term, I managed to write between class, until I could no longer keep up! Essentially, I did not write any of that novel until exam season (last week), where I did manage to get in about 3k words in ~4 days.

Feeding Habits

I’m currently drafting what I believe will be the last chapter of this book (chapter 10: Swan Song). This chapter is so bizarre for a few reasons. It begins the book’s third part and also marks the shift back into Lonan’s head from Harrison’s. I originally thought this part would be much, much longer, with at least another five chapters to go, but quickly realized the book’s content was nearly completed. In my 4 day 3k palooza, I hit 50k in the book (the word count goal), and couldn’t see myself extending past 60k. Since then, I’ve made the loose decision to write this final chapter as a ~novella. Here are a few reasons why:

1. This chapter is structurally very strange.

I unashamedly shift from present to past to present to past past, and so much more every 12 words. I mapped out the timeline on a sheet of paper, and there were over 20 shifts in scenes (the chapter is only about 4400 words at the moment). The fictive past is incredibly important to this chapter, more important than the present, and I thought it would make more sense to not break randomly for a chapter so I could upkeep the consistent inconsistency of the chapter.

2. The chapter is very abstract

This stems from the structural changes, but there are paragraphs in this chapter of the fictive present that are loosely based in reality. They’re more poems than they are factual paragraphs, and keeping them all contained in one place (so a mega chapter/ novella) would reduce the most confusion!

3. There’s not much left to cover

Like I said above, Feeding Habits is on its last leg, lol! I know exactly where the book needs to end up, which is very, very soon from where I’m currently at on the timeline. Swan Song should cover what 2-4 chapters would cover in terms of arcs.

Feeding Habits and I have a really weird relationship, tbh! When I realized a few weeks ago that it’d been over a year since I started the book, I realized I just needed to finish it. Not that I want to rush (because I’ve taken longer than a year to write a book in the past), but that in order to move onto another project, I’d like to put this one behind first. This book has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and has reminded me there’s always a time to let go. This sort of scrounges up a conversation about letting this entire series go, which is certainly something I’ve been contemplating doing soon(ish). If this spinoff series gets a third book, that may or may not be the last Fostered book for a very long time (or ever)! There are many complex reasons to move on, but the main one is that I have other projects I’d like to focus on. This is not a definitive decision, but something I’ve certainly been thinking about!

Here are a few excerpts I wrote recently:

(TW: death, gore)

Dying feels like being a trout dangled out of water. Clinging to a hook. Mouth open. Scales iridescent in a final death cry. It’s like blood spurting up the knuckles, drowning out the flesh. It’s that moment on the long fall down when the clouds cup the body. Easy drifting. The sound a skull makes when it cracks is really just the afterthought.

(TW: death, gore)

Kill shot. Death blow. Coup de grace. Right in the heart. He feels it. The blood swelling, slicking his palms. He can do it. Reach into the cavity. Feel for the ribs. Part each bone. Then cup the humming heart. Stay there. Right. It’s never been easier.

Look at this PURE moment of Lonan holding a baby I CANNOT:

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds. The evening air nipped his cheeks, so he made sure Olivia was securely fastened between him and his jacket. With wide eyes, she absorbed the drowsy suburbia, all its family cars pulling into driveways, all its couples heading back home after a sunset walk. When Lonan passed a young boy walking two golden retrievers, Olivia giggled, and didn’t stop, even after he’d spent fifty dollars on groceries and nearly the rest on a red Corolla marked with a MUST GO NOW sign outside a convenience store.

Let’s move on!

Mandy and Cora

I said I wouldn’t talk too much about this project, but I just love it so much?? I wanted to share my SUPER early thoughts on drafting a novel, especially one that is SO different from what I’ve been writing recently. I talked about this before in THIS post, but the summary about this project is that it’s a YA contemporary novel! Can’t believe I’m writing YA again, it’s been so long, but I also think it’s going so well. Everything I’ve learned as a literary fiction writer has been a fantastic primer for transferring back to the genre. Admittedly, I have not written much, but I’m having a lot of fun diving back into a lighter project. This is the summary:

Cora and Mandy are identical twins who’ve always done everything together. But when Mandy decides to go to university out of province after graduation and Cora doesn’t, Cora takes this as an opportunity to “test run” life apart from her sister for the first time by spending the summer at her aunt’s house across the country.

I have come up with a few ~things since I last talked about this project, mostly how I’d like to structure it. As of now, I’d like the book to be structured super loosely. I’m really pulling on a lot of inspo from “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour (which is SO good), particularly how “nothing happens-y” that book is. This project (which I still need a title for!!) will be structured in short chapters that cover something Cora does on her own for the first time (without Mandy). For example, a few ideas are “Flight”, “Lunch”, and “Groceries”. “Flight” is the first “chapter” (they’re really kind of vignettes) where Cora flies to her aunt’s house. I still can’t determine if this book will take place in Canada. On one hand, I feel like there will be a wider audience if it takes place in the US (is that just an assumption??? maybe?? someone let me know!), but also: don’t really care too much about an audience at the moment! It could also take place in Canada (So Ontario and British Columbia). But if it does take place in the US, I think it may take place in NYC and San Francisco. The problem is: I really don’t like researching lol, and while I’ve been to NYC many times, I will definitely write it wrong! Does this really matter on a first draft?? absolutely not lol, but of course I am already overthinking!

But back to structure: I am looking forward to seeing what this looser structure will do. This is a story that is solely around one half of a set of twins learning to be her own person (and ultimately that she doesn’t have to completely forget her sister in order to do that), and as a twin who KNOWS this feeling, I think this structure of her doing things for the first time is SUPER relatable.

I was worried it might sound silly/worrying to others who are not twins that Cora hadn’t done things like “lunch” or “groceries” on her own, but I feel this so much as an identical twin myself! Not that she hasn’t done anything at all by herself, but as a twin, when you do something without your twin for the first few times, at least in my experience, you notice. If any twins are reading this--weigh in!

This story is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It definitely is an OwnVoices book! Usually, I avoid details that are remotely similar to me because they make me uncomfortable haha, but with this book, it’s all me, lol! The characters are all Guyanese, which is SO fun because I’ve been planning what they eat (my fellow Caribbean peeps know: the FOOD!), which is so fun (yes they have pumpkin and shrimp, yes they have roti, yes they have pera, yes they have mithai). Every time I’ve gone to dabble at this book, or even think about it, I get incredibly emotional for this reason? I don’t exactly know why. I think this is a story I just so want to tell, with the culture I love SO much that I definitely struggled to love as a child. This is reclamation bitchessss!

Not going to lie tho: the prospect of writing ~a book~ is kind of freaky! I’m going to make the minimum word count for this book pretty short (50k) and see where it goes from there. I think I will focus on this project this summer! Originally I was going to write a literary novel this summer, but I think this one’s calling my name!

Here’s a pretty rough excerpt:

Try. I remind myself that’s what I’m doing after the flight attendant fills me a disposable cup of Coca Cola and all I can think of is Mandy and I shoving Mentos into a bottle of the stuff when we were twelve. Just me, wedged in the middle seat between an exchange student heading out for summer break and a middle-aged woman sipping a cocktail, thinking of Mandy and I bursting whole oranges in a blender when we were bored one Winter break as the plane dips through a wave of turbulence. Mandy and I dying our hair neon green with highlighters (didn’t work—our hair is too dark) as the plane lands on the tarmac. Mandy and I arguing so loud last month, we both lost our voices as I lug my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and shuffle off the plane and through the airport, searching for Aunt Vel.

Short Fiction

I’ve written so much short fiction this year! I have a goal to write a short story a month (they can range in length, as long as 1 is “complete”), so my short story brain has seriously been soaking it all up lately. Let’s chat my month to month breakdown so far:

January:

I wrote four stories in January! The first is a flash fiction piece called “Shark Swimming” that follows a young woman who attends a shark swimming class after breaking up with her girlfriend. I wrote this story for a “test” workshop for my fiction class, and it was based off the prompt “think about something you’re afraid to do and make the character do that thing”. I’m not particularly afraid of sharks, but had been wanting to use the title “Shark Swimming” for AGES (literally since 2018).

This story is one of my favourites. It’s only about 900 words, but I think there’s something profound in how mundanely specific it is. The entire story doesn’t even see the narrator swim with sharks once; it actually takes place fully in the sanctuary’s lobby. But I really love this narrator. This is the first story I’ve written in second person in a while, though I felt really connected to the unnamed narrator. She struggles with accepting that she truly is a “boring” person, and there’s something about the final image that really gets me!

I’ve been submitting this around, though it’s been rejected a handful of times. Hoping I can secure it at a magazine one day because I really love it!

The second story is “Joanne, I’ll Pray for You” which is actually a rewrite of one of my very first short stories (the first story I did not write for a class haha), “NYC in Your Apartment”. I LOVE this rewrite a lot, and also learned the original is not a very good short story! Revising this story taught me just how much I’ve learned in the 2 years I’ve been writing short fiction. Seeing the 2019 version versus the 2021 version side by side is fascinating because I essentially “gutted’ the 2019 version of its beginning and end until all that was left was the middle of the story (aka the actual story). AKA: this is the only story I’ve ever written with a hopeful ending and I cut out all the happy bits lol I am SO sorry (that arc is more for a novel or novella). That’s how this went from a 5k word story to an 1800 word story (my Submittable thanks me for this lol). A lot of details and scenes I included were more pertinent to a 3 act structure/novel, which of course short stories don’t often have because of their brevity. I love rambling about writing theory, and seeing that actually pay off is so fascinating!

(TW: trauma)

Like the original, this story follows Joanne, a woman in her early twenties, who spontaneously breaks up with her boyfriend. She claims the poltergeist haunting her drove her to this decision. The original draft focused a lot more on the traumatic events Joanne survives, but this draft really loosens them up. It focuses less so on the events themselves, and more on how Joanne’s life is affected. I found the details of these events were less important, and even sort of contradicted Joanne’s insistence she is being haunted. Instead, the poltergeist really takes more precedence in the new draft as a force Joanne doesn’t understand. That ambiguity, I think, is what the story truly needed.

I also centralized Joanne’s relationship with her boyfriend, Julian, here. Now don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t add anything to this draft. It was a matter of trimming the fat around it to leave the lean “meat” in the centre. But by removing that fat, I was able to emphasize what was most important here, and that was her relationship. Julian always played a really big role in the original draft, but I feel like his role as both a friend and partner to Joanne is much more emphasized since this draft literally is only two scenes now. Because there is less, there is more room for Joanne to reflect, which I’m happy about!

A final change I made was the setting and therefore the title. The original, which was “NYC in Your Apartment,” I couldn’t keep because I shifted the setting to Toronto (this is how I originally saw it, but in 2019 I just?? couldn’t?? write?? canlit??), and “Toronto in Your Apartment” sounded sort of gross LOL. The new title comes from a line in the story which I think is more relevant to the themes!

The next short story I wrote in January was “How to Spell Alpaca.” This one is super fun because I wrote it SO fast (in about 15 minutes or so). THIS is the writing update if you’re interested in learning more. I talked extensively about this one in that update, but some developments are that I dove into an edit a few weeks ago to really understand the core of the story. I’m still not quite there (this is just an intuitive feeling; I know not everything has “clicked), but I am really intrigued by the two mothers in the story, the narrator, and her newfound acquaintance, Violet. Both really struggle to understand their place as mothers (the narrator even declares she isn’t a mother anymore). The narrator, who is in her 50s, sees herself in Violet, who is much younger (~20s), and so she views Violet’s relationship with her daughter in a cautionary, yet mournful way, like she can see it will end up like her own relationship with her daughter, despite wanting the opposite. This is a really subtle story. I feel like if you blink, you’ll miss the message. But I think it’s compelling for that reason. It’s really a portrait of parenting and how to grapple with mistakes you may make that inevitably affect your children. Wow just unlocked the theme writing this lol.

The final story I wrote in January is “The Party,” which may be in my top 3 faves I’ve ever written. This story follows Aida, a recent divorcee in her ~40s. The day her divorce turns official, she moves into a new house and receives a party invitation addressed to the previous homeowner, yet RSVP’s anyway. At this party, she’s hoping to find some sense of noticeability, having struggled with being nondescript her whole life. Things seem quite normal at the party, until it gets bizarre.

I LOVE this story, y’all. Like “How to Spell Alpaca” it really delves into motherhood. Aida, our narrator, is incredibly hurt after her divorce. She now lives farther from her children she struggled to feel connected to in the first place, and doesn’t really know how to reignite her life. This party is a means to do that. This is the first story I’ve written that contains a “twist” which is strange because I really prefer stories that give us as much info as possible upfront, but yes, this one sort of twists.

February

I wrote one story in February, and that was “Protect the Young.” This title is SO changing when I think of a new one because it’s thematically incorrect, haha, but this story follows a woman in her late 40s whose daughter, Lindy, announces she is married the same day all their backyard chickens turn up dead. The discovery of dead chickens prompts our narrator to recall her ex-husband’s murder and the role her daughter may have played in his death.

I love this story so much! I think this would make a great closing for my short story collection. It just has that vibe! I wrote this for my second fiction workshop. I thought I had to hand in the story a week earlier than I had to, so I panicked and wrote this in one sitting! Little did I know, I did not need to do that lol but I’m very happy because this story is so fun. We get to learn more about Arnold (her ex), his relationship with Lindy, and how that translates to Lindy’s relationship with her new husband, Malcolm. I LOVE true crime (I listen to about 3-4 hours of case coverage daily), and this is my first “true crime” story. Because of that, I’m very sus of a few details that probably wouldn’t slide in actual investigatory work, so I’ll also be working on that in a revision. My professor also gave me a great suggestion that may alter the story’s structure a bit, though I look forward to toggling with it in the future.

March

In March, I was really on a Criminal Minds kick lol. I’ve been watching this show since I was seven (oops), and dove into a rewatch since it hit Disney+! This story, “Where to Run When the Lamb Roars,” is very clearly Rachel watching 5 episodes of CM a day. Oops! We follow 14-year-old Astrid as she and her older half brother kidnap a young girl to sacrifice for their yearly ritual.

I knew a few things going into this story, but the main thing was that I did NOT want to show any details of a potential murder (if one even occurs). I really wanted to keep all of those elements off the page because this story is not about those events, but about Astrid’s relationship with her brother. They are a murderous duo, with Astrid actually being the dominant partner. I wanted to explore that. I knew her brother, Fox, was more of a submissive partner in their team, even when he used to do this same thing with his father when he was much younger (chilling!), and so it was a task to explore how this young girl’s desire for violence works. The end actually comes right before the story starts, one could say, but I like it for this reason. It really made me contemplate the story by the time I finished it, and helped me examine what it really was about versus what it appeared to be about.

April

(TW: sexual content, non explicit)

I was so busy this month! Who knows if I’ll write a story last minute, but I did write one story this month called “Five Times Fast.” I wrote this during a “writing sprint” that was being hosted at a flash fiction workshop I recently took with one of my favourite writers ever, K-Ming Chang. I learned so much from this class, and am so happy I came out of it with a draft! This story is just over 300 words, so the shortest flash I’ve ever written, but I’m really happy with it. It was based off the prompt “describe the last time you or your character was naked.” In this case, the narrator has a “friends with benefits” relationship with Ricky who works at a laundromat. This story highlights a moment in this relationship (and also Ricky’s goofy personality lol). I really like it! Hopefully I’ll submit it to some magazines soon.

My short story collection

Very briefly I wanted to touch on my short story collection which I’ve titled “She is Also Dead.” I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this, so look out for that in the coming months, but this collection is already at around 35k words (about 14 stories so far). The collection also surprisingly has a solid amount of flash fiction which is kind of fun! There’s definitely a range here, which is what I personally love in short story collections.

I feel very professional now that I have a ~collection chart. This is her:

(image description: A chart with the title “She is Also Dead.” It is broken into four columns: Story, Status, Word Count, and Published. Entry 1 - Story: Slaughter the Animal. Status: Revisions, Word Count, 3982, Published: N/A. Entry 2 - Story: Joanne, I’ll Pray for You, Status: Polished, Word Count: 1809, Published: N/A. Entry 3 - Story: Primary Organs, Status: Published, Word Count: 2342, Published: The Malahat Review. Entry 4 - Story: Faberge, Status, Polished, Word Count: 619, Published: N/A. Entry 5 - Story: The Wolf-Antelope Will Not Come for Us, Status, Polished, Word Count: 1556, Published: filling Station (forthcoming). Entry 6 - Story: How to Spell Alpaca, Status: revisions, Word Count: 1327, Published: N/A. Entry 7 - Story: Blink Twice for Final Judgement, Status: Polished, Word Count: 6572, Published: N/A. Entry 8 - Story: The Species is Dead, Status: Published, Word Count: 1208, Published: Minola Review. Entry 9 - Story: Shark Swimming, Status: Polished, Word Count: 907, Published: N/A. Entry 10 - Story: The Party, Status, Polished, Word Count 2339, Published: N/A. Entry 11 - Story: Fig, Status: Polished, Word Counter: 947, Published: N/A. Entry 12 - Story: Protect the Young, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4128, Published: N/A. Entry 13 - Story: Where to Run When the Lamb Roars, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 2174, Published: N/A. Entry 14 - Story: Phantom Limbs, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4844, Published: N/A.) /end image description.

