#i haven’t lost them since April and April is probably one of the most terrifying times ofmy life lol

[rhaemaya-valwynn]

Update- Writing Fan-Fics and Real Life Problems.

Hello everyone, I just wanna give an update on whats going on so you don’t think I’ve forgotten the fan-fics I’ve started.

CW: medical problems and near death of my mother

Over the past year I have struggled with medications. I think I’ve probably gone through at least 12 different medications in an attempt to keep me ‘going’ essentially. I have a special condition which makes me horribly depressed and the Doctor’s I’ve been under are at a loss of what to do for me. The last 6 months has basically been them throwing everything and the kitchen sink at me in an attempt to keep me functioning enough to keep working as I needed to make money for medical bills for my type one diabetes, since even having insurance is not enough to truly help with how expensive it is.

It hasn’t worked. Eventually, the side effects of all the medications accumulated to a breaking point in January. I lost the ability to write (literally, my words were jumbled, I would go to write one thing and then look up to see I had typed something COMPLETELY different) and to comprehend what was being told to me. I almost lost the ability to talk because the medication had taken such a severe turn for me. My doctor had me quit cold turkey and STAY cold turkey for 2 weeks. Those 2 weeks were HELL. Coming off the medication was a utter nightmare as I had to battle auditory hallucinations and the inability to move as they occurred (almost like a paralysis.)

When the dust finally settled, I felt better then I had in 7 years. People would tell me that I looked so much better, not just how I talked and behaved. While this was a great relief, about a month ago (March 16th to be exact) I came home to find a call from my mom’s friend. She was in the hospital for emergency surgery.

The doctor’s didn’t know what was wrong with her, other then something dealing with her intestines. They wouldn’t know if they could fix it till they cut her open.

Essentially, she either lived or died.

Thankfully she made it, though the doctor’s said she was 2 hours away from dying. She had torn a hole in her stomach and 20ft of her small intestine pushed through and wrapped around her colon, cutting blood flow.

Yeah, it was pretty bad.

We both reevaluated our life styles and realized we needed each other, as I was living alone going through all these medication problems and her just having divorced my father and was living alone when this happened.

Last Easter we both agreed that I would be moving back with her. April 14th I bought a trailer to live in next to her small house and am in the process of trying to move out by April 1st.

I haven’t forgotten my fan-fics (Void Walker and the Naga!Jotaro/ Warm my Soul fic)

I just do not have the time to relax or rest till I’m officially moved out and settled into my new home. I hope you all understand that I’m going to need some time to adjust and recuperate from this last year.

Thank you for reading, as a treat you can have a snippet from ‘Warm my Soul’ that I did have prepared before everything happened.

Warm my Soul- Chapter 2: Study Master Disaster The wildlife in Jotaro's habitat was more diverse and intricate than you had initially imagined. Birds, lizards, frogs, beetles, bats, and all manner of things lived here. It was almost as if they had plucked a chunk of forest up and put it in Washington State. Nothing in here was severely dangerous that might actually harm faculty or Jotaro. Though, now that he had regained his weight and was nearly recovered, most things didn't threaten him anymore as he was a wall of sheer muscle. With nigh unstoppable power, he could genuinely hurt someone if he wanted to.This meant no more interactions like Angela's could happen. If he didn't want you there, you would know, immediately.

Kyoshi had warned you that healthy Nagas were some of the most dangerous Cryptids. Due to their ability to move silently and crush their prey with terrifying strength, coupled with their potent venom strong enough to stop your heart in three minutes flat, these Cryptids ranked high on the danger chart, primarily due to the fact that their species was on the brink of extinction due to poachers and tamers alike. Lucky for you, Jotaro actually liked you, so you figured the chances of him wrapping you up in his nine-meter tail and snuffing out your life while injecting you with venom to be....minimal.

On a happier note, the herd of capybaras that lived in the man-made rainforest were overly friendly and would typically come trotting from their 'sunbathing' spots to greet you every morning. They were always eager for snacks and loved 'scritches.' A word used by the older veterinary assistant Tomoko Higashikata who was typically tasked with giving you the snack buckets on your way in. Jotaro always gave her a weird look if he decided to wait for you at the entrance, though you never pried as there were too many things going on in his life that you didn't need to be privy to everything.

The animals may or may not be nice to you because you had kept bringing your own food previously and feeding them as you went in for Jotaro's care. The veterinarians noticed your little escapades and began offering healthier options for the animals as several of them had 'gained too much weight' from your overzealous act of kindness. The snacks were indeed better and didn't involve banana chips and dried mango slices from the dollar store. Most days you worked, you saw Jotaro, given that he had become responsive to care only from you and you alone.

The how and why is a little bit of a story, but at the end of the day, you were his most trusted caregiver. Most of your work schedule revolved around him now, with Thursdays being all to him and him alone. While some coworkers lamented their jealousy over your closeness to the snake man, you reminded them about Angela and how they shouldn't talk that way. But deep inside, you were glad to have broken the barrier between Jotaro and the world.

To be continued....

#Health update #Warm my Soul- Naga!Jotaro #sneak peek snippet #thank you for your patience

[catradoracore]

@eleuthoeromania

#I’m too freaked out to text rn and I know that seems dumb ; but!!! #heres the thing #don’t freak out but I cant find my earbuds and I am freaking the hell out #i haven’t lost them since April and April is probably one of the most terrifying times ofmy life lol #I wish I could explain to you how scary it was Bridget I’m AAAAA #i was Not Myself at all #that was not me I don’t know who that was and it’s so horrible #and i. Haven’t told y’all this but while you were scared for me I was laughing on the other end. I was smiling and I was so goddamn empty #I’m so so fucking sorry I did that #it’s not really my fault but holy shit I can’t stop thinking about April #april 2016 was fucking shit too yeehaw! #i don’t get any breaks huh wow interesting do go on #april and November kick my ass every year lmao FUCK #im scared I’m gonna lose my mind again one day i’ll lose it again #and im so scared therapy was supposed to like hhmm not make me do that but I’m so nervous All The Time that it’s gonna happen again #so my memory’s getting worse which means i’ll Likely lose them again in the next school yr at some point #so how do u think that’s gonna play out oh my god if I lose them in like my first classor some shit #if I lose them again I’m terrified my mind will be absolutely gone for good #and then I either wake up or I don’t but it’s whatever the fuck tbh #vent #bridget #my friends #April 9th tag #Fuck it I’m doing a tag

[punksarahreese]

Comfort | Restart

Medtober day 3 + 4 (event by @page-doctor-bekker)

Med student!Sarah; everyone needs a real support system

Word count: 2335

CW: minor parental gaslighting/manipulation

***

Sarah had hoped no one would notice, though she quickly realized her body gave itself away all too easily. No amount of caffeine could hide the sluggishness in her movements, her limbs feeling heavier than lead. If it wasn’t that it was probably the way her voice held no cheerful tone like it usually did, instead her words fell flat and had April casting her concerned glances.

She kept to herself that day, all too exhausted to even try to be social. As long as she made it through her clinical hours she could go home and sleep, at least for a few hours. She hadn’t gotten more than six the past few days, instead pouring over her textbooks that had taken their rightful place strewn across the floor. The exam for her latest rotation was coming up and Sarah was feeling the anxiety far more than usual. That was at the fault of her mother, though the woman would say it was her daughter’s problem alone.

“Sarah, you need to stop worrying over such silly things,” she had told her over the phone, “The only thing you should focus on is school.”

“Mom…”

“Now, you know how important this is. You don’t have time for friends, it will only slow you down. My daughter will be a doctor, right? You wouldn’t let me down after all this money I’ve sent…”

It always ended like that, the passive aggressive cherry on top of narcissism. Her mother wasn’t maternal in the slightest, though she would still use her relationship to Sarah for her benefit. Sure she made certain Sarah had all the money she needed to be successful, but it all came with a price. She was expecting her daughter to make a name for herself as a doctor, which would of course leave room for bragging and manipulation on Elizabeth’s part. Sarah’s whole future rested on her mother’s money as much as it did her own success, which was an unfortunate feat she was beginning to despise.

“Reese,” if she hadn’t already been sitting down, the sudden voice on her right could have knocked her off her feet. She winced at her own jumpiness, turning to look at Connor sheepishly.

“Dr. Rhodes,” she pushed a scrap piece of medical tape into her textbook before letting it fall shut on the marked page, “Hi.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah… yes of course. Just getting some studying in.”

“Uh huh,” he looked at her for a moment and Sarah knew she probably wasn’t helping her case by looking like a whole mess, “Ava was looking for you.”

Usually a mention of her mentor would immediately grab her attention and send Sarah scurrying off to find out what she wanted. This day, however, she wanted to do the opposite. Ava could see through her in seconds and Sarah didn’t have the energy to be chastised for being spacey or distracted. She was burnt out and as much as she enjoyed being on the surgeon’s service she would much rather go home.

“Oh?” Was all she said, getting to her feet. She checked her watch, realizing it was just in time for her break to begin. Sarah gathered her textbook along with her glasses she had opted to wear that day instead of contacts. One more look at Connor preceded her reply, “I’ll go find her in a bit then.”

She didn’t look back at the fellow but she knew he was probably watching her in confusion, her attitude much different than usual. Usually she would be following after Ava like a lost puppy, so the fact that she didn’t even ask where she was was wildly out of character. Sarah didn’t have the time to worry too much about it though, a chirp from her phone letting her know her mother had more to say to her.

***

“Check on your med student.”

“What?” The look Connor got from his colleague was a guarded one, clearly she didn’t know where this was going. Connor and Sam had been pestering her for a while about her soft spot for Sarah Reese, so Ava had become accustomed to assume teasing would ensue at any mention of her.

“She looks like a mess today,” he said as he snatched a chip from the bag she had been munching on, “Bloodshot eyes and way more jumpy than usual, and that’s saying something.”

“What happened?”

Connor shrugged but couldn’t help the little smirk at how concerned Ava immediately became, “Don’t know. That’s why you should check on her.”

***

Ava found her in the locker room reserved for med students and interns, thanks to one of Sarah’s classmates who pointed their instructor in the right direction. She wasn’t sure what to expect when she nudged the door open but what she got was a bit of a shock.

Sarah was sitting in front of her locker, knees pulled up to her chest and her grey scrubs already a bit dusty from the floor. She was staring blankly at the textbook propped up on the bench, completely unfocused from the words. She mustn’t have heard Ava come in because she didn’t react, the only sound being a sniffle.

“Sarah?”

Just like Connor had pointed out, she jumped far more than she had ever before. Ava knew the medical student was on edge most days, but this seemed a bit concerning. That worry only grew when she came around the corner to face Sarah properly, not expecting quite the sight she found.

Sarah’s eyes were swollen and red, as though she had been crying for quite some time. That theory was pretty much proven by the tears tracking down her ruddy cheeks, leaving little stains where they landed on her top. Her hands shook as they worried the fabric over her knees, a rhythmic movement that must have been an unconscious thought. The med student looked like she hadn’t slept for days or like she had been to Hell and back; or maybe both.

“D-doctor Bekker,” she looked up in alarm at her mentor, very deer-in-the-headlights as if she was terrified of what she might say. Something told Ava it wasn’t a coincidence that she hadn’t seen Sarah at all that day, since the other woman looked like she had been caught red handed by just the person she didn’t want to see.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Ava was crouching beside her without a thought, “What happened to formalities making you nervous?”

“I-”

“Sarah, what’s wrong?”

The brunette’s rapid head shake sent rouge curls tumbling into her line of vision, “Nothing! I’m fine.”

“Oh yeah you definitely look fine,” she was a bit shocked with the casual way Ava dropped onto the ground beside her, seeming unlike the focused surgeon she knew. Ava should be working, not sitting on the dirty locker room floor with her medical student who had spent the whole day avoiding her like the plague. Still, she showed no signs of leaving without an explanation, which made Sarah sigh.

“My cardio rotation exam is coming up…”

“Yes and? We’ve been preparing for this for weeks, Reese. You know the content like the back of your hand.”

“I don’t… it’s not that easy,” she protested, “If I don’t do perfect on every exam from here on out I might not match into the program I want. I need to be perfect, Ava.”

“No, don’t do that. You aren’t allowed to psych yourself out like this. You will do just fine, I didn’t train you to hide from the scary stuff now did I?”

“No…”

The blonde nodded affirmatively, “Exactly. So you’ve been studying and not sleeping, I take it?”

Sarah scoffed, “What gave it away?”

“The bags under your eyes are bigger than Connor’s ego,” she teased, “Plus the fact that you haven’t put that textbook away all day and you’re shaking like you do when you’re living off of caffeine.”

“Not fair,” Sarah sighed, “Don’t psychoanalyze me; that’s doctor Charles’ job.”

“Oh I would never take his job,” Ava replied, “I have a hateful relationship with Sigmund Freud and refused to do psych after med school.”

That was what finally got a smile out of Sarah, though it was followed by an incredulous headshake. Of course Ava would say something silly or unrelated to make her feel a bit better, she always did. She shifted uncomfortably on the hard flooring, looking at her mentor cautiously.

“Why are you here, Ava?”

“Because I needed to check on you.”

“You have other things to do…”

“Sarah, you’ve been spacey and avoiding me all day. I can’t very well let my star med student blow off rounds just to sit on this Petri dish of a floor and cry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, just tell me what’s really wrong so I can help.”

“I told you… exams.”

“Yeah but exam stress doesn’t often make you look like you’ve been crying for hours straight. What happened, Sarah?”

She knew she was backed into a corner, very aware of Ava’s concerned, stern eyes watching her every move. It’s not that she didn’t want to talk to her, Ava was probably the only person she wanted to talk to about this, but it wasn’t that simple.

“Exams are coming up; I’m moving to neuro in a couple weeks.”

“Yes? What… oh.” The surgeon seemed to have a sudden realization about what really was wrong. She sighed, slumping back against the locker beside Sarah’s before replying, “Reese, are you upset you won’t be on my service anymore?”

“Don’t say it like that,” she couldn’t help the whine in her tone, “I know I’m being a baby about it, just forget it.”

“No, Sarah,” the comforting hand that fell on her knee made her jump a bit, “It’s okay to be upset about it. I know you weren’t all too excited for CT in the beginning so it’s… rather endearing that you like it so much now.”

Sarah’s cheeks flamed at that and she tried to hide them behind her hands, not replying. She hated how upset the thought of rotation change made her, especially since she never even wanted to do cardio. Pathology was going to be her specialty in the end so that’s the residency she was applying for. She had no reason to feel so attached to cardiothoracics, not to mention the gut wrenching worry that Ava would forget about her.

“Hey,” Ava nudged her gently, “Sarah?”

“My mom is on my ass,” she admitted suddenly, “She’s very controlling and our whole relationship is based on money. She expects me to only think about school and stop ‘playing around’ in clinicals because I’m supposed to go to path in the end. That’s why I wanted to hate cardio, I shouldn’t have gotten attached.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she shook her head, “It’s irrational the way she makes me so anxious but… I need to do perfect, Ava. I can’t afford any other outcome, you know?”

“That’s far too much pressure on you,” Ava looked at her seriously, “You’re allowed to have a life, Sarah.”

“Not in her eyes. I have to be a pathologist first and a human second or my mother won’t be happy.”

“And what about you? Are you going to be happy?”

“That doesn’t… it doesn’t matter.”

The blonde scoffed, “That’s rubbish and you know it. You can’t do your best if you aren’t sleeping and you sure as hell won’t do well in something you’re not passionate about.”

“But-.”

“No arguing,” she couldn’t help the small amusement at Sarah’s immediate compliance, “Please take care of yourself, Reese. Do this for you, not anyone else, or you’ll regret it.”

Ava didn’t wait for an answer, instead she got to her feet and dusted off her dark pants. She held out a hand for Sarah, looking at her with expectant eyes. The student let herself be tugged up off the floor, though she had trouble holding eye contact for very long.

“Sarah?”

She hummed in reply, busy wiping ruefully at the tears that had started to fall again during their talk. She saw the worry in her mentor’s face and it hurt a lot more than she wanted to admit. Ava Bekker cared for her of all people and here she was spending the day sulking and avoiding her.

“Come here.”

She was a bit taken aback when the blonde opened her arms, offering a hug for the first time. She wasn’t a physically affectionate person as far as Sarah had seen, not with her students especially. Still, it had been a very long time since she had received any sort of comfort like that and she had a hard time finding a response.

Eventually she did melt cautiously into Ava’s arms, surprised by how strong and secure they felt.

The surgeon didn’t say anything, just let Sarah lean into her until she relaxed into the embrace like expected. It was clear the other woman didn’t get a lot of physical comfort and Ava felt her stomach twinge a bit at how socially distant Sarah seemed. She deserved a support system, especially in such a competitive med program, and it broke her heart to realize she didn’t have much of one.

“Listen, you are a brilliant student, even if you have trouble with confidence. Enjoy neuro, don’t waste that time being upset and instead learn as much as you can. Don’t doubt yourself or downplay your abilities just because you think you should be in a lab instead. You would make an amazing surgeon, Sarah, whether it’s in CT or not.”

“Ava,” her reply was muffled slightly by her hair, “I don’t…”

“Just put yourself first, okay? And don’t be afraid to ask for guidance. Even if I’m not your mentor anymore once your rotation is up… I’m here, I promise.”

Sarah couldn’t think of a meaningful reply, overwhelmed by it all but still soothed by the lilac scent that was so Ava. All she could do was mumble a “thank you”, but in that moment it was more than enough.

#this is a double day that’s 3 days late <3 but it’s long lmao #it’s also Bad so lmao #my aus #restart #med student!sarah #fellow!ava #medtober 2021 #sarah reese #ava bekker #chicago med #Reesker #crockettstiddies #purple-dahlias

[ghost-in-the-hella]

J: “Join me for a swim?” with PriceMarsh, because I can't get enough of this ship.

Some soft pricemarsh for these troubled times. Enjoy.

---

Kate says a silent prayer before she approaches the woman sitting on the beach. She suspects that Chloe’s not the praying kind, and given the way people in Blackwell and around town never seem to have a kind word to say about her she’d be surprised if anybody else spoke to God on her behalf. And maybe Chloe prefers it that way. They haven’t talked about religion much in the few weeks of their budding friendship, but she’s pretty sure that Chloe is an atheist. “What kind of God would take my dad away when I was only fourteen?” For some people, tragedy brings them closer to God. For others, it pushes them away. But Chloe doesn’t make fun of her for being religious (unlike most people at Blackwell) and Kate doesn’t try to dissuade her from her own beliefs, so they get along beautifully. Everyone has their own path to walk in life, after all.

Kate’s path leads her toward Chloe’s slumped back and bowed head as she sits in the cooling sand and the fading light.

Chloe’s head doesn’t turn as Kate approaches, even though Kate’s footsteps in the sand aren’t exactly silent. It does raise slightly in acknowledgement, however, and Kate assumes that’s as close as she’s going to get to a greeting tonight. 

Kate’s not sure how long Chloe’s been sitting there, staring out at the slow waters of the bay. Chloe had texted her three times after midnight, which Kate of course didn’t see until she woke up at eight. Kate’s texted her five times since then at careful intervals so as to not seem too concerned, and Chloe hasn’t responded to a single one of them. She even tried calling Chloe despite phone calls not being a standard part of their friendship at this point, but she didn’t try again after it went immediately to voicemail. 

Kate’s never regretted not learning to drive so much before. It’s been sort of nice, actually, since Chloe’s got her truck and loves driving. Kate not wanting to ride the bus everywhere has been a good excuse for both of them to advance their friendship beyond “casual but amiable acquaintance” to “person I actively go out of my way to spend time with.” Today, however, not being able to drive has been a serious hindrance. It’s hard to search for someone when you’re reliant on small town bus routes and schedules. Once she started to really worry about Chloe’s silence and start looking for her, it took her nearly three hours to track her down at the beach.

She stops and stands next to where Chloe’s sitting in the sand. “Hey,” she says evenly, as if she hasn’t been clawing her hair out trying to find this woman half the day. 

“Hey,” Chloe answers without looking at her.

“...I got your texts.” Chloe doesn’t respond, so Kate continues, “I didn’t see them until I woke up; I’m sorry. I wasn’t ignoring you.”

Chloe nods thoughtfully, processing this. “My battery died. Didn’t want to go home to charge it.”

Kate can’t blame her for that. “Is it okay if I sit with you?”

Chloe turns to her then and looks at her with those clear blue eyes. It doesn’t seem fair that such beautiful eyes should have to hold such sadness. The light isn’t great, but Kate’s pretty sure she sees a smudge of a bruise beneath one, and that makes her stomach twist all the tighter. “Sure, whatever.” Chloe trains her eyes on the bay once more, but Kate can still feel them piercing her heart. 

Kate tucks her skirt around her legs carefully as she settles by Chloe’s side. The sand is damp and the warmth of the day is mostly gone from it. She looks at the woman beside her. She’s not wearing her beanie for once. She’s wearing short sleeves and her pale, too-thin arms are covered with goosebumps. Without even thinking, Kate removes her cardigan and drapes it over Chloe’s bare shoulders. Chloe glances at her in barely masked surprise. Kate thinks for a moment she’s going to object, but she just wraps her arms around herself and tugs the borrowed cardigan a little tighter around her shoulders.

Kate feels like she should say something, but Chloe breaks the heavy silence while she’s still trying to piece her words together. “Kinda late to come to the beach. Sun’s almost down. ‘Most everyone’s gone home.”

“I didn’t come for the beach. I came for you.”

Chloe’s brows lift then furrow. “Why.”

