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nessaxc · 3 years

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Date Night || Gojo Satoru

Gojo takes you out to dinner, but the flirty waitress at the restaurant really gets on your nerves, so Gojo is determined to assure you that he only has eyes for you.

~ Words: 2.5k

~ NSFW 18+

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"I'm glad I got to see you tonight, I've missed my princess," he leaned across the table to nuzzle his nose against yours gently, and you returned the same motion with a soft giggle.

"I've missed you too," you replied, "it's about time you made some time for me," you added.

"Well, you know, Tokyo keeps me busy," he told you with a chuckle, "but I had to take my best girl out, I know how lonely she gets without me around," he teased.

You giggled and propped your elbow up on the dinner table, balancing your chin in your hand as you held his gaze. He was smiling and shaking his head at you, mimicking your pose, only he rested both elbows on the table and cupped his face with his hands as he looked at you from across the table.

"You look beautiful in that dress by the way, but what else is new, huh?" he winked and broke eye contact for a moment to admire the dress that perfectly hugged your figure, "I'm glad you wore it."

You giggled again at that and twirled a small section of hair around your index finger, smiling down at your lap for a moment before you looked back up at him.

"I'm glad you wore that suit and tie. You should wear it more often, because you clean up pretty well," you grinned and leaned forward slightly to whisper, "by the way, you're really pretty too."

"Am I really pretty?" he joked and batted his lashes, letting his jaw hang slack with a smirk that tugged at the corners of his mouth over the way you instantly cracked up laughing. He chuckled airily as he continued to look you up and down, and you had to turn away in attempt to hide the deep blossoming of your cheeks.

"Yes, you're very pretty," you said with a soft chuckle when you turned back to him.

"Good evening, can I get you anything?"

A young waitress made her way onto the scene before Gojo could respond to you, and she appeared to be addressing just him rather than both of you. She beamed brightly at him and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, letting out a hint of a giggle that you couldn't help but roll your eyes at.

"Some menus would be nice," he grinned up at her and she flaunted her smile right back at him, making it a mission to maintain eye contact for as long as possible and throw in a bat of the lashes here and there.

"I'll go get those for you right now," she bowed her head and smiled softly, but she didn't leave until she'd make a point of leaning towards him slightly to tell him, "by the way, that tie looks great on you, really compliments your complexion."

She was already flirting with him right in front of you whilst being so brazen about it, and it was really taking everything in you not to totally snap. You didn't want dinner to be spoiled by your temper, though, you could already feel yourself starting to lose your appetite because you were red hot with anger right now. You sat there silently and waited for her to leave, gritting your teeth and casting your gaze downward the entire time.

"Thank you very much," he thanked her before she walked away and when he turned back around to face you, he was greeted by raised brows, pursed lips and your eyes glimmering for the wrong reasons. You half-smirked at him and cleared your throat whilst picking at your nails to avoid looking up at him.

"I think she's expecting a tip from you tonight," you managed to make a joke out of it and mustered a small laugh.

He chuckled lightly and acted completely dismissive about it, waving it off as her following some sort of transcript, "It's just service with a smile, Y/N."

He insisted, but you just forced a smile on your face. You fiddled with the cutlery that rested to your side and toyed with the napkin as well, offering yourself a distraction rather than look up at him for the moment.

"Yeah, too many smiles in your direction, though, if you ask me," you sassed, and he laughed loudly at that.

"Babe, something the matter?" he raised an eyebrow curiously, an amused grin on his face. Before you had the time to open your mouth and retort, she soon returned with the menus.

She carelessly laid yours down in front of you while she actually handed Gojo his, making sure to brush her hand over his as she did so. You glared at her but your look went missed, and you were doing a pretty good job of keeping your mouth shut so far, no matter how badly you wanted to tell this girl to back off.

She started babbling on about something that he should try on the menu, ensuring to flash him her smile and bat her lashes some more. She was giggling like he had told the funniest joke, and you were clutching onto a fork tightly with a hand, thinking about digging it deep into her neck. Gojo was a bad influence on you. She brought her hand closer to his so she could flip through the pages and show him exactly what she was describing. You cleared your throat and decided to speak up, because this girl was getting on your last nerve.

"Could you give us a few moments to decide what we're having? Thank you," you gave her possibly the most painfully forced smile you could muster, somehow managing to keep a level head when she withdrew her hand and acknowledged you for the first time since she'd stop at your table. She simply nodded and smiled meekly before walking away, and Gojo’s bright blue eyes shot towards you to give you a look that was nothing short of sheer surprise at how sharp you'd been in your manner of speech.

"Did I miss something?" he cracked up laughing, "My little kitten's got a sharp set of claws, eh?" he remarked before his laughter starting to die down. "I thought she was a rather nice lady," he said with another chuckle.

He scanned over the menu to find a dish that stood out to him. You squinted at him and leaned into him, lightly bringing the menu down to have him look you in the eyes instead.

"Really, Satoru? I wouldn't class the light touches on the hand, the needless giggling and overall acting like a fucking schoolgirl with a crush as just 'being nice'," you snapped slightly, "she's flirting with you, a lot, and I'm sick of it."

"Oh, I see where this is going," he said with a knowing smirk that stretched its way across his lips a few seconds later. You noticed this and your hand targeted your menu in an instant as some form of shield to hide behind to avoid the stares he was giving you, and he lowered your menu down just like you had done to him.

"I think somebody's jealous when she really doesn't need to be," he sang and kept his eyes trained on your face. "So what if she's flirting a little bit? I'm not interested in the slightest," he told you, and you heaved a sigh before he continued, "you have nothing to worry about, my sweet," he said with a smirk, amused with your envy.

"Seriously? You mean that?" you asked, nibbling on your lower lip.

"Course I do," he said, "she could be on her knees begging for my cock and I would say no if that'd make you feel better about it," he finished, and you laughed at that.

"I'm not even feeling that hungry anymore," you said, "she's just so irritating," you huffed, and he looked at you like he was thinking of something until his brain hatched an idea.

"Forget about dinner, I know what will cheer you up, c'mon," he stretched his arm out for you to grab his hand, and you quickly took it in yours. He walked with you until you both reached the closest bathroom - the women's room.

"Um, Satoru, I don't think you're supposed to be in here," you quipped with a short giggle.

"Oh trust me, I am," he cooed. Once the door was closed, he lifted you up by your thighs and pinned you to the wall, his lips attacking your neck in little bites and harsh kisses, not caring about the purple marks he left in his wake.

"Satoru," you gasped his name out, much to his delight.

You let out a soft moan of approval through your own lips as you lifted your hips up in absolute desperation, wanting more of him, and wanting it now.

"I only have eyes for you, Y/N, you and only you," he told you as he continued to cover your neck in wet kisses, and you couldn't help lean your head back to give him easier access. Realizing that you both were still out in the open, he carried you into the bathroom stall, pressing you up against the nearest and sturdiest wall.

He tugged his pants down from his hips and quickly pushed his boxers down to his knees, just far enough to allow his thick and fully hard member to spring up. He nearly ripped your panties down your thighs and threw them to the floor, holding you up with one hand and using the other to glide up your thigh, one finger slipping up your wet folds. He grinned knowingly before he leaned in to growl in your ear, "Look at how wet for me you already are," he hummed, "mm, how bad do you want me?"

Just the slightest touch drove you absolutely wild, and you seemed to forget everything that took place before he brought you in this stall. You keened in the back of your throat and rocked your hips down against his finger, moaning out, "Fuck me, Satoru. I need you so bad. Please!" you cried.

"Well when you say it like that, I don't see how I could say no," he cooed. He grasped his member firmly until he was lined up to your entrance, exhaling loudly as he crouched down to push in. He took his time entering your body at first, watching the pleasure overcome your features. Once you had adjusted to his girth, he set a rough pace, taking you quickly in broad deep strokes that jarred your body and caused your head to slam back into the wall as you surrendered yourself to his movements, hips grinding forward in an attempt to keep tempo. He doesn't waste time going slow, knowing you both needed relief fast.

Grasping his shoulders tightly, you moaned, the volume increasing with each thrust until you were sure you would both get caught.

"That's it, let the whole goddamn restaurant know who's fucking you," he managed to say between his own moans and grunts. "You're doing so good, baby, so good," he praised.

You answered with an even louder moan, shoving your hips forward in a demand for him to go faster, grinding your clit against his pelvis whenever you could.

"Your cunt feels so fucking perfect, squeezing me like this, fuck," he ground out.

He obliged your command, snapping his hips into yours relentlessly, the sounds spilling from your lips urging him on.

"You look so good baby, you always do," he uttered through a pant, "you fucking drive me crazy." He quickly added, "Do you know how beautiful you look when you're all stretched out on my cock?"

One hand gripped onto your hair and he tugged backwards just enough to show you dominance as he pounded into you with no mercy, the sounds of your high pitched moans bouncing off the walls, mixed with his deep grunts and the sound of hot skin slapping against skin.

"Look at you, you're always so fucking pretty, so fucking perfect like this," he told you. His hips moved in the most sinful way, filling you up just perfectly, and he seemed to find that special spot inside you so skillfully, making you cry out in ecstasy.

"You like that, baby? You like how good I make you feel? Good girl, moaning for me and showing the entire diner who's gonna make you come," he hissed into your ear as his thrusts became more erratic, slamming into you again and again as he kept his wild pace up.

"Mmmm!" you hummed. You threw your head back and arched your torso sharply, screaming out in pleasure when your body started to quake with the sensation of your orgasm barreling towards you. His fingers left little purple prints on your hips at how tight he was squeezing your hips, knowing you were both close to your climax.

"Show me how much you like it, come for me," he rasped.

He maintained the angle of his thrusts, continually hitting a sensitive spot within your body until you were convulsing in his arms, orgasm rocking you to the very core. He wasn't far behind, taken over the edge by the tight clenching or your walls around his member.

Exhaling loudly, he relaxed his body against yours as you both came down from your peaks. The wall was the only thing keeping you both up as you wilt, exhausted from your spontaneous lovemaking. Finding the energy to pull back, he kissed you gently, running his fingers through your hair to fix the disrupted locks. You smiled into the kiss, body buzzing from your orgasm and heart glowing at his gestures.

You both cleaned up as best as you could in the stall, he helped adjust the skirt of your dress before moving to fix his own disarrayed hair.

"You had no reason to be jealous, Y/N, like I said I only have eyes for your pretty little face," he nuzzled his nose against yours, and you did the same in return, laughing with each other.

"Thank you, Satoru," you said with a soft giggle when you stepped out of the bathroom stall with him.

"Anything for you, babe," he told you as he intertwined his fingers with yours, walking out with you, "now let's go eat," he started, "we can even put on a little show for her under the table so she knows not to mess with you," he suggested with a loud laugh.

"I like the sound of that," you replied with a broad smirk on your face. That wasn't a bad idea.

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hanibalistic · 3 years

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#758A87 | LEE JENO.

genre | fluff, domestic au, platonic love

word count | 1652

warning | none

note | i am back to advocate for peeling oranges for each other. also, yes, i may be writing a little nct but don’t count on it.

the way jeno kicked off his shoes and begrudgingly walked past you to go to his room told you that he was rejected.

there was this girl who he has been going on and on about for a while now. he kept it to himself fairly well in the earlier stages of his crush, but you caught on anyway after noticing the cues he dropped here and there—smiling at his phone, mentioning her name in and out of conversations, and mostly jaemin's constant teasing. after he came clean to you about his occupied affection, he fully allowed himself to express how ever-growing his feelings were.

although there were times when you felt an overwhelming urge to shut him up (for someone who talks so little, jeno sure talks a lot in the comfort of your shared apartment), ultimately you were happy to see that he has a reason to be so giddy and happy all the time. she makes him talk like nobody can, she makes him beam and coo, and you were grateful that this unknown girl could bring the best out of your friend.

occasionally, though, when you watch the way his eyes light up in the mention of the girl, you would feel a cold breeze of loneliness for the absence of a companion of your own. you were not in love, and neither was anyone in love with you, and there was a deep hollowness in the absence of affection, whether one-sided or reciprocated, that made you feel an unexplainable desperation to find love without being in need of it.

you turned away from your laptop that you set on the coffee table when you heard footsteps trailing out to the living room. water still dripped past his skin, showing that he didn't bother to dry himself thoroughly after the steaming hot shower he just took. his blue hair dripped wet and the towel around his shoulders was the only thing catching the rainfall from his head.

jeno moved slow and depressed, his eyes not a trace of glow in them and his jaw tightly gritted. he bent down to pick up the shoes he kicked off in a moment of a tantrum when he got home, but his fingers were flailing as if he has no will to do anything but lay on his bed and reflect on his entire love life—how it started, how much he loved the girl who broke his heart, where it went wrong, and what the hell was so bad about him that she didn't love him back?

you pouted slightly in awkwardness when he resulted in placing his shoes near the wall instead.

oh lord, he totally got rejected. that was not the worst thing but the fact that you never knew how to deal with someone heartbroken. you never had to go through it yourself, neither were you ever placed in a situation where someone else needed your comfort.

what could you do? distract him by giving him tasks to do? let him vent his emotions out to you even though he has always been quiet about his negative feelings? be insensitive and remind him there were bigger problems than being dumped?

what if he didn't need it, though? do heartbroken people truly need their hearts to be mended at all? if the heartbreak is the only thing left of whom they used to love, do they truly want to get rid of it?

"jeno."

annoyed but kind, jeno looked up from the cracks of the wall to you. he was upset, but he thought it unfair to take it out on you. your wide eyes glanced back at him when he stood up straight again, and you flashed him a tight smile as you raised your hands to him. he looked at the oranges sitting comfortably on your palms, and internally, he sighed.

"can you peel these oranges for me?" you asked as you usually would, sounding occupied but also free.

jeno really could not be bothered with doing anything. he just got rejected by who he thought was the love of his life; he felt confident this morning, especially after you helped fix up his hair and pick his outfit, as well as jaemin's encouraging words, only to have his expectations crumble with a simple answer. some part of him felt humiliated and stupid for choosing this route, for thinking that he had a chance, and he really cannot be bothered at all.

"[name], i'm sorry but i really don't feel like doing anything right now," he confessed lowly.

he was about to turn to leave when you called him again, much more urgently this time but still with a hint of dragging laziness in your tone.

"ah–jeno, please?" you pleaded in a faint childish whine, squeezing the oranges in your hands. "just one orange? please, jeno?"

he almost rolled his eyes when he turned to face you, but the softness that erupted in his chest at the sight of you sitting on the floor, oranges in your hand, stopped him from letting you see his annoyance. his hammering brain relaxed when he saw you put one orange down and attempted to peel the other one with trouble.

he sighed with unknown but familiar endearment when your thumb tore right through the fruit, sprouting juices over your once clean hands, and a gentle defeat once again rushed over him when you frowned up at him with the failure in your hands and a pleading glint in your eyes.

the softness in his heart—he never thought much about it. much of his affection for you was platonic, he believed, but they were also affection that seemed to trump the ones he felt for the girl he loved whenever they rush to the nape of his neck. the feelings he has for you often seemed to trump all else when he was confronted with them blatantly, such as now, and he could do anything.

he could do anything. he could declare that you are one of his best friends, maybe he could tell you he loves you, but mostly he could brush away his sadness to peel you an orange if you asked.

"jeno..."

"okay, okay," he said as he crouched down next to you and took the untouched orange from the table.

at some point, he lost his balance and he ended up sitting down next to you. he skillfully ripped the skin off the orange, carefully and precisely revealing the tasty fruit inside. meanwhile, you struggled freely with your destroyed orange by taking apart the slices and popping them into your mouth.

"oh, try it, this is good."

jeno looked up briefly when you spoke. he opened his mouth so you could feed him the orange slice, and he raised his brows in approval. you grinned, taking note that you should get more of the same ones next time you go buy groceries to stock up.

there was a moment of silence where you focused on the television and jeno on the last bit of orange slices in his hands. when he was done, he reached over to the coffee table and dumped them on the tissue you laid on top. when he was done, he dusted his hands and hoisted himself off the floor, just before you spoke again.

"you got rejected, didn't you?"

jeno pursed his lips, the sorrow rushing over him once again after having forgotten about it. he nodded. "yeah."

you turned your head to look at him. jeno felt self-conscious under your gaze. he never did so, but it felt like you were accessing what was wrong with the way he looked.

"maybe it's your blue hair," you said, pointing at his head and a playful laugher hanging on your lips. "maybe you reminded her too much of sonic, like the hedgehog, so she said no–"

"you are not funny." he smiled patiently but humorlessly.

"i am trying my best!" you exclaimed, then you leaned back against the edge of the couch and asked to the ceiling, "are you sad?"

"yeah."

"okay then," you muttered, then you laid your head on his shoulder and huffed. "how about now?"

jeno choked on a short laugh, in disbelief yet he was kind of used to your way of comforting people, but his heart beat softly against his chest at both the proximity and your discreet care. if anything, he would have preferred your way than the way of talking and reaching into the cave of his emotions. mainly because the latter does nothing but make him realize how much he missed with just one rejection.

at least with your head on his shoulder, he remembers he has friends, a companion. he has someone he has a soft spot for, someone he can put all his abandoned love for in the meantime as he searched for another lover, someone who can make him bother when he feels like he can't anymore.

"maybe a little less," he whispered, smiling to himself.

"okay..." you reached your hand to him, an orange slice in your hand, "care for an orange?"

jeno laughed, but then he grimaced with a choke of disbelief when he saw the monstrosity in your hands.

"[name]! i said peel the orange not kill it!" he exclaimed, his eyes wide at how sticky and wet your hands have become from just peeling the orange.

"i told you i just can't do it!" you laughed incredulously, shrugging and popping another orange slice into your mouth. "this is why i have you."

jeno rolled his eyes in defeat, but he denies nothing of it.

you are where he puts his love into for now, you are who holds half of his soul for now. you are who he is willing to peel oranges for, maybe not just for now but for the rest of his life.

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thefledglingdm · 3 years

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Umm can I request directors commentary for literally any Leopika fic you’ve written??? Love your stuff!

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

ahhahaha thank you so much! yes, absolutely! this is going to be long, because i have decided to do that scene in light of my life, pain of my ass. beware LONG BULLSHIT and spoilers below the cut!

ok to set the scene. i was TERRIFIED to write this part. because this is the climax, you know? we've had 150k words of build-up and emotional tension to this scene. while this has been a romantic story, this is the actual climax of the story. we've spent all this time in kurapika's head as he's dealt with his anxiety, his need for control, his fear of letting go. how he's changed as he's opened up his heart and his life to people outside. and finally he's actually working through all of his emotions and the progress he's made out loud, in front of everyone. and because he forgot about giving his speech until like five minutes before (sorry, kp), he is forced to speak from the heart.

For five agonizing seconds, Kurapika stood alone in the middle of a silent room. Above him, the string lights coalesced into a single shared point of soft white light that illuminated his space.

i so wish this could be adapted to, like, netflix or made into a movie. i put so much into this imagery. the play on light? the cinnamon topography? *chef's kiss* yes please netflix CALL ME.

Everyone in his life was staring at him expectantly, Pairo and Altair and Gon and Killua and Nanika and Alluka and Kalluto and his parents. And approximately a hundred other people on top of that, extended family on both sides, industry insiders, coworkers. All staring at him and waiting for him to say something amazing and powerful and deep about love and what did Kurapika know about love, anyway? He was a thirty-two year old trans man so terrified of his own emotions, so paralyzed by his fear of loss, that he did not figure out he was in love with his best friend until three weeks ago.

this is me screwing the knife in deeper for poor kurapika, sorry. this is so incredibly horrifying for a person with anxiety, as someone with anxiety. behold, the terrifying ordeal of being known.