This order is DEFINITELY not permanent (at this point whenever I write a story, I just fit it randomly into this chart lol), and some of the info is outdated (for example, Slaughter the Animal is now polished!!! thank god!!!). But just an idea of what I’m thinking of including.

This is the summary so far:

In SHE IS ALSO DEAD, characters are pushed to act on their gravest impulses. A small town turns murderous when their local invasive species, the Janices, begin dying. A child struggles to understand her mother’s suicide. A college dropout who insists she’s being haunted by a poltergeist unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend. A mother acknowledges her daughter’s murderous tendencies after her backyard chickens mysteriously die. A young girl caters the funeral of a girl rumored to be killed by a wolf-antelope. A newly-divorced mother RSVP’s to a bizarre party she was not invited to, and a murderous brother and sister upkeep their yearly tradition of abducting a young girl. These stories follow characters who navigate death, violent desires, womanhood, and loss, both self-imposed and otherwise.

This is also so subject to change as I may pull and add stories to the collection!

I think I’m going to leave this update here for now! I’ve written TONS of poetry too, but I honestly ~hate my poetry right now lol, so! Hope you enjoyed this chill rambly update. Hope writing has going well for you all! All the best!

--Rachel

#writing #writeblr #writerblr #amwriting #writingupdates

56 notes · View notes

thebooki3h · 3 years

Text

Lukadamianette Au Part 2

First Here Next

We begin where we left off, with Luka and Marinette on one of the dates Luka Planned. Just because it makes sense in this, Luka and Mari arrive a week early

Because Mari is emancipated and excused herself for the first week of school before the trip during which the class is still in France bc they just ended summer and all that jazz. also I have decided that the trip has turned into a half semester exchange program even though this doesn’t make the most sense, but the French school thought the class could use a reward and tbh they just wanted to get the Akuma class out for awhile. Also this way they aren’t in Gotham for a whole semester of senior year. The trip is planned for the first half of the first semester of senior year. I know that this doesn't make a whole lot of sense but just stick with me.

They go sight seeing and basically on a week long date bc the following week begins the Wayne sponsored exchange program and when Luka has to work for Jagged. One day they go to museums, the next the go to famous parks around Gotham (which are thriving thanks to Poison Ivy), the next they see all of the famous villain spots (which are surprisingly popular tourist destinations bc for the most part they don’t get hit twice in short periods of time) which is a good cover for studying past bat battles. They take days in between to rest and use the inspiration they gained to make new songs or clothing designs.

They share hotel room bc Mari’s parents stopped being her parents a long time ago and lost their say and bc Jagged says they are grown up enough to be responsible for their actions (which brings a blush to their cheeks every time bc “daaaaaddddd” “uncle jaggeeedddd”)

Mari also makes it her mission to visit all of the non chain coffee shops at least once while they are there bc coffee became her best friend when she was active as ladybug. She meets Tim in almost everyone because Tim also drinks coffee obsessively. Luka is more of a tea drinker because coffee interrupts his musical thought process and tea is less harsh. Marinette drinks tea when she wants to relax but coffee is the fuel of the gods. She expresses this to Tim and that's how they become acquainted bc finally someone understands his love for coffee. They exchange numbers after they run into each other for a fourth time. (Luka silently thinks that he might have to talk to Mari about her obsession of coffee again and if there is a rehab center for coffee drinkers) Tim learns that Mari is from the exchange class very quickly based off of Luka’s French accent as well as her light French accent that is mixed with a couple things he can’t quite place.

The class arrives, Lila ofc tried to pull something to leave Mari behind and she thought she was successful so she was gloating. She ofc took credit for the whole trip claiming that she was super close to the Waynes and that she helped Damian acclimate to his new school (she actually knows that Damian didn’t start living with his father until 10 bc why not). Mrs Bustier tries to check in under both her name and Lila’s name, both of which don’t work because they are A) an hour and a half early and B) all of the reservations are under the contest winners name (they have to ok their chaperones to use their name) C)Mrs Bustier told Mari to make all of the reservations under Mari’s name anyway and she totally forgot that.

So the sit in the lobby for an hour, Lila has the whole class riled up bc Marinette isn't there and it is al her fault that they can’t get in to their rooms. Marinette shows up with Luka 15 mins before the class was supposed to show up (they had just gotten lunch at a cafe that jagged had recommended) and she is laughing and happy, which causes the class to BLOW UP in her face. She ignores them and checks everyone into their rooms. Kagami and Chloe share a suite bc they are rich in their own right and upgraded their shared room bc they are dating and signed up to be roommates. They got this okayed by Buister in writing JIC. Marinette as the contest winner also got a suite (the room she had been staying in with Luka that she just extended the booking for)

Lila and Alya obviously make a big fuss about them getting special treatment but bustier can’t do anything because Mari won’t let her. She secretly thinks Mari is a lost cause now but she tries her best to get her to see that she has to be a role model. Mari actually planned the whole trip and she did a fucking fantastic job bc its Mari and planning something is what she is great at. She has all of the bases covered including iternerary, bookings for food, emergency contact info, health info, info on Gotham, safety procedures and the whole shebang. All of which had to be approved by Bustier and that Bustier has copies of but totally ignored.

The next day they try to pull the let’s leave an hour early to leave behind Marinette stunt. Not only does that fail because the tour can’t start until the contest winner is there, but they arrived before Wayne tower was even open to the public. Because jagged is extra he shipped Luka and Marinette motorcycles to Gotham bc they were going to be there for a couple months, they also got special permission from Wayne enterprises to park their bikes in the employee parking structures from Tim once he heard that they rode bikes as expensive as Jason’s. So she left early from the hotel with Luka(bc she knew that Bustier would leave her behind somehow) to go meet up with Tim at a new coffee place (one of his favorites). They end up riding on their respective bikes to WE together so they can hang out before the tour. Luka goes to a recording studio to meet up with Jagged, but not before a very passionate kiss goodbye, which makes Tim blush. (Tim may not seem like the biker type but he is a bat and he lives with Jason so he not only knows how to ride a motorcycle well has one, so it may not be his favorite mode of transportation but he’ll live)

So he and Marinette walk to WE about a half an hour before the class is supposed to be there in the middle of a debate on how best to brew coffee (Mari insists its French press) and low and behold they are there yelling at the receptionist. Mari gives Tim a look that says I’m so sorry you have to see this and yes I was not exaggerating walks up to the receptionist and apologizes for what she is about to do (not for the classes actions bc fuck them they can apologize for themselves she has learned to not take responsibility for others actions and she won’t let all that work go to waste). She then proceeds to yell, much louder than someone of her stature presumably should “SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I STG I WILL BREAK JOKER OUT OF ARKHAM AND LOCK HIM IN A ROOM WITH ALL OF YOU WITHOUT FLINCHING” this is shocking to everyone, especially mrs bustier who is scandalized that her role model student would do something like this.

Tim had a feeling that something video worthy would happen so as soon as she walked away he started recording, and he was NOT disappointed. The video gos straight to the batfam gc and Luka immediately. He powered off his phone then he proceeds to start laughing and applauding. Upon seeing the CEO’s reaction the rest of the employees start applauding as well bc damn those kids were rude. Tim then walks up to Mari talking at a speed no one but Mari, Chloe and Kagami could understand (bc the class is not fluent in English no matter what they would tell you). Mari proceeds to blush once he informs her that he sent a video to Luka (he does not tell her about the batfam gc)

Chloe and Kagami are immediate intrigued bc this is NOT what they picture when Mari said she met someone who loves coffee as much as she does. they may be hella gay for each other but damn that man is ripped. They join the convo while the class remains befuddled bc who knew Mari even swore. in the back of his mind Nino is reminded of a young blue-eyed girl who lost playground privileges for a week bc someone made fun of his glasses and proceed to punch said someone in the nose. But he shakes it of because Mari hasn’t been like that in years.

Bustier eventually collects herself and gently, so as not to cause an Akuma (apparently she didn't get the memo), reminds Mari that they are here for a tour and she needs to get the class their passes. So Mari leaves her friends to get acquainted and goes up to the receptionist, to whom she apologizes for her actions again, and the receptionist replies with a laugh and a “honey, you just made my week, there's no need to apologize I should be thanking you” (she does thank Mari). Mari gets a special pass bc she’s the contest winner to which Lila and Alya (then the rest of the class for the most part) proceed to throw a hissy fit over. The receptionist is so over them though and doesn’t even blink.

Then their tour guide shows up. (its Dick and his assistant Damian). Damian proceeds to scold the class for a solid ten mins (which coincidentally leads up to their scheduled time to start the tour). Dick slides off to talk to the receptionist and his brother who isn't working and is talking to real people for once. Just for that they are his favorite out of the class. Tim unfortunately has to go to work so they talk to Dick to get acquainted until the tour has to officially start.

Los tres amigos are the only ones who pay attention to Dick at all (he leads the tour bc he’s been there the longest but Damian throws in a comment here or there mostly related to shenanigans his family has gotten into but overall useful facts. for example these windows are reinforced because our CEO (Tim) leaned up against one, fell asleep and fell through the window to the office below.)

The rest of the class is focused on Lila who is talking a whole bunch of nonsense about the Wayne family and how she has helped them with their business. Some things actually sound kinda legit, but Mari and Co. know that it is BS. Dick tries to bet bustier involved but she makes an excuse for Lila and goes on her phone and doesn’t really pay attention.

Eventually the class tour turns into Dick talking to Mari, Chloe and Kagami while the class vaguely follows them. Damian doesn’t really say anything because he generally doesn’t do well talking to strangers and these girls seem ok and he is still insecure (not that he would ever admit it to anyone ) about social interaction now that he has figured out how people who weren’t raised as assassins act. That is until Dick starts talking about shenanigans that his brothers get into, and Damian jumps in correcting him because I did not try to tackle Todd, Grayson I did tackle Todd quite successful and also Alfred won’t let you into the kitchen anymore because you almost burned down the east wing of the manor not because he is territorial over the kitchen. And Mari hadn’t really paid attention to Damian until now but OH MY KAWAMI he is hot, and how did she talk so long to notice that.

She ends up taking a pic of Damian without him noticing (he really doesn’t notice which is a feat in itself but Dick does and he will be teasing Damian about it later bc obviously) and she texts it to Luka bc if she is going to freak out over his hotness she wants Luka to do so too. ( he sees the pic in the middle of recording and he ends up needing a water break bc gay panic and he really is extremely handsome. Recording gets delayed even longer bc jagged cannot pass up the opportunity to tease him son and he does so mercilessly and Mari totally knew what she was doing when she sent that picture) Luka ends up demanding that she gets Damians number or he will because that man is fine.

Mari now knows that the stuttering idolization that she had with Adrien wasn’t really healthy and Luka likes to remind her all the time that she can be smooth when she wants to be (sometimes unintentionally but she practices on Luka because she loves to see him blush). Mari then makes it her mission to compliment Damian as much as possible so that it is crystal clear and very obvious that she is flirting with him. If he even shows a little discomfort in a negative I don’t like this kind of way she will stop because she will not make someone go through what she went through with Chat Noir and unwanted advances.

Chloe, Kagami and Dick immediately notice that she is flirting with Damian. Chloe takes a video for Luka bc she knows that he would want to see this and Dick takes a video for the Batfam gc.

Just to be clear Mari and Luka have talked about seeing other people and maybe adding a third person to their relationship as long as they talk about it. that line of communication was opened when Mari sent a pic of Damian to Luka and when Luka asked for his number that was his “go ahead” for her to flirt with Damian. Lila doesn’t understand how that works and neither do the rest of the class so that is a point of contention between the class and Mari. She would NEVER cheat on Luka, she loves him and he is the most important person to her in the world. Something that Juleka understands (she just doesn’t like Mari bc of Lila she knows how polyamory works this is why her and Luka aren't as close as they used to be)

Moving on... the batfam gc blows up for a second time that day and so when the class goes to the cafeteria Tim just has to see this for himself. Mari tries not to be obnoxious in her flirting so she compliments Damians intelligence by asking him questions that weren't included in the tour, and she asks him about his interests and is like that must have taken a lot of time to perfect you must be very dedicated. Damian isn’t used to genuine compliments especially from strangers so he is very flustered by it but he makes no indication for her to stop.

The day winds down and the class has some free time before they have to go to dinner but the do have to leave the tower. Mari does actually get Damians number (he thinks she must be very well trained to get his number that quick bc he refuses to accept that he gave it to her because he likes her) Mari promises to ft him later bc he promised to let her meet his dog and she doesn’t want to wait until the class has dinner at the manor to see Titus.

First Here Next

Taglist

@dood-space

@toodaloo-kangaroo

Also I’m not very sure about how to go back and edit posts to link new parts so if anyone knows how to do that please comment or message me because I would love to learn!

198 notes · View notes

atsukashii · 4 years

Text

❝back again❞ // k. bakugou

SYNOPSIS: ➛ When pro hero ground zero destroys your shop trying to take down a villain, you don’t hesitate to curse him out. What you don’t expect though, is for him to come back again the next day.

» CHARACTER PAIRING: katsuki bakugou x fem!reader

» WORD COUNT: 5K cause I have no self control

» GENRE: pro-hero!katsuki, aged up characters

» WARNINGS: swearing of course, fluff, fluff, and oop surprise more fluff,

» PROMPT: lilac - “if you don’t kiss me right this second i swear”

« masterlist || ao3 »

Anonymous: can i get uuuuhh ‘lilas’ with pretty boy katsuki 🥺💕💕

a/n: hell yes you can! I went a bit overboard with this request but I hope you love it! Also i’m running off the non-canon idea that Katsuki’s hero name is Ground Zero here.

Pro Hero Ground-Zero is an asshole. He’s an attractive one, but an asshole nonetheless. The explosive blonde was the hero on patrol this morning, when a villain decided to attack some old lady in the middle of the street. Ground Zero fought the villain and left behind a crater in his wake. One you are currently staring at, steam almost coming out of your ears. Because that crater consisted of half of your flower shop.

Are you fucking kidding me? You hear the news reporters behind you, talking to their cameramen about what went down on this normally quiet street.

“This morning, Pro Hero Ground Zero successfully defeated a villain known to police as ‘FrostBite’. The villain has been responsible for many civilian attacks recently, he’s been linked to a heist just three days ago, which saw the criminals get away with over fourteen thousand…” You tune out the reporter's voice as you step back into your shop, through the gaping hole that was once your front exterior wall. Great, this is so fucking what I needed right now, you think.

This whole shit fest is the icing on an already bad cupcake. It started when a woman had come into the store just last week, complaining about your goods. Which caused such a ruckus that an inspector was called, only for him to find some bullshit excuse that had stopped you from selling coffee’s in your hybrid cafe/flower shop momentarily. Add on top of that the fact that you are currently in your final semester of university and you’re about to sit your final exams in literally three days. The word stressed does not even come close to describing your inner turmoil right now.

“-and here he is now! Ground Zero! Can you give us any information about what happened today?” The reporter asks.

“A villain got what he fucking deserved, the end.” A deep voice says from behind you, and you just know it’s him. Clenching your fists, you resist the urge to turn around and scream at the man. What about what you deserved? You look around your store once more and stifle a whimper at all the damage; crumbling walls, plants scattered across the floor, pots shattered and your precious neon sign. Broken. You kneel down and pick up the now dull yellow neon light and feel your eyes begin to sting. This shop had been your dream since you were a little girl, and now it was torn apart by a villain.

“I do my job, and I do it well. Write that in your fucking paper.” The hero reiterates again. Pure fury floods your brain until you are seeing red. Spinning around, your eyes focus onto the battered hero and the flawless reporter, and suddenly, all you want to do is scream. Your mouth begins moving before your brain can follow and say it's a bad idea.

“You do your job well?!” You hiss at them. Everyone’s attention moves from the asshole hero to you, your apron covered in dirt and rubble from when your front wall crumbled right in front of you, because a villain was physically thrown through it.

“You destroyed my store!” Ground Zero’s face flushes red in anger as he stares at you with his scarlet eyes. If you weren’t so mad, you could maybe appreciate how handsome he is, but currently you can see too much damage - expensive damage - to even think like that.

“That villain was a threat to society, he got what he deserved. You should be thanking me, you damn extra!”

“Thanking you? You left a DAMN HOLE IN MY FUCKING STORE!” You scream at Ground Zero. “And what about what I deserve? I don’t deserve to have to pay for all of these fucking damages that you caused!” The anger seeps out of you as you look at the small crowd around your store, gawking at you. You can’t imagine that this is a normal response for heroes to get from civilians. What a mess…

“Y/n!” A voice interrupts the crowd and you look to the right where someone is pushing through the mass of people slowly, to get into the store. The second your best friend & work colleague see’s the damage, she lets out a sad sigh and looks your way.

“Oh sweety…” you hold up your hand, making them stop from walking in.