Because when she woke up to Chloe’s texts and saw how long ago she’d sent them, Kate had almost immediately gone into a panic spiral. Because Kate had texted and called and couldn’t reach her. Because Kate was terrified that Chloe was hurt and had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. You weren’t at the junkyard or the diner, so I thought you might be here or maybe the lighthouse.”

“Not a whole lot of places to go in this town,” Chloe says, and maybe it’s a trick of the non-light but Kate would swear that her expression softened when Kate told her she’d been looking for her. “I used to come here all the time,” Chloe continues. “My dad used to take me and my friend Max here every weekend in the summer. When we got old enough, we’d take the bus by ourselves and stay here all day. We practically lived in the bay.” She chuckles softly to herself. “She - Max - used to tease me I was going to turn into a mermaid because I spent more time in the water than on the land.”

Kate can picture that. Chloe’s got long arms and longer legs, built for swimming. Her hair wouldn’t have been blue when she was a child, Kate assumes, but Kate can imagine how it would look now: blue and purple locks flowing with the waves, fanning out around her head like a soft halo. The vivid reds and greens and blues of her tattoo extra bright against the pale of her skin, all shimmering under the water and glittering with reflected light. Long fingers cupping brackish water, lean body moving through the bay like she was born to do nothing else. “Punk rock mermaid,” Kate says a bit dreamily, already picturing how she would draw her. 

Chloe huffs a small laugh. “Nah, not when I was a kid. I was a pretty big dweeb if you can believe it. Super into science, major anime nerd, drew comics, all that stuff.”

Kate can believe it, actually, but she keeps that to herself. 

The smile that had been growing on Chloe’s lips fades away. “Rach loves swimming, too. After Max left - her family moved to Seattle; same day as my dad’s funeral, can you believe that shit? - I didn’t go swimming for a long time. Probably for the best; I would’ve just drowned myself.” She picks at the cuticles of her chewed up fingernails fretfully and Kate suppresses the powerful urge to pull her into a comforting embrace and stroke her hair like her father has always done for her when she’s upset. “But Rach is a Cali girl, so even though our bay’s nothing compared to the Pacific she just has to go swimming. Like, constantly. Day and night. The girl’s blood is half salt water, I swear.”

Kate’s got this anxious bubbling in her stomach that she doesn’t know how to quell. She knows of Rachel Amber, but she doesn’t know her. She went missing last April, three months before Kate moved into the dorms. Everything she knows about Rachel she knows from the unavoidable gossip in the dorms, the graffiti scattered around town - some of it doting, most of it unrepeatably vile, and Chloe. 

She actually met Chloe because of Rachel Amber, oddly enough. Or, more precisely, she met Chloe because Rachel Amber went missing. One day Chloe happened to be hanging up missing person posters around campus while Kate was putting up flyers for the abstinence club, and when Kate saw what Chloe was posting (when she saw Chloe’s eyes) she had offered to help her distribute them. They’d gotten to talking as they worked, and by the time the posters were all hung they’d exchanged numbers.

Kate owes this friendship (this crush) to Rachel. And Rachel’s been missing for five months now. No matter how many posters they hang, no matter how many prayers Kate sends up for this lost girl to be found, she’s been missing for almost half a year. Chloe still talks about her like she expects to see her coming around the corner any minute now sometimes. Kate doesn’t know whether encouraging Chloe’s hope does more good or more harm at this point. Women who go missing for this long, beautiful young women like Rachel Amber… Kate wants to have faith in Rachel’s safety, but her mother’s been telling her horror stories about what happens to girls like her since before Kate was even old enough to understand.

“So we go swimming together a lot. Not now, obviously. But… yeah. Total punk rock mermaids.” She scoffs lightly, but Kate can hear the sorrow in her laugh. “I… I haven’t gone swimming in months. Not since she…” Chloe sighs. She shakes her head and tries to sound annoyed rather than heartbroken. “Missed the whole fucking summer. Now it’s probably too cold to swim. She’s probably been off surfing in Cali all summer, and I’ve just been staring at the bay like she’s coming in on the next boat. How pathetic is that?”

“It’s not pathetic at all. You miss your friend.” Kate reaches out a tentative hand and is relieved 

when Chloe accepts her touch without so much as a flinch. 

“I miss the bay,” Chloe says suddenly. “I miss the way it felt to just run out into the waves and not give a fuck. I miss feeling weightless and small and like if I swam far enough I could step out into a pirate’s treasure cove, or on some forgotten island, and start a new life. I miss feeling free.”

Kate’s never been swimming in the bay. She spent her summer here ingratiating herself with the local parish, learning the bus schedule, breaking in her library card. She stands carefully, dusting the sticky sand off her skirt. 

Chloe looks at her askance. “Heading home?”

Kate shakes her head. She reaches out a hand to Chloe. “Join me for a swim?” Kate asks, and her voice hardly trembles even though she’s beyond nervous. 

Chloe stares at her like she’s sprouted a second head and then she laughs in disbelief. “Are you for real?”

“Very much so.”

“You got a bathing suit on under your clothes, Kit-Kat?”

“Do you?”

“No.” Chloe tries to leer, but it’s so uncertain it falls apart before it can look properly devious. “You askin’ me to go skinny dipping? I thought you were supposed to be a prude about that stuff.”

“I’m not a prude,” Kate protests, her face reddening. “But no, I’m not asking you to go skinny dipping. Or at least I’m not going skinny dipping; you can do as you please.” She slips off her shoes, and good Lord, this really is a terrible idea, isn’t it. She’s not dressed for swimming in the slightest. Her blouse is white, and her skirt is, well, a skirt, but it’s too late to back out now just because she’s had a sudden attack of logic since Chloe’s already taking her hand (and oh Lord Chloe’s hand is so cold and so strong and so perfect) and hauling herself up to her feet.

“Gonna be a weird ride back to campus,” Chloe says with a grin that’s building in its certainty. “Wet jeans are hell to drive in. You know my heater doesn’t work, right?”

“I’ve ridden in your truck before, haven’t I?”

“True that.” Chloe removes Kate’s cardigan and folds it with surprising politeness by her shoes before tugging off her boots and dropping them haphazardly into the sand. She empties her pockets onto the pile of clothes: a crumpled cigarette pack, some loose change, a parking ticket, a key, a lighter, her phone. Kate places her handbag beside them. “You ready to do this thing?”

Kate nods quickly before she can chicken out. “Are you?”

The smile that lights up Chloe’s face is the most radiant thing that Kate’s ever seen. “Hella ready.” Chloe reaches out her hand again, and Kate takes it. 

The water is cold, and swimming in a skirt is just as difficult as Kate feared. It’s completely worth it.

#life is strange #fanfic #my writing #ghost writes #pricemarsh #chloe price #kate marsh #prompt fill #prompt fic #prompt ghost

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 263: [Immigrant Song Intensifies]

Previously on BnHA: Ujiko sicced five Noumus on Miruko. Rephrase that: Ujiko sicced only five Noumus on Miruko. In hindsight this was obviously a mistake. Miruko proceeded to laugh and jump around kicking all of them and literally ripping the head off of the strongest one’s neck with nothing but her thighs. It was legendary and awe-inspiring and also she lost an arm but WHO EVEN CARES, I’m still pledging my allegiance to her. Miruko once beat the sun in a staring contest. Miruko’s calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd, because nobody fucking fools Miruko. Anyway so also the heroes are finally attacking the League of Pliff’s HQ and Skeptic is running around all “AHHHH” so I guess we’ll see how that goes now.

Today on BnHA: Things finally get started over in Gunga, although for the time being most of the kids from 1-A and 1-B are still sitting around in the woods all pent-up and anxious and restlessly shipping KamiJirou. Meanwhile on the front lines, three-and-a-half-year-old Kaminari Denki is all “SOB I WANT TO BE BACK WITH MY FRIENDS WHERE IT’S SAFE”, to which Midnight, who I would just like to remind you is (1) an adult, (2) a teacher, and (3) a person responsible for this literal child’s safety in any number of other capacities, responds with “SORRY KIDDO WE NEED YOUR QUIRK.” I have yet to see any compelling evidence that they really do need it, but putting that dubious matter aside, Kaminari does kick some ass once he gets over his anxieties. Meanwhile Cementoss tears a building in half, Tokoyami reflects on how he was exposed to Kaminari’s good and pure moral character during their many soulful jam sessions, Hawks is about to kill Twice, and – wait, what.

a few stray thoughts since this chapter is taking forever to come out today. one, the good guys need to take out Twice and Toga as soon as they find them, because they’re currently the deadliest combination in the League. Twice for obvious reasons, and Toga because I’m pretty sure she got some of Aizawa’s blood that one time back during the Basement arc, and that fact coupled with the fact that she can now use the quirk of whoever she transforms into spells big trouble for the good guys since she can basically just cancel out whoever’s quirk she wants. plus she’s probably also immune to Midnight’s quirk. all in all bad news

two, it is interesting that Hagakure is the only 1-A kid we haven’t seen yet! probably just me overreacting, but still interesting!

(ETA: we do see her standing next to Mina in this chapter, so so much for that. you get out of it this time Tooru!)

and three, I’m not clear on whether or not Skeptic has actually figured out that Hawks betrayed them, or if he just suspects it, or if he thinks that Hawks leaked something accidentally and doesn’t realize that this entire time the dude was 100% playing them. I’m sure we’ll find out shortly. but regardless of how this plays out, I’m already dreading Twice’s reaction to all this :/ my sweet innocent baby. HE THOUGHT YOU WERE HIS FRIEND HAWKS. HE TRUSTED YOU. fff I really hope Twice’s inherently good and trusting nature isn’t a casualty of all this. then again I still think Twice himself is very unlikely to survive this. so basically I’m just bracing myself for pain sob

(ETA: oh this is bad.)

(ETA 2: by the way just to clarify, the above paragraphs were all written on Friday, and the rest of this recap+all ETAs were written the next day when I finally got to read the chapter! this is not important in any way whatsoever but now you know and that’s half the battle!)

“it’s time” holy shit finally lol. you all have been camped out over here for weeks now. not that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy each and every second of Miruko’s one-woman murder show, but it is nice to finally check in with you guys over here so we can get to work at last and I can get a better feel for who’s about to die. cuz someone here is dying guys

the chapter is called “I wanna be with the others!!” so. this is gonna be a Kaminari chapter isn’t it. I wonder what fresh new traitorous hijinks he’ll be getting up to this week. that detestable scoundrel

Mineta is being all weasel-y and reluctant, and honestly, I’m a bit annoyed. and for once it’s not directed at him! it’s like... how do I explain it. okay, so like, the manga is showing him being all cowardly and clearly not at all happy about being out here, and the fact that it’s Mineta doing it only adds to the general flavor of this being the wrong attitude to have and just a really shameful way of acting in general, because it’s Mineta and we all know Mineta is vile and so clearly he’s in the wrong here! the only thing is though, I actually don’t blame him even if he’s being a little shit about it, because the kids absolutely should not be here in the first place. are they strong? fuck yes. are they gonna end up being the ones to turn the tide once everything inevitably goes to shit, and thus the others are really goddamn lucky that they’re here? probably. does that make it right to conscript kids and send them out here to a soon-to-be war zone which the adults have very little control over meaning that some of these children will almost certainly be injured and traumatized and possibly even killed? nope! not right at all! no amount of “plus ultra” can justify this, folks. and “we get that it’s wrong but that’s just the fucked up times we live in” doesn’t actually justify it either, even if the HPSC seems to think so

but having said all that, there’s clearly nothing to be done about it at this point, and I’m about to enjoy this chapter of the kids presumably kicking ass even after all that whining, so I’ll just carefully climb down from my soapbox now. but I’m still keeping it handy just in case!

who the fuck is this Thundercats guy who looks like he was part of an old timey street gang in 1920s Chicago

lol can he hear the villain hotel being ripped in half over there in the distance

and speaking of hearing, Jirou is popping her earbuds into the ground to do some reconnaissance of her own I guess!

the heroes?? she better not mean the villains. oh lord I still don’t have the faintest idea how they’re planning on actually containing them all. well, brace yourselves everyone. here comes the shitshow

now Gangs of New York is making the most unnecessary speech in the history of this manga

were any of them actually going to be careless?? I’m pretty sure they understand the gravity of the situation my dude. and if they didn’t, I’d say that’s honestly on you guys and not on them because, again, they’re kids. and if you didn’t want a bunch of teenagers goofing off during your incredibly dangerous and vitally important do-or-die hero mission, then maybe you shouldn’t have brought a bunch of teenagers to your incredibly dangerous and vitally important do-or-die hero mission

“listen makeste are you just going to sit around all day bitching about my cardinal sin of daring to involve your precious little darlings in the actual plot,” the imaginary Horikoshi that sits around trying to keep these recaps from veering off track interjects. and okay fine

sob it feels wrong to see MomoJirou there without their Kaminari

(ETA: and there is Hagakure on the left, FYI. at least I think that’s her?)

their baby boy is all out there alone in the woods. is that why you were really listening, Jirou? you can tell me, I promise not to make a big deal about it

MOMO ARE YOU COMFORTING JIROU WHILE SHE OPENLY WORRIES ABOUT “TOKOYAMI”

I lied, I might make a big thing about it. what a beautiful March day for some OT3

MY INFANT SON!!

HE’S ONLY TWO YEARS OLD!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!? MIDNIGHT YOU BETTER KEEP HIM SAFE!! at least until he makes it back safely into the hands of his friends, the League of Villains

meanwhile here’s a fun tip, this manga gets 100x funnier if you scroll back up to that panel of Jirou being all serious and saying “they’re on the move” now that we know that this outburst is almost certainly what she was listening to lmao. “oh, Kaminari is crying, that must mean they’re getting started”

and here they go!!

who is that in the witch hat?? COULD THIS BE THE LEGENDARY MAJESTIC, AT LONG LAST? this person looks like they cobbled together their entire hero costume from Sero’s bedroom. just ransacked it and draped all of his tapestries and throw pillows every which way over some Adidas pants. goddammit who is this person, I need to know everything about them right now

DAMMIT MIDNIGHT

HE’S NOT OLD ENOUGH TO MAKE THOSE KIND OF DECISIONS GODDAMMIT. HE IS YOUNG AND PLIABLE!! WHAT DID YOU DO, OFFER HIM CANDY. DID YOU PROMISE YOU WOULD TAKE HIM TO CHUCK E. CHEESE AFTER IF HE WAS GOOD

SON OF A BITCH ARE YOU GUILTING HIM

I DON’T LIKE THIS, MIDNIGHT. I MEAN, YOU ALREADY KNOW, IT’S NOT LIKE I’VE MADE A BIG SECRET OF IT OR ANYTHING. GUH

and he’s shouting back “no I don’t think you adults are pathetic at all!” while still looking terrified! goddammit how do I cast protection on a fictional character in a manga. I don’t play D&D, but D&D players can do that, right? how do I create a shield around my party. Kaminari you stay put while I try and figure this all out

lmaoooooo Tokoyami’s words of encouragement

A MAGNIFICENT FELLOW. you guys I’m gonna be honest, lately I’ve been enjoying these fan scanlations even more than the official ones at times. obviously Viz’s are fine and good, but sometimes it’s almost like they localize everything a little too much, you know? most people don’t go around calling other people magnificent fellows, but would Tokoyami? yes. yes he would. I believe this in every fiber of my heart

LMAO KAMINARI

“KAMINARI, I REALIZED WHEN WE WERE PLAYING GUITAR TOGETHER... WAY TO WHITE-KNUCKLE THOSE SICK FRETS, HALEN.” thank you so much for that Tokoyami but we are kind of in the middle of something so I’m not sure if right now is really the time to start asking my boy here for his autograph. after, maybe

now Cementoss is literally screaming “ATTACK!” and throwing subtlety to the winds

and now we’re back to this!

and it looks like this is most likely Cementoss using his quirk to tear the building in half! so that’s one mystery from last week solved! holy shit you guys I just realized we’re actually going to see Cementoss in action. so long as the environment is right, dude is a literal earthbender. we may be in for a rare treat

Skeptic is shouting at his minions to alert the Council. it’s okay, Cementoss already alerted them for you I’m pretty sure

so he’s sending Violet and Black to the front entrance, and Cleveland and Carmine to the Assembly Hall (where the Council is). these, if you recall, are the names of the various Vanguard squads, though I don’t recall who is actually on which squad and I really don’t want to go back and look it up... but fine!

okay, Twice is on the Black squad and Dabi and Otter Pop are on Violet. so they’re being dispatched to the front, while Toga, Compress, Spinner, and Skeptic himself (how convenient for you Skeptic) are heading to the Assembly Hall. isn’t that nice that Dabi is heading out to the front, where my son Kaminari “Clapton” Denki is. hahaha. fuck

Lefty Hair is now making a sudden appearance and giving Skeptic some threatening “you majorly fucked up and the only reason I’m letting it slide for now is because we’ve got bigger things to worry about” vibes, which I like. also he has a cigarette. it’s been a while since I’ve seen a manga character actually smoke a cigarette. I guess only villains are allowed to smoke them now

YOU GUYS LOOK HOW FUCKING RAW CEMENTOSS LOOKS HERE HOLY SHIT

HOW MANY PEOPLE IS CEMENTOSS GOING TO KILL TODAY. place your bets. and is cement stronger than fire. please don’t die Cementoss

YOU GUYS HE FUCKING SLAMMED THE FUCKING BUILDING OPEN LIKE ARAGORN OPENING THOSE FUCKING DOUBLE DOORS IN THE TWO TOWERS. I KNOW YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY SLAM A DOOR OPEN BUT ARE WE GOING TO SIT HERE AND ARGUE SEMANTICS ALL DAY OR ARE WE GOING TO KEEP READING??

ARE WE EVEN ALLOWED TO HAVE THIS MUCH BADASSERY IN A CHAPTER THAT DOESN’T HAVE MIRUKO IN IT. LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY FORGOT TO INFORM THE BADASSERY GUILD THAT THEIR UNION MEMBERS ARE WORKING OVERTIME. I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING WITH THIS METAPHOR I GOT TOO EXCITED

by the way I like how a key part of their “let’s contain all the villains” plan was to open up their secret HQ and spill them all out like a bunch of ants. everyone knows this is the best way to keep people contained. instead of stationing people outside of every exit, let’s just make the entire building into one giant exit and MELEE AWAY ALL YOUR PROBLEMS

who died and made Lefty the smartest guy in the room

if only they had all listened to you, Mister Smart Guy. you’re so smart. why didn’t they put you in charge. probably just because they were jealous

booooo it looks like Black and Violet are attacking but Twice and Dabi are nowhere to be found! because they’re part of the Council?? boooo

Best Sweaterist can do anything a sweater can do. it’s not a very good power. everyone was all “you look like the number 3 hero you must be really strong” and so she got promoted waaaaay above her skill level and it’s too late for her to do anything about it now so good luck Best Sweaterist

finally some people from the League!

but where is Hawks? AND WHY IS DABI HEADING THE OPPOSITE WAY AS EVERYONE ELSE HOLY SHIT

LOL HAWKS YOU BEST MAKE YOURSELF SCARCE MY DUDE. OH FUCK

(ETA: Dabi is either going to arrive just in time to save Twice, or just in time to witness Hawks murdering him, and I’m not sure which would be worse.)

OH MY GOD EDGESHOT GOT A LINE

I CAN’T FUCKING WAIT TO HEAR THIS WITH MY OWN TWO EARS IN THE ANIME. IT’S GONNA BE SO GREAT AH MAN. but real talk, Miruko should be above him in the power rankings. I’m sorry I don’t make the rules. but unless you kill three Noumus within the next few pages here I’d say it’s pretty clear cut

OH NO MY SIX-YEAR-OLD SON, MY POOR BABY, HE LOOKS SO FRIGHTENED NOW. LIKE GENUINELY AFRAID-FOR-HIS-LIFE FRIGHTENED AND NOT JUST COMICALLY FRIGHTENED OH MY GOD I CAN’T

Kaminari you sweet little lamb, it’s going to be okay. you just take a deep breath and zap some of these PLF fuckers and then you can go run and hide and you’ll be playing tacky arcade games and eating hit-or-miss-quality pizza before you know it

Kami is actually in a lot of danger here what with how helpless he gets after he uses too much of his quirk though. (unless of course you subscribe to the theory that he doesn’t actually go dumb at all and that’s when he’s secretly transmitting his traitor messages to the zetans.) whose fucking idea was it to put him on the front lines, honestly. he’s only four!!

fuck me, Midnight sees him panicking and she’s being all soothing and encouraging while also being ridiculously sexy as usual. dammit Midnight

hey Kaminari if you want to think about Momo and Jirou I’m not going to complain, I just want you to know that. you can even make it all platonic by just saying “my friends.” either way is fine and I will respect your smokescreen

ahh he’s turning around and the camera is zooming back to the woods where the rest of 1-A are!

the title of this chapter is becoming surprisingly meaningful!! well played!

WOW

I don’t even know what to say?! I basically just slapped both of my cheeks and said “AWWW” out loud?! would you fucking look at these two bisexual icons living it up in this the year of our lord 2020. what a blessing

oh hey this guy decided it was time for him to talk again

okay Kami I give you permission to go pikachu on his ass. go ahead and show us why the heroes went ahead and violated ILO conventions in order to bring you here

don’t tell me this guy is also an electric type. lol who could have guessed that, there were absolutely no clues at all in his hairstyle or anywhere else. I would definitely have noticed something like that because I definitely pay attention to these things lol

(ETA: and presumably the heroes knew the identities of the Vanguard squadron leaders thanks to Hawks, and knew they had to have some sort of plan in place for this guy’s quirk, hence them being all “hey Kaminari let’s talk.”)

anyway

OH SHIT YOU GUYS KAMINARI IS ABOUT TO BE A BADASS!?

