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everlarkficexchange · 3 years

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Just Close Your Eyes, You'll Be Alright

Written by: @alliswell21

Prompt 154: Soulmate au where your soulmates injuries and scars show up on your body tinted in their favorite color. Katniss through the years as she discovers new marks, pondering what it could possibly be, finally figuring out that her soulmate is being hurt way too regularly and in very specific places. Do her parents figure out Peeta is being abused? How do they find and “rescue” him? Or does Peeta live his whole childhood being abused before turning 18? Does he runaway? How do he and Katniss find their way to one another? [submitted by @lovely-tothe-bone / @peetamewllark]

Teen and up

AU- Modern setting (but like without cell phones). One Shot.

Warnings: Canon typical violence, Language, child abuse and neglect, injuries, implied (non-descriptive) underage smut. Nobody dies! Unbetaed.

-lyrics of Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift, Feat. The Civil Wars - Songs from District 12 and Beyond (2012)

Author’s note: Thank you to @lovely-tothe-bone for her inspiring prompt and to the organizers of EFE, for bringing the challenge back so faithfully, you ladies rock!

KPKPKPKP

“Look at her!” Papa screeched at the policeman, lifting the back of my favorite pink polka dotted shirt. “You have to do something about this, Sheriff Cray!” Papa demanded, angrily.

The man just watched, like he didn’t care. Then sat back down lazily, “There’s nothing much I can do, to be honest. Unless you can produce the child sporting the actual bruises, my hands are tied.” Said the policeman.

I had no idea what the problem was, I felt fine, but ever since my 5th birthday, every time Mama helped me out of my day clothes for my bath, she wept and held me close to her chest, whispering “No child deserves to be treated so poorly,”

Papa too always made a face and looked sad and angry when Mama showed him my back after my baths.

It was funny how bath time could easily be my favorite time of day, but it made the grown ups upset somehow. I just liked that mama would rub ointments on my back, bottom and thighs, carefully and without fuzzing about the time she was spending away from my baby sister, Primrose. Is not that I didn’t like Prim— I thought she was as lovely as a doll— I didn’t mind sharing mama’s snuggles with her either, but it was nice to just feel mama’s warm hands caressing me to sleep every now and then.

Either way, I wished someone would tell me what was so wrong with my behind that had the grown ups acting so weird.

They were starting to scare me, really.

“There has to be something we can do! There are genetic tests to determine matchless people, couldn’t we use the same technology to find the markers matching my daughter’s counterpart to identify him?”

“Mr. Everdeen, I’m not a geneticist. I wouldn’t know about anything like it… and who’s to say we could use it to find your girl’s soulmate? Then we what? It’ll open an unknown Pandora’s box situation, people would start tracking soulmates illegally or something less than honorable. It’ll certainly set a precedent we cannot foresee the ramifications of!”

“You’re telling me that there’s some kid out there, somewhere, getting beaten week in and week out, and you’ll do nothing about it?! You’ll allow the abuse to continue uninterrupted?”

The man nodded slowly, “You said it yourself, Mr. Everdeen. The kid’s ‘out there, somewhere’, we don’t even know if he’s local, or his age. In any case, I only have jurisdiction over District 12, and I can’t very well launch a country wide investigation on an alleged case of abuse, specially if we have no victim,”

“But my daughter’s soulmate is suffering! Who knows what permanent damage this poor child may have as an adult! It’s my daughter’s future we’re talking about!”

“Most unfortunate, sir. I don’t wanna seem unsympathetic, Mr. Everdeen, but unless your little girl can figure out a way to communicate with her soulmate, find… an address— at the very least a name— there isn’t anything we can do to help.”

Papa huffed, his nose flared, “Fine. Thank you for your consideration…Sheriff.” Papa put his big ol’ hand on my shoulder and guided me away, “Come on Katniss, it’s time to go home.”

I looked up at Papa and reached for his hand. I smiled at him, “It’s okay, Papa. Mama says to give grumpy people time, and they may be nicer the next time we talk to them.”

Papa smiled at me, but it didn’t crinkled the corner of his eyes, like real smiles did, “That’s nice sweetie… although, that usually only applies to people just waking up from naps, like you and me,”

I giggled when he picked me up and tickled my tummy.

Papa kept talking to grown ups about my back, but nothing was ever done about it.

———————-

I was 11 when our world pitched upside down.

Papa was one the foramen on shift at the town’s coal mine when the earth shifted and an entire tunnel collapsed.

Prim and I were in school when the sirens went off. There’s nothing worse than to hear the end of your world being advertised so loudly and without mercy.

I grabbed my sister’s hand and rushed to the mines; we found our mother there, clinging to the yellow tape cordoning off the site.

I should’ve known something wasn’t right when I was the one seeking Mama out, trying to comfort her, instead of the other way around. It was the first time the concept of a soulmate stopped being an abstract notion, and became a reality, because my mother stopped functioning altogether the moment she realized Papa had been hurt.

I saw how much a soulmate could affect you. It wasn’t only the marks on the skin— those came without conscious pain— it was the fear of knowing that someone you loved was hurting, sometimes badly, and not being able to do anything about it.

Mama’s left leg started glowing pink from the shin down at first, and the color began to shift to a darker red the longer Papa laid underground.

Unbeknownst to us, my father had been pinned under fallen rock and dirt after pushing a man to safety, risking his own life. The sharp end of a pickax perforated Papa’s leg in the cave-in. The pickaxe worked as a plug, keeping him from bleeding out while he waited for the rescue crew to reach him.

Papa laid on the floor of the very last lift to surface with rescued miners. He was unconscious. Had suffered extensive blood loss. The lone medic in the rescue crew couldn’t fix him up right away, but Mama was a nurse, and like a switch flipping on, she ripped off the bottom of her skirt, and tied a tourniquet around my father’s thigh, saving his life at the cost of his limb.

My father lived, but his leg had to be amputated.

He couldn’t work in the mines anymore, and what little money we got as compensation from his injuries, were put into paying off the mortgage, because Papa decided that having a roof over his family’s heads was far more important than having a leg.

The rub was, a roof didn’t fill our stomachs or put a coat around Prim’s shivering shoulders. Mama put a hold on her nursing career, obsessing over Papa’s care, despite his protests. Someone had to pick up the pieces, and that someone turned to be me.

I started selling everything I could carry out of the house in my arms: tools, kitchen appliances, small furniture, etc. But we never had many possessions to begin with, so my wares ran out soon, and I turned to our closets for their meager treasures.

I sold my parents best clothes, along with my sister’s winter boots that didn’t fit her anymore. I looked at my own shoes with longing, but put them into Primrose’s shoe rack, deciding I could manage with Mama’s boots, if I stuffed them with newspaper. Mama never left the house anyway. Neither did Papa for that matter, but he wasn’t dead, just convalescencing, so I left him a pair of footwear just in case, and sold his work boots and his Sunday loafers.

The day I was down to the last pair of clothing, we had been slurping on mint tea for the third day in a row from a few old leaves I found in the very back of the pantry. It was the last of our food, besides Papa’s bland diet, but I refused to let on on how precariously stocked we were, until absolutely necessary.

But, nobody wanted the hand-me-down baby clothes I had for sale, nor the slightly beaten stroller I was pushing around with my ‘merchandise’.

Icy cold rain, soaked me to the bone. I was so tired and downtrodden, I ran to the first awning I found, unwilling to go back home to Prim’s sunken blue eyes and chapped lips, asking for something to eat, while my hands were empty.

I tripped and fell face first on the umbrella stroller, breaking it irreparably and soiling the few onesies I’d been trying to sell.

With my wares ruined, and winded by a sharp pain shooting through my elbow, I limped towards a scraggly apple tree a few feet away. I recognized the place as the alley behind the town’s bakery, just by the smell alone.

I cupped my elbow, wondering if I’d broken it or merely banged it up? That’s when I saw the dumpster.

Big ugly thing, dirty and smelly. I climbed a wooden crate to dig for anything edible inside, but before I could lift the lid, a screeching voice shouted at me.

“Get out of there, Seam brat!”

I jumped off the crate, startled, and cowed behind the dumpster when I saw the baker’s grumpy wife sneering at me from the warmth of her kitchen’s back door.

A boy about my age— I recognized him as one of my classmates from school— peeked his towheaded face around the woman, and although they were a good five yards away, I could see his blue eyes widened as he took me in. The boy slipped back inside, as his mother spewed threats of calling the police on me and whatnot.

I started debating whether I wanted to trace back and drag my broken stroller over; pretend I was merely trying to dump it in the garbage, while inspecting the trash for food… but the baker’s wife was nicknamed the Witch by all the neighborhood children for a reason.

Before my mind was made, a loud, metallic bang resonated into the street from inside the bakery. Yelling ensued, then the sound of a meaty hand against a small face.

A few seconds later, the witch was chasing the boy out the back door, “Toss it in the trash, you stupid creature! Nobody will pay money for burnt bread anyway!”

The boy scurried by with his head down.

My eyes stuck on the bread in his hands, was probably the reason I missed the shiner under his eye. He stopped right in front of the dumpster, but instead of throwing the ruined loaves in, he tossed them in my direction.

I didn’t wait around to ask if he meant for me to grab them. I just scooped them up and fled like a bat out of heck.

When I got home, Mama gasped in horror. She grabbed me by the shoulders and pressed me to her chest. “Oh no! It’s getting worse. They don’t even care to hide the bruises anymore!”

Mama lathered my face with all the medicinal herbs she had at hand, while apologizing profusely for abandoning me and Prim to our own devices. She vowed to find a job, and to take better care of us.

“No child should ever suffer like this!” I couldn’t tell if she meant Prim and I, or whoever my soulmate was.

Mama interrogated me about my whereabouts and how I came upon the bread in my arms, but she seemed to rest easier after a while.

When I was finally able to look at my face in the mirror, I was horror struck by the deep orange bruise swelling under my eye. It took three days for the bruise to go away completely even with mama’s careful fingers.

Coincidentally, the baker’s son didn’t show up to school for the next four days. By the time he did, I had lost any confidence in myself to go up to him and thank him for the bread that fed us for a few days; the loaves were perfect! Only the crust had been charred, but I had a hunch the boy knew that when he threw the bread to me; I was also convinced he burned the bread on purpose, I was just too chicken to ask him why? Which made it even harder to hold his gaze when we crossed each other in the school hallways.

All I knew was that because of the selfless actions of the boy in my year at school, my mother seemed to wake from her single minded obsession. The boy with the bread gave our family a sense of hope, despite the fact that it would take some time for Mama to find work and produce enough money for the family. Papa’s medical needs had to be met as well, and he was due a new leg.

While those thoughts churned in my head, my eyes focused on a bright yellow bloom across the school yard. The first dandelion of the season! I picked the cheerful blossom, and the idea on how to feed my family until Mama was back on her feet, came to me.

After school, I took Prim’s hand and a clean bucket in the other; together we scoured the yard and the woods nearby for all the dandelions we could fit in the bucket. That night, we gorged ourselves on dandelion salad, and the next day, I pulled from under my parent’s bed, the only thing of value we had left in the house, Papa’s hunting bow.

“Are you sure you can handle it, pumpkin?” My father asked, watching me carefully.

“You taught me how to do it,” I said, trying to hide my nerves.

“I taught you with a smaller bow,” he pointed out, “why don’t use yours?”

I shouldered the heavy bow, and took a few loose arrows in my hand, “I sold it. These are all we have left now,”

After a handful of days practicing, I actually shot something worth eating. Seeing my mother’s blue eyes pop in surprise when I dropped the dead rabbit on the table, was priceless.

——————-

One early morning, right before summer break, I happened across another hunter… a trapper, to be precise.

A lanky, scowling boy, with three fat bunnies tied to his belt, and a fourth hanging in the air by a simple— yet elegant— wire snare.

I’d seen his traps before, his prey with their dead eyes and lolling tongues, just high enough off the ground to keep other animals from taking off with them. Papa told me that hunter etiquette was to be observed; if I happened across a trap that wasn’t mine, I was not to touch it, out of respect for my fellow hunters. That still didn’t discourage me from looking! After all, the snares looked like works of art, and I had no idea how to set any on my own.

“Stealing is a punishable offense, you know,” Snapped the boy, and suddenly I realized just how tall he was.

From up close, I could see the beginning of some stubble under his chin.

“I wasn’t gonna take it…” I stepped away from the twitching bunny, with my hands raised in surrender. “Admiring your work, that’s all. By the way, I’m Katniss Everdeen, what’s your name?” I asked, trying to be friendly.

“Name’s Gale. Hawthorne. So… you know how to use the thing hanging from your back, Catnip, or is that just for show?” He practically bumped me onto my butt, stepping passed me while pulling a knife from his belt to cut his kill down. He turned to watch me, smirking. “That thing looks bigger than you, are you sure you can lift it up?”

I scowled at him, wondering if he was expecting to see me squirm or something. I was smaller than the average 12 year old, but I was fast and scrappy.

“My name is KatNISS. I can shoot my own food thank you very much,” I held my bow aloft and moved so he could see my quiver full of arrows, “my weapons aren’t props or fakes,” I said, haughtily.

“Yeah, well, it still looks bigger than you,”

I rolled my eyes, fed up. Any other time I’d meekly shy away, and let him be; but I was feeling stubborn and confrontational, so I pulled my bow, nocked an arrow and let it fly, all in a fluid motion.

Gale gaped with a hint of fear in his gray eyes.

I felt smug and satisfied.

I wasn’t aiming at anything in particular, I just wanted the obnoxious boy to shut it, but by a stroke of luck my arrow pierced a falling leaf, and imbedded itself deep into the knot of a gnarly looking tree trunk.

“Wow! That was amazing, Catnip!” Gale said in awe.

“It’s Katniss… I’m okay, my father was better,” I said, puffing my chest a little, “I haven’t managed stealth yet, not like Papa before the accident, anyway. He doesn’t hunt anymore.”

Gale frowned. “Was your dad in the cave-in?” He asked grimly.

I nodded.

“So was mine. He almost didn’t make it.”

“Same.”

He just stood there, staring at the ground for a moment, then I tried to play cool, “Hey, I’d be willing to spare some shooting lessons, in exchange for some snaring techniques,”

Gale watched me, intently. He finally nodded and stuck his hand out for me to shake, “Deal!”

I smiled. Papa always said that good hunting partners were hard to find, and while I didn’t want a new hunting partner— I already had my father!— I could always exchange knowledge with a fellow hunter and improve my game.

——————-

Papa was fitted with a basic prosthetic leg. He couldn’t run or swim with it, but having the ability to walk without crutches gave him a “new lease in life”, as he called it.

He found work doing odd jobs for Haymitch Abernathy, a hermit drunk, with more money than he knew what to do with, and no family to spend it on. The man needed someone to talk to every now and then, and seeing as he and my father were close in age, they developed a strange rapport between them.

Still, Papa wasn’t completely confident with his fake leg, no matter how many physical therapies he attended; he still walked with a pronounced limp. Yet, he always had a word of comfort for Mama.

My mother often blamed herself for Papa’s disability.

He’d tell her that she did the right thing, that it was thanks to her torniquete he was still alive, and she should never doubt her own healing skills. But every now and then, my mother would catch a glance of her permanently grey skinned leg, and silent tears would slide down her exhausted, pretty face.

By then, I was old enough to know that the soft orange marks hidden under my clothes, meant a kid somewhere in Panem, probably my age, was getting beaten on a regular basis. It was sad to think about, but I’d grown so used to the marks, they felt like a distant happening without a meaningful connection to me. The bruises were there… just shy of a shirt sleeve, or around mid thigh, where they could be concealed by shorts; the way I saw them, they were like oversized freckles that came and went. A nuisance. That’s why watching my mother weep over her shadowy leg, was always unnerving and a little odd.

Was I supposed to despair the same way she did over my own soulmate marks? Was I broken or heartless if I didn’t feel as strongly?

Until I saw my mother’s grief over her soulmate’s leg, it didn’t register to me just how much the orange bruises were supposed to affect me.

I started to think if I wasn’t any better than the person dispensing the punches.

One day, I was leaning on my parents bedroom door, watching Mama applying soothing oils to her gray leg with the utmost love and care.

“Why do you rub so much medicine on your leg? It doesn’t seem to be bringing back your normal color,” I asked, staring where her fingers massaged into her flesh.

Mama stopped and called me over, to stand on her side of the bed.

“Papa is fast asleep, do you see?” She pointed out, kindly.

I looked past her shoulder, where my father was sprawled on the mattress on his stomach, dead to the world.

I nodded.

Mama smiled, “Do you remember all we’ve told you about soulmates? I’m sure they’ve taught you at school other stuff as well,”

Again, I nodded, just a little puzzled. “Soulmates have a very strong bond. They can’t feel when the other hurts, but they can see the marks, tinted in their favorite colors. That’s how we identify our soulmates, because we match and they can see themselves reflected back.”

“Exactly.” Said my mother, beaming. “Now, your papa and I are soulmates, and we love each other very much. When Papa’s leg was separated from his body, my body reflected that loss, despite still retaining my own leg. We match. The one thing most people don’t seem to realize, is that the connection goes both ways. I may not feel the physical pain Papa does, but I can still do things to my leg to help him feel better.

“For example, when he feels phantom itches, I scratch and his itching sensation goes away. When he can’t fall asleep because he’s uncomfortable without his leg, I massage lavender oil on mine, until he relaxes and goes to sleep. Everything I do to heal my body, and take care of it, helps my soulmate feel better.”

“Is that why you put lotions on my marks? To help my soulmate feel better?”

Mama’s lips thinned out; she didn’t like talking about the orange marks on my body.

“Katniss,” she said very seriously, “I tend to your bruises because I love you. I worry about your soulmate, because I love you. I try to keep you as healthy and happy as possible, because that will help your soulmate heal faster… because I love you. I can cure your soulmate’s body through yours, but I cannot protect his heart, mind, or feelings. Right now, you both are too young to feel the pull of your bond, but one day, when your bodies have matured, you’ll have this… yearning, to find one another, and then, I just hope, whoever your soulmate is, knows we tried to help.”

I cocked my head, “Should I be sad every time new marks show up?”

Mama inhaled a deep breath, “We should feel sad every time a child is mistreated, darling, no matter how we’re related,”

From that day on, I paid close attention to every child in my class for bruises matching mine. I also kept pomades and tinctures in my school bag, in case I ever saw another kid getting hurt. I wouldn’t say I started to develop deeper feelings for my soulmate after that, but I did feel deeper empathy for my classmates… I just couldn’t stomach big injuries, gore or vomit, but smaller cuts and bruises… those I could manage.

————————

“Silver Anderson figured out her cousin was dating her soulmate!” A girl in my year was telling a cluster of other 15 year-old girls in the locker room. “Do you remember how Silver has been wearing a turtleneck for the last two days with this darned awful heat?”

The other girls hummed their yeses.

“Well, is because Silver’s soulmate had a hickey on the throat, given by Silver’s cousin, who was his girlfriend or whatever. But apparently the cousin went over to visit Silver with her boyfriend, and one look at the guy’s neck, and Silver recognized the mark!”

There were gasps all around.

It wasn’t rare to hear of soulmates having relationships with other people before finding each other, but it was almost unheard of a relative dating somebody’s soulmate so close.

I finished tying up my shoelaces, and started rebranding my hair, making a mental note to double shampoo, to get all the sweat out.

“What an idiot! Who gets hickeys from their ‘whiles’?” Snorted somebody.

I wasn’t much for gossip, but even I had to agree.

‘Whiles’, weren’t permanent romantic interests, they were just to pass the time while waiting to find your soulmate. ‘Whiles’ were people to satisfy ones curiosity about dating and that kind of stuff, with no strings attached or substance; ‘whiles’ had a bad connotation associated with.

“Oh, the boy had never gotten one mark in his body that wasn’t his, so, he assumed he didn’t have a soulmate, and the cousin has already been confirmed to be a matchless.”

A big “Oh!” Swept the room.

Matchless were born without a soulmate, which meant they could choose to be with whoever they wanted as long as they were matchless as well, or with nobody at all.

Sometimes I envied their freedom to choose, but other times I felt a sense of safety, knowing there was a person somewhere in the world meant just for me and me to them.

Soulmates were genetically evolved to complement one another, but some just wanted to experiment before settling down. Lately, though, matchless births were growing in number, and that upset people for whatever reason, as if the freedom of choice was scary or a curse, then again matchless were usually whiles and those were looked down on.

“That’s awful!” Said a girl.

“I knew Silver’s near freakish obsession with keeping her skin pristine and hidden would bring her issues finding her soulmate someday,” Declared another.

“I don’t think she wanted to find him,” whispered someone else.

“Oh well, they did find each other! You can’t hide from your destiny. That’s just silly!”

“Either way, I feel bad for the cousin, because apparently she and Silver’s soulmate were talking about marriage, since they thought they were both matchless.” Informed the first one.

I lost interest in the conversation when it turned speculative, and stood up to shove my P.E. uniform into my locker.

Someone suddenly called, “Everdeen, how about those orange blooms on your arms?”

My eyes widened, and immediately, I dropped my arms, pulling my sleeves as far down as they would go to cover my soulmate’s private marks.

“Oh… um… yeah. My mother thinks my soulmate might be an athlete,” I stuttered; Mama had only said such a thing in passing once, when a couple bruises appeared that didn’t match the usual ones. “Also, he seems to work with his hands. Lots of nicks and scrapes.” I wiggled my fingers in front of me. That much was true, my soulmate probably wore those marks freely.

“Oooh!” A girl, Delly Cartwright, reached to take a closer look. “Could be a carpenter. Or a locksmith? Maybe a farmer!”

“It could be the blacksmith’s son! Doesn’t Silver have an unmarried brother?” Asked another girl.

“Yeah… a kid like 10! Ugh, Everdeen, I really hope he’s not your soulmate… can you imagine being so much older than your soulmate?!” Interjected the same girl that spotted my bruises.

I scowled. Age was a stupid thing to complain about. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to have an age gap between soulmates… my father was six years older than my mother, and Mrs. Sae from the Soup Corner at the market, was a handful of years older than her soulmate.

Still…

“No. My soulmate is most likely my age. I’ve gotten his marks my whole life,” I shrugged, absently rubbing my arm, where the brand new bruise appeared that morning.

“Oh… at least that’s something. Knowing that your soulmate isn’t so much younger than you, and that he might at least have an apprenticeship somewhere,”

“Right,” I said, turning away, wondering if it was awful of me to wish for a boy who never got marks on his body, like Silver’s pristine skin? At least that would mean my soulmate was safe and treated fairly.

———————-

Papa and I shared many qualities. I inherited his coloring: olive skin, gray eyes, dark, straight hair, our penchant for singing mountain ballads, and the same quickening of the blood when we got a kill during hunting. Prim favored our mother more closely, with their fair skin, blonde wavy licks and blue eyes, they also were more skilled as healers and more soft-hearted towards animals.