“There’s broken glass everywhere. Let me clean up first,” You whisper, suddenly ashamed of your outburst. Ground Zero had been doing a civil duty, and you’d just jumped on his case about the damage he caused? Good one y/n, real smooth. Turning your back on the hero and the crowd, you weave around smashed pots and dead plants, reaching behind the counter for the broom you keep there and begin to sweep up the mess. You can hear the group begin to disperse, but can’t get rid of the feeling that someone is watching you. Looking over your shoulder, your eyes lock onto the vermilion gaze of the upcoming hero, known for his brash attitude towards reporters. Your breath catches in your throat as his intense stare seems to look into you more deeply than anyone ever has. Like he’s analysing your very being and everything about you. You shift away from him, grabbing the plastic rubbish bags you leave next to the till for the frequent mishaps that happen in your store, and you get to cleaning.

What a mess.

❀ ❀ ❀

For the past two nights since your shop was damaged, you’ve been crashing with your best friend who deemed it unsafe for you to stay at your apartment located above the partially destroyed store. You didn’t have the energy to argue against them at the time, so now as you walk down the main street towards your shop, you’re thinking about how strange it is that you need to travel to get to work. At least it's a sunny day, so surely this has to mean something good... You hope.

But as you round the corner convenience store on your block, you stop in your tracks. In front of your pathetically boarded up store, stands a tall man in black jeans and a matching jumper, the hood pulled up over his head. Because that’s not suspicious at all. Unfortunately, he’s leaning up against your front door, so you’re going to have to at least ask him to move.

“Uh, excuse me?” His head whips towards you, and your gaze immediately locks onto the ash blonde hair that peeks out from under the hood, and the matching eyebrows partially hidden by his dark sunglasses. It’s him, Ground Zero. Here. At my store. You don’t have the drive like you did the other day to be mad, so instead you keep walking towards your store with a raised eyebrow aimed at the pro hero.

“Shouldn’t you be patrolling somewhere Ground Zero?” You ask the man as you approach. He shifts away from the door, but doesn’t move far, allowing you to use your keys to unlock it. Not that locking the door would do anything to deter intruders considering there’s a fucking hole where the almost floor to ceiling windows once stood.

“It’s my day off.” Now that you’re not overcome with rage towards the man, you can appreciate the deep tone to his voice. One so alluring it sends chills down your spine. Do not go there, seriously y/n. No, it doesn't matter that you’re not mad, he’s still an ass.

“Good for you.” You mutter, before stepping through the doorway. You had cleaned up a lot of the debris from the room over the past two days, but the council wouldn’t let you begin working on the wall until today, as they had to deem it still structurally sound before you went around doing things. Hopefully, if all went well, you would have the shop open again in less than two weeks.

You notice that the further you walk into Daisy Chains, the hero follows. You place your bag on the till and round to face him, leaning your weight against the wooden counter.

“Are you here to mug me or something?” What use did a pro hero have to you? What use did he have coming here either?

“I’m a fucking hero dumbass, its literally my job to detain people who do that.” He growls, his vermilion gaze forming a scowl that really shouldn’t be attractive on him, but somehow is.

“Well how am I supposed to know? First, you damage my shop, then show up in all black, glaring at me and following me into an empty store?” You challenge, meeting his intense glare straight on. If he thinks he’s intimidating you like this, well he’s right. But, you’re not going to let him know that.

“I’m here to help.” His voice echoes throughout the dead quiet store. For a moment, all you can do is blink at the somewhat stranger. He lets out a growl at you that has you steeling your spine.

“You kick up such a fuss about your fucking store, then what? Don’t want help when it's handed to you?” Ground Zero barks at you, bringing you out of your stupor.

“I’m just surprised is all.” Your honesty makes him pause. “But if you’re serious, I’ll take the offer. It wouldn’t hurt to have another set of hands.” You’re not an idiot, you know you’ve got a lot of work to do in order to get the shop back up and running, and considering you’re not the only employee here and it's your livelihood, you need it up and running as soon as possible.

“The contractor says it's going to take about two weeks.” You comment.

“Then we’ll do it in one. I’ve only got a few days off, so we need to get this done soon.” Ground Zero replies with a blank expression, before getting up off his spot of leaning against the wall. You can’t help but admire his determination, especially to fix something he may have helped cause. A lot of hero’s you know wouldn’t even have bothered to come back for this, it was just another ‘ casualty of the job’. But for some reason Ground Zero did, and you weren’t about to look the gift horse in the mouth.

“If i’m going to have a stranger help me out for the next couple of days, don’t I have the right to know their name?” You ask, walking forward towards him. He straightens up at your approaching figure - as if going on the defensive, and you notice as you come to a stop that he’s quite a bit taller than you. His nose would touch your forehead if he bent forward, no wonder he wasn’t intimidated by me when you yelled at him the other day.

“Y/n Y/l/n, proud owner of Daisy Chains.” Sticking out your hand, Ground Zero looks between your eyes and your hand for a moment before reaching forward and gripping it.

“Katsuki Bakugou, also known as Ground Zero.” He introduces, shaking your hand. You can’t help but notice how calloused it is compared to your own. Well he literally works with his hands due to that explosive quirk of his.

“Katsuki Bakugou…” You breathe, testing the words out on your tongue. You glare half-heartedly at Katsuki, “I still don’t like you.” You finish, pulling your hand away from the blonde. He huffs at you and scowls.

“The feelings fucking mutual. Let’s get this shit done.” Katsuki orders, pushing up the sleeves of his hooded jumper and walks over to the boarded up wall, grabbing a hammer as he moves. He’s definitely determined, that's for sure. One however, can also describe Katsuki as elegant. You observe the way that he moves; every motion fluid with a sort of grace you wouldn’t have pinned with someone like him. He yanks of his hood as he begins to pull the nails out of the wooden beams. Strong too. Unfortunately, his sweater hides his defined biceps that you know are there due to seeing him the other day in his hero costume and you - nope, stop right there. Shaking your head to clear your wandering thoughts, you reach over to the tool kit your best friend brought over for you to borrow and follow Katsuki’s lead and begin ripping down the wood.

With two sets of hands, things get done much faster than you had originally thought it would. You had ripped out the hastily put up wood, and began to demolish the rest of the damaged structure like the contractors had marked out for you. Due to being too poor to afford builders, you had planned to do the whole thing yourself, so as much as you hated to admit it, Katsuki’s presence was actually a major help. Not like you’d tell him that anyways. By the time it was five thirty that evening, you had already begun to put up the interior wall structure. Katsuki somehow knew what the hell he was doing, and barely had to look at the tips the contractor wrote down for you. When you had questioned him, he’d just barked at you to mind your own dang business, and proceeded to pout like a child for the next hour. Some of your neighbours had brought some temporary fencing to put across the front of the store to try and stop people from getting in during the day - and you had thanked them profusely as they waved it off. Because you were only twenty one, the owners of the shops either side of you had taken you under their wings so to speak. The old lady who ran the bakery next door often ‘made too much’ bread and gave some to you, and you in response 'accidentally ordered too many of her favourite roses’ so they’d go to waste if she didn’t take them. And when they’d seen Katsuki, he’d just huffed and managed to find something to do on the opposite side of the store. He’s a strange one that Ground Zero.

As the sky kept darkening, you look from the star speckled darkness slowly settling outside to your watch and decide to call it a day. Reaching over your head, you groan as your muscles pull tightly and ache from all the labour.

“I think we should call it a day Katsuki.” You yawn, looking over to the blonde who has already started to pack up the tools. He glances at you when he’s done, and dusts his hands on his black jeans.

“I’ll be here tomorrow at eight. Don’t be fucking late or I’ll break in the door to get in.” Katsuki promises, before pushing out said door.

“I won’t pay for that damage!” You call after him, watching as his shoulders tense in annoyance at your words. Holding in your laugh, you observe as he pulls his hood over his head and stalks down the street, slipping into the shadows like he’s made of them. You let out a sigh and lean back against the counter, suddenly feeling much more optimistic about your store and its progress now that Katsuki’s helping.

He definitely is a strange one.

For the next three days, your progress clicks like clockwork. Arriving at eight am and leaving at seven when it gets too dark and you’re both too tired to do much more, the store is slowly coming back together. Last night, you’d even ordered take out and actually had a civilised meal together. Sitting on the floor of Daisy Chains, you’d both eaten gyūdon, conversing in innocent small talk whilst you gaped at the hot sauce that Katsuki kept adding to his food. He had smirked at your expression, which then resulted in a two hour Q&A with pro hero Ground Zero. Where you learnt that he absolutely loves spicy food, likes mountain climbing of all things, and can actually cook - which you only learnt because he called the food bland and was offended when you sassed saying that he couldn’t do any better. Apparently, he can. It was a weird experience, getting to know Katsuki as someone other than Ground Zero, Pro Hero destined to be number one - his words of course. It was actually… Nice, talking to him. Your heart jumped around inside your chest like an overexcited child in those moments, just getting to know him and seeing his lips tick up ever so slightly for the first time at a joke you cracked. And you need your heart to stop. You have no reason to feel like this, if anything you should be mad. No, you think. He’s using his days off, things he’s mentioned that he rarely gets, to help you fix something that - yes, he caused damage to, but could have just left alone.

You let out a sigh at your confused thoughts and dip the paintbrush back into the bucket on the floor. Your feelings towards the confident blonde are perplexing at best. Yet, as you look around the nearly completed store, and the painting you have left to do, you couldn’t help but want him there. Sure, you argue - a lot, but you also really enjoy his company. And no, it wasn’t because around midday every day, he’d shed his jumper and you’d be graced with toned muscles bulging out of his tank singlet.

Except he had mentioned to you last night that he wasn't coming in today because he was back on patrol. It’s fine really, you have managed to get a lot done today anyways, as a lot of the heavy lifting had already been finished earlier this week. You had given the new wall a coat of primer after the window installation guys had come in and done their job on the brand spanking new windows that made your bank account cry. Having them back in and the wall officially closed in, you were also finally able to move back into your apartment upstairs and off your friends couch, which was a massive relief.

Dipping your brush back into the paint, you look at the rest of the wall that has to be done. You had decided earlier that you may as well give the rest of the store a bit of a face lift whilst you were at it. Half of it was completed when you had to take a break before you gassed yourself with the paint fumes. Deciding to leave the back door open and turn on the fan, that usually is only made use of in the summertime to attempt to decontaminate the air, but the store still reeked of paint fumes. So you settled on keeping the front door open using a cinder block. It was working, gradually.

Slowly, the sun set behind the skyscrapers and you are still painting. Letting out a yawn, you carefully paint around the edge of the window frame, trying not to either touch the tape you had previously put down or let any drip onto the paint cloth on the floor. You are so focused on the task that you don’t notice someone has walked into the store until they speak.

“You shouldn’t leave the front door open like that dumbass, some creeper is going to take that as an opportunity to come in.” You let out a terrified scream and the paintbrush flies out of your hand and onto the floor. Placing a hand to your chest to slow your thundering heart, you look to Katsuki who's standing in the middle of the store, arms crossed on his chest, his usual glare ever so intensely settled on you, and still dressed in his hero costume. Good gracious.

“I thought you had patrol?” you ask, not moving an inch. It feels like forever since you’ve seen him in his hero costume, and somehow it looks even better then it did the first time you saw him in it. But your opinion may be biased seeing as you’ve unfortunately found yourself thinking of the hero constantly recently. He’s grown on you, like an annoyingly attractive fungus you can’t seem to get rid of.

“Just finished up. Thought I would come over here and see how slowly you’ve been going.” He smirks. You almost choke on your saliva as you look at his ticked up lips. Is he… Teasing me right now?

“Slow? I’ll have you know that i’m moving much faster today than I have with your help Mr Pro Hero.” You sass, picking up the brush and moving to continue on the wall.

“Obviously, that's why you're still going at this time.” You know he’s only trying to rile you up, but you can’t stop yourself from shooting him a playful glare over your shoulder at him But as you move, you find him no longer standing there. Katsuki’s fishing behind your front counter for something, and you’re about to ask what he’s looking for before he walks towards you, a paintbrush in hand. You blink at him as he stands next to you, dips the new brush in the paint and begins to pick up where you left off.

Your brain can’t seem to comprehend that he’s here, when he said he was super busy, in his hero costume, helping you paint. You’re unsure as to how long you’ve been standing there staring at him for, until Katsuki looks at you with a frown.

“You better not start fucking slacking now dumbass. I didn’t come here to do it all for you.” He says with a small smile and god what the hell is going on right now? Your cheeks suddenly feel hot and you don’t need to touch them or look in a mirror to know that you’re blushing. Hurriedly, you scramble for your thrown paintbrush, reaching down to the pastel blue liquid that almost looks white and begin to paint.

The radio plays softly in the background, the only source of noise in the store, and you find yourself bopping your head with the music as you work. Suddenly, when your favourite song comes on, you make a mad scramble to the machine and turn it up loudly, ignoring Katsuki’s protests. Dancing as you walk back to the wall, he’s glaring at you but there's no anger in it. Somehow over the past few days, you’ve managed to finally crack the code that is Katsuki Bakugou, and understand the many meanings of his scowls, glares and unfriendly remarks. And now, as you’re singing along to the song and shuffling towards him with a dorkish grin, he’s one hundred percent amused at your antics. Katsuki doesn’t dance along, or even bop his head, but you can see him mouthing the words ever so slightly, and that's enough. As the last chorus hits, you scream the words out loud, which earns a loud bark of laughter from Katsuki. Mid verse, the climax of your performance, you stop to watch it happen. You know you’ve said things he’s found funny before, because his mouth shifts upwards ever so slightly, followed by him calling you an idiot and turning away. But seeing him laugh, a proper laugh that starts in the belly and spreads happiness through every pore of your body and into those around you, it was so attractive to you. The soft smile he sent you after too was one of the most beautiful things you’d ever seen. For a man normally so harsh and with sharp as fuck features, the gentle look he gave you made your stomach somersault.

The song was forgotten as you forced yourself to keep on painting until you finally finished. Looking at the clock behind the counter, you smother a yawn as you read the time. 11:16pm.

Finally, it was all coming together. With only the radio making noise, you and Katsuki tidy up your tools once more and you walk him to the door. He raises an eyebrow as you lean up against the glass door.

“I moved back upstairs today, so no more couch surfing for me.” You answer his silent question.

“That’s good, I was sick of having to walk you all the way back to your friends place.” Katsuki replies, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He was smart enough to bring a change of clothes with him tonight to change into once he’d dropped blue paint onto his costume and realised that it wasn’t the wisest idea to wear it. So now, he was back in his casual black getup, in the sweater that a part of you so wanted to steal.

“Hey, no one ever asked you to do that, thank you very much.” Scoffing at your words, Katsuki shifts his weight from one leg to another.

“You’d have never made it there without me.”

“Whatever makes you sleep at night Mr Pro Hero.” Standing in silence, you suddenly can’t bring yourself to look at him and instead look back inside the store. “Hopefully I’ll have this place open again in a few days,” You say out of nowhere, simply feeling the need to break the silence.

“That’s good. I might have to come around and actually buy something.” Snapping your head back towards him, you flush from head to toe. Is he flirting with me? You asked yourself...surely not… Why would someone like him flirt with someone like me? But you can’t help but hope that he is.

“If you come around here for any other reason other than to buy something, I swear to god Katsuki.”

“Any other reason?” He challenges, taking a step closer. Your back is pressing into the glass door behind you as your eyes lock onto his scarlet ones. “What if I have a perfectly valid reason?”

“Does it include breaking things?” You breathe, his face so close now that you can feel his exhale fan across your mouth. Oh my god.

“Not breaking, just stealing something.” He’s whispering, as if speaking too loudly would scare you away like a timid animal. Your heart is about to burst from your chest with anticipation. He’s going to kiss me, he's sooo going to kiss me. And you so want him to.

“You’re going to steal some plants Katsu? That's a bit lame. I thought you were some big shot.” His eyes flicker to life with something you can’t quite place. Teasingly, he looks down at your lips and you swear to god.

“Hey,” he drawls, “don’t go judging me now y/n.” his hand comes up to your face and brushes a strand of your hair away from your eyes. “Do you give everyone else shit like this after they’ve done you a favour, sweetheart?”

“Katsuki.” You all but groan, letting logic fly out the door and gripping the front of his sweater. “If you don’t kiss me right this second, I swear-” He doesn’t even let you finish the sentence before he’s cradling your jaw in his hands and crashing your lips together. The two of you collide with such force it knocks the air right from your lungs. Katsuki completely dominates the kiss, which has shocks running down your spine and into the tips of your toes every second it continues. He possesses your very being and you can’t do anything but hold onto him and return it with everything you have in you. Reluctantly, Katsuki pulls away from you, but continues to hold your face captive within his grasp.

“I-uh…” your brain is no longer functioning and sits with the same potential of goo inside your skull. Smirking at your response, pride swirls inside Katsuki’s eyes.

“Got nothing to say now dumbass?” He jokes, releasing a cheek to brush hair out of your eyes again. You’re pretty sure there's paint in it.

“Are you going to kiss me again?” You manage to ask, deciding that you never want to do anything other than kiss him every day for the rest of your life. This time, Katsuki doesn’t laugh at you, or even smirk. His smug grin morphs into something so soft and rare that you doubt many have ever seen this look on him, and even fewer ever will.