MOTHERFUCKER WAS THAT A SHOUNEN WOOSH???! whaaaaaat oh shit everybody brace yourselves

and now a Tokoyami flashback to the two of them jamming like little hero Hendrixes

because he prioritized the health of his fingers beneath his desire to learn the guitar to help his friends perform, you realized he was truly a magnificent fellow. aw shit it’s all coming together

yep

look how evil that smile in the last panel is. clearly the traitor. probably this other electric man is his dad

USING AN ELECTRIC ATTACK AGAINST ANOTHER ELECTRIC TYPE CLEARLY WON’T WORK AND THUS THIS IS ONLY A FAKE ATTACK DESIGNED IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN HIS COVER!

LOOK HOW EVIL HE IS

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN A FIVE-YEAR-OLD HAVING THIS KIND OF RAW FIREPOWER UNLESS HE’S SECRETLY EVIL!??!

OH MY GOD I LITERALLY SAID “OH MY GOD” VERY LOUDLY IN REAL LIFE AND NOW I’M HOPING MY NEIGHBORS DIDN’T HEAR HOW LOUDLY AND EMBARASSINGLY I SAID “OH MY GOD”

FUUUUCK

just. it’s like this weird and crazy feeling that’s a combination of adrenaline and chills-rushing-up-your-spine. that’s the sensation of clicking to a page and suddenly seeing the thing we fucking knew was going to happen, but just because we knew doesn’t mean we actually wanted it to happen, shit

holy shit. does Jin have to die in order for the heroes to succeed? probably. do I want it to actually happen? NO. am I suddenly reevaluating every single thing I thought I knew about Hawks and mentally updating Jeanist’s presumed mortality status in my head?? yes. are Hawks’s eyes here going to give me nightmares for the entire coming week? also yes. am I really unsettled wondering if those eyes were the last thing Jeanist ever saw? listen why do you keep asking me all of these intrusive and deeply upsetting questions like I’m some kind of magic 8 ball?? am I going to be on the edge of my fucking seat now waiting for next week? fuck

#bnha 263 #kaminari denki #jirou kyouka #tokoyami fumikage #cementoss #hawks #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste spoiler recap #makeste reads bnha #is kaminari the traitor? still no #is horikoshi the traitor? probably #nah you know what #yes

[a-patheticapathetic]

# 28 - 7/25/2021

Sure, two calendar years. Let’s do it. Let’s stop thinking about it, stop putting it off, and do it. Write for the first time in months. Vent for the first time in dozens. Oh god, that word has been ruined since the last journal entry. Lots of things have been ruined since the last entry.

How much can possibly happen in two years?

Well, for one, the unthinkable. A global pandemic wasn’t on my list of things to expect for 2020. But all the things that can be said about this whole shitshow have been said a thousand times, and I feel like it would be generally useless to spend time and effort pissing in the ocean on that subject when we’ll all remember this for the rest of our lives.

And for two, the very thinkable. The thing that I have been thinking about and dreading for years and years. 

what words am i supposed to have? what am i supposed to write here? what haven’t i thought to myself already? or said in therapy, or moments of weakness? or even said directly to him, in that last week? 

At the end of April of 2021 my cat died. He was about 16 years old and had lived with us for the entire time. He was more to me than I am. The gaping wound can never heal, but maybe one day I can grow beyond it. The pain won’t be over. I understand this and have understood it for years. I will grieve for the rest of my life, regardless of length. All that matters is that I was there for him until he wasn’t any more. Sometimes, in bad moments, I want to know where he was buried. But I can’t. There is nothing there. There ceased to be anything there the moment his heart stopped. The middle cushion of the couch sitting directly behind me will forever house his ghost. I will dream of him forever. 

So it goes.

The pandemic kind of fucked my hopes for getting that summer job at the school back. Instead I spent the summer wallowing in a heat so extreme that we bought one of those terrible portable air conditioners. Also, we nearly had to evacuate our home due to nearby fires. There’s some fear that is beyond description when you are sitting in a cramped room at night, with all your most precious possessions packed in duffel bags by the front door, fire trucks regularly going up and down the skinny and unkempt road outside the open window, all with the knowledge that at any point a sheriff could show up and give you orders that you cannot even imagine complying with. That any minute could be the last you spend in your childhood home before you are required to leave forever. It’s all the anxiety of packing for a long trip, elevated terminally. Thankfully the fires never got close enough to warrant that. But every summer will only get hotter, and dry thunder will only become more common. Nothing can be done.

Hey, at least I’ve probably accrued enough deep and meaningful pain in the past couple of years to write impactful music, right? It’s a shame that FL Studio is so monumentally complicated that it terrifies me to the point of paralysis. Maybe I’ll pass my song ideas along to someone that can actually accomplish them like I’ve already been doing here. 

All is not lost though. I have another job finally. It’s hard, but sporadic and it works with my terrible sleep schedule. I miss some aspects of my old one at the school, but there are some decent trade-offs here. And things are going pretty well with my band. A member had to move back to Sweden, but before that we managed to record and release a 4-song EP, as well as have one last live performance as a group! That especially seemed unthinkable last year. The last couple of years have also fully radicalized me politically, so given the way things are going, maybe I’ll have a cause to die for in a year or two when the class war finally gets really going. Probably beats dying to global warming. 

I’d like to write more for FftB and other music stuff, but I’ll save you the empty promise this time. I still have some ideas for Deaf and many ideas for Mosquito, the problem is finding the motivation to push my way to and through them. But sometimes inspiration and motivation line up with the stars like they have tonight. 

See you eventually, I suppose.

#entry #2021

[orenonahaichigoda]

I had a rough day, and came to a realisation. I will say a bit about my own experience, and then, after having to lay the groundwork of explaining 400 things about Japan because American schools and media think the whole world is the US, Western Europe, and places to blow up, making explaining necessary, will tie it to Ichigo, or at least how I portray him.

I'm Post Dankai Juniors, growing up in Japan. So's Kubo, actually. The boundaries of this Japanese generation are roughly '75 to '85, Yutori, the following generation that's always translated and localised as Millennial, pretty solidly set as beginning at '86. These things are always fuzzy because you can't vivisect living brains and find the part that likes char siu buns and the part that likes jazz fusion. I *majored* in Social Science. You'll have teachers who say "it is absolute that we date people who are similar to us because we're all actually narcists." (It *might* be because they're like our beloved family or community. Narcistic Personality is not universal) But it really just is fuzzy, and that teacher/book author is an idiot. Anyway, Yutori is always translated as Millennial. I don't know the end boundary. Post Dankai Juniors covers almost totally a debated throe for Germanic nations (I know Britain, Germany, and Nederland use the same generations as America, and their languages are Germanic) because of how fuzzy it all is, though.

Anyway, so since coming to the US, my interactions with other Asians, again, how is this defined when China, Mongolia, Japan all border Russia and West Asia includes Jordan and Saudi Arabia, South Asia is India's area, Southeast Asia is Laos, Thailand's area, I mean, find the Arabic kanji. I don't think Thailand even uses soy sauce. What the heck IS Asia, really? (Or "Middle East" when half of that's Africa and the other half shares plate with Europe? )

Anyway, my experience with Asians that are Boomer ages tends to be people who immigrated as adults, who more identity with a generation like "Dankai" or "Sirake." My experiences with Latinos older than me... I've never actually asked if the generational labels are even the same.

The thing about that is that when the name is the same, it means enough cultural traits are shared.

My biggest experience with people who grew up under the term "Boomer" are Black and white.

I've noticed a unifying trait.

If they're something oppressed (Black, gay), their attitude tends to be"it is mandatory to stand up for *my* demograph...but kicking the person behind me on the ladder in the teeth is wholesome, pure, and fun."

Outing me to large groups and saying I "speak Asian" seem to be the most common two. Calling me "Chinese" long after I've cleared this up for them is a close third.

I mean, don't get me wrong--my experience with Italian Americans past GI generation has been that now acquiring the "white" label, just like biphobic/aphobic/transphobic cisgays, they're more often staunch priveledge defenders than cishet people of Anglo descent! And it's just as true for X and Y as it is for Boomer (for the latter, one need only look at NYC destroyer and trump defender Giuliani) I actually don't really identify with my Italian side at all because I was kinda locked out of making any meaningful connection.

But back to my point that even in so-leftist-it's-almost-not-America Bay Area, Boomers are still like this!

The kind of stuff that flows out a X/Y TERF's mouth, or the mouth of an X/Y person with a Confederate flag on his wall, American-raised Boomers say with ease regardless of their alignment! It's banananas.

(Please note that I also just have not met a whole lot of Native Americans, period, nor enough people significantly older than me from any one place in Africa, that was an omission of lacking data, not intended as erasure)

How I tie it to Ichigo--

So Kubo avoids specifying birth years for anyone.

When I see something like this, I generally assume date of publication, as do most people in most fandoms (which of course gets screwy when you have something endlessly rebooted like Superman or Batman or something eternally unchanging like Detective Conan)

Anyway, the first Bleach something published was the comic in '01.

I generally assume it was supposed to be the start of a new school year, as Ichigo doesn't know many of his classmates until at least the first test scores come out. So it's probably April or something.

If Ichigo was 15 then, he'd also be Post Dankai Juniors, just barely. If Ichigo TURNED 15 shortly after, during his adventure, he'd be undebatably Millennial.

Now, there is still something up with Dankai and Sirake. PM Abe is the latter, b. 1954. A lot of his age-peers are behind him. This is the guy who supports remilitarisation and was caught funding a private militarist/fascist high(?) school that teaches that people from countries Japan conquered during its brief phase of trying to beat colonial Europe are less than dogs.

Now, I left there as a teen. Clinton was US president. Scandals still got people kicked out of public office in Japan. I hadn't figured or come out yet. Sure, I got bullied for being mixed, but kids will pick if you like different singers than the "cool" ones. They'll pick based on what's in your lunch. That data is sausage.

I'm not 100% sure what Ichigo would face day-to-day sociopolitically as he grew up/aged. I haven't had living family since'95 there, and friendships don't get deep enough to ever last distance until at least high school. For me, adulthood.

But I've kept/caught up enough (you try keeping up in the South before the internet was more than ten University sites!) that I know he'd face fascists (c'mon, the guy takes on a martial law government to save a new friend--that's anarchist, he just doesn't seem anarchist in his own world. He only fights humans in defence) I'm not sure how he'd feel about the JSDF, but he only fought the sinigami's war out of feeling like it was his responsibility because the adults around him kinda made it so. I super don't see him being for *starting* wars. In a human war, I see him actually being like Sugihara Chiune, a historical figure who died when I was a kid who I majorly admire. He worked at a Japanese embassy in Nazi territory, and when the embassy was evacuated,he continued throwing passports to Jewish people to go to Japan from the train he was departing on,and is hidden from Americans in the same spirit that Martin Luther King is...pulled the teeth out of. (PS, speaking of,go Google Steven Kiyosi Kuromiya)

Also, Ichigo's whole schtick is defending those worse off than him. He's not someone I see defending Yamato Japanese priveledge. Heck, I could see him joining Uchinanchu efforts to get Parliament and the US base to leave them alone. I can easily see him sticking up for a Filipino domestic worker he met thirty seconds ago.

To this end, I think regardless of what he is, he'd have a large rub with Japan's equivalents of Boomers.

Not to mention that Abe supporters tend to be very sexist and queerphobic, which isn't even homegrown but imported from Américanisation. I mean, there were female warriors--assasins, which is what Yoruichi and Soi-Fon are styled after, and go look at some Ukiyoe, like Utagawa Kitamaro. Quite a few artists in the 200-ish years of the Edo period depicted life in the queer districts. I've also had people posit that Noh might've been a welcoming draw for trans people the same way drag was all over the US in the twentieth century and still is in rural areas, where there's less cisgay gatekeeping. But this isn't something I can reasonably research without access to plenty of older and not well known dusty documents, and lots of time, and I live in the US many years now. And do you know how much round trip airfare alone is!? Also, the language changed so much and I can't read anything before Meiji without dropping words. Rukia, Byakuya, Yoruichi all have made for TV old-sounding Japanese like period dramas. Actual 18th Century Japanese would be unintelligible to the unspecialised.

So this stuff isn't really native, but Abe and a lot of people his age support all these -isms.

I super don't see Ichigo being happy about this.

(I also feel like Issin's old enough to remember before these -isms, but that's my own thing. In my project, he was in those districts, but that's me)

At the same time, I'm still writing this through my own lens. Also, not still being there, I just don't have enough data on Yutori in adulthood, or the grown Yutori lens. Honestly, even most other immigrants I meet are older than that. Or older than that and their adorable three year old children. So I have no clue.

In the early 2000s, I got myself from the South to CA and began to reconnect, but began to is the key phrase. I can tell you right now that Abe is as much of a second phase of Nakasone as trump is of Nakasone's buddy Regean. But what shifted when, I can't say. I'm not entirely sure how Koizumi ran the ship, as it were. I know some things, but not enough to say.

But whenever things shifted however, and whichever year Ichigo was born, I just cannot imagine him being any more on board with current events than really anyone in my area not born between 1946-1964 and raised in America.

I feel like he'd probably be too tired or self-effacing to fight for himself, but he'd take on, loud and proud, any bigotry against *others.*

I...also can't really say I'm much different, except my joints are held together by the power of wishes, so I'm more like "get the victim to safety" than "give the attacker plenty of regret." So, I can only do anything in limited ways.

Ichigo is also entirely fuelled by the power of love. Lost his ability to protect and feels like his sinigami friends ditched him? Mondo depressed, however much he wants no one to notice--which most do a great job of ignoring! Everyone in his world turned against him for a guy who has attacked people close to him? Terrified, and murder can now be an answer. (Fullbring Arc)

I was going somewhere with that. I've forgotten, but I'll leave it.

But anyway, I feel like he really only comes close to fighting for himself when others are taken away from him in a way that's also wronging them.

So yeah, I super don't see him happy with current events or Sirake gen.

I'm not sure how much I see him fighting for himself as mixed panromantic grey-ace. I mean, we know he fights people who are about to punch his face in for his looks, but what else can you reasonably do at that point? Get your head bashed in? I'm not sure how much I see him fighting hateful words pointed at him versus resigning himself to "people are the worst." I mean, when he talks about being picked on, he kinda seems resigned, or at least like it's a fact, like shoes being for outside or something.

I guess I tied it to Ichigo a lot better than I thought!

But also, the struggle against people born just after the war is not just you, and not just America. It's a major problem.

And it's likely that Ichigo would agree.

#out of body #musings #baby boomers #generation x #millennials #Japanese generations #Japanese politics #queerphobia #colonialism #moritomo gakuen scandal #sugihara chiune #japanese history #yoruichi shihouin #edo period

[natsubeatsrock]

My 10 Favorite Posts, So Far

Well, tomorrow makes 5 years of blogging as natsubeatsrock. It’s been quite a crazy 5 years and I’ve made a number of crazy posts in the time between starting this blog and today. To celebrate I wanted to talk about 10 of my favorite posts over the past five years. This list isn’t necessarily ranked from least to most favorite, but there is one post I can call my absolute favorite.

Let’s go!

Honorable Mention: The Rewrite of Fairy Tail: Part 16 (Lisanna) [originally posted March 27, 2019]

As an honorable mention, I want to shed some light on my favorite post from last year. I started making this post months before the series was on the verge of ending. As I was working on this post and decided to work on rewriting Fairy Tail, I started to rework this series as a defense for keeping Lisanna in the series, as opposed to cutting her. This has been a theme in a lot of the posts I’ve made about Lisanna since a post I made before that one and I do plan to talk about that in the future.

#10. My Incredibly Unpopular Thoughts on: Ships/Zervis [originally posted October 25, 2015]

This is the earliest post in my top 10 and it shows. Around this time two big things happened: I made a post on August 31st called My Incredibly Unpopular Thoughts on: Juvia and the fandom exploded over Zervis, due to the revelations in canon. I intended to make that first post a part of a series and this was too big of an opportunity to pass. I remember that writing this was ridiculously easy for me. In fact, it’s one of the shortest posts for me to draft and upload with its relative size.

While I’m not as proud of how my writing prowess shines in this post, almost everything I’ve said in this post has become my philosophy on ships since posting it. My thoughts on shipping fandoms? Check. My thoughts on canon weight of ships? Check. My wishy-washy feelings over Zervis? Check. For a long time, this was my favorite entry in this series, but we’ll ge tto that soon enough.

#9. Bye, Bye Lucy: Part 4 [originally posted May 20, 2017]

A lot of you may be shocked to see this post on the list. “Bye, Bye Lucy“ was a series of posts I did explaining all of the issues I have with the infamous subset of fanfics that has Lucy get kicked off the Strongest Team in favor of Lisanna, resulting in her leaving Fairy Tail. I had a ton of fun working on this series. So much so, I actually ended up writing a story based on the idea I posit in Part 3 of this series, which I released earlier this month. But, individually, Part 4 is my favorite individual post in the series which focused on the idea of Lucy leaving the guild over the whole situation.

Originally, this whole series was going to be one really long post at just over 10,000 words. However, around the time I was working on the part that would become this post, I realized that these stories fail with each successive plot point important to this trope of story. At this particular point, any stories lose me as both stories inspired by Fairy Tail and as their own type of stories. No good story that I know even tries to play with these tropes has Lucy actually leave the guild, even temporarily.

#8. Why I Still Ship Nali (Even if Most of the Rest of Fandom Doesn’t) [originally posted March 1, 2020]

I didn’t want to add too many posts from too recent on this list. As much as I think my current writing is my most consistent writing, it would be hard to say that too many of my posts now are at the same level as many of the posts coming up on this list. But, I’m honestly glad that I made this post, especially considering some of the things surrounding its creation.

About three months into my blog, I made a post called “What I Need to Stop Shipping Nali (and why I still do)”. Around the time I was going to post it, I guess someone made a post questioning why people would still ship Nali. It’s become one of my least favorite posts and I’ve felt it desperately needed to be updated for a while. I decided to tackle an issue I’ve had seen in much of fan interpretations with Nali: doing nothing past Edolas with Nali. I wrote the first draft out months ago and waited for a good opportunity to type it out. When I got the hate messages, that felt like as good a time as any. Speaking of which...

#7. My Response to Anon-san [originally posted March 31, 2016]

A bit of backstory may help with this one. I posted “My Incredibly Unpopular Thoughts on: Lisanna” on Easter that year. I check my phone coming out of my church’s night concert and I got the two messages I respond to in this post. When I first saw I got messages, I was worried because that was the first time I ever got negative anon messages. But when I read them, I knew I needed to talk about this as my 3,000th post on this blog - a milestone I was on the cusp of approaching when I got the messages.

While I like the precedent my response seemed to set for my dealing with this type of stuff, the reason this post is here that I legitimately love the messages I was responding to. Every now and then, I read them to myself just to remind myself they exist. I’m not even sure why I got them in the first place. They don’t even seem terribly connected to that Lisanna post. While complaining about fandom has been something I’m apt to do for a number of reasons, I can’t imagine which post got on their “nevers”. But believe me when I say that I am feeling very cooling about the fact that I did.

#6. My Incredibly Unpopular Thoughts on: Nalu [originally posted July 9, 2016]

I’m sure this one isn’t much of a shock too many of you. Around the time I made this post, the “anti-Nalu“ community was very different from how it is now. I had made a couple of posts about some of the issues I had with the ship and its fandom, but nothing on this scale. As a part of Fairy Tail month, I figured should try to explain everything I saw wrong with both.

Even as I wanted to do this and made plenty of similar posts before this, the thought of backlash terrified me. I made sure to set it up to post when I knew I’d be away and wouldn’t be able to see how it was received. When I finally did see the responses to this post, all of them were positive and from people who agreed with me. It’s become my favorite post in the series and still seems to serve as a great primer for people who don’t ship Nalu.

Though I’m kind of sad that a lot of the stuff I talked about in that post regarding the development of Nalu and fandom habits haven’t changed almost four years since I first posted it. When I went to make the sequel for this post, I was shocked how little fandom changed and how stuff inside and outside of canon seemed to embolden fandom to be worse about other actions over abour 18 months. Though, I didn’t hate Nalu when I made this post, even as I stopped wanting to ship it around that time.

#5. Opinion I’ll Probably get Stoned For #100 [originally posted April 29, 2016]

I really have to get back to making these. “Opinions I’ll Probably get Stoned For” was the series I was known for starting less than two months into making this blog. It’s a series where I drop spicy takes ranging from Sweet Bell Pepper to California Reaper. I’ve gotten into it with fans over more than a few of the posts in this series. However, my favorite of the series is one of the longest editions in the series.

Months before posting this, I remember seeing one of my favorite Graytear bloggers get into trouble with Gruvia shippers. One point brought up that particularly pissed me off was the moment that Gray was about to used Iced Shell against Silver. According to the Gruva shipper, the fact that the panel remembering Juvia is bigger than the panel remembering Ultear showed enough of Mashima’s priorities. This argument literally made me sick to my stomach. For months, I’d privately joke that this proved the exact opposite: Gray went through with Iced Shell because he remembered Juvia.

To celebrate hitting the milestone of 100 posts in that series, I decided to make a longer version of the series and explain my thoughts in depth. As soon as I had the idea, I knew that had to be the one. My favorite thing about this post is that, despite clarifying that I’m not terribly serious about this argument twice in the post, I actually got blocked by a Gruvia fan over this post. I guess they didn’t see it as that funny of a joke. Weird how that works.

#4. Nali Week: Scars and Unkept Promises [originally posted July 24, 2016]

Every once in a while, someone will make the remark to the effect of “People should stop complaining about the ships they don’t like and make stuff for the ships they do like”. Thank goodness no one has actually said that in regard to my posts. As much fun as I’ve had over the years complaining about the stuff I don’t like in Fairy Tail and its fandom, I do make a point to talk about the stuff I do like and why every now and then. While the series was running, ship weeks usually meant meta posts from me and this is my favorite of them.