Five seconds. Kurapika finally found Leorio standing near the back, leaning against the bar. He wondered if Leorio picked the same spot where they sat together the very first time they came here on purpose. Leorio sent him a wink and a thumbs-up.

the terrifying ordeal of being known and being so, so loved anyway. it was great to write in a way that showed leorio realized he was in love with kurapika first (indeed, realized that kurapika was in love with him before kurapika knew himself), because these little interactions shows so much how leorio is inviting and allowing kurapika to come to him on his own time. and supporting him the whole way, because they are friends!!!!

Breathe, Kurapika thought. Just breathe. It’s going to be okay.

this statement was not supposed to be a running theme/motif, but i'm super glad it did! i wrote it as a one-off line for melody, but then i was like, hang on, that's kinda good? every other time i write i'm like, hey, you could make a theme out of this!

“Um,” Kurapika started, his voice cracking. Christ, he sounded seventeen again. He cleared his throat.

my friends told me about how their voices changed and dropped on T. any trans person is stronger and more powerful than any us marine.

“For those of you who may not know, I’m Pairo’s brother. Kurapika. His older one, just to be clear.”

this is definitely something that has happened like a hundred times.

There was a smattering of chuckles around the room. He twisted to look at Pairo. “I’ve known Pairo since he was a toddler dragging a ragged, threadbare T-Rex plushie around behind him. I was there when he read his first chapter book on his own – Dino Hunter, of course – because he came bursting into my room at two o’clock in the morning to tell me about it.” Another round of laughter. “I was there when he got his first notebook, when he won his first writing contest, when he was published in his first magazine. I was the first person he told about liking boys instead of girls. I’ve watched him grow and learn and fall in love. And now Altair is part of our family, too.”

pairo and kurapika's lives as brothers were amazing. dino hunter is a reference to the book they both read in the manga that led to kurapika wanting to leave the kurta and explore the world.

i also thought that writing fit pairo well because it's a pretty accessible career for his eyes. he could type, he could enhance the screen and font when he needed, and he could do talk-to-type. one day i want to write a side-story of when pairo and altair met, because i have it perfectly formulated in my head and it's adorable.

Kurapika took a deep breath, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. He confessed, “To be perfectly honest, I was scared when Pairo asked me to do this, because I’ve run out of things to teach him. He’s run on ahead of me in life. Settled down, moved in with his boyfriend – now husband, congratulations on that by the way – and gotten married, while I’m perpetually single and living alone in my loft apartment with an absolutely spoiled monster of a cat. Stop laughing, that wasn’t supposed to be a joke.”

emperor the cat was also not intended to be a character. i came up with him like, right before i started writing the chapter.

i think it was hard for kurapika to watch his brother fall in love and move on ahead in life. even if he was genuinely happy for them both. i had a conversation with a coworker a few months ago where we both talked about how we feel like we are "behind," even though we're both very accomplished. she felt like she was "behind" because i have a master's degree; i felt like i was "behind" because she was happily married and already had a child on the way (who is here and beautiful and perfect). and i imagine kurapika wondered if he was falling behind or missing something when he saw his brother succeed in love and business without really trying.

but there's no competition at all, of course. the world spins on, and we grow and change and find our place in our own time. there's no race.

The room quieted again. Kurapika went on, his eyes flicking over the crowd. He was starting to smile, too, now.

he's starting to realize this is okay, he's not going to mess up, he may actually have something worthwhile to say or share. he's getting more comfortable in all this.

“But I’m also a wedding planner – I know, ironic – and I’ve learned a lot about love from my clients. So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share some of those lessons now.”

No one from the back shouted at him to shut the fuck up, that he didn’t have a single clue what he was talking about, so he thought he was safe to carry on.

how funny would that have been??? like, it would have been fucked-up and humiliating, but in any other situation?? hilarious. just killua looking like that dude in mean girls being like HE DOESN'T EVEN GO HERE except it's like HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT LOVE IS.

He thought back to Light of My Life’s various couples, musing over their own rocky paths to the altar and the beautiful, fractured glimpses into their lives they gifted Kurapika and his team. What did they teach him? What did they teach his heart, that terrifying, terrified lump of meat frantically beating in his chest?

More than you think, his heart seemed to be telling him. Trust me; I will guide you through this. Trust me, trust me, trust me.

*"listen to your heart" plays in the background*

also like. trusting oneself and your perceptions and your feelings and your heart is so necessary. it's an important part of healing. and being honest with yourself and your feelings is part of a foundation for all healthy relationships, i think.

also i really like writing alliteratively. the play on words with "terrifying, terrified" was. inspired? terrifying, because kurapika for a long time feared his own heart and feelings, viewing them as a loss of control; and terrified, because his heart is afraid, too. and they are taking this leap together!

And Kurapika explained: “Love isn’t just found in eloquent professions or grand, romantic gestures. It’s supporting each other through your lowest, worst moments and coming out the other side stronger for it. It’s standing together, hand in hand, against the world. It’s in looking at someone simply existing in the world and seeing them as they are: good, beautiful, strong, intelligent, kind. It’s in your communication and your foundation and trusting that all good things will come together in time. It’s in the family that you build together. It’s in the work you each put in to get through the hard times. Together.”

me: yeah uh-huh jj you really did summarize the fic so far.

this is also where i started being sappy and thinking about love. friendly and romantic love. the love i've seen in my friends, the love i feel myself in my relationships.

There. That’s what his clients taught him. Menchi and Buhara; Morena and Theta; Pokkle and Ponzu; Knov and Morel; Knuckle and Shoot; Canary and Amane. But so many more people showed him what love was. He pictured Pairo and Altair on his couch, laughing at him and judging him and helping him put his own puzzle-piece heart together into something cohesive and beautiful. He smiled at his brothers and saw the way they were clutching each others hands, mouths beaming and eyes dewy.

they LOVE their brother so MUCH. their view of the outside looking in for the past year, watching kurapika fall in love, go soft, be happier than they've ever seen him.

He told them, “It’s in the way you can communicate in gestures and looks, and sometimes, without looking at all. It’s in banter and private jokes and finishing each other’s sentences. It’s in casual touches and... pouring their coffee before your own.”

my coffee is never as good as when my partner makes it. my honey-lemon tea is never as good as it is when my partner makes it. my jokes are never as funny as they are when my partner and i finish each other's sentences, build off of each other's quips. we can communicate across rooms with nothing but a look. these little signs of love are everywhere and expressed in so many tiny ways. these examples here are between people in romantic relationships, but these apply to platonic friendships as well.

His eyes swept the room and found Killua and Gon. Gon had his camera hefted onto one shoulder, and Killua stood behind him, arms around his waist and chin on his shoulder. “It’s on the first day you wake up and realize the way you look at the world has changed. The way you open your hands and your heart and give what you have, simply for the joy of being received.”

to love? transcendent. to be loved? incandescent. to love and know that it is valued and cherished and requited?

and this was a callback to killua talking about, of course, how he fell in love with gon like melting ice. like sinking into a bath. and this was also a quieter callback to how gon fell in love. because it wasn't just that he had/has so much love to give, but because for the first time in his life, he got to see it truly received. accepted.

Kurapika saw Killua’s breath catch and Gon’s hand flex over the fingers interlaced over his middle. Heedless of their surroundings and of the running camera, Gon twisted to kiss Killua on the mouth.

SMOOCHES ahahaha!

He turned his head back to Leorio. The man had not moved; indeed, he looked like he was nailed to the floor. His eyes were so intense as they watched him that Kurapika was almost surprised he had not yet burst into flame. Kurapika said, “It’s in the moment you see someone you’ve never met before, but you look at them and just know, to your core, that this is really going to be something.”

leorio realizing something is happening here. something huge is about to happen, is about to change. and he's trying so hard not to dare to hope it might be good. it might be everything.

A chorus of oohs went around the room. Even from this distance Kurapika saw the way Leorio’s face went red, and he ducked his chin, looking bashful and embarrassed.

leorio: holy shit holy shit holy SHIT IT'S HAPPENINGGGG

How was I such a fool before, Kurapika wondered, How was I so blind, so willfully ignorant and oblivious. How did it take me so long to realize you were talking about me. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I’m sorry I made you wait for so long.

this is important because it's not just kurapika realizing and accepting his feelings for leorio. this is kurapika's version of realizing that leorio feels the same for him. leorio is in love with him, too. and he's wondering how it was possible he was so scared and blind for so long. he fears he may have hurt leorio by holding off on this for so long, so he wants to be brave, take the leap, and see what they could be.

Kurapika did not want this man to wait another second. He did not want Leorio to spend another moment trapped in this limbo. So he confessed in the middle of a silent room in front of over a hundred people, “It's the first time you hear them laugh, and your entire world’s axis shifts beneath your feet.”

i remember the first time i met my partner. i remember the first time i looked at them and felt my world shift a little to the right. i remember falling in love and thinking that this one was unlike all the others. it was warm, golden, comforting.

Kurapika watched the confused frown on Leorio’s face when he heard that, amused by the almost puppyish tilt to his head as he considered it. He knew the moment Leorio realized what he meant when his eyes blew wide, amazed and awed and achingly soft. His lips parted.

gOD he is so CUTE. he's like oh hmm huh what does that mean

and then he remembers

i promise, he's not a huge dickwad!

and leorio laughing at gon's accidental gaffe and his sweet earnestness. and kurapika walking in. leorio realizing kurapika wanted to know him before they ever even met.

Kurapika made himself turn away from the arresting sight. “One of my favorite venues lately was the Roseview Ballroom downtown. Among its many beautiful, gaudy attractions are its murals depicting scenes from Shakespeare’s plays all across the ceiling. One is a famous quote from Twelfth Night: ‘journeys end in lovers meeting, every wise man’s son doth know.’ But the more I think about it, the less I agree.”

i'm such a WHORE for shakespeare, as any readers of mine will know. check out my modern college adaptation of much ado about nothing.

He turned to meet Pairo’s eyes again, repeating, “‘Journeys end in lovers meeting.’ But nothing is ending here. It’s just changing.”

life does not end when we start relationships! or when they end! or when we move, change jobs, graduate, go to school, drop out of school. happy endings in stories still aren't endings. the greatest constant in life is change.

“Because what I’ve learned in this job, Pairo and Altair, what nugget of wisdom I have to give you, is this. Love is looking at a world that can be terrifying, cold, capricious, and indifferent, and finding the person whose hand you want to hold through it all anyway. Because you want every laugh, every tear, every wrinkle, every spark of joy. Love is life’s greatest leap of faith, because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. But you know exactly who you want to spend all those tomorrows with.”

me finishing this: dammit i just wrote out my wedding vows.

Kurapika looked around the room again. At Gon and Killua; at Kalluto, Nanika, and Alluka; at his parents; at his brothers. At Leorio.

He concluded, “So you simply breathe. And you trust it will be okay.”

There wasn’t a dry eye in the room when Kurapika dropped the microphone.

DAMN ME TOO THIS SHIT WAS GOOD TF?????? sorry my writing has peaked here.

#jj answers #hxh #loml

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arotechno · 4 years

Text

The Heartless: Chapter 1

Read on Inkitt

(A/N: HOOOO boy here we go, after five years of staring down the barrel of this thing it’s finally done! Important question: does it matter to y’all if I don’t post the text of the chapter directly below the cut in the future and just link to Inkitt? I ask because formatting for tumblr was beyond annoying and I’m not looking forward to doing it for like 20 more chapters. But if it’s necessary for accessibility reasons, I’m willing to do it.)

Chapter I: in which the story begins

When the winter first melted into spring, Basil and I crept to the edge of the woods behind our houses to pick wildflowers in the meadow. It was still too early for raspberries; in the summer, we’d fill our baskets and our stomachs with them until our mouths were stained red with juices. Our mothers would bake pies in the afternoon and we’d eat them in the evening, cleaning every last scrap from our supper plates with the promise of a sweet dessert. Now, the earth was still cool beneath our bare feet, our toes wiggling in the soft dirt. Once we’d filled our fists with flowers, we settled in the tall grass and began weaving together goldenrod, daisies, and violets into flower crowns and daisy chains.

Basil presented his work and beamed at me, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun with the back of his hand. “Take it, I want you to wear it,” he urged, thrusting the flower crown into my lap.

“But you worked so hard on it,” I replied.

He shrugged and brushed the dirt from his tanned knees. “I want you to have it,” he insisted, reaching forward and taking the crown from my lap to place it gently on my head.

I stared down at my own work in my hands; it was not nearly as beautiful as the one Basil had made. Some of the stems had split, and many of the flowers had lost some of their leaves and petals. I didn’t have the same steady hands that he did.

“In that case, I want you to have mine, too,” I decided, pressing the crown onto Basil’s head as a couple more leaves fluttered to the ground.

Basil grinned a mile wide, practically radiating sunshine with every inch of his being. “Now we match,” he beamed.

A peaceful silence fell over the meadow. Behind us, the trees rustled in the woods. Insects hovered in the grass, hopping from flower to flower; Basil jumped when a bee buzzed past his face to land in the flowering raspberry bushes that bordered the tree line.

“We’ll be friends forever, right, Basil?” I asked after a while, sheepishly adjusting my flower crown.

"Of course we will,” he responded. “Even when we’re old!”

“How old? Like, eighteen? That’s super old!”

Basil laughed. “Yeah! Eighteen and then even older!”

I smiled hopefully. “And we can still make flower crowns like this?”

“Ace, when we’re eighteen, I’ll still make you all the flower crowns you want,” Basil decreed with a grin. “That’s a promise.”

* * *

The warmth of the sun and Basil’s innocent smile faded as I woke up to last night’s rain dripping down on me from the cracks in the ceiling above. Bertrand stood over me, jostling me awake with one hand while the other held a vial of another one of his concoctions. I assumed I had fallen asleep after supper, because the dishes remained untouched by the washbasin and twilight was just pouring in through the window.

“Drink up,” Bertrand commanded in that voice of his that just begged to be disobeyed, holding the potion in front of me expectantly as if to remind me of the curse that filled the vacant space within me. He stared at me with piercing eyes over the top of his dull gray beard, swishing the vial back and forth for emphasis.

I grabbed it from his wrinkly hand and sloshed the red liquid around in disgust before shutting my eyes and downing it in one gulp, just to appease him. Even so, I could not resist the urge to lay a hand against my chest, but still I felt nothing. Shaking my head, I rose from my cot and pushed past Bertrand, grabbing my bow and arrow off the hook by the door and slinging it over my shoulder.

“Where are you going?” Bertrand called after me.

“Out,” I answered, already halfway out the rickety wooden door.

“It’s past nightfall, Ace, it’s dangerous out there!”

But I was already gone, walking away from the old house as the door slammed shut behind me with a satisfying thud.

Over the seven years I’d spent under Bertrand’s leaky roof, I had slowly become disillusioned with the idea of ever finding a potion strong enough to light a fire in my ribcage. Bertrand had tested a lot of his spells on me throughout my life, but the love potion had always proven to be the least effective.

But I suppose that is to be expected when you do not have a heart.

The Village of the Heartless was smaller than the town where I grew up. A single dirt road ran from the village gates to the top of the hill, through the neighborhood before coming to a stop at the edge of the woods that surrounded the kingdom of Amistadia. We were a close-knit community, learning to provide and look out for each other through thick and thin, through every harsh winter and plentiful spring.

Bertrand’s house stood at the edge of the village, where the hill dropped off toward the gates below. At the base of the hill stood a large, sturdy oak tree where I perched some nights with my bow and arrow on the lookout for trouble.

Nights in the Village of the Heartless were always dark, as we could never afford enough oil to keep all of the town’s lamps lit, but they weren’t always quiet. Kids from neighboring towns sometimes wandered the area at night, brandishing knives in their grimy hands, looking to stir up trouble. Tonight was no exception; as I neared the village limits, I caught a glimpse of a pair of boys making their way down the road, and a thrill shot up my spine. I climbed swiftly up the oak tree and perched in the shadow of its lush, leafy branches, fingers itching for my bow.

The pair dragged a child behind them by the arm, yanking her across the dirt with them as they cackled and cheered triumphantly at their prized catch. The girl held tightly to a canvas sack, trying fruitlessly to pull away from her captors.

“Get away, get away!” she shrieked, dodging a blow as she fell to the ground, clutching the bag to her torso desperately.

“What’s the matter, little runt?” one of the assailants sneered. “You’re not afraid of a couple of kids, are you?”

“I just wanted something to eat!” the girl cried out as a likely filthy knife narrowly missed her cheek.

If I had been in my right mind, I would have simply shot the pair of boys in the shoulder, snatched up the child, and run away, but Basil’s face kept flashing in my mind; an anger was boiling in my gut that demanded confrontation.

“Hey, ugly!” I shouted, pulling back an arrow and pointing it in their direction.

The kid with the knife froze, eyes darting up to my place on the tree branch. I was yards away, but I could see the glint of light from the last of the setting sun on the knife as his fist tightened around it. His partner, as well as the child still laying on the ground with the sack clutched to her chest, stared wide-eyed as he

“Who’re you talking to?” he grumbled.

“Doesn’t matter,” I quipped, hopping down from my perch and tightening my grip on the arrow. “Just let the kid go.”

“Why should I?” he retorted, nonetheless taking a step back when he saw the arrow aimed directly at his head. “Y-You’re not really going to shoot that.”

“How do you know?”

The other kid called out, “Hey, let’s just get out of here.” He was ignored.

Pointing to the little girl, Knife Boy puffed out his chest and continued, “There’s no way you’re really worried about her. You Heartless are all the same; you don’t feel a damned thing. No way you’d go out of your way to save her.”

I allowed myself a bitter, self-indulgent smirk, too brief to be seen in the thick darkness. “If that’s what you believe, that I am entirely emotionless, then wouldn’t it also stand to reason that I would feel no remorse about ending your sorry life right here and now?” I drew my bowstring further; the wood audibly creaked. “If that’s the case, then it would seem you had better start running.”

Knife Boy froze, taking a few steps back before he and his friend took off running in the direction they came. “Cursed bastards!” he yelled over his shoulder as he hopped the gate and disappeared. Once they were out of sight, I let my arms drop to my side and slung my bow back over my shoulder. I felt my brow furrow in frustration; life in the village had become so mundane that I was almost hoping for a fight. I quickly stifled that selfish thought, pushing it to the far recesses of my mind; the girl, who had stayed completely still on the ground throughout the whole ordeal, now scrambled to her feet, still clutching the bag in her white-knuckled hands. Now, no longer squinting through the dark, I recognized her immediately.

“That was awesome! How did you know what to say?” she beamed, slinging the canvas sack over her shoulder and wiping the dirt from a pair of ratty pants that fell three inches from her ankles.

"Petra, you’re the one who I keep hearing has been stealing food from the neighboring villages?” I asked her, and her expression soured immediately at having been caught.

“Yeah, that was me,” Petra admitted under her breath. Then, scrambling to justify herself, she added, “But I only do it because there’s not enough food in the village and I gotta eat something!”

I nodded, mulling it over. “Sure, now I suppose I can’t blame you for that, but stealing is wrong. You’re plenty old enough to know that.”

“Of course, I know that, but I needed food!”

“Fine, I get it, I get it,” I sighed. “Just don’t make this a habit, got it? I promised Annie I would keep you out of trouble.”

Petra pouted. “Fine,” she mumbled. I started back up the hill, with Petra trotting silently alongside me.

At thirteen years old, Petra had been living in the Village of the Heartless since she was a baby—which was still longer than I’d been in town—left outside the home of one of the village women, Annie, in the middle of the night. I’d met her several years ago, and she quickly became enthralled with my stories of life outside the village. Annie was dead several months now, leaving Petra to fend mostly for herself, though the community kept a watchful eye over her (Not watchful enough, I thought ruefully).

“You didn’t tell me how you knew what to say to that kid,” she urged, struggling to keep up with my strides.

“I used to spend time around those kinds of people a lot when I was a kid,” I explained, deciding to humor her. “I’ve learned how to turn their own words against them by now.”

I did not tell her that had I learned how to do so sooner, things may have turned out a lot differently.

* * *

I eventually sent Petra home with a warning that I’d be watching to make sure she didn’t get into any more trouble. When I crossed the threshold back into Bertrand’s musty old house, the palm of his hand came down hard across my face, leaving a sharp stinging sensation behind on my skin.