The day Prim brought home a half dead cat, riddled with fleas and missing an ear to be patched up and adopted into our family, my first instinct was to drown the orange pelt and be done with it, but Prim got upset and worked up, and I just couldn’t stomach her cries over what I considered to be the world’s ugliest cat… his face was flat, like it’d been smashed against a wall…

It took a long time to calm my sister down, and Papa made me pinky promise that I wouldn’t kill the fur sack and pretend it ran away, which I only did reluctantly, because I loved my sister and didn’t want her to be crossed with me.

Papa asked me to walk with him into the woods, afterwards, which I did readily.

Before he lost his leg, we used to go hunting all the time; everything I knew about hunting and foraging, I learned from him. But after losing his leg, we’ve only gone to the woods to hike and get him used to his prosthesis in the uneven terrain.

It was good exercise for him. The fresh air seemed to lift his spirits too.

We didn’t hunt together anymore. Papa’s tread wasn’t feather-like the way it used to be, prey scattered away before we even saw it.

It was alright. We enjoyed being out there together, and he still had lots to teach me about edible plants. Sometimes he’d find one of his old spiles, and then it would hit me: all his knowledge would’ve been lost if he’d died in that cave-in. I would’ve never known where to look for those spiles; I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to harvest sap and turn it into syrup.

Sometimes, I had to sit down and catch my breath when those thoughts knocked the wind out of me.

I was having one such moment, when out of the blue, my father spoke in a low, calmed tone.

“There’s a new chief of police,” he said while sitting on a log, next to me.

“I heard.” I wasn’t trying to be snippy with him, but every time a new chief or sheriff was appointed to our district, Papa wanted to run back into the precinct, and demand they look for my soulmate.

Appealing to the police never led anywhere. It didn’t matter if they had new staff, they always gave us the same spiel: can’t investigate an abuse case without a victim. They couldn’t go looking for a person without a name or an address.

After a while, one just started feeling like it was an impossible task, to help one child feel safe.

Papa sighed. “We could try ourselves. I’ve been saving some money, and we could—“

“What? We could what?” I snapped. “We could go door to door visiting every little town in Panem until we find the bruised up mutt matching me?” I was at the verge of tears.

Mama said that once my body was matured enough, I’d start feeling the pull. Well, I kinda felt it, calling desperately. It started around my 14th birthday, when I started having a regular cycle, and puberty was at its summit.

First, I was curious about my other half and began cataloguing all the soulmate marks I could see easily. Suddenly I had whole maps of my hands and arms, and legs. Mama suggested I keep track of my hidden marks too, just in case. The curiosity persisted and evolved into an incessant wondering: where was he? How was he getting along? How could I help him protect himself?

“Haymitch may have a way, sweetheart. He knows people, and he likes you… he says you’ve got spunk,” Papa smirked.

I’d met Haymitch Abernathy countless times. He was rude and sarcastic. I usually responded to him in kind, earning myself a host of reprimands from my parents— although Papa still couldn’t hide his pride, despite trying his hardest.

“What would he know about soulmates anyway?” I muttered.

Papa shook his head, standing up, “Haymitch lost his girl, mother and brother all at once during a special outing. There was a car crash. Haymitch was badly hurt, but survived. His family didn’t. His soulmate was 16, so was him. The government paid him excessively for damages and the loss of his soulmate, because it was proved the city had skimped on roadside safety that caused the accident. But money didn’t fill the void of losing his loved ones. Haymitch never recovered.

“He told me once that losing a soulmate is akin to drowning. Except you’re still breathing without filling your lungs with oxygen…” Papa picked up the bucket we brought to collect sap, and smiled sadly at me. “Katniss, I may be exaggerating by hounding the police about your soulmate, but sometimes I worry that if we don’t find that kid soon, you could very well share Haymitch’s fate. Believe me when I say that I’d do anything in this world, to keep that from happening to you.”

I turned 16 that spring.

I started carrying a small mirror on me, to try and look over my shoulders into places I couldn’t reach, obsessing over every little mark that sprouted anew on my back.

I wasn’t sure if the all consuming watching, and the doubts that kept me up at night, not knowing what was being done to my soulmate, wondering if he’d survive another day, was the pull Mama talked about, or simply terror at becoming the next Haymitch Abernathy. Either way, I became more vigilant for injured teens around me, but a sinking feeling in my gut started nagging at me, that my soulmate was an expert at hiding in plain sight by now… how would I ever find him if he was as adept at camouflaging as I suspected?

—————————

“This spot is perfectly in the middle of the turkeys’ path.”

I crossed my arms over my chest to glare at Gale, “You just spilled a bunch of blood there. No critter is gonna come this way anymore with that stink.”

“Turkeys aren’t that smart, Catnip,” Gale looked up from his belt after securing his new catch— his pants were covered in gore from where the rabbit nearly cut its own foot off trying to fight the snare’s grip. “I’m more than confident that if we set traps here, we’ll catch at least a fat Tom…more if we set up a system wide enough,”

After a somewhat rocky start, Gale and I learned to respect each other’s skills, even joining forces for certain seasons, like deer and turkey hunting. We also fished together on occasion. It was safe to say we had a friendship after three… almost four years of partnership in the woods. At 18 Gale was less obnoxious, but still a stubborn ass.

“And I’m telling you, the path is tainted now. We need to put feed on the other side of the bushes, to keep them in the area.”

“That’ll take weeks!”

“Then you shouldn’t have let that bunny bleed to death in here!”

“Listen here, Catnip—” whatever he was about to say, died in his throat.

“What?!” I demanded, angrily, when he just stared at me horror struck.

“Your nose!” He roared. “Your eyes!” He tumbled forward, and squished my cheeks in his one, long-fingered hand. “There’s more coming!”

I yanked myself away from him. “Cut it out!”

“I think your soulmate is getting the shit beaten out of!”

I grunted and brought my fingers to my face, as if I could feel the changes.

Gale had seen some of my bruises, enough to be sure I had a soulmate, but not enough to realize my soulmate was being abused.

I rubbed under my nose, and the tip of my index came back bloody.

I gasped. That had never happened before.

“How bad is it?” I asked Gale, frantically.

“Um… orange keeps popping up all over your face. There’s some running up your arm right now.” He sounded careful, but frightened. “It’s like… burn marks,”

I looked down, where indeed, long, fat tongues of intense orange glowed up my left arm. I’ve seen glowing marks before, but always in the tip of my fingers or the sides of my hands, I never connected the glowing with fire— burn marks— but it made sense. I guess my soulmate must handle fire regularly.

“What’s happening?” I pulled my little mirror from my pocket, to see my face, and nearly sobbed at the sight.

One eye was completely covered in orange. Burn marks ran all the way from my elbow up to my cheek, and part of my forehead. My nose had a tiny, bloody smear, and my lip had streaks of orange here and there.

Whatever happened, was bad.

“Fuck… Do you know where he is, by any chance?” Gale winced.

“No… but I’m about to find out!” I looked around for a place to sit, then pulled my small knife out of my boot.

Once seated, I examined my forearms. The flaming marks started at the elbow on my left arm, and went up on that side, my right arm was free of injury, except for my palms. Both were glowing orange, but not too bad.

“Okay… here goes nothing!” I gritted through my teeth, placing the tip of my knife to my arm, I traced the word, “WHERE?” crudely, and just deep enough to break the skin.

Gale made a face, but crouched closed by, staring intently. “Do you think it’ll work?” He asked dubiously. “He might be unconscious for all we know,”

“We’ll see.”

The minutes rolled by and no answer came. I was starting to panic; all I could think about was would that be the day I became the next Haymitch Abernathy? At least he got to meet his soulmate and have a relationship with her before she died; I had no idea who mine was. Was it worse that way, knowing them and then losing them, or was it worst to never meet them at all? Would I become soulless? Would my entire body turn gray? Would I ever find another soulmate? Haymitch never said if he ever looked for another, but I knew it was possible to get a secondary soulmate if enough time went by.

“Look!” Gale shouted.

A shaky “D12” appeared under my message.

A relieved gasp left my mouth.

“District 12! That’s good! He could’ve been all the way in District 4, and then what were you gonna do? Call the authorities there?” Gale muttered, clearly invested in what was happening to me.

Tears stung my eyes. I wrote: “ME 2”

We’ve been in the same district the whole time, and I still had no idea where to find him!

I turned the knife back to the first word, and traced a line under it “WHERE?”

The answer came back faster. “S H”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I moaned, “What kind of abbreviation is that? Ugh! I’m trying to help you!” I screamed at my arm as if my soulmate could hear it.

“Seam House?” Gale mused… “No, there are hundreds, if not thousands of houses in the Seam,” he said.

The Seam was the poorer part of the district, where people like us lived: low income families, miners, laborers and the such.

“Ah! Ask if he means Slag Heap? If I was trying to pick a fight with someone, that’s where I’d go.”

“He didn’t pick a fight!” I snapped, defensive and angry. “He’s been beaten every other day, since I can remember. My parents used to go to the police station every year to see if they could do something about it. Nobody ever did! They always said we needed to figure out a way to communicate with him… well, I’m doing it now!”

Gale frowned, “That’s shitty. I’m sorry to hear that. The Slag Heap could still be it, though. Many people go there to be alone… if they’re running from someone, there’s plenty hiding spots,”

That sounded logical, “Okay… but the slag heap isn’t exactly small, and there’s some woodsy area to consider too,”

“Mmm… asking has been working so far,”

“Yeah, but the whole mutilation part is getting to me…” I glared, he wasn’t the one cutting his arm, “I’m starting to get woozy,”

“You’re a hunter, Catnip! Blood is nothing,”

“Animals, Gale! Not my own blood,”

“There’s no difference,” Gale cupped my face in his hands, to keep my eyes on his gray, steely ones. “we’re all animals. We all bleed the same. Your soulmate needs your help, if I knew who mine was, and I knew she was in trouble, I’d be rushing to them… you can do this, Catnip,”

I took a deep, cleansing breath, and nodded. “I’ll ask him. As soon as we know where to go… could you please fetch my father? He’ll know what to do,”

“You got it, Catnip!” He let go of me, and I felt renewed courage after his weird pep talk.

Once again, I trace the tip of my knife on my skin, “SLAG H? WHERE?”

“YES NE”

“North East! I told you it’ll work!”

“Yeah,” I grumbled, spelling making one last message: “W8 4 ME”

“K”

With half a plan in motion, Gale rushed to find my father, and I made a mad dash to the slag heap, where years and years of dumping dirt and rocks removed from the mines had formed small hills and mounds at the edge of the district.

“Hello!” I called out loudly. “Can anybody hear me?!”

There wasn’t a whole lot of vegetation in the slag heap, only hundreds of disturbed soil pits and little mountains… some were tall and wide enough they’ll easily conceal a person or two looking for privacy.

“Anybody here?” I called again.

A weak cough answered in the distance.

I rushed in it’s direction, hoping it was my soulmate, and not a couple trying to steal away a few minutes alone.

“Please, tell me where you are!” I called before another round of coughing reached me.

“Here to finish me off, sweetheart?” Came a weak, raspy voice from behind me.

I turned around but saw nothing besides dirt, and sticks, and moss on rocks.

I swallowed, “Where are you?” I stepped closer to the heap in front of me, and then…

“Well, don’t step on me!”

I jumped back and looked downwards, and finally saw dirty pieces of flannel and denim, incongruous with the area, and under all the debris, I realized a person had dug a little wedge at the foot of the hill, and thrown the stuff he’d dug out back on top of himself. The disguise was clever, camouflaging himself into the terrain.

I gasped and dropped to the ground, pulling handfuls of earth out of the way. A jolt of recognition hit me when a pair of bright blue eyes blinked open and shut, slowly, as if fighting off fatigue.

“Don’t go to sleep!” I warned.

“I’m sorry, but it might be too late for that already. There’s an angel hovering above me, and I’m not sure I’m not dreaming it,” a row of white teeth appeared from the soil.

My knee-jerk reaction was to chuff and roll my eyes, but if he was throwing me those cheesy lines, it meant he was somewhat lucid, and it was imperative to keep him that way.

“How do you know is not a nightmare?” I countered.

“Because Katniss Everdeen coming to my rescue, and being my soulmate could never be a bad dream. On the contrary It’s only my deepest, most desperate hope, really…” he trailed off, and closed his eyes again.

I was momentarily frightened.

“Keep talking,” I ordered, brushing dirt off his head. Some of it mixed in with his blood and sweat, turning into a thick mud. I could see more of his battered face; my heart beat erratically against my rib cage, there were so many bruises. “Peeta, keep talking,”

His untouched eye opened slowly, a lazy, sideways smile greeted me, warming me up. “You know my name?”

I chuckled, startled, “You know mine,”

“Everyone knows you, Katniss ‘the huntress’ Everdeen!” He reached up, tentatively, and touched the tip of my braid, whispering under his breath, something that sounded like: unreal.

Just saying his name felt otherworldly; like breathing for the first time. I’ve never uttered it before, for fear of bringing forward memories of that awful day in the rain, by the bakery’s scraggly apple tree.

“And you’re Peeta Mellark, the boy with the bread. I’ve known your name for a long time, baker’s youngest son, whose kindness saved my entire family from starvation,” I cupped his injured face in my hands, and I couldn’t help the slight tremble in my voice.

He seemed to melt at the sound of my voice; then his hands came to touch my face. “I can’t believe it’s you. I can’t believe you found me!” He said, an edge of incredulity and awe colored his tone, but then his face fell, “But, your sweet, beautiful face… it’s all…” a fat tear rolled down his muddy cheek, while his thumb gently caressed my temple and the side of my face. “I’m so sorry, Katniss… I never wanted you to look like this! I always tried to shift positions, so you’d never had to see how bad it got. I’m so sorry,” he was crying so hard, he started to shake and cough.

It took inhuman strength not to cry myself; I knew he needed me to protect him, and there would be time later to fall apart and feel emotional.

“Shush, I’m here now.” I knelt next to him and locked my arms around his head, pulling him against my chest, so he could hear my heart beating only for him. “I’m going to take care of you.”

“I really hoped it was you. I really did…” he heaved into my neck, his arms wrapping gingerly around my waist, “thank you for finding me,”

“Of course I found you… I’ve been looking for you for ages,” I whispered, finally giving in, shedding some tears, relieved that the tension, fear, uncertainty, and frustration were finally gone. My soulmate was in my arms, where he belonged! “My parents started looking for you when we were little. But we’re together now,”

Peeta calmed down some, but he was still breathing too fast, “Now that you have me… what are you gonna do with me?” He asked meekly.

I smiled down at him, “I’ll put you somewhere safe, where you can never get hurt again,”

He closed his eyes. “I’d like that…”

“Peeta, you can’t go to sleep just yet, okay?”

“I’m so tired, Katniss,”

“I know,” I cooed. I had no idea I was capable of speaking with such softness. “My father will get here soon, and then we’ll patch you up real well.”

“I can’t go back to my house though—“

“You ain’t going there, kid!” Papa said from a few feet away. Gale and two police officers followed closely.

I must’ve been completely enthralled with my soulmate, because I never heard them coming,

“Even if it’s the last thing I do, I won’t let you go back to that place!” My father stated.

And that was that!

——————————-

“Tell me what happened,” Officer Darius asked in a soft tone, trying to be encouraging.

My soulmate inhaled; one eye was so swollen it was completely shut, his other one roved around the room nervously. Peeta locked his gaze with mine, beseeching, and I offered my hand in support. He clung to it like a lifeline.

“My mother asked me to burn a pile of leaves and branches in the backyard that had been there since fall, but the branches were damp and it was taking me a while to fire it up. Since it’s the last week to burn stuff, my mom got impatient. She screamed at me, called me incompetent and useless… the usual stuff—“

“Does your mother call you names regularly?” Asked the officer.

“My mom calls everybody names. I guess that’s how she was raised. Her mom used to call her names too…” Peeta shrugged.

“That’s no reason to keep the cycle going,” my mama grumbled quietly, so only I could hear her.”

“After insulting you, what else happened?” Prompted the police woman, Officer Purnia.

Peeta scowled. “I told her I’d pour some lighter fluid on the pile and let it soak for a few minutes, but she wouldn’t hear it. Said I was doing it wrong, I was too stupid, I would never accomplish shit if I couldn’t even light up some dead branches… and, well. I got fed up. I told her she could start the fire herself if I was doing such a lousy job… my mom… she—She doesn’t like to be talked back…” He sagged on his hospital bed, and turned his face away.

“What do you mean?” Asked officer Purnia, taking notes, trying to keep an impassive mask on.

“The first slap landed across my ear because I dared to move away from her flying hand,” Peeta said tersely, “She didn’t like that either, so she took aim again, but with the bottle of lighter fluid on her palm. She practically smashed it against my face.” He stopped to gasp for air, while his good eye filled with tears. “I think fluid squirted everywhere, I smelled like my hair and clothes had been doused in the stuff,” he raked a shaking hand over the singed hair at his temple.

I caressed his arm to sooth him.

He smiled gratefully at me, and faced the officers to continue. “I’d just put a piece of burning cardboard into the pile. I guess the leaves caught fire during the squabble with mom, and I must’ve lost my balance after taking a plastic bottle full of liquid to the face, because next thing I know, I’m bracing my hands on the ground, on burning sticks, and then I’m on fire myself.”

Peeta sustained first degree burns on the different spots from his left forearm, up. Luckily, his wounds were managed as soon as we got to the emergency room, and his treating doctor said he would recover, with minimal scarring.

“How did you end up at the Slag Heap?” Asked Officer Darius.

Peeta sighed, “My mom kind of freaked out when she realized I was on fire. She picked up a rag from somewhere and started hitting me with it…” he paused, “in retrospect, I think she may have actually been trying to help me, but… I just saw it like she was still trying to beat me, so I ran off. I tripped, fell, then rolled on the ground, she started calling my name, coming closer to me. I was scared. I took off again and didn’t stop until I fell at the foot of that mound of dirt in the slag heap. That’s when I noticed my soulmate’s note.”

Officer Darius quirked up a reddish eyebrow, “Your soulmate’s note?”

“Yeah… these,” Peeta tried to peel back the bandage over his arm, but my mother put her hand over it, and shook her head.

“Here!” I said, immediately shoving my own arm in front of the officers.

Both examined my arm. “How did you think of doing that, Miss Everdeen?”

“I was inspired by your bosses actually,” I snarled.

“Katniss!” Mama chided, and then politely addressed the officers. “You see, my husband and I have come to the authorities for many years, urging them to find a way to locate our daughter’s soulmate. You see, she’d started exhibiting her soulmate’s bruises from a very young age, which in my professional experience, were inconsistent with normal toddler scrapes and bumps—“

“The chief of police always said to find a way to communicate with him, ask where he was… so I did,” I interrupted, haughtily. “I got you a real life victim to investigate. You’re welcome.”

The officers stared at me, flabbergasted.

Mama made a dismaying noise in the back of her throat, but Peeta’s face— burnt, bruised and swollen— lighted up, with the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen a person direct at me.

Mama interjected, conciliatory, “My husband and I believe, your department should have enough evidence to investigate Peeta’s case, now?” My mother’s searching blue eyes seemed to x-ray the officers.

“Well, Miss and Mrs. Everdeen, Mister Mellark, I think we have everything we need for now. Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll be in touch.” Said Officer Purnia snapping shut her notebook.

“Mr. Mellark, your case worker, Miss Trinket, will be in as soon as the matter of your emergency custody is settled.” Informed Officer Darius, right before wishing us a good evening.

Peeta frowned, “Are they sending me to like a home or something? What about my brothers? They can’t stay home with my mom… she’ll go nuts on them!”

“No, no, Peeta,” Mama spoke softly, “Miss Trinket is already on it. Haymitch Abernathy has offered his house for your brothers to stay at for a few days while things get sorted out. You’re welcome to join them, of course, but your injuries need supervision and several cleanings daily, so Mr. Everdeen and I feel it is in everyone’s best interest if you stay with us, at least until you’ve healed enough.” Mama hesitated, and then patted my soulmate’s hand, “I hope that’s okay with you, but if it isn’t—“

“It’s absolutely great, ma’am! Yes, I—thank you,”

Mama nodded, “Well, I’m gonna go get some stuff taken care of, and check on that case worker. Then they’ll hopefully let us go home… Katniss, I’ll need your help with something before we leave, alright?”

“‘kay.”

“Mrs. Everdeen…thank you,” Peeta said meekly.

Mama just stood stoically by the door, “You’re family, Peeta, it’s the least we could do for you.” The door clicked shut leaving me alone with my soulmate.

We were both silent for a minute. Then Peeta said half amused, half shyly, “I think the guy cop liked you. I caught him smirking a couple of times after your ruthless answers.” His smile was crooked. Boyish. I almost swooned.

I shrugged. “I don’t think he cared that much,”

“Are you serious?” Peeta laughed, “Katniss, you have no idea the effect you can have,”

I scowled at him, and he just shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or complimenting me. He changed the topic before I could decide which.

“So, you’ve been looking for me then?” He sounded nervous, and a little uncertain, “isn’t it weird…we are soulmates, but the only thing I know for sure about you, is that your favorite color is green?” He rubbed his fingers together, then showed me the tips, where he had dark green spots, exactly on the same place I had permanent calluses from pulling on my bow string.

I bit my lower lip, studying the thin spidering of green nicks and scratches, were I surmised my own marks have appeared after my daily trips into the woods.

“Your favorite color is orange. Not bright, but muted…”

“Like the sunset,” he finished for me.

Mind bonding wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities between soulmates, but my understanding on the matter was, that the bond had to be physically sealed before a pair could develop those empathic connections, where soulmates shared perfectly synchronized thoughts, as if they had one mind. Peeta and I weren’t there just yet, but it felt like we understood each other pretty well already.

He just stared at me in fascination, before his face fell, “I hope you don’t get permanently disfigured, if my burn scars don’t go away completely… you are so pretty.”

I rolled my eyes, pleased that he thought I was pretty, but not really knowing how to respond graciously. I’d never been called pretty by a boy before, not that it’d have the same effect as when Peeta said it… “You’re just saying that I’m pretty because I’m your soulmate,”

He smiled sadly, “No… I really mean it. I’ve had a crush on you since I can remember. I just new I belonged to someone since I was like 4, when I saw my first soulmate scratch on my knees. Your favorite colors back then were teal and pink. Your marks were always swirls of the two colors. I liked them. I liked that I belonged to someone who enjoyed colors, like myself… I wondered what your marks looked like, but then, I hoped you never had to see my marks. I was ashamed of them.”

My chest tightened, I climbed onto his bed, and pressed my side right against his, “Hey… I’ve like your marks.” I stuttered, “my parents never let me see the ones on my back until I was older, but I liked the ones you got in normal places. Yours appeared as rainbows where we were little.” I held his hand in mine. “I don’t care if we stay fire mutts forever, Peeta, the important thing is that we are together now,”

“Thank you for finding me,”

“Thank you for leading me to you,”

We leaned our heads together, and fell into an easy silence.