This post was born from my own musings about how the anime dealt with Natsu and Lisanna’s relationship. I wanted to talk about its handing through the perspective of Lisanna being an important person Natsu lost and how that works with his desire to see Igneel again. The big moments I draw on is his promise in episode 75 where Lisanna asks Natsu to save her if she ever gets lost and their reunion in episode 79.

The perspective I took in that post is one I don’t really take a lot. I’m not arguing against an idea a lot of people in fandom agree with. I’m not even really arguing that my perspective is the correct perspective. I’m explaining the thought process that Natsu, as I interpret him, has regarding someone he cares about. The stuff I talked about in this post has become part of my interpretation of Natsu and traces of it can be seen in a lot of the posts I’ve made since. We have to bring Nali Week back.

#3. An Open Letter to the Nalu Fandom [originally posted October 1, 2017]

I love satire as a rhetorical tool. I love taking an idea I disagree with to so large an extreme that the problems with it are obvious to even the people who agree with it. While many of my posts have drips of sarcasm and irony, I love making an entire post based on the idea of pointing out the problems with an argument. Consider that I’ve done similar things with Opinion #100 and, to an extent, my most recent story.

The trick is finding something with problems that are so glaringly obvious, you can’t imagine people actually taking its side. In the case of this post, it was a hilarious letter addressed to the “anti-Nalu’s”. Apparently, the idea that people openly didn’t like Nalu got on “the nerve of every last one of their pussy hair“. So they wrote a short letter they meant for fans who don’t like Nalu to read. I would give them a pass becasue they were apparently on their period, but they were defending those Twitter pics of Natsu and Lucy on chain leashes.

It’s worth mentioning that this was a few months after the original series ended. I had been trying hard not to make a post about Nalu and the stupid things I saw their fandom do. I didn’t even talk about the pictures they were defending. When I made this post, I figured that I was probably not going to be making many more posts about Nalu for a while. So I decided to throw in every issue I had with the Nalu fandom between talking about it a year earlier and then.

As you can probably tell, I haven’t stopped complaining about Nalu and its fandom. This post seems to have set the tone for how I would deal with the ship and its fandom this side of the ending. Instead of pointing to why a ship fails for me, I’ve been talking about why others should have expected the ship to fail. And, if recent events are a sign of the future, it seems like I’m going to have stuff to say about it for a while. Yay?

#2. Why was Ichiruki Popular? [originally posted July 6, 2018]

What does it say that this post is among my top 10, both on this list and in terms of most notes on a post on this blog? This is a Fairy Tail blog for crying out loud. I shouldn’t be able to get so much attention for talking about a series that isn’t Fairy Tail. It almost certainly shouldn’t get more attention than most of my posts about Fairy Tail. A few people even liked and reblogged it this week.

Then again, this wasn’t my first time talking about other series. I’d already spent time talking about Rave Master, Naruto, and Monster Soul on this blog. I asked my followers if it would be cool if I spent time talking about other series, now that Fairy Tail had ended. Since I got a fairly decent response I decided to talk about a few series, including Bleach.

I got into reading Bleach about a year before it ended. At the time, I was following people who were already into it and was well aware of the popularity of Ichiruki and infamy of its fandom. I was fairly behind but I didn’t see much reason to ship Ichiruki when it ended and I saw the fan meltdowns. Imagine my shock when I got to the end and felt exactly the same about its chances when Rukia said Ichigo’s just her friend. I made this post to vent.

If I started reading Bleach about a year before getting into Fairy Tail, I likely would have been a Bleach blogger. This post served as an interesting glimpse into what that timeline might look like. It’s also one of the few posts that sparked actually interesting responses. While many have pointed to the anime as a reason for its fan popularity, I can’t tell how the staff came to the conclusion that Ichiruki needed to be portrayed as more romantic than in the manga.

#1. I’m late to the “Nalu wasn’t the original plan” party, aren’t I? [originaly posted December 10, 2016]

I’ve made a lot of posts on this blog. I’ve said a lot of things, done a lot of analysis and meta, and shared a lot of opinions here. And yet, I can’t say that too much of the stuff I’ve said is important. Not to say that my insight into certain topics isn’t appreciated. It’s just that much of what I’ve said over the years, even in some of the posts on this list, likely has been and would have been said by anyone else if I didn’t say it. The biggest exception to that has been this post.

A few months before this post, there was a leaked image of Mashima’s afterword in Fairy Tail S regarding the extra chapter Special Request, which happens to be one of my favorite chapters in the series. In it, he admitted that he didn’t originally plan on writing Natsu and Lucy’s relationship as romantic and was currently writing them as somewhere between friends and lovers.

When I first saw it as an image on a Tumblr post, I was extremely hesitant to say anything about it. I didn’t know about Fairy Tail S and assumed it was a troll. When it was confirmed by another blog, and it source was ultimately verified, it was a dream come true. Mashima had vindicated my thoughts on the ship literal months after my big post on Nalu. And yet, not many people were talking about what this actually meant for Fairy Tail and the fandom moving forward. So came this post.

In many ways, I’m still shocked that I still have to point people to this afterword and what it means for Fairy Tail. I’m sure many people know Mashima didn’t plan on making Nalu happen, but I doubt many people understand that fandom is outright incorrect to say that Nalu hsa been obvious from the jump. In a weird connection to the previous post, Mashima’s comments on Nalu are similar to comments Tite Kubo made regarding his writing Ichiruki. Even now, it’s hard to say that Nalu will become canon knowing Mashima’s original intents.

Of the most important thing to come from this post, this marked the start of me starting to hate Nalu. Up to this point, I went from being indifferent to it to not liking it. However, once this came to light, I came to actually hate the idea of Nalu as romantic. I’ve had even less patience for the fandom that made itself near synonymous with the Fairy Tail fandom at large on every site ever. I doubt that will change anytime soon and I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing anymore.

Well, that’s my list of my favorite posts. I’m sure you guys have favorites among my posts and maybe some of them are on this list. If you want to see more of my other personal favorite posts and reblogs, I’ve tagged all of them as fav on my blog, including this one. Here’s to 5 more years of whatever the heck I’m doing on this blog!

See you!

#this was fun #i spent too much time through the anti nalu tag for this #i've made a lot of fun posts #fav

[fire-fira]

I-I need more Lab Escape AU ;-;

I have another fic in the works (not yet done unfortunately), but! Since you asked I’ll give you a small preview of the newest fic and some information on the boys and their reality. I hope you enjoy, and I will gladly talk about them and this AU at length– so feel free to send in whatever questions or thoughts about them that you care to. n.n

(Getting and editing this screenshot took way longer than I want to admit. lol)

————————————————————————

PREVIEW:

The eldest winced, but otherwise chose to ignore the parts of the comment he didn’t approve of. “The point is, it’s dangerous. I know we want to get out, I know we want to leave and never come back, but there are a lot of ways it can gowrong.”

The youngest snorted. “We already have their shifts memorized. We know where the cameras are in here. So we time things right. We get out. We leave and don’t look back.”

“We don’t know outside of this room. Not well enough,” the eldest insisted. “All it would take is one misstep and then it would all be over. I don’t want to lose any of you.”

Claws dug into the nest, faintly scraping against the hard floor underneath as the second-eldest reined in a frustrated sigh with an effort. “Lenox. We don’t have a choice. If we leave we might lose one of us, but if we stay we’re not lookin’ at a ‘might be’—we’re lookin’ at a damn near guarantee. We can’t stay. If they’re gonna cut any of us open, then we need ta get out before that can happen.”

“And where will we go?” His panic was almost a choking thing, the sort of thing that made the eldest want to curl into a ball after huddling down for his own safety. Maybe if he’d been a different type of turtle he would have already withdrawn into his shell most of the way. Unfortunately that wasn’t something he was physically capable of. Even if he had been, with the wide gouge in his shell behind his left shoulder, how much physical safety it would have offered was questionable. And it wasn’t like trying to disappear into his shell would have kept the others safe the way he wanted them to be.

The third-eldest reached out to gently squeeze the eldest’s arm, reassuring. “None of us know. There’s no way to know, not while we’re here. But out there we have a better chance than we do in here.” He knew better than the other three what might happen if they didn’t leave, had a better understanding of what might be done to them in terms of the specifics— he was, after all, the one who had figured out how to read first before turning around and secretly teaching the others and had used his skills to skim through and piece together whatever he could whenever he got the opportunity. He was also the one who had figured out how to open the ventilation shaft and had crept around the facility more than once after the staff had left for the day.

The eldest choked back a worried whine. If only… If only they could go back to the way things used to be, before they had any idea… If only there was no risk of any of them being killed by the very people who claimed they wanted to protect them. They were the only four of their species that had been found, the only ones… When the eldest spoke, it was a choked whisper, forced out past the rapidly forming knot in his chest. They had been frozen long enough; their choices were to either move… or die. “Soon. I- I don’t know when. But soon.”

———————————————————————— 

WORLD/CHARACTER INFO:

For those not acquainted with this AU of mine, these are their names before Yoshi helps them change their names:

Leo – Lenox

Raph – Corsa

Donnie – Forsyth

Mikey – Verdi

Now then!The boys were found in an out-of-the-way corner of Central Park in this reality, soon after they were mutated and were still babies. They were kept together because it was pretty quickly obvious that they were social because they kept making noises at each other and expecting a response.

The scar/gouge on Leo’s shell is thanks to an incident when the boys were 6. One of the keepers was being a little too rough with one of his brothers and Leo’s knee-jerk reaction was to bite the guy’s arm as hard as he could, which wound up with him getting thrown against a wall way too hard in the guy’s efforts to get him to let go– and ultimately resulted in a severely cracked shell that lost a chunk in the course of healing. Leo has it in his head that he has to be the appeasing one and has to watch out for his brothers and their well-being, because he’s the one to regularly think of multiple scenarios and the ways they could go wrong, with various contingency plans just in case. The poor kid probably has anxiety.

Before they escaped, Raph took advantage of the fact that the staff assumed there was only so much language they could understand and thoroughly abused that fact as an excuse for having an absolutely horrendous mouth (with loads of ‘seemingly random’ strung-together vulgar phrases to make sure they wouldn’t clue in that he wasn’t just parroting). Like other versions, this Raph is one who likes/prefers to stand his ground and fight back– but he’s also highly aware of his weaknesses and so will do what he can to avoid a situation where he feels powerless. He keeps people at a distance with a lot of snapping, snarling, and bravado while also having the tendency to try to charge head-first at a problem (and damn the consequences), yet he’s got a gentle protective side that makes him want to push back against Leo’s worrying (even if he can’t see a way for things to play out that doesn’t match up with what Leo thinks might happen).

Donnie is an information SPONGE. He was the first to learn how to read (through lots of sneaky observation and carefully picking things apart in his mind) before turning around and teaching the other three, has trained himself to have a near-photographic memory (it was the easiest way for him to absorb any text he got access to when he usually only had a few moments to look), and was very easily bored out of his skull in their enclosure. There was one point where he was bored enough that he tried to climb to the top of their enclosure to get a better look at some of the detail on the ceiling and ended up slipping and breaking his left arm when he landed. He’s also the one who figured out how to open the ventilation shaft without being found out, which led the four of them to be more familiar with the complex as a whole than they otherwise would be (and was actually the source of him getting access to a lot more information). For Donnie knowledge is both power and something he’s felt starved for, so if he’s not careful and if someone doesn’t put the brakes on it fast enough, he could easily become obsessive and so absorbed in learning and information-gathering that he could completely neglect eating or sleeping, along with anything else.

Mikey is the bright ball of sunshine who manages to keep the other three from retreating and hiding or pushing themselves too far. He’s also leading the way in his hope that things will get better, and has been more willing than the other three to trust and take risks that the right people won’t harm them (like Yoshi). Because of his deliberately cheerful disposition he tends to be better equipped not to freeze in a given moment when it might be dangerous to, but he’s also extremely prone to nightmares and when he gets upset he’s prone to hiding. He’s also got a bad habit of trying to deny that anything is wrong with him because he feels like if he gives into his bad moods too much that he won’t be there for his brothers when they need him.

All four of them pushed the ultimate dad-button on Yoshi, and he gladly took them in the night he realized four terrified teenagers were hiding in the alley behind his home. He’s blind and lost his sight during the same incident that killed Tang Shen, though he can still see light and vague shapes of color. Part of his going to America in the first place was due to a falling out with his grandfather (both over who he married and that he refused to be an ‘appropriate’ heir to the clan). He runs a Shinto shrine and allows visitors to spend time in his gardens, and he’s often sought out for advice– all of which makes it easier for him to maintain the privacy of the non-public portion of his home. He rarely makes mention of his knowledge of martial arts or the fact that he was supposed to be his grandfather’s heir for the Hamato clan, unless he feels it’s worth mentioning.

April and Casey both will eventually meet the boys, but I haven’t figured out specifics yet.

#Leonardo #Raphael #Donatello #Michelangelo #Lab Escape AU #TMNT #TMNT AU #Hamato Yoshi #my fiction #long post #cake4ninja

[three-drink-amy]

If After All These Years, You’d Like to Meet

Chapter Six

I GOT THE PROMOTION! Big party at my place Friday and ye ALL better be there!

Claire laughed at Rupert’s text to the group. She had to look at her schedule to see if she could make it. Looking at the calendar, it said Friday was the 20th. Her heart hurt at the realization that April 20th was so close. This year it would be so much harder. Maybe she wouldn't end up making it to the party.

When Friday evening came, Claire was sitting in pajamas on her couch. Her phone rang and she reached to pick it up. “Hey Geillie,” she answered.

“Hey! So do ye think we have to bring a gift for Rupert? I’ve never been to a promotion party,” she mused. “Is it rude not to?”

“I’m not sure,” Claire admitted. “But I can't make it.”

“What?” Geillis cried. “Is it Frank?”

“No, it’s not Frank. I...I’m just having an off day. I can’t make it,” Claire replied vaguely. She figured no one would really understand. “Please give Rupert my best though,” she added.

“Claire-” Geillis began.

“I’m sorry, but I won't be there. Okay?”

There was a long pause on the other end followed by a sigh. “Oh alright. I’ll pass on yer kind words.”

“Thank you,” Claire said before quickly ending the call.

                                                         ~~~

Jamie was four blocks from Rupert’s when he felt his phone ringing. “Geillis? What’s up?”

“Have ye talked to Claire?” she asked quickly.

Jamie’s steps slowed. “No. What's wrong wi Claire?”

“I don't know. But she’s not coming tonight. She said she was having an off day or something stupid like that but she wouldn't tell me what was wrong,” Geillis explained.

“So why are ye calling me?”

“Because if Claire didna go to me, I thought she’d go to ye. So I didna ken if ye kent what was wrong wi her.”

Jamie halted. “No. I haven't talked to her at all today. I talked to her Wednesday and she seemed fine.”

“Well something’s off,” Geillis said unhelpfully.

“Do ye think she broke up wi Frank?” Jamie wondered, ignoring the feelings that came along with that thought.

“I asked her if it had to do wi him and she said no,” Geillis answered. “Besides I’d hope that when that time comes she would come party with us instead of wallowing.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to see what ye kent. I’ll see ye at the party in a few.”

“Aye,” Jamie replied absentmindedly.

After Geillis hung up, he called Claire. She didn't answer her phone. Sighing to himself, Jamie stared down the road toward Rupert’s home. Though he probably had no real need to be, he was worried by Geillis’s statements. What if something was wrong with Claire? Jamie looked down at the bottle of Mackenzie whisky in his hand. It was originally a gift for Rupert but his instincts were telling him that it might be put to better use elsewhere. Making up his mind, Jamie turned in the other direction and hailed a cab to get to Claire’s.

                                                         ~~~

Claire was part way into the next episode when there was a knock at the door. She looked around the room and it was a mess. Kleenex and pictures were scattered like confetti. Why did someone need her? Sighing, she got up to answer the door. The sight on the other side took her breath away. “Jamie? What are you doing here?” she asked, surveying him. “And why do you have whiskey and bags of food?”

Jamie started to walk in the door before answering. “Well, Geillis told me somethin was wrong wi ye but that ye wouldna say what. I didna ken what would fix what ails ye so I have whisky, Chinese food, and ice cream. Ye can choose which is the winner.”

Claire stared at him where he stood comfortably in her kitchen. She was in awe of the man he was. “What about Rupert’s party?”

He shrugged. “Seemed like ye might need a friend more than he did.”

Tears sprang back into Claire’s eyes unwelcomed. “You seriously skipped the party because I was having a bad night?”

Jamie looked a bit uncomfortable. “A bit, aye.”

He was opening his mouth to explain more but Claire cut him off as she threw her arms around him. He quickly returned the gesture, running a comforting hand up and down her back.

“Are ye alright?” he asked hesitantly.

Claire sniffled, pulling back and looking at him. “It’s April 20th. It’s the anniversary of the day my parents died.”

Jamie’s face fell at her explanation. He quickly wrapped her back in a tight hug. “I’m sorry, Claire,” he said into her hair.

Just the act of him trying to comfort her caused her to cry harder. She hated the way that worked sometimes. “I’m okay. Really!” she said unconvincingly. “It's just that this is the first year since Uncle Lamb died. And no matter where I was, he’d always come see me so I didn’t have to be alone on the anniversary of their deaths. And now he’s gone too. I lost the last tie I had to my parents.” Claire stepped back and brushed the tears off her face. “I’m okay. It’s just…”

“Some years are just harder,” Jamie finished, answering from his own personal knowledge.

Claire nodded as more tears fell, though some for him this time. “Exactly.” She looked over at the counter, examining the treats he’d brought. “I say we start with the Chinese food. I was just about to order in dinner so your timing was perfect!”

Jamie smiled before opening the bag and plating some food for both of them. They carried the food over and sat on her couch to eat. “I always liked yer parents,” Jamie said unprompted. Claire looked over at him with a sad smile. “Yer mam made the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had in my life,” he mused. Laughing, he continued. “In fact I told my mam that once and she was not at all happy about it.”

Claire laughed at his memory. “I can imagine. You know I actually have my mother’s cookie recipe.”

Jamie’s head whipped over in her direction. “What? Ye’ve lived here for two and a half months and ye’ve just been keeping that to yerself?”

Claire’s head tilted back as she laughed. “Well I do have a job that keeps me rather busy. I also didn’t realize I was holding onto the holy grail.”

“Aye well ye should ken that ye are holding on to it.”

She beamed at him. “I promise I’ll make you some cookies some time. Though I can’t promise that I’m as good a cook as my mother was. There could be some discrepancy.”

“I’ll try not to get my hopes up too much,” Jamie teased. They sat there in a comfortable silence as they ate. “I could never pin down yer dad,” he continued. “I was always in some place between fear and respect.”

“That’s probably just what he would have wanted,” Claire said with a chuckle.

“Do ye recall that day we accidentally broke the window in the kitchen?”

Claire’s eyes went wide as she remembered the day. More often than not, Claire was over at the Frasers’. But that day, Jamie had come over to the Beauchamps’. They’d been eating snack at the kitchen table when, like most things did, it turned into a game. She couldn’t remember now how it had escalated, but it had reached the point where they were both fighting for a small cutting board and it frisbeed out of both their hands and went through the kitchen window. Only one pane of four was broken, but they were completely terrified. It was loud enough that her mother had come into the kitchen to observe them panicked and trying to figure out how to fix a window. Jamie frantically ran towards Claire’s room after yelling “We need glue!” It took 7 words from her mother to make Claire think her life was over. “Just wait til your father sees this.” When her father had arrived home, Jamie and Claire were still in the kitchen, fearing the worst. Claire was in tears and Jamie was nearly in tears as they heard her father’s footsteps coming down the hall. Her mother pointed out the window before stepping back to see his reaction. He brought them over to the window as he got a good look at it. He focused back on them before he put his elbow through another pane of the window. The two of them gasped loudly at the damaged he’d done himself. “Look, these windows are easy to break,” he said reassuringly. “But that doesn’t mean it’s okay. It means that you two need to learn how to be gentle creatures,” he said with a knowing look at both of them.

“I still can’t believe we never got punished,” Claire marvelled all these years later.

“Well ye might not have,” Jamie said in an irritated tone. “I got my arse skelped after I told my parents what had happened.”

“You did?” Jamie nodded in reply. “You never told me that,” Claire remembered. “I’d have felt bad then.”

“Ye dinna feel bad now?” Jamie asked with a grin.

“I mean, I feel a little bad. But not terribly bad.”

Jamie shook his head at her. “I was so sure yer father was going to say I wasna allowed over to yer house anymore. Hell, I think in the hours we waited for him to come home, I’d even wondered if he’d let me be yer friend after that. I was quite worried that he wouldna.”

Claire smiled at him. “Given how often your mother watched me, I doubt he could have really enforced that.”

“Fair,” Jamie agreed. He looked lost in thought, twenty years back in memories. “Yer home always smelled of cinnamon,” he commented. “I thought that was lovely.”

Claire watched Jamie as he talked about the things he remembered about her parents and her life with them. Suddenly, a realization hit her like a bolt of lightning. When Uncle Lamb died, she’d thought she’d lost her last tie to her parents. But the man sitting next to her on the couch was proof that she hadn’t. He was skipping a party with their friends to sit and reminisce with her about her parents. He would always be a tie back to her childhood and back to the joyful life she’d once had. It was as if Jamie was her tie to the happy feelings she used to have. It only took a moment for her mind to make another leap. Meeting Jamie as adults had helped her be happy again.