“What on earth was that for?” I yelped. Bertrand grabbed me by the wrist and dropped me into one of the rickety dining chairs in the center of the room, bearded face practically sparking with rage.

“You must not keep doing that!” he scolded.

“Doing what?” I asked innocently.

“Getting into confrontations with… hooligans! What else?”

“I did what I had to—”

“Don’t think I wasn’t watching, Ace! I could see the entire ordeal from the window!”

“Well maybe if you’d actually done something to help instead of just watching—”

“Unlike you, Ace, I value my life and am not going to get myself killed just to feel like the hero!”

I couldn’t help but bristle at his comment. Something in my soul shattered, and I sprung to my feet, the wooden chair tipping backward onto the stone floor behind me with a loud clatter that would have rang through the eaves had I not immediately erupted into theatrics.

“What do you mean you value your life? All you do is sit around making futile potion after potion and you still think it’ll work next time!” I clenched my fists at my sides, willing the confrontational energy in my veins to burn out before it swallowed me whole. “So maybe I need to tell off some asshole every once in a while to finally feel like I’m doing something meaningful. So you can keep pouring bile down my throat all you want, but I can assure you it’ll never make me happy!”

Bertrand’s face fell, and I knew deep down that I had hurt him, but I could not bring myself to feel guilty. He had it coming, I thought, stalking across the room to my cot by the window. I sat down on the thin mattress, kicked off my boots, and pulled my knees up to my chest.

“Ace—” Bertrand, having followed me, reached out a hand as if to lay it on my shoulder, but I flinched away from the touch and he retracted the appendage as if he had been burned.

“Don’t touch me,” I muttered, directing my gaze out the window at the dark, lonely night creeping across the landscape. “Just leave me alone.”

With a sigh, Bertrand retreated from my bedside, retiring to his back potion room to conjure his demons away, and I sat back against the wall, longing for home and the warm voices of my parents.

That night, I dreamt of Knife Boy, and his words reminded me of Carita, the girl who kissed me under an oak tree when we were younger and told me I was weird for flinching

Next chapter releases 7/25!

#The Heartless #aro #aromantic #aro writing #aro writers #writing #writeblr #aspec writing #aspec writers #op

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csnews · 4 years

Photo

Innovative New Whale Detection System Aims to Prevent Ships From Striking Animals

Alex Fox, September 17, 2020

Southern California is home to the busiest port complex in the U.S. Nearly 500 ships passed through the 24-mile-wide Santa Barbara Channel en route to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in August alone. The same strip of water also hosts droves of giant whales. In summer, over the course of a single day, whale watching outfits routinely spot as many as 15 blue whales, many nearly 100 feet long, feeding in the channel alongside humpback whales and thousands of dolphins. This overlap creates an environment where ships sometimes strike and kill endangered blue, humpback and fin whales. The last two years have set successive records for the most whales killed by ship strikes off the California coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with 21 whales dying by the hulls of ships in 2018 and 2019 combined.

And researchers say that’s likely to be just a fraction of the true death toll. A 2017 paper published in the journal PLOS One estimated that more than 80 endangered whales are killed by ships each year along the U.S. West Coast. The same paper suggests NOAA and whale researchers may only find between 5 and 17 percent of the whales whose bodies have been broken by the bow of a ship, because their corpses tend to sink to the bottom rather than washing ashore. The fatal collisions scientists do record are often grisly. Many times a vessel will coast into port unaware of the pulverized whale draped across its bow. The ships are so large, many are 15 stories tall and more than 1,000 feet long, that they typically have no idea what’s happened until they reach port.

“I’ve seen the damage that a ship strike can do and it’s massive and traumatic,” says Nick Pyenson, the Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and author of the book Spying on Whales. “I’ve seen fractures that run clear across a 20-foot skull, jaw bones that have been snapped and cracked. If it’s not immediate death it’s horrific suffering that typically ends in death.”

Now, a team of researchers is launching an innovative new whale detection system called Whale Safe in Southern California waters to help mariners avoid collisions with the marine mammals and to grade shipping companies on their whale safety. The system produces daily alerts informing subscribers how likely ships are to encounter whales in the Santa Barbara Channel as well as a web-based interactive map showing the locations of individual whale detections. The team has shared the tool with key shipping companies, and officials at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach who are expected to share news of the launch.

The goal of Whale Safe is to provide mariners with the best, most up-to-date information available and to create more awareness, says Doug McCauley, a marine scientist at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and director of its Benioff Ocean Initiative, which is launching and funding the project in collaboration with other research institutions. “These are 100-year-old animals that are ecosystem engineers carrying around thousands of trees worth of carbon and they’re being run over out there,” he says. “We want to help incentivize the people and companies who want to do the right thing to actually do it and be recognized for it.”

Whale Safe creates a near real-time map of where whales are swimming and how likely ships are to encounter them using data from three cutting-edge sources. First, a buoy equipped with an underwater microphone listens for whale songs in the Santa Barbara Channel and uses an algorithm to automatically identify the calls of humpback, fin and blue whales before beaming the detection to a satellite. Second, trained observers and citizen scientists use a smartphone app to report whale sightings from boats. Third, a newly developed mathematical model uses information gleaned from years of blue whale tagging studies and the latest oceanographic data (such as sea surface temperature and ocean currents) to predict where blue whales are most likely to be.

These three streams of data are all integrated in a single streamlined platform accessible via the web. “The combination of methods is ideal,” says Jaime Jahncke, a marine scientist at Point Blue Conservation Science who was not involved in the Whale Safe project. “Acoustic detection alone is not perfect and modelling alone is not perfect but the combination makes it much more robust. The multiple layers of data help give mariners the clearest picture of where whales are and could make Whale Safe very effective if mariners use it.”

In their preliminary conversations with shipping companies, McCauley says the Whale Safe team has gotten a lot of interest, but no commitments to use the platform right out of the box. Most companies want to take a look at the website and the alerts and see how the whole thing works before taking it on board.

“Nobody wants to hit a whale so whatever we can do to mitigate that we’re excited to pursue,” says John Berge, a vice president with the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. “More and better data is always an improvement. Having a better idea of where whales are and their concentrations at certain times of year will allow ships to make more dynamic speed and routing decisions.”

Following its launch today, Whale Safe could see a wide range of user groups, says Morgan Visalli, a marine scientist at UCSB who led the Whale Safe project. Curious scientists or members of the public might peruse the locations of whales off their coast, while port officials or the U.S. Coast Guard may decide to push out alerts to ships in their area based on whale detections made by the system. In the case of the shipping industry, Visalli says some companies have indicated it would work best for them if an operations manager on shore signs up to receive the data, and then disseminates it amongst their fleet. Visalli adds that the Whale Safe team is anxious for feedback once more mariners are able to interact with the system.

Some parts of the Whale Safe are already in use in other parts of the world. Acoustic whale detection systems are in use on the East Coast of the U.S. and an app called Whale Alert has been mapping the locations of sightings by humans on the West Coast since 2014. But Whale Safe is the first platform to bring all the best available, near real-time data on whales under one digital roof. Sean Hastings, the resource protection coordinator for NOAA’s Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, says Whale Safe combines layers of data in a matter of hours that might have once taken his team up to a month to merge.

In the Santa Barbara Channel, where Whale Safe’s efforts are concentrated, shipping lanes have been shifted to avoid whales and what’s known as a voluntary speed reduction zone was put into effect in 2007 in response to the deaths of five blue whales killed by ship strikes in just a few months. These voluntary speed limits currently request that ships slow down to 10 knots during whale season, which usually runs from May to November. But even after a more than a decade on the books and various incentive programs only 44 percent of ships slowed down on their way into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in 2019. Near San Francisco Bay, cooperation is only slightly better at around 50 percent.

Berge says the ships that don’t slow down may be more concerned with adhering to a strict schedule, may be unfamiliar with local regulations or may in fact be slowing down, just not all the way to 10 knots. “I like to think that continual outreach on this topic will continue to boost the compliance,” he says.

Scientists say slowing down makes the impacts that do occur less deadly and may give the whales and the ships a better opportunity to avoid the collision in the first place. “I think of whales as being like giant kids,” says McCauley. “If they’re wrapped up in feeding and socializing, they’re not focused on looking out for ships. We ask cars to slow down around schools to keep kids safe, and these speed restrictions for whales are the same idea.”

Research suggests mandatory slow down zones aimed at protecting the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale have had some positive results. A forthcoming paper by researchers with Point Blue estimates that if 95 percent of ships slowed down in the voluntary speed reduction zones off San Francisco it could decrease humpback and blue whale deaths by as much as 30 percent.

Many whale species have made historic recoveries after being nearly exterminated by human hunting, but those recoveries aren’t bulletproof. When it comes to endangered blue whales in the eastern Pacific, even one whale is significant. “NOAA’s most recent assessment for blue whales says that if we lose more than one animal each year, which we do, then we’re not meeting our population growth targets,” says Hastings.

Whale Safe will be issuing report cards for shipping companies based on their vessels’ cooperation with the voluntary speed reduction zone that NOAA seasonally activates in the Santa Barbara Channel in hopes of reducing fatal ship strikes. Whale Safe uses public location data transmitted by special transponders on ships to calculate their speeds and judge whether they slow down when they’re steaming through the whales’ dining room.

Though the results are only now available to the public, Whale Safe has already produced some assessments for shipping companies’ adherence to the slow-down zones in 2020. The world’s second largest shipping company, Mediterranean Shipping Company, gets an “A.” Its vessels slowed down to the requested ten knots in the voluntary speed reduction zones 94 percent of the time. Meanwhile, Ocean Network Express, the sixth largest shipping company in the world, gets a “D” for only backing off on the throttle for whales 35 percent of the time.

McCauley points out that if the system helps motivate more vessels to slow down for whales, humans will reap benefits too. When ships slow down they burn less fuel, which cuts down on their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and the release of pollutants like nitrogen and sulphur oxides.

Hastings says Whale Safe could also help inform other interventions like amending the paths of the shipping lanes themselves or extending the envelope of speed reduction zones. If Whale Safe proves effective during its first year of deployment, the Bay Area could be its next stop. But the biggest question surrounding the project’s ability to make an initial impact is whether it results in more ships reducing their speed when whales are present.

“I’m hopeful that the added confidence that Whale Safe will bring to say ‘Hey there really are whales here today’ will encourage more shipping companies to slow down,” says Hastings. “But it also provides resource managers like myself with amazing data to assess whether these speed reductions should become mandatory. Because while we’re grateful for the cooperation we’ve gotten with the voluntary speed reduction program so far, it’s not good enough.”

#news #wild #cetacean #research #whale #dolphin

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justasparkwritings · 3 years

Text

Illicit Affairs: Beautiful Rooms Pt. 4

Previous: Beautiful Rooms Pt. 3

Pairings: Namjoon & Reader (Barely), Jungkook & Reader (diff reader)

Genre: Angst, Slice of Life

Ratings: PG15

Word Count: 2.3K

Warnings: Therapy and Swearing, Discussion of past Trauma

Summary: Under the guidance of Dr. Aarons, OT7 spends a few days rebuilding their slowly cracking bond.

Listen: illicit affairs by Taylor Swift

Shout out to @the-rambling-maiden for reminding me about JK’s fear of sleeping alone and for always reading & commenting on everything!!!

Penultimate Chapter

Setting up the small conference room, Dr. Aarons looks around and wonders if this is a mistake. Not the seven men, well, yes the seven men, but the space. More corporate than cozy, it’s lack of plush furniture and soft textiles is evident. The snacks on the table only adding to the sense that this space was never meant for actual group therapy, because it isn’t, but it offers the least access points, less visibility than any other room in the complex, and has its own bathroom. Perfect for secrecy. Perfect for hiding Bangtan.

She places name cards at various points around the table, her careful consideration for personality types and friendship bonds allowing her to place them strategically.

Jimin, Namjoon, Hoseok, Jungkook, Seokjin, Taehyung, Yoongi.

She had worked it over many times, moving and shifting, but ultimately decided to place

Jungkook in the center, the person to his left and right someone who gives him great comfort and security, similarly for Namjoon. Though Jungkook’s mental safety was more important in the set up than Joon’s.

The raucous laughter of seven men alerts her to their arrival, and stepping back from the door, she’s greeted by Jungkook’s enlarged orbs, smiling brightly at her.

“Good morning,” He says, bowing.

“Good morning Jungkook,” She replies. “Welcome, gentleman,”

The men shuffle through, taking stock of the room before finding their seats.

“Thank you all for being here, it takes a lot of courage and respect for one another to want to go through this process together. We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s dive in. Do you have any questions for me before we start?” Dr. Aarons greets them.

“Has this been, successful?” Yoongi asks.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Working with Namjoon and Jungkook, has it been productive?” Yoongi clarifies.

“Namjoon, Jungkook,” She says, turning the question back to them.

“It’s been really great, for me personally and I think for all of us,” Jungkook answers. “I’ve learned a lot, and unlearned a lot too,”

“Will things be different, when we’re back in Seoul?” Taehyung inquires.

“Different how?” Dr. Aarons questions.

“Will we still be, Bangtan?”

“That’s up for the seven of you to decide. You’ve had a major moment, a huge shift in your group, dynamics haven’t changed, but perhaps your purpose or your interactions with each other have. Why don’t we get to work, and we’ll see where we’re at?” Dr. Aarons opens her notebook, a new marble covered, hard bound book. She’s filled the front half with notes and observations, and as the week with the men progresses, she’ll continue to add more.

A little after lunch on their second day, Dr. Aarons stares at the men, taking in their posture, the way their eyes glance sideways, the jokes lingering on their lips, the words they are waiting to say remaining tight within them.

“I wanted to ask you all if you have a memory of your first days together, specifically your thoughts and impressions of Jungkook? Namjoon, can you share what you told me?”

“Sure. I told Dr. Aarons and Jungkook my first impressions of JK. How innocent he was, how unsure and unsteady, that he took pieces of our personalities to build his before finally breaking the mold. I remember how curious he was, how willing to learn, how pliable, but also very scared. It took a lot for him to stay,” Namjoon does his cursory glance at all six men while he speaks, years of interviews making this gesture as easy as walking a press line.

Dr. Aarons writes down the members reactions before speaking. “Thank you, Namjoon. Who would like to start?”

“Do you remember when Jungkook first moved to the dorms?” Yoongi starts, eyes moving from Dr. Aarons to the other men.

“What specifically?” Hoseok asks.

“He couldn’t sleep alone, you remember?” Yoongi replies.

“We shouldn’t have given him the single room,” Seokjin says.

“He earned it, fair and square,” Namjoon says.

“He was so scared that first year, of the dark, of being alone, of everything,” Yoongi reminds them.

“I wasn’t that scared!” Jungkook counters softly, his hyungs glancing at him.

“Oh, don’t lie,” Seokjin chuckles.

“You remember our compromise?” Namjoon asks.

The seven nod but it’s Taehyung who speaks first. “We promised to leave our doors open a crack, so that when he was scared or couldn’t sleep, he could crawl into bed with us.”

“He abused that privilege,” Yoongi laughs.

“It was almost every night, Dr. A,” Namjoon says. “He almost had a rotation,”

“He had the biggest room, a single to himself, but he spent months sleeping in our beds,” Hoseok reminisces on those nights, nights when he’d be nearly asleep only to have a quiet Jungkook crawling under his blanket to join him.

“He eventually got over it,” Seokjin reminds them.

“He was so little, so small,” Yoongi says. “He wasn’t taller than me, yet.”

“Physically and emotionally,” Hoseok responds. “He was just a kid, barely a teenager.”

“It was so hard, watching him leave his family for us. We weren’t anything yet, and here he was, believing we would become something,” Yoongi speaks.

“He’s only two years younger, but he just reminded me of my little brother,” Taehyung says. “So delicate,”

“Most of you are younger siblings, correct?” Dr. Aarons asks.

Four of the men nod.

“It makes sense why you all felt responsible for Jungkook, even as younger siblings yourself, six of you stepped into the role of an older sibling, despite never having been the oldest before,” Dr. Aarons analyzes. “He became your responsibility, in a very earnest way.”

“I didn’t feel responsible for him, not as much as Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-Hyung and Namjoon-hyung felt,” Jimin says.

“Me either,” Taehyung agrees.

“Same,” Hoseok adds. “Maybe that’s why I’m his favorite.”

A chorus of Oh’s and no ways and don’ts leave the men’s lips, laughter in their voices as Hoseok beams at Jungkook.

“Well, the three of you needed more guidance,” Namjoon says glancing at Hoseok, Jimin and Taehyung who happen to be sitting together. “You were the greenest out of all of us.”

“Remember when you got asked what your three chances at life were?” Jimin turns to look at Namjoon. “Remember what you said?”

“Jungkook was the second,” Namjoon answers.

“Was that true?” Taehyung inquires.

“Yes,”

“But then you abused him and lied to him, and the rest of us for years,” Jimin’s sentence reads like a statement, but the lilt in his voice, the upturn of notes in the final syllables alerts everyone that it is in fact a question.

“Remember that one performance, it wasn’t Fire, but Jungkook had an exam the next day?” Taehyung asks. “He was so mad we were performing that night, he looked pissed.”

“He was just, we had good times, you know?” Seokjin starts. “Taking him to school, managing his schoolwork,”

“That’s how you two became so close?” Dr. Aarons asks him.

Seokjin nods. “Mm, we all had our moments with each other, but for us, that was it,”

“When you heard what had been going on, how did you feel?” Dr. Aarons looks to the men, all in a row according to age. She notices the shifts in everyone’s demeanor, the anger coating their eyes, the jaws locking, the cracking of knuckles. She knew this would come, war.

“Can I go first?” Jimin asks.

“Of course,” She responds.

“I was, disgusted, and confused, and hurt. Jungkook and I have gone through a lot of similar things, with our bodies and our attitudes towards them. We’ve been through a lot, and I felt so betrayed and scared that maybe what I had gone through was more calculated than I thought it was.” Jimin’s voice is strong, determined. He’s unafraid.

“I wondered that too,” Taehyung adds. “I was scared, we talked a lot, after the fight, about what had been going on and if it had been happening to us, too.”

“I just, I still can’t believe it,” Hoseok tells the room.

“You still can’t?” Dr. Aarons asks him.

“No, it’s all so, scary? So manipulative and planned. I just get so upset when I think about it.”

“I don’t understand how you did it,” Yoongi doesn’t look at Namjoon, he doesn’t look at anyone, dark eyes pointed directly at the floor.

“Me either, or why? I know why, you told us, but still,” Seokjin says.

“While these traumas were occurring, five of you were comforting Jungkook, consoling him, supporting him, correct?”

“Yes,” Jimin answers.

“Did you have any sense that all the things happening were just, too much?”

“What do you mean?” Hoseok questions.

“Did we wonder if something bigger was at play? Like all of it was planned,” Yoongi explains.

“No,” they respond.

“How do you feel now? Months have passed, you’ve gone through some therapy, individually, how do you feel now?” Dr. Aarons is curious, had her recommendations worked?

“I still don’t know why,” Yoongi starts, “I don’t understand what was so important that Namjoon allowed this to happen to Jungkook. I don’t get why Bang and Sejin and everyone else thought abuse was the way to go, we were all suffering just fine without them.”

“Suffering how?”

“Do you want us to go down the line?” Yoongi’s sarcasm is met with a terse glare from Dr. Aarons, followed by a nod.

“Seokjin, you start,” She says.

“I was extreme dieting, eating only plain chicken breast to slim down, dancing long hours, trying to get in shape,”

“How long did that continue?”

“A while… then it stopped, and started again, and stopped again,” Seokjin says.

“Yoongi?”

“I hurt my shoulder in a car wreck and still haven’t gotten it fixed.”

Dr. Aarons already knows the answer. “How long have you been in pain?”

“A few years,”

“Do you have plans to get it fixed?”

