#there's so much joy in thrifting clothes in particular

[korusalka]

.

#there's so much joy in thrifting clothes in particular #i have this amazing blue jumpsuit with white flower straps and i got it for #for 5 euros and back then it was already lowkey falling apart #the bottoms are fraying and too short but ive started wearing shorts or skirts in combo and it looks soooo good #eventually I'll probably convert it into a top for good #and once the straps give out I'll fix them or replace them with something equally artsy #same goes for my 50s sundress i need to reattach a strap again but it looks chef's kiss #you don't get to be that creative with clothes you got firsthand. thrifted clothes on the other hand get you excited about mending #fashion #i should really start thrifting soon! and sell my old dress from like 10 years that is in pretty much perfect condition #*restart

[wysteria-clad]

Hi! I love your writing and I saw you were taking requests so I was wondering if you could do a Steven Grant blurb + "isn't this the book you wanted?"

Thank you and I hope you're having a nice day! ~🦢

Hi there! Thank you! Have a lovely day/night <3

Steven Grant + 'Isn't this the book your wanted?' from this cute prompt list

-------

The cold air bites your skin as you stepped outside of your house, even though you were wearing layers of warm clothes, and a thick soft sweater.

It has been snowing for the past few days. Being cooped up inside has started to become pretty boring.

You wanted to go out, and do anything. At least to walk around the block. To get your legs moving and feast your eyes on the silvery white snow cloaking the city. It is beautiful.

Steven voiced to go and check out the local thrift store, and you wanted to devour a nice, warm cup of hot chocolate and other wamn delights from your favorite cafe. It was decided then.

You smile to yourself. You'd appreciate it more if you it wasn't this cold, but you enjoyed it nonetheless.

Steven stepped next to you. "Here you go, love." He slips your beanie on your head, tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear. He pulls it down so it cover your eyes from the cold. He then places a kiss on your forehead.

You smile and thank him by kissing his lips. Despite the weather, his lips are warm. You slip your gloved hand into his, leading to your first destination.

.

.

The walk to the thrift store wasn't long.

It was an old fashioned store. Maybe that's the charm of it. It was one of your favourite thrift stores. A small bell rings as Steven opens the door.

The owner, Mrs. Thatcher looks up at you and Steven—her customers for the morning, and greets you. It was short and polite.

Few minutes pass as you walk around, searching for anything that catches your eye.

"Love?" he calls you.

And you turn around as if it's your name. It's so simple, and so Steven, yet it made you feel warm everytime he called you. You are his love.

"Isn't this the book you wanted?" he lifted up a book to show you.

You grinned widely. You had been looking for this particular book, a rare edition for months. And he found it finally in a thrift store.

He remembered.

"You found it!." You walk to close the distance between you and him. "I knew you were my lucky charm."

That brings out a soft smile on his face. He doubts it. In fact he would argue it's the other way, but he doesn't lets his thought dull down the light in your eyes.

.

.

The next stop was even more cozy. You ordered tea for him, just the way he loved and much awaited warm, hot chocolate for yourself.

The cafe wasn't crowded, but you noticed few couples and a group friends.

You were glad to be seated on the table near the window. Sooner, the noises and people around you became a blur, and become background noise when you and Steven talked, just about anything that came to your minds.

He rambled enthusiastically about his latest favourite thing. You nodded along, content, with the taste of your warm drink down your throat. It was as if you were in a own bubble of world, just you and him.

It was a lovely day, indeed. Simple, but filled with little joys you adored. And love packed in between.

Maybe love doesn't have to be grand all the time. It could be slow, boring and mundane. It can be just remembering how your lover drinks tea, or remembering what book your lover wanted.

------

Moon Knight taglist:

@twwcs @friendlyneighbourhood-parker @fayes-fics @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @devilish-mirage @syrma-sensei @gaymistakeboi @scarabgrant @mintpurplemnm @kittiesluvyou @luke-o-lophus @nana1000night @this-is-me1 @thatdummy-girl @vinsevena @hot-mess-express1 @hotbisexualmess @fandxmslxt69 @beaxtrice @ninebluehearts @moonknightwifey @i-still-dont-like-your-face @toracainz @damnzelsoul @bitchyglitterfox @21stcenturycirce

#wystie-verse #steven grant x reader #steven grant imagine #steven grant fluff #moon knight x reader #moon knight imagine #moon knight fluff #moon knight #steven grant

[apenvs3000w24]

01: Finding Myself in Nature: The Evolution of Our Special Relationship

I have not always had a strong connection to nature. I grew up in an indoor-loving Italian household in Hamilton, Ontario. We enjoyed watching movies, going shopping, and planning dinner dates with friends and family. Nature was something “out there” to my cohort. It was “disgusting” and “dangerous” and not a part of our world. 

When I started doing more travelling in high school, I quickly learned that I enjoyed hiking more than the city activities I had grown up doing. I had gone on two one-week camping trips with my school and became obsessed. I started forcing my childhood friends to go on hikes with me and together we made chasing waterfalls our favourite summer activity. I recognized the joy I derived from nature and put myself in more positions where I could explore it. 

One particular experience stands out as one that helped build my current relationship with nature. Two years ago I went tree planting in Northern Ontario. For two months I backcountry camped, planting seedlings in harsh conditions for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (the insect abundance was unreal — I was swarmed by black flies constantly). I experienced the unkind parts of nature and was often frustrated with my living conditions. Despite this, I have never been more at peace than I was during those two months. I could disconnect from my busy online world and connect with myself on a deeper level. I think about this experience often and believe this self-connection is why I enjoy being in nature so much today. 

In university In university, I began to learn more about global environmental change in my classes, closely followed environmental media, and made friends who cared about the natural world to the extent I did. My friends and I would discuss current events and encourage each other to live more sustainably (we went vegetarian and began to thrift all our clothes and household items). I chose to study international development, geography and ecology in university to understand how I/we can help mitigate global environmental change. Therefore, I also built on my connection to nature through my formal education, my friends and my media eco-chamber. 

“A sense of place”, as described in our textbook, is recognizing a location as more than just another common environment. It is identifying and understanding the special characteristics and the bigger picture of a place. As previously mentioned, I believe that my teachers, friends and the media are important influences that have "interpreted nature" for me, helping me gain a sense of place with it. Due to these influences, I view nature as more than simply flora and fauna. To me, nature represents billions of years of evolution, complex and changing interactions, and a space where I can peacefully exist. I understand nature's history and culture due to my education and have built on our relationship due to close influences in my life. 

[fanlitfairy]

Could You Walk Away?: A Review of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"

Art Credit: Katie Huff on ArtStation

Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is one that is sure to make you close your book slowly, stare at a wall, and wonder if you would be the kind of person to walk away from Omelas. (Spoiler: it is more complex of a situation than you might imagine.)

Le Guin’s story opens with the Festival of Summer in the city of Omelas, a town by the sea with “red roofs and painted walls,” “moss-grown gardens,” “avenues of trees,” and “great parks and public buildings.” The city is alive with the diverse crowd of Omelas citizens and they are all remarkably joyous, even the horses who were excitedly flaring their nostrils. 

Le Guin continues past the Festival and begins to explain the people of Omelas. According to Le Guin, they live without a government, police, slavery, stock exchanges, things that have a heavy presence in our own society. Some may think that this town is full of simple folk but they are “not less complex than us.” The descriptions of the town continue, exposing more and more information about their lifestyles and it seems on the surface that this town is just a truly happy town with a lack of judgment, crime, and better than our own. 

Gradually, Le Guin reveals the key part of Omelas, the thing which their entire joy rests upon: a small child, in a basement of a private mansion or a public building. It is malnourished, neglected, and frightened. It begs for help and it never comes, only people who offer cornmeal and grease as a meal, kick it, or stare through a window. Every townsperson in Omelas knows of the child’s existence and they all feel some kind of anger or guilt but they say there is nothing they can do. The child must suffer so that their joy may live on. 

However, as the title of the piece suggests, some feel so negatively about the child that they walk away from Omelas. They do not have an idea of where they are going but they know that they will not stay in the town, profiting off of a dying child, hidden somewhere in a basement.

This short story, sometimes labeled as a “philosophical” short story, places the reader in an uncomfortable situation. Like I mentioned before, sometimes, after reading this story, you have to sit with yourself and wonder if you would be the kind of person who would walk away from Omelas. Or, perhaps you are the other option that isn’t as explored in this piece. What would happen if you stood up to the town of Omelas and freed the child from the basement? 

One of the reasons I enjoy this story so much is because of the relevancy in our century, despite this piece being written in 1973. Our world relies on convenience and commodities which places a significant amount of stress on producers, service workers, and the lower-class who frequently end up in jobs where they have to bend over backwards in order to please consumers. The most obvious connection I can make is to fast fashion, where companies like Shein, Forever 21, Fashion Nova, and even the less obvious ones like Nike, rely on the difficult labor of child workers who are working in poor conditions to produce clothing for people to conveniently buy fast and cheap. 

Consumers ignore the horrors happening behind the construction of their thin, mesh tops that will eventually end in landfills or thrift stores. Some even twist these horrors, making it seem as though the working conditions are fine and attempt to convince others, as well as themselves, that this lifestyle is okay. Is this not painfully similar to the town of Omelas? 

Another reason I have a particular affinity for this piece is Le Guin’s masterful writing. I will admit that when I first saw this piece in text, I felt daunted by the large paragraphs with no separation, no dialogue, and what seemed to be heavy description. I have never been a fan of stories that pack a lot of information into one long paragraph. However, with some bravery, I jumped into this piece and found rhythmic writing that flowed so well from the paper and into my mind. 

Le Guin’s words flow so effortlessly into one another that you can’t help but finish the piece in a short amount of time. The first paragraph where she describes the Festival of Summer is a key example of this. In one sentence, Le Guin offers some description on such a simple topic as horses: “Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another….” The repetition of verbs ending in -ed gives the text a sort of bum-bum bum-bum reading that I really appreciate in texts. 

Le Guin’s frequent repetition of phrases like “How describe the citizens of Omelas?” and “Do you believe?” connects the entire piece as a whole. I, for one, feel more drawn into a text when I can point out familiar themes and word choice throughout it all. It also places emphasis on some key points that Le Guin is trying to get. To the reader, it may feel physically impossible to have a world devoid of all the negative things we are so used to. Before the reveal, she asks if we believe and directly after, now that we know the whole reason why, she asks again because we are more likely to believe in a world that relies on a suffering child to keep their happiness. 

This work must be classified as one of the greatest short stories. Its themes are constantly relevant, the writing is great, and it is an entirely thought-provoking piece that takes risks in its content which work effortlessly. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is undoubtedly a must-read for everyone, now more than ever. 5 stars out of 5. 

Works Cited

Le Guin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer, Vintage Books, 2020, pp. 228-232.