He looked over at her and she realized she was staring. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she replied quickly, shaking her head. “Just a lot of good memories is all.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “Life was easier then, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Jamie chuckled to himself, making Claire look back over. “I was just thinking about how I begged yer Uncle Lamb to let ye stay.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “Aye. I told him we could take really good care of ye and there was plenty of room for ye in our house. I even tried to get my parents to tell him ye were welcome to stay wi us. But they, like yer Uncle Lamb, told me that ye needed family. I was very mad at all of them.”

Claire stared at him and wondered suddenly what her life would be like if she’d spent the rest of her childhood at Lallybroch instead of travelling around the world with her uncle. “I never knew that,” she said quietly. She reached out and grabbed his hand where it sat between them. “That’s quite sweet.”

“Well I suppose I was scared to lose my best friend,” Jamie admitted, squeezing her hand.

“Do you think we could call Ian really fast and you could say that bit again?” she asked with a grin. “We used to fight about that.”

Jamie laid his head against the back of the couch as he laughed. “Of course ye did.” They soon fell into silence again before Jamie pointed to the television. “So what are we watching?”

“Don’t judge me,” Claire begged.

“I’m no going to judge.”

“It’s Downton Abbey,” she admitted. “I started watching it after I moved to Boston and it made me miss England but also feel really English. I don’t know. I was just in the mood for it tonight.”

“I’ve never actually seen it. How far into it are we? Have I missed much?” Jamie asked, settling into the couch and getting comfortable.

Claire noted that they were sitting quite close on the couch. “Not far at all. It’s only episode three.”

“Perfect. Let’s do this,” Jamie said, looking over at her with a grin.

They sat watching the episode for a few minutes before Claire paused it. Jamie looked confused. “Thank you,” she said in earnest.

“For what?”

“For everything you’ve done this evening,” she clarified. “You’re a really amazing person. Not many people would give up everything just to comfort someone else. Between you and me, I called Frank earlier when I was feeling down and he answered and rushed me off the phone. So I just want to say that I am truly, very thankful to have you in my life. As you can probably tell from the state of this room, I was having a harder time with it earlier.”

“And now?” he asked.

“Now I’m still a bit sad, but I feel better.”

“I’m happy to help. I sadly completely understand what it’s like,” he reminded her.

She nodded. “I hate that you do.”

“I hate that we both do,” he replied with a sad smile.

Claire hit play on the show and they stopped talking about their parents. It was comforting enough to just have him there.

“Ye mentioned Frank,” Jamie said a while later. “What ever happened with you going to Boston?”

Claire sighed. “I haven’t had the time off yet. I also have been trying to sneakily see what Frank’s schedule looks like but he’s been weirdly evasive. I’ll get there eventually.” Jamie nodded in reply.

They continued watching the show until they both fell asleep on the couch. Claire woke up in the middle of the night against Jamie. She moved slowly so as not to wake him. Before she went to her bedroom, she covered him with a blanket and turned off the tv. She laid a hand gently against his shoulder in a silent thanks. Taking a moment before walking to her room, she couldn’t help but stare down at him. It seemed like every time she spent time with Jamie, she felt grateful that she’d found him again. Tonight had been no exception to that. He always knew what to say and somehow was always there for her. She’d been in London for two and a half months and in that time, he’d become the constant in her life. It was weird how things happened that way. It had pretty much happened the same way when they were four years old. He’d been her confidant and best friend. Those roles had pretty quickly been assumed by him once they reunited. Shaking her head, she walked away from the couch, thankful for him.

Claire woke up early the next morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. She tiptoed into the kitchen and started making some tea. As the kettle heated, she stood with her back to the living room as she looked at her phone. “What are ye making?” Jamie asked croakily from the couch, making her jump a foot.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” she nearly screamed as she recovered.  

“Sorry,” he whispered, still not moving yet.

“I was just making some tea. Would you care for some?”

He nodded before closing his eyes again. Once the water was ready, she made them both a cup of tea. She sat down on the couch at his feet and put his cup on the table. “Your cup is how you like it and on the coffee table. But you don’t have to get up yet. I’m in no rush to get anywhere,” she said with a pat on his leg. He nodded with his eyes closed. She shook her head and grinned at him as she enjoyed her cup of tea.

A knock at the door shocked her from her sense of calm. Who would be showing up at her door just after 8:00 in the morning? She placed her cup on the table and jumped up. Jamie opened one eye and looked up at her. “Go back to sleep,” she urged. “I’ve got it.” Another knock came before she could reach the door.

Opening the door revealed one of the last people she expected. “Surprise!” he exclaimed.

She stared at him in shock. “Frank?”

Next chapter

#my writing #outlander fanfic #Outlander #outlander fanfiction #if after all these years you'd like to meet

[sun-summoning]

summary: sakura and seven women. non-linear timeline. multi-genre. for sakura week.

i. iron will of determination

“are you going to do something you’ll regret, sakura?” shizune asks.

sakura’s jaw begins to ache from clenching it so tightly. no, she wants to say. i don’t know. maybe. yes. yes. sasuke’s fallen over the edge, naruto’s gone rogue, kakashi’s keeping her completely in the dark. oh, and they’re all out of the village. and tsunade is in a coma and about to replaced by that sketchy bastard danzo. yes. yes, yes, yes.

shizune looks at her, sadness in her dark eyes, and she draws sakura into her arms. one hand cups the back of her head, the other is wrapped around her body. shizune holds her despite sakura’s stiffness and after a moment, sakura considers crumbling. but she doesn’t. she wishes she could clutch at shizune, shake and cry because she’s scared and she’s lost and she feels terribly, terribly guilty, but sakura just tightens her jaw until it aches and the only proof of her determination to do something very, very bad is the way her eyes have glossed over. 

“i’m not going to stop you,” shizune assures her, probably already knowing sakura’s plans. “whatever you choose to do, sakura, is entirely up to you.”

sakura nods once. “i know.”

“but you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life. do you understand?”

“i understand,” sakura replies, not intending for that life to be very long.

shizune smiles at her sadly and hands her a scroll. sakura looks down at it, perplexed. “you’ve been so busy that we haven’t had a chance to work together in a long time.” 

sakura’s eyes stay trained on the scroll, forest green and gilded with gold. sakura doesn’t shift in the slightest, so shizune reaches for her wrist and then presses it into her hand.

“we created this arsenal for a reason,” shizune reminds her, forcing sakura to recall all the nights she spent learning about what certain chemicals can do to a man when mixed with each other in what portions. she doesn’t smile, doesn’t frown, but there’s a sadness in her eyes that cannot penetrate the iron walls forged in sakura’s. “you and i are the only people in the world with access to these poisons. you and i are the only people who are immune. and you and i are the only people with the antidotes.”

sakura swallows thickly because using one of these will mean sasuke will, without a shadow of a doubt, die. her hands begin to tremble so she tightens her grip around the scroll. 

“thank you,” sakura whispers.

shizune leaves sakura to the fate she’s chosen. “do with it what you will.” 

-

ii. connections

the invitation is strange, but sakura still accepts, clearing time in her schedule to meet up with a young woman who claims she wants to write about her. when sakura sits across from her, the writer begins to shake.

“i’m sorry,” the writer says. “i don’t mean to be weird.”

sakura just smiles back. “don’t worry about it.”

“i know you’re a busy woman. former e.r. director, current head of the medical ninjutsu program, part-time practitioner, part-time researcher, weapons development consultant.” the writer raises a finger with every title. “i understand that you’re unofficially off the mission roster for jounin, but i imagine that has more to do with the fact that you have a toddler at home. i’m also going to gracefully not even consider what the next step tends to be for well-trained shinobi with a rare specialization such as yourself.” the writer clears her throat because sakura narrows her eyes in that subtle, suspicious way only the most trained of shinobi might. “i’m going to be direct with you. i want to write your story.”

“pardon me?”

“your story,” the writer repeats. “you are probably the finest kunoichi in this generation and i think it’s important the world knows that. or, at least, our village.”

sakura looks away, a flush forming on her cheeks. she begins to shake her head, wring her hands, and stutter incoherent things. the gestures all seem so strange, so foreign, so uncharacteristic of someone that holds all the titles the writer just mentioned. she finds it sad that haruno sakura can’t take this sort of compliment because this is a woman that can shatter the ground with one finger. 

words should have nothing on her.

“i’m not saying there aren’t strong women out there,” the writer continues. “it takes one glance at the hokage mountain to remember that there are. but you...you’re just...” she shrugs. “simply put, you’re incredible. and i think decades from now someone is going to write a book about all the best kunoichi that ever existed and i want to make sure they have a proper source of reference when making sure that you’re on those pages.”

“why?” sakura asks.

the writer shrugs, but there’s a hopeful sort of smile stretched across her face. “every little girl needs a hero, don’t you think?”

“and you think that’s me?”

“i know that’s you.” 

the writer leans back into her chair and a waitress arrives with the tea the writer had ordered earlier. she takes a sip and contemplates the steam. across from her, haruno sakura is quiet.

“why don’t i tell you my story first,” the writer says. sakura nods so the writer does as well. “i was eight-years-old when konoha was invaded years ago. my parents, both shinobi, were part of the efforts to the stave off the attack. 

“to be clear, this isn’t a sad backstory. they’re both alive. retired, but alive. 

“they left me with my grandmother in what they assumed was a safe place. but there were no safe places. not at that time. not with the akatsuki attacking and all the monsters they brought with them. 

“did you know i used to be afraid of bugs? how irrational. they’re everywhere. but i used to be so frightened by them. and then after my parents left, a giant centipede came out of the ground. we were all running. i fell and i looked back and i saw it. a centipede as tall as a building that i was so certain was going to eat me. i couldn’t move. i was hurt and i was terrified and then all of a sudden i saw a girl leaping in front of me like every incredible manga heroine i’d ever read about. then she took it down with a single punch. 

“the people around were marvelling at the dead monster and talking about how this girl took it down all by herself. but she--” the writer shakes her head. “but you--you didn’t even look at them. you came to me and checked on me and healed my wound while comforting me.

“you saved my life that day, saved more people, and not to be weird, but i’ve been following your accomplishments ever since then. you’re not lauded in the same way people like uzumaki naruto are. not at all. you’re not something flashy, something often spoken about. your influence runs deeper than that. your legacy runs deeper than that.

“no shinobi name, no blatant nepotism--no offence--you started off ordinary. and now you’re--” the writer falters, unable to find the right words to describe what haruno sakura has become. she shakes her head. she grins, something tight and rueful for her shortcoming. “you’re--”

“okay.”

the writer blinks. “what?”

“okay,” sakura agrees. there’s something in the way her posture loosens, in the way she rests an elbow on the table and cradles her chin in her palm. she’s relaxed enough, but the writer catches the way she braces herself for the inevitable onslaught of questions that will likely lead her down a few mental pathways she’s probably spent years ignoring. 

haruno sakura smiles and the writer bites her lip when she remembers that this is her hero.

“what would you like to know?”

-

iii. from a bud to a blossom

her mother doesn’t look particularly impressed when she visits home with an indisputable baby bump and a wedding ring dangling from a chain around her neck. the wedding came first, sakura has the decency to clarify, but the lack of husband at her side leaves mebuki frowning. 

“sasuke-kun and i can’t just--” sakura stops, pursing her lips and then looking away.

unlike her husband, mebuki has never once turned a blind eye to the bruises that used to dot their daughters skin, how limp limbs turned sturdy and powerful over time. perhaps he attributed it all to puberty, perhaps he refused to acknowledge the way her mouth had tightened with grim acceptance, how her gaze had sharpened. her daughter is one of the few from her class that was promoted to jounin, and it wouldn’t surprise mebuki to know that perhaps she was promoted even further. 

sakura might pretend they’re on some sort of journey of redemption or whatnot, but her secrecy is telling enough. 

“sasuke-kun couldn’t join me,” sakura says instead. “he had something he needed to do.”

“for kakashi?”

sakura dons a careful mask of pleasantness. “yes.”

mebuki almost laughs. sakura was never a good liar growing up, too quick to stutter and stumble. even after meeting ino and gaining the confidence only a best friend could provide, sakura couldn’t quite wear the right poker face. it was only after her team split up, after she learned from tsunade, that sakura figured out how to hide the important things a bit better.

“fine,” mebuki acquiesces. they fall silent, so she picks up the cup of tea before her, prompting sakura to do the same. there’s a tension between them that’s only felt when they bring up uchiha sasuke, so mebuki goes for the next best thing and nods to sakura’s midsection. “so.”

“so?”

mebuki raises an eyebrow. “are you not going to tell me about my grandchild?”

“um. you’re having one?”

“how soon?”

“well i’m due in april--”

“are you afraid?”

sakura looks startled. “what?” 

“are you afraid, sakura?”

“i--” sakura swallows thickly. “i am.”

“don’t be.”

mebuki reaches across. she pulls sakura into her arms and almost laughs because she hasn’t held her little girl like this in years and now she’s just so big. she looks down at sakura’s growing belly and reaches out hesitantly. she might be her mother, but mebuki remembers all too well the invasion of hands on pregnant women. after sakura nods, mebuki smiles softly and rests her palm upon her grandchild.

“you’ve grown up, haven’t you,” mebuki murmurs. she looks up, meeting sakura’s eyes, and with her free hand, she cups her daughter’s cheek. “you’ve always been mature--probably more than you ever needed to be--but somehow seeing you like this, about to become a mother...” 

sakura’s eyes, green just like hers, begin to water, and mebuki hopes against all statistically likeliness that this baby might inherit that trait. 

“i love you,” sakura blurts out, her voice wavering over every word. “mommy, i--” she sniffs. “i love you so much.”

mebuki laughs. “hormones, huh?”

“mommy, they’re awful.”

she laughs again, shifting her hands to sakura’s shoulders and then pulling her into a hug. she pulls back and presses a kiss against sakura’s forehead like she did when her girl was growng up. “i love you too, sakura.”

-

iv. zodiac

one day sakura is cooking breakfast while sarada sits at the table reading a magazine. she looks so strange, dressed down in her pyjamas with her hair messy and her glasses askew. she yawns and then says, “hey, we have the same zodiac sign, mama.”

sakura glances at sarada with an eyebrow raised. “you’re thirteen. this is just occurring to you now?”

sarada sticks her tongue out at her. “i’m just saying!” she holds up a page with a ram on it. “aries women are passionate, enthusiastic, and determined.” then she winks at sakura. “they’re also short-tempered, moody, and aggressive.”

“what was that? you don’t want me to make you breakfast and you want to starve today?”

"see! short-tempered!”

sighing, sakura slides the cooked eggs out of the pan and onto a plate. she brings the food to the table and sets everything up for the two of them. sarada needs to eat up for her day preparing for the chuunin exams with her team, and sakura has work to do at the hospital.

“also,” sarada says, stuffing her mouth with a piece of fish, “we aries are optimistic.” she pauses, probably considering herself and considering her mother. “yeah, the both of us really are all of those things.” she nods. “it’s because we’re both aries.”

“that’s absurd.” sakura shakes her head, hardly one to believe in something like astrology. she rests her chin over her palm and stares at her daughter, a young woman full of confidence and drive. she reaches out with her free hand and musses sarada’s hair. “we’re alike because i raised you, not because of some stars.” 

she leans forward, pressing a kiss against sarada’s forehead. when she draws back, sarada is beaming. 

“you have all those amazing traits because you had an amazing mother to teach them to you,” sakura says with a wink

sarada laughs again. “and the negative ones? did i get my moodiness from you or from the stars?”

sakura steals a bit of sarada’s breakfast. “that we’ll blame on your father.”

-

v. japanese mythology

while sakura’s chakra control has always been superior to that of her peers, she still lacks the utter precision of people like tsunade and shizune. she’ll get there, and she’ll get there very soon, they often remind her, but there are still times when sakura’s control falters at the moment meant for release.

sometimes nothing will happen. sometimes she won’t exert properly, won’t protect herself either, resulting in a shattered fist and broken arm, and even worse depending on the intentions of her opponent. 

and other times the opposite will take place. sakura will throw her punch, putting everything into a well-timed attack that results in much more damage than she could ever intend. sakura’s caused minor earthquakes, demolished buildings, shattered foundations, but not because she meant to.

she’s still learning, tsunade will tell her. it hasn’t even been a year, after all.

sakura tries not to use her chakra enhanced strength all too much, but sometimes it’s necessary. 

she doesn’t know where her current team is. ever since her genin cell was split up, tsunade has put her on various squads. she’s mostly meant to heal, but she still needs to fight, and right now she’ll die if she doesn’t.

the kunoichi she’s up against is strong and comes at her with the intention to kill. she’s stronger, so much stronger, and sakura doesn’t know if she can beat her. she wishes she could be as powerful as this kunoichi, as sure of her own capabilities that she had no qualms with separating from her team. sakura scowls, jealous, and curses her old team and curses her current one. she tries to hide to get her bearings, but the yatsugatake mountains do not allow her this reprieve.

“do you intend to run away?” the kunoichi asks. 

she’s much older than sakura, and judging by the scar by her eyebrow and the hardness of her face, she’s much more experienced as well. she moves with a confidence sakura can only wish to one day achieve, and strikes just as surely. 

sakura is just fortunate that she’s much better at dodging. 

"fight me!” the kunoichi yells.

the kunoichi slashes her side and sakura cries out and stumbles. the kunoichi moves to hit her again, but sakura rolls out of the way at the last second. she runs, unashamed by her cowardice. one hand holds her bleeding wound, unconsciously feeding it with healing chakra.

she has to do something. 

she has to do something.

sakura slides down against the jagged stone of the mountain and takes a deep breath to think. she can’t get in close. the kunoichi is better than her. sakura can evade, but she can’t do that forever. she can attack with the few long-range weapons she has on hand, but sakura doesn’t doubt the kunoichi will counter them with ease. 

sakura takes a breath, looks down at her stained hands, and wonders is she can cause a rockslide. 

“stop running--”

sakura concentrates her chakra into her fist. she draws her arm back, punches the mountainside, and release everything she has. she cries out as something breaks in her arm, but she gets the result that she wants. despite her pain, she catches the flicker of fear on the kunoichi’s face when the stone crumbles and immediately falls on top of her. 

sakura herself barely dodges the boulders. she jumps as far back as possible and watches and waits and waits and waits. she waits for the mountain to settle once again, waits for the kunoichi to claw her way out of her grave, waits for the pain in her arm and on her side to turn numb.

finally, sakura moves forward. she takes careful steps, eyes and ears open to the sound of the kunoichi’s counterattack. when sakura hears the tortured groans of a survivor, she turns and finds her opponent. her entire body is covered by the broken mountainside, but half her face is visible. her mouth moves, and sakura can only imagine the pain that causes.

she considers what is left of this section of the yatsugatake mountains and considers how strong she’ll one day become.

“how pathetic,” the kunoichi says. she coughs, causing the boulder on top of her to shift. her eyes squeeze shut and despite the excruciating pain, she laughs. “i can’t believe i’ve been brought down by a child.”

“i’m fourteen,” sakura tells her. she doesn’t mean to take offence, but she does, and so she presses her foot down just so, making the kunoichi cry out once more. satisfied, sakura eases her stance. “i’m old enough that you decided to fight me. am i not old enough to kill you too?”

the kunoichi sneers at her, revealing red stained teeth. “i’m not dead yet, brat.”

“no,” sakura murmurs, slowly sinking to her knees. she considers pulling out a weapon, but her manipulation of chakra still needs practice. and shouldn’t she practice? as her bloody palm nears the kunoichi’s nervous face, sakura takes a deep breath. “but you will be.”

-

vi. acknowledgements

naturally, tsunade’s sudden retirement is a sore spot for sakura. sakura raves, sakura rages, and sakura doesn’t once back down. this is ridiculous. this is preposterous. this is terrible timing. this is not at all a wise political move. she’s cyclical and repetitive, so tsunade mostly tunes her out after the first few days of sakura’s screaming. 

“i don’t see why you’re so against this,” tsunade drawls over a cup of tea. “one would think you might find this ideal, considering who my successor is.”

sakura’s scowl darkens at the reminder that kakashi will soon be taking over as hokage.

“after all, he’s the one who will be dealing with the age old question of what to do with uchiha sasuke.” tsunade leans back into her chair. she drums her fingers over the leather arm and cocks her head to the side. “surely you’re relieved that he won’t be on the receiving end of my brand of justice.”

sakura rolls her eyes. “there’s still the village council. and the other kages. and, well, konoha’s reputation. you’re one person--”

“listen here, you little--”

“--and i know you would never do that to naruto.”

“naruto?”

sakura shrugs. “he wouldn’t take anything less than a pardon just sitting down.”

“and you would?”

“this isn’t about me.”

“then i’m making it about you,” tsunade insists. “do you think i’d do that to you?”

“i--” sakura purses her lips to stop herself from talking. 

tsunade might not be the best politician, but she plays the game better than any of her predecessors because she’s a woman and isn’t it just so easy to underestimate her? shizune sleuths just as well, acts and smiles on cue, and so sakura has picked up these skills too. little sakura knows who to smile at, who to butter up with her femininity, who to demolish with just a couple of words. the girl can argue and make it seem like your idea was never hers to begin with. 

“yes?”

“it’s not about me.”

“i acknowledge that. i don’t care. answer my question.”

“i--” sakura grunts to herself. “no,” she admits. “i don’t think you’d do that to me. but your decision to pardon sasuke wouldn’t be about just me. it would be about sasuke. about naruto and kakashi, about inspiring hope, about--”

tsunade waves a hand. “you don’t have to do that.”

“do what?”