“Only if you agree to go out with me.” Katsuki states. Of course he wouldn’t ask like a regular person. He’s Katsuki fucking Bakugou, pro hero and future number one if he gets his way. He doesn’t have time to beat around the bush.

“It’s almost midnight Katsu.” You point out, which makes him laugh.

“I didn’t mean right now dumbass.”

“Oh.” You feel yourself blush bright bright red, mortified you try to pull your head out of his hands purely out of embarrassment. But Katsuki quickly moves his hands from your face until he’s pulled you tightly against him, your chest flush against his torso, your head craned up to look at him.

“You’re lucky you’re cute.” he utter’s before leaning in and kissing you again, this time softly and chastely, so different from the desperate kiss earlier. Suddenly, you’re so glad he exploded into your lift and ruined your shop that day. “You’re getting dinner with me tomorrow night.” He mumbles against your lips.

“Do I have a choice?” You ask, your fingers weaving through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. You feel him smile a feral grin against your lips and try to hold in a smile of your own.

“No.”

“Good, wouldn’t want it any other way Katsu.”

#katsuki bakugou #bakugou katsuki #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou x reader #mha x reader #katsuki x reader #flower prompt #requests #bnha x reader #bakugou one shot #katsuki bakugou imagine

515 notes · View notes

sanakoreanlangblr · 3 years

Text

2021 Goals

Heyy! I’ve decided to put my goals for this year here, hoping that that might motivate me further, and maybe motivate someone else as well. Good luck everyone! And please take extra care of yourselves and your health, mental or otherwise! Everything else can wait.

This year has been difficult for all of us. As for me, even now, the upcoming semester is a big question mark. Currently I’m studying in France, and this semester I was supposed to go on an exchange to Taiwan buuuut that’s not happening anymore, as it has been cancelled. So per my school’s requirements I need to find an internship in the place of expatriation, which is a pain now. And that basically just means I have no idea where I’m going to be in the coming year or what I’m gonna be doing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry, needed to complain for a bit, as I am going absolutely insane with the stress…

Anywayyyy, I still hope I will be able to uphold most of these goals, wherever I will end up. I tried to not make them overly big, so that I won’t get burned out too fast. But I have a whole year for those, some of these have dates for which I could expect to finish but I will not keep to them very strictly. Whatever happens, happens :))

Also, sorry if there are any mistakes, English is not my first language!

Korean (A2 -> B1)

1. Do 100 lessons of grammar from the HowToStudyKorean website.

I’ve started a few grammar books but in the end decided to settle on this website as I like its explanations best, and it provides the most example sentences when introducing each point. A nice touch is also the fact that it includes a list of a number of new words before each chapter, which gives me some new vocabulary to learn :)

So far I’ve divided the grammar points introduced in lessons into „to learn”, „to revise”, „already know”, and turns out I have:

66 „to learn”

35 „to revise”

32 „already know”

So if I did 3 points a week, I should be done around August.

2. Read 2 little stories per week from “Easy Korean Reading for Beginners”.

There is 30 stories in the first one (I already did 5), so I should be done by the middle of April.

3. Do one chapter per week from “My first hanja guide”.

I just got this book for Christmas and haven’t had the time to fully go through it so we will see how it goes.

4. Do Anki at least three times a week.

Every day would be preferable but I know that would last like a week at most.

5. Have iTalki lesson at least once a week.

That one is not a problem as I have been doing one or two per week for the last year, but I would just like to keep it up.

6. Try writing at least twice a month, and at least 2 pages.

Yeahhh that one is a bit of a bother, as writing still takes me a long time so we will leave it a twice a month and see how it goes.

7. Watch one youtube video per week on Korean grammar or vocabulary.

Generally I would say my goal is to use Korean more, as I know quite a lot but when I’m speaking I tend to go towards the easier words and grammar, which is why I am thinking that writing more could help me. And also I really want to focus on learning vocabulary as that’s always been a pain for me, I’m more of a grammar lover :))

French (A2 -> hoping for upper B1/ beginning of B2)

1. Finish the intermediate grammar book. I’m currently doing „Grammaire Progressive du Français” Intermediate edition, for A2/B1.

The problem is that my grammar knowledge of french is a mess , so going through this book is a bit of an annoyance, as most chapters I technically know but each time I find some nuance I wasn’t aware of... therefore I need to go through it, even the chapters I would have assumed I know :|

So I divided the chapters the same way I did Korean, into „to learn”, „to revise”, „already know”, and I ended up with:

14 „to learn”

34 „to revise”

4 „already know”

So technically if I did 2 points a week, I should be done in June.

2. Read the two french books I got for Christmas (“Les aventures d’Alice au pays des merveilles” and “Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours”).

3. Read at least two of the Harry Potter books in French.

I have started the first one this week, and I can tell it’s gonna be a very very slow process. It’s the first book I’m reading in french so it’s a bit difficult and frustrating but hopefully it’ll get better as I go along.

4. Watch at least 4 french movies, with french subtitles.

5. Learn a french song.

6. Read one story per week from „French Stories for Beginners”.

These are quite easy, but they are a nice practice for switching to books later on.

I don’t know if I’m gonna keep this one in, depends on how much my reading of actual books will progress.

7. Get to point 5 on the Duolingo tree.

I use Duolingo mostly as a revision tool, so I’m not really going to focus on it much, but still want to keep it up.

8. Watch one YouTube video per week (on any topic).

9. Listen to two podcasts per month.

10. At least one iTalki lesson per week.

11. Do Anki at least 3 times a week.

I really need to listen to french more, as I’m good at reading and I usually understand that pretty well, and I’m not the worst as speaking, but I am absolutely terrible at listening :| So that’s a priority.

Chinese (tbh I don’t know...end of HSK1/Beginning of HSK2 -> let’s say the goal is HSK3 for this year)

1. Finish the book „Integrated Chinese”

I’m having a tough time to pick a book from which to learn but I guess for now I’ll continue with that one.

Again, I divided the points in the book to „to learn”, „to revise”, „already know”, and ended up with:

47 „to learn”

11 „to revise”

15 „already know”

So doing 2 a week I should be done in July.

2. Learn 15 characters a day

I am way behind on learning characters.. I remember the words well but I didn’t put enough time to learn the characters at the start and now that’s gonna be a bit annoying to catch up on :|

3. Finish the drama „Go Ahead”.

4. Watch 3 Chinese movies, with both English and Chinese subtitles.

5. Have one Italki lesson per week.

6. Learn a children song in Chinese

7. Watch one youtube video per week on grammar.

8. Do Anki twice a week.

Generally focus more on characters. My speaking isn’t terrible (well besides the tones), but I need to work on the grammar a bit more as I seem to mess up the structures quite frequently. I need to put more work outside of my lessons. Since I found out I’m actually not going to Taiwan this semester my motivation has fallen a bit, but on the other hand I now have more time to prepare for fall, at which point I will hopefully be able to go!

Personal

Read 20 books.

I have always loved reading but in the past two years the amount of books I’ve read has gone down, which upsets me a bit… On the other hand the amount of fanfiction I’ve read is tremendous, so there’s that. However I would like to make more effort to read this year, especially since I’ve accumulated a huge pile of books over those few years.

2. Workout regularly.

Right now I’m at home, so that should be easy to do. I don’t really know what’s gonna happen this semester, so we’ll see what I’m going to do about that later.

3. Eat better.

Meaning: cut down on sugar, eat more veggies and fruit.

4. Get a bit closer to my ideal weight

I’m not necessarily focusing on that this year as the previous one has been hell and really managed to deteriorate my mental health back to high school levels... but still hopefully working out a bit and eating less sugar, more veggies, I will be able to lose a tiny bit of weight. But overall I just want to focus on being a bit healthier.

5. Clean out my wardrobe

Sorry that’s a silly one but I’ve been getting to it for half a year now and I’m just too lazy to do that... maybe once I put it here I will have some motivation

6. Take care of my face and hair

So my sensitive skin hates wearing masks and needs extra care these days I need to really focus on it and baby it, to not go back to the awful red mess it was two months ago

As for my hair, I have kind of 3a curls which I haven’t been taking care of properly and plus I damaged them with hair dye (still I refuse to give up ginger hair, I blame Merida). So now during lockdown and quarantine season I finally had some time to read up on hair care of curls, and honestly after a month I can already see the difference, and well I hope for the best :)))

7. Get a tattoo

It’s something I’ve always put off since I either didn’t have the money or time. And now again both are problematic, so I will wait for the decision until I know what my school semester is going to be like. Maybe this time I will find a good moment! (Although honestly saving up for travelling after all this is over is also a great idea :))) )

8. Don’t go to sleep at 5

Yeah so during lockdown and because of online classes my sleeping schedule got so messed up I don’t even know what to do about it anymore. And while my goal isn’t to switch it to 10 pm, cutting it to 2 am at max would be nice

9. Watch 25 movies

10. Sell/donate the things that I don’t need

I’ve accumulated a huge pile of books, movies, CDs, Xbox games, art products - that I need to get rid of - and I’ve been saying that for like three years now, about the same pile of things. I will try to do that one this year!

I hope everyone’s 2021 will be a ton better than 2020! Keep fighting!

46 notes · View notes

thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Note

hello! Not sure if you’re still taking winter prompt requests, but 34 seems like it has strong NSFW OT4 potential :o)

Here you go! It is indeed NSFW

34. we’re stuck together on a group project and everyone is tired and frustrated so you suggest we take a break and build a snowman

There are lots of things Joseph likes about attending UWV Kepler. For starters, it’s one of the oldest schools on the Interplanetary University System, meaning he’s surrounded by students from Earth and its sister planet, Sylvain. The first gate between the two worlds appeared in Kepler, giving the whole area an air of mystery that he relishes. And, at the start of the summer, the cute Sylph in his lit class asked him out.

Barclay is soft spoken, an amazing cook, and part of a whole community of Sylphs who live on Earth full-time. Sometimes, when they’re cuddled up watching the X-Files or he’s helping Barclay in the kitchen, he looks at the other man and is awestruck that he’s chosen Stern as his boyfriend.

As much as he loves being at school, it has downsides. For instance, while the spring semester on Sylvain uses more experiential means of testing students, the fall semester on earth ends in finals weeks, just like high school did. He’s good at tests, so while they’re a pain he doesn’t hate them. Projects don’t often bother him, but when they’re group projects he gets flashbacks to his junior year of high-school and develops a sort of pre-emptive anger at the people he knows wont pull their weight.

The final project for his Community Development class started off well. Barclay was in the class with him, and is one of his partners. The other two in the group are Duck and Indrid, another Sylph/human romance, and in the midst of their first planning session Indrid let it slip that he and Barclay hooked up during the Sylph equivalent of high school. Duck was wholly unbothered, though that may be more to do with him being even-keel in general, and Joseph got a little distracted imagining the two of them together.

Between his organizational skills, Duck’s environmental knowledge, Indrid’s knack for art, and Barclay’s ability to incorporate different elements, their plan for the hypothetical sustainable community center on Sylvain was chugging along. Even if Duck and Indrid kept cuddling up or stealing kisses whenever they could. It’s just a little much, in that it makes Joseph wonder what it’d be like to be between them, Indrid’s wiry frame wrapped around his back while that wide smile pressed into Joseph’s neck while Duck gave him that crooked grin and pushed his legs apart with strong hands…

Focus. He needs to focus.

Because they have been trying to put it all together for two hours straight and have made no progress.

“...just think this bit is gonna read as convoluted. What do you think babe?” Barclay points his pen at the section in question.

“We could probably do without it.”

“Maybe” Duck pulls up the directions for the fortieth time, “I’m worried if we over-edit we’re gonna fuck up section five on the rubric. I still don’t know what he means by those last two bullet points.”

“Not sure reading them over yet again will reveal anything new.” Joseph rubs his forehead, “Indrid, what do you think.”

No reply, just a scratching pencil.

“Indrid?”

“Earth to ‘Drid.” Duck nudges his boyfriend, who abruptly shakes his head.

“Apologies, I got caught up in a future. How can I help?”

“Does this need to be cut?” Even Barclay sounds on edge.

“...maybe.”

“‘Drid!”

“It does not strike me as having a large impact on the grade either way.”

“Someone please just make a decision.” Barclay groans.

“Hold on” Duck leans back to look out the window, “it ain’t snowin as hard. So, here’s what I’m thinkin; how about we take a break and get some fresh air. All four of us.” He looks pointedly at Stern, “seriously Joe, you been outside in the last two weeks?”

“Only to get from point A to point B.”

“C’mon” the shorter man hops up, heading for his coat, “last one out has to make the next pot of coffee.”

Soon they’re tromping across the lawn near Indrid’s house; because he’s a seer, the silver-haired man is in high demand by universities, governments, and businesses, which resulted in one paying his tuition and another for his house.

“I have to do a stint as court seer anyway, I may as well take advantage of it.” Had been his explanation the first time he showed them the building, so at odds with his unkempt appearance that Joseph wondered if it was a practical joke.

He still has no idea what kind of Sylph Indrid is, as he keeps a human form at all times. Barclay also leans that direction, but when he’d offered to show Joseph his Sylph form and Joseph practically jumped for joy before, during, and after the reveal, he became more comfortable wandering around as Bigfoot (“a bigfoot, babe”) at home.

Indrid pauses mid-stride, turning to Duck, “An excellent idea, love.”

“Gotta let me say it first, sugar.”

“Apologies” Indrid kisses his cheek.

“The snow ain’t turned to horrible slush yet, so: who wants to build a snowman?”

Twenty minutes later, they’re standing before a six foot tall snowman. It’s very well engineered, if he does say so himself.

“Wonder if we can get it higher.” Duck contemplates the structure.

Barclay winks at Joseph, slipping off his bracelet and rolling up another ball.

“Hell yeah!” Duck whoops and Indrid claps with an appreciative chirp.

“I’m going out on a limb and saying we’ve maxed out height.” Joseph shields his eyes as the snow falls in larger clumps.

A wide grin cuts across Indrid’s face, “Not necessarily. Allow me.”

He hands his glasses to Duck and Joseph gasps; standing before them is creature coated in black and grey speckled feathers, save for his arms that are a smooth, dark grey chitin. Feathery antennae and glowing red eyes complete the picture.

“Holy shit.”

Indrid trills, seemingly pleased by Josephs awe, and gathers a ball of snow before flapping into the air.

“Ta-dah!” He bows, still flapping, having brought their sculpture to what must be closing in on nine feet.

“It look a little rickety to you?” Duck whispers to Joseph.

Barclay, yelling over the sudden burst of strong wind, calls, “Indrid? You might wanna land buddy.”

“I suppose you’re--oh damn it.”

The storm picks up, sending the top layer of the snowman straight onto Indrid, knocking him the rest of the way to the ground.

“Fuck” Duck moves faster than Joseph’s ever seen “you okay ‘Drid?”

“C-cold, b-but otherwise f-fine.”

“Thank fuck.” With that Duck wheezes, shaking with laughter, “you shoulda seen your face.”

Indrid snickers, then sneezes. Which they all take as a sign to head inside. Having been the last one out the door means Barclay goes to start coffee, while Duck steps away to call his friend Juno to be certain she has a safe way of getting back to their shared apartment in the storm. Which leaves Joseph to be the one helping a very damp mothman dry off.

“Why not just take your human form?” He scrubs the fantasy wicking towel along Indrid’s back.

“It would probably let me dry faster, you’re right. But I’m nervous that water droplets would stay in the feather somehow and freeze, which is unpleasant.” When Joseph finishes his head and back the Sylph poofs up, then shakes his feathers back down.

“That got a great deal of it, thank you. I can do my inner wings, if you’d rather go warm up.”

“It’s alright, I’m happy to help. Same motion?” He takes up position by Indrid’s extended right leg as the Sylph spreads his wings.

“Yes. Ah, be careful towards the innermost fourth. They’re sensitive.”

He nods, sets to work. As he glides the towel over the eye-spot, he murmurs, “I’m amazed you keep this form hidden.”

“It tends to alarm people.”

“Even Duck?”

A small laugh, “Only the first time, because he wasn’t expecting it. And I turned up at his window to warn him about a fire that was about to start in the dormitory.”

“I think you look incredible.” The sincerity in his tone registers at the same instant their physical closeness does.

Indrid smiles, “So you do share Duck’s proclivities.”

“I, um, I’m not sure what you mean” He busies himself cleaning.

“You are attracted to me.” Indrid replies, folding both sets of hands in his lap. Startled, Joseph moves his hand too far in and Indrid chirps, higher than normal.

“I’m sorry!”

“It’s alright, as I said they’re sensitive, but that does not mean they’re painful to touch.” The smile tinges with mischief and Joseph is ready to toss the rag aside and ask Indrid to let him put his fingers there when a drawl comes from the doorway.

“Makes an even better sound if you play with his antenna.” Duck pushes off the doorframe, sauntering over as red eyes stay locked on him, “see?”

Indrid trills as Duck rubs the tip of one antennae between his thumb and finger.

“Careful, sweet one, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Joseph doesn't know if he wants to take Indrid’s place or Duck’s, just that he’s wringing the towel so tight it’s tearing.

“Coffees ready.” Barclay pokes his head in, chuckles, “or do you two need me to put it in hold until you’re done fucking in front of my boyfriend.”