“Yeah, I’m nearing the point where I either fix it and recover or just slowly lose mobility,” The fear in his voice is almost undetected, but Hoseok hears it and pats him gently on the back.

“Mm, Hoseok?”

“I just, don’t stop,” Hoseok’s eyes leave Yoongi, meeting Dr. Aarons.

“Meaning?”

“I keep going, I push myself, I don’t slow down.”

“Is it a compulsion?” She writes, Hoseok’s therapist, Dr. Lee, had mentioned this in their debrief a few days ago. It was a compulsion, OCD mixed with anxiety.

“Maybe,”

“Jimin?”

“I had an eating disorder,” Jimin reveals.

“Taehyung?”

“I had insomnia, still do sometimes,” Taehyung shrugs.

“During these years, from training until now, the seven of you have endured psychological and physical trauma. You nearly disbanded in 2018, and just barely signed a new contract which Namjoon got amended. Why are you still together?” Dr. Aarons sips her now cold coffee, gently setting back on the marble coaster.

The men look at each other, unsure of an answer.

“No one knows me the way they do. Without them, I’m lost.” Jimin speaks first.

“They mean the world to me,” Taehyung answers. “They are the most precious, most important people,”

“Have you ever wondered why Bang let you all suffer so long?”

“He tried to help us,” Hoseok says.

“But, enough?” Dr. Aarons wonders. “You have collective trauma, it makes sense to me why you protected Jungkook, and why you’ve banded together. No one understands what you’ve been through, except the seven of you.”

“Doesn’t that make the betrayal that much worse?” Jimin ponders.

“We know each other by our breath or our smell, and here’s Namjoon, ruining Jungkook right in front of us.”

“Have you ever worried how much of yourself worth is tied to your success?” Dr. Aarons asks. “Not to dismiss the betrayal, but the root of this conundrum is success, it’s wealth, it’s fame and recognition. You’re viewing yourself through your accomplishments, no matter how you feel about yourself, how much you love yourself, you are so focused on being loved by the world that you will ruin each other to get there.”

“Some of that comes with youth, though,” Seokjin says.

“I feel like we’ve made progress, personal growth,” Yoongi agrees.

“We’ve matured, but we still want the praise,” Jimin adds. “We still want a Grammy someday; we still want to chart and perform in the biggest venues. We want a lot.”

“If you don’t achieve those things, does your work still hold value?”

“If ARMY thinks it matters, then it matters,” Taehyung answers.

“What if ARMY doesn’t think it matters?” Dr. Aarons presses.

“Then what was all the suffering for?” Jungkook whispers.

“I don’t know,” Jimin says.

Yoongi sighs, “It’s been worth it, though,”

“I agree,” Seokjin nods.

“Was Jungkook?” Dr. Aarons knows the outcome of this question, she knows the impact of the words she’s about to speak. Sipping her coffee, she inhales slowly. “Was it worth Namjoon being bribed and manipulated? Was it worth Jungkook being starved, worked to exhaustion, conditioned to think he’s weak or inferior? The disordered eating each of you endures to this day, the diets, the excessive exercise, the self-doubt, has it been worth that? The racism, xenophobia, the hiding of sexualities and being forbidden to express love towards another, your creative license being stripped from you album after album, has it been worth that too? Or is the fame, the prestige, the accolades, worth all the trauma you have inflicted upon each other, and yourselves. Has all of that been worth it?”

The seven men sit silently, their breaths the only sound, uneven as tears fall, shoulders shake, hands cover mouths to mute the sound. Dr. Aarons stares at each of them, crumbling one by one, because in this room, in this safe space, they’re finally able to understand the gravity of the horrors they’ve endured. They’re able to recognize that what has happened is not acceptable, it’s not okay. Though they don’t understand Namjoon or forgive him for his place in the abuse of Jungkook, they can rectify that it wasn’t of his volition. Forgiveness is earned, and in this beautiful room, sun soaked and welcoming, Bangtan is beginning to heal.

Next: Stolen Stares

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razieltwelve · 3 years

Text

Crouching Chocobo, Hidden Snake (Final Rose)

Fury was not normally one to team up with a snake, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Strangles had been asked to wipe out the vermin that had infested a barn, but the rodents had proven to be far more numerous and vicious than expected. Unfortunately, Taren had come along to watch the snake in action, and the three of them had soon found themselves surrounded by angry rats.

Despite being a chocobo chick, Fury was confident of dealing with a few rats. But this many? Even he would be hard-pressed to fight them off. To make matters worse, Taren was armed with nothing more than his wooden practice sword. It was heavy enough to do some real damage if he connected, but it wasn’t anywhere near as effective as a real sword, and there were a lot of rats.

Strangles seemed to sense the danger as well. A grass snake, especially one with his cunning and experience, was more than a match for a rat, even a small group of rats. But an angry horde of rats? No. The only way the three of them would get out of this alive was if they worked together.

Fury cheeped at the snake. For a long moment, the reptile said nothing. Fury couldn’t blame him. Chocobos and snakes were natural enemies. But on this day, if they wished to survive, they would have to put aside their ancient differences and work together for the greater good.

Finally, Strangles nodded.

Today, they would fight side by side.

“Uh... guys.” Taren tightened his hold on his wooden sword nervously. “I hope you’ve worked out your differences because here they come.”

The rats, dozens upon dozens of them, chittered evilly and then charged.

The battle was on!

X X X

Fury danced out of reach of a vicious bite and then darted forward to peck at the rat’s exposed side. Enhanced with Aura, his strike pierced through the rat’s ribcage and sent it sprawling back. Another rat leapt at him, but Strangles was there. Normally, the snake would have eaten his prey alive, but that wasn’t an option with so many of them. Instead, he swung his body around like a whip, the minute amount of Aura he had access to allowing him to crack every bone in the rat’s body.

However, there was no time to celebrate. More rats were upon them, and Taren lashed out with his wooden sword. He caught two of the rats off guard, but the third leapt back and then lunged forward to strike at his arm. Most children would have panicked, but despite only being six-years-old, Taren had more than a year of training under his belt. He moved his arm out of the way and kicked the rat out of the air.

“Gah!” Taren backed away, standing back to back with Fury and Strangles. “That was close.”

Fury chirped in agreement. They couldn’t afford to get careless. There were only three of them, but there were dozens of rats. If even one of them fell, the battle would become completely impossible to win. They needed to stay close and keep their formation tight. He chirped his thoughts to Strangles, and the snake gave a hiss of agreement.

“You’re right,” Taren agreed. “We can’t let them separate us.”

The next wave of rats closed in, eyes gleaming and teeth gnashing. Fury kicked the closest one in the head and raked his claws over the rodent’s face. It shrieked and went down, and Taren brought his sword down in a punishing blow to stop another rat that tried to attack from Fury’s blindspot. Beside him, Strangles catapulted forward, driving his head into the stomach of a rat like a battering ram before swinging his tail around to hit another two rats back.

“Good work.” Taren was fortunate enough to bear wearing shoes. Any rat that went for his legs could expect a stout kick or worse. “We just have to keep this up for a bit longer.”

Fury trilled a challenge to a trio of rats. They attacked him together, teeth flashing as they tried to tear out his throat. He dodged their blows - no rat could ever match his speed, for all that he was still a chick - and pecked one in the neck before raking his talons across the belly of the second. The third one jumped at his back, and he batted it aside with one wing, using some of his precious Aura reserves to give the blow enough force to break its ribs.

“Take this!” Taren whacked a rat out of the air and then quickly turned to swipe at another that had tried to get onto his back. A third and fourth rushed for his ankles, but he skipped back, striking out with his sword to send them flying.

Strangles rushed to deal with another pair that jumped off the beam that ran along the centre of the barn. With a burst of speed, the snake met them in mid-air. His tail cracked the neck of one while he wrapped himself around the second. Grass snake’s weren’t constrictors, but they could do a decent impression of them in a pinch, especially to something the size of a rat. He crushed the rat in his grip and then landed, slithering back into position as Taren moved back to Fury.

The chocobo let loose a loud kweh. The rats were beginning to falter now. More than three quarters of them had been slain or injured. The remainder were circling them warily, unwilling to flee yet unwilling to attack. Fury’s eyes narrowed. This was the critical moment of the battle...

“Attack!” Taren pointed his sword at the biggest of the remaining rats. “Get him!”

X X X

“You know, this seems more like the sort of thing you’d find yourself involved in,” Averia drawled as she watched her brother, his chocobo, and her sister’s snake finish their battle against the rats. The trio finished off the last of the rats and paused to get their breath back before shouting/chirping/hissing in celebration.

Diana chuckled. “Well, yeah, but it’s not fair if we’re the only ones who have adventures.” They were watching from the roof of a neighbouring barn, but neither of them had any problems seeing through the wall of the barn with their Semblances. “And I was confident he could handle it. He might only be six, but he’s not about to let some rats beat him, even if some of them are pretty mean.”

Averia raised one eyebrow. “It was quite close at times.”

“Yeah, but I knew he could do it. Besides, he wasn’t alone. Fury and Strangles were with him. Fury can handle some rats and so can Strangles.” Diana snickered. “And were you really going to just stand there if things got out of hand?”

Averia didn’t even dignify that with a reply. If things had gotten out of hand, she would have intervened. Yet despite the close calls and the desperate struggle, she had stayed her hand. Battles like these, as trivial as they seemed to her and Diana, were important for a boy like Taren. It was how a child built up confidence. She and Diana had done the same in their youth, using their various adventures (most of which were Diana’s fault) to put their skills to the test.

X X X

On another neighbouring barn, Lightning and Fang watched as Diana and Averia leapt off the roof of their barn and went to congratulate their brother.

“You know,” Lightning drawled. “Not all parents would be happy that their six-year-old boy just went through fifteen minutes of mortal combat against an army of berserk rats. Fury and Strangles did their share of damage, but Taren actually killed more rats than them.”

Fang shrugged. “It’s not like he’s murdering them for fun. He’s helping keep this area free of vermin.” Her lips twitched. “In fact, this sort of things is a pretty common way for young Yun trainees to get blooded. The first time you kill something shouldn’t be a Grimm. You might freeze. And kids generally handle it better when it’s something like a rat that’s out to get them.” Her brows furrowed. “Although there are some pretty twisted customs out there.”

“Oh?”

“We don’t do it,” Fang said. “But our records talk about how one clan we fought used to make children raise a puppy for a year... and then kill it as a way of hardening their hearts.”

“I can think of better ways to handle that issue,” Lightning growled.

“So can the Yun.” Fang nodded. “Should we go congratulate our son on his first major victory?”

“I think so.” Lightning looked at Fang out of the corner of her eye. “What did you do to celebrate yours?”

“Honestly? I had to kill a barn full of rats too. I ended up eating them all. You’d be surprised by how good roasted rat tastes.”

“I think we’ll get pizza instead.”

X X X

Author’s Notes

Thus ended the Great Barn Battle. In all seriousness, though, one of the Yun rites of passage does involve going out and killing something. Since the Yun emphasise the importance of working together and helping the clan, they typically choose missions like clearing a barn of rats or hunting down other vermin. The objective is to produce warriors who kill to protect the clan not people who go around killing because they’ve got a taste for blood.

But, yeah, Fang is going to sit down and talk with Taren about it, but the rats were picked precisely because they are ‘acceptable’ targets. They’re vermin, they’re vicious, and it’s basically self-defence. And, yeah, this might seem barbaric by Earth standards, but keep in mind that this is Remnant. You cannot afford to be squeamish there.

#final rose #fanfiction #taren #fury #strangles #diana yun farron #averia yun farron #oerba yun fang #lightning farron

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cannibalisticapple · 5 years

Text

So around a week or two ago I sent an anonymous ask to @corndog-patrol suggesting Villain Mic finding a Cat!Shouta. When I saw it on my phone in the car, I had to stop myself from reading until I could get home and look at it in full on my computer. It has been so much better than I could have ever imagined.

Seeing all the doodles and artwork so far has been a HUGE inspiration for me, and I ended up writing this over the past week. Because I am physically incapable of writing anything short, it kinda ballooned to almost 8k words, partially because I ended up adding to it as more art was posted. The majority of it was written before the bowtie pic though, including the opening scene. (Fun fact: I originally called Shouta “Pepper”.)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, well, anything to Tumblr, so apologies for any weird formatting issues! And thanks again to @corndog-patrol for making such a great Villain Mic AU! Anyways, enjoy!

The Adventures of Puddles

Given his known fondness for cats, most of Shouta’s friends and colleagues often teased him about how getting hit by a Quirk that turned him into a cat would be a dream come true for him.

They were wrong.

The hero-turned-feline felt thoroughly irritated as he loped down the street, the heavy downpour soaking him thoroughly and weighing down his thick black fur with water. He’d been turned into a cat while heading to UA just that evening, and since then he’d been rather unhappy. Nemuri had laughed her head off when she found him halfway to her apartment with his goggles around his neck and his capture weapon dragging along the ground behind him, which really hadn’t helped much.

Considering he’d been found by Nemuri relatively fast, he should be safe and dry right now, but then Nemuri had taken him to UA. Logically it made sense of course, Shouta would be safe there and he’d have easy access to a support network to find a way to reverse the transformation. Unfortunately, he hadn’t accounted for how the kids would react. One of them had sighted Nemuri carrying him inside, and Nemuri had no hesitation dumping him on the student with a sadistic grin while she went to meet with the other staff.

After spending an hour being assaulted by his students cooing over him and ruffling him from twenty different directions at once (literally), he’d desperately craved some space and alone time. The sight of Snipe and Cementoss sneaking around with cameras and phones ready, clearly intending to take photos of his ordeal, had been the last push he needed to jump the wall and get away from UA for a bit. He knew the area well enough, he should be safe to walk around a couple hours even as a cat. Key word: should.

It was just his luck he’d get chased by someone’s dog for what must have been half a mile, ending with him lost in an only vaguely familiar part of town. His attempts to find his way back had only succeeded in making him more lost over the ensuing hours, the vaguely familiar scenery giving way to buildings he absolutely did not recognize. And of course, it also had to start raining shortly after that.

Right now, he just wanted to get out of the heavy rain. He was wet, cold, tired, and felt sore in ways he didn’t even know possible until being turned into a cat. Turns out having your body undergo a radical physical transformation tended to put some stress on muscles and preexisting injuries. Go figure. At least his dry eye hadn’t seemed to transfer over, but that didn’t make him any less stressed.

The feeling only amplified when he stepped in a puddle and proceeded to plummet into it with a startled yowl, water splashing everywhere. Of course this sidewalk would have a giant hole in it that flooded with water and turned into a miniature, cat-sized bath. The hole was deep enough his head barely stuck above the water, the chilly temperature making him shudder. He scrabbled at the edges with an annoyed growl, trying to pull himself out.

“Hey, you okay little buddy?” The voice behind him made him freeze, the fur on his back standing on end. Shit. He knew that voice. His head whipped around to see a man crouching behind him, and while he wasn’t wearing his costume, Shouta couldn’t think of anyone else with a loud voice who also sported a stupid mustache like that. This had to be Present Mic.

Great, just great, he thought sarcastically. For some odd reason the idiot wasn’t wearing a raincoat in this weather, his long blond hair partially pulled into a bun with the loose strands plastered to his face and shoulders by the rain. How the guy could even see with all those water droplets on his glasses was beyond Shouta. “Oh man, I always said someone was gonna fall into this stupid thing. Come on, let’s get you out.”

Shouta silently glowered at the villain as he reached out to him but made no effort to push him away. Trying to get a good grip on the pavement was tricky with the rain making everything so slippery. Maybe if he could figure out how to get his claws to pop out, but he’d yet to figure out a lot of his new form’s functions. Frankly, the fact he could walk at all was a miracle considering he’d never used a four-legged body before.

So the sulking cat allowed the blond villain to carefully slip his hands around Shouta’s... armpits? Well, his hands went between around the edges of his front legs and shoulders, so, close enough—and pull him out of the hole. Rather than put him down like he expected though, Mic shifted his hold to carry the grumpy feline, turning to walk to a nearby apartment building. “Come on, let’s get you inside so we can dry you off. My place is just over there!”

...And now Mic was taking him to his apartment. Crap. Shouta naturally began to struggle, wanting to get the hell back to UA instead, but Mic had a surprisingly strong grip. In the end he gave up and just sulked in the villain’s arms with a grumpy scowl as the blond draped a towel over him, resigned to his fate. At least he was out of the rain.

“Oh man, you’re lucky I found you!” Mic commented, looking down at him with a concerned frown. “A lil’ fella like yourself could drown in all that rain!” He switched on the light switch by the door, illuminating one of the most rundown and shabby apartments Shouta had ever seen. And considering his meager salary as an underground hero, he’d seen a lot of crummy places while apartment hunting. “You’ll be safe here, just make yourself at home you little cutie!”

Shouta just silently scowled at his current predicament. He just wanted to get warm and dry and take a nice, long nap until this stupid Quirk wore off. (It better wear off.)

The Quirk did not wear off.

Morning found Shouta still very much a feline, much to his ire. He woke up well before Mic, the blond snoozing away in his bedroom (Shouta had chosen to sleep on the couch, which had literal patches sewn on it, he’d never seen that outside cartoons), and Shouta felt no small amount of irritation at the fact he still had this stupid feline body. At least he was warm and dry now. That didn’t make him any happier about the situation though.

A glance at the bathroom mirror had revealed himself to be particularly mangy and stocky rather than sleek and agile-looking like most cats. His long hair had turned into thick, shaggy fur, the black coloration adding an air of dirtiness as opposed to the soft and fluffy feeling exuded by Mic’s actual cat. Sprinkles, if the name written on the food bowl was accurate.

Speaking of the food bowl, Mic was now beaming down at Shouta as he sat next to the now-full bowl. “Come on, it’s safe to eat!” Mic goaded—nay, practically pleaded with him, his mouth pulled into a pout as he looked down at Shouta. “You have to be hungry, little guy!”

Shouta just glowered at him, ignoring the bowl. Nope. Not gonna eat that. He might be a cat for now (seriously this stupid thing better wear off on its own), but he was NOT going to eat cat food.

Mic sighed, seeming to accept the fact as he turned to begin rifling through the cabinet. Good, looks like he got the picture and was looking for something else to feed him. “It’s the bowl, right?” he muttered. Wait, what? Mic turned around holding a cracked plastic soup bowl, dumping another scoop of kitty kibble into it before setting it next to Shouta. “There! This bowl doesn’t smell like Sprinkles, so it should be good, right?”

He beamed down at Shouta, clearly proud of his understanding of cats. Shouta just stared at him blandly, making no move to touch it, and Mic soon deflated. “Eh, you’ll get hungry try it eventually,” he muttered, turning away with a sigh and trudging off to his bedroom. Shouta watched him leave with a blank face, still pointedly ignoring the bowl of cat food.

As he sat there Sprinkles sauntered over and plopped down on the floor next to him, blinking her large eyes at him as she studied him curiously. Normally, Shouta would be happy to be in the presence of a cat, especially one who seemed as sweet and friendly as Sprinkles. Seeing as he himself was currently a cat, however, he found his joy slightly diminished. He couldn’t exactly pet her with paws, which sucked since her fluffy white fur looked particularly soft and silky.

For now, he settled for patting her leg with his paw to try to satiate the urge. Sadly, it did not have the same effect as running his fingers through her fur. He sulked up until he heard a gasp, and turned to see Mic staring at him with sparkly eyes from the door to his bedroom. He bounced over with a giant grin and bent down next to them. “So adorable!” he gushed, rubbing Shouta’s head affectionately.

At this point, Shouta’s broody mood outweighed the urge to claw off his hand.

“So, I already have Sprinkles,” Mic mused aloud, “So what do you think of the name... Pickles?”

Scratch that. Shouta proceeded to do so literally, highly satisfied by the startled and pained yelp from the blond.

“Ow! Ow! Okay, not Pickles! Ouch, that really hurts!”

Day two of being a cat. Shouta was now covered in clothes while Mic loudly rooted through his dresser.