“convince me about hypotheticals. it’s not going to be my call considering i already have a successor.”

sakura flinches at the word and that gives tsunade pause. leaning back, tsunade considers a smile. instead she shakes her head. do i detect jealousy? she wants to ask. but sakura isn’t jealous. sakura is worried. sakura is upset. sakura is upset that kakashi would replace tsunade as sakura’s beacon and that he would replace her as tsunade’s legacy.

“as hokage,” tsunade clarifies. “all this means is that kakashi’s face will be carved into a mountain between mine and some other poor bastard. that’s the successor he is. do you understand?”

sakura frowns and tsunade laughs in her face. 

“don’t be like that,” she says, smacking the back of sakura’s head the way she used to when sakura was young and naive and full of dumb answers despite her obvious intelligence. “kakashi? my new successor?” tsunade mimics with a laugh. she smiles softly, shakes her head, and picks up her box of things. “he might have my title, but you know better than that, sakura.”

-

vii. happy birthday, sakura!

for her twenty-second birthday, sakura and ino makes plans to meet up and celebrate. sasuke makes some excuses so he can lag behind, and while normally that might have annoyed sakura, she takes it with a stride and just goes on ahead. 

she’s seeing ino again. she’s seeing ino again after so long apart and as she runs faster and faster, her heart races from the anticipation. when she finally catches sight of ino at their meeting place, sakura releases a stupid little squeal that ino reciprocates. they run for each, meeting with a hug and moving around with it.

“i missed you!”

“i missed you!”

“your hair is long,” ino says, playing with the locks of pink. “you look so pretty!”

sakura sniffs. “you look pretty.” she pokes ino’s bicep. “do you even lift?”

ino rolls her eyes. “not all of us can be ripped and use our chakra for additional strength.” 

sakura laughs and ino laughs too and then they’re hugging once again.

eventually ino notices how sakura is alone. she peers over sakura’s shoulder as if expecting her partner might appear. “where’s sasuke?” she wonders.

sakura shrugs though. “he has some stuff to do.”

“he’s not joining us for your birthday celebration?” ino asks, sounding thoroughly unimpressed with the man her best friend had chosen to fall in love with. 

“nope,” sakura responds with a grin. sasuke’s absence might irk ino like it irks her mother, but sakura knows him well enough to know that this is his gift to her: time alone with her best friend. sakura loops her arm around ino’s and they begin to move. “it’s just you and me, ino.”

it always was and it always will be. no marriage, no other friendships, no children -- nothing will change ino’s significance to sakura. ino, the friend who brought sakura out of her own shell, the one who gave her confidence and supported her through absolutely everything. sakura loves many people and will continue to do so, but sakura will never be able to replicate the sort of bond she has with her best friend. 

“sounds like a perfect pair then.” ino presses a sloppy kiss upon sakura’s cheek. “happy birthday, sakura.” 

-

fin

#fic #sakura haruno

[shortend]

Scooby-Doo meets the TMNT

So, I've decided my new dream is to write and direct a direct to DVD “Scooby-Doo meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie featuring the original 80's turtles. The Gang heads to New York for sightseeing and get interrupted by mutants committing crimes. While trying to apprehend the suspects they end up crossing paths with the TMNT who were also responding. They all head to the sewer lair to regroup and share their findings.

VELMA: Those aren't masks, are they?

LEONARDO: Nope.

DONATELLO: Say, she's good. Solid deductive reasoning.

RAPHAEL: What gave it away, the lack of foam rubber or the beautifully articulated mouths? Even Henson can't build 'em like this.

VELMA: I need a moment.

FRED: There will be time for that later. First we need to figure out--

Fred tries to put a comforting hand on Velma's shoulder and is startled by her abrupt scream.

VELMA: (Screaming) I need a moment!

Fred freezes, withdraws his hand, and silently mouths “Okay” as he takes a step back and gives Velma her space.

Wide angle of the whole cast. Velma turns her back to the camera and puts her hands on her hips. Everyone stands awkwardly, trying not to stare but unsure of exactly what to do. Most of them are fidgety or visibly uncomfortable with the silence. After a moment of slow breathing and some neck stretches, Velma turns back to the group.

VELMA: Okay, you were saying?

----

Fred and Leonardo both try to take charge and struggle for dominance. Master Splinter suggests they track down the Shredder, because obviously.

----

MICHAELANGELO: Hey, dudes. While the fearless leaders over there hash out the deets, what say we partake of some major deliciousness of the pizza variety.

SHAGGY: Like, if we ever say no to an offer like that, we were probably replaced by impostors as some sort of devious master plan to take over the world. Lead the way.

SCOOBY-DOO: Reah!

MICHAELANGELO: You're in luck, dudes. The kitchen is totally stocked so take your pick. We got fresh pizza, frozen pizza, do-it-yourself pizza, leftover pizza, room-temperature pizza, week-old pizza, pizza we don't remember ordering, gummie pizzas, pizzas with gummies, pizza sandwiches, English muffin pizzas, breakfast pizzas, which are basically pepperoni pancakes, oooooorrrrr...

Michaelangelo gestures to the immense wall-sized pizza oven with pride.

MICHAELANGELO: We could use the patent-pending Dona-langelo Mega-Delux Hyper Oven X to bake our own giant pizza and use other pizzas as toppings! Donatello made it himself to my exact specifications. Big. And awesome.

Shaggy and Scooby look unimpressed and stand with their arms crossed in judgment.

SHAGGY: Like, okay, so I know what you were going for, Michaelangelo, but if you had this thing over here, why didn't you just lead with that? As if there were any other option. Kind of wasting our time.

SCOOBY-DOO: Reah. We're burning dayright.

ALL: When we could be cooking pizza!

MICHAELANGELO: Hey, Donatello! It's supervision time, bud!

DONATELLO: Just a quick warning in advance. This is a delicate prototype and it still has a few bugs to work out. At any point in the process either it or the pizzas could become sentient and try to destroy humanity, so have these books on ethics and moral philosophy at the ready just in case.

*Hi-jinks*

----

APRIL: Go get 'em, guys!

DAPHNE: Aren't you coming?

APRIL: What? Of course not! Not when there's a hot scoop like this. I gotta get to the office and fetch my cameraman.

DAPHNE: Cameraman? As in... television camera man? As in... television?

DAPHNE: Let's split up, gang. I'll go with April to the news station. You guys all go do that other thing you were talking about that’s also important. Go get 'em!

----

DAPHNE: So, is this how things usually go? The guys stumble onto something, tell you, you consult your contacts on the force, confirm your sources, alert the media, they disregard your seemingly outlandish claims despite overwhelming evidence, and then you jump into the fray at the last minute to help the turtles save the day?

APRIL: In times like this usually Vern and I, that's my cameraman, just circle the city in the helicopter or the van and wait for something to explode, or a giant monster to show up. Ooo! Or portals to other dimensions! Those are always popular. Sometimes we get footage, sometimes we don't. Then I just wait for the guys to stumble across something else. Most of the time it's the other way around.

DAPHNE: You stumble onto a case during one of your investigations, but it's too time sensitive to go to the police so you contact your vigilante allies and kick down doors together until you reach the heart of the matter?

APRIL: Wow, you make journalism sound so... empowering! Is it really like that where you're from?

DAPHNE: Not exactly. Just in movies and stuff.

APRIL: I see. I don't really have time for that sort of thing. I'm usually just going from one place to the next. I tend to do fluff pieces for events in the city. Then something goes horribly awry, I get kidnapped, and wait for the guys to rescue me.

DAPHNE: That sounds... I'm trying to think of a polite way to say this... taxing?

APRIL: It's a living. I mean, it should be. Most of the time my footage gets lost or destroyed. But every so often things go my way and I get my job back. I'm so lucky rent is cheap in New York.

DAPHNE: Oh, honey. You need a Daphne Blake career makeover.

APRIL: Oh, wow! What's that?

DAPHNE: Let's find out. Together.

APRIL: No, I mean, I think that's the Technodrome sending something from another dimension! What a story!

DAPHNE: Jeepers! I bet everyone else is already there. We’d better hurry.

APRIL: Not without my cameraman.

DAPHNE: Okay, but, what if there's something we can do to help?

APRIL: We aren't the story, we just sensationalize it. That’s how we help.

----

SHREDDER: Oh, so I see you’ve arrived to spoil my little plan. If only I had anticipated such an event after countless decades of almost ritualistic losses I've faced at your hands. If only I had something up my sleeves... like this!

A killer robot steps through the portal and falls flat on its face.

SHREDDER: Oh. Would you look at that. My backup plan didn't even get off the ground. I just. I don't even... Rocksteady, Bebop: Throw yourselves at them for a moment while I reflect on my life.

ROCKSTEADY: With pleasure.

BEBOP: Yeah. And casual disregard for our own safety and wellbeing.

KRANG:(Communicator) Shredder! Haven't you dealt with these interlopers ye-- are you crying!?

SHREDDER: No. I just... went a little overboard with the helmet polish this morning. I wanted to look nice.

KRANG:(Communicator) (Sighing) Look, I know things have been hard for you. Things haven't gone your way since... ever... but you're not alone.

SHREDDER: Really?

KRANG:(Communicator) Of course. Ever since I met you nothing has gone my way either, but there's something my dear Grandmama Krang use to tell me whenever I was feeling down. She used to say, “Krang, don't let hardship eat away at you. Amass an army. Strike out at the unsuspecting masses, and enslave them to do your bidding and worship you as a god!” I will never forget those words, and neither should you! Now suck it up, dummy, and slay my enemies! Bwaaaarb!

----

SHREDDER: You thought it was me sending those mutants in to steal random junk? Oh, that's rich.

LEONARDO: But, isn't that what you do?

RAPHAEL: That and get confused for a kitchen utensil?

SHREDDER: I've been out of mutagen for ages! Come to the Technodrome and take a look for yourselves. I've got nothing to hide. I was going up to the surface to investigate for myself where these creatures were coming from just in case someone else had discovered some mutagen that I could then steal, create an army with, and send them out to steal things I need to enact my plans for global domination. I've done nothing wrong.

VELMA: Well, if the subterranean mobile base trapped in another dimension wasn't a dead giveaway I can see why you were suspect number one now.

FRED: But if it wasn't the Shredder...?

LEONARDO: Then we need to find the real monster behind these monsters.

FRED: Nice.

LEONARDO: Thanks.

----

LEONARDO: Oh no! Scooby-Doo and Shaggy been turned into mutants!

MICHAELANGELO: Hey, dudes, how 'bout instead of demolishing the city, we all chill for a sec-amundo and gorge ourselves on some toasty pizza while the brainy bunch find you a cure?

Mutant Shaggy and Mutant Scooby savagely destroy the pizza parlor.

MICHAELANGELO: Those bros... are not... my bros.

----

MICHAELANGELO: Velma! Wait up!

VELMA: What is it, Michaelangelo?

MICHAELANGELO: The others have it all wrong! Those two dudes just now were not mutants!

VELMA: How do you mean?

MICHAELANGELO: I mean, like, well they could be.

VELMA: Your contradictions aren't helpful, Michaelangelo. Either they are or they aren't.

MICHAELANGELO: What I mean is, those dudes might be mutants, but those dudes are definitely not Shaggy and Scooby-Doo as mutants.

VELMA: Jinkies! Now I'm intrigued. Go on.

MICHAELANGELO: It was something they said earlier.

SHAGGY:(Flashback) Like, if we ever say no to an offer like that, we were probably replaced by impostors as some sort of devious master plan to take over the world.

MICHAELANGELO: But when I offered them some delicious slice-age, they totally did a number on the pizza parlor!

VELMA: That...

Velma takes off her glasses and rubs at her eyes. She has had a long day of dealing with mutants and inter-dimensional travel.

VELMA: That's not typically something I would consider hard evidence, but you're also not wrong. Even as terrifying mutants hellbent on the destruction of mankind, Scooby and Shaggy would've made sure they had scavenged the restaurant before destroying it.

----

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I have actual work to do.

----

BONUS

IRMA: Do you have new friends? Are any of them cute? Are they single? Never mind. Answer the first two. I can take care of the rest.

APRIL: Not now, Irma.

DAPHNE: Is she okay?

APRIL: She’s always been that way. C’mon! We have work to do.

DAPHNE: Okay. (Shouting down the hall to Irma) Bye! Get help! I’m worried about you!

#Good dumb ideas #Dumb good ideas #Scooby-Doo #Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #Ninja Turtles #TMNT #Fred Jones #Daphne Blake #Shaggy Rogers #Velma Dinkley #Leonardo #Michaelangelo #Donatello #Raphael #April O'Neil #Zoniks #AU #Headcannon #Shower Thoughts #Dude WB and Nick need to get on this pronto-mundo #Heroes in a half shell SCOOBY-DOO

[memoirs-to-myself]

The World Can Be Tricked Re;DUX

This has been one lackluster journal, blog, whatever, hasn’t it? What started as a simple way to cowardly way to vent, went to daily reports, occasional pics and posts, and long absences due to actual journaling in late 2014-early 2015 (which are sadly lost, more on that later), then lack of interest, computer availability, and last but not least, tumblr taking the crapper (yes 2011 me, I know, insane right?)

What was my point, again? I had a point writing this, right? Oh yes, the memoirs, right. 

I’ve always been, well, kind of different. I experience the world in a different sense than most people. If you’re reading this, chances are you already know that. One of the ways I like to view the world, ever since I was a little kid, was like a book series. Sometimes video game series, or a long movie series, but book series seemed to appeal to me more. Probably because of the length. I would always wonder to myself as a kid,” Is this my backstory? How many books am I already in? Has my story begun?” The thought has never really left me. “If my life were a book series, where would the first book start” Kind of a hard philosophical question of you think about it. Well, I think I have an answer, or at least one to give a purpose to this blog and possibly give it a future. 

Let’s say my story started the moment I created this “secret blog”. I know, I know, there are plenty of important defining moments before I created this blog, and for all intents and purposes, those can all be my prequels. But the actual start of my mind library, or memoirs-to-myself (get the blog name? My mind’s been secretly planning this for years) is February 2, 2012. Excellent, now we have a starting point for my first book. And it just so happens be the starting point of this blog, oh my goodness, how convenient. 

You might be asking yourself, “Hey Zach, How does this book series metaphor even work?” and I say, excellent question, trusted friend and/or future Zach! (Thanks for playing along buddy) I think of the “series” as my entire life, from start to finish, the “books” are the major stages of my life, possibly as childhood, adulthood, and retirement for example, “chapters” to being long stretches of time, “pages” being big moments on a smaller scale. That’s normally how I structure my life as I think back on it. I know, I’m a weird one, right?     

But why start the books here, almost 17 years into my life already? Well, this is around the time I believe I started thinking for myself and becoming my own person. The start of who I am today, so to speak. However, I know I’ll want to chronicle the 16 years prior, and for that, I’ll probably view that as my prequel or backstory, if you will, so it stills stays within my book series motif. That story is for another time though, because I need to get to my point and I’ve already spent 45 MINUTES (oh my god) writing this part up and I don’t think i’m even close to done. 

God have mercy.

The point being is that I believe the first book of my life is over. And if this blog is all a representation of that, then it is a poor one. I would like to fill in some gaps, clarify a few moments and memories that need proper spotlight. After all, I didn’t know I was in some of the best times of my life. And some of my worst. How could I? I want to use this blog as a library of sorts for my memories for as long as I can, and to do that, I need to redo the chronicling of my first book “The World Can Be Tricked”. Hence the ReDUX in the name of the title. This post will be a timeline of sorts of the important events that happened in that book. Everything before this post was written from me from the perspective of that book. This a retelling of the events after time has past. I plan to do these for all my “books” as a therapeutic way to reminisce and grow.

So without further ado, Let’s ReDUX:

2012- Wow. What a year. ZachZachMoore at his finest. I actually take back what I said earlier, this is a great place to start my story. The year I turned 17, the height of my high school career, the year I thought I fell in love. Already best friends with Jeffrey, Bloo at the time. Thats when I met Alex, Duff, Satiel, and even Kieth. Being a teenager was wild. Back then, I was still heavily involved with my youth group, wanted to be a youth pastor, was Prof. Plum in Clue, star performer in show choir, and was section leader when our marching band did Mechanize, the most successful show DCHS ever put on. It’s the year I became a senior, which is eventful on it’s own. Minecraft came out, friends had cars. It’s also the year where I didn’t get a lead in my last musical but all my theater friends did, the year I got my heart broken, and the year I started smoking pot. A year of beginnings alright and the peak of my teenage years. I had no idea where my rollercaster life was going, but I knew I was on top of the peak. You can say I was not ready for the first loop

2013- The first month of 2013 of was pretty normal. I was transiting from PC gaming from my ancient XP (rip sims 3) to modern (ish) console gaming due to my new XBox 360 and 3DS. My terrible school future had a light at the end of the tunnel, with moving going to the DEC, giving me a easy way to catch up on  credits and not having to be at school all day. Things were looking good for me. Then Mom and I lost our home. Due to new management, and my mom having a terrible payment plan with the old management, we were evicted on the spot, had 24 hours to move. It was traumatic to say the least. I had lived there for over 7 years, it was the closest thing I had to a childhood home, that and my grandparents house. And in a night, it was gone. I didn’t even get to truly say goodbye. After that, Mom and I moved in with Grandma Judy, and Aunt Tami. It was not ideal. I kind of just shut down the rest of the school year after that. I barely talked to my family, started partying when I could, slacked off on my studies, lost faith in my religion (found Danganronpa and Nico B, but didn’t fully engage in them. Yet) . And then I was 18, laying in a dorm bed at Olivet Nazarene University for Celebrate Life 2013. I was laying there, thinking about my future. If things went as I had planned up to this point, then by this time next year, I would be laying here. but as a student, in the next stage of my life. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel right. Then I had graduated. I still missing some credits but I essentially scammed my way through and got a diploma anyway. That marks the start of the summer of 2013, my post graduate summer. Yes, I got fucked up. That was also the start of the Dope Fam, a collection of friends we had in school and just people that were in our class. They taught us to smoke cigs, party hard, and “trip” on triple C’s. Bad influences to be sure but hey. So were we. Then, on July 19th, I had on of the worst experinces of my life. I refer to it as the incident, and I plan on giving it a whole post in itself at some point. For now, now it was a “bad trip” of sorts, and it truly terrified me to the core. This whole first book is about me transitioning for a child to an adult, but this moment truly gave me a head start. It is definitely the start of my depression, even if I didn’t know it at the time. Moving on, this cycle of partying and staying at Papaws continued all throughout the year, I even practically moved in during the fall. But by the end of the year, I was back at my Grandmas, with my mom

2014- Once again, the start of the year was pretty much the same as last year. There wasn’t a real change til around April, when I officially moved into Papaw’s camper with Jeffrey, and started working with him in Landscaping. That lasted until it didn’t. We had sorta moved out of Papaw’s at that point, and were staying at a value hotel, when we weren’t partying at D-Mo’s, but without jobs, we couldn’t afford to stay there anymore. We stayed at Alex’s a bit, starting the three of us calling each goons (showed us death note, started my love on anime), re found Danganronpa and binged it to it’s sequel, securing my taste in Japanese storytelling, bought my iphone 5s, my first phone I 100% bought for myself, and moved into Jennifer’s garage in Ingalls in the middle of the summer, in the middle of nowhere, to the point where I didn’t get service for my new phone. At this point, Alex got us a Job working at the Marriott. Satiel worked there also. Around September, my depression was in full swing and I was convinced I was going to die at 19 because I was going to kill myself (Only thing that stopped myself was that I haven’t played KH3). Dark times indeed. Jeffrey wasn’t faring too hot either, with every girl under the sun taking advantage of him. He even got a cat, Jamenson. We needed a change or we were going to suffocate. So we did. On the final days of November, Jeffrey and I moved into our first apartment together, off of Ditch Road, at the Northwest Retreat, bare bones and broke as fuck, referred to now as “THE apartment”. We viewed it at the start of a new chapter. We had no idea how right we were

2015 Part 1: Part 1? As if this wasn’t long enough?!?! I’m sorry, but there’s such a drastic shift in my life in the middle of 2015 that I have to split it up. It’s also a good place to visualize the middle of my first book, so that’s a plus. Anyway, sometime in January, Eric started working at the Marriott. We befriended him immediately (Do you smoke? Smoke What?) and invited him over to the apartment. We quickly learned that his best friend named Richie lived in the same apartment and also invited him over. This is the start of the Goon Squad, a pre-evolution of the family I have now. For the majority of the first half of the year, Alex, Eric, Rico, Satiel, Jeffrey, and I spent our days chilling and smoking, not giving a damn about anything. This is when we decided we all true friends for each other. But working at the Marriott was brutal, non rewarding, and ridiculous and after 8 months, I caved and quit, promising a new job. After awhile, everyone quit, Alex moved in for a month, and we partied even harder. But we dropped all responsibilities, started acting like kids again. At this point in my depression, I was convinced I was trash and didn’t have a personal reason to exist in this world, except for KH3, which wasn’t much. So I just ran with my life at that moment, living for the Goon Squad. It was enough for me so I didn’t think of the Consequences. And so, in July, we were evicted from THE apartment. Jeffrey moved back to his mom’s. And I, along with Jamenson, who I essentially adopted at that point, moved back to mine, who had gotten a small one bedroom apartment, and had poor communication with me, which was all my fault, due to me being upset that all of my childhood belongings were lost, which was also my fault really. It was not a good time. Then it was June.