“Katniss…”

“Mmm,”

“We are soulmates.”

I tilted my head away, to look at him, “Yeah. We already established that,” I said suspiciously.

Peeta smirked, “You know, we’re supposed to be madly in love…so, it’s okay to kiss me whenever you want to,”

I snorted and rolled my eyes, but he was right. In any other circumstance, I’m sure we would’ve already progressed into couple-y, lovey-dovey stuff.

“If you’re already fishing for kisses, that means you’re healthy then!” I kissed his forehead. “But let me tell you right now, cheek and sass won’t take too far, sir,”

“It won’t?” he pouted, “then I’ll just have to swoop in when I see an opening,” he leaned into me, and I let him plant a peck, full on my lips.

My first kiss ever, and all I could register was how chapped his lips were… besides the small fluttering of butterfly wings in the pit of my stomach, of course.

“Well, time for a sip of water, and you should rest some too.” I said feeding him the straw in the Styrofoam cup full of icy water by his bed.

After he drank, we gravitated towards each other, meeting in the middle. Our second kiss was short, sweet, and full of relief.

I liked it. In fact, I wanted another, but Peeta was drowsy after the day we’ve had.

“I remember you used to sing, so beautifully, even the birds would stop to listen,” Peeta said, shyly… “would you… mind singing for me?”

“I don’t sing all that much nowadays, but if that’s what you want…”

He stared at me expectantly, so I had no other choice. I combed back his freshly washed hair, and started.

“Just close your eyes;

The sun is going down.

You’ll be alright;

No one can hurt you now.

Come morning light,

You and I’ll be safe and sound...”

When Mama came back, Peeta was asleep, and so she took me outside while my father sat in the room with the case worker, signing in my soulmate’s release papers, waiting for him to wake up.

“I want you to take these,” Mama produced a packet of medicine from a white, pharmaceutical baggie.

“Birth control?!” I groaned, embarrassed.

“Don’t look so scandalized, Katniss,” Mama rolled her eyes, “You and Peeta are healthy, newly acquainted teenaged soulmates, who will suddenly coexist together in close quarters. Papa and I agreed that starting you on contraceptives is the right thing to do,” she fixed me with a stare that broker no protests, “That said, we are not giving you carte blanche to act on pure hormonal instincts, Katniss. While we aren’t so naive to believe you won’t explore intimacy with your soulmate, we fully expect you to use caution, and make responsible decisions. Is that clear?”

I nodded, and snatched the pills from Mama’s outstretched hand. My face was burning with mortification, but I was grateful for my parents’ wherewithal and openness.

The next few days proved harsh and blissful at the same time. After 11 years pestering the authorities, Papa finally got the law to prosecute my soulmate’s parents for abuse and neglect. To call it a victory, was understatement.

Peeta’s father was declared another victim of the Witch’s abuse, but court ordered him to see a therapist and get evaluated by a professional, before he could come back home to his sons.

Mrs. Mellark was charged with endangering a child, battery, abuse and arson. She was court ordered to seek anger management and psychological counseling. She had been abused as a child too, and after watching her son in fire, it finally clicked in her head, that she needed to put a stop to the cycle… late as it may be. She went willingly when the police served her arrest warrants.

Since Peeta and his middle brother were still minors, they were temporarily placed under their eldest brother’s care; but the eldest brother was only 19 and had no idea how to be a father figure, so strange as it was, my parents insisted on having them all bunk in our tiny house, which was comically insufficient. Thank heavens Haymitch Abernathy was still willing to help.

The grumpy old drunk invited the lot of us to stay at his place for as long as we needed, and after cleaning up all the empty bottles and general messes around his huge house, we could enjoy the place at our leisure.

The boys kept working at the bakery, since they needed a source of income, and something to keep themselves occupied. Mama said they needed the normalcy of their business to cope.

It was a good thing Haymitch’s house was so big, since Peeta started having horrible nightmares after his mother was released from holding, after making bail; her trial was still pending, but my poor soulmate suffered severe PTSD from the events that brought us together. Neither of his brothers wanted to share a room with him at night…which allowed me to slip in when I heard him crying out desperately and fearfully.

Peeta would only go back to sleep after I laid beside him and sang, while carding my fingers through his sweat-damped, ashy blond waves.

“I’m not okay until I can see you’re safe,” he told me once.

After the third night in a row of this happening, I just stayed with him in his bed. My parents didn’t exactly approve— we were still 16— but there wasn’t much they could say to stop us. After all, our soulmate bond trumped any other familial bond; we just couldn’t legally get married and apply for housing until we were both 18.

Peeta still woke up in cold sweats at night, but my arms were there to fend off the terrors, and so were my lips.

On the night I felt a hunger so consuming and devastating, gnawing at me from my core, radiating to the tips of my being, I was glad my mother put me on birth control.

My soulmate gently, but steadily joined us together, cementing our physical bond for the rest of time, while branding his love and adoration to me into my very skin, with fevered lips and shaky hands. We gasped and whispered vows of devotion to one another, and then an explosion of feelings and emotions went off… I couldn’t tell where his life force started, and mine ended. We were one. Sharing a single soul.

After, we laid tangled together, our hearts beating as one. Peeta kissed my knuckles, and asked.

“You looked for me, for years. Real or not real?”

“Real.”

He kissed my forehead, “Will you sing?”

“Of course,” I combed back his hair with loving fingers, and sang.

“Just close your eyes;

You’ll be alright;

Come morning light,

You and I’ll be safe and sound.”

#alliswell21 #lovely-tothe-bone #prompt 154 #Springtime Edition 2021 #submission

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lunaekalenda · 3 years

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Hi! Can I request a Jean x Reader fic where reader is Marco's beloved little sister and basically follows the "Im in love with my brother's best friend" trope? And Reader doesn't do anything about it because she thinks Jean only sees her as a little sister (bc that's what he always says) but Jean is madly in love with her too? And hw never says anything until she does something really reckless. (Any Au is okay :) )

omg yes yes!! of course! i hope you like it! 💖 sorry for the waiting, anon!

❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁

❁ jean x reader!

❁ modern au!

❁ all are college students (age +18), mention of alcohol, food.

❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁

"Y/N, I'm leaving!" Marco was at the door, putting on his shoes. You nod while you look at your big brother, a smile on his mouth when he sees your eyes from behind the kitchen's door, eating some doritos. "Oh, Jean is coming for dinner." You almost choke. You cough and Marco looks at you. "Y/n?"

"The dorito was spicy, sorry." Jean Kirstein is coming to have dinner at your home. Jean is Marco's best friend since the two of them wore diapers. Marco laughs.

“I told you they were spicy. Well, I'll go now, I’m late! Don’t worry about dinner, I’ll cook once we arrive home!”

You don’t like cooking, but you like even less to be alone with Jean while Marco is occupied. Marco never wants you or him to help, which means you’ll be alone with Jean when he cooks. You remembered your room was a mess and your makeup is in the main bathroom. You run to go and order things a bit, just in case Jean needs to use the bathroom and sees all your makeup around. You also entered your room and got changed, using a pretty outfit based in pastel pink clothes.

Jean is just a couple years older than you, but he thinks about you as his little sister, or so does he say. After all, he and Marco are like brothers, so that makes you her "fake lil-sis." You're tired of that sentence. Of that "How's my sis today?". You want him to look at you like a girl, someone to fall in love with. Not someone to apply a fake blood rule. Marco trains football until 8 p.m, so you have exactly an hour to get all clean. Even when you and Marco are really tidy people, it’s impossible to keep all the things in their places. You’re sitting on your bed, moving your legs with nervousness, when you hear the boys entering home.

“We’re back!” Marco yells. You prepare yourself for acting as nothing happens while you go down stairs. Your brother is taking out his shoes and giving his friend house slippers.

“Hi, welcome.” Your voice comes out more shy than you’ve expected. Jean looks up, his hazel eyes looking directly at yours. You feel your legs weak when he smiles.

“Hi, y/n!” he says. For your luck, you hear another voice.

“Is y/n here?” Connie’s voice is listened behind Marco.

“She lives here, idiot.” Jean comes in and you look how his tall body is now positioned near yours. Connie smiles and runs toward you, his arm around your shoulders.

“Jean, sometimes people go and spend nights out with friends, specially if you’re coming.” The boy clicks his tongue. “Long time no see, bestie.” You laugh. It’s true that Connie is one of your best friends, he’s in your math group, and his outgoing personality made him became one of your best friends really quick, and also Marco’s.

"You're having dinner here?" Connie shakes his head.

"Nah. Today I cook on the shared flat, I don't want to leave Sasha without dinner or she'll eat my chocolate reserves. I just came to steal a couple beers to Marco." Marco points the fridge with his index. Connie laughs. "Bro, I know where your fridge is, but thanks anyway."

They have a trust in each other that you envy, is so natural for them to visit the others' houses, and they're comfortable with it. As you're comfortable with them hanging around your house, seeing Marco so happy. Jean crosses his arms, his arm touching yours for a second. Your braincells disconnect from your body and you enter in a kinda of Jean repetitive thoughts. Connie sits on your sofa, opening a beer.

"Well, I'll go and make some pasta. You guys can play there." Connie takes the remotes, giving one to Jean and another to you.

"Marco, you should play with them." you say. "I'll cook."

"Don't worry! I beat their asses every day, now it's your turn to do the same." he says, entering the kitchen. You sigh, taking the remote. They put a shooter. You sit in the middle of your sofa, giving space to Jean to sit near Connie.

"Fuck, I'm so bad at this..." You say. Even knowing is a cooperative game against zombies, you're always the first one to die. Jean laughs quietly, before sitting next to you. His leg collides with yours in a jokingly way.

"I'll protect you." he says. You know he's talking about the game, but you can't help and start daydreaming about him and you, how his long fingers will take your hand and pull you to his chest, whispering those words on...

"Oi, Jean, you're not that good to protect her! Zombies will kill you two unless I protect you both!"

"Connie you suck at this game." Jean defends himself.

"I'm sure Y/N prefers me to protect her. Or do you prefer Jean?"

He's dead man. He knows perfectly what do you feel. He knows you like Jean a lot, and he has been trying to make you confess. Jean looks at you, his sweet gaze fixed on your eyes. Yo look down.

"I think I can handle it by myself." Connie laughs and Jean roasts him. The game starts. You watch how Jean's fingers change quickly between all the buttons: pressing, touching, moving. You look again to the TV, blushed. You shouldn't be thinking this things. Concentrate in the game, Y/N. Concentrate. The game goes strangly well, the three of you comunicate your plans easily to the others, and it all goes well. Jean rests his back against the sofa, making his t-shirt go out a bit and his sport shorts tighten around his worked body. You can't take your eyes out. You blush again and you feel how your remote vibrates, indicating you're being eat by a zombie. Connie sighs and Jean looks at the screen.

"Fuck, Y/N, sorry." he says. You clear your throat and shake your head.

"I was distracted, sorry." Connie smiles.

"What distracted you, bestie?" he asks. You're going to kill him. You don't answer, getting up and asking what do they want to drink. Jean asks for a glass of water and Connie asks if you could bring something to eat, even when he has to leave in ten minutes. You give Jean his glass and Connie some chips.

"Thank you, bestie." he says. You look at him, faking a smile.

"Eat and be silent for a while, bestie." he nods and eats. Even knowing you're joking, he doesn't say anything for a bit. He's concentrated in the game, as Jean is. You go to the kitchen and ask Marco if he needs soemthing. He shakes his head, preparing the sauce for the spaghetti.

"Weren't you playing?" he asks. You nod.

"Yep. I died." he smiles. Marco's smile is the most bright and beautiful smile you ever seen. You wanted to have a smile like his, but you only have his same eyes and freckles. He looks at you.

"Go, go. Don't leave my guests alone!" you nod and went back again to the living room. The game is finished, with Connie and Jean's stadistics in the screen.

"Look, bunny!" he says "I was the better one to protect you!". It's true that Jean's stadistics are better than Connie's.

"Oi, Kirstein, you're just a bit better... It was luck." he says. He looks the hour on his glass and gets up. "Well, I'll go home now. It was a pleasure." he says. You accompany him to the door. "I wish you luck, bestie. I'm sure you need it." You punch playfully Connie's shoulder before hugging him. "And, mark my words: He's just waiting." Then, he leaves, without giving you the opportunity to ask what the heck he meant by that. You head back to the living room, where Jean is sitting on the sofa. His sweater is on a near chair. It's so big and looks so comfortable...

"Do you want to play more?" you ask. Jean looks at you while you sit, giving him space. He smiles.

"Why not! Do you want me to teach you how to play this one?" he takes a open world game. You know he's really good at them. Marco, Jean and Eren usually play online every saturday, and they want you to join their team, but you haven't played that much. You nod. "Okay, let me..." He moves near to you. He takes the controller and gives one to you, keeping him the other. He enters the game. "Well, choose a character, bunny."

He has been calling you bunny since he discovered how much you like bunnies. They're so fluffy and beautiful, you like them. You have one, called "Wink", because he has a genetic problem that makes him wink one of his beautiful eyes. He was about to be sacrificed because of that, but you saved him in the last moment. He's now a happy bunny with a curious talent. You doesn't dislike the pet name Jean gave you years ago, but it makes him sound like he's calling you a really affectionate nickname.

You go back to reality and choose a cute little girl using a big hat. He chooses a near character and clicks play. "Okay. This is the main city, so now you have to climb here to unlock the map..." he explains you for a while, and you follow his character. Sometimes, when he moves his leg, his knee collides with yours. Now, you're totally stuck in a level.

"Jean, how do I...?" he looks at your character, stuck between two walls.

"Can I?" he puts his hands near your controller and, when you're about to give it to him, he puts his big hands on top of yours, covering them. His fingers pressed lightly against yours. You look at him, but he has his eyes fixed on the screen, as he moves your fingers with his. “You have to move like this, silly...” he says. But you can’t concentrate in anything more than his scent near you, the warmth his body irradiates and his fingers pressing yours sweetly. You feel how your heart speeds up it's beat.

"Y/N!" Marco yells. "Can you take the garbage to the container, please?" he asks. You yell yes in response, getting away from Jean's body. You get up fast. He does the same, suddenly kinda uncomfortable.

"I'll accompany you, bunny." he says. You nod, taking the garbage bag. Jean follows you silently. The container is not far from your house, just a couple crosswalks. You take the bag and start walking. It's dark now, and the street is really quiet. Just your steps and Jean's can be heard. He follows you keeping a distance, his long legs making short steps. "The night is beautiful today." he says. You nod in response. You look at both sides before crossing the street.

"Maybe a little bit cold." you say. He quickens the pace to be near to you. The sweater he took from the chair is around his waist, so he takes it and puts it on your shoulders.

"Use it. I'll take the bag." he says. You murmur a little "thanks" while putting his sweater on. It smells like him. You try to take the bag from his hands back, but he moves. "Jean, give me back the trash." He smiles playfully.

"Take it from me, bunny." he jokes. His long arms move the bag, avoiding you to take it. He's playing near the road, so if you go around him and surprise him from the road, you can take it. That's why you go down to the road, without looking and without noticing a car that is coming fast towards you. The car lights were really low, and that didn't make you realize it was coming. But now, now that Jean yelled your name and the car beeped, you realize you're about to be hitted by it.

You can't move, your body is totally paralyzed. You knew the car was trying to stop, but the high velocity it got is impossible to stop. You thought you'll feel a hard hit, but you felt a soft thing around you.

Jean's body is around yours when you find you two on the street. It takes you a couple seconds to realize what happened.

"Jean, Jean, Jean." you move him. Got he hit by the car? Did he put his body between yours and the car? He looks at you, his eyes searching your gaze.

"Are you okay?" he asks. You nod while he gets up, helping you to fo the same.

"And you? Did it hit you?" He shakes his head.

"I just pulled you against me, that's why we were on the floor." He explains. "None of us got hit. But you have to be more careful, what could have happened to you if I wasn't here? You coul... Y/N?" he asks. Tears are running down your tears. He takes you in a hug, his big and warm body protecting yours.

"Sorry." You say. You feel how he caresses you hair.

"You scared me. I thought the car was going to hit you. Be more careful." You nod. You try to make a joke, to make things more comfortable.

"You're really a good fake brother."

"That's what you think of me?" he asks. Isn't that what he wants you to think? Isn't he the one calling you sis? His hands explore a bit your body, with long caresses from your neck to your low back. His long fingers running slow on your skin.

"That's what you think of me" you answer. He clicks his tongue.

"You never showed any interest in me. I gave up and treated you like a sister. That's what you wanted, no?" You wanted to look at him, but he doesn't let you, pressing your head soflty against his chest.

"I was in love with you, Jean. But you came home and tell my brother how good Mikasa looked and «How are you, little sister?». What I was supossed to do? Compete with an older girl? Make you realize I'm not your little sister?"

He doesn't say nothing for a while. He breathes deeply, before talking.

"Sorry, I was nervous. I thought the car was going to hit you. I thought I was about to see you getting hit." he says. His breath is a little bit irregular now. Taking some valor, you leave a kiss on his chest, where is heart is ubicated. He sighs. "I also liked you. But it didn't feel good, you were my bestie's little sister. I didn't want to ruin my friendship or worse, your relation with your brother. I thought it was better for me to stay away. That's why I treated you like that. I was trying to convince myself. It didn't work." he lets out a little laugh.

"I felt like you were serious about it. That's why I never said anything. But I do like you, Kirstein."

"You're a lucky girl." he says. He keeps your head buried on his chest. "Because I also like you, Bott." he says. He leaves a soft kiss on your hair and, shyly, accompanies you to throw the garbage. There's silence. Once you're walking back, in the same silence, he breaks it. "Should we date, then?" he asks. "We're both adults and we like each other, doesn't it work like that?" he asks. You nod.

"But, Marco?" he says then. Oh, you forgot about him. Marco, your brother, his best friend.

"Oh, true..."

"Well, Marco is home and we aren't." he says. "He isn't going to miss us a couple minutes, right?" his voice getting low as his lips got closer to yours. "You don't know how many times I wanted to kiss those lips or caress this body." he murmurs. You tangle your hands around his neck.

"Why you didn't, then?" you ask. He lets out a little laugh.

"Now I have all the time of the world to kiss you." you feel his soft lips against yours. His hands around your waist and yours tangled on his hair. It feels so good.

"I hope so."

m e a n w h i le

"do you think he confessed?" Connie asks. Marco keeps taking out plates while talking to Connie on the phone.

"They have been out for twenty minutes. I'm a 99% sure he did, and he's corrupting my little sister behind a house." he says.

"He doesn't want to break your sister's relation with you." Connie says. Marco sighs.

"My sister is in love with him. If both like each other, it's none lf my business."

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cruelfeline · 2 years

Note

Hey Feline, here's a (suprise!) non-Hordak ask for you:

You're a veterinarian, right? What can you tell me about your animal dietetic expertise as a vet? I know vets in my country have very little classes on dog/cat diets and when they do the classes are often sponsored by Certain Big Kibble Brands convincing the poor students that their dry, almost meatless kibble is The Best Choice for pets. How does that look in your country and in your college? Do you, as a vet, feel comfortable giving out dietetic advice or would you rather reccoment consulting an animal dietetic specialist?

Feel free to reply in PM if you want :)

Ah, I always enjoy animal questions!

This is a really common sort of thing that people ask about all the time, and it's a bit frustrating for vets because yes: we do get nutritional training. And no, it's not provided by food brands.

It's provided by nutritionists. Sometimes, like when we're learning about specific conditions (let's say, chronic renal insufficiency), we're taught condition-specific nutrition by experts on said condition.

Now, do those nutritionists sometime work for food brands? Absolutely. But thags because a good food brand will hire veterinary nutritionists and utilize their expertise. If a food brand doesn't have a dedicated vet nutritionist on staff, I wouldn't really recommend them.

The issue with the whole "vets are taught to feed meat-less kibble by food brands" is multi-factorial.

First, who perpetuates that myth?

The people who want to sell you more expensive, boutique pet foods.

Second, why do they say that, specifically? Rather than, say, showing you the copious research they've done to prove that their food is healthier for your pet.

Because they haven't done any research.

Pet food is a huge industry, and there's a lot of money to be made within it if you can find a niche and convince people to buy your product. But! Research, specifically well-done, live-animal research that truly tests formulas, is very expensive to do.

So many of these small companies will formulate products based upon math calculations (using research done by the bigger companies, who can afford it!), throw a bunch of nice-sounding ingredients together, and call it good. Then they will spend money on marketing, rather than factual research, to convince people to buy their products.

And it works! People stop trusting doctors, stop trusting research, and listen to the latest "homemade all natural dog food" company that tells them things that sound nice.

The thing is, this often doesn't really matter too much. Dogs are, for the most part, able to do well on a variety of diets.

Because that's the thing about dogs: by and large, they're not these obligate-carnivore, meat-eating machines. They're not cats. They're not wolves. They're animals that essentially evolved and became domesticated by living on the edges of human settlements and eating our garbage. Ancient dogs didn't receive choice cuts of meat from ancient humans. They ate scraps. They ate junk. They ate whatever. And a lot of that "whatever" was agricultural waste, often grain-based, because ancient humans were going through their agricultural revolution at the time.

This is reflected in the canine genome.

Now, that's not to say that certain breeds don't do better on higher-meat-protein diets. Northern breeds, various sled-pulling breeds, do. Again, genetics-based. And related to the fact that the humans in those regions dong really farm, they hunt. So, again: following human diet in domestication.

But most dogs that you find, day-to-day? They really are okay on many of the diets on the market. Some do better on fancy diets. Some actually do worse, getting diarrhea from the high protein. Others need hypo-allergenic, lab-made diets because of how severe their food allergies are.

It all depends on the individual dog, but again: generally speaking, dogs are adaptable. And they don't require what many of those boutique brands say they do.

Now! An example of what can sometimes go wrong.

Back in the summer of 2018, there were a bunch of dogs that ended up with what appeared to be a nutritional dilated cardiomyopathy. Some died. Others returned to health when they were taken off of their grain-free, exotic ingredient boutique diets (which is how docs knew it wasn't genetic; there's no cure for genetic DCM).

And this sort of showed an issue you can run into with these non-research based diets: if you don't do studies to see how your formula behaves in an actual live animal, you may end up using a mix of ingredients that sound very nice, but they don't allow appropriate nutrient absorption and utilization. In this case, it seemed that the high proportion of pulses and legumes in some diets caused problems in some dogs.

So you get dogs eating great-sounding diets whose hearts fail because they can't absorb taurine from those diets. Yet, when placed back on the "dry, almost meatless kibble," they recovered.