#college #english #fantasy literature #literature #the ones who walk away from omelas #ursula k le guin #omelas #short story #review

[saikitsu]

i know i didn't respond to discord dms yet but expect me to patiently sit at your door like a pitiful minecraft dog waiting for its owner for any oc lore you have even if you don't like what you have 🤲 mutual oc brainrot my beloved

ok all i have abt him is insane ramblings in my journal and like random notes on my phone so i looked up a character sheet on deviant art to try and make it more coherent >< i hope this makes sense :p also he is not a self insert he’s like.. completely another guy. just to clarify -v-

Basics

Name (Nickname): juno (everyone calls him junie for some reason. asmo calls him junebug because he’s insect-like <- will explain that later)

Age: 26 

Gender: whatever. uses he/him.

List three to five most important things about your character.

autistic, prone to paranoia, appears detached (and sometimes is) but is usually very very invested in everything (more than he can handle). easily influenced by the people around him in terms of behavior. cigarette smoker (addicted and doesn’t care to quit).

Physical Details

Build/Body Type/Physical Frame: imagine if a mosquito was a guy.

Height: taller than most humans, shorter than the brothers/royals.

Skin: brown. lots of random discoloration for no particular reason.

Hair: dark brown. reaches his waist. 

Eyes: brown.

Other defining features/extra anatomy: crooked nose (broke it and never went to the doctor). long, thin fingers. not particularly nice to look at.

Habits: bites nails, tries not to talk/verbalize anything as much as he can manage, counts in his head when he is nervous. chainsmokes over a pack a day. 

Gestures/Mannerisms: none at all he’s quite still. will fidget with his hair if nervous but otherwise he’s kind of like a statue. 

Demeanor: bad posture, sort of a nervous/neurotic looking guy. his eyes are large and round so he always has an owlish expression.

Voice: monotone, his emotions aren’t easily expressed with his voice so a change in tone is practically non-existent barring any physical influence on his throat or something. 

Style/Clothing: owns three pairs of jeans and like seven t-shirts he got from a thrift store, the most average wardrobe ever because the thought of being perceived terrifies him. does stick to dark/neutral colors when he can because brighter colors are very overwhelming for him to look at. no real sense of style it means nothing to him/confuses him.

Personality

Part One: Basic Info

Loves/Favorites: menthol newports, MMORPGs and platformers, nonfiction media, slice of life media, extremely tight hugs, philosophy (kierkegaard-pilled), any foods with a soft/smooth texture like mashed potatoes or ice cream or something, others expressing joy around him.

Hates: depressing/existential media (he loves escapism), having his stomach/chest touched, rooms with too many doors/windows (can’t sit with his back facing a door or a window), talking about himself (makes him deeply uncomfortable). also pain (like, extremely low pain tolerance even paper cuts send him spiraling but he hides it well it’s just internally. he suffers.)

Hobbies: reads a lot but will re-read the same books and refuse to find new ones unless they are very specific to his niche tastes (drives satan insane but he will not budge), enjoys cooking but only for himself, likes to review media he consumes in his journal (will not show anybody ever and will get annoyed if someone insists on seeing), and driving (he’s not good at it).

Talents/Skills: hmm he is rather intelligent if that counts as a talent, in terms of skills he convinces himself that he is incapable of everything and talks himself out of practicing in fear that even if he devotes himself to it he will never be good. above average singer but he hates using his voice so it’s not really relevant. has a great memory. i don’t know that this is a talent but his paranoia means he has a map-like understanding of every building he’s ever been in, and a great sense of direction. oh and he’s a decent cook.

Hopes/Dreams: has very little ambition, is fairly content going through the motions (wake up, go to work/obligations, sleep, repeat). sometimes desires to be known and loved but he could live without it/in all honestly would not do well in a long-term relationship with someone who required a normal amount of devotion/attention. if he didn’t have to work he still would not do much i think he’d just sit in his room and read or drive around.

Fears/Nightmares: being perceived like literally being looked at and having a physical form bothers him a lot (especially being tall, he wishes he could be average height, one thing he likes abt the devildom is that he is shorter than everyone). having his back to any door or window (general paranoia). any tidbit of information he gives other people being used against him, even if it logically couldn’t be. 

Best Quality: despite being generally confused by other people and how they behave, he does try his best to make others happy in the ways he can manage. i also think he cares deeply abt others but it never comes across.

Greatest Flaw: too intimidated by the larger aspects of life (love, career, etc.) that he does not try for anything and chooses to be content with the bare minimum/nothing at all.

Character Strengths: doesn’t really budge on his convictions, cares a lot and tries to be careful with other people’s emotions (not always successful), despite the flat affect he loves joy in others. 

And the coinciding weaknesses: if he feels a relationship (platonic or otherwise) has faded/weakened he will cut it off completely and will not be convinced of its potential by the other person no matter what. avoids conflict to a point others would consider extreme (physically removes himself from any conflict situations, if he is cornered, shuts down and will not speak). generally is very private abt his existence and does not do well being around others for more than a few hours at a time.

Quirks: not particularly physically affectionate but subconsciously leans on people he is comfortable around, or places a hand on their shoulder. clicks his tongue often after speaking. prone to chronic nosebleeds.

One thing they are and one thing they are not.

kind, but not really nice.

Part Two: In-depth Analysis

How does the character picture themself?

physically he does not think abt himself at all, mentally he is so consumed by outer stimuli that any inward reflection is uncomfortable/exhausting so he does not think abt himself very much. if he is forced to be alone with his thoughts i do not think he would like himself very much but he would be resigned abt it. 

How do others see them?

unpleasant if you do not know him, if you are his friend/he thinks of you as such he will be quite inexpressive but you will get a gentleness that he doesn’t use with others. gives off an aura of discomfort/nervousness (i can’t find it but think of that video of a wet rat trembling).

Most valued possession: the notebook where he keeps his media reviews. 

Darkest secret and/or treasured memory: doesn’t really have secrets his life is quite small. treasured memory.. he doesn’t think abt memories like that really.

Are they motivated by possibility or necessity?

he’s not motivated by anything, necessity maybe in terms of avoiding breakdowns or triggers, but even physical necessities like eating/sleeping are difficult for him to be motivated to do. 

How do they view the future and/or the past?

does not think abt them, prefers to stay grounded in the present as there is already a lot going on in his head at any given moment.

What kind of energy level do they usually have?

low base level energy, rarely if he is worked up abt something/interested in something he will have a bit more energy. 

Do they have a temper?

yes. you can tell when he’s getting upset because he starts getting twitchy and eventually leaves the room.

How do they respond to the surrounding world, the ‘unfamiliar,’ and other people in general?

autistic so all stimuli is very overwhelming and anything unfamiliar takes a lot of work to get used to, and if he doesn’t want to he will not acclimate to it no matter what, even to his detriment. other people are confusing to him and he can’t handle a lot of interaction but he doesn’t dislike them, most of his conflict with other people stems from a lack of understanding on both sides. if it weren’t for that i think he would like to meet new people.

Polite or rude?

he’s not.. rude on purpose but people would think of him that way. that’s me projecting a little im often told i’m rude when i’m just being.. neutral i think.

What kind of ‘public’ face do they display?

none, or at least not intentional. he seems apathetic/detached because he struggles to emote/does not speak, but that rarely changes in public or in private. 

Leader or a follower?

neither/follower. a very solitary person but he can be influenced by the people around him to behave a certain way.

More happy by themselves or in a group?

by himself, but he does find enjoyment in being in a group sometimes. he’s content to sit back and watch other people interact like listening to a podcast which is how he grows a little fond of the brothers and their hijinks. 

Do they have any addictions/dependencies/fixations/ or other strange behavior?

addicted to cigarettes. he likes bugs a lot more than most, but i don’t know that i’d call it a fixation. i don’t know what classifies as strange behavior.

History/Background

Occupation: probably found some menial office job that pays enough and doesn’t require a lot of interaction/has a strict routine. 

Intelligence Level: what does this mean.. intelligence level 9000….

Family:

parents: doesn’t hate them but doesn’t care abt them and vice versa. they don’t talk and they’re both fine with it. older brother: doesn’t get along with him. they don’t talk. younger sister: civil, bordering on friendly relationship. but not close and only speak when they really have to/want to check in on the other.

Friends: before the devildom, none. after the devildom.. none. (that’s not quite true but i’ll elaborate later.)

Combat (<- lol)

Physical Strength: poor

Coordination/Reflexes: also poor

Fighting Style: if he had to fight/defend himself he’d just break down. this is relevant i suppose in the obey me universe. 

Unusual Abilities/Powers: absolutely none. average human being. cant cast a spell to save his life. not a magical bone in his body. (the whole lilith descendant thing is.. i just don’t think abt it but lets say it’s true he just didn’t inherit any powers.)

if u r curious i can elaborate on his relationships with the obey me characters but i think this is already too long :0 i’ll leave it here lmk if u want to know more abt him or have any questions.. i like to talk abt him but i didn’t think anybody would like to know.. hope u enjoy this little guy... thank u goodnight *bows*

#oc #juno #ask #trying to answer these questions based on my incoherent scribbles was so. it was so.. #does any of this make sense…. #but i enjoyed it pls ask any questions you may have -v- if you even have any he is not that interesting #txt

[disastrouslyyours]

Since Spamton has the anatomy of a puppet, he could get away with acting like a lifeless toy as a sort of hiding/disguising mechanism. But what would happen if someone found him and starts feeling and squeezing him?

Amber, bestie, this took a wild turn in my brain?? I don't know if this is what you expected, so hit me up if you wanted this to go a different direction lol.

ANYWAYS you find a weird doll in a thrift store, what happens next will shock you!!

Thrift shopping has always been one of your favorite ways to decompress. There was something about mindfully carding through an endless sea of clothing that allowed you to get lost for a couple hours, your mind focusing on the funky fabrics and outlandish outfits in front of you instead of drifting off to various unknowns and anxieties. It was much easier to focus on whether or not you’re willing to pay $5 for a sweater you’ll wear twice before donating again than to consider whether or not moving here was the right decision.

Either way, you found yourself skulking around any one of the local thrift stores at least two times a week. This particular trip happened to be your third in the past six days, which was as good an indicator as any of your mental state. The winter was always particularly rough for you, both mentally and physically, and moving to a new city ended up being more stressful than you had hoped. The lifeless cardigans in front of you weren’t sparking as much joy as they usually did, so you found yourself meandering to other sections of the store. Somehow you ended up rummaging around the toy section, feeling sentimental and nostalgic as you perused colorful shelves lined with Beanie Babies and Lego sets. One item stands out to you as particularly odd, even for a thrift store. A large doll of sorts, reminiscent of a ventriloquist dummy, lies strewn across a shelf all the way in the corner. It’s surrounded by a random assortment of other toys, including a bright red toy phone, a deck of cards, and a handful of Hot Wheels. Looking at it almost makes your stomach turn the same way looking out of a window at night makes your stomach tie itself in knots out of fear that someone would be looking back at you.