“Where is that shirt?” Mic grumbled to himself, tossing a pair of jeans over his shoulder. Why he apparently stored pants and shirts in the same drawers, Shouta had no idea. Why did a person need this many clothes? Granted, he barely bothered with more than the minimal amount needed himself. But still.

Also, what was that guy even aiming at? Shouta was sitting in the doorway, not even fully in the room!

Mic made a sound of triumph as he held up a shirt in an eye-searing chartreuse, on the more yellow end of the spectrum. A fact Shouta knew only because he’d spent an hour arguing with one of his students over demanding to use the color in their costume two years ago. Why. Why did anyone have clothing in that shade.

Mic turned around with a grin, but his smile quickly faded to a look of confusion. “Puddles? Puddles, where are you?” Shouta’s eye twitched, still displeased with the name (seriously, what was with this guy’s preoccupation with English words?), but it beat literally every other suggestion the villain had. Even if he didn’t like the whole reminder of being pulled out of a puddle.

He gave a displeased mrow and Mic blinked and bent down next to the discarded pile of clothes, lifting up a pants leg to see Shouta’s eyes glowering up at him. “Oh, there you are, you silly baby!” Shouta glared at him, willing all his disdain to show through his eyes. Mic was unfazed. “Aw, geez, now I need to wash the hair off this stuff!” Mic playfully scolded as he started picking up the clothes.

You literally threw it on me, Shouta thought silently. You have no one to blame but yourself for this. He waited patiently for Mic to lift the clothes off him, depositing them on his bed to be washed later. Shouta took silent pleasure in the glimpse of black hairs stuck to them.

Mic pulled on the eye-searing shirt while Shouta continued to sit and brood, chattering all the while. “Man, I am so stoked to see this band tonight! I feel kinda bad leaving you alone here all day when you’re still getting used to the place, but you’ll have Sprinkles to keep you company so you shouldn’t be too lonely!” He grabbed what Shouta presumed to be his work uniform and folded the shirt over his arm, giving Shouta a final pet as he strode past him. Shouta remained in place, pointedly ignoring him as he continued to sulk and brood.

Approximately ten seconds later Mic returned, looking notably dejected. “Your bowl is still full,” he said glumly. “Are you seriously on some sort of hunger strike?” Shouta made a rumbling noise halfway between a meow and a grumble, and Mic groaned, dragging his hand down his face. “C’mon, Puddles, I’m on a limited budget here! Do I need to steal expensive food for you?”

Shouta responded with a pointed glare. He would NOT condone Mic stealing cat food for him. As a hero, he couldn’t allow even the most trivial of crimes, even if they had good intentions behind them. Plus, he had a feeling the blond would try feeding him a wet canned food next, and the thought of the slimy-looking can-shaped meat chunk just made him want to shudder.

(He pointedly ignored the fact he stole one of the pieces of chicken from Mic’s dinner last night when the blond wasn’t looking. He was a cat right now, cats did not need to obey any laws, and snagging food from someone’s plate wasn’t exactly illegal anyway.)

“I still have that concert tonight so it’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Mic sighed, and then nodded to himself with a look of renewed resolve. “I can’t let you starve though! We’ll have to improvise for now!” He marched off to the kitchen, and Shouta followed silently, letting himself feel a glimmer of hope. That hope was soon rewarded when he found Mic rooting through the fridge, pulling out a can of sardines.

Not my first choice but I’ll take it. Shouta trotted over as Mic put it on a paper plate, hopping onto the counter to begin chowing down before he could even pick up the plate. Relief visibly flooded Mic’s face as he ate, his shoulders slumping and a breath of air escaping him. “Oh thank goodness, I was getting worried there! Kinda picky for a stray though, aren’tcha?” Shouta just rumbled in the back of his throat, too busy eating to respond otherwise.

“Welp, I gotta run if I want to get to work on time,” Mic said, glancing at the clock. “See you later, cool cats! Sprinkles, make sure Puddles doesn’t get into trouble while I’m gone!” The white cat meowed in response, and with a jaunty wave Mic departed, the click of the door shutting and locking ringing particularly heavily in the ensuing silence. Shouta’s head snapped up, eyes locking on the door.

Okay, he’s finally gone. Time to see if I can find an escape route. Shouta had no intention of staying here absolutely longer than necessary; the sooner he found someone he knew, the better. Finishing off the sardines, he leaped off the counter and made his way to the door, determined to get out.

Ten minutes of trying to open it later, he found his resolve faltering though. Cat paws just weren’t good for turning round doorknobs, even with the advantage of knowing how they worked. And that didn’t even account for trying to just reach it. There were no convenient surfaces near the handle to stand on, so he spent most of those ten minutes just hopping up and down trying to reach it.

As he found himself clinging to the knob with all four limbs trying desperately not to slide off, he finally conceded this probably wouldn’t work.

Letting himself fall to the ground, he proceeded to sullenly slink to the rest of the apartment to search for an alternate route. He’d neglected to explore the apartment the previous day beyond the bathroom and the main living space, as he’d rather not look around a villain’s place too much. Beyond the whole “don’t intend to stay more than a day” thing, he didn’t really feel keen on the “invasion of privacy” thing. The man might be technically a villain, but honestly, Shouta viewed him as more of a nuisance than dangerous.

After checking the window in the living room and confirming it would be even more of a hassle to open than the front door, he reluctantly turned his attention to the bedroom. The door was half-closed, and he felt apprehensive as he crept towards it because, again, invasion of privacy. He’d only sat outside the door that morning because Mic was being noisy and he was curious. He hadn’t been able to see a window then, but there could be one on the wall outside his view, and if he got lucky it would be open. So he nudged open the door, looking around, and—

............

That was a lot of Eraserhead merchandise.

Shouta just stared at the collection of posters and other objects in the corner where two dressers met, as if staring would make it disappear or somehow become... something else. Anything else. But nope, it all stayed in place, from the folded shirt to the homemade banner with ‘ERASERHEAD’ written in large English letters.

I don’t even HAVE merchandise. What the actual hell. Those looked like replicas of his capture weapon and goggles, though the color was slightly off, and... Was that a plushie of him? Hopping onto one of the dressers and prodding at the small doll curiously, he confirmed it was, indeed, a hand-made plushie of him.

Mic returned several hours later to Sprinkles pawing at Shouta as he hid under the couch. Mic, naturally, just assumed Shouta was spooked and proceeded to spend about half an hour trying to coax him out. Shouta pointedly ignored his cooing and just remained curled up in the safe embrace of the darkness, wishing desperately he could unsee what he had seen.

Day three of being a cat. Shouta had finally emerged from his spot under the couch to dine on more sardines, having resumed his usual cool demeanor after the initial shock and embarrassment at seeing the shrine. What shrine? Shouta saw absolutely no hand-made plushies or other merchandise of himself, Mic’s room was absolutely normal. Well, as normal as a bedroom belonging to Present Mic could be.

More important than nonexistent merchandise, he was starting to wonder if the Quirk had a time limit. Was he doomed to be forever a cat? No, no, he’d give it a week before he started to panic. A lot of long-lasting Quirks had a week-long time limit, there was no reason to assume it didn’t have a limit. No need to freak out just yet—

What was that spot?

Shouta froze, transfixed by a yellowish dot moving on the floor next to him. Gaze following it intently, he tentatively slapped his paw over it, only for it to appear on top of it. He blinked in mild surprise, and when he withdrew his paw the spot didn’t move with it instead, remaining in the exact place on the floor.

Had he been human he would have frowned at it, so for now he settled for squinting. What is this thing? After a few seconds the weird spot moved away and bounced in a small circle along the tile floor. Eyes narrowing, he slowly crept towards it and pounced again, only for it to once more appear atop his paw.

Another confused blink, and he quickly retreated, circling it warily. He slowly reached out to tap it, watching the spot overlap with his dark fur before quickly withdrawing his paw. Nearby he heard Mic give a soft giggle, which he chose to ignore as he inspected the spot more thoroughly. Obviously it wasn’t a bug, or even anything physical.

Is it a light? he thought. It was the most reasonable explanation. But what kind of yellow light is that small and able to move like that? The only light he could think of were—wait.

Shouta abruptly froze as the spot zoomed away, just staring into space as gears clicked into place in his mind.

Did I seriously fall for a laser pointer? he thought in disbelief. Another soft giggle from Mic drew his attention to the blond, and he confirmed his suspicion instantly upon seeing him pointing a pen-like device towards the wall. His left hand pressed against his mouth as he watched the two cats from a distance, an amused smile peeking through his fingers.

I fell for a laser pointer, Shouta mentally reiterated in mild shock.

In his defense, his new eyes had a more limited range of color so he couldn’t exactly tell the light was red. Had he been able to see its color, he would’ve made the connection right away. Somehow, his newfound red-green colorblindness had slipped his mind with everything else going on. Come to think of it, that hideous shirt Mic wore yesterday might not actually be that hideous. Huh.

As Shouta stared at him Mic’s smile faded, his hand lowering from his mouth as he frowned. He looked kind of... disappointed? Shouta blinked, briefly confused by the change in expression, until he saw the laser zoom past his paws again. Oh. Mic was still trying to play with him. Yeah, Shouta got pretty dejected too when his own cat lost interest.

As he watched Mic’s shoulders slump he felt a twinge of guilt, and decided to take pity on the man. He abruptly spun and pounced onto the light, the laser bouncing wildly as Mic startled. As the laser swerved away and Shouta chased after it, he snuck a glance at Mic to find him grinning brilliantly, his eyes sparkling. That looked much better than the sad look he’d been sporting.

Shouta was only doing this because he was bored. Cats had very limited options for mental stimulation, it was only logical to take advantage of a distraction when he had the chance. The fact it made Mic happy had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

Day four of being a cat.

Shouta was learning more about Mic than he ever wanted to, and not just because he was forced to inhabit the same space as the man. No, Mic had apparently decided that cats made perfect receptacles for venting.

Shouta felt ready for a villain to burst through the wall and end his misery now as Mic laid on his bed, venting to him in a manner eerily reminiscent a teenage girl. The comparison was more apt than Shouta expected actually, given the man’s obsession with appearances and melodramatic tendencies in his villain persona. He kind of reminded him of an unholy fusion of Ashido and Jirou.

So far he’d heard everything. Rants about the awful music selection played at the convenience store on the way to his job. The atrocious battery life of his cell phone and the hassle of carrying a charger everywhere. The apartment manager who always drew out and loudly over-enunciated her words after she first noticed his hearing aids, making it even harder to understand her (actually a valid grievance, Shouta admitted).

And Shouta just sat there with a grumpy look, trying to convey his utter lack of interest through his sour glare. Part of him contemplated just leaving, but he had actually been quite comfortable sitting on this pillow before Mic came in and flopped onto the bed with an exasperated, “You won’t believe the day I’ve had!” Aside from the noise, this pillow was still quite comfortable, much moreso than the couch, which was worn enough he could feel the springs creak under his weight. So he just tried to ignore the venting.

It was not as easy as he hoped.

“—And then there’s my shitty job—god I hate that place!” the blond muttered, poking Shouta’s ear. His ear twitched away from the touch, just squinting at him with disdain. You seem to hate a lot of places, he thought sarcastically. “They treat me like shit!” Most “villains” would try destroy a place if they really hated it that much.

“It’s all just so horrible!” the blond finished with a dramatic groan, while Shouta watched on with absolutely no sympathy. Screw this, the couch is lumpy but at least it’s quiet there. He was about to get up and leap away when the blond perked up, a bright smile lighting up his face. “But y’know what makes everything better?”

No, what? Shouta thought sarcastically, knowing he’d find out either way.

“Eraserhead!” Wait what? Shouta tensed at the mention of his name, staring wide-eyed and starting to feel rising panic as Mic began gushing about him. “Seeing him always makes me so much happier!” Okay, he really should have seen this coming, since the villain was pretty overt about his romantic intentions towards Shouta in... literally every encounter they had. “He’s my boyfriend y’know? Sooo cute!” Wait, wait, what—no, back up!! We’re not dating— “He kicks my ass a lot but only ’cuz that’s his job!”

Don’t say it like! That makes it sound like an abusive relationship!! A distressed hiss nearly escaped Shouta, but it was silenced by the all-consuming panic and embarrassment that had gripped him. Mic had a dreamy-looking smile on his face, his eyes almost glittering as he loudly proclaimed, “I love him a lot!”

Oh my god. He really IS a teenage girl. Shouta felt like he was watching a disaster movie play out in real time, and in a way he was. The disaster that was Mic’s delusional take of their relationship. Did this idiot even understand how healthy relationships worked!? Why do you even love me so much!?

Maybe his feline features were more expressive than he thought, or maybe Mic was just in a mood to gush over him, because the blond gave a dreamy sigh and proceeded to elaborate.

“Man, you should see him in action. He’s so graceful and agile, like a cat.” More literally than you know right now, Shouta thought sullenly. “And he totally doesn’t back down even if the other guy’s, like, ten times his size!” That would be a sixty-foot-tall person, Mic. That would be unrealistic and just makes me sound reckless. “And he manages to take them down with nothing but his skills and his awesome scarf!” I wish I could take down a sixty-foot-tall giant with just that.

“And plus, he totally punched a reporter in the face this one time!” Mic continued, and that one admittedly caught Shouta’s attention. Usually people highlighted that incident as a bad one, not a good quality. “It’s just, there’s so many heroes out there who only seem to care about the press, y’know?

“Don’t get me wrong, I love big and flashy stunts as much as the next guy—I mean, as long as I’m not, you know, actually facing All Might myself, haha, oh thank god he’s retired now and that won’t ever happen—but some of them just feel... hollow.” Mic waved his hand with a vague frown. muttering. “Like, they do it more for the cameras than a feeling of doing good, I guess?

“But Eraserhead,” he breathed with a small smile, rolling onto his side to gaze at the totally nonexistent shrine as he rambled, “He doesn’t care about that stuff. He’s willing to put his life on the line to save everyone! Hell, that poster of him over there” which does not exist “doesn’t show it, but he has this big scar under his eye. Like this, see?”

He twisted his torso to face Shouta again and traced a crescent-shaped line under his right eye, mirroring the one currently visible on Shouta’s face at that very moment, seriously how dense could a guy be!? “And you know how he got it?” Mic asked, and yes, he did. It was hard to forget having his face slammed into the pavement and ground against it by a Noumu while his students were watching nearby—

“He got it protecting his students, barely even a full week after meeting them.”

The sheer reverence in Mic’s voice silenced any snarky internal commentary, Shouta just blinking slowly. Any lingering traces of the dopey smile had faded by this point, replaced by a more serious look he rarely saw on the blond. “Eraserhead almost died then. I heard he was lucky to even still be able to see. I sent him a card of course, and took over his patrol route for him until he got better,” wait, was THAT why there wasn’t a massive spike in crime while he was gone, “but man, it was such a close call...”

He sighed, letting his head flop back onto the mattress as he stared into space. “It’s just... He went to work expecting a normal day, and instead he ended up facing a giant ambush of, like, two dozen guys or more. And he just went in anyway, knowing he’d probably die. And that—that takes a lot of guts. Guts, and heart.”

Shouta remained silent, just... staring at him. Slowly he slumped atop the pillow and rolled onto his side, staring into space. He had a lot to think about now.

Night four of being a cat. Shouta was currently in Mic’s bed. Repeat: Shouta was currently in Mic’s bed.

Don’t move, he silently commanded himself, staring wide-eyed into the darkness as he remained perfectly still. At some point after listening to Mic confess his undying love he’d fallen asleep, and apparently Mic had taken it as invitation to use him as a teddy bear. The sleeping blond had one arm tossed over Shouta essentially trapping him in place, the hero-turned-feline pressed close to his front. By “close”, he meant he could feel Mic’s breaths tickle the fur on his ears, feel his steady heartbeat against his back.

Had he been human Shouta would probably be blushing right now. Actually, he might still be doing so underneath the thick fur judging by how warm his face felt. This was the most intimately close he’d gotten to another person in... well, ever. Aizawa Shouta was not a tactile person by any means. ...But even with his limited experience he’d never been this physically close to someone.

They were sharing a pillow, for crying out loud!

Part of him wanted to worm his way out and abscond to the couch, pretending this never happened, but... at the same time, he didn’t really want to move. Mic’s body felt so warm. The arm draped over Shouta didn’t feel heavy, but instead oddly comforting. The rhythm of Mic’s heartbeat and the steady rising and falling of his chest gently pushed against his back, providing a silent lullaby that put him strangely at ease.

This was so illogical. Mic was a villain—well, more of a public nuisance, but still—Shouta shouldn’t feel so safe around him. But something about being pressed so close to the blond, half-covered by the blankets and with his head laying against the surprisingly soft pillow, just filled him with an odd sense of contentment.

He could feel Mic shift in his sleep, unconsciously pulling Shouta just a little bit closer. “Soft,” he mumbled, the word slurred and quiet, barely recognizable, yet still full of a deep fondness that tugged at Shouta’s heart. He exhaled slowly before closing his eyes, willing the tension to fade from his body as he curled a little closer to Mic.

Just one night won’t be too bad. I just need to make sure he never finds out I’m the cat.

Day five of being a cat. Shouta took back anything nice he ever said about Mic.

“How do you like your new bowtie Puddles?” Mic asked enthusiastically, hugging a very unenthusiastic Shouta with a giant grin.

“Mow,” he replied dejectedly. This is the worst thing I’ve had to endure in my entire life.

“I agree!” Mic proclaimed cheerfully.

“Mow.” No, you don’t, or you wouldn’t be doing this to me.

Now that he was aware of his current colorblindness, Shouta had no idea what the bow tie actually looked like, but he didn’t think any color scheme could make it look less tacky. It had polka dots. Nemuri might claim Shouta had a horrific fashion sense (not that he cared enough to agree or disagree), but even he acknowledged that a polka dot bowtie was the epitome of stupid looking.

Sprinkles mewed loudly as she pawed at Mic’s leg, blinking up at them with those large green eyes of hers. Similar to Shouta, she also wore a bowtie, this one a sparkly sequined thing that might be either green or pink. Unlike him, Mic positioned it so the bow was on the back of her neck, which Shouta found to be a perfectly practical and overall lovely choice for a female cat. Clearly she was used to being dressed up, as she made no fuss over it.

“What’s that, Sprinkles?” Mic asked, bending down and finally releasing Shouta from his hold. Shouta promptly began tugging at the bowtie with his paw, silently cursing his lack of opposable thumbs to aid in removing it. His tiny toes couldn’t get a good enough grip to do anything but pat it, much to his dismay.

While he sulked over that Mic held out his arms, Sprinkles jumping into his hold without further prompting. As she did her poofy tail coincidentally whacked Shouta in the face, making him jolt and sneeze. He shot her a sour look, while Mic just laughed as he swept her up and hugged her to his chest. “Hey, you did that on purpose, didn’t you?” he accused playfully. The white feline meowed and bumped her head against his chin, eyes sliding shut as she purred.

The accusation made Shouta’s eyes narrow, his glare growing harsher. Mic snickered at his expression before turning his attention back to Sprinkles, his grin softening to something more gentle and fond. “I get what you’re doing. You’re just jealous of all the attention I’m giving Puddles, aren’t you?” He adjusted his grip to scratch her chin and Sprinkles seemed to melt in his arms at the attention, a look of pure bliss on her face. “But you don’t need to be jealous. You’re still my adorable sweetheart.”

As he watched the pair Shouta felt his ire melt away, replaced by a sense of peace and contentment. The love and adoration in Mic’s face as he gazed down upon Sprinkles was nothing but genuine, the relaxed slump to her body an indication of total trust and happiness.

A guy who cares about cats that much can’t be that bad, he thought to himself quietly.

Half an hour later, he rescinded that thought when Mic posed with him and Sprinkles, all three wearing matching hats and bowties as he tried to angle his phone for a good selfie. He silently vowed to get his paws on that phone and dump it in the toilet as soon as he had the chance.