As a vet, I feel very comfortable advising people to pick a diet that is complete, balanced, and well-tested. There are many diets that fit those criteria.

What I generally refer out to a veterinary nutritionists is people who want to make homemade diets for their animals: that requires very specific knowledge and is best handled by a veterinarian who is board-certified in nutrition.

Now, as far as cats go: most cat-savvy vets will tell you that high protein/fat, low carb, wet food is best for kitties. Short, sweet, simple. Still needs to be balanced and tested, but that's the usual cat-vet recommendation nowadays. Not food-manufacturer recommendation. Vet recommendation.

Which is, again, were we tend to get our info! Fellow vets who specialize in nutrition.

#cf does vet things

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facets-and-rainbows · 4 years

Text

Blue Exorcist 10th anniversary book Q&A session

The 10th anniversary book has a section where Katoh answers 100 questions submitted by fans on Twitter, so here they are translated/paraphrased! May contain manga spoilers up to the recent flashback arc, so be warned.

(Note that I’m playing it very fast and loose here because there are A HUNDRED OF THEM, so not exact wordings, but it should capture the gist. Lemme know if there are any you want elaborated on)

1. Katoh likes the feel of traditional drawing more than digital but is impressed with how far digital has come

2. Meph THOROUGHLY ABUSES spacetime to watch all his shows and ensure that he gets all the merch he wants

3. Did the girls take all of Yukio’s school uniform buttons in middle school? Yes, they did (apparently it’s like A Thing for girls to ask for a button from their crush at middle school graduation, based on some sad movie from the 60s where a guy who got drafted as a kamikaze pilot gave a girl one of his uniform buttons to remember him by)

4. Rin's tail is about a meter long

5. There are tons of servants working at Mephisto's mansion. Belial is in charge of them

6. Katoh borrows from all sorts of neat real locations when making settings

7. Katoh identifies with pretty much all the characters the most! Except Lucifer.

8. Demon designs she's proud of include the impure king and hachirou, pretty much anything that was the main one in an arc

9. Katoh lists a bunch of her favorite musical artists/music she’s listening to recently: King Gnu, Official Hige Dandism, Kenshi Yonezu, BAD HOP, Sakanaction, Keyakizaka 46, Hypnosis Mic, Aimer, B’Z, Queen Bee.

10. Awww the rabbit manga that characters are often reading isn't just Robo to Usakichi, it's an even older one that she drew as a little kid

11. She likes industrial style interior designs

12. Rin and Yukio alternated who got the top bunk growing up, because they couldn't agree on it lol

13. Katoh cares a whole lot about panel layouts and speech bubble positions, might even be her favorite part of the process (it shows!)

4. Katoh does NOT have a mashou, lol

15. Rin has probably been practicing in secret so he can learn to carry stuff with his tail

16. Izumo probably got into shojo manga around 1st grade, her mom had some around the house

17. Specialty dishes: Rin - lots of stuff but especially nabe Yuri - stuff you can throw together quickly Shiro - stuff he learned from Yuri and/or cookbooks, alongside teaching Rin Yukio - Does. Not. Cook.

18. Can't pick a favorite place she's been on research, but there's no place like Japan

19. Kinzou's band isn't currently meeting because demons, but he's probably still thinking of new songs

20. Hardest characters to draw: anyone with detailed flowing hair. Hardest to write for: Lightning and Gedouin. She had to go read books about serial killers specifically for material for Gedouin, lol

21. Suguro actually gets a dorm room to himself, though allegedly Yukio is technically assigned as his roommate, lol. Didn't end up that way what with Yukio being a teacher and also Rin’s whole...situation

22. Shiemi makes some of her own hair accessories! Cute

23. Katoh doesn't mind if you include stuff with fan letters but check with the editor first

24. Time for making each chapter: Planning/storyboarding: 1-5 days. Sketching: 3-5 days. Drawing/inking: the rest. Just...the rest of the time

25. Neither Suguro nor Izumo have dated before and neither is currently dating. But that's probably just because things were hectic for them! It could happen

26. Yukio breaks 5 or 6 pairs of glasses a year, someone get this kid a strap or something

27. How many spare glasses does Yukio have? Check the fanbook lol it's in there (dang it Katoh)

28. The demon she wants us to pay the most attention to is Lucifer. Because plot.

29. What's under the Order's big meeting table? It's a BOTTOMLESS PIT and if you fall in it you DIE that's what makes it COOL (laughs)

30. What are the job requirements for the angelic legion? Literally just Arthur liking you and inviting you to join

31. She WANTS to do more character profiles but just hasn't gotten to it

32. Rin's tail feels like a cat tail, texture wise

33. The "red Assiah fire" is literally just actual fire nothing special

34. Rin's current hair color is light blue fading to white at the ends

35. Thoughts on Rin's growth: she likes that he stays positive in awful situations and she also thinks it's very main character of him to face the past instead of avoiding it

36. Mephisto didn't purposely surround Rin with stuffed animals when he woke up after going crispy. Mephisto's bed is just Like That

37. Kurikara was based on a cool sword she found in a sword book, but that one was technically just a ceremonial sword. The symbol on it us a Sanskrit letter kaan (sp?) associated with Fudou Myouou

38. Kuro can communicate with normal cats and hangs out with them often

39. Sometimes Shiemi's skirt is extra fancy around the hem what's up with that? Apparently it's an optional accessory that comes with the skirts help I haven't noticed this and don't know any fashion terms in any language

40. When coloring, Katoh always tries to have an overall theme in mind ("emphasis on blue" etc) so it comes together in the end

41. Yes the twins are genetically related to Shiro because of Goro (she says they're like his nephews but I say GENETICALLY at least they'd be indistinguishable from his children)

42. Strongest mom of all the strong moms around here? Yuri! Did you SEE her give birth??

43. Are you careful about your own health Katoh-sensei? Not particularly! Her mom has had to bring her food at work sometimes! Don't do this at home kids

44. At the dating events Shura goes to, does she drink cocktails in moderation? Yeah, she probably downplays her normal drinking habits at these things. But normally she's down for just about any kind of drink

45. Lucifer just really likes oysters okay

46. How many pages of manga does Katoh draw in a day? If she's being good about self-care: three. Maximum number ever: TEN

47. Mephisto is one of those folks who can eat like a garbage compactor and never gain weight. Possibly because his body resists that sort of change the same way it resists aging etc

48. First food Rin cooked: fish burger type patty. Yukio's favorite things Rin cooks: fish simmered in soy sauce, yellowtail with daikon radish. It's fish all the way down

49: Did Rin ever get more monthly allowance from Mephisto? It doubled! He gets TWO 2000 yen bills now (rip) [T/N: That's uh, that's USD $37.26 a month or 33.10 euro]

50. Why isn't Rin more popular with the girls? He gets nervous talking to them, plus he's too oblivious to notice even if he DID have some fans

51. Why change Suguro's hair? She gets bored with keeping everything the same, and she wanted a visual representation that he was getting serious and going into kind of a training arc

52. Things Katoh pays extra attention to when drawing: trying to capture the feel of whatever she's drawing (like "that looks warm and soft" or "I bet that guy stinks" cough Lightning cough)

53: Does Rin take after Yuri more? (He's got her eyes!) Katoh tried to draw Yuri so she looks like both twins. Personality, too - Yukio has her smarts and Rin has her optimism

54: Do you ever wanna be like Mephisto? Well she'd like to be able to get away with just ANYTHING EVER, but no, let's not be like Mephisto

55. Konekomaru not only carries around a cat toy in case he meets any cats, he MAKES cat toys to carry around based on what he thinks the cats would like

56. How'd you come up with Shima? Go read the fan book!

57. Do the kids have Twitter/Instagram accounts? Rin - probably not. Konekomaru might be on some social media. Paku and Izumo are totally on instagram

58. Is there something Rin makes that you wish you could try? All of it! That's the whole idea! He's good at cooking!

59. Will we ever have a (G-rated) reveal of what ALL of Mamushi and her family's tattoos look like? Maybe! She'll think about it

60. Does Arthur have a repertoire of different hairstyles? Not really, he just puts some of it up on the top. Heck he might even have people to do that for him

61. If you wrote a shojo manga what would it be about? She'd have to do a lot of research before even coming up with a story, since there are so many style differences between the genres aside from just the subject

62. The other two of Mephisto's top 3 favorite foods: Cup ramen and....f-fried bubblegum?? Is that a THING???

63. Where do you start when drawing a character? Usually the outline of their face but if it's a complex pose/composition she'll start with whatever's in the foreground (like hands)

64. If Katoh could have a familiar, what demon would she choose? Mephisto. As the all-powerful author, she might actually be able to command him as a familiar!

66. If you swapped Yukio and Rin's relationship around what would change? not much, you'd pretty much have Rin going to the Illuminati and Yukio going to the past

67. Top 3 foods/souvenirs to try in Kyushu? Well she doesn't know what’s good CURRENTLY but when she was there she always used to like burdock tempura udon, hakata torimon (a kind of manju with white bean paste inside), and Chikae style cod roe. today I learned Katoh went to high school in Kyushu

68. Katoh listens to music a lot while she's storyboarding, then when she and the assistants are all drawing and inking they put various videos/movies and stuff on in the background

69. For all his hitting on girls, is Shima actually popular with the ladies at all? He's got enough girls in his life that he probably COULD find a girlfriend if he really wanted, but the double agent thing tends to get in the way. He still wouldn't be as popular as Yukio though (side thought/translator’s note: Shima would be proud of being number 69.)

70. Katoh has the ending planned out in a big-picture way, but there are still a few details here and there that she's fretting over

71. It's cute when the boys put their ties over their shoulders when they're working on something! Where'd that come from? She just figured a tie might get in the way and that seemed like a realistic way to get it out of the way

72. Looks like Yukio is getting some facial hair! What about Rin? They're both about the age for it, but maybe Rin can't grow a beard yet. Maybe a little peach fuzz here and there

73. Katoh's favorite blue exorcist merch? There were some exorcist licenses a while back, and the exorcist pins. Basically it's really cool that these little accessories she drew ACTUALLY EXIST NOW, LIKE YOU CAN HOLD THEM IN YOUR HANDS

74. Okay realtalk how long do we have left, I don't want the series to end yet? We're solidly in the second half by now but it's not, like, ABOUT to end yet

75. Katoh would be a Knight meister, based on what characters she likes to play in games and such

76. How many people in the whole exorcism cram school? More than you think! She doesn't give a number but apparently licensed exorcists also attend classes for new meisters, etc, so there's a wide age range attending

77. How's Arthur feel about, like, studying Taming on the way to becoming Paladin? He's at least mostly accepted that you have to use demons to fight demons effectively

78. Konekomaru started wearing glasses in his first year of middle school, so like 7th grade (more recent than I thought!) He has one spare pair, in contrast to Yukio lol

79. Katoh's current obsessions? Ghost/scary stories! She's even been going to live readings of them recently

80. Media Katoh consumes for inspiration? A wide range of foreign teen drama, horror/suspense, shojo manga, light novels, anime, etc. Special focus on things where two boys are in conflict or there are brothers involved

81. If they weren't exorcists what jobs would they have? Rin - chef. Yukio - doctor. Shiemi - uh, florist?

82. Inspiration for the design of True Cross Town? Katoh and her assistants gathered up a bunch of references, picked out stuff they felt matched the tone, and mashed them all up together

83. Did you use any references etc for the school/exorcist uniforms? She says she probably should have but she just kind of made them up before publication

84. Favorite part of drawing? For color pages, picking out a color scheme. For black and white, drawing in all the little details (though she doesn't always get time to lately)

85. Once again confirms the demon kings' weird hair is a representation of their horns. ADDS THAT PEOPLE WHO CAN'T SEE DEMONS CAN'T SEE THE WEIRD HAIR

86. Now that Yukio's at the Illuminati, where's he gonna get his Jump SQ and spare glasses? Well he probably never planned to stay for long, but hey it's a big ship and they might have an optometrist and/or newsstand there

87. Do you base the demon characters on any references etc? Not really, she just gets a general idea of popular demon designs and then makes up her own in her own style

88. Merchandise Katoh personally wants to have made: stuff that an adult could just use in their day to day life. Also, it's not gonna happen, but if her favorite figure brand made AoEx figures she could die happy

89. If Beelzebub's host body was a beautiful woman, how would Shima react? Would the womanizing win out over the bug phobia? Katoh replies that Shima would probably just faint from being near a girl that pretty, before the bugs even got involved

90. Will the twins ever get to smile and eat dinner together again?? We'll just have to wait and see!

91. What do you check at a "scenario check"? what's a scenario check man I dunno They check for people being out of character or the setting feeling off. They had a lot of these checks for the anime, but they also do them for the drama CD, games, and all that other stuff where multiple authors are involved

92. Why does Shura use baldy as an insult for people who are clearly not bald? She feels like they have some kind of metaphorical, mental kind of "baldness" and she's calling them out on it. Whatever that means

93. After Blue Exorcist ends, what do you want to draw next? She has SO MANY IDEAS, SO MANY

94. Did Katoh make up the Shinto chants that, for example, Izumo used against Gedouin? They're assembled from bits of actual Shinto prayers according to what feels right in the scene

95. Yukio reads the Jump SQ, right, and, just hear me out here, he likes gag manga, right? Does this mean he reads Salaryman Yukio? It's something he would read, but let's say that in the AoEx universe there's just a very similar manga that he finds oddly relatable

96. What do Yukio and Shima do in their free time on the Dominus Liminus? oh my god you guys this ship has so many amenities. Yukio probably spends time reading in the library, which they totally have. There's also, like, a gym, and a movie theater, and a THEATER theater, all of which are free. Shima probably hangs out at the pool (!) and goes to the movies, and hits on illuminati girls, lol

97. Easiest character to draw? The ones with boring simple hair, lol. Lightning gets an honorable mention for ALSO not having eyes in most shots, but Rin wins--he was specifically designed to be easy for Katoh to draw because that's what you want in your main character

98. How do demons understand gender? They just possess whatever feels like the best match to how they feel in Gehenna, whether that's a man, or a woman, or a rat, or whatever

99. Where do you start when you're coming up with a story? She starts with character design and how the characters relate to each other. Currently she's just continuing an existing story, so she works on splitting up the overall plot into episodes and fleshing it out with scenes and information about characters

100. When do you feel most happy? She honestly feels like she lives a very happy life overall. Mentions noticing a lot of little things, like how nice her cats' heads smell when she cuddles them or taking a nice cold refreshing drink of water. There's happiness in everything. aww.

#blue exorcist #interview #Ao no Exorcist #translation

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h2ojustaddmako · 3 years

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Headcanon: The Origin of Mermaids & Magic

Wooooooo...it’s been a long time since I’ve written one of those. I can truthfully say I’m been sitting on this one for maybe over a year...letting it cook up inside me...like a dumpling of information. Okay, weird image, i get it, but that’s the truth.

Basically today I wanna go over a little idea of mine I’ve had for a long time, and every time I rewatched the show, it was fed and grew larger and larger, with more and more information to help me piece out the puzzle of mermaid powers, and why all you thought you know was absolute garbage.

As I went over in my (pretty popular, if I may) post about how the powers work, mermaids use electromagnetism in a way that helps them alter the magnetic field around them and manipulate water in multiple ways to be able to “control” it. The moon is magnetic, and so is Mako Island, therefore, something in the full moon evokes the powers. But what is it?

While watching season 3 and Mako Mermaids as a whole, you’d realize they are more similar than you’d think. Actually, the lore introduced in season 3 seems to be the base foundation to the entire world-building in Mako Mermaids. One thing that is highly notable is the appearance of the crystals. Moon crystals, as I call them, can indeed release “moonlight”, this blue, hypnotizing energy wave. But that’s not really moonlight, per se. You see, moonlight isn’t a real thing in nature; the moon doesn’t radiate like the sun, it’s just reflective, and it’s surely not deep blue. And so, the so-called moonlight in the show is actually something else. Like the stones of Mako, the crystals in them also originated from the moon, and Mako (and every other “moon pool” out there) is probably sitting on millions of them. Considering how many were inside that one piece Ryan and Sophie tried to grab, the foundation of Mako Island is rich with these blue bitches. Now, these crystals are unique because they store inside them the secret to mermaid magic.

You see, throughout the Mako show, one of the most valuable items are these little ‘moon rings’. These little rings with a nice, big blue crystal right in the middle. While the show never explicitly reveals that the crystals are originated from the moon pool, or Mako at all, but given the pretty obvious design choice, it’s very clear to us that it’s more than just an artistic design. They also work in a very similar way - they both radiate blue energy that is very strong, and have serious powers. Mako gave us a very big hint to the origin of that, by saying the moon rings need to be recharged in full moons. That’s when the power of the moon is the strongest. Now going back a little, we said the moon doesn’t really shine a light of its own, so what are we talking about? Well, like the crystals on the rings, the crystals on the moon absorb power daily, from the sun and space. The sun uses a strong magnetic field, holding the planets and what-not spinning around it in perfect rings since the creation of the solar system. The crystals on the moon absorb that power, and every night, the moon radiates it back to earth, to its cousin, Mako Island. Simplifying things, the moon absorbs power and in return release it towards Earth, only for that power to charge the entire Mako Island crystal colony. Many have spoken about the weird sensation Mako gives them - electromagnetism, and no wonder mermaids feel it stronger, since they are sensitive to it more than most people. The girls felt the comet getting closer because a part of them is now sensing magnetism in the environment.

So Mako is charged with energy, so what? You see, the moon pool’s shape is very interesting. The decision to place it at the bottom of a volcano isn’t just a creative choice (though it is very cool). The shape of a volcano is that of a cone, of a funnel, if you may. The moon centers around the small opening above and radiates into the moon pool itself. Unlike the rest of the island, which seems unaffected during full moon nights, the shape of the moon pool allows the power to get trapped in the spacious room of crystals walls, awakening the power that is also trapped inside the crystals themselves, probably magnifying the intensity of it by a lot. Add the fact that the full moon is the stronger of the faces of the moon considering all of it is facing Earth and you have yourself a force not to be played with. That means that the moon pool as a room has very strong energy to it, one that apparently can turn someone into a mermaid.

The mystery of why a mermaid, of all things, and what mermaids have to do with the moon is still a puzzle left to be solved. But one thing’s for sure, mermaids are not natural creatures, despite what Mako Mermaids tries to sell you. They have too many human characteristics to only be relatives to humans and go through such an evolution is a short (evolutionarily speaking) time. Plus, no power in the world can turn you into something you’re not, and for Lewis’ examinations and the medical tests they went through in the “fake sick” episode, it’s pretty safe to say that genetically, mermaids are very slightly different to humans, and it’s not something that can be detected without looking into their DNA. But that tells us enough to safely bet that the origin of mermaids is human, and not another species adapted to live in the ocean.

And yet - sea-born ‘natural’ mermaids are so different from humans. They can siren sing, they give birth to “hatchlings” (whatever that means), and heck, some can even speak to sea animals, what’s up with that? Well, these could all be considered under the umbrella term of rapid evolution. In simple words, rapid evolution is the process a species goes through in order to adapt to a new environment that is foreign to it and different from its natural habitat. While humans don’t really have a natural habitat, we are land animals, and therefore, to live in the ocean we’d have to adapt to different factors. The transformation of the full moon only does about half the work, but a mermaid like Cleo couldn’t live in the ocean forever, as we saw when she ran away. She was hungry, ‘cause she didn’t know how to hunt. She was tired, ‘cause she didn’t know where to sleep safely. And you would be too, if you were to be thrown out of your natural environment and into some place you may have the physical skills to handle, but not the knowledge.

So my theory goes as follows: in an order of events, at some point throughout Earth’s history, a piece of the moon detached and entered our atmosphere. The piece broke off, landing in several places around the world, such as China, Ireland, perhaps the Caribbean as well, but the biggest piece landed off the coast of Australia. The new mass of stone tore through the layers of the Earth, resulting in an active volcano, that eventually cooled down and turned into an island. Million of years later, ancient humans, probably a male and a female, discovered one of the moon pools around the world (probably Ireland), sometime around 3000 years ago, before the first mentions of mermaids in Greek mythology. Said humans were probably considered as witches, gods, beings of magic and power. It is not far fetched to assume they may have escaped into the ocean. Perhaps more people were interested in getting such powers; maybe it was more than two, maybe even tens of people. Mermaids were considered as monsters, beings of evil to be feared of, and when Christianity rose, perhaps unholy abominations. The moon pools were considered supernatural places. All that led to merpeople being secluded, escaping humans, and accepting the ocean as a new home. They adapted quickly, and with time, the mermadic gene was implemented into their DNA. They were still humans, just highly adapted to life underwater. With the industrial revolution, the stories of mermaids became nothing more than folklore, one with ancient gods, monsters, and myths. Every now and then someone saw a mermaid, like Christopher Columbus, but who would believe a person that saw a being half woman half fish?

this actually started as a whole other headcanon, but go figure

#Headcanon #h2o just add water #mako: island of secrets #mako mermaids #natural history

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cuttlefishkitch · 4 years

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hello! i haven't talked to you before, but ron said that i could ask you for some advice on writing eds? (i'd like to know things to avoid/common things that could come up in everyday life that would be good to mention/the sort of aids and stuff they'd have maybe?/anything else you think is relevant)

Hi! Sorry this took so long, a combination of ADHD and chronic pain slowed me way the fuck down. Thank you for being patient!

EDIT: WEIRD HEEL THINGS I FORGOT!!

So, before I get into this I should probably say I technically haven’t been diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS for anyone reading) because it’s one of those syndromes that takes forever to get diagnosed with (it took a friend of mine’s mother over 30 years to get dxed). Many doctors, and everyone I know who does have EDS agree with me that it’s probably what causes my chronic joint pain and some of my other chronic issues. But just because three separate doctors have said “Yeah Probably” doesn’t mean I’m diagnosed!! Only a geneticist can do that!! And they had two-three year waitlists BEFORE the apocalypse happened.

I am diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Small Fiber Neuropathy, and potentially misdiagnosed with Fibromyalgia (once I get properly tested for EDS I might get undiagnosed with this because I don’t have most of the main symptoms of Fibro, but I got diagnosed with it anyway because it’s what doctors misDX you with when they don’t know what’s wrong with you and don’t want to do more tests).

All that said, I’ve done a lot of research about EDS (mainly because it’s the only thing that explains all my symptoms since doctors seem incapable of doing so), and know a few people who have either confirmed or suspected EDS, so I’ll link to some stuff, talk about the symptoms that often come with EDS, explain how the symptoms I have affect me, because just because someone’s not diagnosed doesn’t mean they aren’t having symptoms, and probs elaborate a bit about writing physical disabilities and chronic pain in general because it’s super important to me!

So RESOURCES aka how to make sure your post never sees the light of day because you’re linking things and tumblr hates it when people give other people information!!