“We would do no such thing without permission. Yours and his.” The way Indrid says it, as if Joseph is merely something can give or revoke access to, makes him cross his legs in a hopeless attempt to turn himself off.

“Joseph?” Barclay’s voice is gentle as he joins him on the floor, “it’s up to you, babe. I’m happy to get my hands on some feathers again while you get your hands on those two but, uh, if you don’t want to or, uh, or need time-”

“I…”

Duck, blushing, sticks his hands in his front pockets, “Sorry, didn’t mean to come on too strong, was tryin to flirt a little-”

“Yes.” Joseph tosses the towel into the laundry hamper, “yes, I want this, you, all off you, oh my lord I haven’t been this turned on before. And that’s saying something” he turns to Barclay with a smile and gets a kiss in return, beard scratching his skin as the other man trails his lips down his neck.

“That worked out nicelEEEEH, ohohyes” Indrid leans against Duck as the human plays with his antenna. Joseph crawls forward, eager to get his hands on Indrid’s wings, only for a clawed hand to come palm-up towards him.

“Ah-ah, I didn’t give you permission to touch me, pet.”

He moans, hears Barclay growl, pleased, as Indrid chuckles.

“Goodness, Barclay, you didn’t say he was that submissive.” Clawtips rest under his chin as Indrid keeps him in place.

“Hold up, you two been comparin notes on fuckin humans?” Duck raises an eyebrow as Indrid nods, unashamed and Barclay goes bright pink.

“Oh yeah? What’ve you been sayin about me, sugar?” He teases, tugging on the antenna. Indrid releases Sterns face and growls, pivoting onto his knees to trap Duck against the wall.

“That you are the finest, most accommodating human in either world and you make such lovely sounds when I bite you.”

“Sounds about right.” Duck kisses Indrid’s forehead, “but if you wanna see how Joe stacks up, I ain’t gonna complain. Long as I get a turn with him too.” He looks past Indrid to Joseph, “been wantin to know what you look like under the whole buttoned-up nerd thing.”

“No time like the present.” Joseph pulls his sweater off, grumbles as he remembers the shirt beneath it has buttons. As he undoes them, Indrid cocks his head.

“I have an idea. Duck, remove your pants and underwear and whatever else you see fit. Barclay, stay clothed for now. Joseph, take everything else off.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Then work faster, pet. I’ve been wanting to do this since you first touched my wings. Ah, there we are.” He purrs as Joseph kicks his boxer briefs away, “come sit in my lap.”

He does as he’s told, sighing as feathers tickle and caress his skin, “this form is even better from this angle.”

Indrid chirps softly, tongue darting out to lick his cheek as he closes his wings around him, “there will be ample time to explore it later, I promise. Right now, there is something that requires your attention.”

“OHmylord” his fingers sink into Indrid’s chest feathers as something thin and undulating teases between his legs. Two more appendages join it, one the same size and one thicker.

“To answer the question you’re about to ask, the shape has various, ah, biological functions.”

“And means you can get fucked more’n one way at a time.” Duck chimes in with what is obviously a happy memory.

“Very true. However, for your first time, I think you can be a good boy and take the whole thing.”

“FUCKohmyfuckinggod.” Down comes loose in his fingers as all three tendrils thrust inside him at once, twining into a single, ridged form that wastes no time in fucking as deep as it can manage.

“Good boy.” Indrid tips his head back, purring louder, before turning his attention to Barclay, “Enjoying the show, sunburst?” The Sylph term of endearment gets a pleased rumble in reply, and Joseph steals a glance behind him to see his boyfriend palming himself through his jeans.

“You know it, gorgeous. Seems like Duck is too.”

“Hell fuckin yeah I am.” Duck is rubbing his dick, the sight making Joseph lick his lips.

“Such an eager little human, my sweet.” Indrid glances at his boyfriend, “I think that deserves a reward.” He grips Josephs jaw with an upper hand, forcing his lips apart and his face up, “come and get it.”

Joseph moans, wiggling his hips as Duck’s two hands replace Indrid’s one.

“Fuck, you look so goddamn good like this Joe.” He strokes his cheek, cock temptingly close.

“I don’t know, the view fromAH god, from down here is great.” He kisses Duck’s thigh, relishing the sweet smile the compliment gets him.

“Gonna look even better in a sec. Now” he shoves his head forward, “suck my dick, pretty boy.”

He whines against slick skin, brings the hand keeping him balanced up and around to grope Duck’s ass. He loves the shape of it, and will tell the other man as much the moment his mouth is free.

“Barclay, come here dearest” Indrid’s lower hands remain on his hips, but the upper two lift to do something he can’t discern until there’s a zip of metal and an appreciative trill.

“Yeah, you like the look of it little moth? Ohfuck, Indrid, baby, fuck that feels good.” A wet, rythmic sound suggests Indrid is blowing him, but when Joseph turns to look Duck jerks him back, fingers tightening in his hair.

“Uhuh, ‘Drid gave you to me as a reward, so you’r gonna fuckin focus until I cum. Fuckin christ, wanna see just how good you look when I cum on your face, pretty boy. Nnn, fuck, bet your mouth feels even more amazin when your cummin. ‘Drid?”

“‘On ‘oment”

A high, sharp chirp echoes through the room and Joseph can see Barclay’s hand from the corner of his eye, jerking up and down near the base of Indrid’s antennae.

“Yeah, fuckyeah, Indrid, that’s it, fuck, can’t believe you’re lettin me cum on your feathers, god it’s gonna look so good, fuck, fuck, yeah.” Drops of cum hit the back of his next as Barclay howgrowlpurrs, Indrid’s tongue-tied reply sounding pleased with itself.

A thud as his boyfriend drops to the floor, “Fucking-A, forgot how fast I cum from that.”

“It’s very gratifying. As for you, sweet little pet” all his claws dig into Josephs skin, the delicious pain sending whimpers up his throat, “I believe it’s time I made you cum.”

He yelps, muffled, as Indrid fucks him roughly, one tendril slipping out stroke his dick.

“Here, let me help.” Four thick fingers push in and he whines, Barclay kissing his shoulder and still letting out little growls of effort.

“How’s that, my sweet?”

“So fuckin good, goddamn Joe, you feel fuckin perfect when you scream, heh, someone’s got a praise kink” he smirks as Joseph grabs him harder at the word ‘perfect.’

“C’mon babe, take it, you wanted all of us, remember?”

“Oh, I’m certain he does. And he’s going to feel it in the morning, I’ll make sure of that.” The tendrils still inside him curve just right and he cums, clinging to Duck’s legs as it ripples through him. Barclay pulls his fingers back, but Indrid continues fucking him, thrusts turning short and erratic as Duck grinds into his mouth. The other human cums with a groan and a string of curse words, stroking Josephs hair as he finishes.

There’s a trill and Indrid’s wings flex, sending Duck stumbling backwards and Joseph pitching against the Sylph’s chest as he spills into him. It takes longer than usual, even accounting for the times it’s been with Barclay in his Sylph form. Just as some it drips out and down his thighs, there’s a final pulse and then the tendrils retract.

“Mmmmmmm” Indrid closes his arms and wings around him, “that was spectacular, pet.”

“Goddamn, came so hard I can’t feel my legs. You okay, Barclay?” Ducks fingers appear under Indrid’s...armpits? Wingpits? He’ll have to ask later.

“Uhuh.” A scuff as his boyfriend cuddles up with them.

“......wait, we don’t need that section, we cover the rubric points Duck’s worried about in our ‘considerations’ portion.” Joseph sits up.

Duck guffaws, Indrid gives an amused tilt of the head, and Barclay leans over Indrid’s wing to kiss Joseph on the cheek.

“What? Post orgasm clarity is a documented phenomenon.”

“We can fix it soon.” Indrid rubs his face, “I for one need to bathe, and given the storm will only intensify overnight and leave you all stuck here, we have ample time to fix it.” He flutters his wings shyly, “would anyone like to join me?”

An hour later they’re all clean and dry, the project is at a stopping point, and Barclay’s made fancy coffee for three of them and eggnog for Indrid. They settle in on Indrid’s nest of a bed to watch T.V, Duck in Indrid’s lap and the Sylphs wing draped over Barclay and Joseph. The weather outside chills and darkens the world, but as he nestles against soft feathers and warm fur, Duck’s hand in his, he’s got plenty of love to keep him warm.

#indruck #OT4: Government Men and Their Cryptid Boyfriends #sternclay #duck newton/agent stern #agent stern/Indrid Cold #Indrid cold/Barclay #winter fills

14 notes · View notes

prettylittlearrowfangirl · 4 years

Text

Final Thoughts: “Whenever You’re Ready”

I call this column “Final Thoughts”, but that’s seldom the reality. The truth is, I think about these episodes a lot. Especially when it comes to shows as complex as The Good Place.

Series finales are hard to nail and hard to bear with when you really love a show. It’s hard to see shows that you love end and know that this is the last time you’ll see these characters together. The only way to cope with a finale is to absolutely knock it out of the park and find the right ending. Not necessarily the “happy” ending, but the right ending, the one that makes you think, “There’s really no other way this could have ended.”

I’m glad to say that this is how I feel about “Whenever You’re Ready.”

When they created the door in “Patty,” I knew that at least one of our humans would step through the door. They wouldn’t set that up only to completely ignore it in the finale. As I’ve grown to really care about these characters, part of me wished that they would all stay together. But it was inevitable that Team Cockroach would have at least one member cease to exist, and likely that it would involve more than one loss. And that’s honestly the way it should be. It wouldn’t feel authentic to do anything else. In a way, it’s a nice surprise to know that at least one of our humans chose to stay in the afterlife, albeit in a new role. This show has become known for crazy plot twists, but it’s a smart move to have twists be smaller here, like Tahani staying or Michael becoming human (more on that later).

This show has always walked a very tight line balancing humor with heartfelt moments and sadness. While the very premise of this leans toward the latter--three of our four original humans ceased to exist in our universe--they still manage to work in some jokes. And that’s necessary for this finale. It’s also full of fun cameos and appearances that let us know that this system is working, that people are actually able to make it to the Good Place, even if they weren’t the best on Earth. Except for Brent. Jury’s still out on him.

The structure of this episode is smart, too: have each human get one “act” devoted to what happens to them. They’ve used this structure twice before: in the Season Two premiere and the Season Three premiere. Both “Everything is Great!” and “Everything is Bonzer!” devoted the first act to Eleanor, the second to Chidi, the third to Tahani, and the fourth to Jason. Here, it’s the reverse: Jason leaves first, then Tahani, then Chidi, and finally Eleanor. (Technically, Michael is between Chidi and Eleanor, but that’s not the point here.) I’m also happy that they still manage to sneak Jason and Tahani in the show after their characters have “left”.

I’ve talked a lot about the humans throughout my Post Show Thoughts, but we need to turn to Michael here. Michael gets the most pure, unquestionably happy ending: finally getting to be human. He’s said it blatantly a couple of times, but the one that stands out to me is from “Best Self,” where he says, “All I’ve really ever wanted was to know what it feels like to be human.” This television show would not exist had Michael never been fascinated with humans. The point system that sent everybody to the Bad Place would never have been questioned, and Michael would just be designing normal torture arenas. Giving him the ability to become human and truly experience the pains and pleasures of Earth is his Good Place. It’s the best send off imaginable.

Janet’s eternal existence might be the saddest ending, as she has to go on running the neighborhood without her friends actually around, waiting however many Bearimys it takes Michael to return. Janet’s my favorite, and I hate the idea of her feeling sad. (What a show this is--that I care so deeply about a non-human/non-robot’s feelings so deeply.) Were it not for her line early on about how she experiences time differently and that remembering moments is the same as living them, it’d be too devastating. It’s still sad, but when the alternative is marbleizing her, I’m okay with her continuing on, living in the moments she had with her friends and love.

I’m sure I’ll be talking about this show again on here. I’m certainly going to watch it again. But for now, here’s what I’ll say:

I started watching this show in December 2017. Season One had been on Netflix for a while, and I hadn’t made time during my busy semester to binge it. Within two days, I’d watched all of Season One and every episode that had aired of Season Two. I’ve never fallen more than one week behind on an episode. It’s twisty, surprising, heartfelt, hilarious, and so much more. I’ve grown to adore all of the cast and the love they share for each other. The underlying tone of this show is hope in the face of hopelessness, and in an era where things can sometimes feel hopeless, that sort of positivity is inspiring. Every week, this show was a bright spot. I could talk to my friends about it and never felt like an episode was truly disappointing. And maybe that’s just me being so far up this show’s ash that I find it hard to be critical, but I genuinely believe it’s that goo. This show has almost edged Parks and Rec out of the spot as my all-time favorite show. (I’ve still given Parks the top slot because it’s been around for longer and proven its longevity, but I think this will end up bumping it down to a close second.)

I am so glad that this show exists. We may not have more new episodes, but we’ve got over 50 episodes of beautifully crafted television. I’m going to miss this show so much, but I know that the story ended on its own terms, without padding and with the right ending.

So. Until next time,

Take it sleazy.

#final thoughts #the good place #whenever you're ready #tgp 4x13 #the good place 4x13 #michael the good place #janet the good place #eleanor shellstrop #chidi anagonye #tahani al jamil #jason mendoza #post show thoughts #i will miss this show #tgp #tgp spoilers #take it sleazy #the reason is friends #reflection

81 notes · View notes

rocksandrobots · 4 years

Text

Of Rocks and Robots Ch. 6 - The Beach

Saturday had come and Varian and the rest of his new friends were all crowded in Wasabi's car. Wasabi had precisely enough room to fit six people, though perhaps a bit uncomfortably. He and Varian rode in the front seat, with Varian carrying Ruddiger in his carrying cage, while Hiro, Gogo, Honey Lemon, and Fred were squished together in the back seat. The robot, Baymax, was folded up inside his battery pack and tucked away in the trunk to make room.

Apparently today was a holiday and they were all heading to the beach. Well in truth the actual holiday was on Monday, but Americans spent the whole weekend in celebration. Said holiday was Memorial Day and was meant to honor warriors who fell in battle. However, despite this somber origin, most considered the weekend to be the official start of summer and would mark the occasion with picnics, parties, and public swimming.

For Varian and his friends though, this was the end of spring break. Starting on Tuesday, the university they now all attended would open back up and the summer semester would begin. The thought of which sent Varian's stomach churning with butterflies. He'd never been to school before and didn't know what to expect. He was filled with anxious excitement and to calm his nerves he looked out the car window to admire the scenery.

He'd been in this strange new world for a week now but he'd had little chance to admire it. For the past five days he'd been busy studying for his entrance exams for college. Passing the 'graduation' test in particular was important for gaining admittance into the school and Varian had to do some serious cramming to prepare for it. Squeezing twelve years worth of educational knowledge into his brain in less than a week.

Fortunately Varian was very good at memorizing facts and all his new friends were on hand to help him. On Monday, Hiro had helped him gather up the study materials he'd needed and told him what to expect. Wasabi gave him practice tests throughout the week and helped him pinpoint the areas he was weakest in. He was pretty good with math and grasped most of the science quickly, with Wasabi being on hand to fill in the gaps, but he needed help in other less familiar subjects.

Gogo had swung by on Tuesday and spent the whole day giving Varian a crash course in Social Studies, which was a combination of history, geography, and civics.

Varian took a special interest in America's founding and it's chosen form of government, which was unlike anything he had heard of before. They had no king nor royalty of any kind. In fact the country was founded by people who committed treason and fought a war to overthrow their ruler, and who then put into place a democracy made up of elected representatives instead. It most closely resembled the government of ancient Rome, before Julius Caesar had taken over, but was expanded upon to encompass a vast kingdom, larger than even most empires.

Varian had already thought San Fansokyo was an impressively large city, but was completely flabbergasted to know that not only was it not the largest city in the country, it wasn't even the biggest within its own providence; and there were fifty of these states that stretched across the continent from coast to coast with similarly massive metropolises in each.

It was mind boggling and it took him sometime to wrap his brain around the concept. And that was just the tip of the iceberg, he also had to catch up with some four hundred odd years worth of world events on top of that. But Gogo was a patient teacher and she carefully broke down everything into manageable chunks, giving him timelines, charts, and maps for him to refer back to. By the end of the day he had perhaps learned more in those eight hours spent with her than he had in his whole sixteen years.

On Wednesday, Fred had showed up to help Varian practice for the writing portion of the tests. He would have to complete two essays on any given subject for each of the two exams. Fred himself had actually completed one of the same tests, the S.A.T, just a few months ago and knew what the graders were looking for when it came to such essays.

Mainly, they just wanted to know if Varian could follow the basic guidelines of writing; paragraphs and sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and his overall ability to form an argument on paper. All things Varian felt pretty comfortable with, but it was nevertheless a good refresher of those basics. Essay writing and thesis statements were apparently expected of any student attending higher education and he would have to write many during the course of his studies.

Thursday, Honey Lemon stopped by to help Varian with Language Arts. Both tests would cover reading comprehension and even more grammar. Once again Varian was pretty comfortable with those two subjects, especially given the writing practice from the day before, and so they finished pretty quickly. Even with Honey Lemon adding in extra information about various important books and plays that had been written in the past four centuries, just in case any of them made it into the reading part of the exam. Though Shakespeare was still deemed the most influential even in this modern age. A fact which disappointed Varian; he personally thought Marlowe to be superior to the bard.