2015 Part 2: My mom asks me to get a job. I pretend to try and don’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything, for anyone. I felt abandoned by the very people I started to live for, though I now imagined they felt the same way. My relationship with my mom had changed  drastically with me being 19, and I hadn’t felt fully comfortable with that change, let alone living with alcoholism again. I couldn’t enjoy any of my interests anymore, and I had no reason to move forward, even to help my mom, which I knew was selfish and I punished myself for it, causing an endless cycle of self hate. My depression was in full swing again. My friends weren’t faring better. Eric and Rico could barely show up to all our gatherings when we could have them, so they felt as if they were being forgotten. Satiel thought we were all moving on, Alex felt like a cheafur, I felt abandoned, and Jeffrey felt so thrown away, he dated the worst girl alive. ugh. Then Jeffrey got sick. Very sick. It was very possible he could die. It brought us to our senses that we were being petty and needed to come together. It was frightening and eye opening. When Jeffrey woke up, we all promised again to always be there for each other. I felt like things were looking up. The next night, I watched my grandma die. Yeah. The next night. My family was a mess of emotions. I could barely feel a thing. As I've stated, I sort just shut down when I can’t process things. That wasn’t an option this time, as I had my mother to think about. So I only turned off part of myself, except I don’t know if I ever turned it back on again. I’ve never enjoyed celebrating my birthday after that, since they’re so close. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over it. I don’t know if I ever will. My mom got some money back and wanted to do something great with it, so at least something positive can come out of this dark time. So, she fulfilled my long time childhood dream of owning a laptop. With that, I was back into the PC world. To be strong for my mom, I knew I had to sort something out with myself. so I found new interests, mainly Danganronpa and Nico B, learning that I can be passionate about something nerdy and not be alone, raising my spirits greatly. At this point, Jeffrey broke it off with {nameredacted} and moved in with me and my mom, and we all started moving forward again.

2016 - Oh boy. I knew 2016 was one of the books when I was living it but hot damn, this might be the best year of my life so far. So many good memories, friend building, family making, litest time ever. It’s the year Jeffrey met Krista, Rico met Rachael, Alex found Nico, Duff officially joined the group, Keith came back for a bit, Taylor showed up in our lives, I turned 21, and so, so, many snapchats. Raccoon Lake, Duff’s garage, Rico’s parents house, Alex’s car in my parking lot. We all hung out as much as we could. 2015 is when we became friends, a squad. 2016 is when we became family. So many memories that I could go on and on and on. Zero Time Dilemma came out that year. Nico played Kingdom Hearts and fell in love. I found Steins;Gate, arguably the greatest story ever written. 2016 wasn’t without it’s bad though. I still couldn’t keep a job, and I wasn’t doing my mom any favors by letting her take care of me. 2016 was the year I “dated” Cheyenne and stopped looking for something romantic, feeling that it wasn’t for me. I was so caught up in trying to like my life again, I didn’t realize the sacrifices people were making for me to even get the time to think about it. Alas, I was blissfully ignorant, living in the glow of 21-ness. The year passed with no real page turners. Just good memories.

2017- Kingdom Hearts 2.8 is coming out, the final piece of the puzzle before Kingdom Hearts 3. I need a PS4 to play both, so I guilt trip my drunk mom to buy me one, even though she definitely couldn’t afford it. At this point, I was still feeling like my mom still owned me something due to her alcoholism in my life, without realizing that even if that was true, she had paid that due and i was practically stealing from her at this point. Not gonna lie, I was kind of a shit this year. I just couldn’t see it at the time. With my PS4, I could play with mostly all the Goons, starting the co-oping time of my gaming life, directly leading me to Paragon, starting my competitive part of my gaming life, which I was sorely behind on. I was working warehouse to warehouse to appease my mom but not staying long enough to actually help her at all. Triple C’s weren’t cutting it anymore so Rico and I tried Acid, and Jeffrey and Krista tried Molly and we shared our results with the class. We finally found our party drug, and I finally got some closure on the incident. Jeffrey and Krista moved in together, after he proposed to her, and we made it our new trip central. I started streaming my gameplay and actually giving serious thought towards a future career in gaming. Then, in October, my mom and I got into a fight. A really bad one. I named it “The fight that ended” and I’ll probably explain that name and the event in detail in a later post. For now, It was a fight that made us realize that we couldn’t live together anymore. “We weren’t good for each other” she said. So she threw me out. Jeffrey and Krista took a shattered me back to their place. They said I could stay there but their lease was up in a month  so we would all have to make quick plans. I knew at this point that I had changed into something I didn’t want to be, someone that hurt the ones he loved. That had to change. And now was a good as time as ever. So, the Goons made plans to move in together. And by plans, I mean threw all their chips in the pot and hoped for a flush. I got seriously employed, sold my laptop so I could have move in money, hardened myself for the journey. I was still shook from the fight with my mom but I had to grow so I stopped feeling and just moved. Through some divine power, we got our wish, and on November 22, Duff, Alex, Rico, Jeffrey, Krista, and I moved into the “Goon Pent”, a penthouse apartment in Castleton. A dream we all shared since THE apartment, had finally been realized. We were at an all time high, we were adults and we were making it work, together. After a rocky end, we were looking towards the future with hopeful eyes.

2018 - For the first 3 months of our lease, everything was cream and peaches. We all had jobs we were serious about, we were drinking or tripping every weekend  in our own place, we kept the place clean and every one was one their own shit, Alex started dating Shelby, we even re branded the Goon Squad, to Goon Tang Clan, adding more members and friends we made along the years. Then I had an observed pee test which I couldn’t do, quit my job as a result, and wound up in the same place mentally as I was 3 months prior. I realized I hadn’t changed at all and in a cycle of self hate, I started doing the same thing I was doing at my mom’s: nothing. Duff fell into the same strut, Rico had an unreliable job, Krista and Jeffrey couldn’t find a job they could tolerate so they sold pot to make up the difference, which was also unreliable, making Alex having to cover the differences all the time. Things were starting crack, figuratively and literally, as we learned out penthouse wasn’t so luxurious as it was made out to be. We learned that while we were all great friends, we weren’t the greatest roommates to each other. We distracted ourselves with a month long stream, Taylor moving in, Paragon’s death, but by May, we were starting to get shitty with each. Me really getting shitty with me, cause at this point I had pawned all my stuff, and owned all my friends money. I had nothing to show for it and it was my birthday soon? No. I’ve had enough of doing nothing to just do something for a little while to make me feel better to just quit. I wanted to be someone my friends could depend  on, after all the time I had depended on them. I didn’t need to be some superstar person to be of use to them. Even if I was a shitty person, I could still do this. I realized this world can be tricked, that I could have issues and still make it through life. And so, for the first time in a long time, and truly did something. On the eve of my 23rd birthday, I got employed and worked all summer. I cleaned up the house without compliant. I helped others with bills and help found jobs for others. I paid back all my debts and got my PS4 back, albeit with no games, forcing me to truly build a gaming library all by myself with no ties to my mother, I was never late or missed a day at work during that time, using my self hatred as fuel to work hard. In the summer of 2018, I finally changed for the better. Then we got some huge news: Rico was going to be a dad. So Rico moved out (though he’s over allllll the time), Shelby moved in, and we all agreed to one more year here, making the end of the lease in December 2019. In September, we were doing we but I was starting to get tired of cleaning all the time. My self hatred could only take me so far and it had died down quite a bit over the summer. It’s hard to be depressed when you’re always busy and actually tired. Though Kingdom Hearts 3 delay to January didn’t help any. The house was being divided though, with me on all sides. It was going to blow to a head soon so I tried to mitigate everything I could. From Duff’s Alcoholism, to Krista’s friends being over ( Newdell is the only important one to note), To Eric just being over, we were complaining about everything. It was at this point that I fully realized that our dream of living together, had an expiration date. This great moment of my life was starting to end. On Christmas that year, I was left wondering where would that leave me? I wasn’t afraid of the Squad breaking up, but if we all moved forward right now, what would I do? Could I exist on my own? And then it was

2019- I stare at my TV screen, the timer on it draining ever so slowly. Less than 5 minutes were on it but it might as well been years. Funny, considering how long I’ve been waiting for this moment, how long could 5 more minutes be. Very long in fact. Long enough to rethink your whole life to moment. It was 11:56 PM on January 28th, 2019. 4 minutes til Kingdom Hearts 3 was out. I had called off for this. I didn’t know it at the time but I was going to be temporarily fired for this. My friends were sitting in my room with me. They weren’t caught up on Kingdom Hearts but they were to watch me react. I’ve been waiting for this game for over a decade. I stayed alive for this game. I existed these past 7 years for this one wish, to play this game. In 3 minutes, that dream will come true. And I was terrified. For some reasons, understandable. Will I enjoy playing it, Will my favorite characters survive, Will it live up to all it’s hype. All rational fears to be sure. But one was screaming louder than the others. What now? All my life, I hadn’t have many personal goals for myself, choosing to live for others rather than myself. But with everyone slowly moving on without me, I have to learn to have hopes for myself. However, the few childhood dreams I had, I had already achieved. I found a family where I could be myself. I got my laptop, found nerdy games, moved in with the goons. The only one left was about to be delivered in 2 minutes to my PS4. “Are you excited?” someone says. “Yeah, I’m speechless” I stammered out, not quite a lie but no where near the whole truth. Am I excited? It’s the end of an era. End being the key word. I realized that I can no longer call myself a child anymore. I was an adult. What does that mean? A minute left of this time, this moment. How do I feel? What do I do now? Can I live on with everyone on my own strength. Am I strong enough? It was then I noticed my phone was buzzing. An alarm was going off. It was for the release of Kingdom Hearts 3. It was out. Before I could even blink, the moment was gone. I existed post Kingdom Hearts 3 world now. A world I never thought of living in. The song I chose for the alarm was reaching it’s chorus. I had a choice here, a choice that’s been present this entire first book. To finally move forward and change, or return to endless cycle that will doom me. It’s never been much of a choice. Either I stay in this moment pretending it’s perfect or I live to beat of the song thats been playing. To face your fears. I turn off the alarm and turn towards my PS4, with KH3 waiting to be played. A choice to make here. “Well are you going to press play?” 

Not much of a choice at all

I faced my fears and pressed play

Ending “The World Can Tricked”

A book on how I learned to face my fears: myself 

[blogforfrances]

2018: a year in Japan

It hasn’t quite settled in that a new year has begun. Maybe that’s because I haven’t made a to do list for the year or any resolutions, but whatever, I’ll get to that soon. First, I’d like to look back at my 2018 because it was kind of a major year for me.

On March 5, 2018 I moved to Japan to start my job as a high school and night school teacher. To this day, I’m still in complete shock that I managed to wrangle such a good job with an amazing company. And close to Tokyo too! My Japanese friend Kaito, who I met in Canada the previous year, had told me about it and mentioned me to the company. When I finally did apply and do a skype interview, the interviewer was like “finally! I’ve been hearing so much about you!” We hit it off from there and, even though I didn’t exactly meet all the requirements (I had still hadn’t finished my onTesol, and my teaching experiences was not from in a school classroom) he thought I was an excellent fit for the job. 

January and February were a blur to me. I was so busy preparing to move. I was running around getting the proper papers for my visa. Speaking with people from the company about my training when I arrive, working extra hours at work so I’d have some extra cash coming in for the first 2 months I was in Japan (although I arrived in March, I wouldn’t start work until April, and wouldn’t get paid until May!)

In March I got set up in an amazing apartment and my Japanese friend lived just down the street, a one minute walk away! It really helped that I knew someone there, because I was initially so confused and ran into some problems. My luggage got lost on the way, and since I didn’t know my own address or have a working phone number yet, I gave them my friend’s info and he collected my things. My boss helped me apply for a bank card, drove me to shop for a microwave, and my coworkers gave me furniture and dishes and took me out for dinner and drinks or just to walk around the neighbourhood and give me some useful tips. 

Starting work was also so much fun! I had been so worried about going to the high school in April since everyone, including some Japanese people, told me the high school students are the worst. Aside from 2 classes, one that is apathetic to English and one that is super quiet, I found the students to be so much fun to teach, especially the first years! They are so excited to learn everything and always tell my assistants about how fun my classes are. It really made me happy to hear that they enjoyed my class!

Around the end of April, my Japanese friend and I had a falling out. In Canada we would spend almost every day together, hanging out, eating, teaching each other our language; but since coming back to Japan he suddenly had no time for me. He couldn’t take me to see places, he couldn’t help me set up things for daily life there, and when we did spend time together he’d be on his computer - I’m not joking, he even brought it to the restaurant say diagonal from me and didn’t talk to me once. It was in May that finally I accepted that I was in a one-sided friendship.  He’d invited me for a drive with his friends to a beach that was hours away, and when we got there, him and his friends left me and my friend waiting at a convenience store for 3 hours while they went off to another beach, an hour walk away. This person who I thought was a good friend was only nice to me in Canada probably because they needed my help - I drove him to work sometimes, helped him apply for a difficult job and prepare for the job tests, taught him English, and showed him around. But now that I needed that from him in Japan, he had no time for me. I decided that, as hard as it was going to be, it was time I distance myself from this friendship. He went from being someone I’d considered one of my best friends to someone who the thought of hanging out with brought a feeling of dread. 

I decided then and there I needed to make new friends. And wouldn’t you know it, I met the most amazing 3 people after that!

I met Fumi on hellotalk and later invited him to a language exchange picnic I found through meetup.com. There we met Mel who was from California the the 3 of us hit it off. After the event I slept over at his place and met his wife Ai, who was just as crazy and funny as he was. A week after this me and Fumi decided to throw a takoyaki party and we invited Mel and some other friends. The 4 of us have become inseparable since then. Me and Mel sleep over at Fumi and Ai’s house almost every weekend and go on crazy adventures through Tokyo, road trips to Osaka and Shizuoka to bother his friends and family, and experiment with Japanese cooking. When my brother and his girlfriend came to Japan in the summer, my friends took them to so many interesting places and were so kind to them. I always judge people by how they treat my family and friends, and the fact that they quickly became friends with my brother and his girlfriend made me so happy.

I believe that people come into your life for a reason. Some are meant to stay till the end, while others, like Kaito, are meant to just pass through. I’m not the kind to hold grudges and I will always be grateful for how he helped me in Canada and encouraged me to get a job in Japan - without him I would definitely not have moved to Japan last year, that’s a fact - but I no longer need this person in my life, and I’m sure he doesn’t need me. 

I think the summer break was the highlight of my time in Japan. I had 2 months off work, spent so much time meeting new people, going to festivals, sleeping over at Fumi and Ai’s place, and had my brother come to Japan. Nothing could bring me down!

Except when it all went away....

After my brother left Japan, I started back work. Someone had quit and for some reason they didn’t replace him, so I was covering some of his shifts. This added work and the lack of family around left me feeling drained in September and October. For the first time in all my travels, I felt homesick. I wanted to be able to share my jokes with someone, watch movies with, hang out with on a regular basis. For a while I was actually counting down till my year in Japan would be up. I just wanted to go home and get back to my “normal” or “real” life. I hated myself for thinking that way, so I decided I was going to make it right. I was going to find a way to fulfil this need. I messaged my family and told them I was thinking of coming home for a few weeks and they were more than thrilled! I was originally going to go in March 2019 but instead I came during the Christmas holidays! I’m actually writing this on my second to last day here in Canada. 

The other thing I decided to do was to start dating. I was absolutely terrified! I’d never done online dating in Canada let alone another country with a language I only knew the basics of! this was going to be a challenge. But again, I got very lucky, and have met 2 amazing people. They didn’t last very long because of the language barrier and distance but I think I’m starting to gain my confidence in going on dates and what I’m looking for. Those 2 months of dating in November and December were all I needed, but if I try again in the future, I’m only going to start conversations with people who can also speak English since that was most important to me. 

Coming to Canada for the holidays turned out to be exactly what I needed and I can’t wait to go back to Japan and see my friends! My students have 2 more months of school  - only 8 classes, so I’m nearing the end. But, luckily I’ll be staying another year in Japan! I can’t wait to see more of the country, try new things and meet new people! 

I’ll be putting together my to-do list for 2019 soon!

#2018 #last year #japan #my life in japan #a year in review #new years #teaching in japan #living in japan #tokyo #summary #this is a very long post sorry #canada to japan #dating in japan #japanese #making friends #meeting people #toxic friends #toxic friendships #letting people go #moving on #goals #starting a new life

[hxlgapataki]

HEY ARNOLD FANFICTION REC LIST

September 2017: I’m moving my HUGE rec list onto this account. I CONSTANTLY AM UPDATING THIS POST WITH NEW RECS BTW JUST TO KEEP THINGS IN ORDER.

September 25 2015: Recently I’ve been getting back into Hey Arnold! (again…) and with all the hype about Nick dropping some heavy clues that our long wait for the jungle movie or just any news at all for the ending we all know Hey Arnold! Needs and deserves well I couldn’t help it but get back to reading fanfiction again!Now now … lately I’ve been complaining a lot about the bad fanfiction I’ve been reading and how little rec lists there are since the fandom is sorta tiny so I decided to make a rec list of fanfictions that won’t make you wanna cringe!So I might as well get this one out of the way, since most of the fandom has read it and it’s one of those “fanfiction the entire fandom knows about” but I’m sure there’s a few people here and there that haven’t read it and the story is of course, the amazing, 

Ribbons/Hair/Never/There by Heidi Patacki

Helga and Arnold meet at Eugene's wedding, ten years after the cruel circumstances that split them apart. Helga reveals a secret, and its not what you may think.

Tutoring Arnold by Azure129

Oh no-it seems Arnold needs a little help with his poetry assignment if he wants a decent grade in English!Hmm, I wonder what fourth grade poet laurete Mr.Simmons could assign to help him out...Set postconfession to make things even more fun

Learning to be Helga by Azure 129

What could be more amusing than taking two hundred thousand words to make Arnold realize he loves Helga? Taking EIGHT hundred thousand words to explore in detail how this newfound relationship is working out! Sequel to Tutoring Arnold! Let's do this!

Christmas in Brooklyn by Heidi Patacki

" ... She was still Helga and he was still Arnold: the enemies, the lovers, the eternal paradox..."

Let me be your hero by AiraChica

When a girl is known for being strong, it can tear her apart to be looked at with pity. Helga Pataki, an 18 year old girl, had a part of herself stolen from her one night and ever since then, she lost herself. She was ready to give her life up, until someone reached a helping hand out for her. Arnold wouldn't let her fall, especially not when someone else was going down with her.

Dropped the ball by Luvtowritefics247

Helga figured that Arnold was drunk enough to not remember anything, and she was drunk enough to think it was a good idea. But she'll soon find out that what they'd done that night isn't going to be a secret for long. Very Slight AU.

The swing of things by Luvtowritefics247

Arnold can't decide which is harder: Raising a baby or figuring out his feelings for Helga. Sequel to Dropped the Ball.

Let’s be ‘friends’ by StarvingWriterMaeve

He brought it up first. Just because she was hopelessly in love with Arnold didn't mean she'd risk any chance of being exposed. She'd never suggest something as crazy as being Friends With Benefits. Oh, no, this was all his fault because he brought it up first.

Love is like a baseball bat by StarvingWriterMaeve

Love is like a baseball bat. It's used as a weapon if needed. It's something you hold close to you, something to be used with all of your strength. You have to fight to get a decent swing, just like the good relationships are worth fighting for

Blue Oceans by Jae B

A journey through time reveals the trials and tribulations of an unlikely couple.

The pink ribbon that he untied by Pyrex Shards

"You do nothing." Helga whimpered to herself. "You sit and watch, and you, and, you let him go. Cause there's, nothing you can do."

Arnold’s couch confessions by DarthRoden76

Dr. Bliss receives a new patient. My sequel to the Hey Arnold! Episode Helga On The Couch. This time, it's Arnold's turn to talk! Enjoy!

A Letter For Helga by Otter

Teenage Helga gets a letter from a long lost friend.

July 25 2016:

I said a few days but it’s actually been months…

Anyway this is probably the longest fanfic rec list yet

I’ve read A LOT of fanfiction since the last list and I want to share the gems I’ve found with ya’ll

Some of these are incomplete and some are ongoing, basically if it’s been over a year since the last update I will mark it as INCOMPLETE.

Instead of me getting all crazy over how much I love these fics like I did the first time, I will be posting the original summary. This list will be long and I will probably repeat myself since I do love all these fics.

Salted Nut Rolls by Commander

It would be a daunting enough task to tutor the weird girl with the bizarre hair and bizarre fashion sense even if you had never actually met her. It was downright scary to tutor that girl and know that, at least once, she had been in love with you. A/H

The Broken Locket by DarthRoden76 INCOMPLETE

Arnold begins to see the real Helga in his dreams and starts to wonder about his arch nemesis.

Not Exactly the Ugly duckling by Pillow Bosom

4 years after graduation, everybody else has moved on, but Helga is still waiting for something to happen to her.

It’s a deal by stagetrinity

Arnold and Helga make a deal: If she can help him get a date with the girl of his dreams by coaching him in romance, then he has to accompany her to formal dinner as her date. However, a lot can change in two months time. Will Helga be able to handle helping Arnold woo another woman? And if Arnold does get what he wants, will he still want what he gets?

Cocoon by CMW2

Senior Year of High School: Helga loves Arnold. Arnold loves Helga. Lila wants Arnold and will do anything to have him. And that’s all before the school year even starts!

Arnold Loves Helga by SuprSingr

What would happen if Helga had never erased her name from the wall in the episode “Arnold and Lila”?

Escalating Love by NintedoGal55 INCOMPLETE

The sequel to “Arnold Loves Helga”. What will happen in particular episodes now that Arnold and Helga have been on a date? The answers are here in this new reality.

Road Trip by Broken Nintendo

While on a road trip to Vancouver with Gerald, Phoebe and Arnold, Helga decides to torment Arnold during the trip but what happens when things heats up…could things change their normal relationship into something more?

A Sure Thing by Zero to Hero INCOMPLETE

In a moment of irrational thinking, Arnold agrees to let Helga help him get Lila to fall for him. However, he soon learns the hard way the nothing is ever a sure thing.