Youtubers! If you want to know about the day to day of living with EDS or any disability or chronic illness I super suggest finding a youtuber that makes videos about their life. My EDS favorites are

Jessica Kellgren-Fozard

Annie Elainey

Amy Lee Fisher

Websites! If you’re asking random folks on tumblr I’m assuming (and hoping) you’ve already done the basic WebMD google searches and looked over the seemingly ridiculous lists of symptoms and related conditions, so here are a few websites that are made more for people than for doctors.

The Ehlers Danlos Society

OhTWIST (That’s Why I’m So Tired)

ChronicPainPartners (the fact that they have an entire section of articles called “Dealing with Doctors” should really tell you something)

Books! If you feel like doing actual reading! I suggest reading books written by people with Ehlers Danlos, to get a feel for how they portray themselves. I’m not saying steal, but it’s probably a good point of comparison to see how your portrayal feels. (haven’t actually read these b/c my ADHD doesn’t let me read)

Ria Ruse by Morgan S. Ray (a superhero book with a disabled super MC!!)

Mysteries of Maybelle by Imani Benfell (Imani is still in high school and has already written and self-published a book cause she didn’t have enough representation for herself how cool is she!!)

Bodies in Motion by Liana Brooks (tw for pregnancy problems and miscarriages in the link, because it’s a blog post talking about integrating EDS symptoms into the story without explicitly naming them as such)

OKAY, now for some rambling about EDS SYMPTOMS!!!

Ehlers Danlos is one monster of a genetic condition in complexity and variety. There are THIRTEEN different identified types of EDS, it often comes with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) and/or POTS, and can lead to various other conditions like gastroparesis, chiari malformation, craniocervical instability, and/or bad teeth. So if you’re going to be writing a character with EDS consider what other comorbid conditions they might also have. I’m mainly going to be talking about Hypermobile EDS (hEDS) because it’s what I probably have and what I’m most familiar with. That said there is a lot of overlap in symptoms with the other varieties.

I started typing this section and realized I was going to have to break it down even more so we’re going to talk about Chronic Pain, Unstable Joints (Dislocations and Subluxations), Skin Things, Mobility Issues, and Other Weird Shit and how those things get addressed separately.

Gonna get the Other Weird Shit out of the way first. Because EDS is a malfunction of connective tissue it can fuck up all sorts of random things. For instance, I and many other people w/ hEDS have trouble swallowing. Shit gets stuck in my throat, I sometimes choke on and have to cough up food, and pills can be hard to swallow, which sucks cause I take A Lot Of Pills. If it doesn’t cause full-on gastroparesis it can cause IBS or other digestive problems b/c the digestive tract is mostly made of connective tissue. It can potentially cause heart problems even if they aren’t as big of a risk as in some other forms of EDS. Premature osteoarthritis is common because what you need is more joint pain. And Fatigue OH BOY THE FATIGUE. And of course the headaches, can’t forget those pesky migraines can we!

AND piezogenic papules!! I completely forgot!! Piezogenic papules are little white bumps that appear when you put weight on your heel. In some people they hurt, but in others they don’t. They’re technically tiny little herniations of fat peaking through the fascia in the heel. They were added as part of the diagnostic criteria for hEDS in 2017!

Now for Skin Things cause it’s not as big a thing in hEDS as it is in other forms. Basically, in a lot of forms of EDS, the skin is extra stretchy and extra delicate. It bruises and tears easily, people with the extreme versions of this can accidentally scratch something into an open wound if they aren’t careful. My skin is pretty soft and sensitive, I def have the typical velvety skin, and as is pretty par for the course of someone with hEDS my skin is a little stretchy, and sorta delicate. I’m not as tissue-papery as some people get, but I almost always have at least one mystery bruise or scrape b/c existing is hazardous. Most of scars are also pretty normal, unlike the extremely papery and atrophic scars (though I have a few tiny acne scars that are atrophic) that are common with other kinds of hEDS. Something that I DO have is Lots of Stretch Marks, all over my thighs, and even down to my calves. Which wouldn’t be abnormal, except for the fact that I’ve never been over 145 lbs and I’ve never been pregnant. Having a lot of stretch marks or striations in the skin without due cause happens because the structure of the skin isn’t as strong as it is in people with a normal amount of connective tissue.

I don’t have to worry as much about my skin but people that do are usually very careful with adhesives because they can irritate or tear the skin, which sucks when you need a lot of bandaids cause your darn skin won’t do its job.

Now on to the meatier stuff and since I’m mostly working backward let’s do Mobility Issues!! These can happen in loads of ways, but a lot of what causes these in people with EDS are the other two things I wanna talk about. Unstable joints lead to increased risk of injury when doing stuff people with fully functioning joints can do.

For context, I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user, meaning I can walk, but a lot of the time it’s better if use a chair. Mine is mostly for my POTS symptoms, but the fact that my legs aren’t also in absolute agony is a big plus. I use a custom manual wheelchair with a SmartDrive (b/c I’m very fucking fortunate and have good insurance) whenever I leave the house and have to be “walking” for more than a few minutes at a time. I can’t fully self-propel in a manual chair because it would be damaging to the joints in my arms and hands, but the smaller chair is easier to maneuver in less than accessible spaces (like almost everywhere). There was about a month-long span where I used a very cheap and very bulky electric chair while I was waiting on the ideal set up I have now. Before that, I also briefly used, and sometimes still use, an up-right posture cane.

People with EDS have widely varying mobility issues because of how uniquely it can manifest. My cane only gave me a little help with balance because if I used it in any prolonged capacity any pain it took away from my legs was relocated to my arms, and as an artist, my arms are more important to me!

If you’re going to write a character with EDS having mobility issues as a result of their EDS the best thing to do is to narrow down their specific needs. Are their knees complete and utter garbage but their shoulders and wrists strong? Maybe they can get away with using a cane. Can they not stand for longer than 5 minutes because of the vertigo from their POTS? Maybe they need a manual wheelchair. Would propelling themself damage their back and arm joints? An electric chair might be necessary! Plenty of people with EDS use all sorts of combinations of these aides to get around their life, consider how your character’s good and bad days would be. Do they have back up plans if they overestimate themselves? There can be a lot to manage, but don’t let it scare you off! Sometimes I try and make it into a resource management game (because I’m a game designer and that’s what I do), to make evaluating my energy and mobility needs more fun!

But now let's tackle some of the reasons those mobility aides might be needed. Unstable Joints.

Ever stepped wrong and rolled your ankle? It hurts for a few steps and then kinda fixes itself, or maybe it bothers you for the rest of the day and you put it up and ice it when you get home? When I was walking around outside my house that would happen AT LEAST once a month, usually more. Some times I’m sitting wrong and when I get up my knee isn’t a knee anymore and decides to just give out from under me. My knuckles are made of unruly popcorn and they Don’t Want To Stay Home!! Oh! And my shoulder is more often out a little out of its socket than it is fully in.

Unstable joints lead to Dislocations and Subluxations of varying intensity, and some people get them more frequently than others. Some can be severe enough to necessitate hospital visits and even surgery, some subluxations are so banal (like my fUCKING SHOULDER) that you just learn to live with the pain.

If a character is going to be in high action, combat-heavy scenarios, chances are they’re going to be popping out joints left and right. Hell, depending on the severity of their joint laxity they could be doing the same sitting at a desk. Again, it’s incredibly varied. I’d suggest setting some sort of baseline for yourself, of what a character’s joints can and can’t stand up to, and maybe do some research on which joints are most likely to pop out in general (hips and shoulders are big culprits being the wacky ball and socket motherfuckers they are). Then maybe have something pop out or hold up every so often when it shouldn’t cause hey! EDS is kinda just like that! Unpredictable!

Some ways people manage joint laxity is with braces, KT tape, and physical therapy. Braces come in many different forms, since I’m currently getting pretty much no treatment for my shitty joints I use mostly compression braces made for sporty people. It really is amazing how much a bit of tight fabric can do to keep my wrist in place.

More specialized braces often have solid parts to prevent the joints from hyper-extending (bending the wrong way) and causing further damage. If you ever see someone with what looks like diamond shaped rings around a bunch of their finger joints, chances are those are Ring Splints, and are there to keep the finger shaped like a finger. I want to get my hands on some and get some on my hands Very Badly, because my fingers hyper-extend SO MUCH when I type, and it makes my hand pain way way worse.

KT tape is another thing people often use. It’s stretchy tape you put on your skin and it basically functions kinda like a second ligament as well as reinforcing the joint and keeping the bones mostly where they’re supposed to be. The problem with this is a lot of people with EDS have very sensitive and fragile skin like I mentioned before, so KT tape can cause allergic reactions, chronic skin irritation, or just straight up take the skin with it when someone goes to remove it. Hence a lot of folks are really careful with it.

Physical Therapy is kinda the best (and only) treatment for joint laxity aside from Very Invasive and sometimes Highly Experimental surgery. It focuses on strengthening the muscles around the joints so they can do the work all those bone ropes made of body glue can’t. The problem is finding a physical therapist that 1) knows what EDS even is, 2) knows you have it, and 3) knows how to treat it without doing stuff that’ll Phucking Hurt You Worse!! Because exercising wrong with EDS can do Permanent Damage!!!

Again most folks use a combination of all of these things, or have next to no access to them b/c healthcare sucks.

Anyway, on to one of my favorite topics, Chronic Pain!! One of the reasons this post took me so long!!!

Chances are if your character has chronic pain as a result of their EDS there are gonna be some things they hate, including stairs, rain, thunderstorms, stairs, hills, uneven terrain, oh and did I mention stairs??? It’s going to vary person to person, but almost everyone I’ve met with pain from EDS has complained about their knees. For me the most debilitating pain is in my fingers and wrists. They’re by far my least stable joints but I use them constantly for stuff like drawing, typing, and sewing.

Because my joint pain is so wide spread, like most people’s with hEDS, it effects every single part of my day to day life. I can’t carry a heavy ceramic plate, open a bottle, or even use my computer without pain. It’s practically impossible for me to get comfortable in any position be it sitting or laying down, and as you can imagine that makes it hard to sleep a lot of the time. Moving too much hurts, but so does sitting still. I’m constantly taking braces on and off or cracking/stretching my joints so they pop back into place and hurt less.

Also being in pain makes everything else That Much Worse. I get tired way faster than I did before my pain was this bad (I had chronic pain for a while before actually realizing it wasn’t normal to not be able to walk down the block without feeling like your foot bones are trying to escape). My sensory issues and anxiety disorder are more easily aggravated because my base level of comfort is way worse. It fucks with my depression. And OH BOY does it make my ADHD worse because being in pain is fucking distracting as hell and makes it harder to make decisions and switch tasks. Also my ADHD often makes my other symptoms worse cause I forget to take my meds, don’t drink enough water, or can’t find my fucking braces because the item eating black-hole that comes with ADHD stole them. The intersection of mental and physical disabilities is probably a rant for another time though, so back to chronic pain.

Does it suck? Yes, undoubtedly. Is this incredibly debilitating? Of course it is, I spent the last several months unable to feed myself without assistance because there was a staircase between my room and the kitchen and I could only manage to climb it once a day. Is it overwhelming? Definitely, I’ve frequently broken down crying from a combination of pain and frustration because I’m having a bad day and there’s no relief to be found. Am I able to predict when it’s going to rain with uncanny accuracy because any change in barometric pressure makes me feel like every bone in my body is trying to kill it’s neighbors? You bet your fucking ass I am!! Does it sometimes make me irritable, angry, and occasionally dismissive of when abled people get cold or a temporary injury because the stuff they’re complaining about is my life every single day and all avenues of treatment and recovery I have could take years and still not entirely solve my issues? Yeah, and while I deserve a little extra patience I also have to be sure to check myself because I don’t want to turn into someone who’s nasty to be around. Do I sometimes need to sleep for 17 hours straight because it’s raining, I have migraine, and I’m in too much pain to be conscious? Yup, sometimes a few days in a row. Does living in constant pain mean I’m unable to do all the things I want to and does that sometimes make me wanna curl up in bed and never leave? Yeah, it happens.

But! And here’s the big important but, that’s not everything! I still write, draw, and talk to my friends!! It might take me a little longer but I get there. I’m still happy and excitable and make the time to write out five page long posts about EDS because it’s something I’m passionate about! My chronic pain doesn’t stop me. I refuse to let it. I never really wanted to go mountain climbing anyway, so I’m perfectly happy being able to make it up and down the six steps in my house, even if sometimes I have to sit and bump down them on my ass, or crawl up them like a cat. Chronic pain isn’t all I am. It isn’t a fate worse than death. It isn’t the only thing your character should talk about (though I do talk about my pain a lot cause I’m a complainer about almost everything). You can have your character be hindered by their pain, realistically they would be. You can have them seek comfort, support, and relief. Other characters can commiserate and be sympathetic, but it doesn’t mean their whole life is going to be one big pity party, that would be incredibly fucking boring. I know I’d be bored out of my mind.

All that said dealing with chronic pain, especially from EDS, is Complicated. Physical Therapy is the gold standard, but like I said before it can be a long and difficult process, and isn’t always accessible. Stabilization methods like I talked about before can help prevent pain, or reduce it by keeping bones mostly where they belong. Heat and cold help joints, relax muscles, and reduce inflammation but keeping them applied is rough and the relief doesn’t always last. Doctors prescribe anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, and sometimes even anti-epileptic medication to help manage pain, but everyone’s mileage with those varies. And I’m not at all qualified to talk in-depth about narcotics or other heavy duty pain-meds, but suffice to say the war on drugs fucked shit up for people that legit need that kind of help BIG TIME.

Now for my closer/bonus rant about EDS and Disability Writing in General!

Everyone always says write what you know, so if you really want to do disabled people justice, get to know disabled people! Make friends with disabled people, get involved with advocacy groups, consume content made by disabled creators both about disability and not! Disabilities are so fucking diverse, even EDS is such a complex disorder, and comes with so many potential co-morbidities, that practically everyone with it has a unique experience. There’s no way I can fully explain everything in a tumblr post. Hell, even if I could talk to you for hours probably couldn’t give you enough info to answer all your questions (especially since I’m still in diagnosis hell :,) ), so talk to a wide range of people with EDS and other disabilities!! I know it sounds like a lot of work but trust me, disabled people are some of the strongest, raddest, coolest, people you will ever meet that it won’t feel like it.

And don’t be afraid either, the fact that EDS and other disabilities are so wildly varied means that you have a little bit of wiggle room with your character’s experience. There’s so little disability rep out their I think people are WAY to scared to try their hand at writing it. So long as your character is a fully developed person in addition to being disabled, you give some logical thought as to how it would affect their life, and you don’t make their disability the butt of any joke it isn’t difficult to avoid ableist writing. PLEASE WRITE MORE DISABLED PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC PAIN/CHRONIC ILLNESS!!

Okay that’s it, again sorry it took so long for me to get back to you! My fingers were being little pests about it, and my ADHD (which is honestly more disabling than everything else a lot of the time lmao) was being an asshole! Hope this helps, and feel free to ask me more questions if you need clarification! It might take me a bit but I do love talking about this stuff.

#neela-chaan #ehlers danlos syndrome #EDS #hEDS #hypermobile ehlers danlos #disability #writing advice #disability writing #Chronic Pain #asks #SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG IM JUST SLOW #also i'm sorry the formatting is such a wreck #my adhd won't let me go back and fix it #and i've already spent way too much time

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bogleech · 5 years

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Okay here’s the whole entire text of my original pokemon gen concept under a cut (sorry if that screws you up on mobile)

I’ve only ever sketched a tiny number of these (like my fly ideas here), but I can see most of them in my head pretty clearly and might sketch more of them by request someday. I originally set my fan-region in Florida, a place I hated living but still had a lot of interesting characteristics. This changed over once I moved to Oregon, and the thing about Oregon is that it has desert, forest, swamp, coastline and frozen mountaintops that are all pretty vast, ancient and in places relatively untouched compared to the rest of North America. This is not only a perfect setting for some really wild pokemon, but makes a believable choice because our Pacific Northwest is pretty popular in Japan.

The different biomes of this region have "deep" areas where the pokemon change. Some also have "polluted" areas. The region is environmentally themed and heavily deals with human interference on the natural world.

The villains are Team Bio, genetic engineerers lead by a mysterious old woman who narrowly survived the original Mewtwo experiment. Her underlings all use "mutant" pokemon, and she seeks to create a new species of hyper-intelligent, pure-hearted pokemon that will replace humans entirely. Along the way is a strange increase in reports of interstellar pokemon activity... I actually tried hard to minimize how many pokemon in this are just “my kind” of concept, but I think I failed pretty hard. It probably does feel like it leans a little more towards Mortasheen than something Pokemon would actually make, but for basically every pokemon that’s one of my “dream concepts” or “most wanted” I tried to come up with one that I thought would appeal more to somebody else’s taste than mine.

THE STARTERS

Grass Starter: a grass "lumberjack" pterosaur with an axe for a beak. Second stage has more saw-like beak, final stage is a grass/steel quetzalcoatlus (the pterosaur) with a beak and crest forming a chainsaw, no longer flies

Fire type calf whose black cow marks are actually soot. Evolves into cow with craggy black “helmet” and horns of charcoal. Final stage a charcoal-armored minotaur like fire/ground type.

Water Starter is a beady-eyed water shrew with big webbed flipper feet, known to steal shiny objects. Second stage more humanoid, said to dive for treasure. Final stage is water/dark lanky, stripey shrew with a black mask, said to rob boats like a “highwayman” of the river.

Meadows and forest:

Normal type mammal is a spherical porcupine, like a chestnut. Rubs its spines with noxious fruit juices, giving it a multicolored look. Evolved form is a colorful “punk” porcupine.

Early bug is a sticklike inchworm Evolves to cocoon resembling a wooden log on top. Final form is bipedal stick mimic grasshopper, evocative of a cute wooden puppet with a pointed nose.

Basic bird is a hummingbird Evolves to be four-winged and legless, never lands in its whole life. Final hummingbird is a fierce looking hunter that drains energy from grass types like a predator.

Grass type walking bud creature, looks nervous. Evolves to grass/flying orchid-like angelic flower. Alternate evolution is wilted, grey, grass/ghost goth orchid with tattered petals, cute but sad. (evolves this way if it levels up after a battle in which it sustained super-effective damage)

Ground type earthworm sticking out of dirt, cute flower-shaped head. Evolved worm looks like shark sticking out of the dirt, nose looks like its prevo

Electric/dark pikachu-like packrat holding a large coin. Electrically charges its treasure as a booby trap. Actually said to be employed as underlings by the water-type shrew starter.

MISCELLANY:

Bug/poison type grub with fangs. Only encountered in garbage cans. Evolves into a fly pupa Final stage is a gloomy looking, drooling anthropomorphic fly.

Single stage bug/fairy type: a beautiful Maleficent-looking parasitoid wasp. Evolves from any cocoon/pupa pokemon if they're holding a "suspicious egg" item.

Ocean

Water/grass nudibranch with flower on its back. Evolves to a glaucus, each "arm" a colorful flower that absorbs sunlight as it floats.

Water type fish that "sails" on the sea's surface with its fins. Sleepy looking stingray evolution. Final form is water/dragon deep sea fish, combines some traits of anglerfish and viperfish with eyes on stalks. Only evolves from stingray when you're in the sea trench.

Water/flying marlin with huge, dazzling butterfly like fins.

Water type baby dolphin, fuzzy like a seal pup, only evolves if it has fainted more times than the number of its current level. Evolved form is water/dark, shaggy-furred, fierce looking, battle scarred dolphin with legs instead of flippers, a throwback to the doglike ancestors of delphinidae.

Polluted inlet

Water/poison oil slick with two tentacles and beady white eyes, signature ability changes it to water/fire type if it uses a fire move. Evolved form is an oil slick rising into a cartoon octopus with x's for pupils.

Water/steel fish hook with tiny head and eyes, like a barbed metal worm. Water/steel fishing jig, googly eyes and everything.

Barren Island - just a very big rock in the middle of the inlet

Ghost/poison: a greenish "dodo bird" with a face like a biohazard mask, the ghost of a species that went exinct due to sickness.

Sea Trench

Water/fire bristleworm "snake" Water/fire tube worm "dragon"

Water/ghost wailord skeleton draped in pink fuzz and a garden of one-eyed bone worms.

Swamp

Electric/flying bird resembling a lightbulb kiwi. Evolved form resembling a neon light lawn flamingo.

Grass/fairy giant sloth with sleepy face, completely covered in shaggy moss with various flowers and mushrooms. Protector of the swamp, able to control plant life.

Grass/psychic sundew, just a pair of sundew leaves atop a sleepy looking oddish-esque bulb. Evolved sundew is mostly a big circular sundew rosette, but a humanoid flower rotates in the center like a music box to lure prey.

Water/fighting borzoi pup with long legs, acts like a water strider. Evolved form is an elongated, elegant borzoi "ballerina" that dances atop water

Water/ground red leech slightly evocative of a vacuum cleaner. A healer that sucks poison from the body instead of blood. May mysteriously appear in your team after walking through swamp water.

Deep Forest:

Grass/ground banana slug with colorful mold spots, learns spore. Evolves into mold splotched, brown banana peel creature, more like a big squid.

Grass/dark autumn leaf in the shape of a bat, has levitate. Evolved form redder, bigger "vampire cape" leaf-bat.

Psychic/ghost cheshire cat with Meowth-like proportions, bright crescent smile. Evolved form just huge smile and cat eyes hovering in the air, beastly cat body fading into view only for physical attacks or when struck.

Rock type humanoid made of transparent amber with a strange mayfly-like bug sleeping inside. Outer body can "break" at low HP and release faster, more offensive pure bug form.

Rock: incredibly huge, stony looking moose with long white fur draped over its eyes and back. Comes in size variations like Pumpkaboo line and said to never stop growing. A truly titanic one is used as transportation through the deep forest.

Snowy patches

Bug/ice velvet worm that spews a freezing liquid. Silly looking, almost like wiggler from mario.

Ice/flying fluffy white bird resembling a tiny Japanese style snowman. Evolves to resemble western style snowman with clawed bird feet, pointed beak nose. A flightless pure ice mountain dweller.

Electric/ice with levitate: a crystalline "UFO" sky-jellyfish with many colorful lights, core body looks like a cute pikmin-esque "alien" inside. Catch by fishing off of ledges into the sky. Mistaken by locals for alien activity.

Lava Tube Caves

Psychic type bipedal pink salamander with no eyes. Evolves into beautiful milotic-like psychic/dragon blind olm.

Rock/fighting spearhead with feet, eyes are just round holes through blade. Evolves to gain a stick-figure sort of body.

Abandoned town

Normal/bug filthy dog, a shaggy pile of fur with goofy eyes and pink tongue. Little black specks jump about it. Ability changes normal moves to bug moves. Evolved form more obviously a dog but still very shaggy, surrounded by constant cloud of black specks.