Yet, part of you is intrigued by the potentially haunted ventriloquist dummy. You feel your heart vibrate in your chest, its palpitations reverberating off of your ribcage, as you slowly step closer towards the doll. Before you can even process what’s happening, you watch your hand extend out in front of you to cup the doll’s face. Turning it towards you, you admire the attention to detail on the facial features. A cartoonish oversized nose, cute red cheeks, and an ever-present smile adorn the funny lil man on the shelf. You’re drawn to his dual tinted glasses, one lens pink and the other yellow, as they are a particularly unique choice. You can’t shake the feeling like you should know who (or what) this doll is, but you can’t quite place your finger on why. He just seems so familiar, like you’ve seen him before…but where?

Attempting to jog your memory, you lift him off of the shelf and find him surprisingly heavy and suspiciously warm. You reason that he might’ve just been put on the shelf, warm from being in a donation bag or in someone’s arms. The idea that someone once loved him, only to toss him, crosses your mind and nearly chokes you up.

Get a hold of yourself. Your mind has been particularly frazzled this week, so you try not to be too hard on yourself for having a streak of sentiment.

Turning him over in your hands, you decide to investigate to see if you can find proof to confirm your ‘ventriloquist’ theory and slide a hand under his distinguished black jacket. You’re surprised to make contact with another shirt, which seems to be neatly tucked into his pants. You prod around his back for a while, digging your fingers in to try and find a spot for a hand to fit. You find nothing of the sort, but nearly jump out of your skin when you hear a sound coming from the doll in your hands. This new information makes you think that he perhaps isn’t a ventriloquist dummy, and instead might be some sort of custom-made doll. Complete with a custom voice box, although from the sound of it the batteries must be running low. You flip him back over and decide to test your new theory by pressing a finger into the middle of his stomach, resulting in another strange sound. You still couldn’t determine any distinct words, which was odd. If someone put a custom voice box into a doll, then surely it had to have specific dialogue. Maybe I’m not pressing hard enough? You reason, figuring that press both thumbs into the middle of the doll.

Nothing could’ve prepared you for what happened next.

Pressing into his stomach caused his limbs to flail wildly for a moment, accompanied once again by the indistinguishable sound.

What kind of doll talks, moves, and is this size??

This prompts the need for further investigation. You search him for a price tag, finding a small $4.99 label tied to his wrist. Your inner conscience begs you to reconsider, lest the cute cashier judge you for bringing home…whatever this was. Last week they complimented your selection of sweaters, and while you were hoping to woo them again with your choice finds, curiosity got the better of you. You avoided eye contact during the transaction and barely muttered out a have a good one before rushing out of the door and back to your apartment, with a funny little guy curled up in your arms.

***

Fortunately, you managed to return to your place without seeing any of your acquaintances out and about. As you place the thrift store find on your couch, you can’t help but wonder aloud what compelled you to bring him home in the first place. Grateful for the privacy your own home provides, you decide to start your head to toe investigation. Taking a seat next to him on the couch, you begin by lightly skimming your fingers through his hair. So incredibly soft, you mutter to yourself, and out of the corner of your eye you swear you see the doll’s painted cheeks turn a shade darker. Shifting your attention to his face, you cup it in both of your hands and run your thumbs over the smooth plastic of his cheeks. You’re almost positive you see the area surrounding his painted marks flush a dark pink, and you furrow your eyebrows in thought.

“What kind of doll talks, moves, and blushes?” You ponder, letting your hands fall to his shoulders and giving them a soft squeeze before trailing them down his arms to inspect his hands. Cupping one of his hands in yours, you trace the outlines of the joints along his fingers and press your thumb softly into his palm. You thought there might be a button in his hands that would activate his voice box, but found you thought wrong. You settle your hands on either side of him and press, determined to hear his voice again and attempt to make out what he’s saying. Maybe his vocal track will help me determine what he is?

This time as you squeeze into his surprisingly soft midsection, you watch as his mouth opens to release a fit of giggles.

“Oh? Is this some sort of Cyber City Tickle-Me-Elmo?” Shocked, you press again to receive a similar reaction. Third time’s a charm, however, and on your third squeeze he squeaks and slides away from your touch, backing himself against the armrest of the couch and batting at your hands. You recoil with a scream, nearly falling off your couch as you back away from the moving doll in front of you.

“EASY WITH THE GOODS, [Hochi Mama].” His voice is now very clear except for a clip at the end that sounds forced, somehow. You are frozen in horror, a creeping realization settling in that the man in front of you might actually be just that- a man.

“W-what the fuck?” Is all you manage to stammer out as you watch the definitely a man stand from your couch and brush himself off. He shoots you an uneasy smile, his eyes hidden behind his dual tone glasses.

“I COULD ASK YOU THE SAME THING, [Dearest Customer].” He huffs, seemingly annoyed that you dared to question him. “YOU’RE THE ONE WITH THE [Hands On Experience], NOT ME.”

“What are you?” You feel stupid asking, but you can’t think of anything else to say.

“I’M THE [#1 Top Rated Salesman1997], YOUR OLD PAL SPAMTON G. SPAMTON.” He continues to smile at you in a way that makes your skin crawl, his words dripping with confidence as if they clarify anything and everything. You bury your face in your hands and groan. What do I do with a top rated salesman?

#did i call myself out in this one? #yes thrifting is one of my all time favorite activities #also y’all spamton is a horrifying creature and we have to acknowledge that #ik im thirsty af for him and ik hes so sexy but like #if i saw this in a thrift store id call 911 #drabble requests #amber im sORRY #idk what HAPPENED #the zoni enthusiast

[mctreeleth]

Hi! Once you get this you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly, then send this to ten of your favorite followers (nonnegotiable) SPREAD POSITIVITY! 💌🥰

I have been thinking about this since I got it yesterday. There was a post a while back where someone was talking about when they were asked something along these lines but their therapist called them out for the fact that all their positive qualities were things they could do for other people, and while I glossed past it at the time, now it is making me think:

What do the five things I like about myself actually say about me?

Because, on the one hand, there is the "things I do for other people" track. I like that I am instinctively supportive and try to help. The fact that I struggle to have a good time while someone around me is miserable is a good thing because it motivates me to do what I can to alleviate their bad time. My almost debilitating sympathetic embarrassment drives me to do everything in my power to make the people around me comfortable. Those are all things I like myself for doing, but are they things I like about myself, and, more importantly, are they good things to like about myself? If I only like the things about myself that serve others, then do I really like myself?

Okay, so what about what I can achieve? That's a pretty common one. I like how I can intuitively work out the maths behind any quilt pattern. I like how good I am at rendering a 2D material into a 3D object, like clothes or a bag or a toy. I like how good I am at making big charcuterie platters that both look good and have everything get eaten. That is harder than you would think - a lot of the good looking stuff no-one actually likes. But these are all instances where I am liking my ability to produce. Is that the kind of thing that I should be liking about myself? By making the things I like about myself be things that demonstrate achievement, I am unconsciously reiterating the idea that if you cannot produce, you are not worthy. So the things I like about myself should probably be more intrinsic.

Okay, so lets try basic cliched stuff. I like my eyes, I think they are pretty. But - multiple classes of feminist theory on the way in which we are embodied selves aside - thanks to some chronic health issues, to me my body is mainly the thing that carries me around. It would be like saying that a thing that I like about myself is that my car has good headlights. I like that my shoe size is average so it is easy to find boots at the thrift store, and also that the size of tyres my car uses are fairly cheap. And, you know, probably shouldn't be prioritising physical attributes either.

Saying things like "I like how I dress" or "I like how I have decorated my apartment" are instances where I am liking my participation in consumer culture. That seems generally like a bad thing, and a lot of people don't have the time to thrift as extensively as I do, or the money to access such things new. It's like saying "I like my privilege."

Which I suppose leaves the inside stuff. A lot of it is double-edged-sword-y, and so tinged with the accompanying annoyance, but you get that on the deep introspections.

I like how quickly I can flit from fun idea to fun idea, even though it does make it hard to retain thoughts, or concentrate.

I love how much fun I have yes-and-ing everything and anything, even as it means I struggle when things are not sparkly and exciting. I love it when I hit a groove with someone, and we simultaneously elevate each other’s dumb ideas. I love how good I am at spiraling upwards, even if it means I am also predisposed to spiral downwards.

I am possibly one of the best in the world at finding joy in tiny things - at least on par with your average 4 year old - and have annoyed my friends by waxing lyrical for extended periods of time about automatic swinging doors, how good it feels to have exactly the right amount of something, or how good this one particular piece of foam feels. Seriously, touch it, it is so good, I carry around a 5cm square of it in my handbag these days. It was in the bottom of a wooden box of fancy wines at work and they were going to just throw it out. If you press on it gently it feels like it is a crumbling piece of florists foam, but it is just regular foam, so you don't end up with green gritty stuff, AND it pops back up so you can do it again. It's so fucking good.

I like how my heart feels like it is going to explode when I think about my dogs and my bird and my mum and my car and my piece of foam and the idea of bridges and my stuffed toys and my fluffy rug and being in the river and sitting in front of a fire and being engrossed in a story, because I can love things so so much that I could combust.

And I like that I take things maybe a little too seriously sometimes. I like that my brain tries to think about a thing from every vantage point it can find, even though it will never find them all. Maybe part of it is being done because I am worried about the other people who are being exposed to what I am putting out there. But I think it is more like my thoughts are like that magnetic slime, just fully engulfing an iron cube of an idea, so excited to have something to connect with that it is incapable of not taking it a little too far.

Also, a bonus one, just because: I love how wild my metaphors are.

#release-the-sheep #don't mind me I am just having an overthinky ramble this fine 2am #I almost finished my quilted cape tonight #I have to machine the shoulder seams and the neckline #and attach the bias strips #and then I am going to hand sew them down like a madwoman #I hate hand sewing #but we're trying stuff out

[assortedmutts]

A X for the whole cast

Valentine’s headcanon meme.

A   :   AFFECTION.   how does your muse show affection?

Merc: affection, to him, means trust and loyalty above all. He likes for his partner to be able to rely on him, no matter what - be it in providing them with protection, comfort or support. He’ll lend them an ear and a shoulder to cry on and provide them with whatever acts of service he can think of - bring them food, take care of them (best he can) when they’re down, handle their enemies if such exist, back them up on anything and everything. Sometimes, it can be something as simple as removing their shoes from their feet after a long day, ironing their clothes, tidying up, or pampering them in bed if they’re up for it.

He’ll start taking pictures of places around the world that make him think of them, or buy them gifts. He likes putting thought into these and making sure they’re something special - something no one else would have thought to give them, a reference to a private joke or story, or something you cannot find anywhere else in the world.