"You don't even like Romeo and Juliet?" Honey Lemon asked aghast, "But it's sooo romantic."

"But it's sooo stupid," Varian mockingly admonished with a laugh. Which in turn made Honey Lemon give him a not-so-serious pout.

"Look, what was stopping them from just leaving together in the first place?" Varian explained his point.

Honey Lemon opened her mouth to retort back but just as soon closed it again; she had never considered that question before. She screwed up her mouth in thought as she searched for a better answer.

"Weeelll, sometimes it's hard to leave the only home you've ever known. Isn't that why you want to get back to your world?" She asked him.

Varian just stared at her for a moment, thinking of an answer to give that didn't allow him to explain his past in detail. Finally he said, "I wanna get back because my dad is there. I couldn’t care less about Corona itself."

"You don't care at all?"

"It's just a bunch of buildings." He mumbled with a shrug, then he added, more assuredly, "What matters is the people in your life."

"I guess," She replied, "all I know is that I had a hard enough time just leaving Sacramento. Even though it's only an hour and a half away and I can still see my family whenever. I can't imagine what it's like to be lost in a whole other world."

Varian ignored her attempts to sympathize, not because he didn't appreciate the effort, but because he was ready to move on from the conversation. Instead he shut his eyes tightly and tilted his head back, trying to recall some of the new information he had recently learned. "Sacramento; that's the capital of California, right?"

"Yeah. But don't worry, no one actually memorizes all fifty states and their capitals. I only know like twenty or so." She admitted.

"Oh, good." Varian breathed in relief. Soon both he and Honey Lemon were just giggling, happy to relieve the tension in the room.

"Oooh, you know what? I brought my make-up bag with me!" Honey Lemon suddenly exclaimed, and just like that all previous talk about literature and writing gave away to other subjects, mostly chemistry.

Honey Lemon made her own cosmetics. It was a passion of hers to find new, safe, and 'biodegradable' chemical compounds to replace some of the more toxic stuff on the market.

"And absolutely no animal testing." She added in all seriousness.

She even sold her wares over the internet, shipping them to customers as they ordered them, as a means of making money on the side.

She poured out the contents of a rather large tote bag onto the floor and walked Varian through each item, what it was for, and how she had made it. Varian listened intently and even tried some of the stuff himself.

He found he didn’t care much for lipstick nor cakey foundation, the texture was off putting to him. He also didn’t like anything with a heavy perfume. However, he did like the eyeliner and the black fingernail polish he had previously bought. He was still fascinated by the concept of synthesized polymers.

They were both sitting on the floor, makeup strewn everywhere, laughing over nothing in particular, when Wasabi came home from his part-time job. Honey Lemon was in the middle of applying mascara to Varian’s eyes and he was trying his best not to blink but failing at it, which only sent both of them into more fits of giggles. Meanwhile, unnoticed by them both, Ruddgier had gotten into the powered blush and was making a mess in another corner of the room.

“I thought you two were studying.” Wasabi said with a hint of annoyance to his voice. He was tired from work and none too happy to find makeup scattered about his dorm room.

“Sorry,” Honey Lemon tried to say through her laughter, “but we finished early and I’d promise to teach Varian how to paint his nails.” Varian held up his hand to show Wasabi his newly painted nails as a way of response.

“That’s nice.” Wasabi replied back in a sarcastic tone. “Did you also teach the raccoon how to put on foundation?”

That’s when they both finally noticed Ruddiger. Varian got onto his pet and went to clean up the mess, effectively ending the study/make-up session.

The next day, Wasabi gave him two final practice tests and then it was time for him to take the real thing. He met Professor Granville at the school and, alongside a few other hopeful students, took the two tests.

The first test, the S.A.T., went smoothly, but he wouldn’t know his actual scores until his answer sheet and essay were sent off to be graded. The graduation test however was taken over the computer and it took several hours to complete with a few breaks between parts. He felt he could have finished sooner had he had the chance to take the test using a pencil and paper instead, as he found the mouse and keyboard awkward. But the positive thing about using the new technology was that he got his scores back sooner. He managed to pass all the parts, even with him just barely scraping by on the Social Studies section. His official certification would come in the mail, the professor told him, but for all intents and purposes he now had a high school diploma.

Which was apparently a big deal in this world. Earning a diploma was considered to be something of a rite of passage. Obtaining one meant you were ready to start entering the adult world and with it you could gain full time employment or seek higher education, like college. According to his friends, he should’ve been extra proud of this accomplishment since gaining a high school diploma at his age, while not unheard of, was unusual, and he had done it in less than a week when most took years to achieve it.

To signify just how important this was, all his new friends threw him a party at the Lucky Cat. Even Aunt Cass had pitched in and made him a special dinner. It was something called ‘sushi’ and she typically prepared it for celebrations like this one; having cooked similar dinners for both Tadashi and Hiro when they had graduated high school as well.

Varian was appreciative of her efforts, though he didn’t quite know what to make of the food itself. The ‘sushi’ consisted mostly of rice topped with raw fish wrapped in seaweed. The taste wasn’t bad but the texture of the uncooked seafood was weird to Varian. Fortunately, not everything was raw. There were different kinds to be had and Varian was able to pick out some that he did enjoy; ones stuffed with crab, egg, or just veggies. He especially liked the ‘dessert sushi’ made with tropical fruit.

He’d just finished recalling last night, when Wasabi loudly proclaimed, “We're here!”

There were whoops and joyous yells in response from the various passengers and Varian looked out the front windshield to see the familiar blue streak that was the ocean just up ahead. Wasabi parked the car in the designated parking lot and then they all piled out of said vehicle and made their way down to the beachfront.

The sandy beach was tucked in between two rocky cliffs and you had to walk down a wooden stairway to get to it. As he made his way down the stairwell, Varian could look out and see the expanse of dark blue ocean and lighter blue sky go on forever. It didn't look much different from Corona's coast. What did look different were the inhabitants. Corona's coastline was usually deserted save for the ports and the occasional fishing boat off in the distance, but here the beach was a mass of half naked bodies and swarms of vacationers enjoying the summer sun. Spread out along the sandy tolls were towels, blankets, folding chairs, and umbrellas of all sizes with scantily clad people lounging upon or underneath.

Varian tried to remember Gogo's words from a week ago, about how this was deemed normal and not to bring himself to attention by starring. But everywhere Varian looked he was met with the sight of a lovely lady's long legs or a handsome lad's toned chest. Not looking was very much like asking a small child in a pastry shop to hold their nose and ignore the sweet smells of pies and cakes surrounding them. Fortunately, he was able to keep his composure long enough for them to reach the shore and find a spot to set up camp for the day; managing not to hold his gaze for too long on any one person or thing.

They had brought a variety of towels and folding chairs of their own, along with a large parasol and ice chest full of food and drink for the day. Varian and Wasabi had spent that morning making sandwiches for everyone; tuna fish salad, sliced cucumbers with butter, jam mixed with a spread made from ground nuts, and some sort of mystery meat called 'baloney' paired with cheese. Varian couldn't figure out if said baloney was made from ham or chicken, as it didn't really taste like either, though it also didn't taste bad per-say. They also stored small bags of crispy fried potatoes, individually wrapped miniature cakes, and bottles of some sort of fizzy drink called 'soda' in the chest as well. Varian found the carbonated sugary drink to be odd but surprisingly tasty.

While everyone was setting up Hiro unpacked Baymax from his portable charger, the robot inflated to full size again before stepping out, and Varian released Ruddiger from his carrier. The raccoon was grateful to be let out of the small cage at last and promptly snuggled up on one of the folding chairs under the sun to catnap. Varian didn't think the leash necessary as there really wasn't any place for his pet to run off to.

Once done with setting up, the gang then proceeded to unpack the various toys and games they had brought along as well. There was a game you played with a net, like tennis, only you used your hands to pass a 'volleyball' over said net instead of a racket and you didn't want the larger ball to touch the ground at any point. They also brought a flat discus called a 'frisbee' which you threw from person to person. Gogo had with her a flat wooden board used to ride the waves that broke along the shore. Which she let Varian and her other friends try out for themselves.

Varian however was not very good at any of these new sports. While he was fairly athletic, capable of running, climbing, and whatnot, he had never been the best at coordination. More often than not he'd simply trip and fall in his efforts to keep up with the ball or maintain his balance on the surfboard.

Instead Varian found himself wandering off occasionally to try and strike up conversations with new people. He'd hadn't had a lot of social interaction while growing up, especially with others his age, and he wanted some practice before he started school in a few days. Hopefully to ease the awkwardness of being dumped in a world that he knew next to nothing about.

However every time he'd smile at a pretty girl or make eye contact with a cute boy his age, his efforts to make small talk were sabotaged by some mishap or other. Either his own clumsiness would get in the way or he'd put his foot in mouth, as the saying goes. One particularly unfortunate incident involved him getting beaned in the back of the head from a misthrown volleyball while trying to chat up a couple of vacationing teens. Fortunately, his embarrassing failures at flirting would be followed by one of his new friends trying to engage him with some other activity so he was never left alone with his awkwardness for long.

Swimming, sand castle building, more games; like 'chicken', where you tried to push one person off another person's shoulders into the water, or 'Marco Polo' where one person had to find the others with their eyes closed, using the ancient explorer's name as a call and response, digging for seashells, and other similar actives were to be had to pass the time away.

Finally, the sun started to hang low in the sky and they all headed back to the car. They were wet, tired and covered in sand. They tried to knock the irritating substance off their shoes and things before all squeezing back into the ill fitting vehicle in order to head back home. They all sat on towels so as not to get the seats wet and their bathing suits and cover up clothes all clung to them dripping with sea water.

Varian sat again in the front seat, only this time Honey Lemon had asked to hold Ruddiger on the ride back. She, Gogo, Fred, and Hiro were all fast asleep in the backseat with Baymax once again tucked away in his battery case. Wasabi had the radio on in order to keep himself awake as he drove (and to drown out Honey Lemon's snoring if he was being honest). The music that filtered out of the speakers was called 'classical' music, which just meant it was mostly orchestral music from ages past. To Varian it sounded very modern and sophisticated to his ears, like chamber music played for royal courts, not the more rustic folk music he grew up on.

Right now a gentle suite with piano and strings was playing and it along with the steady motion of the car moving was beginning to lull Varian to sleep as well. He looked out again at the houses and scenery that passed by and thought of the day's events and the fun he had had as his eyes grew heavy. This world was so much more inviting and nicer than his own, it was a shame he'd have to leave it soon, but his Dad needed him and that was that. And with that final resolve Varian drifted off to dreamland.

youtube

#varian #tangled the series #BH6 the series #Hiro Hamada #Honey lemon #ruddiger #Wasabi #GoGo #Fred Frederickson IV #rapunzel's tangled adventure

44 notes · View notes

mahinourabdou · 3 years

Text

WEEK 3 POST WEEK 🌟 HERE WE GO!

Before I go into detail of a few comments for research, influence, and notes about my upcoming painting project series for the class, I would like add something in regards to the “Content, Materials, and Process” post made last week. I wanted to add onto the “Process” part regarding the shooting art style/painting technique after pharaohnic era. Not only would I want to be interested in Picasso’s marks (the dynamics of how he shapes the forms of cubist artwork from his models from head to toe) but i also wanted to go back a bit: either Impressionism or Fauvism, or BOTH! Fauvism is a very interesting art style i just remembered/realized before even having to say about Picasso’s Cubism art technique (i may turn into Dory from Finding Nemo eventually due to a bit of memory loss from my past art history classes a few semesters back hahaha 🤣). The reason why I say this is because I see Impressionism and Fauvism as very important art styles/1800s aesthetic use of painting, color, and landscape skills that brought the whole art world’s attention during the 1800s as a birth of a brand new era. Especially when it comes to Van Gogh (what also inspired me from his magnificently iconic artwork “Starry Night”), I thought because it looked so calming and smooth because of how he used his brush strokes as a symphony to create a life-like attraction of what beauty he sees within his perspective amongst the reality that seemed rather not harsh but vernacular for an average everyday person doing the same thing all day: wake up, eat, work, go back home, eat, drink, sleep, and repeat. Same thing with the pharaoh art I would do; the Spiral of Thought (if you go back to the Content, Materials, and Process post i made/talked about) will be a unique trademark of how it will attract and relate to us of how we feel about our emotions and stressing days; alongside of how we think of our thoughts inside-out, and/or the opposite, outside-in. In my opinion, I think Van Gogh had more of what he wanted to expect for his artistic value and love for art for anyone who’d aspire to look upon him as a friend and a person of color and vividly kind creativity. That’s why by his “Starry Night” painting, it gave me the sudden, warm, and mediated feeling that Impression and Fauvism are the key to an artist’s reality check from whatever struggles he/she are facing within the everyday life we live in from the Modern era/Gen-z society we live in today.

———————————————————

POST 1!

RESEARCH (PT. 1)

Subject——EXPLORATION: Pharaoh Art (Exploring Its Art, Fashion, and Faces)

Going through this subject of the research I will break this post (separately) down into 3 parts—Exploration, Influence, and Experimentation. Today I will go through exploration. (IF POSSIBLE, I may add a little it of how I got influenced and inspired by the artwork from the Ancient Egyptian era; I will put a little bit of its heritage along this post if i may)

While roaming through my favorite museums, The Met and MoMA, I had always favored The Met mst often. Through its website to personal visits, I always had to start with the Ancient Egyptian Art section; nonetheless, it had so much more history from fine arts to mosaics and from relief paintings to sculptures. Also, if i can recall, a documentary by the name of Netflix’s “Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb” was beyond all levels the most interesting documentary i have ever watched (highly recommend it), for hard working archaeologists, until today, have discovered a pharaoh that had nearly been forgotten and yet analyzed to be hidden for the past 4400 years—the excavation was announced in November 2018. NOT ONLY FROM THE WHOLE DOCUMENTRAY, but animation segments describing the ancient artifacts of how Ancient Egyptian pharaohs/gods/goddess handled with everyday pharaohs during that era had so much monarchy awed today’s historians and analysists for years and years. What I would like to add about the documentary that actually did caught my eye was not only the beauty of how the archaeologists worked and dug really hard to find the new pharaonic discover,b to the animation segments that moved and placed the rare expectations of how the era felt genuine, golden, and mostly royal towards the Ancient Egyptian society before we were all born.However, because of the hard work the servants, villagers, and high classed pharaohs served their royals paid off with their stories carved, painted, and decorated onto the walls, pillars and temples, it is easy enough to say that it means a whole lot from their time period that blessed future and present artists, historians, and archaeologists today the rare beauty and magnificent restorations and excavations. Because i say this, I believe the rare beauty of how the pharaoh era became essentially the most aesthetic, authentic, and golden time when their arts became the historical movement of all art history and archaeology. Here are a few Pinterest images of Pharaoh art/wall paintings collages for your better viewing to understand why, how, and what the distinguishing beauty and fabulous color remarks the Ancient Egyptians used to tell stories, historical events, and (i wish gossip *hehe* 🤣) other specific genres of average/mysterious/formal everyday of the pharaohnic era.

As you can see here, in this collage, not only because of how the Ancient Egyptian lives lived through stories depicting war, religion, rituals, monarchy, and structurizing royal classes, but because of how these artworks (sculptural and architectural as well—but for this series i will mostly focus on wall paintings) resembled the rhythmic and superior use of colors, shapes, texture (fashion and painting-constructed wise), headwear/crowns, jewelry and facial expressions.

1 note · View note

wildmichaelflower · 4 years

Text

Too Young, Too Dumb - College!SOS PT. 1

Word Count - 1.6k

Warnings - Slight swearing

Luke groaned as his alarm went off, interrupting the peaceful sleep he had been having. Sitting up, he turned it off before going to his select his outfit for the day. Once dressed, he went to go make a coffee to go, biting his lip when he was greeted by the sight of his roommate Michael slumped over the table, a cup of coffee gone cold in front of his laptop. Luke gave his shoulders a couple shakes and whisper-shouted his name, watching the other man grumble to life.

“Mike, it’s 7 am. How long have you been sitting here?”

“Well,” he yawned, “I got off work at ten, stopped at McDonald’s, got home by ten-thirty-ish.” He took a pause to rub his face, “I took a shower, then came out here, so eight hours?” He took a sip from his mug, immediately spitting the contents back out, “That tastes like shit..”

“Well, that’s eight hour old coffee for you,” Luke sighed as he prepared his roommate a fresh cup.

“Nah, more like five hours. I remember making some around two and everything after that is a blur. I passed out around four, I think?” He yawns again.

“How do you expect to pass classes if you can’t stay awake in them?” Luke sighed as he set the mug down.

“I think the bigger issue here is that you’re still expecting me to go to my classes.” Michael mumbled as he eagerly picked up the mug.

“Dude, come on,” Luke gave a hard look, “You’re on a full ride, do you want to throw that away?”

Michael groaned, not in the mood to have this conversation, especially this early in the morning, but he also had to acknowledge that Luke was right.

“Ok,” He sighed, “My first class isn’t until eleven so I’m going to sleep until ten.”