Grass/electric "christmas tree" made of holly and lights. Found in a burned down house, glowing eyes peer out from beneath it.

Ghost: has a colorful quilt for a body and a pincushion for a head. Found inside houses.

Garbage dump - accessible through abandoned town, possibly what drove people away (includes piles of toys you may investigate to encounter a banette, mimikyu or klefki)

Water/poison: cartoony fish with blank eyes and humanoid pair of legs. Fish for in toxic green garbage pools. Evolves into ground/poison skeleton fish with four limbs, walking like a lizard.

Steel/bug rusty orange silverfish. Eats junk metal. Evolved form so big it wears a rusty car for protection with just its legs and feelers sticking out.

MICROPOKEMON - enlarged artificially in a laboratory where you can also take your fossils.

Bug/fighting flea - spiny black flea with big jagged white teeth. Create from the "pest sample" an item carried randomly by the normal/bug dog.

Poison/fairy germ - fuzzy multicolored mold ball with eyes, stalked suckers. Retrieve "germ sample" from the dodo ghost.

Water/fairy tardigrade - transparent, cute bug stylized almost like a "gummy bear." Retrieve "dew sample" from moss sloth.

Pseudolegendary:

Rock type baby gargoyle creature. Evolves to winged gargoyle with levitate and a few mossy patches. Final form is an elegant griffon-like rock/dragon with an elaborately carved surface

SPACE ARK DRAGON This location is itself a dragon/fairy legendary pokemon so massive you can enter its body. It exists to collect and preserve species from dying worlds. Most common wild pokemon inside is duosion and sometimes Reuniclus. You can also collect "gene samples" from crystalline pods to replicate the ultrabeasts in the same lab you enlarge the microbes and resurrect fossils.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a little like weird yellow plant suckered to the ground, red flower-like head with an eye on each petal ala the yokai parasite, gyochu.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a colorful worm with cute eyes and beautiful mothlike wings, a little like the yokai parasite koshi-no-mushi.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a pale, red and white striped "lizard" with six spindly limbs and a tubular proboscis, inspired by the yokai parasite kagemushi.

Fairy type alien medic, looks like a cute flatwoods monster with heart motif and nurse coat. Flees from all battles unless you have defeated at least one of each of the parasites.

LEGENDARIES:

Dragon/electric: the ark dragon's smaller offspring, looks like an electronic space whale.

Dragon/steel, menacing, sleek black starship creature. Rival to the ark dragon, a "world reaper" that attempts to destroy planets that it thinks are already dying.

Psychic/fairy little white, fluffy mothman-like being, an observer that casts judgment on suffering worlds to call one of the dragons (version based)

Normal type legendary is the most human-like pokemon we've ever seen, a serene floating figure with long hair and black, almond-shaped eyes. A genetic experiment to supplant humans.

Electric/fighting: a hulking humanoid beast, almost frankensteinian with asymmetrical features, a failed early experiment.

A "glitched and scrambled" two dimensional pokemon. The result of the earliest known experiments in digital pokemon transfer. Actually literally typeless.

POISON FUSIONS created in the garbage dump:

Weezodor - poison/flying - Garbodor/weezing hybrid, like a jellyfish bag with smog tentacles.

Mukking - poison/water - Weezing/muk hybrid, like a koffing with slime appendages.

Garmuk - poison/ground - Muk/garbodor hybrid, like a giant slug made of trash.

MUTANT POKEMON: mutations of classic first-stage pokemon into creatures slightly tougher than even their original final stages.

Mutant Caterpie - bug/dragon - huge, dragonlike Caterpie with more menacing eyespots, clawed limbs.

Mutant Paras - pure grass - giant paras with far more mushrooms of different colors, body pure white with no mouth and white sphere eyes, actually made only of fungus.

Mutant Venonat - bug/dark - same old venonat with a big shaggy monster body

Mutant Zubat - Psychic - somewhat larger than crobat, has actual legs and a pair of clawed arms instead of wings. Much bigger ears.

Mutant Voltorb - electric/steel - a Voltorb even bigger than Electrode, otherwise looks normal besides angrier yellow eyes...until it splits open to reveal sharp teeth.

Mutant Tangela - grass/fairy - more like its scrapped Gen II evolution but perhaps a lot taller, with two very very long arms.

Mutant Geodude - rock/fighting - HUGE spiky arms and hands but head/body are the same as always.

Mutant Shellder - water/steel - it's the spiraly slowbro one!

Mutant Exeggcute - psychic/poison - bigger and more plentiful but "rotten" looking eggs with gloomier eyes and dark purple goo.

Mutant Eevee - normal - bigger than any of the eeveelutions, shaggy and beastly with the "camouflage" ability. Learns strong attacks of every eevee evolution type.

Mutant Doduo - fighting type with only one head

Mutant Luvdisc - the only one based on a non-evolving pokemon. Angry "broken heart" Luvdisc with record offensive stats for the series, but even worse defenses than regular luvdisc.

Mutant Trapinch - dragon/bug - giant turtle-like Trapinch, redder, spiny, second mouth inside jaws.

Mutant Dratini - dragon/fairy - huge long dratini with longer feathery wing ears, identical wings down body.

Mutant Larvitar - dragon/dark - big, armored green reptile, still has larvitar type head with craggier, meaner horn.

Mutant Bagon - dragon - huge, more t-rex proportioned bagon, spiked shell on head.

Mutant Deino - bigger and shaggier with a ring of five long-necked deino heads

Mutant Gible - dragon/fighting - only usually seen as a huge sharky fin sticking out of the ground. When it emerges, its body isn't much bigger than regular gible.

Mutant Goomy - psychic/dragon - giant goomy with gaping mouth, antennae are much longer, green and stripey.

Mutant Jangmo-o - dragon/steel - same old head but more ankylosaur-like big body, entirely a dark iron color with more pitted looking scales.

ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATIONS no mechanical or typing difference, but new color schemes and decorations on existing pokemon, totally an aesthetic change. Have their own shiny forms.

SEA TRENCH FORMS: Entirely pale pink golisopod line with closed eyes transparent red tentacool line with darker red nodules dark maroon inkay line with blue lights red and purple feebas line

CAVE FORMS: White, eyeless venipede line White, eyeless magikarp line

DEEP SWAMP FORMS: crocodile-green Sandile line with lily pad on head black shelled "freshwater" shellder line with green algae growths pure red and purple colored bellsprout line

DEEP FOREST FORMS: braviary with more hawklike colors foongus line with no pokeball pattern...the original foongus? wolf-spider colored joltik line

POLLUTED INLET FORMS: Dewpider line with all black body and limbs, yellow glowing eyes in dirty green water Grey wailmer line draped in red algae, clumps of barnacles (presumably degenerated binacle) Wingull line with grey and black oil-splotched feathers, tin can on head

GARBAGE DUMP FORMS: Bounsweet line with only grey, brown and black colors, dark spoiled looking splotches Black bag trubbish line with green trash, copper colored pipes Rusted looking klink line, rotates only once every few seconds.

----------GYM LEADERS -------------- In this region the gyms are dual type, and bring back past mechanics and gimmicks as their focus.

flying/normal: a blind, wheelchair-bound old man who specializes in dog and bird pokemon. Uses a baton pass team.

Steel/electric: an astronaut commanding his gym by remote feed from the station. Uses Magnezone, Rotom forms and, surprisingly, a random steel or electric ultrabeast.

Poison/bug: a germophobic lady scientist ironically obsessed with pollution pokemon, always wearing a biohazard suit. Has weezing, garbodor, the fly pokemon and Yanmega. Uses Z-moves, but it's random whether she uses a bug or poison one and on which pokemon.

Dark/fire: an elderly biker lady. Has no gym and in fact roams around the region. Surprisingly challenges you to a third-gen style beauty contest with her frightening selection of pokemon.

Grass/fairy: witchy pharmacist and botanist who lives out in the woods, all of her grass types are mushroom based. Unusually has you team up with her in a double battle against a random pokemon of unusual size and strength, like Alola's totem pokemon.

Ground/fighting: an extremely frail little nerdy guy who likes amazingly fearsome pokemon, hates bullies but kind of is one. Makes you face a horde battle with all of his pokemon vs. only one of yours at a time.

Dragon/rock: a boisterous monster movie director who dresses his pokemon in costumes, gym is a cardboard city. Uses a dynamaxed pokemon.

Ghost/psychic: a horror author, Vincent Price like, lives in a mansion and makes visitors face scenes from his books. Instead of a single battle, he has you face a series of singular mega pokemon behind each "scene." THE LABORATORY This location is of course secretly associated with the villain team, but you can free it up from them in the endgame. Here you can make fossil pokemon, micropokemon, regional forms from past generations, ultrabeasts and even mega stones, but all require you to spend one or more “gene crystals.” You’re handed a number of these through the storyline but it would be very challenging to farm more than that (think Gen 7 bottlecaps). Spending more crystals at the lab would allow you to finally alter abilities, natures and IV’s at a whim, and for an exceptional cost you could upgrade the BASE stats of any L100 pokemon permanently. This is a percentage increase applied across the board to all of its stats at once, and stops at either 100 total points beyond their normal limits, or a final base stat total of 530 (equivalent to a fully evolved starter) MISC STUFF:

Your mom this gen asks you if you hope to have an easy, challenging, or very challenging adventure. You can return to her at any time to adjust the difficulty again.

When you beat the game, you can make a custom trainer for online battles using the models of other NPC trainer types, i.e. you can finally be a swimmer/scientist/grunt/etc. You can unlock some popular ones from past generations.

You can select one pokemon as your main partner, which not only has it following you, but involves it a little more in the storyline (special events based on its first typing) and gives it some in-game perks.

A special item attached to any one of your pokemon allows your whole team to “share strength,” meaning that their weaknesses are mitigated for each teammate they share a type with. This allows for type-themed teams to be more viable but wouldn’t completely eliminate their weaknesses, and the effect diminishes proportionately for every pokemon that faints.

You can designate a seventh pokemon to be your “team mascot,” a non-combat role with different effects depending on species/type.

A single team can have either the mascot, a z-move, a dynamax/gigantamax form or a mega, cannot mix these.

Legendary pokemon now suffer a stat nerf for every other legendary pokemon on the same team. A team of six legendaries would actually be somewhat below-average in stats.

#pokemon #fakemon

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teenyfish · 4 years

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Marine Biology Story of the Day #8

Before I start in on this one I would just like to say how all of your reblogs and likes totally make my day—thanks so much for the support! I put a lot of effort into these so they read well!

Okay, so as promised, this is part 2 of what it’s like to live on a working tallship. You can check out part 1 and other information about this voyage here: post 7 and post 1 . Today we are going to talk about what it’s like to do science on a sailing vessel. Our baby was the Robert C. Seamans, a 134 ft brigantine.

We were limited to what we could research-wise do since a sailing vessel does not have the same power as a modern vessel with an engine. We were mainly researching plastic concentration (from trash and garbage that gets released into the ocean) in the north pacific subtropical gyre. A gyre is basically a big ocean current, and they tend to concentrate plastic and garbage into central regions (shown below) we were studying the garbage patch off the California coast.

We did see a lot of large plastic, mostly in the form of in-tact plastic containers, buoys, or derelict fishing gear (known as ghost fishing, because this gear continues to catch and kill fish even though no one is benefiting from it).

But, in actuality, most of the plastic found in these patches is nano or micro, basically little pieces that have broken off of larger pieces and get worn down by the wind and the waves. This also includes little pieces of fishing line (monofilament). These pieces are often more dangerous because very small organisms (including plankton!) can swallow them, and the plastic can rip up their insides and release harmful chemicals.

How did we sample for this micro plastic? The same way we did plankton! We used a net with very very fine mesh called a neuston net, which we towed along side the ship, and then we filtered the water into increasingly smaller sizes of mesh. After that, used a microscope to sort and count plastic, and to identify species within the plankton community.

We caught a lot of interesting organisms and species in these tows, including these types of zooplankton below:

Top row: Copepods and amphipods, which sort of form the bottom of the food chain out in the open ocean, Bottom left: pteropod, or a swimming snail, these guys have modified their “feet” to form wings that the flap to get around in the open ocean, Bottom right: velella velella, or by-the-wind sailors, are siphonophores (similar to jellyfish) that use their big sail to push them around the surface of the ocean.

We also caught a variety of larger organisms, including flying fish (which are a real treat to see IRL, they really do glide for hundreds of feet) and various species of squid.

We also collected water samples. Water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen are all important parameters that help us understand why certain species live where, and how climate change could impact these species habitats and ranges. We used a hydrocast (shown below) to do this:

A hydrocast has multiple canisters that are all opened before the hydrocast is lowered down, and each cannister is programmed to snap shut at a different depth. This way we could collect water samples at a variety of different depths, all the way down to the sea floor.

We also sampled at night to collect deep sea plankton and fishes as they migrated up to the surface to feed (called diel vertical migration). During the nighttime, there are less predators, so it’s more beneficial for them to come up to the surface and access the nutrients and phytoplankton on the surface. If you want to check out some of these deep sea critters, check out my previous post! In the meantime though, to pass time, we would sometimes fish for squid. This involved shining a light down in the water to attract the squid, and then throw baited handlines down in the water—we were not often successful.

We were more successful at fishing for tuna and mahi mahi however, during the daytime. We would throw a baited line off the back of the ship while the ship was running at full sail. These fish would get fin clips for genetic studies, and would also get turned into some pretty boss cerviche, poke, and fish tacos (our stewards, or boat chefs, were AMAZING). Don’t worry, we didn’t catch too many of these guys, but they were still pretty cool to see up close and in person.

Left, A mahi mahi, (or dolphinfish or dorodo, depending on where you come from) slowly loosing color; these fish die pretty quickly out of water, and they quickly become grey, loosing their bright blue and yellow coloration. Right, a skipjack tuna; these are one of the smallest tuna species and are usually considered trash fish—the endangered bluefin and yellowfin tuna are like, bigger than a person. It will blow your mind.

One last thing before we go—by the end of the trip they started letting us, the students become the chief scientist during our watches, which was an amazing learning experience, and we were bestowed the magical tutu of chief scientist-dom (made out of a torn neuston net).

This picture of me was taken in the science lab when we officially hit 1000 nautical miles into our journey—at 3 am in the morning. Yes, being a scientist was a 24 hour job on this trip, if you couldn’t tell from my dark circles.

Alright, well that’s about all I have for today. Next week I’ll reveal to you all what I do as a marine biologist currently, and while I’m no longer sailing on the pacific, I’m still doing big studies---and this time, they are all

And as always, PLEASE don’t hesitate to ask about this research or anything else on this trip!

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bettertheworld · 3 years

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How and why fear scares people into eating meat.

Did you ever wonder why you ate what you ate as a child? Do you wonder why you continue to eat what you eat? Or are you simply on autopilot because you don’t think it matters all that much and you basically have it all figured out? Or do you feel powerless, and confused with the amount of fake news out there about food and you’re not sure where the hell to find real information? The answer does not lie in marketing, it lies in scientific research; geeks required.

Quick disclaimer - I’ve been through University and have a Bachelor of Science with a minor in Psychology and am trained as a Paramedic and for all of the years I’ve been out of school, I’ve become a geeky Paramedic thereby educating myself with regard to emergency medicine and the causes of our main killers.

What I find to be most useful with regard to school is how I am able to read research and make sense of it. Giving credit to where credit is due is not as easy as it seems - this is why ‘that guy’ or ‘my friend’s friend’ literally knows nothing, and anyone who refers to life rules from those sources, does not know as much as a person who refers to scientific journals.

Now with regard to food, I’ll be able to help you digest some of what’s out there and help you critically think for yourself. I won’t do it for you, but I’ll help you do it yourself, so bring your critical thinking, and bring your skepticism, I welcome it.

“Everything in moderation”, we’ve been told, except moderation has never been shown to be effective, i.e. reversing certain illnesses the way a specific diet has. Can you guess which diet has cured a the most common killers in today’s society? If you were able to guess, do enjoy this write-up, if not here’s a hint - it contains no animal products and I encourage you to open your mind and do some research after reading this. If this challenges you to your core and are offended, you are probably upset that your feelings and actions are in direct conflict, but that’s okay - real information will fix that.

On the topic of real news, here’s a few gems; butter from dairy in your coffee is never healthy, eggs are never part of the healthiest diet possible, and bacon is the quickest way for you to cause cancer and heart attacks in yourself. Eggs are the most concentrated glom of cholesterol you can eat on the planet and most people are born lactose-intolerant because we’re not cows, we’re people, so why would it ever be a good idea to challenge the body in such a way that it actually doesn’t want to be? In later write-ups, I’ll discuss the ‘Lac-operon’.

One thing you’ll need to do is always consider the source of research. Just because Dr. Oz or some “Doctor” or “professional” goes on TV blabbing out the benefits, of X, Y and Z or saying “the relationship isn’t strong enough to prove anything”, you have to ask yourself, who has done the research on the topic and who paid for the research to be done?

Rich people paying for research have a reason for doing research, it’s always about money, and they always get what they want in some way, shape or form due to the flexibility of statistical analysis. Rich people with money who have gone out of their way to pay for research, are also most likely to be taking advantage of nearly everyone downhill - kind of the way Trump does business. The sick-minded narcissistic ways the meat and dairy industries are run, if admitted by everyone would shudder in disbelief. The veil that has been pulled down before all of our eyes is real, and needs to be lifted.

The problem with foods is that as the research comes out, then another paper comes out to deny the ‘realness’ of the original - now who do you believe? This is especially true when it comes to foods containing cholesterol - animals products. You might wonder why animal products contain cholesterol? Because their cell walls contain cholesterol, just like ours do. Why do companies want to exploit this? Animals do not have rights the way humans do, so if companies can get away with exploiting animals and make a bunch of money doing so, and people are dumb enough to support this because they need huge amount of protein (because they don’t know how little they actually need), then my friend, you are indeed a sucker supporting Trump-like meat and dairy businessmen.

Cholesterol is needed by the human body to have strong cell walls and it’s made inside our own bodies, it’s never required to be eaten because your body makes all it needs. When people eat cholesterol, consider the fact that it is a solid at room temperature and has a melting point of 148 degrees Celsius. That means until you get to that temperature, it’s a solid - this is why it gets stuck in your arteries, and remaining in your arteries until it’s pushed into the walls or is broken down; if you’re smart enough to stop eating cholesterol.

Our bodies make what it needs, you never need to eat cholesterol, so saying certain foods have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cholesterol is like saying cyanide, sometimes is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We all know that ALL CYANIDE IS BAD CYANIDE, but we don’t all know that ALL CHOLESTEROL IS BAD CHOLESTEROL. We know all cyanide is bad cyanide because the effects of cyanide poisoning are very quick and easy to notice, but the effects of cholesterol-poisoning have a delayed onset - so long that many of us could never piece it altogether, and we call the manifestations of this poisoning ‘heart attacks’.

Do you know there are strong correlations between certain types of foods and certain illnesses? Do you know you can avoid the major killers in today’s society by avoiding the bad foods? It’s difficult to say what’s ‘good’ and what’s ‘bad’ because both of those denotations are subjective, but when it comes to cancer, heart attacks, strokes, the science is clear, animal products are killing you, slowly but surely - decreasing the years you get to live on this earth, and decreasing the quality of life that you live.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, a life not fearing cancer, heart attacks, high blood cholesterol, and best of all, not fearing high blood pressure which is also called “the silent killer”? All too often you hear people say, “Yeah, my father died of a heart attack, so I will one day too”. While there is a wee bit of truth to this statement, the amount of greatly overestimated. Habits and traditions are what are subconsciously passed down to next generation, thereby the body tends to react similarly as time goes because you’re eating the same foods with roughly the same body.

But what is hugely undervalued is with a change of habits, i.e. change of food sources, comes great opportunity to change your destiny. Just because dad had a heart attack or had cancer, does not mean you’re going to have one or die from one. Even if we have cancer genetics, certain foods promote ‘cancer-genetics’ and others thwart these genes from producing cancer.

Once you remove the foods that are associated with hardening of the arteries, you don’t have to worry about hardening arteries anymore. Without hardening arteries and clogging them with cholesterol, your risk for a heart attack was just cut down to nearly to a huge degree. Food matters, food matters a lot.

There are many peer-reviewed scientific journals out there - pubmed being a great starting place, which discusses how plant-based whole foods diets are reversing diabetes and reversing clogged arteries associated with heart attacks? Did the meat-producers forget to tell you this?

If my memory serves me correctly, it was something like 84% of diabetic patients, within 20 weeks of a new whole foods plant-based diets were off their diabetic medications having fixed their insulin resistance. Diabetes is a problem of physical nature, if all or most of the sites where the sugar goes from your vasculature to your functional cells of your body are blocked with cholesterol and other fats, then you my friend are ‘diabetic’. When you clear those sites with a whole-foods, plant-based diet you have essentially cured yourself of diabetes. Animal-fats have higher boiling points than that of vegetable sources, this is why they’re problematic for us.

Similarly, this same vegan diet was proven to erode the cholesterol in the arteries, thereby cleaning up the arteries, and with regard to the heart, you’ve now decreased your likelihood of having a heart attack. The vegan diet works for both illnesses because both of these problems happen in the tubes of the body, the highway, the vasculature, arteries to be exact.

With diabetes, you remove the cholesterol and stuff that sticks to it, thereby allowing insulin to let sugar into the cells from the arteries, and with heart attacks, you allow blood to circulate through the coronary arteries more freely now that the plant-based whole foods diet has eroded away the cholesterol and other fat-soluble substances stuck into the walls thereby blocking the blood-flow.

This is where we discuss the problem with saying ‘everything in moderation’. Science can now say, with certainty that a plant-based whole foods diet will fix your arteries nearly all of the time, but no one can say that eating one piece of meat per day will allow the same progress to occur - so let’s critically think, is ‘everything in moderation’ even true? Who made this garbage up? My guess is probably some Doctor who was making allowances for him or herself!

We all love to hear good things about our bad habits, but you’ll never hear a teacher tell a student, “It’s ok that you don’t really try very often in my class, everything in moderation my dear.” So why do we give ourselves allowances based on our own wants when it comes to food? If you’re a scholar, if you’re a critical thinker, if you value your body, you need to begin asking yourselves the questions that matter; how much do I value my health - do I even care about myself, or the future? Or maybe you aren’t a scholar, thinker, or maybe you don’t care and that’s why you refuse to understand what science has proven. Again, if you take offence to this, you’re at war with yourself. Everything I write is based on science but I do not write the sources in.

When I discovered these facts, I went on a rampage, trying to help everyone, wasting my energy and burning bridges, but now I’m leaving it all out on the table for like-minded people to read. I assume we all are like-minded because everyone just wants the best for themselves and their loved ones. It might be shocking to be challenged, so I’ll do my best to maintain neutrality, but what you might discover by following me might change the course of your life and sometimes we need a little challenge, but not too much.