Blackmail Toy by AiraSora

Helga had always made it her personal mission to keep her love for Arnold a secret. She’d never ever thought that someone would overhear her monologging about him! And this guy was ready to demand absolutely awkward, terrifying and embarrassing things from Helga in exchange for not telling her secret to anyone.

Dependents by Pillow Bosom ONGOING LAST UPDATED APRIL 22 2016

Always prideful, Helga is loathe to ask for help, especially from the person who makes her feel so vulnerable… but it’s about more than just her…

Sixteen Awakening by NintendoGal55

At sixteen, while on an extended visit in Hillwood, Arnold not only reconnects with his friends and old times, but also, having to battle his ongoing sexual desires regarding Helga. As for Helga, she too is facing the same struggle.

Alter ego by AiraSora

Most people would argue that Arnold is a saint of nature. Lady Luck is not always on his side though and one day, while playing baseball, he hits the ball so hard it flies through the window to Madame Blanche’s store. The gypsy does not take it lightly and puts a curse on him. Soon he starts acting weird around his peers; especially around a certain blonde girl.

Learn to Fly by Mouse9

“Well maybe not your complete soul but definitely part of it. If you’re willing to bare your body to me, it’s only fair I get to see part of your soul too.”

Disease by MoonlightMask

He was sick, he had to be. How else could he explain the fire inside him every time she smirked at him or teased him, this constant need to defeat her? Ever since that kiss on the rofftop it was like something inside him snapped, she occupied his every thought, consumed him even in his dreams. He didn’t know who he was anymore and it was all her fault.

The Love Note by SilveryMoons

When Arnold is dared to write a fake love note to Helga, things get a bit hectic. More like a lot hectic. Can he stop things from going further than he expected?

Trying by LeSkuh INCOMPLETE

Fate, in the form of Arnold, collapses onto a twenty-five year old Helga G. Pataki’s front step as she runs late for work one fine summer’s day - effectively turning her life upside down and then stomping on it for good measure.

The Perks of Being Roommates by AiraSora

When Helga came home one night after a party, she thought that Arnold was in pain because of the whimpering noises coming from his bedroom. What she discovered when she barged in, left her in complete shock and… fascination?

Boring by AiraSora

“You’re bored with her, aren’t you?” the strange girl asked me. I wanted to tell her that Lila was perfect for me. I had fought for her attention for years and now she was finally my girlfriend, but it felt like I was still trying to win her heart. Something was missing and that something could be this excitement I felt whenever I looked in the blue eyes of this strange girl.

Bad Behavior by AiraSora

“I told you I was trouble with my bad behavior.” he said to me as he pushed me up against the wall, claiming my lips in a breathtaking kiss. I, Helga G. Pataki, has officially fallen for a bad boy, something I thought I was too smart to ever do. He is sugar-coated misery, a devil in disguise and a snake with green eyes. I guess it’s karma… I have bad behavior too.

Blind Date by shieldmaiden5678

Arnold and Helga are set up on a blind date by their best friends in an attempt to get them out of their depression. After not speaking to each other for nearly two years, old wounds are reopened and secrets are revealed on a night neither will forget.

You let her go by PreselyRox

Gerald never understood the appeal of Helga until age 19. He should have felt bad for sleeping with his ex’s best friend/best friend’s ex-girlfriend, but he didn’t. He always knew he’d never be her happy ending, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

Ask Geraldine by Kat Doll INCOMPLETE

After FTi Helga confesses her love to Arnold, who sadly doesn’t feel the same way. Now Arnold is running Hillwood High’s newspaper, and dating Lila. As an act of revenge, Helga becomes the mysterious advice columnist ‘Geraldine.’

Arnold’s Darkest Day by tear of the sun girl

“Have you ever watched someone die? It’s awful I have watched her die so many times if I do one more time I won’t survive” Arnold is stuck in the same day and no matter what he does it keeps repeating. Can he make it stop? Can he change the future?

Heart Shaped Box by Reinamy

In which Helga G. Pataki gets stuck in an elevator with the last person she ever wanted to be in close quarters with. Her life, ladies and gentlemen.

Spanish 2 Was All For You by Polkahotness

Spanish 2 with Arnold was fun until a class presentation changes everything. When he leaves to chase his dreams & find his parents in the middle of the San Lorenzo jungle, it’s Helga who is left behind with the secret she was never able to tell. But will a surprising video call from Arnold months later change her life forever?

The Art of Losing by Ardent Ly

She gave up her boots, her closet, her childhood, and ultimately, her heart – so, it only made sense that she should be the one to give this up, too. Never underestimate a woman in love.

Please don’t forget me by gardenOfeden777

the best night of both of their lives become the most tragic and ironic as Arnold pops the big question but after getting hit by a drunk driver he forgets his love for Helga. He remembers how much he hated Helga and how much Helga hated him. Will Helga have to start from square one or will his memory come back? would she have to give up the only thing she cares about most?

Home cooking by Otter

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But Helga can’t cook. Or can she? Take one cup comedy, add a spoonful of drama, and a dash of romance. Then overheat like Helga’s imagination!

Crazy for you by Poison Ivory

Helga and Arnold are reunited at Phoebe and Gerald’s wedding, and neither of them are talking about what happened between them. But what did happen?

Jealousy by Janette-Chentel

The Gang’s older, and Arnie’s back, but he’s not the same geek he was 8 years ago. Can Arnold contain his jealousy when Arnie turns his attentions to Helga?

Turn On The Lights by LittleXio INCOMPLETE

“I’ve never felt sorry for you, Helga. And no one ever should.” Helga’s life has never been easy, but at the peak of her high school completion, she suddenly finds herself homeless and with less friends than fingers. Can she save herself and make her dreams come true?

Rain by xconfundedx

“For her, it marked the day she lost her inspiration and stopped writing. Her entire worldview and every dream she ever had were on a plane the next day.”

Rooftop Confessions by SuprSingr

What the heck are Arnold and Helga doing on top of a building AGAIN?

The Turntables by whatsamatta

A chance encounter at a record store? Some things never change.

One for the Road by whatsamatta

Helga takes Arnold on a road trip neither will soon forget. Sequel to The Turntables.

Studying on more important things by BrokenNintendo

A smile came to his face, and he said nothing, just continued to admire her, how beautiful and soft she was, in the afterglow of pleasure. “I guess studying on more important things was worth it, huh?”

Up in the Air by PreselyRox

After Helga witnesses her fiancé killing someone she goes to police and discovers just how little she knew about him. He is connected to the biggest crime ring in the East Coast. After giving her statement she learns she must go under police protection and is shocked when she finds out the FBI agent assigned to protect her is her old crush, Arnold Shortman.

Saturday Night by Avery Greyson

Helga takes in Arnold after he’s had a few too many drinks.

Helga’s Problem by darkdork13 INCOMPLETE

When Helga sees Bob slap Miriam late one night, she runs away and finds herself on Arnold’s doorstep. Her emotions are running too high to keep under wraps, and Arnold begins to see another side of Helga that he never thought existed.

Dreams of Blue Skies by BunniGirl INCOMPLETE

Helga snaps after she sees various things in her life go wrong, grades, family, friends, and her love. She sees the only way out after one night. Will someone save her before it was too late?

Breaking point by Luvtowritefics247

Because their sexual tension could only remain unresolved for so long; something was always bound to happen.

In the summertime by AiraSora

The first time I saw her, she was naked. The first time I met her, she recognized me. The first time she kissed me was the first time I was kissed at all. This girl would change my summer and I knew it from the moment my eyes met hers. There exists many bad ways of meeting the girl of your dreams, but the way I met Helga Geraldine Pataki takes the cake.

To the fire escape and beyond by Polkahotness

After years of confusion and hiding her feelings from Arnold, Helga has finally become the object of Arnold’s affections. The catch? Nobody knows, and they intend to keep it that way- at least for now. But will an unexpected school group project prove to be their secret’s undoing?

I am yours by RedGem270

Arnold gets amnesia after getting hit on the head. He mistakes Helga as his girlfriend, but after two days does Arnold really have amnesia or is it a trick of the mind?

Coffee by Writer25

I spent more than five years trying to forget the greatest heartbreak of my life. I grew up, moved in with Olga, and tried to figure out what I was going to do with my life. So of all the coffee shops in the city, why did he have to come to mine?

Life is Short by starfiction123 ONGOING

Many have different perspectives on how life is defined. Some would say lovely, complicated, treacherous, passionate even. But whether the thoughts be pleasant, cherishing its value, or bitter enduring its harsh realities, from my experience I’ve found this fact to be true…that life is short. So my story begins…

Ardent by EmmyDana

Since Arnold had stayed in San Lorenzo six years ago, sixteen-year-old Helga always sleep walked to the boarding house and slept in his bed, hoping she’d wake up next to him. She didn’t expect one morning to actually wake up to her very beloved next to her.

Words I couldn’t say by Arnold’s Love ONGOING

You can grow up, you can move on, you can even move away and start over, but somehow the things you left in the past have a way of catching up with you…

My Fair Pataki by stagetrinity INCOMPLETE

Arnold volunteers to Stage Manager the school play "My Fair Lady” in order to get an extra activity for college apps. However, working under Helga as acting director isn’t the best job one could ask for. But Arnold has an escape - his online IM partner. But when he discovers the blogs owner, adjusting to what he sees against what he reads can be hard. Which version to believe?

Lucky shot by NerdilyNi INCOMPLETE

Arnold, now 17, has always been left wondering who Cecile was. So when an odd girl who knows who Cecile is moves into the Sunset Arms, Arnold might finally get some answers. At least, as long as his new found feelings for Helga don’t get in the way.

Kissing the lipless by Let Love In INCOMPLETE

After receiving news that her grandpa Robert has died, Helga learns that he left her his house in Hilwood. She moves back only to find that her repressed memories are waiting for her

The Break-up by MuffinLove03

Somewhere Along the way by Pink Lychee

Arnold was never sure what it was exactly that made him fall for Helga. As he retraced every possible memory of her, he couldn’t choose only one reason.

Sex-ed by NeuroticBanana

Helga and Arnold are stuck in Anatomy class discussing sex ed. Things get awkward when the instructor makes everyone put condoms on bananas and the class gets a little rowdy. Time for confession perhaps, Helga?

I thought you liked redheads by LycoRouge

Everyone is dying their hair lately and getting a lot of attention for it. Should Helga cave and dye her hair too? Will that get the attention she craves from Arnold?

Victoria’s Secret by StarvingWriterMeave INCOMPLETE

Helga’s much more than the nine year old 'It Girl’.

Things that are True by YuniX-2

He’d sort of already known what was coming, truth be told, when he questioned Helga on the roof of FTi. But then again, he hadn’t really known at all. Some puzzles are too preposterous to solve on ones own.

I 'Hate’ YOU too! By Azure129

What maybe happened after Helga ran off into the sunset after her confession? And more importantly what the heck happened to TJM?

Sweet Hostility by Twelvepercent

Arnold reacts out of character as he feels the need to defend the girl he cares for the most. It’s rated T for violence and adult content.

Harder than you think by SuprSingr

Being dense is hard work.

FTi Aftermath by NintendoGal55

Arnold reflects his feelings about what had happened on the fated day upon the FTi rooftop. After some pretty good advice, and taking the time to think it all over, he decides to get it all out and have a good talk with Helga about it.

Avalanche by Pointy Objects ONGOING

“I don’t think I’m that good of a liar.” “I think you are.” “Well, I did convince you I wasn’t in love with you for nine years…”

Things fall apart by sweet.aria INCOMPLETE

In the aftermath of her dramatic confession, Helga begins to withdraw.

RNLD by NinentedoGal55 INCOMPLETE

Based on the adorable Disney & Pixar movie WALL-E, follow along with our hero, the lovable and curious Arnold as he goes from his life as a trash collector, to find out what he is truly meant for upon meeting the beautiful search scout Helga.

The surprise by twilightfucker

“You’ve been in love with me since we were three and treated me like shit ever since. I let you because I knew deep down you didn’t mean it.” When the confrontation comes it is not planned and what occurs is a surprise to all.

July 27 2017: 

ALRIGHTY GUYS TIME TO UPDATE THE LIST! I WILL BE UPDATING THIS SPECIFIC POST FROM NOW ON TO KEEP THIS IN ORDER ON A SINGLE POST.

Missing by Missie2

Five years after Helga G. Pataki vanished, presumably murdered, her ghost pops up in Arnold's house to take care of some unfinished business.

I Can Still Hear You by Hannahmc15

Arnold had always had a strange ability- the ability to hear Helga, even if she wasn't around. Years later, he can still hear her, but now it haunts him. If she is dead, how can he still hear her?

The Club by Polkahottness

I never thought life without Olga would cause so many problems for me. After all, out of everybody I knew, I was probably the only one with just cause enough to want her gone. But now that she was, everything was up in the air, including my relationship with Arnold. Could a view from Mighty Pete shed light on what I'd lost? Or help me lose Arnold forever?

Slam by Smarty0007

Helga is a slam poet. Arnold is a musician. What happens when the two collide?

Lovely Misandry by Airasora

Being in love for the first time is never easy, but to Arnold, it's downright torment. Not only has he been in love with her his whole life, not only is she his best friend; she hates and distrusts men with her entire being. He is the only exception, but how much of an exception is he really? Can he win over the girl whose heart has turned to stone by the men in her life?

Keeping Arnold:Or, How to Get Disowned by Lachesism

After ten long years in San Lorenzo, Arnold suddenly returns to Hillwood, throwing Helga's world into chaos irreversibly. Gerald and Phoebe start acting suspicious about his return; what secrets does he bring with him, and what does it mean for Helga? Can she get him to stay? Does she want him to stay? And how does Lila, mysteriously absent for years, factor into his return?

Ever After by Mouse9

The hottest thing on television is a teen drama called "Ever After". It's fresh, it's raw, and it's popular in the Shortman household. The problem is, the story might be a little less fiction and a little more family history.

Never After by Mouse9

The episode is called "Homecoming" It's a story that needed to be told. The second in the "Ever After" Series.

Discovery by Devoosha

A Hey Arnold fan fiction with the kids in 5th grade and beyond. The lead up to the events in The Jungle Movie and what is my version of the Jungle Movie and what happens after.

The Sweet Hereafter by Lord Malachite

A journey of selfdiscovery for Helga as she discovers who she is, with a little help from a certain Football Headed young boy.

Clean by American HOT Fender

After waking up in the hospital, a 26 year old Helga lands herself in rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. Bob wants her cleaned up but while she's there, Gerald begins to dig into the past and brings out a skeleton in her closet that has haunted them both. And what exactly does all of this have to do with Arnold anyway?

I’ll Even Give Her Mine by apychopathsutopia

"So... Arnold had cheated on his girlfriend. My man Arnold. Cheated. On his girlfriend. But it was the way that he said it that really interested me: he just said it. It was a statement to him, not a confession, or a heart-wrenching admission of guilt. He said it the same way he'd tell me he was out of sugar."

All I Can Do by Smarty0007

Collection of events that eventually culminates in an understanding. And boy, does it take forever.

The Ant by Call Me Nettie

Just a quickie, a little bit more than a drabble but much less than a story. Hope you like it. 

Lila Likes Helga by EVILinnocence666

Why Lila only likes Arnold and doesn't like-like him. 

Kidnapping, Match-Making, & Everything-in-Between by theps118confessional

Helga Pataki- 26, now settled in almost every sense of the word: a steady job, a kid and a house- kind of, really doesn't think she qualifies as certifiably crazy anymore. That is- until she kidnaps Arnold Shortman's children. By accident. Sort of. 

Leaves, Missed Signs, and the Incorrigible Effects of Time by theps118confessional

Arnold left. Arnold came back. Arnold didn't change at all. Everything else did. Helga hadn't physically hit someone in years, but God, did she want to punch him in the face. 

Smoke On The Water by AiraSora

Trouble always seemed to find Arnold, especially if that trouble was Helga Pataki. After a fierce mud fight at a school trip, Arnold was forced to head back to shower. Helga was also left behind in order to change so when the rusty pipes gave out and left Arnold blind with his own shampoo who else could save him than the girl who had put him in this predicament to begin with? 

Roadside Girl by AiraSora

Acting had in many ways been one of Helga's many skills. Arnold hadn't expected her to give a shot at a career in it though thereby leaving Hillwood to study abroad just when he had started to grow feelings for her. That smidge of love has turned into bitter resentment, so when the play Helga is cast in as the heroine is falling apart, can Arnold ignore the past pain and save it? 

What Are The Odds by American HOT Fender

"-My leg is killing me!" She howled, "Crimeny it hurts!" At that, the young man paused and squinted very closely at his victim. "H-Helga?" He asked. Helga pried her eyes open and stared at him with a furrowed scowl, "Football head!" She barked. Of course! Who else would bowl her over but Arnold Shortman! Arnold freakin' Shortman.  

The Elevator by American HOT Fender

It certainly wasn't how Helga Shortman had planned to spend her day. Trapped in an 8x7 space with her soon to be ex-husband. 1 elevator, 2 people, 6 hours. Will they kill each other or rekindle their love? 

Oh, I Can’t Take Another Heartache by MellyTheHun

As Arnold begins his biggest adventure - growing up - he finds that the things he used to find easy and simple become more and more complicated and the people he used to have certain slots for in life... well, maybe they just don't fit in easily definable boxes the way he always thought. It's hard to tell if the world is getting bigger, or if he's just feeling, hearing and seeing more of it than before. 

I Do My Best To Understand, Dear, But You Still Mystify by MellyTheHun

Puberty takes a physical and hormonal toll on our favorite Hillwood hero while he tries desperately to take control of his life, afraid that he is not the one holding the reigns.

Five Kisses by Commander

Shakespeare's original version of Romeo and Juliet has FIVE kisses? Helga's totally getting gypped! ...Or is she? "School Play" inspired two-shot.

#hey arnold #hey arnold! #arnold shortman #arnold p shortman #helga pataki #helga g pataki #gerald johanssen #phoebe heyerdahl #shortaki #helga x arnold #arnold x helga #arnold/helga #helga/arnold #hey arnold the jungle movie #hey arnold! the jungle movie #tjm #the jungle movie #hey arnold! fanfiction #hey arnold fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfiction rec

[diaryofsswomen]

Dear Diary: Thoughts x10

19 April 2020

Sunday

20:35

It has been a month of lockdown and now lockdown is to be extended. Great right? Since this national lockdown has started I could not help but think, now when I say think I don’t mean spend quality time thinking and reflecting about life probably as I should…SIKE!!! I OVERthink. If you are like me you know that this is not easy to pass by and now with more time on our hands, our minds are going crazy. All those thoughts, situations and feelings that we avoided in our lives before COVID19 are now re-surfacing, I don’t know about you but mentally I am not okay.

I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder when I was 18 and since then, there isn’t always smooth sailing in my head. There are effects of mental health that society does not pay attention to or talks about, major effects of anxiety are memory loss, overthinking and negative or terrifying, worrying thoughts. I have gone through it all. At a time like this, we don't only need to look after our physical health, involving the actual Corona Virus but also, more importantly, our mental health. I am sure we are all going crazy being isolated from the outside world, friends, families, places we loved to go to. We have to be stronger than this and as cheesy as it sounds we need to be in it together and most importantly for ourselves, we need to keep ourselves sane.

During this lockdown thoughts, situations and past issues began to creep up on me, it was frustrating because I started feeling like I could not deal with them because I was locked up in my house and couldn’t go out or see anyone. So this cloud of melancholy came over me, I haven’t been the cheerful, bright, energetic person that I am, also I just didn’t have those daily distractions and it was then when I realized, for the longest time I had been holding everything inside and now the time had come to let it go and like filling a balloon with way to much water I burst. I spilled everywhere and perhaps too much onto those things and people I care about and love. I have had so much time to think just not in a healthy way, I allowed myself to take this period of quarantine to not heal. But not all is lost! I figured this lockdown period could go two ways and there are three things to remember.

Two Things:

1.       You could take the time to reflect and think about your life, how good it is, how bad it is, what needs to change, what doesn’t. You could practice healthy self-care by writing it down, praying on it, talking to loved ones about it. releasing it and come out of this soo much stronger, appreciating life and never taking anything that God has offered us for granted. You could allow yourself a life-changing experience from this pandemic.

2.       Or you could constantly allow yourself to think the worst of everything, allow the past to resurface, allow fear to dictate the time you have alone, not communicate at all, stay down, mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. Solve no pressing problems and come out of this worse than when you came into it. Repeat the same actions and treat the world and your attitude to life like before the pandemic started.

 Not sure about you but I am definitely trying to go for number 1 which is undeniably the best way to come out of this lockdown.

 I am not going to quote some fancy self-help book, video or Professor, no in this entry I am quoting myself and it comes from my own experiences. Three things to remember:

 1.       It is not the end of the world: COVID19 might seem like the end but it is not, your life is precious, you make 10000 mistakes, forgive yourself, learn from it, never do it again move on, everything is temporary where you are now is not forever.

2.       Focus on yourself especially your mental health: In the end, you die alone and you only have YOU, do what-if right for you, what makes you feel good and free and just plain happy. LOVE YOURSELF(I needa do some of this). Do what is good and healthy for your mind.

3.       Keep it moving: No matter what keep it moving ask for forgiveness, forgive yourself for the past, straighten it out with people, with yourself, fall, pick yourself up and keep going keep moving!

 This entry was special to me because it was my way of releasing all I have been feeling and going through in the last few weeks and it feels so good to share it with you. Helping is in my nature, I hope this helps. Take care of your mental health, stay safe and sane!

 Goodnight XOXO

#its okay #diaryofsswomen selflove lockdown loveyourselfmore