“And your homework is all done?”

“Yep,” Michael grinned sleepily and finished his coffee before placing the mug in the sink. He picked up his laptop and its charger before heading towards his bedroom.

Luke shook his head before continuing to make his breakfast, humming softly as he made his plate. He poured himself a mug of coffee, then sat down to eat his fried eggs and turkey bacon with a side of mixed fruit. He unlocked his phone and began to scroll through Twitter, keeping an eye on any important headlines to bring up during his night class. He got extra credit if the class discussed something he brought up, not that he wanted or needed it, he just thought the conversations were important. After screenshotting a few articles, he finished the remnants of his breakfast before going to load the dishes into the dishwasher. He decided against running it, not wanting to break the silence in case Michael wasn’t asleep yet.

He quietly went to pack up his bag, making sure he had the appropriate books and chargers for his laptop and phone. Sure, he was coming back after his second class, but it never hurt to be prepared.

He headed back to the living room, grabbing his keys from the coffee table before slipping on his shoes. He left a note on the counter for Michael, reminding him to take his meds, before heading out. As he was locking up, he smiled as he watched his neighbor also lock her door.

"Morning," he said, biting his lip as she jumped, "Sorry if I scared you."

"Yeah, you did," she smiled sheepishly as she ran a hand through her hair, "Didn't think anyone else was crazy enough to be awake and moving at 8 am."

He laughs and nods, "Yeah, it's not for the weak, but someone has to make sure the world turns. I'm Luke by the way," he sticks his hand out, smiling as she takes it.

"Carina," she smiled as she introduced herself, shaking his hand, before pulling away and heading to the steps, "So what's your plan for keeping the world turning?"

He grinned, "I work the front desk of the student union. Gotta make sure people have their popcorn."

She laughed and nods in agreement, the student union desk sold other things, but popcorn was easily it's most popular product.

"And what about you?" He smiled.

"I work at the bookstore, where, once the semester settles, people buy anything but books."

Luke laughed at that and nodded understandingly, "Guilty."

"Aren't we all?" She smiled and opened the front door to the building.

They walked out together, and Luke grabbed his keys from his pocket when he noticed her leaving the parking lot.

"Want a ride?" He asked as he unlocked his car.

Carina stopped and turned around, biting her lip.

"You seem nice, but how can I trust you? We just met."

Luke bit his lip, he honestly didn't think she should walk to campus, but he should've known what it would've looked like.

"I'll let you drive?" He offered awkwardly, smiling as she laughed.

"And I was thinking I trusted too easily," she smiled, debating with herself on whether or not to accept the offer.

Granted, she just met this guy, but he was cute, in an awkward but doing his best kind of way, and didn't seem to pick up any bad vibes from him. She would play a test on him, and if he passed, then she would get in with him.

"Before I get in, could I take a picture of the license plate and send it to my friend?" She pulled her phone out.

Luke nodded, "Of course, anything that helps you feel comfortable." He smiled before getting into his car.

Carina smiled to herself, thanking the internet for giving her the clever idea then took a couple pictures of the back of the car before updating her best friend.

Getting a ride from school from my neighbor, never met him before today but he seems nice! Just in case, here's some info.

She sent the pictures before getting into the car, surprised by how clean it was.

"Offer still stands if you want to drive," he smiles.

She laughs but shakes her head, "I don't think you're pretty face can handle the speeds I drive at."

He chuckled and pulled out of the parking lot, heading towards the campus. It wasn't a long drive, just a few blocks, but with the temperature dropping, Luke felt better giving rides to people.

"So, what's your major?" Carina asked.

"Business economics," he smiled, "and yours?"

"Social studies education, with a minor in political science. I'm guessing your minor is something like mathematics or international relations. That's a common one for you business majors, that or Spanish."

He laughed, much to her surprise, but he was used to people assuming those kind of things out of him.

"Actually, my minor is gender and women's studies."

"Wow.. what made you choose that?"

"Well I took one class freshman year about history and social structures from the perspective of women to fill the diversity requirement, and I was hooked."

Carina nodded, smiling at this new insight of her neighbor.

"Your partner is very lucky."

Luke blushed and bit his lip, "I, um, I don't have a girlfriend."

"Really?" Luke wasn't her type but she was surprised, he had a good heart, a good looking future. How could there not be anyone for him?

He shrugged, "College has kept me busy, but who knows, this could be my year." He smiled hopefully.

Carina couldn't help but returning his smile, while also running through a list of her friends that might be a good match for her neighbor.

Luke made another turn towards the bookstore, stopping at the dead end next to the building.

Carina got her bag and smiled, "Thanks for the ride, I really appreciate it."

"Of course! With the weather dropping I don't mind giving people rides, I rather them be safe. If you want to make this a regular thing, you know where I live?" He winked jokingly.

She laughed and nodded, "I'll let you know." She pulled her phone out and opened it to Snapchat, "You should add me."

He nodded, pulling his phone out and snapping a picture of her code, smiling as the request went through.

She slid her phone back in her pocket, "Cool, now we'll be best friends," she joked before getting out, "Thanks again for the ride!"

She closed the door then started to walk to the entrance, smiling as Luke didn't leave until he was sure she was inside.

Luke smiled as he made his way out of the dead end, heading to the parking ramp where he kept his car during the day.

Once he parked, he grabs his bag and travel mug then heads to work.

He greets his coworkers next to him in the printing shop as he set his things down before sitting at the desk. He then logged onto the computer and got the desk ready for the day. He knew it would be hours until the building would be busy, now it was just professors and a student or two waiting to grab coffee.

Luke pulled his laptop out, his boss didnt mind when he or his coworkers did homework on the job, as long as they paid attention to customers. An email popped up in his notifications, reminding him that his night class would begin the final presentations that week. It's not that Luke was unprepared, his presentation had been ready since that weekend, but he had some nerves about speaking in front of the class.

He made a mental note to go over his presentation one more time, then opened a word document to the paper he had been working on.

#5 seconds of summer fic #luke hemmings fic #michael clifford fic #calum hood fic #ashton irwin fic #5 seconds of writing #college!sos #5sos au #5sos college au

41 notes · View notes

the-cookie-of-doom · 4 years

Note

this pandemic is such a mentally and physically exhausting, traumatic experience; its a really hard thing to go through so setbacks in mental and physical health are gonna happen. that doesn't mean in another 4-6 months you won't get back into a good routine! please don't berate yourself for being affected! xo

My issues actually started last October 😔 my life seriously went down hill, and then I failed one of my classes which really... messed me up. More than I thought, because I went into the worst depression spiral I've ever had during my 2 month break, which is usually my favorite part of the year. That middle of December into the middle of February is when I catch up on all the things I've neglected during the fall semester; I love the weather because I can snuggle up with my dog and some coco and a book/fic, and it's usually so peaceful. But this year it was just awful.

And then what's really messed me up on top of THAT was an especially awful breakup just after Valentine's Day that pretty much wrecked my life and left me crying for almost a week straight. Also the evening following the breakup I had my first Econ 102 exam which I completely failed... luckily my professor had the good grace to give me an A in the class because I pulled myself together over the next three months. Ironically I actually dropped like 10 pounds that month between the depression and stress over school.

Then the quarantine in March actually didn't affect me all that much, in the beginning. It was honestly the best thing that could have happened for my grades, since it meant everything was suddenly open book. I did good on the rest if my Econ tests and passed the class I failed last semester, and picked my GPA back up.

But then the quarantine continued. And continued. And continued. I didn't mind in the beginning because I thought I wasn't doing much outside of my house, but I've realized just how much I'm missing now. I can't go to the gym, or the beach, or even just randomly shop around town. I turn 20 next month and I had all these plans to go on a road trip up the coast, but clearly that's not happening.

I got my job and that was amazing, until I started actually working and now it's just another source of stress. I had to cancel my first escrow today, after 2 months working on it. And not to be crass, but I was going to get paid $12k when it closed. I was really hoping to buy myself snowboarding lessons this Christmas since I've always wanted to, but it's like 2k for the week with travel and lodging expenses, so THATS not happening.

This was supposed to be my year. I'm starting a new decade of my life and I was going to get my shit together so I could go into it with s fresh slate. Instead I'm at an all time low... which I know isn't actually true. My family is in a much better place than we were 10 years ago, we've come a long way. But 10 years ago I didn't have depression to constantly remind me of all the things that suck.

I'm lonely and I feel like Shit because I can't even tell myself it's my choice anymore; that choice has been taken away, and it doesn't look like anything's going to change anytime soon. I was going to graduate and transfer out next fall, but I can't take classes this fall which is going to put me a year behind, so that's awesome.

I can't even manage to write. Estranged was supposed to be done 2 months ago so that I could start writing SoGo in June, but obvs that hasn't happened. Never mind that the fic was REALLY supposed to be done last December. At this point I may as well just keep waiting until THIS December and finish it on Christmas like originally intended.

Sorry for ranting 😔

I'm doing some cooking tonight and I'm going to get back into mealprepping/working out tomorrow, since part of my problem is that I feel so listless. I need a solid plan of what to do so that I stop spending my money eating out and wasting my time at my computer. Work hasn't given me the structure I'd hoped for (yaaay, being an independent contractor. Perks: if I don't want to work I don't have to. Cons: if I don't ant to work I don't have to.) but I'm going to work on that too.

And on the bright side, I ordered a really nice copy of Coraline yesterday. I've been meaning to read it for years, and I'm finally getting to it!

#cookie speaks #cookie rambles #sorry for the vent #as you can see i sm Not Doing Well lol

2 notes · View notes

babybluebanshee · 5 years

Text

Feedback - A MHA Fic

Hizashi Yamada may be loud, obnoxious, childish, goofy, and frankly have the stupidest hair on the planet...but he's still a teacher.

Aaaaaand Ashido makes five. Sorry, kid, but “tooken” is not a word.

Hizashi made a harsh red line through the incorrectly conjugated verb, then moved his pen over to a legal pad. In large capital letters, he wrote “VERB REVIEW B4 WEDS.”

After he finished writing, he tapped his pen against the paper once. Twice. Then, he underlined his note. Three times.

He moved back to Ashido’s paper, and tallied her score in the corner - a 64%. Not bad, by Ashido’s standards, but it could stand to be improved. He’d have felt slightly better about it if he hadn’t written even lower percentages on Mineta, Kaminari, and Hagakure’s papers.

He sighed and polished off his soda. As was his way, he tried to look at this from a positive angle. He’d known the unit on irregular verb conjugation was going to be rough going in, especially in a language as absolutely insane as English. He taught the damn course and he sometimes had trouble with it. At least now he had an idea of where the students needed the most work before the test on Wednesday. The extra review would be good for all of them. And hey, maybe he could do some browsing online and try to find some review games. Those seemed to help when the kids were struggling with sentence structure.

Hizashi smiled as he tossed the empty soda can in the wastebasket by his desk. Everything would be fine. Class 1-A was one of the most promising groups of kids that UA had seen in years, and what they didn’t learn right away, they always managed to get eventually. He scribbled a little happy face on Ashido’s page (to complement the one she had doodled after her name), and set the sheet amongst the other graded assignments.

He casually looked over the next, slightly crumpled sheet in the stack. After a moment, he closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. Goddammit, Bakugo...

For the past three weeks, Bakugo had been turning in assignments that were only partially done. At first, it had just been a question or two left blank. Then five or six questions. Then entire sections.

This time, aside from his lazily scrawled name in the corner of the paper, Bakugo had left this entire paper blank.

Hizashi shoved his hand up under his glasses, trying in vain to rub away the headache this would doubtlessly bring on. He was so glad he’d taken out his hearing aids while he graded. Right now, the noise would not have helped. At all.

He marked a giant zero in the corner of the page, pressing so hard he was momentarily afraid he’d rip a hole in the paper. As he set Bakugo’s paper off to the side, his stomach clenched in hunger. This was as good a stopping point as any, he supposed. Time to find something to constitute dinner.

He padded down the hall and into the kitchen. Just as he was trying to decide if he felt motivated enough to go through the trouble of cooking vegetables and meat for some ramen, or just blasting it in the microwave and eating like a poor college kid, he spotted the pink bag on the counter, the words “Shrimp Chips” emblazoned on it in cheerful bubble letters. He lunged, quietly blessing Shouta and his pathological need to have a constant supply of garbage food in the apartment at all times as he tore into the foil bag with his teeth. He pulled out a handful and stuffed them into his mouth.

Something soft and fluffy snaked its way between his legs. Looking down, he saw Mame’s two giant green eyes staring up at him from the black void of her face, gazing longingly at the chip bag. Her fluffy tail swished back and forth lazily. She opened her mouth in what Hizashi assumed was a pleading mew. He smiled down at her and shook his head, moving his legs to sidestep her. Mame bounded away from him and jumped onto the nearby table, splaying herself out quite contentedly on the table in a pile of papers, discarded mail, and Hazashi’s school bag. She immediately rolled onto her back and stretched out a paw longingly. She then brought her paw back to her mouth, once, twice, three times.

She was signing “food”. And Shouta said you couldn’t teach a cat to sign.

Hizashi chuckled, swallowed, and then signed back, “First of all, child, you’re not even supposed to be up on the table.”

Mame blinked in response.

“Second, these are my chips. None for you. Shouta doesn’t want you eating anything but cat food anyway. He already feels bad when he has to explain to the vet why you’re so fat.”

Mame rolled back over, letting out a squeak of indignation, before stretching and jumping off the table. Unfortunately, her shifting weight jostled Hizashi’s bag, and before Hizashi could set the chips aside and catch it, everything inside had spilled out onto the floor. He tried to glare angrily at Mame, but she had suddenly become very interested in thoroughly cleaning her front paw. He supposed it didn’t matter. He could never stay mad at her anyway.

He brushed the chip dust off his hands and began to sort through the mess on the floor. Honestly, he’d needed to clean out this bag for a while. Its contents were a mess of lunch receipts and old notes he’d written to himself and playlist ideas for the radio show that had never fully come to fruition. As he crumpled up the trash in his hands, he uncovered his gradebook. He groaned slightly as he began to realize that meant he hadn’t recorded any of the worksheet scores yet, and he was already more than halfway through the pile. He’d have to go back and do them all again.

At least he’d caught himself. And he also had shrimp chips. That sort of softened the blow.

He gathered up the rest of the mess from his bag and put it on the table. He’d sort through it all before bed. Then he gathered up his gradebook, tucked the chips under his arm, grabbed another soda from the fridge, and walked back towards the bedroom.

He flipped open his gradebook with one hand, so he’d at least have it open to the right date by the time he sat down. It fell open to a page near the beginning of the semester. He was just about to shake the book to turn the pages (very nearly losing his underarm grip on his chips), when something caught his eye.

“Bakugo, Katsuki: 88%”

Huh.

His eyes drifted downward, to the next assignment he’d catalogued. An 87%.

He approached his desk, and he began arranging his things to his liking, but he never once took his eyes off the grade book. He scanned the next assignment. Bakugo had scored an 84%.

Hizashi sat down slowly, his chips and the rest of the papers forgotten. He turned the page in his gradebook. Bakugo’s next grade was an 89%.

The next was an 88%. Then a 90%, followed by an 85%. Another 87% and another 89%.

This didn’t make any sense. How could Bakugo start out with such high scores and then suddenly start turning in blank assignments?

He turned the page and got his answer. A 73% was the next grade he saw. It wasn’t exactly failing, but it was a dip in quality, jarring compared to the previous pages.

Maybe the blank assignments weren’t so sudden.

He continued to scan the page. The percentages hovered around the low seventies for a while. On the next page, they dipped into the sixties. Checking the dates, Hizashi saw that these grades began three weeks ago, right around the time Bakugo had started turning in the half-finished assignments.

The decline was steady, until Hizashi finally got to the last assignment he’d recorded. A 58%. A far cry from where they’d started.

His phone was in the corner, next to his hearing aids. He snatched it up and opened up his text thread with Shouta. His husband would be out patrolling right now, but it was still early, and Hizashi hadn’t gotten any breaking news updates on his phone. Hopefully, he wouldn’t catch Shouta at a bad time.

Quickly, he typed, Yo, have you heard anything from Cementoss or Ecto about Bakugo’s grades?

Shouta’s response was quick, taking a little more than a minute. Hizashi was the only person who could brag that Shouta had never left him on read in the entire time they’d known each other.

No. Why? Short and sweet. That was Sho for you.

I’m grading 1-A’s last assignment. Noticed something super weird.

Yeah?

So I’ve complained at you about the kid turning in unfinished work, right?

Many times. They’re enjoyable rants.

Before Hizashi could reply, Shouta sent another message. Do I need to talk to him again about getting his work in? Because I’m sensing the last talk didn’t stick.

Hizashi smiled and replied, Not sure yet. I looked at his grades from the beginning of the semester and they’re good. Not perfect, but good.

Hmm…

Then I started noticing him slipping. He was still handing in complete assignments, but he was getting more stuff wrong. Then he starts handing in this half-assed stuff and his grade just drops more. It’s weird.

What do you think is going on?

Dunno yet. That’s why I was asking if anyone else has said anything. If they had, I was thinking maybe we could have him talk to Hound Dog or something?