Another way for Merc to display trust is that he gradually becomes more verbal and shares with them that way, be it in expressing his opinions or sharing stories from his past. Likewise, he’ll gradually become more comfortable with physical touch, and especially enjoys PDA (when he’s otherwise a very private person and likely would not have been seen with them publicly). He also likes taking them to his favorite spots around the city/country/world (depending on their mobility, I guess): skyscraper rooftops, places with pretty scenery, abandoned buildings that are fun to explore, his favorite food joints, markets, clubs, or the aviary where he keeps his pigeons. Anywhere that’s touched him or is dear to him in some way or another. 

Job: so much physical contact and PDA. He’s gonna have a hand on his partner wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, and he’s going to want to kiss them all the time. Likewise: all the sex they can possibly keep up with. Job’s sex drive is high at any given time and is his go-to way of showing affection, and it only becomes higher when he develops romantic feelings for another person. He’s also a service top through and through and will gladly do whatever his partner wants to please them. 

His loved ones are always on his mind and he likes showing them that whichever way he can: collecting little gifts for them from along the road, trinkets and jewelry/items of clothing from thrift shops, flowers he picks and dries among the pages of his books/journal, pretty rocks and seashells, etc. Since he’s unable to communicate with them regularly while he’s on the road, Job also likes writing to his partners - letters, postcards, love songs (which he will occasionally compose and perform for them upon his return). In addition to all the found/purchased gifts, Job’s favorite form of gift-giving is creating handmade things for his partners, if and when he can (say, if he’s working in construction and has access to woodworking tools). He may create little statues for them of things they like, pieces of jewelry or handy stuff for their home/kitchen like wooden bowls or chopping boards.

Additionally, he just loves hanging out with his favorite people and find activities for them to do together: he’ll take them out on picnics (both day and night; nothing more romantic than dinner under the open night skies), little concerts at parks or dive bars, thrift-shopping, etc., and there will always be food involved in these activities to some capacity or another. Little brings Job more joy than feeding his loved ones, and he will absolutely try to fatten them up with his home cooking if he can.

Saul: as he’s never been in love or involved in a romantic relationship, his means of showing affection lean more towards the platonic side. Like Job, Saul very much enjoys cooking for his loved ones and will happily labor in the kitchen the entire day just to see them enjoy their meal by the end of it, and he loves it all the more if/when they want to participate. He likes to include them in his family traditions if they’re not already part of them, such as inviting them over for Shabbos dinner or a major Jewish holiday and offer for them to partake by helping him recite prayers/practice rituals/even something as simple as offer them a yarmulke or head scarf so that they may show their respect to the occasion. While it’s worth nothing that he will respect their wishes if they don’t want to participate, it’ll likely be very difficult to impossible for him to maintain a romantic relationship with someone who never wishes to partake in his culture.

On the odd occasion that he does go on a date (more like did - don’t think he’s been on a date in, like, 10 years), Saul prefers to use his playing field (Manhattan) to his benefit - take his dates out for walks around Central Park (the High Line is also a favorite, especially at night), visit the MoMA or the Guggenheim, chat over a bottle of red wine and share a few courses in some cute little bistros he knows (LBR, he’s likely friends with the owners and gets to have some special shots/dishes sent over free of charge). 

It may also sound a bit funny but, Saul likes arguing? Maybe not arguing so much as debating. It’s no small part of Jewish culture and he loves sharp people who can keep up with his intellect and will always do his best to challenge them. Catch him debating something entirely theoretical and/or nonsensical to death just for the hell of it, just to see who can win the argument. On a similar note and, though he’s never done it before, he’ll also likely enjoy taking his date to his casino and watch them gamble the night away (wouldn’t mind paying for it, either). Bonus points if his date knows poker or blackjack and can challenge him at the table.

X   :   XOXO.   does your muse use / like pet names?

Merc: as is always the case with this edgelord, the answer is: outwardly no, but secretly yes. Obviously, pet names suggest an intimate relationship, which Merc very much prefers to avoid for obvious reasons.

He does appreciate being called pet names in both platonic and romantic relationships and is an absolute sucker for anything soft a partner might call him, such as baby, angel, princess etc., because he’s so often regarded as tough, monstrous, etc., and because his true identity is obviously a touchy subject. But it’s also worth mentioning that words - and names, at that, their meaning and the way that they’re used - mean a great deal to Merc, and that there’s value and intimacy in his friends and partners calling him by his real name. As he often introduces himself under either an alias or a nickname (even before he became Merc, he’s had more nicknames than he can count on both hands), this is a very rare occurrence and, depending on the circumstances, it could be either comforting or terrifying to be addressed by his real name.

With regards to his own use of pet names, he is far likelier to use derogatory terms as terms of endearment rather than actual pet names: rather than call someone baby or angel or what have you, he’s far more likely to call them a bitch, cunt, dickhead, cocksucker, etc. Helps ignore or come to terms with the level of intimacy that a pet name suggests if it’s derogatory or funny. He also often does the opposite and uses terms of endearment as derogatory terms - calling people darling, sweetheart etc. as a means of humiliating them and showing his disrespect.

With that said, though, it’s not beyond him to eventually drop the facade and use actual pet names for loved ones - namely love, pet, darling and sweetheart.

Job: yes to both!!! So much!!! He’s likely to address people by their official title upon introduction, as per his country manners, but he absolutely loves both using and being called pet names by friends, family and partners alike. Even in casual conversation, he’s likely to address someone as man, girl or dude (dude is used for all genders and is hence his go-to) rather than use their actual names. As for his partners, he tends not to prefer one particular pet name and will call them anything that he can possibly think of: darling, sweetheart, honey, sugar, baby... you get the gist. He also likes to play off of people’s names and create cater-made nicknames just for them.

Saul: yes, absolutely, and you can rest assured that they will be Yiddish pet names more often than not. His father used to do this all the time and, the older Saul gets, the more he takes after Menash, especially when it comes to speech patterns. I.e., he’ll often refer to Jess as boychik (as Menash used to refer to him). Among his favorite terms to use are zeeskeit (sweetness), sheifale (lamb), bubbeleh (doll), libe/r (love, female/male), oyster (treasure) and ketsele (kitten).

#badactors #( answered ) #( answered: badactors ) #( about: the mercenary ) #( about: job edwards ) #( about: saul shapiro ) #i swear to god i tried keeping this short #but as always you ask the real shit

[btaes1]

Ambul

Jungkook x Reader 

This is the Jungkook imagine! I hope you guys like it! This is probably my favorite story-line, although I don’t know if I like how I executed it. If you do like it please like and follow me! Also, I didn’t re-check before uploading! (I do tend to take around a few weeks re-reading my stories though, so i’m sure in general it is fine.) 

Word Count: 2.2k

Rummaging through the small yet unique thrift shop looking look for nothing in particular. Racks of clothes sit in the middle of the store untouched; books overtake bookcases filled with dust, and old movies sit in a box yet to be touched.  Nothing seemed to catch the eye, until you caught a glimpse of a pair of old yellow shoes. Simple shoes, a dull color of mustard, but you could sense these shoes were once bright and full of life.  

           All of a sudden, a lady speaks “They’re mine, you know.” Standing against the rail, she smiles. Looking at the lady, she couldn’t have been older than 50.

           “I’m sorry, I didn't know they were yours; I was just looking.” you answer, cheeks flaring up from being caught staring so intently at them.

           “They were with me for a long time, they were my favorite shoes. Now the only thing left is the memories that were made with them.” She smiles fondly, as if she were reminiscing of the past. 

“They’re very interesting.” you smile, intrigued by hearing her speak of the shoes 

“They’re yours if you want them, I know they’re not the prettiest, but I can promise they will bring you great memories.” she offers. 

Surprised with her generous offer you immediately shake your head no “Oh no, I couldn’t take these from you, they hold a lot of memories for you.” 

Picking up the shoes, she stares at them for a moment and passes them to you “Take them, please. I just want them to have a good home, and to bring someone joy as they have brought me.” Bringing them close to you, you stare at them once more and decide to take them home.

“Thank you so much, I promise to treat them well.” 

Watching you leave the old lady takes one final look at her old shoes, smiles once more and softly says “I know you will.”

---------

 “Oh no no no no” you groan, clicking the snooze button on the alarm. “I’m going to miss it” You whisper shout. Scanning the room for the quickest outfit in sight, you come across a purple sundress, and a mint green jacket. “Perfect” you whisper while continuing the search for an outfit. Stumbling across the room in search for a pair of shoes, the yellow shoes the kind lady gifted a few days prior seem to stand out in the crowded bedroom. So, instead of grabbing the brown sandals closest to you, you turn to the side and walk towards the curious looking shoes.

Holding the shoes close shows just how unique they are, with a slight peak of silver running across the sole, and a dull shade of blue appearing to be a hand drawn butterfly across the heels of the shoes. 

           “Hmmm, well I don't see why not” you mumble under your breath. Sitting down and placing the shoes on your feet you realize they fit perfectly. Standing up to take a quick glance in the bright blue mirror, instinctively tilting your head which leaves you feeling silly about the colorful attire, tilting your head to right you convince yourself that the shoes are good enough for the time being. 

           They look cute, you think while stepping out the door. 

           Seeing Seoul come to life in the early morning was a privilege many people didn’t have. Watching everyone start their days, street vendors trying to catch the attention of anyone who would listen, adults focused on making it to work on time, children laughing without a care in the world on their way to school. By far making this the city of your dreams. Fortunately, running out of the house as quickly as you could let you make it in time to catch the view. Noticing the quick glances from everyone was almost enough to make the confidence you had garnered from your outfit disappear. Almost. The glances were quick, almost as quickly as they looked, they looked away. It was almost unnoticeable. Almost. 

Hmmm, some shoes. You thought after realizing they seemed to be the reason for the glances.  

----------

Just Keep your head down Jungkook thought to himself. Travelling across town was dangerous for someone like him. That didn’t stop him from taking these walks whenever he could though. The mornings in Seoul were something he couldn’t see anywhere else in the world, and trust me, he had seen a lot of bright mornings across the world, but nothing could compare to his home. 

Being the unruly person, he is, Jungkook took the risk to travel down a more well populated street. Something that could end very badly. He didn’t mind the risk though; he knew it was worth it. These moments were far and few between. Keeping his head down was making it difficult for him to see where he was going. The last thing he saw before he fell were an odd pair of yellow shoes. 

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you.” Jungkook mumbled getting back up, his heart racing at the thought of being caught. 

“No, it’s okay, I guess I should have been more aware of my surroundings, but I can’t help but look at the view around here.” The girl rambled while patting her knees clear of any dirt. Looking up at her he couldn’t help but notice her unique sense of style. It was different, and she was beautiful.  After making eye contact Jungkook’s heart sunk. She noticed who he was. 