You can’t free an oppressor, or the oppressed with oppression itself, it must be with deliberate care and without imposing ones beliefs, it must be with information, not by force. While I could use the platform to shred fools who base their decisions not on science but tradition, instead I’m going to empower you and not make you feel stupid for being duped - because we all have been duped by the meat and dairy industry. I want to continue to critically think, and beg for you to do the same.

Did you think you had free will when you were developing your eating habits and family traditions? Did you think you chose your food yourself with a sense of ownership? Or did you just want to fit in with the rest of your family? Did you not want to disappoint your parents by not finishing food prepared for you? Did you want to be guilty of letting an animal die for you, and you denying eating it forcing your parents to throw it out and waste its life? Did you want to avoid being called and feeling ungrateful? Was trying to be a good boy or girl causing you to compromise your thoughts and feelings? Did you love zoos but ask yourself, why am I eating this animal? And why don’t we have pet cows? Why do we think dogs are cute and cows not? So many children have thoughts that are repressed and never entertained by true critical thought, this is a crime of parenting.

Now circulating all over the internet are videos of cows playing fetch with fitness balls, just like dogs fetch a tennis ball. Imagine you could watch the video without thinking that because you eat meat, that you’ll completely disregard the emotions you’re feeling of how cute the cow is, so that it won’t be hard to eat your next beef-oriented meal?

Conversely, imagine you are healthy, strong, full of energy and vegan person who can fully enjoy videos of cute animals because you don’t see them as food, you see them as sentient beings capable of feelings, social structure, language and emotion. This is just one way people differ because of food choices.

This is how people are split when it comes to cute animal videos. No self-proclaimed animal lover wants me to bring up this comparison because for me to even suggest eating a dog is the same as eating a cow, the omnivore will become so enraged that they won’t be able to focus on the conversation and they’ll begin hating on this argument before I finish the thought - likely because they’ve repressed the thought in their own mind. I think eating all animals is completely wrong and completely necessary, but is eating a cow any different than eating a dog? Not in the slightest, but facts don’t change belief systems - they polarize the crowd

Why are some people not able to accept this logic? It’s because of a little thing called Carnism. A viral belief system where some foods and animals should be looked at as food, while other animals can be considered cute and not-to-be eaten. To one, a cow might be considered cuter than a dog, and a dog might be considered cuter than a cow to some, but to the alien coming from a different planet, they would not be able to see why which is cuter because they have not been affected by carnism itself. If a cow and a dog are both animals, then they are both food or neither are food. Why does one get preferential treatment in today’s society? Carnism is to blame for why. Carnism is with a simple google search, a basic idea that meat is there for us to eat, and if we’re not eating it, we could be because we’ve conquered the world, so it’s now there for the taking; aside other important points.

Who does carnism affect? Everyone who thinks they need meat and everyone who despises the idea of people who think they need meat to survive? Who started carnism? When science got interested in food, we made some inaccurate discoveries and statements, and we’ve sort of run with that. A 200 year-old science paper by Liebig which has been debunked plays a small role, but companies who saw the profit in exploiting animal protein are the true perpetrators of this.

How do they do it? Marketing. Marketing is a genius tool that highlights the good, and ignores the bad. Marketing is telling you what you want to hear about something that has no part in offering what you’re being told it offers. Marketing also tells you that if you wear the same sunglasses as Jason Statham, that you’ll be as desirable as Jason Statham. Clearly you’ve been affected by marketing because if you put on the same sunnies as him, you’re not going to resemble Jason Statham because you are not Jason Statham, and have a different bone structure than him. As a result, the sunglasses will have a different effect on you, and more than likely you just wasted $600. Buying what other people wear won’t make you look like them, but your feelings tell you otherwise - welcome to the level of marketing - your feels. And also, he’s 5′8, sorry if you thought he was 6′1.

Feeling a certain way about something is what determines our beliefs then our actions. When people feel that they need meat, they defend their ‘right’ to eat it, instead of listening to the ways you can get everything meat offers, and be so much more healthier. Try questioning an omnivore as to why they eat meat and then prepare yourself for heaping pile of shit excuses, and subjective garbage because none it’s true or valuable.

Humans have needs for amino acids, not meat. We need some fats and are pretty damn happy with certain types of carbohydrates. When it comes down to it, we need a fuel source, and a machine to move us that turns energy into movement, we’ll call this tool our muscles, we need muscles.

Since muscles move us, we need to fuel them. What are the ways we can do do? Plants and or animal products. If we think that we need to eat cow’s muscles for energy, we should know that this is completely false. Let’s discuss why this is not optimal.

For us to use muscles for energy, we have to eat that muscle, break it down, store it, then mobilize it for energy, and this process takes time and energy and you can refer to it as a slow process. On the other hand, if we eat carbohydrates, these sources are quickly accepted by the body and are ready to be used for energy extremely quickly by comparison.

If you’ve seen The Gamechangers movie, there is a study that uses beet juice and proves that you’re going to be able to cycle longer if working out after drinking beet juice vs not drinking it at all. This is because you’re providing a high-octane fuel source vs using meat which contains much less high-octane fuel to the point we’ll just call it low-octane fuel source. In addition using protein for energy requires you to be in starvation mode and you’re deciding to break down your body because there is no high-octane fuel around, this is not optimal - this sounds a lot like chronic fatigue. Using meat for energy is not optimal, not even close.

How does beet juice then offer us the chance to have stronger, better muscles? The juice offers energy that your muscles use quickly and readily. From my time at the University of Guelph where I completed my undergrad, I took a Cardiorespiratory Physiology Lab course, and I sure am glad that I did. I learned that whatever system you challenge, you will have gains in. So, if I provide my leg muscles with energy thereby allowing them to cycle, and I challenge my leg muscles with exercise just beyond what it comfortably, there will be growth - you will change the physical structure of individual cells. This means that the next time you challenge these muscles in the same way, the work that was 10% beyond your comfort zone, next time is 9% beyond your comfort zone, which means you have experienced 1% growth.

How did this growth happen? You fed your body what it needed for growth to occur. Did you need meat for this growth to happen? No, you needed essential amino acids. Amino acids that are made by plants. All amino acids are made by plants, and so many plant sources contain every single amino acid. As long as you’re challenging your body beyond it’s comfort zone and you’re feeding it the building blocks it requires for growth, growth will happen. Animals are not required, amino acids are, amino acids that can all be provided by plants.

The difference between vegans and omnivores is that vegans say, “No, it’s not ok for us to exploit animals for any reason”, but omnivores don’t want to discuss this matter because they feel that meat is required, so they do not fully allow themselves to empathize with what they’re eating, if they did, an omnivore would not be able to eat the cow, pig or chicken.

If it comes down to taste; what a greedy reason it is to kill a sentient being taste is? If it comes down to nutritional needs, saying you need animals to be healthy is a lot like thinking you need to only breathe oxygen from Nepal, because only Nepalese oxygen provides me with what I need. False! If we’re eating food and getting enough amino acids from a plant-based whole foods diet, is it in any way deficient compared to amino acids from animals? The answer is no, and additionally, you’re not priming yourself for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, other cardiovascular disorders.

Just a few thoughts maybe we should revisit. Were you given a choice between eating meat and not eating meat? When you were 5 years old and could conceptualize that you’re eating another life, did your parents sit you down and ask you how you felt about it or even talk to you about it? Did they even bother to tell you that you’re eating a sentient being capable of thought and having feelings? Do you think your parents had a clue about what they were feeding you beyond whatever food guide was popular at the time? Did you know that food guides are based on financial relationships and not what’s actually best for your body (until recent history in Canada)? Does this information enrage you the way it did to me? Do you know what government subsidies are? Does it make sense that you can find burgers at fast food joints for super cheap which contained the life of an animal, but can never find a ridiculously cheap head of broccoli? In fact, have you ever seen a cheap salad at McDonald’s? No, and you never will, because there are no government subsidies for lettuce or anything that goes in a salad. The government is in bed with whoever pays them the most money, and due to the fear that people have regarding becoming protein-deficient, 98% of people are afraid to turn their back on meat and dairy. I did this is 2014 and to this day, it’s been the best choice of my life.

The interesting fact is in the 1950s and 1960s, the FDA artificially increased the amount of protein ‘needed’ to sell more dairy and meat. Especially after Babe Ruth died of throat cancer due to smoking. At the time ‘Doctors’ were claiming cigarettes weren’t bad for you or cancer-causing, the relationship ‘wasn’t strong enough’. The baseball community should all be vegan for this reason alone.

If we’re human, always been and always will be human, then out there somewhere is a perfect diet for us, but what if we’re too afraid to eat the healthiest diet for us because of scare tactics used by the meat and dairy industry? Wouldn’t that be sad, maybe even criminal? I think so, but you only have yourself to blame once someone informs you or you read this.

I want to discuss the process of cooking food, but I want to get into that next time, the idea of what’s on the label, vs what’s on your plate after you cooked the carcinogens into it, and the vitamins out of it.

Ask yourself, what is the meat and dairy industry doing for you, aside from providing you with a much-less-than-healthy source of calories? They’re providing you with cancer, cardiovascular disease, double-standards, an emotional haze and basically, you work for them while they make you sick - this sounds a lot like the exploitation of you, the consumer. You think it’s time to wake up yet?

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lovelyirony · 5 years

Note

Hello friend! I'm in a mood and just feel like reading something sad. Could you pretty please maybe write some sad winteriron? Maybe something to do with terminal illness but it's up to you!

Being human means that there are many things that could happen to you and you can’t help it.

Like cancer.

Or being hit by a bus.

Maybe a heart condition that you didn’t know about until you were thirty-two, had weird chest pains, and then found you didn’t have genetic testing done and neither parent told you about any extensive medical history because they both were estranged from the family.

Okay. That was specific.

But Tony was laying in a hospital bed and the doctors told him that he wouldn’t live past forty and he would die of heart failure.

He feels like he should be hit harder by this. He only has eight years left to live. He shouldn’t be in his kitchen making eggs, he should probably be hysterically calling Rhodey and Pepper and Happy and asking them about funeral arrangements and what he’s going to do and quite possibly if spending the extra money to get the executive suite at the fancy hotel in Switzerland is worth it.

Except he doesn’t want to.

Death is a messy process. Not for him, they assured him of that. But everyone asks you questions and your loved ones. You have to figure out where to bury someone if they didn’t do it beforehand. Sometimes you have debates about cremation. Other times about how much you want to spend on a casket.

He really doesn’t want to look at Rhodey or Pepper or Happy when they talk about that because he knows that their faces will break into tears and he will see the tear tracks when they go home to their houses and cry some more.

Nonsense.

If he can hide it, then he will. He doesn’t want to be a bother, it would be...unfortunate.

Besides. He’s lonely at the top, and there’s no climbing back down the mountain. He won’t pull a Scrooge and get visited by three ghosts.

So he lives.

He pulls some risky moves, but nothing that makes Pepper have the “are you up to something serious that could potentially cause my midlife crisis to go off-schedule” talk.

Again.

He donates more money to charities and helps people pay off medical bills and walks around New York late at night to wonder why he’s going to die in eight or maybe even seven years instead of the proposed twenty to thirty. (What? He wasn’t going to be too generous, he knew himself.)

Tony wonders sometimes if he will meet someone and they will make him want to live so much more than he can. It will be like those romantic dramas with rainfall and hair plastered to foreheads and passionate kisses that leave some of the older women teary-eyed and wishing that their husband would do something like that.

But he’s a genius, so he knows statistics like the back of his hand.

There will be no one.

Eight turns into seven. He celebrates by getting absolutely slammed on New Year’s Eve and wakes up to the shittiest radio station blaring. He’s pretty sure they’re playing Maroon 5, which fucking ugh.

New Year, new resolutions. He doesn’t bother to make one.

“Why not? You usually make a joke one,” Rhodey says.

“We are all going to die,” Tony answers. “Why make a resolution if I don’t want to? If I were to die in a year, it wouldn’t really matter.”

“Okay Lord Byron,” Rhodey says, rolling his eyes. “You want Hot Topic giftcards for your birthday? Huh?”

Tony laughs.

Rhodey always knows how to make him laugh.

Tony doesn’t know how he’s going to make Rhodey laugh when he’s dead. So that’s a breaking point where he stares at the wall and starts to write random memories down, like the time they snuck up onto a hotel’s roof to see the city wake up and the wind chapped their lips and Tony swore that he’d never leave Rhodey.

Except he is.

And he realizes that he needs to let Pepper and Rhodey and Happy know that he loves them a lot. So he starts the letters.

He writes a letter to Pepper to remind her about how much she regrets getting light blue nail polish every single time she gets a manicure, and she should never get it. (Yes, even for a wedding she’s in, get something, anything other than that.)

He writes a letter to Happy that is basically just wondering about how they can troll asshole celebrities that they know. He doesn’t know, but maybe he will find some dirt so that if Happy ever falls on dire times, he will have some extra cash flow coming in. Not that Tony would let that happen, but say Happy ever did. Maybe someone stole his bank information. Who knows what will happen in seven or six years.

Summer still sucks. He thinks maybe he’ll like it more, now that he knows that his heart is going to quit. But it still smells like piss and garbage on the streets of New York, people are still blasting shitty music and riding bikes too dangerously, and he still feels gross by two p.m. when he goes outside to face the world.

Not even the treat of shaved ice helps this.

“At least I won’t have to face another one in seven years,” Tony murmurs. “Thank god for that.”

Seven turns into six.

It’s around this time when an attractive redhead shows up at his office, bends down a bit lower than necessary, and Tony gets the feeling that SHIELD should really train their agents a bit better if they want something out of him.

He organizes a meeting with Fury, walks in, and states that they cannot afford him.

“You know that your help would be particularly useful,” Fury says.

“For you to get what?” He asks. “Don’t bullshit me with some answer about compassion. Peggy Carter was kind, but she wasn’t a damned saint.”

“There are new...developments.”

Like the fact that they’ve found Captain America. And Bucky Barnes didn’t fall off into a random ravine, so the four different conspiracy theory documentary videos that Tony watched last year were about five hours of wasted time.

They need somewhere to stay. Fury wants Tony to foot the bill.

“What, can’t ask the government for funding?” Tony asks. “I’m sure if they can up the budget for military every year, that covers Cap and his old pal. Hell, I bet they’ll even open up the champagne fridges.”

“They don’t know about it.”

“And why would that be? Because you’d rather have idols to yourself?”

It’s a low-blow. But Tony agrees to take them in. He just doesn’t want to see them, notably because his father was a bit of a Captain America fan, Tony had had a crush on the former sharpshooter when he was a younger guy, and it was all kinds of messed up.

But he gives them their own little apartment, one of his safehouses.

“This ain’t little,” Steve mutters to himself, unpacking a box of plates. Natasha has been nice enough to show them around and tell them about the changes she finds relevant. She forced them to listen to what she called ‘the goddess of pop’ in the car, and Bucky nearly clawed out the stereo after “Toxic” came on.

“Fuckin’ palace,” Bucky mutters. “Who’s is this?”

“A man in high places,” Natasha answers. “He doesn’t want to be known. Doesn’t exactly play well with others.”

She leaves them be, and there’s so much that has changed. Steve is still looking for any sign of the past he can find in Bucky, and Bucky...

He’s not who he used to be. He doesn’t remember half the shit that Steve does. Perks of having your brain so fried up that you can barely remember your middle name.

They eat together in silence.

“I guess...I guess we have to figure out who we really are,” Steve says. “Because you’re not who I remember, and I’m not...I guess I’m not either.”

Bucky nods.

“Do you reckon we’ll like going out dancing?”

The answer is a strong no, although Steve has to say the drinks have improved a hell of a lot more. He likes the ones that come with the small paper umbrellas. He doesn’t know where they get them, but it gives him an idea for an art project.

Tony doesn’t hear much about the wonder boys. He doesn’t want to, not really. Natasha just says they’re getting more and more adjusted and she has evidence of Steve Rogers going clubbing.

“Oh my god,” Tony groans. “Romanoff, do not.”

“It’s funny.”

“I don’t wanna know.”

“What, you jealous that you’re not dancing with him?”

“Hardly. Blonde and beefy isn’t my type.”

“Then what is?”

“Classified.” Tony answered. “Now, is there anything else you want SHIELD to suck out of me?”

“Well, my manicure funding is getting rather low...”

Tony snorts, but points towards the door.

His chest hurts. It’s been happening. He’s actually gotten used to it. In a way, he’s more concerned when it doesn’t hurt. He went to another specialist. They say his death sentence is signed, even if they don’t word it like that. Here’s how it is usually worded:

“I have a colleague who works at insert-clinic/hospital-here...I can refer you to Dr. So-and-So?”

They can. But it’s another list of referrals of so-and-so’s and clinics and appointments at the most inopportune times.

All for nothing, because Tony knows that he can’t be fixed. The human body sometimes works like a machine. But it’s not one. It’d be like Tony calling a dog a wolf. Similar, but no one wants to bring a wolf into their house as a pet.

He gets a phone call from someone named Deputy Director Hill.

He needs a new arm.

Barnes needs a new arm. Of course he does. Tony should’ve expected that, of course. Hydra isn’t exactly known for revolutionizing prosthetics or being particularly kind to their projects that they work on. So Tony automatically has a one-up.

He gets Barnes to come to this mechanic garage, surrounded by old tin signs and vintage cars that cost more than most of the monthly rent of penthouses in New York.

Bucky does a double-take.

“Howard?”

“I hope not,” Tony answers. “Hop up on the chair for me, please. I’m getting you a new arm.”

“This is fine,” Barnes automatically spouts. Tony can see the damage from here, and can even point out that the arm’s reaction time is probably the worst it has been currently.

“If you want to stick to your Great Depression ideals, then by all means be my guest and go bitch in a grocery store about prices,” Tony responds dryly. “But if you want an arm that’s gonna be actually good, then sit.”

So he does.

Tony looks incredibly similar to his father. But there’s something different about him. Something softer, almost. Bucky didn’t know Howard nearly as well as others did, but he knew that Tony wasn’t his father.

“How are you adjusting to the city?” Tony asks.

"Still the shithole we all know and love,” Bucky swears. “I think the rats got bigger.”

“They did. It’s amusing and horrifying at the same time. You ride the subway yet?”

“Yes and I’ve come to terms with it. Lots of new things to learn about it.”

Barnes’ visits become more frequent. They talk about New York stuff. Tony tells him all about the fun events that have happened that he missed while he was doing time as an icicle.

It’s nice, talking to him. Tony finally has someone who understands fatalistic humor and doesn’t respond with

“That’s scary, Tony.”

“What do you mean?”

Bucky just says “cheers” and decides to tell Tony about the time he nearly died in 1992 because he lost his footing on the Eiffel Tower.

Tony laughs, and laughs harder than he thought he had in a long time.

Six turns into five.

Bucky gets closer, and they have...something. He’s not sure what it is yet, but he knows that they go on breakfast dates most of the time and he knows the coffee orders by heart.

“I think you’ve found someone,” Pepper says, teasing. “Look at you.”

“Yeah, look at me,” Tony murmurs.

He has five years left. That’s plenty of time to date someone and break up, right?

Except.

It’s...wonderful to date Bucky. They go all over, have fun trying the shittiest restaurants in town, and even get Steve to get out more and socialize with the group.

They date and celebrate holidays together and have fun candles and--

Five turns into four.

“Not that bad,” Tony whispers to himself when he’s getting ready for bed.

“What’s not bad?” Bucky asks.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Tony says. “Just got a new toothpaste.”

They watch It’s a Wonderful Life and Tony can’t really focus, not when he’s thinking about the fact that he still hasn’t picked out a design for his urn.

Not when he realizes that he needs to break up with Bucky and make it a whole big scene so that no one will talk to him. It has to be about two years before the date, he thinks.

He goes to another Dr. So-and-So. They say he might actually have one more year, but who knows.

He doesn’t.

But he wakes up with Bucky every day and they make breakfast, and he thinks that maybe he could tell him? Maybe?

The words get stuck in his mouth.

He can’t.

He meets with his lawyer for the will.

“Why making sudden changes?”

“Just like to shake things up,” Tony says with a smile. “Never know what’s going to happen, right?”

“You are right about that,” the lawyer says. He’s a bit uncomfortable. Tony Stark looks at him like he knows that his life is short and that something else will come up. But it’s not the lawyer’s job to ask if things really are okay, and it’s not like Tony would tell him anyway.

So he makes the changes to the will.

Tony looks at Bucky as he’s napping, face so peaceful.

He can’t ruin that.

#lovelyirony writes #for some reason tumblr never lets me put in a 'read more' link until like after i've done all this shit so here's to hoping this works #winteriron #:(#hope this fits the sad theme anon #tony stark #bucky barnes #rhodey #pepper potts #happy hogan #steve rogers

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kob131 · 5 years

Note

New "So This is Basically X" video from Jello Apocalypse is on RWBY, and it's a bunch of pretty much crapping on the show.

(Note: read the Edit section for my recollected thoughts. I’d jus rewrite the post but that’d be like covering my mistakes)

… You know what? My dog just died so I am in no mood to tolerate this bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3vYbF3_TAk

A. ‘Added into the show at the last minute’ he says as his own fucking image directly states that the ‘last minute’ was the fucking Red Trailer. AKA the fucking psuedo-pilot. He had so many other chances like Neo or ABRN or the fucking Maidens but nope decided to do the ONE wrong thing.

B. ‘Hoitty Toitty Princess’ Yeah, because she was abused by her dad for years as well as watched her mother degrade into a lifeless husk. Again, could have made an actual point but decided to just spew out the most basic shit ever.

C. ‘Lose every fight she’s been in.’

*cough* WHITE TRAILER *cough*

Also: Fucking Missed Oppritunity: 3 *ding*

D. ‘Weiss hates Ruby’

That stopped in Volume 1, try again

E. ‘How many ears do they have?’

2 or 4

‘Human ears?’

Always

‘Animal ears?’

Sometimes

‘Neither?’

That’s you

‘BOTH?’

Sometimes

‘Why do some of them only have tails?’

Genetics

‘Humans are racist against the Lagoos’

Says the man who tried guilt tripping half the population through racism accusations.

Missed Fucking Opportunity: 4 *ding*

E. What couldn’t find say bullshit to spew about Yang? Missed Fucking Opportunity: 5 *ding*

F. Those are fucking one offs characters. Homer’s Vegas wife isn’t referred to as a side character, why should most of these be any different?

Also: ‘Never explores any of these!’ *shows team CFVY who are getting their own fucking book*

Good to see you still suck at making a point.

G. ‘Show isn’t about the characters!’

We get it, you’re slurping the anti-RWBY crowd’s cock. Make a valid point that not everyone and their grandmother’s grandmother made years ago.

H. *tries citing Neptune, a character that had about twenty minutes of screentime total as ‘eating up’*

Are you gonna do SOMETHING worthwhile? Because these jokes fall flat with a basic knowledge of the show.