Like I said, haven’t heard anything from either of them. They’re not shy about telling me when someone is struggling.

It was true. Hizashi had never known either of his fellow teachers to turn away students who came to them for extra tutoring. And if the students wouldn’t come to them, they had no problem approaching them privately and gently insisting they should. There weren’t many students who would say no to a guy who looked like a walking corpse and someone who could make the parking lot swallow you up.

It just made everything more confusing. He couldn’t think of why Bakugo was doing so much worse in his class than any of the others. It couldn’t be because Bakugo particularly didn’t like him. Not that the kid was particularly fond of any of his teachers, but Hizashi had seen the way Bakugo behaved around people he genuinely hated, like poor Midoriya. That explosive resentment was a far cry from the casual annoyance Hizashi usually saw on Bakugo’s face when they were having a long lecture about diagramming sentences.

Then the word caught him. Explosive.

He thought of Bakugo during training, igniting the nitroglycerin-like sweat that poured off him, and making thundering explosions, loud enough to rattle windows and be heard for miles.

Hizashi’s gaze flicked up to his hearing aids, still at the corner of his desk. English had been a challenge for him because of them. Obviously, learning another language entailed being able to listen to it and pick up the various patterns, words, and grammar rules.

He picked up his pen and tapped it against the desk. Yes, English had been difficult for him, because he’d been deaf since birth. He knew that was the reason.

He could only imagine what it must be like for someone who doesn’t even realize something is wrong yet.

He tapped out a response to Shouta’s last text. I think I know what to do. I’ll explain when you get home. Love you xoxoxo.

Hizashi picked up Bakugo’s blank worksheet. Next to the zero, he wrote, much more lightly, “See me after class.” Then he underlined it. Three times.

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

Hizashi kept his eyes trained on Bakugo as the rest of the class filed out of the room. He thought it pretty telling when the normally cocky little twerp was trying his damnedest to look everywhere but at him.

Finally, Bakugo stood up from his desk and approached the front of the room, hands deep in his pockets. As he did, Hizashu covertly touched the screen of his phone. The video he had queued up began, and a high-pitched whine filled the room. Even though his headphones cancelled out most of the feedback, it still made him wince as his hearing aids worked overtime to process the frequency. It was irritating, but he’d survive. He needed some proof.

“What do you want?” Bakugo muttered tersely.

Hizashi flicked his gaze down at his student’s pocket, where he’d stuffed the blank homework assignment Hizashi had handed back to him. As if sensing that Hizashi was looking, Bakugo crumpled the paper in his fist and shoved it further down.

“Look, I’ll do the stupid thing again if that’s what you want,” Bakugo said, a bit louder. Hizashi knew the kid was trying to intimidate him. He tried it with literally everyone who even looked at him funny.

Hizashi just sighed quietly and replied, “This isn’t about one assignment, Bakugo. It’s about the last several assignments.”

Very few of his students had ever heard Hizashi use his “authority” voice, as Shouta called it. Hizashi honestly didn’t like using it. Most of the teachers in UA were some form of intimidating, and he didn’t want to be that way. He wanted his students to feel like he was a friend, rather than an authority figure. But that didn’t mean he didn’t know when it was time to straighten up and start putting on a teacher voice.

At least the tone had gotten Bakugo to stop looking at the floor and move his eyes somewhere in Hizashi’s general direction.

“It’s not my fault your class is a waste of my time,” the kid muttered.

“Then you should have no trouble explaining to me why your average score on my homework was an 87% until recently.”

Bakugo didn’t answer at first, but Hizashi could practically see the wheels turning in the kid’s head, trying to offer up some angry response that would hopefully scare this prying teacher off.

The high-frequency playing on Hizashi’s phone droned away. It was starting to make his skin crawl. Bakugo didn’t show any signs that he even noticed it.

“Guess your teaching bored me so much it made me drop a few IQ points,” Bakugo offered up weakly. Once again, his gaze was firmly fixed on the floor.

Hizashi took a deep breath, and said, “Bakugo, how long have you been having problems with your hearing?”

That really got Bakugo’s attention. His red eyes contracted to pinpricks, and he straighten his whole body to look Hizashi square in the face. “What the hell are you talking about?” he shouted. His words echoed through the empty classroom. “I can hear just fine!”

“Uh huh,” Hizashi said, picking up his phone and showing it to Bakugo. “Then why couldn’t you hear this high frequency that’s been going for the past few minutes?”

For a split second, Bakugo looked at Hizashi like he’d slapped him. Then the familiar rage contorted his features again, and he shouted, “You’re a liar! You didn’t have anything playing on that piece of shit!”

Hizashi held the phone out to him. “Check if you don’t believe me. But blow it up, and I’ll have you expelled faster than you can blame Midoriya.”

Bakugo swiped the phone from Hizashi’s hand and looked down at the screen, studied the video of the high frequency. He tapped play on the screen, and instantly, the dreadful noise filled the room again. Hizashi actually flinched a bit at the renewed onslaught.

He watched his student stare in silent confusion at the video for a whole thirty seconds before Bakugo spoke up again. “I...it...this stupid video doesn’t even have any sound,” he grumbled, thrusting the phone back towards Hizashi.

Hizashi took the phone, mercifully muted the video, and stuffed it back into his jacket pocket. “Now, back to my original question: how long have you been having problems with your hearing?”

“I already told you, I don’t have any stupid problems!”

“Then you’re definitely gonna need a better excuse to explain away these half-assed assignments,” Hizashi retorted firmly. A brief flicker of confusion crossed Bakugo’s face, and Hizashi guessed this was the first time a teacher had actually sworn in front of him. Hizashi took advantage of the confusion to add, “I talked with Aizawa and the other teachers. My class is the only one where you pull this stunt. Incidentally, math and literature are classes that don’t revolve around being able to hear what your teacher is talking about very well. Unlike, say, English.”

Bakugo merely growled.

“Maybe you’ve noticed ringing in your ears? Or that sound is fading in and-”

“How many times do I have to tell you?!” Bakugo’s sudden shout filled the room. Those red pinpricks were back on Hizashi, full of fight and fire. He had no doubt that Bakugo’s palms were roughly two seconds from starting to pop. “If you can’t get it past your stupid, gel-encrusted hair and through your thick skull, then maybe you’re to one having problems with your hearing!”

Hizashi couldn’t help it - he started to laugh. He’d been prepared for Bakugo to insult and demean him (the crack about his hair was almost a given), but this was just too good. And the look on the poor kid’s face - torn between unbridled confusion and an animalistic urge to jump the desk separating them and claw Hizashi’s eyes out - only made him laugh harder.

Finally, Bakugo barked, “The hell is so funny?!”

Hizashi simply reached up and slid his headphones off, being sure to turn his head slightly so Bakugo could see the thin wires running from the insert to the black processor behind his ear.

“I kinda hope I’ve got a problem with my hearing,” he said. “Otherwise I paid through the nose for the world’s ugliest jewelry.”

Bakugo didn’t reply. He just kept staring - gaping really - at Hizashi’s ears.

Hizashi set his headphones down on his desk, and said, “I’ve been deaf since I was born, but I’ve only had hearing aids since I was about six. I wasn’t kidding when I said they were expensive.”

No reply.

“The doctor who fitted me with my first pair as a kid told my parents that’s probably why I cried so loud. I literally couldn’t hear myself and stop.”

Still no reply.

“The headphones serve a double purpose. They protect my hearing aids against damage, and have a backup power source for them if the batteries ever die while I’m fighting villains or helping in a rescue.”

Silence.

“Bakugo?”

“...you mean to tell me those stupid headphones you wear actually have a purpose?”

Hizashi laughed out loud. “Excuse you, but those things are the height of fashion and function. At least that’s what Hage pays me to say.”

Was that a flicker of a smile Hizashi saw on Bakugo’s face? He decided not to press his luck by asking. Instead he said, “Now, will you answer my question or not?”

Bakugo chewed his lower lip a bit. Another beat of silence passed, and then he finally grumbled, “A while.”

“I’d ask you why you didn’t say anything sooner, but I already know why.”

“Screw you.”

“So you’ve noticed some symptoms?”

“...yeah. It mostly started as ringing.”

“Started?”

“Yeah, it’s worse now. Now sometimes people will just...cut out when they’re talking to me. If I’m not looking directly at them, I miss what they say.”

“And I’m not gonna ask you to learn lip-reading just to get by in English class. It’s a pain, trust me.”

“You can read lips?”

“Yep. I sign too. Since I went through a chunk of my life not being able to hear anything, it can be a little overwhelming. I sometimes take them out when I’m at home. Or in a boring staff meeting.”

That one actually got Bakugo to laugh. Or snort, really. But at least it was something other than confusion or fury.

Hizashi smiled and said, “But you’ve been able to hear your entire life, and if it’s caught early, you might not need as elaborate a set-up as mine.” He took a business card from his back pocket and held it out to Bakugo. “This is for a woman named Nanama Sakakibara. She’s one of the best audiologists in Japan. I want you to think about seeing her. Also, I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure that your explosions are what’s damaging your hearing, so maybe think about hitting up Power Loader for some ear protection in that costume of yours.”

Bakugo gave him a stiff nod, but eyed the card like it might bite him. He flicked his glance back up to Hizashi’s. “Do I have to take it?”

Hizashi’s smile morphed into a cat-like grin, and he said, “No, of course you don’t have to. I can always keep it to give to your mom when I set up an emergency parent-teacher conference to discuss your near-failing English grade.”

Bakugo narrowed his eyes at him, then silently snatched the card from Hizashi’s hand. “You’re a dick,” he grumbled.

Hizashi merely smiled wider and picked up his headphones, sliding them back into place over his ears. He slipped back into his announcer voice and said, “I’m a dick because I care, sparky.” He gave Bakugo a double finger-gun, and added, “Now amscray before Eraser gets suspicious about why you aren’t at training yet.”

Bakugo began to move toward the door. Hizashi found it pretty promising when he didn’t immediately shove the card into his pocket, with his incomplete assignment.

When Bakugo reached the door, he stopped, one hand on the door frame, his shoulders tense and his head ducked down.

A beat of silence.

Then: “Thanks or whatever.”

And suddenly Bakugo was gone.

Hizashi shook his head. The gratitude was more than he’d expected. At least it was better than holes blown in the walls.

#hizashi yamada #present mic #katsuki bakugo #deaf mic #deaf bakugo #shouta aizawa #my hero academia #mha #fanfic

268 notes · View notes

lenjaminmacbuttons · 4 years

Note

Hope you’re doing okay, I know there’s been a lot going on the past couple weeks. 🌈🌈💛💛

FOOF YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN

thank you for the good vibes anon, i love you and it means a lot to me. however unfortunately now im gonna use this to vent dump exactly how much has been going on the past couple weeks off the top of my head. this is actually pretty far from Everything thats happen but im so tired and dont want to think about any of it anymore

my grandma passed away last week. we were prepared for it and we know she’s at peace in a better place et cetera et cetera, her body was all full of restraints & impediments that she doesnt have to deal with anymore and the next time she’s in a body it’ll be all New And Improved and awesome. i missed so much work in anticipation of this that now i can’t get work off on the day of the funeral, so i can still go to it but i’ll have to go immediately to work right from it and have to pretend everythings fine and dandy and nothings going on.

everyone at work Does know there’s something going on however and the two coworkers i have who are actually like i consider them friends mostly they’re all like Hey Im Here For You Talk About Your Feelings Honestly with me and i. dont. want. to talk about my feelings at work. thats not what work is for and i dont like talking about my feelings anyway and i dont want them to ask anymore

the changes to the handbook and the honor code have completely sunk my heart. i had so much hope up until those hideous ridiculous unfathomably transphobic things they wrote and now i don’t feel like i can trust or have hope in ANYTHING the institution does anymore. ive been up all night going back and forth over whether i want to go to church today. or ever again. it’s not bringing me joy. it’s making me feel anxious and depressed and frustrated and alone. i keep seeing people just on the street or on facebook who are so happy and content with the church and whatever it does and i just…i get struck every single time with this thought of “they don’t care about me. they don’t care about any of these problems. they’re not affected personally by it and so they don’t care.”

and then that makes me feel like such a hypocrite because!!! ive been them too for so long!! what makes this moment so different!!!!! why is this the straw that breaks the camel’s back when the camel should have thrown off the whole burden and run to join its friends at the first strike of the owner’s whip!!!!!!

plus it’s making me feel gross about my mormon memes blogs. idk if i can keep running those anymore.

im failing this semester anyway and i keep getting emails about it. i was planning to take a break from school After this semester but ive missed so much class that i just really can’t go back to any of them so i guess im just dropping out right now. as much as i’d love to participate in all the incredible amazing protests going on right now i really really cant be on campus at all without feeling literally physically ill. and my Hope was to do really well this last semester and then submit mission papers and that way i’d know exactly what next to do with my life until i decide what After, and id be able to Get Out somewhere and travel someplace while still feeling like my life has some semblance of structure and direction. however! HOWEVER!!!!!!!!

i’ve been feeling so, so horrible and so worn down and i dont even know where or what my testimony is anymore. but that’s probably a lot lower on the list of Why I Can’t Serve A Mission, because a. i still don’t trust my Local Bishop enough to talk to him about things The Handbook says to b. i am finding it harder and harder and harder to be perceived as female. i never really have dysphoria about my body or my presentation or anything but like, when people say Sister and Ma’am and Miss and Daughter and Hey Pretty Lady It’s Me Your Relief Society President it’s like…that’s not me. that feels gross. and i wear suits and ties to church, have done so for a while and never get any flak for it, and im gradually working up the nerve to maybe start introducing myself as lev or levi instead of lillie buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. socially transitioning apparently is not allowed.

not to mention my temple recommend expired ages ago anyway. anxiety about bishops prevented me from ever going in for an interview to renew it. i haven’t visited the temple once since before graduating high school. but every time i see it or think about it i long for it so badly and it hurts so much.

and also like, i get that same kinda horrible regretful longing feeling whenever i hear violin music? because i played violin for a few years and then stopped but i still have the instrument because it was given to me by my grandmother. who played it herself until sickness wouldn’t let her anymore and she entrusted it to me and i Stopped Playing but then i hoped to pick it up enough to at least learn how to play her favorite song and aw wouldn’t that be so nice to play that for her on her violin except i never actually got around to printing out the sheet music or practicing At All. and now she’s gone.

and one of the last things she said to me was that she would love to hear my book since her eyesight was too gone to read it so i said i’d record it as soon as i got the right software/hardware to do that and then i never did that either. also i promised alla yalls that book would be Published Published coming up on four months ago now and i still haven’t done that

i took a pair of safety scissors to my forearms as mentioned in a previous post and surprise surprise, the lines have not healed still, it’s getting warmer outside and thus harder to wear long sleeves, and guess what! a while ago on a separate occasion i complained that i kinda wished my self harm scars looked more like the classic cutter lines and Now They Do!! And I Hate It!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and a couple nights ago my little sister saw them and so i told her i got attacked by a spider-pawed bear and fortunately my brother Understands and backed me up like “dang what do they teach in schools these days i cant believe youve never heard of the spider-pawed bears that live in the mountains and are totally normal and real”

and steven universe is ending. that’s a thing.

and like….okay. not everything in my emotions right now is bad. some of it is just complicated. one coworker friend i have recently confessed that she’s had a crush on me for several months now. fortunately when she said this i was able to be honest and say that im not super eager for a relationship right now, im not ready in the slightest to settle down or anything, im still hung up on my high school crush and also dealing with issues from my last relationship, and she replied that’s all perfectly fine and she doesn’t have any expectations and she’s great being friends and we can take things at whatever pace is good

except i also now have a date with said high school crush loosely planned for tomorrow and i told this coworker friend about it and she admitted it’s making her a little jealous and then she said jealous is an ugly word and amended it to Insecure and i feel bad about that

but i also like. am really excited for this date. like it’s not really a for sure romantic capital-d Date and that’s fine, but i haven’t seen this friend irl for so long and ive been missing her so much over this past little while that we’ve been internet chatting and that ive been i guess officially falling back in love with her but i also like, i dont know what her deal is romantically right now i don’t want to presume anything but i really really really am itching to see her

work is stressful. it’s only gonna get more so as weather gets warmer. but we’re getting two new managers with loads of experience and glowing reviews next week. i have hope that they’ll makes things a little lighter.

and there’s also. good things. peridot took off her visor for the first time ever in canon and i saved like 50 different gifs of it to my computer cus it rocked my world. sonic has she-ra toys for the kids meals and i managed to snag a tiny inflatable version of the sword. i’m making cosplays of the tres horny boys from the adventure zone and they’re all very exciting and making things makes me very very happy. i’m finding joy in all the fanfictions i’m writing right now and in talking about dungeons & dragons with my brothers and friends. ducknerva is a very beautiful Good Ending version of marahope which makes me happy and taako is a super effective projection outlet. i bought cupcakes today and they were delicious. and when i think about those good things, when i think about any good thing no matter how small, everything else disappears.

whatever happens happens i guess.

she who lives will see.

#talkyllama #hey if anyone needs tags on posts like these please please let me know asap #i always forget that actual people see the things i post #i dont usually trigger tag cus i dont usually think i need to but if i do i will

3 notes · View notes