“Listen, please don’t say anything, I was just trying to have a walk across town.” He pleaded with the oddly dressed woman. His eyes wide. He was fully ready to get down on his knees and bed. 

           Jungkook could feel her big eyes staring into his, and before he had a chance to walk away, she stated “I would never do that you know?” Breathing a sigh of relief, he thanked the girl “Thank you, I appreciate it.” 

“I don’t blame you for coming out here you know. I can’t imagine another place with a view like Seoul, although I can imagine you can” She smiled. Hearing this left Jungkook in shock. No one else seemed to share his opinion that Seoul had the best views in the world. 

Gazing at the sky he laughs “You know, I haven’t met anyone who thinks the same as me” looking back only to realize the girl with the yellow shoes had walked away. He immediately scanned the area, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but it was too late. She was gone. 

----------

“Kook, you know better than to leave without telling anyone.” Jimin scolds Jungkook as soon as he walked into the studio. Taking off his coat and throwing it towards the couch, Jungkook threw himself into the chair next to Jimin. “I’m sorry Hyung, I wanted to walk around before our tour.” Moving his chair closer to Jungkook, Jimin smiles and states “I know Kook, but you have to be careful, you could have easily been caught.”

“About that” Jungkook mumbles. 

“What happened?” Jimin asks, a look of concern spreads across his face. 

“I met this girl Hyung, I don’t know who she is, she had this weird jacket on, and don’t even get me started on her shoes, they were an ugly yellow, but she made them look so cool, but she was far from ugly.” Jungkook rambled on, looking at his older brother with a slight smile. 

“And what happened with this girl?” Jimin questioned Jungkook, pulling himself up and placing his hand under his chin, suddenly intrigued with the younger members story. 

“I ran into her by accident, I was so scared she would freak out and expose me, but she told me she wouldn’t do that, and you don’t meet a lot of girls like that Hyung, you know?” Jungkook rambled, his story all over the place.  “She talked about how she thought Seoul had the best view in the world, and I haven’t met anyone who thought that. Did I mention her shoes Jimin Hyung? They were so different, I’ll never forget those shoes, and her eyes, they were so bright when she talked about Seoul. That's how I knew she meant what she said...”

“Jungkook, enough.” Jimin laughed, standing up to ruffle the younger members hair, “Did you catch her name.” 

“No, I didn't.” Jungkook stated, his shoulders falling slightly. 

“I’m going to go back every day though, I have to get to know this girl, when she looked at me, it was different, I wasn’t Jungkook, I was just a normal person.” Jungkook continued. Smiling at his younger brother Jimin looked at Jungkook and said, “I believe you; I hope you find her.” With a pat on the back Jimin walked out of the studio leaving Jungkook by himself.

“Yeah, I hope I do too.” He softly whispers.

---------

Even though the shocking encounter with Jungkook had taken place days ago, that didn’t stop the memory from spilling over to every aspect of your life. Since then you had fallen in love with the yellow shoes. Something about them seemed to help you create some kind of memory every day. The shoes came alive when you wore them, the quick glances did nothing but increase their uniqueness, and help you realize that they were only helping you become a confident person. 

The alarm rang as it always did at 7 A.M sharp. Rolling over to turn the alarm off you mentally groan to yourself. Waking up early wasn’t easy, but the walk outside was always worth it. Slipping out of bed and putting on the first articles of clothing that could be found was the first step of the morning. Reaching to grab the yellow shoes you quickly let yourself replay the memory of you meeting Jungkook. What was he doing on the streets of Seoul so early? Questions cloud your mind quickly, but before you let yourself dwell any longer the second alarm goes off.

Shoot, I’m running late. You think, making a mental note to start getting ready earlier. With one satisfied look in the mirror you run out the door. Making it just in time to catch the vendors setting up. Feeling a sense of happiness, you let your mind roam, enjoying the cool morning as much as you can. Now enjoying the attention your shoes brought, you would now smile after feeling someone look for so long. 

The feeling of a hand on your shoulder snaps you back to reality, looking over to see a young man staring at you. Immediately recognizing the handsome man, even though he was covered to the point of where you could only see his eyes. 

“I’ve been looking for you” he pants “I saw you in the distance, and I had to run through crowds of people” Confused, you instinctively turn your head to the left 

“How did you find me, Jungkook?”

           Bringing his head down in embarrassment “Well, I saw your shoes, I couldn’t forget something like those.”

           Not sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult, you completely ignore the statement. Standing in the middle of the street with people walking all around you Jungkook shuffles around before starting to speak up again 

“I’m just going to say this before I lose my confidence. Do you remember when we ran into each other and you said that you couldn’t imagine another place with a view like Seoul? And you also said that you could imagine I had found something better. Well you didn’t stick around long enough to hear my answer. You’re right, but you’re also wrong. I have been to a lot of places, yes, but absolutely nothing compares to Seoul. I have never found someone who thinks the same as me. The way your bright eyes lit up even more when you talked about Seoul, and the way you smiled just made me realize that I had to get to know you. I’m glad I ran into you, I think you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met, and I barely know you. I am so grateful that I saw those funny looking shoes of yours, because If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have stopped to stare at them, which in turn led me to fall into you.” 

Stunned with his response, and feeling the heat rush up to your cheeks, there was so much you wanted to say, but the only thing that could come out of your mouth was. 

“But you don't even know my name”

Feeling his shoulders fall, Jungkook was shocked. You were right, he didn’t even know your name. Looking at you, he realized that you were the most interesting character he had ever met, along with the most beautiful. With an awkward Chuckle he states.

“Well, I’m Jungkook, and I’d like to know your name, but if you don’t want anything to do with me, I understand. You can walk away.”

Placing your hand in between the both of you, and with a smile on your face you confidently exclaim 

“Nice to meet you Jungkook, I’m Y/n, with the yellow shoes”

#bts #bts jungkook imagine #bts jungkook #bts imagines #bts imagine #jungkook x you #jungkook x reader #jungkook #jungkook imagine #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #bts jungkook reaction

[bandarlotere88-blog]

Around the Topic Of Spare-time activities To the Novice Hobbyist

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You may get alerts, if you would want.

Cabinetry is one involving the oldest hobbies ever made. For years, people own taken a blank piece of wood and altered it into something wonderful and useable. You can consider essential woodworking classes or maybe utilize the online tutorials to learn on your path around the particular wood shop and even tools. In order to treat monotony at home the idea is best to locate a pastime that can consider your thoughts away by the mundane part of living. A good interest can be relaxing together with help to alleviate numerous of your own stresses. Thus find that enjoyable hobby that you can pursue, and you will probably be compensated intended for many years ahead. Hobbies and interests are frequently an origin connected with enjoyment for a good deal of persons. You may well certainly not think you might have time in your life intended for a interest, but any time you take up the activity you find that it enhances your current life. Use the information in this posting to help you come across out more about often the many pastimes available.

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[miracufic]

A Broken Window

Read it on AO3!

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There are few things that Uraraka Ochako hates more than love at the moment.

In point of fact there are only two things.  One of them is pity.

The other is poverty.

And of course because her life is such a wellspring of light and joy and fun fun fun she gets to experience all three right fucking now at the hands of one Midoriya Izuku, who had come sailing through her window not three seconds earlier, trailing ribbons of smoke.

“I am so sorry,” he says as he tries to extricate himself from the broken, tangled mess that had been her coffee table, television, and fan.  Plastic crunches under his sneakers, and he winces.

“Oh, shoot,” he says.  “Uraraka, I am—crud, I am so, so sorry, look, I can pay you back, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

He means well, she reminds herself.  It was one of the things that makes him so—likeable, which was absolutely the word she’d been thinking of, he was earnest and compassionate and had a sense of responsibility that yes, sometimes was a touch on the broad side and she was spiraling again.

She takes in a deep breath and refocuses.

"Midoriya," she says, her voice much calmer than she thought was possible given the situation.  “Go."

"Look, at least let me help clean this up for you—"

“I said go,” Uraraka repeats, and her voice snaps out this time, making Midoriya flinch away from her as though from a whip.  He holds both his hands up as he backs towards the door, his palms towards her, until his back hits the smooth metal of her dormitory door.  Then he reaches back and fumbles for the handle.

“Okay,” he says.  “Okay, I’m sorry.”

The lock clicks against the reinforced steel of the frame as he opens the door, and clicks again as he carefully pulls it shut.

Right.  Now.

Uraraka breathes in and out steadily in the sudden quiet filling her room.  Wind whistles in through the shattered window, carrying in the sounds of a raised voice—Bakugou, she guesses, from the number of expletives being thrown around—and several other, quieter voices, their register low.

It does little to keep the lid down on the roiling mess of her emotions.

First comes the rapid set of mental calculations and the grim, mathematical realization, following on the heels of her dismay, that she has maybe enough slack in her bank account to cover the cost of her coffee table.  And that assumes that the local thrift stores have something, that she can survive taking a chunk out of her food budget for the next two weeks, and that the school isn’t going to charge her for damages to her dorm.  Second is the billowing, seething hurt that Midoriya would dare to condescend to her like that.  Pay?  As if she wasn’t responsible enough to handle her own finances?

The whole mess is irrational, of course.  Irrational and distracting and exactly what she doesn’t need when she’s dealing with schoolwork and the sudden uptick in villain activity and the ever-present, ever-looming, and now ever-growing threat of death at their hands, coming swiftly in the night or brightly by day, by accident or malice or a little of both—oh, and her stupid fucking period on top of all of that, because this is exactly the right time to be a crampy hormonal mess.  It is therefore something that she is going to push to the back of the mind until she has the time and attention to spare to it.  Which is probably going to be a while, given things.

It had been cruel of her though.

The thought sneaks in unbidden as she stares at the mess with overwhelmed tears blurring her vision.  Others follow.

He had just been trying to help, after all.  And she knows Deku like she knows her own Quirk, and he isn’t the type to just burst into someone’s room and wreck all their things on impulse or for some stupid joke or out of malice.  Which means that this is an accident.

And isn’t it reasonable to expect him to make amends if he’d broken something on accident?  So it’s reasonable for her to accept his offer of repayment. So it’s not pity, and it isn’t as though her bank account actually has enough padding at the moment to replace her TV.  And if she doesn’t let Deku help, the guilt is going to eat at him for weeks, because he’s just the right combination of kind and generous and stupidly self-sacrificing for that to be the case.

And of course that thought makes her chest feel tight and her breath stick in her throat and her head feel fuzzy because fuck love.

A stray thought flickers through her awareness involving Izuku and that particular verb, and she nearly combusts on the spot.

Uraraka shakes her head a few times to clear it and hears a knocking at her door.  She wipes at her eyes and straightens her clothing before she gets up, navigates around the patches of shattered glass on her floor, and opens it.

“Hey, Ura,” Ashido Mina says as she pokes her violently pink and enormously fluffy head in through the doorway.  “I just saw Midoriya leaving, what happened?”