Day six of being a cat.

Mic had returned from his job a few minutes prior, which was just as well since Shouta had unfortunately confirmed that operating a laser pointer without thumbs was hard. He had a feeling Sprinkles had been more frustrated by the erratic movement and blinking of the dot than usual during his attempts to play with her. At some point she’d clocked onto Shouta as being the source of her frustration, because she had decided to ignore the laser in favor of jumping at him.

“Wow, you two did a lot of roughhousing today, huh?” Mic asked as he sat on the floor with Sprinkles in his lap, running a brush through her fur. Strands of black had gotten mixed into her otherwise pristine white coat, the usually fluffy and silky texture more ruffled and messy from their small wrestling match. Shouta himself looked no better; he could see white furs spot his paws, almost seeming to glow against his own pitch black coat.

He had taken refuge atop a cabinet in the far corner to get away from Sprinkles, and now took advantage of his vantage point to just... observe them. Mic clearly brushed Sprinkles often judging by her reaction. She purred contently as he gently dragged the brush along her head, her ears briefly flattening beneath the bristles before popping back into their usual perky position. She leaned into the strokes, arching her back slightly while her cheek rubbed against his chest.

The sheer love in Mic’s expression was visible to anyone, his smile so much softer than Shouta ever thought the loud and hyper man to be capable of. Plucking a few lingering strands of black fur, he set the brush down and lightly nudged her off his lap. Sprinkles hopped off his lap and strutted away, the blond watching with obvious fondness.

Those warm green eyes turned to Shouta, making him stiffen. “Okay, your turn,” he said, patting his lap invitingly. When Shouta didn’t move he got up and walked over, stopping next to the cabinet. “Come on, time to get down.”

“...Mrow,” Shouta responded in a surprisingly meek way. I would, but I’m kinda stuck, he thought sheepishly. Climbing the cabinet had been one thing, but now that he was on top of it... well, the drop to the floor looked much higher than he thought.

This is so illogical, he thought sulkily. As a human he’d made plenty of larger jumps (with the support of his capture weapon of course), but as a cat the drop seemed a lot bigger. He also lacked the fine-tuned reflexes and familiarity with his body he’d developed from years of training with it, so he felt considerably less confident about his ability to safely jump from such a height without hurting himself in some way.

Mic seemed to pick up on his unease, a small frown settling on his face. “Hey, Puddles, are you nervous?” he asked. “Here, come on, just hop on down. I’ll catch you, okay?” He held out his arms, and Shouta blinked, slow and catlike. Seriously? He was asking a cat to jump into his arms? The rational part of him scoffed, since he knew a normal cat wouldn’t be able to understand such a thing.

But... the less rational, cat-loving part of him, understood. How many times had he tried to coax a cat to jump down from a branch, to leap right into his open arms, logic be damned? Seeing that earnest look on the blond’s face, the encouraging little smile silently asking him to trust him... It made something feel content in Shouta’s chest.

And so, he jumped.

His jump was clumsy and awkward, his mobility just as hindered by his lack of familiarity with this body as he suspected. One of his hind paws ended up catching on the edge of the cabinet, turning a would-be graceful leap into a fumbling tumble. Mic shot forward and caught him, the drop to his arms nowhere near as long as it would be to the floor.

Shouta blinked dumbly as he stared up at the blond, cradled almost like an infant. He had a perfect view of the blond’s smile, relief clear in his face. “Oof! Almost slipped there! Don’t worry though, I got ya buddy.” He carried Shouta over to where he’d left the brush and sat on the floor, rolling Shouta onto his stomach with the feline settled in his lap. He picked up the brush and pulled off the fur already caught in the bristles before he began running it through Shouta’s fur, the strokes light and gentle.

Shouta tensed, memories of painful attempts to brush his own hair flashing through his mind. Tugging his brush through particularly bad knots sometimes felt just as painful as getting slammed into the wall by a villain, and he didn’t look forward to feeling it all over his body. To his surprise the strokes were light and gentle though, each one strangely soothing, and—dare he say it... nice.

He practically melted in Mic’s lap as the bristles stroked through his thick fur, Mic using his free hand to pluck individual white furs that the brush couldn’t capture. “I bet you’ve never been brushed before, have you?” he mused aloud. “You look like you’ve lived your whole life on the streets, you poor thing. Don’t worry though, those days are over.”

Shouta gave a throaty hum, his eyelids sliding shut. It was exactly the kind of thing he had told his own cat when he’d first brought her home, some distant part of his mind noted. He didn’t know how much time passed with Mic brushing him, his mind slipping into a content haze.

It felt like all too soon Mic finished, setting the brush down. He didn’t nudge Shouta off just yet like he did with Sprinkles though, instead pulling Shouta into a small hug. The mellow haze which had consumed his senses lifted slightly at that, a single golden eye peeking open as he felt the blond scratch his ear.

“Hard to believe it’s been a little under a week since I found you.” Mic had a gentle smile as he stared down at Shouta, his eyes soft and lidded. “It already feels like you’ve been part of the family a lot longer.” His hand fell away from Shouta’s head, joining his other arm to wrap around him in a slightly tighter hug. “It might be silly, but I’m glad you’re here—it gets quite lonely at times. Pathetic, I know.”

The blond gave a self-deprecating chuckle while Shouta just sat in his arms, staring forward blankly. Right now, he could feel nothing but pure love radiating from Mic, his genuine and powerful fondness for what he believed to be a normal cat quite evident despite only knowing “Puddles” for less than a week. And hearing him call himself pathetic so easily didn’t sit right with Shouta.

Before he knew it he’d twisted in Mic’s hold and bumped his head against the man’s chest, purring lowly as he rubbed his head against him. He could feel the blond perk up, sitting a little straighter. “Oh! You’re a cuddly kitty!”

Shouta just kept purring, eyes sliding shut as he felt the blond gently scratch his back.

This, he thought distantly, was contentment. This was happiness. Just being in the arms of someone who cared about you, and showing you cared about them back, even if just a little.

Maybe being stuck as a cat wasn’t so bad after all.

Morning seven found Shouta rousing to consciousness slowly, his eyes feeling crusted shut and refusing to open. His muscles felt notably more sore than they had the past week, making him groan lowly and curl up a little tighter. Ugh, stupid cat body... He forced his eyes to blink open, and for a moment he was confused.

Doesn’t the room seem a bit... brighter? He frowned, squinting blearily at the shrine (not a shrine, what shrine, those were just random posters of a random guy who happened to resemble him) which seemed a bit more colorful than he remembered. The sand crusting his eyes made it hard to focus, and he reached a hand to rub it away before pausing. Wait a minute, is my hand human?

Behind him Hizashi slowly stirred to consciousness as the mattress shifted, a distant part of his mind registering it dip heavily to the side. A sleepy little moan slipped past his lips, barely audible to even the keenest ears, his eyes drowsily fluttering open to see something dark and furry in front of his face.

Puddles? he thought hazily, but as his vision came into focus his still-drowsy mind quickly registered that it was not his feline. No, it was the back of a human head, a man sitting up on the other side of his bed. A flash of peach near the blankets drew his eyes to an arm with a starburst-shaped scar on the elbow, the blanket falling slightly as the man lifted his torso and wait his back was totally bare, holy shit this guy’s totally naked and he’s in my bed. Any lingering drowsiness vanished instantly as he bolted upright.

“What the fuck!?” Hizashi screamed as he bolted upright, Quirk unconsciously activating in his shock.

Shouta flinched and sat straight up, his hair whipping around his face in the voice-fueled blast of wind as he gripped the blanket against his chest. Well, the Quirk finally wore off at least. Okay, he doesn’t have his glasses yet. Hopefully he won’t be able to recognize you and you can just run before he gets them—

“Wait, wha—ERASERHEAD!?”

So much for that. As Mic’s voice devolved into a high-pitched squeak of horror Shouta rubbed at his eyes with a quiet groan, doing his best to ignore the sudden silence that fell over the room. After a few seconds past he turned his head slightly to look at the blond, finding him staring at him with an ashen look of shock and disbelief, mouth open but for once producing absolutely no noise. Only took waking up next to me in bed to finally get him to shut up.

“So,” Shouta said awkwardly. “Got any pants I could borrow?”

#erasermic #aizawa shouta #aizawa x hizashi #yamada hizashi #mha #fanfic #my hero academia #boku no hero academia

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regenerategum-tissue · 3 years

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Regenerate Gum Tissue

There are lots of things which can lead to your teeth in your mouth start to recede. Gum disease and receding gums would be the two most common of those ailments. It's not always simple to tell when one is going to happen, but it absolutely does happen sooner or later. This article will allow you to know what things to search for once you start to see that your gums are beginning to eliminate some of these whiteness.

Regenerating Gum Tissue Naturally

First thing which you ought to do is to understand your dentist every few months. This way, your dentist may test your teeth and provide you a fantastic oral hygiene check up. You also might want to have x-rays accepted so that your periodontist may have an in depth look and get an notion of where some of the problem are as might be. X rays will help your periodontist to establish if there are any abscesses or other problems that he wants to look at. A routine cleaning schedule along with your periodontist and an exhaustive brushing program may also help you to reduce the amount of plaque that's building upon your teeth and between your teeth.

1 thing that is very important to look for isn't any evidence of periodontal disease. Although gum tissue and bone growth have been healthy, whenever they are starting to shrink in size then you definitely could have periodontal disease. If you're discovering some one of those symptoms, you should understand your periodontist after possible. Periodontal disease has rather severe implications and shouldn't be brushed under the rug.

Your periodontist will perform deep cleaning procedure in addition to brushing and cleaning your teeth. This will get rid of any tartar that's made up on your teeth through the years. It is going to also remove pockets of plaque which might be stuck between one's teeth. These are known as'problems' and should not be brushed or flossed alone. They should be taken out by an expert dental procedure and carefully analyzed by your periodontist. Your periodontist will be able to inform you how many teeth you have to lose and just how deep they need to be cleaned.

When this plaque starts to crack it down exposes nerves, blood cells, and other tissues to infection. You'll find two kinds of bacteria that are included with periodontal disease; friends that's famous as'otiaceae' and another called'growths'. Both of these categories of bacteria are consistently the identical type and usually cooccur.

Regenerate Gum

When a person has gum disease, the bacteria may be too saturated in number for the good oral hygiene clinics that'll continue to keep the plaque from gathering to such an extent. It's these bacteria that produce tartar. This tartar is made from materials that the bacteria could divide into their environment; the plaque subsequently hardens to form tartar. As time continues, this may lessen the plaque but the gum may also have to be scrubbed longer in order to secure it to a point where it may fall away and heal without even causing new gum disease or cavities.

This is why a deep cleaning procedure will probably be more powerful than brushing and flossing at least once. A deep cleaning treatment can get to the root of the problem, carrying the bacteria and other materials that the gum disease gets. By doing this the gum disease might be kept from getting worse and could even be reversed. This is possible because the treatment will probably take the present gum disease and use it against it self to create the situation better and allow it to disappear and heal.

It can be required to have more than one visit to your dentist for deep cleaning procedures. Your dentist might need to execute a variety of cleanings to get all of the tartar and other residue eliminated and this could indicate you are going in twice as often as usual. This nevertheless should be considered only a temporary step until you observe how your gums improve after the dentist has been doing the necessary number of cleanings and hopefully, given time, you will begin to notice a gap.

Whenever you have sore gums you consider the bad breath coming from their website. You could wonder how you can prevent it and keep it from coming back again. Gum disease and receding gums are both common dental ailments. Receding gums refer to a circumstance where your gums recede from the gum , exposing the underlying root surfaces of their teeth.

Regenerate Gums

That is actually one of the most common causes of tooth decay. The bacteria that causes periodontal disease also soothes the moutharea. Whilst the mouth becomes infected with this form of bacteria, the protective tissues of the gums start to weaken and invite the bacteria-free access to the gingival blood source (the blood source that attracts the blood flow into one's teeth). This allows the bacteria to begin to attack one's teeth and resulting in the tissue injury which ultimately leads to a case of gum disease and also a loss in teeth.

Whilst the bacteria continue to clot and the devastation of the protective tissue continues, the gingivitis will advance. A example of tartar is the last stage of this development.

Just how do we comprehend the beginning stages of periodontal disease? The first sign is usually gingivitis. This really is the launch of a bacterial buildup. As the bacteria has been flourish, plaque might be manufactured and crystals are formed, finally leading to receding gums. At this point, it's frequently known as periodontitis or tartar.

The next thing to do is to do it to block the progression of the disease. In that surgery, a tissue flap is eliminated from the gum to permit for a new bone growth that simplifies the reduction in tissue and soothes the exposed tissue into a healthy level. The flap is surgically closed and stitched straight back in the bone. This grafting procedure provides a brand new structure for that bone to attach to so it is likely to be stronger and more ready to withstand additional damage from bacteria and plaque.

If you are having any signs of gum recession or periodontitis, then it's important to find your dentist straight away. Stop by your dental office atleast twice a year to find dental checkups. Make sure you ask for a painless visit as the dentist works in your mouth. If your gum disease has progressed to an even more serious stage, then root canals may be recommended by your dental office.

Whenever you see your dentist, he/she will be able to recognize the reason behind your gingivitis or periodontal disease through a comprehensive examination. Your dentist will likely desire to perform deep cleaning of your mouth having a nitric oxide laser or a electrical pulsed light. A higher intensity laser beam is sent to kill the bacteria in plaque and tartar. These procedures can be quite painful and should only be considered as a last resort to relieve severe gingivitis. For people that have mild to moderate gum disease, this deep cleaning procedure could be enough to eliminate the symptoms.

Regenerate Gums Naturally

Dental planters and root planters are also becoming popular possibilities for people suffering from a receding gums. Root figurines are plastic containers which can be filled with sterile cloth which can be placed over your tooth roots. The plastic pieces are able to push out and contain the roots so they don't fall out. This procedure stimulates the growth of fresh tooth roots and keeps your teeth clean and healthy. This procedure will help to prevent any further tooth loss due to decay.

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homestuck-info · 5 years

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The Homestuck Epilogues: Bridges And Off-Ramps

Andrew Hussie has released a massive explanation of his intents behind the Epilogues and plans for the future of the franchise. Fitting to his theme on subverting delivery of content, its in the newest episode of Pgenpod.

You can listen to the full episode here, with the message around the 1 hour mark, or read the transcript below:

The Homestuck Epilogues: Bridges And Off-Ramps ; By Andrew Hussie:

The history of printed version of The Homestuck Epilogues is also the history of The Homestuck Epilogues themselves, because I originally envisioned releasing them only as a book like this, to even further emphasize their conceptual separation from the main narrative. If you know anything about the epilogues, you probably already understand that conceptually distinguishing themselves from the story by their presentation as "fanfiction" is an important part of their nature and what they are trying to say. In the form of a book (which you can read from one side, or flip upside down and read from the other) it somewhat carries the feeling of a cursed tome. Something which maddeningly beckons, due to whatever insanity it surely contains, but also something which causes feelings of trepidation. There's an ominous aura surrounding such a work, probably for a few reasons. The sheer size of it means the nature of the content probably isn't going to be that trivial. The stark presentation of the black and white covers, its dual-narrative format, the foreboding prologue combined with an alarming list of "content warnings", and even the fact that an "epilogue" is delivered with a "prologue" first, all adds up to a piece of media that appears designed to make the reader nervous about what to expect from it. Such is the nature of a cursed tome retrieved from a place which may have best been left undisturbed. It is also the nature of any creative inclination to reopen a story which had already been laid to rest - a reader's desire to agitate and then collapse the bubble which contained the imagined projection of "happily ever after", simply by observing it. There exists inherent danger in a reader's eagerness to collapse that bubble, or to crack that tome. There is also danger in a creator's willingness to accommodate that desire. It's a risk for all involved. It should be.

Obviously, it wasn't released as a book, until now (the plans for printing it had already been made, but were just delayed until well after its release on site). We decided to just release it all on the site so everyone could read it right away if they wanted. There was a long tradition of making all content freely accessible on the site, and we just produced one utterly enormous update which we were perfectly aware would cause a massive amount of discussion and agitation in the fandom. Overall it was probably better to just get it out there, let people read it relatively quickly, form their opinions on it, and then begin discussing it critically. In other words, people were going to feel something from all this, so it seemed better to just let it out there, allow the maximum number of people feel whatever it would cause them to feel, give people time to process those feelings, and then move on to whatever comes next.

But what comes next? That's a good question. I feel like the work does a lot to suggest it's not merely following up on the lives of all the characters after a few years, but also reorganizing all narrative circumstances in a way that points forward, to a new continuity with a totally different set of stakes. In this sense, I think it's heavily implied to be a piece of bridge-media, which is clearly detached from the previous narrative, and conceptually "optional" by its presentation, which allows it to also function as an off-ramp for those inclined to believe the first seven acts of Homestuck were perfectly sufficient. But for those who continue to feel investment in these characters and this world, ironically the very elements which could be regarded as disturbing or depressing are also the main reasons to have hope that there is still more to see. Because, as certain characters go to some length to elaborate on, you can't tell new stories without reestablishing significant dramatic stakes: new problems to overcome, new injustices to correct, new questions to answer. There can be no sense of emotional gratification later without first experiencing certain periods of emotional recession. And by peeking into the imagined realm of "happily ever after" to satisfy our curiosity, we discover that our attention isn't so harmless, because the complexities and sorrows of adult life can't be ignored. Nor can the challenges of creating a civilization from scratch, when several teenagers are handed god-status. It turns out the gaze we cast from the sky of Earth C to revisit everyone isn't exactly friendly, like warm sunlight. It's more like a ravaging beam, destructive and unsettling to all that could have been safely imagined. Our continued attention is the very property which incites new problems, and the troublemakers appear to be keenly aware of this. So they spring into action, and begin repositioning all the stage props for a new implied narrative. But "implied" is all it was. There was no immediate announcement for followup content, and I'm not announcing anything here yet either. More time was always going to be necessary to figure out what to do next, including what form it takes, the timing, and all those questions. For now I think it was alright to just let things simmer for a while, and give people an extended period of time to meditate on the meaning of the epilogues and why they involved the choices they did. But regardless of anyone's conclusions about it, I can at least confirm that it WAS designed to feel like a bridge piece since its conception.

Is it this way because an epilogue SHOULD be this way? No. It is this way because I thought that was the most suitable role for an epilogue to play in the context of the weird piece of media Homestuck has always been. The story experiments a lot with the way stories are told, and in particular messes with the ways certain stretches of content get partitioned and labeled. Playing with the labeling I think has ways of bringing attention to those labels, what they actually mean, and how they affect our perception of the events covered under certain labels. It can even get us to wonder why certain labels exist at all, and can expose "flaws" in the construction of stories which include them. For instance, "intermission" is such a label. But perhaps another way of saying intermission is, "whoops, the story is getting too long, here's a break from the real story with a bunch of dumb shit that doesn't matter". It's seemingly a tacit admission to a problem. And by continuing to toy with that label as the story rolls along, you start to unpack the nature of that problem by implicitly asking questions about it. If you have one intermission because the story got long... can you have two if it gets longer? Can you have even more than that? Once you have a multitude of intermissions, don't you have two dueling threads of content, one supposedly "irrelevant", and the other important? And if that's true, then is it possible for the "irrelevant" thread to accrue more importance, throwing its entire identity as "optional content" into question retroactively? And if that can happen, is it possible the two threads can flip roles, with the intermissions becoming more important than the main acts? Then once the story goes through the motions of answering "yes" to all of this, isn't it also fair to ask, why bother with this examination at all? Was it pure horseplay and trickery? Actually, yes, sort of. There is a trick involved. The gradual realization that intermission content is nontrivial forces the reader to reevaluate their perception of the material, which was originally influenced by a label presiding over that material, and what they believed that label meant. It relies on the reader's presumption about the label's meaning to disguise certain properties of the content (like relevance), and therefore disarms the reader initially, leading to the potential for subverting expectations about the content later in surprising ways. In other words, you can use whatever it is the reader already presumes they know about stories in order to control the perception of what they are reading, just by gradually shifting the boundaries of whatever it is they've been well trained to expect from certain elements.