I. ‘It’s about the over the top spectacle fights!’

Which not only were far less frequent in other ‘similar’ shows but they sometimes just #ate up screentime.

Missed Fucking Oppritunity: 6 *ding*

J. *butt metal!*

*cites Flynt, a fucking JAZZ musician*

What’s next? ‘Durr, marvel movie orchestra? BAD1′

K. ‘durr, clipping issues!’

*Slaps Fist Of The Blue Sky: Re:Genesis onscreen*

Come back when you make a point.

L. Jello, at the 2:10 mark you’ve done nothing but either say the same standard bullshit (which gets disproven within a minute of research*) or make shitty Take That! jokes.

About fucking RWBY. Egoraptor’s Ocarina of Time and ScottFalco’s Pokemon videos are mocking the shit out of you because you somehow made a worse version of both, about a less subjective medium with a fucking barrel full of fish. Guess that ‘Vote’ video must’ve fried them braincells huh?

M. Dust is elemental gunpowder, how is such a basic concept too complex for you to handle?

N. ‘Steal Dust and never bring it up again!’

Probably because the ending of Volume 2 was the END GOAL of stealing the dust you dumbass.

O. The magic comes straight from the fucking gods, Semblance and Dust have been used in Remnant science. Or is my cheap ass phone magic because someone from the 17th century doesn’t know how it works.

P. *points behind Jello at the massive burly man with the title ‘Lord of the Rings’ on it’s chest*

Have fun with him.

Missed Fucking Opportunity: 7 *ding*

Q. Wanna bet if the RWBY haters didn’t slurp Chibi’s cock he’d be bashing hibi instead of praising it.

R. *join the plot*

Ruby is the fucking plot.

S. So I’m guessing you’d call Hercules’ rage against Olympus and Hera ‘him getting a little mad?’

That’s okay, just like how you’d say your little ‘vote’ video was just ‘you having a little brainfart; amirite?

T. Ah yes, Volumes 1 and 2, which had the least defined characters, the most wasted screentime, the least plot, the least likablke versions of the heroes, the most side characters (INCLUDING NEPTUNE WHO YOU MOCK)-

Literally EVERYTHING you’ve spewed out your mouth was in the first two Volumes and 4 and 5 are the worst ones. Sure.

Missed Fucking Opportunity: 8 *ding* (Should actually be about 8001)

U. ‘Speaking of garbage *which is a segway I could put anywhere in this video’-

Good to know you’re aware of the piss poor quality of the video. Now if only you’d learn to keep your trap shut.

V. Ozpin was never suppose to be morally grey, next.

W. …

*pulls out Qrow and Ruby and replaces it with Yang and Liar Bitch McMass Murd-I mean Raven.*

Wow, context kicks your ass.

X. Jello.

What is the plot of RWBY?

No ‘Well there IS no plot’ bullshit. Tell me. What. The plot. Is.

… You can’t can you? This is the fucking Vote video all over again. You’re talking about a subject you have no clue about, spouting off whatever you think will get you the most positive PR and did no research whatsoever, Except with the video so infamous you had to DELETE it, politics is an inherently difficult subject matter that is easy to screw up (well, not to your extent.)

This is a web show.

Made by two drunk interns and an animator who took inspiration from BLAZBLUE.

And you have NOT made a SINGLE valid point.

The closest you got was the lip movements but you CLEARLY weren’t talking about the Volumes where it mattered so fucking credit.

Y. Blah blah blah ‘Bumbleby bullshit because pander’

Z. Qrow: ‘Oh ad my sister sold me and the daughter she abandoned twice before to the literal devil. Also why I am saying the bird thing is a curse? I defended Ozpin. My sister is the one claiming it to be a curse. Because she wanted to get away from the immortal pseudo-Greek villian which is a common feeling most people would think to do since it appeals to the inherent pragmatism in humanity but I overcame it through my niece’s determination to do the right thing in the end because just being pragmatic and doing what is most likely to succeed goes against one of the few things that make human beings what we are!

… Now I’m gonna go say my political opinions like I’m an important figure and not a walking punchline only known for mildly entertaining content that has suffered such a drop the Simpsons are looking at me in pity because I have a massive ego. And then when people call me out, I’ll delete the video and mock them like the child I am.’

*cracks open a beer* I don’t care if that’s cruel. He wants to talk like he knows shit? He can take it.

Edit:

https://twitter.com/alle1304/status/1137340212315643904

Well I owe him an apology. Over thinking he was pandering to the hate mob as well as my stupid attitude.

However I still stand by a lot of what I said: He missed a LOT of opportunities to make a good point and instead went with the lowest common denominator stuff. Like with making the joke about Weiss hating Ruby. It’s not funny because the joke is based on heavily outdated information and is just blatantly untrue.

There’s a reason why his ‘Welcome to *Website*’ videos are funny. Because while it is an exaggeration of what happens on the websites, it’s still basically true. Humor works when it strikes hard, either by throwing something so absurd at you that you’re forced to laugh because you don’t understand it, so raunchy that you laugh at the absurdity in which something so wrong was said so earnestly or by saying something so true that you’re forced to laugh to make light of the situation.

Jello’s video doesn’t do any of that. It either says a bunch of basic stuff that doesn’t work with knowledge or is saying things in a satricial way that people , EARNESTLY say, basically invoking Poe’s Law on himself. (The law of ‘Without a clear indication, a satire of X can easily been taken as an earnest belief in X.’)

This isn’t to say I was justified in what I did: it’s just even in a rational state of mind, the video is too flawed to be funny.

(Also no, I don’t regret what I said about the Vote video.)

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mischiefandspirits · 4 years

Text

Iron Legion (18/?)

Never let it be said that Tony Stark ever does things by half. He might have grown up with little family, but he wasn’t about to keep it that way.

Tony Stark was seventeen when his first child was born, and that was just the beginning.

For Masterpost, Timeline, AO3, and Fanfiction

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

Arachne Mark II, Part 1

Tony Stark was forty when Spider-Man was born.

“Hey Petey, how was your first week of school?” Tony asked as Peter came into the living room.

“Great!” he chirped, dropping his backpack before flopping onto the couch next to Tony.

“That’s wonderful,” Pepper said, leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead before heading towards the elevator. “I’ll be back for dinner and then we can hear all about it.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Tony waited until he heard the elevator doors close before giving his son a look. “So, how’d it actually go?”

Peter gave him a confused look.

“Don’t give me that. You know you can’t lie to me.”

Peter groaned and set his head in Tony’s lap. “It was fine.”

“But?”

“It’s nothing, just… Everyone seems to already know each other, either from middle school or because their parents all know each other. And I’m just some weird random homeschool kid who's there on a scholarship and changes in the bathroom stalls instead of the locker room.”

If only they knew, Tony thought as he ruffled his kid’s hair. “Just give it time for that winning personality of yours to kick in. You’ll have tons of friends soon enough.”

“You think so?” Peter asked, looking unconvinced.

“Sure, maybe try joining a club or… I don’t know. I’m not the making friends type. Still not sure why Rhodey’s stuck around this long. He and Pepper would be better at this. Just make sure to be yourself. If they don’t like the real you, then they’re not worth your time. Starks don’t change themselves for anyone.” He could hear Rhodey, Happy, and Pepper calling him a hypocrite in his head, but ignored it. Being a dad was all about do as I say, not as I do.

“Alright, Dad.” Peter sat up and hugged him. “Thanks.”

“Anytime, Kiddo. Now, how about you go put your stuff away and then we test out that new drone I’m making for Wilson?”

Peter perked up. “The bird bot?”

“The bird bot.”

“Yes!”

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

Peter was doodling ideas for improvements on the bird bot when someone tapped his shoulder.

He flipped his notebook closed quickly and looked up to see a pretty older girl standing over him.

“You’re Peter Parker, right?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah, that’s me.”

She smiled and held out her hand. “My name’s Elizabeth Toomes, but everyone calls me Liz. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Peter said, bemused, as he took her hand.

“Can I talk to you for a second? If you’re busy with your project, then we can do it later.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” he said, pushing his notebook aside. “I’m just messing around. I finished the project we’re supposed to be working on last week. My last school was a little ahead.” A lie, technically. The Tomorrow Academy hadn’t gone over what the project covered, but Dr. Banner had during one of their science sessions.

His teacher had seemed a little annoyed when he’d told her he’d finished ahead of schedule, as had some of his classmates, but Liz just seemed excited and dropped into the empty seat next to him. “I’m a member of the school’s academic decathlon team. Our captain asked me to invite a few promising freshmen to try out while he’s getting our practices ready and a couple of your teachers recommended you.”

Blushing, he ducked his head. “Th-thank you, but I don’t know anything about academic decathlons.”

She shrugged. “That’s okay, we can teach you how it works as long as you’re smart enough to compete.”

Peter wasn’t sure about the competition part, but his dad and Uncle Rhodey had both suggested he join a school club or team to try to make friends so he nodded. “Uh, sure then. How do I try out?”

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

“Yeah, Ned, I’ll ask Nebs as soon as she gets home,” Peter was saying as he came into the workshop. “Yeah, that sounds great… Uh-huh… Okay, bye!” Peter dropped into a chair and rolled up next to Tony. “Hey, Dad! Guess what happened at school today!”

Tony adjusted the power levels and reran the simulation for the engine he was working on.

“Dad?”

“Jay, save these results.”

“Right away.”

“Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Did you hear something, Jay?”

“I believe it was Master Peter.”

“Who?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Peter pout. “Nebs told you.”

Tony continued to ignore him.

“She promised she wouldn’t say anything!”

“Say anything about what? You betraying the entire family?”

Peter rolled his eyes and nudged Tony’s arm. “It’s just a field trip.”

“To Oscorp,” Tony spat, putting as much disgust into the word as he could.

“The entire robotics lab is going. I’d look weird if I don’t go.”

“No, you’d look smart. Oscorp is garbage.”

“Compared to us, sure,” Peter agreed easily, leaning against Tony to see his work. “But they’re still one of the best companies in the world and it’s a big deal to the others that we’re able to tour some of their labs.”

“Osborn’s probably just trying to scrounge up some good PR to combat whatever scandal he’s apart of this time.”

“Yeah,” Peter hummed, reaching out to turn the diagram.

Tony shoved the hand away. “Uh-uh, traitors don’t get to help out in the lab.”

“Dad!”

“There you are,” Nebula said, walking in. “Why were you asking Uncle Happy when I was off?”

Peter spun his chair around to point at her. “You promised you wouldn’t tell him!”

Nebula gave him an unimpressed look. “What does it matter? It’s just some stupid field trip.”

“The triplets would never spew such blasphemy,” Tony muttered.

Nebula shook her head. “Is that all you wanted or can I -”

“Wait!” Peter called as she started to leave. “Ned wants to know if I can come over to his house tomorrow!”

“Ned?” Tony and Nebula asked together.

“He’s in AcaDec and robotics lab with me. He’s a freshman too and last practice we were talking about those old Star Wars movies. He invited me over to watch them.”

Old Star Wars movies, Tony mouthed as Nebula asked, “And why does this concern me?”

“His mom wants to talk to you to make sure it’s okay.”

Tony laughed as his daughter scowled. “You wanted to be responsible for him.”

“Please, Nebs!”

She groaned and turned to leave. “Just give her my number.”

“Thanks, Nebs! You’re the best older sister ever!” F.R.I.D.A.Y. made a sound and Peter said, “Older! You’re still the best sister altogether.”

“Thanks, Baby-Bro!”

“So you’re making friends, then?” Tony asked.

“Well, friend. It’s just Ned. At least, I think he’s my friend.”

Tony shrugged and ruffled his hair. “Barely two months and you’ve already got a maybe friend? Way better than me at your age. Knew you could do it. I’m proud of you.”

Peter beamed. “Even though I’m going on the field trip?”

Tony dropped his hand and turned away. “Jay, did you hear that? It almost sounded like someone was talking.”

Peter pressed his face into Tony’s shoulder with a whine.

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

Two hours into the tour and Peter was honestly just bored.

Nothing Oscorp was working on, or at least nothing they were willing to show his class, was cutting edge. His class was mostly just interested in the equipment the labs were using, but Peter had worked with better while helping his dad or Dr. Banner.

“Dad was right, I should have just bailed,” he sighed, hanging back while his classmates all crowded around the tanks of spiders Oscorp was using for a breeding experiment.

He shivered at just the idea of being that close to the arachnids, behind glass or not.

He glanced around the lab in search of something to focus on before his brain just started tuning everything out and his eyes landed on a display hidden off to the side next to a tank.

Giving the tank a wide berth, he walked over and read off the formula. It seemed to be part of the breeding experiment, but something was familiar about it.

“Please stay with your class.”

Peter jerked to the side, tripping and barely managing to catch himself on the workbench holding the tank. Blushing, he pulled himself upright and turned to see Dr. Connors, Oscorp’s lead genetic biologist. The man had been the one to give them their lecture when they’d reached the bio labs and was now staring down at Peter with a forced smile.

“S-sorry, I was just looking at this formula.”

“It’s beyond you, very advanced. Come back over with the others.”

Peter shook his head. He hated when adults looked down on him. His teachers did it, some of his classmates did it, the Avengers had done it whenever they visited Dr. Banner’s lab while he was there, even Dr. Banner had done it at first. His dad had never done it, though, and he didn’t stand for anyone doing it to Peter or his siblings.

Well, except the twins, sometimes. But only Dad was allowed to tease them, and they knew he was just joking.

“My… uncle taught me about formulas like these years ago.” He pointed at a portion of the formula as he realized what was familiar about it. “Why is Extremis incorporated here?”

Dr. Connors dropped the smile for an annoyed expression. “It isn’t.”

“But I recognize it. My uncle taught me about it.”

“Your uncle must have been mistaken.”

Peter scowled. Dr. Banner was above and beyond Dr. Connors’ level.

“Please return to your class. Now.”

Peter marched over to Ned’s side as the class began to leave for the next part of the tour.

Just as the doors closed behind him, he felt a pinch at the back of his neck. His hand slapped at it reflexively.

“You okay?” Ned asked.

“Yeah, just an itch.”

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

“Peter!” Nebula called as she strapped her gun to her hip. “You’re going to be late if you don’t get out here.” She grabbed her badge and jacket, then turned to Peter’s door. “Peter?”

A bit of worry dug at her when she didn’t get a response. She hadn’t seen Peter the night before, but his backpack was on the coat rack so she had assumed he’d gone to bed early for some reason. What if…

Nebula threw open his door and sighed when she saw the fluffy brown hair poking out from under his Iron Man comforter (a gag gift from Uncle Rhodey, Peter had made her swear not to tell Father he actually used it). “Peter?”

He groaned and peaked out of the covers. “Nebs?”

She frowned at his raspy voice, bleary eyes, and flushed face. “You okay?” she asked, coming to his side.

“Tired.” He leaned into her cold skin when she set her hand on his forehead. “Everything’s bright and loud.”

She nodded as her sensors listed a temperature. “You’re running a low fever.”

He flinched and pulled his comforter back over his head.

Considering what he’d said, she quietly moved over to the window and shut the blinds and curtains. Then she went to the bathroom and grabbed some Tylenol and earplugs out of the first aid kit. She brought them into his room with a glass of water and offered them with a small, “Here.”

He peaked out again then took the Tylenol and water.

“I’ll call your school and let them know you’re staying home. Just rest. If I can’t make it back for lunch, I’ll send someone to check on you. Call me or Father if you start feeling nauseous or if anything else starts feeling off.”

He nodded and put the earplugs in before slipping back into his chrysalis.

She gave his side a pat and left for work.

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

A car honked, a baby cried, someone knocked on a door, someone dropped a glass, another car honked.

So much. Too much.

Peter reached up to make sure the earplugs hadn’t fallen out while he was asleep, but they were still in. They really weren’t helping much, but he figured something was better than nothing.

He pulled his blanket down and squinted as the light hit his eyes. He wanted to tug it back up, but his stomach was killing him. Maybe Nebs would be back soon?

Sitting up a little, he reached out for his glasses so he could check the time. He paused when he spotted his glasses next to the alarm clock.

The alarm clock that he could easily read.

He looked around his room and was shocked to find he could see everything perfectly, once he pushed past how bright everything was. For so long he’d never been able to see more than a foot in front of his face, yet now everything was crystal clear. Better than, really. Even his glasses had never let him see everything with such detail.

He rubbed his eyes, but the only thing that did was help his eyes adjust to the light a little.

His stomach gave a loud gurgle and cramped, reminding him of his hunger.

Shoving aside his weird eye thing for now, he checked the time and pouted when it showed it was only half-past ten.

Hissing, he slipped out of bed. The ache throbbing through his body briefly grew in his legs as they took his weight and rippled through the rest of him. Once it dulled, he shuffled over to his desk and grabbed his sunglasses. They made everything blurry as his miraculously healed eyes tried to focus through them, but he knew the living area was going to be even brighter than his room.

Sure enough, it was blinding and he barely opened his eyes as he searched the kitchen. He ended up pulling out an orange and some leftover pasta from the fridge. He tossed the pasta into the microwave and moved to the sink to peel the orange.

However, as soon as he broke the skin, he was hit with a strong citrus smell that sent a shiver down his spine and he dropped the orange out of instinct. He stared at the fruit until the microwave timer went off. With another shiver, he carefully grabbed it by the unbroken portion and tossed it in the trash. He then washed his hands thoroughly until all he could smell on them was mixed berry hand soap.

It was only when he was back in his room, halfway through his leftovers and a party-sized bag of chips, that he realized something was up with his behavior. He stared down at his hand, lost. Why had he reacted like that? He’d never had a problem with oranges before, especially not to such an extreme. Maybe the fever was messing with his head.

Resigned to more bed rest, he finished off his food then cocooned himself back on the bed, leaving the container and bag on his desk since he didn’t want to face the bright light again. He dozed until he was woken up by Uncle Happy coming into the apartment.

“Kid, you still in bed?” he yelled, shutting the door and locking it.

“Yeah,” Peter groaned, clenching his fists around his comforter. “Not so loud, please. Why is everyone yelling today?”

“Kid?” Uncle Happy stomped down the hall and opened Peter’s door. “Peter?”

Peter shushed him.

Uncle Happy stomped up to his bed and sat down on the edge, reaching over to rub up and down his side. “How are you feeling, kid?” he asked. He wasn’t yelling anymore, but he was still a little loud.

Why couldn’t anyone whisper?

“A little better,” Peter sighed. “Still hurts and tired.”

“I see you got up to eat.”

“Mm-hm. Really hungry.”

“Clearly. You ate enough to satisfy Cap. Feeling nauseous at all?”

“No.”

“That’s good. When was the last time you took any medicine?”

“Nebs gave me some Tylenol before she left.” He considered mentioning that it hadn’t seemed to help, but kept quiet, figuring he must have just fallen asleep before it kicked in and woken up after it wore off.

“Alright. I’m going to go grab the thermometer and some more Tylenol, okay?”

“Mm-hm.”

He quickly did as he said and Peter swallowed the pills while Uncle Happy held the thermometer in his ear.

“Well, your fever’s gone down some. That’s good. Must just be a bug or something,” Uncle Happy said, rubbing his shoulder. “You need anything else?”

“‘M okay.”

“Alright. I’ll get you some more water before I leave. Give one of us a call if anything happens before Nebula gets home, alright?”

“Okay,” Peter agreed, burrowing back into his cocoon. “Can you also grab me some jerky?”

“Still hungry?”

“A little.”

“An appetite’s good, right? Yeah, probably. That it?”

“Yes, please.”

Uncle Happy ruffled his hair. “Get some rest. I’ll leave your snacks on your bedside table.”

Peter groaned and ducked further into the chrysalis.

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

By the next morning, his fever was gone, but everything still seemed too loud and bright. The body pains were still there too, though they’d faded to a muted ache. And then there was his vision…

“Hey Peter, how are you feeling?” Nebs asked as he came into the -- thankfully darkened -- living area. “Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?”

“I’m okay, just a bit of a headache. I -” His nose twisted up and he took a step back. “What are you drinking?”

“Peppermint tea. Vision recommended it. Want some? It’s supposed to be good for headaches.”

He took a few more steps back when she held her mug out to him. “Pass.”

She raised an eyebrow before shrugging it off. She came up to him and he forced himself to stay in place, shivering at the smell. She placed her hand on his forehead and said, “Are you feeling up for school today? You don’t have a fever anymore.”

He shook his head, thinking about crowded halls and loud bells.

“Alright. You might as well come with me to the tower then.”

He nodded. He didn’t want to have to go outside, but it would be worth it to see Dad and hide away in his soundproof room with the windows blacked out.

“Go get dressed then. Don’t forget your glasses.”

Peter quickly dressed, but paused when he picked up his glasses. He put them on and everything went blurry.

What is going on?

“You almost done?” Nebs called.

“Yeah.” He put his glasses away and dug out the sunglasses he kept for the rare occasions he decided to wear his contacts.

He picked up his jacket and nearly jumped out of his skin when a spider fell out of the hood. Not taking his eyes off the bug, he reached back to grab a petri dish and its lid off his desk. It was only after it was safely trapped inside -- and held as far from him as possible -- that he realized the spider was dead. Relieved, he looked closer at it, curious about the bright red, blue, and black coloring. He’d never seen a spider like it before.

“Peter?”

“Coming.” He set the dish down and shook his jacket out. Once he was sure there were no more hidden spiders, he tried to put it on, only to find his hand stuck to the fabric. He shook his hand and tried to pull it off with his other hand, both to no avail.

“Peter hurry up.”

He spun around as his door opened.

His jacket fluttered to the ground.

“What are you doing?”

“Just putting on my jacket,” he chuckled nervously.

“Right,” she said, looking unconvinced. “Well, let’s go. I need to get to work.

“Yep, sorry,” he sighed as Nebs left. He glanced at his jacket on the ground, then grabbed another out of his closet. He pocketed his phone and put on his sunglasses before pausing. He glanced at the spider, then his door, before slipping some rubber bands around the dish and pocketing it as well.

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

For the record, since I've gotten a comment about this, Harley is not Reed Richards. That's on the right track though.

Just finished writing down the Infinity War part of this and I've got to say, I cried while writing it. Why does Infinity War have to exist?

Also, place your bets now on who bites the bullet!

An update on something I mentioned in the past: Riri, Miles, Gwen, and Kamala won't be appearing in this story, unfortunately. I just don't have enough information on Riri and the Inhumans to include her or Kamala and Peter's just too early in his superhero gig for Alchemax to be trying to recreate him so two spider-powered-people will have to do for now. There are two kid heroes that don't show up in canon that will be appearing though. One who was already planned and I might have mentioned already, can't remember, while the other will be taking Riri's spot... and all that implies

#iron family #tony stark #peter parker #nebula #oscorp

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