Her gaze takes in the trashed room and the breeze blowing in through the smashed window, pushing gently at the curtains, half-torn from their hangings.  Her lips purse thoughtfully.

“Oh, wow,” she drawls as she steps into the room.  “You and—wow. Using his Quirk too from the look of it, that’s kinky—“

“If you’re not going to help, Ashido, then fuck off,” Ochako snaps.  She bites down on her tongue a second too late. Her hands ball into fists at her side as she forces a flat neutrality back onto her face.

Ashido’s lips purse further as she regards her trembling friend.  She nods once, slowly.  “Okay,” she says, holding her hands up as Midoriya had.  She nods again before lowering them.

“How about I help you clean up and you tell me what happened, then?” she says.

Uraraka swallows and bows her head.

She and Mina set about cleaning up the glass, picking up the bigger pieces with their hands, sweeping up the smaller pieces with a brush and dustpan.

“Okay,” Mina says after they’ve swept the floor clean a final time and picked a few glittering fragments out of the gathered mess of lint and hair and dust.  “So what happened?  I mean, don’t need to say it twice, but this place is a wreck.”

Uraraka puffs out a breath and tucks a few stray bangs back behind her ear as she plops into her chair; Mina takes a seat on the bed.

“I was working on that essay on the development of the modern heroing system we have due Friday,” she says, her voice now steady, if somewhat hoarse.  “I heard the boys shouting outside and I went to go close the window.  Second later I’m ducking because Deku is flying right towards me, and then he goes through my window and trashes my room.”

Uraraka thinks she sees Mina’s expression flicker into an alien look of hard-edged fury, the edge of her lip twisting away to expose a gleaming incisor.

The moment passes.  Her friend again has only the same blank look of open and neutral sympathy that she’d adopted at the start of their talk.

“And anyways,” Uraraka says after a pause, “that was basically it.  He offered to help clean up, I told him to leave.”

Mina blinks at her.  “Why?” she says.

Uraraka feels her lips twitch upwards into something resembling a smile in an instinctive and defensive reaction.  For a second she considers trying to fight it down.  Mina is a friend, after all, and you’re supposed to be able to talk to your friends about stuff like—like—not relationship issues, because she doesn’t have those, and not boy problems because she doesn’t have those.

She changes the subject.

“That reminds me,” she lies.  She looks away from Mina and towards the shattered hole where her window had once been.  “Who do you think we should contact to get that fixed?”

Mina looks at her askance but lets the subject drop. “I don’t know,” she says.  “Probably one of the teachers knows.  Let’s go ask Momo to make us some tarp or something we can use to cover it up first and then we’ll see.”

Later that night, the boys are thoroughly surprised when Mina barges into their common area and smacks Bakugou over the head.

“The fuck was that,” the boy snarls, turning to face her, but she’s already moving on.  She hits Kirishima over the head to much the same reaction, then moves on to every other boy in turn, pausing only over Midoriya and Iida.  The latter she eyes for a minute before giving him a light tap on the head; the former she pokes sharply in the head before pointing to the nearest door with the same finger.

“Out,” Mina orders.

Midoriya looks at her, then at everyone else, then back up at her, blinking bemusedly.  “Um,” he says.  “What’s going—“

“Out!”

He scurries out.

Mina watches him leave, then turns back to the group, who are by now either glaring at her or wearing expressions of bemusement.

“What the hell were you idiots thinking?” she hisses. “And don’t try to deny it.  I know we have money riding on this bet but that was just going too damn far.  For crying out loud, property damage?  That’s Uraraka’s own stuff she’ll need to replace now thanks to you dumbasses.”

“What happened?” Iida asks, his usual demeanor subdued.

“Well, let’s see,” Mina says, her tone acidly sweet. “There’s a giant-ass hole in the wall where her window used to be, her TV is smashed, and her coffee table and her fan, and she was this close to breaking down and crying over all of it thanks to you morons, and I am this close to—to—“ she pauses, trying to think of an appropriately terrible revenge “—melting all of your shit and seeing how you like it!”

After a beat Kaminari points out, somewhat hesitantly, “Your fingers are touching, Ashido.”

“I know!”

Iida is on his feet and before her in a flash, bowing so deeply he looks like a sideways L.  “My deepest apologies!” he belts out, forcing Mina to cover her ears to prevent an attack of deafness.  “I was remiss in my duties as class president this afternoon and failed to rein in our classmates’ enthusiasm for ensuring that our friends find happiness in each other!”

“In each other,” Kaminari snickers.  Mina glares at him, and his quiet sounds of amusement die away.  He coughs and looks away from her.

“So here’s what you chuckleheads are going to do,” Mina says.  “You’re going to buy a new TV for her.  You’re going to buy a new fan for her.  You’re going to buy a new coffee table for her, and—“ a vicious little smirk peels the corners of her lips up “—because it’d make someone suspicious if all of you showed up for no reason at all, you’ll send Midoriya and only Midoriya to deliver them to her.”

A chorus of grumbling comes up from the boys, but it dies away after a minute without much fuss.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Mina says, folding her arms across her chest, her ire somewhat fading now that petty vengeance had been dealt out.  “I mean, the scheme to fake his heart attack and to get Uraraka to do rescue breathing on him was stupid enough, and the Twister game was—actually pretty good come to think of it.  All right, throwing the two of them into a janitorial closet and locking the door was stupider.  The heck was the idea here?”

Bakugou grunts and folds his arms across his chest, marinating in his own sullen wroth.  Iida looks embarrassed and clams up, seating himself back on the couch with a thoroughly preoccupied air; Kaminari tries not to catch her eye.  Everyone else in the room takes a sudden and intense interest in either the floor or the ceiling.

In the end, it’s Kirishima who ends up trying to explain.

“Right, so, uh,” he stammers out, looking around him for support and finding none.  “Right, so we noticed that Midoriya was always really nervous around Uraraka, every time we got them close together, so we figured that, uh, maybe they just needed a bit of a push, to you know, get comfortable with each other—“ he pauses a moment, trying not to wilt under the force of Mina’s glare.

“—so we invited him out to the lawn for a quick free-for-all spar and then Katsuki blew him through Uraraka’s window,” he finishes in a rush.  He drops back down onto his seat and fiddles nervously with his fingers.

“Do you guys ever think things through beyond step two?” Mina says into the awkward silence.  “Or step one for that matter?  Good grief, what did you think was going to happen, he falls into her lap and instantly seduces her and they’re making out in public by the end of the week?”

She sighs and shakes her head.  “Look, whatever.  Can we just agree not to do it again?  No property damage, no psychological scarring, nothing like that. We just want them to get together, all right, we’re agreed on that?”

A silent chorus of nods passes around the room.

“All right,” Mina says.  “End of the week for Uraraka’s replacement stuff, all right?”

She leaves.

“Fucking damnit,” Bakugou says after the door closes behind her.  “All right, how much does a fucking TV cost.”

By the close of their first year, it was completely obvious to everyone in Class 1-A that of the potential romances in their social circle, the one growing between Midoriya Izuku and Uraraka Ochako was the most promising.  Okay, sure, there was some mileage to be had in shipping Todoroki and Momo; there was always fun to be had when mentioning Momo to Jirou, of course.  There was even something to be had between Bakugou and Kaminari, although given Bakugou’s propensity to try and murder you in as messily a manner as possible at the slightest provocation it was advised to poke that particular wolverine with a very long stick indeed.

So of course, it had taken all of two minutes for a betting pool to spring up.

The first two weeks were chaotic, as people tried to negotiate rates and odds and tried to negotiate exchange rates for favors, with at least one fistfight breaking out over an unfavorable bet—Bakugou, as it turned out, getting pissed that no one would accept his low, low offer of eternal servitude should “Chubby Cheeks” and “That Asshole” get together within the next year.

Iida and Momo made sure to take over after that, and quickly instituted a cash-only rule.

Things somehow managed to consolidate themselves after that, the various bets and bargains merging and growing until two distinct blocs had formed, with the boys opposite the girls.

And then, of course, the competition had started.

It had begun innocently enough, with Bakugou’s brag that he could easily arrange matters so that “those two fuckers” would be “eating each others’ dumb faces” by the end of the month.  Iida had protested that it’d be unfair to the spirit in which the betting had begun—only with about two or three times as many words—Bakugou had flipped him off, and then while Momo and Todoroki were trying to keep that fight from breaking out, Ashido had countered that while he didn’t have a chance in hell, she was perfectly capable of pulling something like that off.  Matters deteriorated from there.

They managed to quell the argument only when Jirou suggested that they turn the entire thing from a horse race into a competition.

Three months later it was debatable as to whether making everyone even more hyperfocused on trying to get their friends together, now that prestige and money were both on the line, had caused or solved more issues between them.

What wasn’t as debatable was that Midoriya and Uraraka were both stiff-necked idiots who couldn’t recognize their affections for one another if you got the both of them shitfaced drunk and shoved them in a closet together.

The time had therefore passed with little to no progress, and with increasing amounts of desperation from all participants.  It was now less a matter of money and prestige, but a matter of honor and duty, at least for anyone who wasn’t Bakugou—or Mineta, but they’d banned him from participating at all after he’d half-buried Midoriya’s bed in condoms.

The situation was becoming dire.  No one was willing to go so far as to outright tell either Midoriya or Ochako about the others’ affections—that would be rude, and besides, Iida had made it very clear that anyone even considering doing so would be given a lecture.  But it was getting close to the point where they were willing to risk having the brains drilled out of their skulls by such punishment, if only to get those idiots together.

Still, there were options still available to them that didn’t involve a horrible, slow death at the hands of Iida; they would exercise them.

“Thanks for helping me set up everything, Deku,” Uraraka says.

“No, it was really no problem,” Midoriya says as he scratches at the back of his neck.  “It’s the least I could do after wrecking your stuff.”

“About that,” she says.  She coughs and kicks at the floorboards with the toes of one of her socked feet.  “I heard the whole story from Mina, and I think that I owe you an apology for how I treated you the other day.”

“Oh, no—“

“No,” Uraraka says, cutting him off.  “It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t fair of me to treat you like everything was your fault, and I really do need to apologize.  So, um, yeah.  I’m sorry.”

They stand there at the threshold to Uraraka’s room for a little while, until Midoriya swallows down the lump in his throat and says, with entirely too much brightness, “Well, if there’s nothing else that you need me for, I’ll be off then.  I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you later,” Uraraka says.  “Uh, at class later, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, “at class.”

Mina pops up about half a second after Midoriya rounds the corner.

“See,” she says reassuringly.  “He doesn’t hate you.”

“Yes he does,” Uraraka moans, trudging back into her dorm.  She doesn’t bother shutting the door behind her, and Mina takes it as the invitation it was intended to be and follows her in, throwing herself spread-eagled across the bed.  “Did you see him?  He couldn’t have gotten out of here faster if Iida had been dragging him by the legs.”