So now the label "epilogue" has been toyed with in a similar way, and also in a manner which exposes an apparent flaw with the label. Or actually, just by using the label "epilogue" at all, it seems the story is admitting to an apparent flaw. If another way of saying intermission is "whoops, story's too long, here's a break", then an alternate way of saying epilogue is "whoops, I forgot some shit, here's some more". And we know right away this label will be subject to the same kind of trickery, since there are two story paths of eight epilogues each, prefaced by a shared prologue. It's already an unhinged implementation of the label before you even read it, which means it's probably time to get nervous about whether it satisfies your expectations about what the content existing under such a label should provide. Before you read it, it's already an invitation to start questioning what an epilogue even is, and whether it's kind of a silly idea even if applied conventionally. Take a 50 chapter novel with an epilogue, for example. Why isn't the epilogue just called chapter 51? Why was the choice made to label that content differently? Should we consider it an important part of the story, or should we not? If it's not important, why are we reading it? And if it is important, why is it given a label which is almost synonymous with "afterthought"? Is it a simple parting gift to the reader, to provide minor forms of satisfaction which the core narrative wasn't built to provide? Is it actually important to deliver those minor satisfactions? If it really is important, why didn't that content appear in chapter 51? And if it isn't, why bother at all? What are we even doing here?

By going down this path of questioning, it sounds like we're assembling a case against writing epilogues altogether. But actually, there's really nothing wrong with them. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to include in any story. It's just that the more you ask questions like these, the more you are forced to think about the true nature of these storytelling constructs, the actual purposes they're meant to serve. And with something like Homestuck, where issues like this are heavily foregrounded, like what should be considered "canon" vs. "not canon", or even more esoteric concepts like "outside of canon" or "beyond canon", then the issues you uncover when you ask such questions about an epilogue can't really be ignored. My feeling is, there's almost no choice but to turn the conventional ideas associated with epilogues completely inside-out, because of the inherent contradictions involved with crossing the post-canon threshold and revealing that which was not meant to be known. Stories end where they do for certain reasons, answering the questions which were thematically important to answer, and leaving some questions unanswered for similar reasons, and the reader is left with the task of deciphering the meaning of these decisions. Under the "whoops, I forgot some shit, here's more" interpretation of an epilogue as a flawed construct, by reopening an already closed-circuit narrative, what you're really doing is introducing destabilizing forces into something which had already reached a certain equilibrium, due to all the considerations that went into which questions to answer, and which to leave ambiguous. And these destabilizing forces became the entire basis for the construction of an entirely new post-canon narrative, for better or worse.

These are the types of things the epilogues let you to think about, along with a few other ideas. Like the fact that all narratives have perspectives and biases, depending on who is telling the story, even in the case where it's unclear if the narrator has any specific identity. The suggestion that all narratives are driven by agendas, sometimes thinly disguised, other times heavily. There's also stuff to think about just due to its presentation as fanfiction, and that it's the first installment of Homestuck which included other authors (contrary to some speculation I've seen, every word of all seven acts were written by me alone). By deploying it as mock-fanfiction, and including other authors, I'm making an overt gesture that is beginning to diminish my relevance as the sole authority on the direction this story takes, what should be regarded as canon, and even introducing some ambiguity into your understanding of what canon means as the torch is being passed into a realm governed by fan desires. If the epilogues really prove to be the bridge media they were designed to feel like, then I expect this trend to continue. The fanfiction format is effectively a call to action, for another generation of creators to imagine different outcomes, to submit their own work within the universe, to extend what happens beyond the epilogues, or to pave over them with their own ideas. And I believe the direness in tone and some of the subject matter suitably contributes to the urgency of this call to action.

I also think many of the negative feelings the story creates isn't just an urgent prompt for the reader to imagine different ideas, or ways to resolve the new narrative dilemmas. It's also an opportunity for people to discuss any of the difficult content critically, and for fandom in general to continue developing the tools for processing the negative emotions art can generate. Sorting that out has to be a communal experience, and it's an important part of the cycle between creating and criticizing art. I think not only can creators develop their skills to create better things by practicing and taking certain risks, fandom is something which can develop better skills as well. Skills like critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways, and trying to understand different points of view outside of the factions within fandom that can become very hardened over time. Fandoms everywhere tend to get bad reputations for various reasons, maybe justifiably. But I don't see why it can't be an objective to try to improve fandom, just as creators can improve their work. And I think this can only happen if now and then fandoms are seriously challenged, by being encouraged to think about complex ideas, and made to feel difficult emotions. I believe when art creates certain kinds of negative feelings in people, it can lead to some of the most transformative experiences art has to offer. But it helps to be receptive to this idea for these experiences to have a positive net effect on your life, and your relationship with art.

So now I'm looking to all of you on the matter of where to go next. Wherever the most conscientious and invested members of fandom want to drive this universe, as well as the standards by which we engage with media in general, that will be the direction I follow.

#homestuck #epilogues #andrew hussie

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not-terezi-pyrope · 5 years

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Andrew Hussie writes into Perfectly Generic Podcast about the Homestuck Epilogues

Transcript below comes from Reddit as well as the PGenPod wiki.

The Homestuck Epilogues: Bridges And Off-Ramps

by Andrew Hussie

#homestuck #upd8 #homestuck epilogues #andrew hussie

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homestuckhomestuckhomestuck · 5 years

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The Homestuck Epilogues: Bridges And Off-Ramps: pgenpod ep52

by Andrew Hussie

#transcript #huss #epilogues #theory time

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lurafita · 5 years

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Petvengers (Or, how Peter tricks NY heroes into pet adoption)

Again, this is also on Ao3, but I want to have duplicates, just in case.

here is the link if you want to read it on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19139326/chapters/45486811

This is part of a series. This is bordering on crack, seriously. It is a lot of fun to write though. I hope you will enjoy it.

Peter has decided that New York's heroes should all have (at least one) pet. Because pets are awesome. Now he just has to convince them of it.

Here a little bit to catch you up:

As with all the other fics in the series, Civil War got resolved peacefully (and Ross is out of office), and Infinity War and Endgame did not and will not happen. This fanfiction series universe is a happy place. Okay? Good.

Tony and Pepper share custody over Peter with May. Peter occasionally calls Tony Dad (he might also at one point refer to Pepper as Mom, but Aunt May will always be Aunt May, without the title diminishing the magnitude of love he feels for her)

Peter has a male Pitbull named Hope, a shelter rescue dog who was about to be euthanized.

Tony has spilled the beans on live TV about Peter being heir to Stark Industries.

Peter is acquainted with some of NYPD's detectives and the captain.

Tony, being the overprotective helicopter parent he is, has used his, so far limited, access to nano-technology to make a watch for Peter that tracks pretty much everything and can't be taken off by anyone other than Tony (or, in the event of Tony's demise, Pepper, May, Happy, or Rhodey) – See part 1 and 2 of the series for reference.

Tony and Pepper still own and live in the Tower, and the Avengers all have rooms (floors) there as well. Due to the events of the second story in the series (the wounds we see and the scars we don't) May and Peter have also taken up residence in the tower (more specifically on Tony and Peppers floor, where they have their own living spaces). Though right now this arrangement is temporary and the two might move back into their house in Queens eventually.

Since I ignore Infinity War and Endgame, neither Tony nor Peter have nano-tech-suits. (Though they might at some point)

Also, the identities of other vigilantes are known to the Avengers (part of the fixed Accords thing)

Last but never least, my very favorite part of this series, Peter swears in food names. Shit = Skittles, Damn = Donuts, Hell = Hot Dogs, Fuck = French Fries or Fruit Loops, any kind of name calling, i.e. Bitch, Ass, Fuckface, etc = Licorice

Chapter 1

Steve

Edward 'Ned' Leeds loved his best friend. He truly, absolutely, did. Peter was his brother from another mother.

However, that didn't change the fact that sometimes, Peter could be a teeny, tiny, little bit ridiculous.

Because who else would ever get the idea of tricking earths mightiest heroes into each adopting a shelter animal.

MyfriendscallmeMJ: Peter, you can't lie to save your life. How do you plan on tricking anyone, much less the Avengers, into taking a pet home? Especially since they already have you.

DefinitelynotSpiderman: Okay, first, rude. I can totally lie when I want to. In fact, I'm a great liar. Like,... Just look at my chatname! If that doesn't scream 'Master of deception', nothing does.

Guyinthechair: Ô_o...

MyfriendscallmeMJ: Ô_o...

DefinitelynotSpiderman: And second, I have a fool proof plan.

Guyinthechair: Ô_o...

MyfriendscallmeMJ: Ô_o...

DefinitelynotSpiderman: Parts of a fool proof plan... like... 46% of a plan,... that is not at all fool proof... but we can totally pull it off!

Guyinthechair: Yeah, somehow I do not feel confident about this. At all.

MyfriendscallmeMJ: What do you mean 'we'?

And so it was that Ned found himself, armed with his trusty camcorder, waiting in front of 'A heart has four paws' shelter for Peter, on a sunny Saturday morning. Really, all Peter had said was to meet him there at exactly 9:30am, and to be ready to film what would become 'a promotional video'.

Ned had absolutely no idea what Peter had planned, but it was either going to be absolutely epic, or completely embarrassing.

A quick look at his phone revealed the time to be 9:27, which left his best friend three minutes before Ned was allowed to officially change Peter's chatname into 'ThetardySpider'. He was already typing in his friends password into the first of many social media platforms, when (happy) barking reached his ears. He looked up to see Hope and Peter racing each other to reach him.

"Not late!"

Peter wheezed out as soon as he came to a stop in front of Ned.

"I totally did not forget to ask Friday to wake me up early today and was absolutely not just woken up 35 minutes ago by Hope licking my face off. Completely on time, that's me. Mr. Punctuality."

He doubled over immediately after, bracing his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath.

Ned checked his phone. 9:29. Donuts! Oh well, knowing his best friend, an opportunity for assigning punishing nicknames would present itself once again. So he bent down to give Hope some love, while Peter was finally regaining his lost oxygen.

"Okay! We all set? You got your camera, Ned?"

He held it up for Peter to see.

"What am I even supposed to film with it? And shouldn't you have brought at least one of the people you intend to con into pet acquisition with you, oh great master of deception?"

"Please, you make me sound like a criminal. I'm not going to 'con' anyone, just persuade them to do something I want by slightly bending the truth."

Ned gave him a deadpan look.

"Pete, that is the textbook definition of conning someone."

But the brunette waved him off, digging his phone out of his pants.

"Semantics. Now, Steve left for his morning jog at 5, the freak, and since it's Saturday and there is no mission to prepare for, he wanted to make it a full run 'round."

Ned's yaw dropped.

"Are you telling me Captain America is jogging through all of New York?"

Peter nodded distractedly while typing something into his phone.

"And he got up a 5 am to do it. 5 am, Ned! Sleep-hating-freak. Not even Sam and Bucky joined him for something this crazy. I mean, 5 am, Ned!"

"You know you have gotten up earlier than that. Actually, you have stayed up later than that."

His exclamation was waved away again.

"That was for Spiderman, and lab time with Tony,... and cartoons. You know, important stuff. Not to go jogging!"

Peter shuddered for effect.

"Anyway, according to his usual running speed, traffic, roadblocks, calculated detours and approximate number of stops he had to make to hydrate or take a selfie with a fan, he should be in this general area by now."

Apparently having finished with his first task on the phone, Peter then scrolled through his contacts and hit the call button for one 'Star spangled man with a plan'. He didn't have to wait long for Steve to accept the call.

"Hey Pete, what-"

"STEVE! IT'S AN EMERGENCY! COME TO LEE AVENUE 14! HURRY!" And then Peter promptly hung up.

Ned stared at him open mouthed for three long seconds, then he beamed and proudly patted his friend on the shoulder.

"You just lied to Captain America without stuttering, over-explaining yourself, or dissolving into a puddle of anxiety! Good for you!"

Peter's grin couldn't possibly be wider.

"Thanks! For a moment there I thought I was going to choke, but then I pulled through! Tasha practiced with me for two hours last night."

"The Black Widow knows about your plans?"

Peter nodded.

"Tasha knows everything."

"Does she know about the-"

"Yeah."

"And about the time when-"

"Yeah."

"And what about-"

"She knows that, too."

Ned let out a reverent "Whooow."

Then he thought of something else.

"What if the Captain calls the other Avengers for backup, thinking you are in trouble?"

"I told Karen to inform Friday to ignore any assemble requests made by Steve, right after my phone call with him."

"So that's what you were typing on your phone earlier."

Peter nodded, then suddenly looked down the street in front of them, Hope simultaneously lifted his head from where it had been resting on his paws.

"Get your camera ready, Cap is closing in."

Ned did just that, and forever captured on film as one (very sweaty) Steve Rogers ran full speed to the two of them.

"Peter!"

He didn't take long to reach the two teens, even with an excited Hope jumping up and around him to greet the super soldier.

"What happened? Are you hurt? Are you two okay? Is there a new villain? What's the situation? I called for backup, the others should be here shortly."

Knowing they would not, Peter grabbed for Hope to hold the enthusiastic Pitbull at bay, and waited for Steve to finish with his visual assessment of any possibly sustained injuries. Then he grinned.

"Quick, the one needing your help is inside!"

He grabbed the blonde's arm and unceremoniously pulled him through the shelter doors, a still filming Ned and tail wagging Hope right behind them.

Andrew was just getting some of the forms for new owners in order, when the automatic doors of the entrance opened with a ding, causing him to abandon his task for later.

He did a double take when non other than Captain America, Steve Rogers, in civilian (and kinda sweat stained) clothes was dragged in by a familiar looking teenager. Followed by another teenager holding a camcorder fixed on the american icon, and a familiar looking Pitbull.

Since his brain was obviously not equipped to sort through everything at once, he focused on the issue that was the easiest to resolve.

"Hey! You are that kid that was here with Tony Stark, right?"

Said kid grinned and proceeded to drag Captain freaking America to the front desk.

"Yes! I remember you too! I'm Peter, by the way. I see you did some remodeling with the place."

Andrew smiled and shook the teen's hand.

"Hi Peter, I'm Andrew. And yes, thanks to Mr. Stark's generous donation, we were able to expand quite a bit. Even got some space out back, for the bigger ones to run a little."

"That's great!"

"You aren't here to return your dog, are you?"

"Never! Hope is ohana, and ohana means family."

"Good, good. Say, quick question, kid. Is that man with you Steve Rogers, aka Captain America?"

"He is."

"Peter."

The authoritative voice of the living american legend, pulled Peter and Andrew out of their little conversation, and brought their full attention on him. Steve, for his part, after having scanned the buildings lobby for possible threats, or other dangerous things, and valiantly ignoring the camera Peter's friend kept trained on him the whole time, took a deep breath.

Calm, be calm.

"Peter, why am I here?"

The teen grinned brightly.

"Rescue mission."

Calm, remain calm.

"And who, exactly, needs to be rescued?"

The grin got brighter.

"Well, whoever you decide on taking home with you. Though I've always kinda pegged you for a dog person, so maybe we should start with them."

Calm, calm, calm, you fought in wars, soldier. Keep calm.

"Son, I'm not getting a dog."

The kid shrugged.

"Okay, the cats here are great too! Or maybe you want a bird? Some of these have a pretty long lifespan, you know? We can also look at the smaller animals. They have ferrets, and chinchillas, and rabbits-"

You fought aliens, and an insane robot, your boyfriend was brainwashed into trying to kill you and one of your best friends is Tony Stark! If you can live through all that, you can get through this insanity too.

"-though I really think you should get a dog. It just fits, you know?"

Calm, calm.

"Peter, I am not getting a dog!"

"So, this is Colonel. He is a mixed breed of unknown origins, though the shelter worker said that there is definitely some German Shepard in there."

Steve was met with the non blinking eyes of his fellow Avengers and friends, and their assorted families, who were for once all in attendance in the tower's common floor living room.

The Barton kids (minus Nathaniel, who was busy spreading mashed potatoes everywhere that wasn't his mouth, and especially his father at the moment) and Peter were playing with the two dogs.

Then Clint (who really didn't look at all intimidating with a toddler on his lap and mashed potatoes all over his face) was staring imploringly at his wife, Laura skillfully ignored her husband, Natasha went over to Peter to congratulate him on his successful manipulation of another human being, Sam groaned about not scooping up any poop, Bucky joined the kids and dogs on the floor, Pepper shook her head, May refilled both her, Laura's and Pepper's wine glasses, Bruce hid a smile in his book, and Tony almost fell off the couch, he was laughing so hard.

"Your dog has a higher military rank than you!"

end chapter 1

Next up: Bucky and Sam :-)

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cjs-got-a-selfship · 5 years

Text

Jasper/Page- pt.8/9

pt- 7

The halls were still just as twisted as before, and as soon as they reentered the dank and damp tunnels, the negative heavy feelings returned. However, Page curiously found that the closer she stood to Jasper, the better things felt, at least a little bit.

Over the weeks they had spent talking on and off, she had been growing slowly more fond of the Nosferatu. Aside from being one of the few consistent Kindred contacts she’d kept in a long time, he was interesting, unexpectedly witty when he wanted to be, incredibly knowledgeable on many subjects, and at least… a little bit generous, understanding, and kind. Him allowing her to stay the first time she stumbled in had to count for something. And, she supposed--as far as Nosferatu went--Jasper wasn’t too bad looking… maybe even kind of handsome.

She felt herself slightly lagging behind, stealing longer and longer glances up at Jasper, seemingly too focused on directing them on the right path back to have noticed. Page blinked her thoughts away and caught back up, keeping close at his heels. After a few minutes of silence she decided to try and reignite some conversation.

“So… any plans for the ley lines now?”

He answered as they continued to walk, occasionally meeting her gaze, “Not really… if we are completely correct about it… it’s quite possible that there could be something… really big or at least really powerful down here. I think for the time being with… politics the way they are nowadays… it may be best to keep all this quiet. Obviously if the Camarilla knew anything about this… things could get very bad very fast and probably not just for me. But I don’t think… the Anarchs knowing about all this wouldn’t be all that much better…”

“No that… that makes sense…” another question came to mind, which he asked in all sincerity without a drop of malice in her voice, “So what makes you any better to be in charge of it?”

Jasper paused at the question, their progressed through the labyrinth paused as he thought her question through. He had habitually chosen his words carefully, but this seemed less like he was walking on eggshells, and more like he was considering the answer for the first time. His gaze diverted just past Page’s shoulder as he slowly responded.

“I……. I guess to put it simply… I’m not… I’m not any better than the Camarilla or the Anarchs… It’s very likely if either side had access to the ley lines and knew how to use them… they’d do so purely to screw the other over……. I know if I knew what to do with them and was able to… I would… I suppose the big difference is… scale… because, they’d be doing it to set things straight in their eyes and probably destroy the other side in the process. I would… honestly only want to do that sort of thing to… a few people… and then skip town somewhere… far from Kindred… far from… all this mess… somewhere… where I could live out the rest of whatever I have without… other people telling me what to do.”

Jasper’s eyes focused on Page’s. She was completely enraptured by every word he spoke.

“So I guess my point is… at least with me these things are in the hands of someone… ignorant… which I would think is probably better than someone like the Camarilla or the Anarchs who probably definitely would know what they were doing… or would at least have access to someone who did know… If that answers your question…”

A softness and understanding emanated from her expression, “Yeah… I get that… I feel like… this kind of power shouldn’t really be held by anyone, y’know? It’s not something that anyone should be able to just throw around… but… and I may be a little biased here… but if anyone had to have found it and figured out what it was… I’m glad it was you… and not the Ivory Tower.”

Another short breathy hiss of a laugh and toothy grin, “Thanks…” a spot of hesitation crept into his demeanor, and he looked into Page’s eyes with curiosity. “But--if you don’t mind me asking--what do you… mean by ‘biased’?”