“I did watch him leave,” Mina says.  “Although I must admit that I was focused more on his very nice butt than I was on whether he was trying to get out of here especially quickly.”

She grins toothily as she watches her friend’s face go completely blank.

“Relax, I’m not intending to steal him from you,” Mina says.  “He’s really not my type.”

Uraraka’s face remains blankly neutral even as her cheeks color slightly.

“Although honestly,” Mina muses innocently, rolling herself upright and tapping her heels together, “he is really sweet and nice and thoughtful and everything.  Kinda generically so, but there’s a lot of people out there who’d be fine with something like that.”

“Not me, certainly,” Uraraka says, a little too quickly. “Anyways, did you do the extra credit on the essay?”

“Nah,” Mina says with a dismissive flick of her hair. “The essay itself was enough of a chore, so I didn’t bother.  I guess you did, what topic did you choose?”

“I had to choose a major case and explain how it helped to shape the legal powers given to us as heroes,” Uraraka says.  “There was an argument that I was a little worried was too weak, do you mind if I run it by you and see what you think of it?”

Mina tries her best to follow her friend’s argument but finds her eyes glazing over as the stream of wherebys and therefores flow past her with only the minimum amount of comprehension.

“Ura,” Mina says after five minutes of this. “Ura!”

Uraraka stops.  “It was weak, wasn’t it,” she says.  “Ugh, I knew—“

“Ura, you’re one of the smartest and hardest-working people in our class,” Mina says.  “I’m sure your argument’s fine, I just can’t make sense of it.”

Uraraka blinks at her.  “So you do think it’s weak?”

“I’m saying that if you want some actual good feedback I’m probably not the best person to ask about this,” Mina says. “You should really be going to Iida or Todoroki or—“

A thought traces its way across the forefront of her thoughts like silent lightning, and she has to fight down the giant, shit-eating grin that threatens to bisect her face.

“—Midoriya,” Mina says.  “Yeah, Midoriya is probably your best option, he’s smart and overachieving like you and he’s probably done with his essay so he’s got lots of free time, you should drop by and see if he’ll help, plus he’s probably still feeling really guilty over wrecking your room so you can totally guilt-trip him into helping even if he doesn’t have free time.  And I mean you’re friendly with him and all, he’d totally help you.”

“I’m not going to bother him about this,” Ochako says, her expression set, her lips pressed together.  “And Momo finished hers two days ago, I’ll run my argument by her.”

“Yeah but you know that she’ll just nitpick your argument to death,” Mina says quickly.  “And I mean, neither of us want that, do we?”

“Uh,” Uraraka says as she closes her laptop and tucks it under an arm.  “I mean, yes. It’ll make my essay stronger in the end if it can stand up even to Momo’s analysis.  Look, thanks for your help, Mina, I’ll be back in a bit.”

Mina sits primly on the bed with her hands folded neatly in her lap, and does not dive desperately for her phone the instant the door closes.

“Don’t help her,” she hisses into her phone the moment that Momo picks up.  “Do not! Help!  Her!”

“What?” Momo says after a blank moment.

“Do not help Uraraka just trust me on this,” Mina says, and hangs up.

Momo calls back thirty seconds later.  “Okay, so I told her that I was busy,” Momo says. “What is this all about?”

“We need her to go to Midoriya for help,” Mina says.

“Ah.  I see.”

“Look, she might be going to Iida or Todoroki next,” Mina says.

“I’ll head off Todoroki,” Momo says.

“I’ll handle Iida,” Mina says.  “Should we get the girls to run interference on anyone else?”

“Bakugou is the only other one I can think of, but he and Kaminari are over at the gym right now,” Momo says.  “I can get Tsuyu to run surveillance on them in case they’re just finishing up, but we should be safe.”

“Cool,” Mina says.  “If the situation with Ura changes I’ll update you.”

“Okay,” Uraraka says to herself.  “I can do this, it’s just sitting in a room and going over some homework, and it’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

Of course, the other times they’d had other people around.  And back then she’d at least been able to function halfway normally for three minutes together when in close proximity to Deku.

Fuck crushes.  Fuck them sideways.

Still, everyone else was busy and she needs to get this stupid essay done, so she needs to get over herself right now.

She knocks on Deku’s door with a quick tap-tap-tap and steps back.  After a second the door opens.

“Oh,” Midoriya says.  He stares at her.

“Uh,” Uraraka says, waving her hand in front of his face. “Hey, Deku, are you okay?”

“Huh?  Oh yes,” Midoriya says.  “Oh, uh, sorry.  Did you need something?”

She needs him to stop making her heart do backflips when he has that adorable look on his adorable face.

“Do you have a couple minutes?” she says.  “I was having a little bit of trouble with the extra credit essay and I just needed to run through the argument with someone and try to work out the kinks in it, and everyone else seems to be busy with something else and I was hoping that you wouldn’t be.”

“I was, uh, actually planning on starting that myself,” Midoriya says.  “Come in—oh, sorry, do you want to work in the common area?”

“No,” Uraraka says, trying to keep the word from coming out as a squeak.  “There’s nothing wrong with—your room is fine.”

“So do you want anything to drink or anything?” Midoriya asks Uraraka as he ushers her in.  “My mom brought some barley tea last weekend, do you want the chair?”

“I’ll take the bed,” Uraraka says, and perches herself on the very edge.  “And thank you, I’ll take some tea.”

“Uh, okay,” Midoriya says.  He kneels and pries open his minifridge and pulls out a glass bottle filled with an amber liquid.  His other hand searches atop his desk and comes down with a relatively clean mug as he pops the bottle open with his thumb.  He pours the mug half-full and hands it to Uraraka as he places the bottle back in the fridge.

“Right,” he says.  “So, uh, what did you need to go over?”

“My extra credit essay,” Uraraka repeats after a moment and an askance look.  “On the Tanaka v. Japan case, the one we skimmed over in class?”  After another second without any response she adds “You know, the one that—“

“That eventually led to the establishment of the professional heroing system in Japan, yes,” Midoriya mutters to himself, his brows knitting together.  “I did that too, what are you having trouble with?”

Uraraka sighs.  “Not so much trouble, as—well, I’m just not sure that my argument makes any sense.”

He nods.  “All right, walk me through it then.”

“Right, so background, this was when the use of Quirks was still banned nationwide, Tanaka was smuggling drugs into the country and was caught by a police officer with a mild telepathy Quirk.  He appealed his case after his conviction, arguing that because there was no evidence of drugs or drug paraphernalia in the car the officer could only have had probable cause to search his car if he’d used his Quirk illegally to find out that he was smuggling, and when his appeal was denied he eventually managed to bring his case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the search was a violation of Article 34—”

“The ‘nor shall he be detained without adequate cause’ clause,” he says, nodding.  “Right, right.  Adequate cause was obtained but only through illegal means, so it was invalid.”

“—right, and that the use of the officer’s Quirk in general was a violation of Article 35, arguing that his private thoughts were covered under ‘effects’ in that article, and obviously since it was initially just a stop on the freeway there was never any warrant.  Supreme Court eventually decided in favor of Tanaka.”

“Okay, so what argument are you making about the case?” he says.

“I’m arguing that the narrowly-worded decision that was eventually handed down by the court is what drove the development of heroes as privately-funded rather than government-funded organizations,” she says.

“What bit?” he says.  He turns to his laptop and after a few seconds of searching brings up a copy of the decision.  He hands the laptop to Uraraka, who sets her own computer to the side.

“Uh, this one here,” she says after a moment, highlighting the passage and passing the computer back to Midoriya.

He scans the screen, murmuring under his breath. “—whereby we recognize that the arresting officer’s actions were, given the legal standard previously set, et cetera et cetera—“

This goes on for about a minute or so.  Uraraka amuses herself in the meantime by trying to count the freckles on Midoriya’s cheeks.

“Stop jostling,” Kaminari hisses as he, Bakugou, and Iida fight to get an ear to the door leading into Midoriya’s dorm room. “Stop it, they’ll hear.”

“Why don’t you fucking back off then,” Bakugou snaps. “I have better hearing than you do anyways.”

He elbows Kaminari out of the way with many a quiet protest and presses his ear against the door.

“What,” Jirou says, “are you idiots doing?”

The three of them turn to face her with expressions between surprise and irritation; she quirks an eyebrow at them in return, but otherwise remains expressionless.

“Round-cheeks went in a few minutes ago, we’re trying to see if she and Worthless are doing the nasty yet,” Bakugou answers.  Behind him, Kaminari makes a number of quiet, frantic gestures which more or less translate to “no we are not”.

“We are trying to hear what our friends are conversing about,” Iida says, glancing towards Bakugou, “and yes, seeing if what they are conversing about concerns their relationship.  I assume that Uraraka being here is part of your plans?”

“Not mine,” Jirou says with a shrug.  “Momo or Mina’s probably, I’ll ask.”

“While you are here,” Iida says.  “Do you mind if you assist us?”  He gestures towards the door.

“Sure,” Jirou says.  One of her earphones spools out and punches delicately through the drywall beside the door as the other raises itself and points towards the boys.

“—so the issue I have here is,” Midoriya says, his voice somewhat muffled but still understandable, “that it seems to me that your entire argument hinges on literally one word and some vague wording in the prior Yamamoto decision.”

“Right,” Uraraka shoots back, “but it’s an important one word, because by mentioning specifically public enforcers of the law in the Tanaka decision and with the whole “urgent need” clause they mention in Yamamoto it basically meant that privately-owned and –operated security companies could deliberately throw people into situations where they would be in mortal danger, have them use their Quirks, and then claim self-defense as their urgent need if they got slapped with any lawsuits.”

“Yeah, but they closed that loophole within a month of the first big companies starting to advertise their services,” Midoriya counters.  “And besides—just playing devil’s advocate—that doesn’t explain why the police couldn’t do the same thing, since the Tanaka decision was interpreted as forbidding only the use of Quirks that could go against Articles 35 or 38, and being able to punch someone really hard or blow them up doesn’t really translate to unlawful search and seizure or compelling someone to confess.”

“Oh my god,” Bakugou gripes.  “This is fucking useless.”

“No, no,” Iida says, nodding thoughtfully, “she makes a good point with the—“

“Oh fuck off,” Bakugou says.  He gets up from his half-crouched position in front of the door and shambles away, his hands in his pockets.

“Well, those two are dense as hell,” Jirou says as she retracts both of her earphones.  “Or maybe they’re just such enormous nerds that that’s their version of foreplay or something.”

“Or perhaps they really do merely want to focus on their academics,” Iida says.

“Eh?” Kaminari says.

“I am saying that perhaps the reason that our efforts have been fruitless up until now is because our friends are not interested in romance,” Iida explains.  “And if that is the case then perhaps we—“

“Five words or less, Iida,” Jirou says.  “We don’t have all day.”