“W-well I just mean that… well I’m naturally not really a fan of the Ivory Tower, or even the Anarchs. I don’t think either of them should really get their way with everything… but… I’ve… enjoyed talking with you ‘n stuff. I’ve looked forward to the book deliveries ‘cause it meant if even just for a little bit, I could talk to someone I didn’t completely despise who knew what was going on with us…” she averted her gaze from his eyes to their feet. “I’ve run a lot of jobs for a lot of different Kindred… nine times out of ten, I never wanted to see them again once the job was over… the other one out of ten, I hoped they had the shittiest deaths imaginable… but I never once felt the same about you, Jasper.”

She looked back up at him, not sure what to expect in return. Surprisingly, the usual steely demeanor Jasper held had ebbed, his expression softer with a tiny hint of a smile, a genuine one.

“Hhhhuhh… th-thank you…” he seemed at a loss for words.

In the moment of relative silence, both became aware of a growing resonant sound. The scraping of claws on concrete and stone once again. The Kindred were snapped away from their conversation, disturbed by the intrusion. Jasper slowly pulled his book back up from his side, keeping an eye and an ear open to their surroundings as he flipped to the correct page. Page’s head was back on a swivel trying in vain to locate the direction of the source. Something about these halls made it impossible to determine the direction of anything, never mind a sound echoing through the smooth concrete walls.

Jasper gently tugged on Page’s arm as he led them supposedly in a direction away from the sound but closer to the way out. However, no matter what they did or where they went, the sound never seemed to fall farther away. It was all Jasper could do to make sure it at least didn’t come closer. Rounding corners, slipping down halls, ducking into alcoves, none of it diminished the sounds of steady scraping and heavy animalistic breathing.

The two eventually stood at the mouth of a long straight hallway marked by dozens of connected corridors, Jasper still leading them on. Passing by the adjacent tunnels, Page glanced through by the fleeting beam of the flashlight. In the quickly shifting shadows, she could have sworn she saw a shape move just out of sight. Her eyes shot wide as her hand tightly gripped Jasper’s arm. He stopped, confused, and looked down at her.

“What-”

“-We need to MOVE.”

Suddenly, the noises they’d been hearing grew exponentially louder, now accompanied by sniffing and a low guttural growl. A new scent also joined the musty air: the smell of filthy dog.

Instinct took over as the Kindred barreled down the tunnels, no longer trying to keep their position a secret. With the change of volume, whatever was causing the noises became suddenly agitated. Growls escalated to barks and the sniffing became more frantic. Hoping to lose their pursuer, they ran down smaller spaces, doubled back around corners, switched directions on a dime, but the sounds only grew louder.

Charging around another corner into a short hallway, the Kindred came face to face with exactly what they feared, and their greatest enemy: an enormous eight foot Lupine. And he looked hungry. Before they could turn and change their course back the other way, the Lupine bared its teeth and launched itself down the hall straight into Jasper. Book and flashlight both went clattering to the floor as the massive wolf like creature slammed the Nosferatu onto his back, Page barely stumbling out of the way to avoid being knocked down herself.

With a hiss she felt the nails on her hands extending and forming sharp knife-like claws as well as her teeth lengthening and growing sharper. Without hesitation she leapt onto the back of the creature, sinking the natural weapons into its shoulders. Howling in pain, its attention was diverted off of Jasper and onto the small Gangrel now attached to its back. It stood up, taking a few steps back and began reaching above its head to swipe at Page, finding purchase on the back of her neck. Its own claws dug into her skin, ripping her off itself and throwing her to the side. The smell of both Lupine blood and Kindred Vitae permeated into the air, spurring both sides almost to a frenzy, like chum thrown into the ocean. The Lupine’s head swung to Page, its teeth bared as it growled and snapped at her as she tried to regain her feet. It failed to notice as Jasper drew a long wicked knife until the blade was deep into its side. Its blood curdling how was cut short as Jasper’s hand clamped around its neck and he threw it likewise onto the ground. Its limbs flailed as it tried to resist, eventually its efforts found purchase on flesh its massive jaw clamped onto Jasper’s leg.

He let out a deep seeded roar of his own as he withdrew the knife from the Lupine’s side and reburied it in its chest. It responded by sinking its teeth deeper into his leg. Page charged to the other side of the Lupine on the floor and grasped onto its upper and lower jaws. With all the strength she could muster, she pried open the beast’s maw, ignoring the piercing pain of its teeth now slicing into her hands. With a sickening crack, Jasper’s leg was freed, and the monster’s lower jaw was dislocated. Lashing out, its claws raked across Page’s torso, shoulder to hip. Hissing through the pain, Page leapt to her feet and over to Jasper’s side. She helped him to his feet and away from the beast now whining in pain, its lower jaw slack to one side. The two limped to the resting book and flashlight on the floor, picking them up as they fled the area and they glanced back to see the Lupine scurrying to its feet.

Without taking a real step, it became abundantly obvious Jasper’s leg was not going to support much weight. Page slung his arm over her shoulder to support him and urged them both forward. Clicking the flashlight off to better conceal their escape, the Gangrel chose to rely instead on her heightened darkvision to navigate. Getting lost could be undone, dying to a hungry Lupine could not.

Although the sounds of the Lupine’s presence faded away, the two didn’t stop to assess themselves for nearly half an hour. Finally then, did Page find an alcove to let them both attempt to remedy themselves. She could feel her claws and teeth receding to their normal state and her darkvision faded, giving way to the pressing darkness.

Page let Jasper down to the floor, propping him against the wall and pulling the flashlight back out. Turning it back on revealed just how bad the Lupine had torn at his calf. His pant leg hung in ribbons, exposing the flesh beneath bearing a deep bite mark glistening in the small light of the flashlight with spilled Vitae. Aside from the unusable leg, his jacket seemed to have seen better days, looking even more ragged than before. Claw marks tore at the shoulders from the initial engagement, but if they had also pierced into flesh it wasn’t outwardly obvious.

He stifled a groan and sat there almost frozen wide eyed in pain, jaw clenched.

Page didn’t feel that much better. The holes in her hands raged like a fire, but paled in comparison to the wounds on the back of her neck and torso. Her shirt at this point hung shredded, like Jasper’s pant leg. Long angry wounds stretched from her collar bone across to the opposite hip. Hands already covered in Vitae, she could feel the back of her hair also slick with the stuff. All this would take days to heal, maybe even a week. And a lot of blood.

She looked up at Jasper, “You okay? Can you walk?”

He hissed as the muscle and sinew began to shift, starting to reconnect and repair itself. After a moment it stopped and he relaxed a touch. It looked better, but far from perfect. His wounds ran deeper than hers, he’d likely need a couple rounds to fully close them as well. Pain underpinned his voice, “Yeah. Yeah I can walk.”

Page did likewise, focusing the power of her own Vitae to the claw marks on the back of her neck. She could feel the tissues reconnecting and the skin reforming over the top. However, she had to stop before it could fully heal. Unfortunately she hadn’t fed since almost two nights ago, she had been to focused on rounding out her delivery. Pushing it any more than this would likely send her into a frenzy to find sustenance. And with the only clear options for food at the moment being the two rats in her pockets, Jasper, or the Lupine they narrowly just escaped from, she wasn’t willing to take that risk.

Jasper looked back at her, “Are you… okay?”

She steeled herself, “Yeah. Let’s get out of here before it finds us again.”

With some difficulty she found her feet again, and helped Jasper to his own. Better as his leg may be, he still needed support to keep himself upright. Page slung his arm back over her shoulder and kept them both steady on. It took more time than they cared to admit, but with the book in Jasper’s hand and the flashlight in Page’s, they eventually found their way back to his haven at last. The two could sense it was probably only an hour until sunrise by the time they closed the heavy door shut and collapsed on the sofa..

Safely behind closed doors, they finally felt the freedom to speak above a whisper.

“Well… that was certainly something…” Jasper broke the silence.

“I’d never seen one in person before.”

“Can’t say that I have either until now.”

“I didn’t like it.”

He huffed a laugh, “No, I can’t say that I did either…”

A moment of quiet passed, “I… should go before the sun comes.”

“That’s… probably a good idea.”

Page slowly stood up from the couch and made her way to the safer door out.

“Y’know…” Jasper said, breaking into her fog of pain and hunger, “I didn’t get to say it… before we were so rudely interrupted but… If you wanted to come back again, no book deliveries necessary… you would be welcome to… as long as I was here. If you don’t I understand I know I wouldn’t want to repeat all this but… I would… enjoy the company… I don’t really get many visitors…”

Despite the pain, and her Beast screaming in her ear, a small smile came across her lips, “We have a saying in my clan… ‘The lone wolf may look cool, but he’s the first to be picked off’... I’ve been alone for a long time… it’d be nice to have a pack… even if just a small one.”

Jasper let out another short toothy laugh, “Excellent… see you around then, Page.”

“See you around, Jasper.”

With that she turned back to leave, up the sloped hall, out the service door, into the remainder of the night sky. Outside Griffith Park she quickly made her way through the back alleys, weaving the service streets and broken decrepit buildings until she finally reached the abandoned office building she called home for now. Making it inside mere minutes before the first light of dawn, she bedded down into supernatural sleep while the rest of the world was barely opening its eyes for the day ahead.

pt- 9

#// fighting #// blood #// gore #// injury #// violence #// body horror #may as well get those out of the way #my fic #jasper #f/o #la by night #vampire the masquerade #s/i page #fr tho im proud of this one

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wepon · 5 years

Text

the homestuck epilogues: bridges and off-ramps, by andrew hussie*

the history of the printed version of the homestuck epilogues is also the history of the homestuck epilogues themselves because i originally envisioned releasing them only as a book like this to even further emphasize their conceptual separation from the main narrative. if you know anything about the epilogues, you probably already understand that conceptually distinguishing themselves from the story by their presentation as fanfiction as an important part of their nature and what they're trying to say. in the form of a book which you can read from one side or flip upside-down and read from the other, it somewhat carries the feeling of a cursed tome, something which maddeningly beckons due to whatever insanity it surely contains but also something which causes feelings of trepidation. there's an ominous aura surrounding such a work, probably for a few reasons. the sheer size of it means the nature of the content probably isn't going to be that trivial. the stark presentation of the black-and-white covers, its dual narrative format, the foreboding prologue combined with an alarming list of content warnings, and even the fact that an epilogue is delivered with a prologue first, all adds up to a piece of media that appears designed to make the reader nervous about what to expect from it. such is the nature of a cursed tome retrieved from a place which may have been best left undisturbed. it is also the nature of any creed[?] of inclination to reopen a story which had already been laid to rest, a reader's desire to agitate and then collapse the bubble which contain the imagined projection of happily-ever-after simply by observing it. there exists inherent danger in a reader's eagerness to collapse that bubble or to crack that tome. there is also danger in a creator's willingness to accommodate that desire. it's a risk for all involved. it should be. obviously it wasn't released as a book until now. the plans for printing it had already been made but were just delayed until well after its release on-site. we decided to just release it all on the site so that everyone could read it right away if they wanted. there was a long tradition of making all content freely accessible on the site, and we just produced one utterly enormous update, which we were perfectly aware would cause a massive amount of discussion and agitation in the fandom. overall it was probably better to just get it out there, let people read it relatively quickly, form their opinions on it, and then begin discussing it critically. in other words, people were going to feel something from all of this, so it seemed better to just let it out there, allow the maximum number of people to feel whatever it would cause them to feel, give people time to process those feelings, and then move on to whatever comes next. but what comes next? that's a good question. i feel like the work does a lot to suggest it's not merely following up on the lives of all the characters after a few years but also reorganizing all narrative circumstances in a way that points forward to a new continuity with a totally different set of stakes. in this sense, i think it's heavily implied to be a piece of bridge media, which is clearly detached from the previous narrative and conceptually optional by its presentation, which allows it to function as an off-ramp for those inclined to believe the first seven acts of homestuck were perfectly sufficient. but for those who continue to feel investment in these characters and this world, ironically the very elements which could be regarded as disturbing or depressing are also the main reasons to have hope that there is still more to see because, as certain characters go to some length to elaborate on, you can't tell new stories without reestablishing significant dramatic stakes, new problems to overcome, new injustices to correct, new questions to answer. there can be no sense of emotional gratification later without us first experiencing certain periods of emotional recession. and by peeking into the imagined realm of happily-ever-after to satisfy our curiosity, we discover our attention isn't so harmless because the complexities and sorrows of adult life can't be ignored, nor can the challenges of creating a civilization from scratch when several teenagers are handed god status. it turns out the gaze we cast from the skies of earth c revisited aren't exactly friendly like warm sunlight. it's more like a ravaging beam, destructive and unsettling to all that could have been safely imagined. our continued attention is the very property which incites new problems, and the troublemakers appear to be keenly aware of this so they spring into action and begin repositioning all the stage props for a new implied narrative. but implied is all it was. there was no immediate announcement for follow-up content and i'm not announcing anything yet here, either. more time was always going to be necessary to figure out what to do next, including what form it takes, the timing, and all those questions. for now i think it was alright to just let things simmer for a while and give people an extended period of time to meditate on the meaning of the epilogues and why they involve the choices they did. but regardless of anyone's conclusions about it, i can at least confirm that it was designed to feel like a bridge piece since its conception. is it this way because an epilogue should be this way? no. it is this way because i thought that was the most suitable role for an epilogue to play in the context of the weird piece of media homestuck has always been. the story experiments a lot with the way stories are told, and in particular messes with the ways certain stretches of content get partitioned and labeled. playing with the labeling, i think, has ways of bringing attention to those labels, what they actually mean, and how they affect our perception of events covered under certain labels. it can even get us to wonder why certain labels exist at all, and can expose flaws in the construction of stories which include them. for instance, intermission is such a label. but perhaps another way of saying intermission is "whoops, the story is getting too long, here's a break from the real story with a bunch of dumb shit that doesn't matter". it's seemingly a tacit admission to a problem, and by continuing to toy with that label as the story rolls along, you start to unpack the nature of that problem by implicitly asking questions about it. if you have one intermission because the story got long, can you have two if it gets longer? can you have even more than that? once you have a multitude of intermissions, don't you have two dueling threads of content, one supposedly irrelevant and the other important? and if that's true, then is it possible for the irrelevant thread to accrue more importance, throwing it's entire identity as optional content into question retroactively? and if that can happen, is it possible that two threads can flip roles with the intermissions becoming more important than the main acts? then once the story goes through the motions of answering yes to all this, isn't it also fair to ask "why bother with this examination at all"? was it pure horseplay and trickery? actually yes, sort of. there is a trick involved. the gradual realization that intermission content is non-trivial forces the reader to re-evaluate their perception of the material which was originally influenced by a label presiding over that material and what they believed that label meant. it relies on the reader's presumption about the label's meaning to disguise certain properties of the content, such as relevance, and therefore disarms the reader initially, leading to the potential for subverting expectations about the content later in surprising ways. in other words, you can use whatever it is the reader already presumes about stories to control the perception of what they are reading just by shifting the boundaries of whatever it is they've been well-trained to expect from certain elements. so now the label "epilogue" has been toyed with in a similar way, and also in a manner which supposes an apparent flaw with the label. or actually, just by using the label "epilogue" at all, it seems the story is admitting to an apparent flaw. if another way of saying intermission is "whoops, the story's too long, here's a break", then an alternate way of saying epilogue is "whoops, i forgot some shit, here's some more", and we know right away this label will be subject to the same type of trickery since there are two story paths of eight epilogues each, prefaced by a shared prologue. it's already an unhinged implementation of the label before you even read it, which means it's probably time to get nervous about whether it satisfies your expectations about what the content existing under such a label should provide. before you read it, it's already an invitation to start questioning what an epilogue even is and whether it's kind of a silly idea even if applied conventionally. take a fifty-chapter novel with an epilogue, for example. why isn't the epilogue just called chapter fifty-one? why was the choice made to label that content differently? should we consider it an important part of the story or should we not? if it's not important, why are we reading it? and if it is important, why is it given a label which is almost synonymous with afterthought? is it a simple parting gift to the reader, to provide minor forms of satisfaction which the core narrative wasn't built to provide? is it actually important to deliver those minor satisfactions? if it really is important, why didn't that content appear in chapter fifty-one? and if it isn't, why bother at all? what are we even doing here? by going down this path of questioning, it sounds like we're assembling a case against writing epilogues altogether, but actually, there's really nothing wrong with them. it's a perfectly reasonable thing to include in any story. it's just that the more you ask questions like these, the more you're forced to think about the true nature of these storytelling concepts, the actual purposes they're meant to serve. and with something like homestuck, where issues like this are heavily foregrounded, like what should be considered canon versus non-canon, or even more esoteric concepts like "outside" of canon or "beyond" canon, that the issues you uncover when you ask such questions about an epilogue can't really be ignored. my feeling is there's almost no choice but to turn the conventional ideals associated with epilogues completely inside out, because of the inherent contradictions involved with crossing the post-canon threshold and revealing that which was not meant to be known. stories end where they do for certain reasons. answering the questions which were thematically important to answer and leaving some questions unanswered for similar reasons, and the reader is left with the task of deciphering the meaning of those decisions. under the "whoops, i forgot some shit, here's more" interpretation of an epilogue as a flawed construct, by reopening an already closed-circuit narrative, what you're really doing is introducing destabilizing forces into something which had already reached a certain equilibrium due to all these considerations that went into which questions to answer and which to leave ambiguous, and these destabilizing forces became the entire basis for the construction of an entirely new post-canon narrative, for better or worse. these are the types of things the epilogues let you think about, along with a few other ideas, like the fact that all narratives have perspectives and biases depending on who's telling the story, even in the case where it's unclear whether the narrator has any specific identity. the suggestion that all narratives are driven by agendas, sometimes thinly disguised, other times heavily. there's also stuff to think about just due to its presentation as fanfiction, and that it's the first installment of homestuck which included other authors. contrary to some speculation i've seen, every word of all seven acts were written by me alone. by deploying it as mock-fanfiction and including other authors, i'm making an overt gesture that is beginning to diminish my relevance as the sole authority on the direction this story takes, what should be regarded as canon, and even introducing some ambiguity into your understanding of what canon means as the torch is being passed into a realm governed by fan desires. if the epilogues really prove themselves to be the bridge media they were designed to feel like, then i expect this trend to continue. the fanfiction format is effectively a call to action for another generation of creators to imagine different outcomes, to submit their own work within the universe, to extend what happens beyond the epilogues or to pave over them with their own ideas, and i believe the direness in tone, with some of the subject matter, suitably contributes to the urgency of this call to action. i also feel that many of the negative feelings this story creates isn't just an urgent prompt for the reader to imagine different ideas or ways to solve the new narrative dilemmas. it's also an opportunity for people to discuss any of the difficult content critically, and fandom in general continuing to develop the tools for processing the negative emotions art can generate. sorting that out has to be a communal experience, and it's an important part of the cycle between creating and criticizing art. i think not only can creators develop their skills to create better things by practicing in taking certain risks, fandom is something which can develop better skills as well. skills like critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways, and trying to understand different points of view outside of the factions within fandom that can become very hardened over time. fandoms everywhere tend to get bad reputations for various reasons, maybe justifiably, but i don't see why it can't be an objective to try and improve fandom, just as creators can improve this work, and i think this can only happen if, now and then, fandoms are seriously challenged by being encouraged to think about complex ideas and made to feel difficult emotions. i believe when art creates certain kinds of negative feelings in people it can lead to some of the most transformative experiences art has to offer, but it helps to be receptive to this idea for these experiences to have a positive net effect on your life and your relationship with art. so now i'm looking to all of you on the matter of where to go next, wherever the most conscientious and invested members of fandom want to drive this universe, as well as the standards by which we engage with media in general. that will be the direction i follow.

*i have no way to verify this statement

#homestuck #posting this because i think it's helping me let go of the desire for a proper final conclusion #[waves] goodbye

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