He blinks at her, but takes a second and chooses his words carefully.

“They care about finishing school,” he says.  “I accept that it doesn’t necessarily preclude the formation of a romance while we are here, but that is their focus, and they are driven and highly motivated, and given our current lack of success I find it difficult to imagine that they will shift that focus anytime soon.”

“Okay,” Kaminari says, clapping Iida on the back, “I think that was way more than five words, buddy, but yeah, sure, that sounds right.”

Jirou’s eyes go wide.  “You idiot,” she hisses, “they heard that!”

“Scatter,” Iida orders.  The three of them dive for cover.

A few seconds later Midoriya opens the door and glances from side to side, frowning slightly.

“Sorry, I must’ve imagined it,” he says as he turns and lets the door swing shut behind him.  “Where were we?”

Iida, Kaminari, and Jirou peek out from around the corner they’d bolted around.

“How about we just leave them to it,” Kaminari suggests.  “That was way too close.”

“For once I agree with you,” Jirou says.  “Come on, let’s go see if anyone knows what’s actually going on.”

“Look, we’ve been arguing over details for the past three hours,” Midoriya says.  “I think that your core argument is fine, and if you do lose any points it’ll be over little nitpicky things that even actual lawyers don’t really agree on.”

Uraraka’s mouth flattens into a line, almost a pout. “You’re sure about that?” she says.

“Positive,” he replies.  “We’ve been over every word in this eight times and all we’ve changed is maybe a couple of sentences.  It’s a good essay, it’s well-argued, you build it up logically, you cite appropriate precedents, it’s a really good essay, Uraraka.  You can worry over it until next week but it’ll still be a good essay.”

He sighs as he sees her expression.  “Look, if you insist, we’ll go over it one more time, okay?” he says.  “Let’s just take a break, get something to eat or something, come back at this when we’re refreshed.  There’s a new ramen bar that’s opened up not too far from here and Iida says that their prices aren’t bad—”

Midoriya’s teeth clack together as his exhausted brain catches up with his tongue and a blush works its way onto his cheeks.  “—I mean,” he adds a little hastily, “if you want, or we can just go and grab something from the convenience store and come back.”

Uraraka’s brain takes a minute to break from its loop of “essay essay essay freckles essay essay legal jargon freckles”, but when it does she flushes riot red.

“Uh,” she says.  “Um, sure.  Ramen sounds good.”  She closes her laptop with some care and stands up with it clutched before her like a talisman.  “Let me just go grab my coat and my wallet.”

She scurries out.

“So I’ll see you in a few minutes?” Midoriya calls after her.  He looks around his little room and runs a hand distractedly through his hair.  Right, a comb maybe, and a clean shirt.  Jeans, probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go out in sweatpants.  Should he brush his teeth, no that would be dumb.

Mina brightens as Uraraka scurries into the common room.

“Hey, Ura, what’s the rush?” Mina asks as the girl hurries past, her laptop clutched to her chest.

She blinks and turns her head to follow Uraraka as she fails to slow or to even acknowledge the friendly greeting, but instead disappears down the hall leading into the girl’s dormitories.

“Uh,” she says.  She turns to Momo, seated off to the side at one of the tables scattered around the room.  “The heck was that all about?”

Momo doesn’t look up from where she’s typing away on her laptop.  “Was what all about?”

“Ura just went through here like a shot.”

“Oh.”

Momo looks up as quick footsteps patter back across the carpet—Uraraka, now with one arm in a big, puffy coat, the other hanging onto a small clasp purse.

“Oh,” Momo repeats as Uraraka hurries past them with a kilometer stare.  “A date.”

“Eh?”

“Coat and wallet, so she’s going out and she’s expecting to have to buy something, she’s gone completely stone-faced so something’s happened to make her emotionally overwrought, and really the only thing we might reasonably assume would do that these days is Midoriya.”

“Ah.”

“Also she’s headed straight for the boy’s dorms with her coat and wallet while being emotionally overwrought, and what does that all indicate for you?”

“Okay,” Mina says, nodding.  “That makes sense.”

They fall silent again as Uraraka, now accompanied by a quietly red-faced Midoriya, pass them by and exit the building.

“Someone’s smug,��� Momo notes as she turns back to Mina. “Well, it’ll hopefully be well-deserved.”

“I haven’t heard of them pulling anything,” Mina says, “that’ll be a yes.”

“You said that about your last three plans.”

“My last three plans weren’t sure-fire.”

Oh my god.  Oh my god.  Oh my god.

Uraraka tries to keep herself from losing it as she walks next to Midoriya, the chill in the air turning their breath into a fine mist that hangs in the air before them for a moment before floating away.

It isn’t a date that they’re on, it’s just a quick meal and then they’re heading back and finishing up their essays and there are zero romantic implications to this whatsoever.

Midoriya’s hand brushes hers and she nearly jumps off of the sidewalk and right into the path of a passing car.  He jerks away so viciously that he nearly trips into the little concrete drainage trench bordering the road.

“So, uh,” he says a minute later.  “I know it’s a bit early for that but are you looking at any agencies that you want to join up with?”

“Yes, actually,” Uraraka says, relieved at having something so utterly normal to talk about.  “I spoke with No. 13 and he helped me get in touch with a few companies that do rapid response for disasters, rescue work mostly since that’s what my powers would probably be best for, lifting rubble off of people and everything—“

Okay, Ochako, get ahold of yourself, you’re starting to babble.

“—but I’m looking into groups that do more direct crime prevention and crime response too ever since I got some training from Gunhead,” she says.  She mimes a couple of quick jabs and a rising uppercut and immediately feels foolish for it.  “Some of them do community service and outreach, some work with the police and respond directly to urgent scenes, you know, the usual.”

She pauses to take a breath and asks brightly, “What about you?”

“I—well, I don’t know, actually,” Midoriya says. He looks down at the sidewalk and massages the back of his neck with a hand.  “I haven’t really thought about it, ever since, uh.  Ever since—we rescued Eri.”

He doesn’t need to tell her his real thoughts.

“But I was thinking that I’d find someone to take me on as a sidekick,” he says.  “Get some street experience first, get my name out there before trying to sign on with an agency as a full hero.”

Uraraka can’t help herself—she chortles, sticking one of her hands over her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle the noise as Midoriya turns a bemused expression towards her.

“Um,” he says.  “Sorry, did I say something?”

“No, no,” Uraraka says through a burst of giggling, “no. It’s just that you realize that you could walk up to any group and ask to be signed up as a hero and they’d write you a check on the spot, right?”

His expression becomes more bewildered, like that of a puppy confronted with an unfamiliar squeaky toy.  Uraraka can’t help herself—again she bursts out giggling.

“You’ve been involved in three or four major fights at this point,” she explains.  “Big-league guys too, and that’s making people sit up and take notice.  I mean, every time I mentioned our class, the first thing that everyone said was ‘Oh, with that Deku boy?’”

She pauses, then adds “except that one guy who said ‘Oh, you’re in the same class as that insane kid?’  Look, my point is that people know you, and—okay, well most of them—think well of you.  You could go up to any of them and ask and they’d give you a job just like that.  You’re the guy who does the impossible, wins the unwinnable, uh, punches the unpunchable, I guess.  You set your sights on a goal and you let literally nothing stop you from achieving it, and people admire that.”

Midoriya scoffs.  “I think you’re overestimating me, Uraraka.”

Uraraka’s smile thins out to a line.  “I think you’re underestimating yourself,” she says in soft rejoinder.

“Well, what about you, then?” Midoriya counters. “You helped take down Chisaki, and you’ve been doing as well or me or better academically.  Your performance during the Sports Festival was a lot more impressive, too, since you actually used your head instead of just running straight in and breaking your arms and most of your fingers.”

“I lost that fight,” Uraraka says.

“There’s always going to be a fight that you can’t win,” Midoriya says.  “And I lost to Todoroki, too.”

“Yeah, but you’ve also done a lot more winning than I have,” Uraraka says.  “And let’s face it, you’re a lot more inspiring than I am.”

“Oh come on—“

“I mean it,” Uraraka says, continuing doggedly. “You inspire people to do things that they know they’re going to get in trouble for, you inspire them to keep fighting even when they would be perfectly justified in just lying down and letting someone else handle it, you inspire them to—to try to be better than they are.”

She flushes as she realizes that Midoriya is staring at her, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open very slightly.

“What?” she says.  “I mean, it’s all true.”

“I didn’t know,” he says, looking down at his feet.

Silence descends again between them before Midoriya breaches it.  “Um,” he says.  “Do you feel like that?”

Before she can answer a man steps out in front of them from a darkened alley with something shiny and pointy in one clenched hand—a knife, more a machete, roughly the length of her forearm with a simple curving drop-point tip.

Uraraka feels something click into place in her head. She shifts her feet slightly apart and rises onto the balls of her feet, letting her purse drop away as her hands come up to the level of her waist.

“Wallets and purse,” the man says, the tip wavering between her and Midoriya.  He licks his lips.  “Now!”

Okay, so they just need to keep calm and not make any sudden moves and oh dear Midoriya is stepping in front of her and now he has a knife buried up to the hilt in his stomach.

Okay, so it is important to not freak out and now the mugger is pulling the knife out—

She darts forwards and kicks him in the knee; something makes an awful and satisfying crunch, and the mugger screams and drops the knife. He takes a roundhouse swing at her, which is ridiculous he’s well out of range and fuck her he’s got her with his nails or claws or something and now she’s got two or three hot streaks of pain across one cheek, but now she’s got a hold of his arm by his wrist and upper arm and twist—

The man feels his shoulder joint twist painfully before he hits the concrete face-first, hard enough that something crunches in his face.  He screams in agony—at least until Uraraka kicks him sharply in the jaw, knocking him out cold.

Okay, primary threat has been neutralized.  Now she can freak out.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Uraraka babbles. She drops to her knees beside Midoriya as he curls up around the spreading red stain in his gut.

Oh god, what does she do?  Pressure on the wound, right?  Apply pressure with something, stop the bleeding—oh god, there’s so much blood—make sure he doesn’t pass out on her. She needs something to staunch the bleeding—not her down-stuffed coat, needs to be something with a dense weave, something that’ll help stop the bleeding

“Uraraka,” Midoriya hisses between gritted teeth.

She stares at him, wide-eyed.

“Recovery Girl,” he manages.

Fuck her, right.  An ambulance wouldn’t take long to get here but the wound was deep and he was losing a lot of blood very quickly, and it was no guarantee that they’d be able to stitch him back up in time even if they got him to a trauma suite in the next five or ten minutes.  His best chance of not bleeding to death here on the concrete was to get him to Recovery Girl—the teachers lived on campus now, after all.  There was always the risk that she’d be off at the hospital of course, and wouldn’t that be deeply ironic if they fucked up and brought him back to campus only to find no Recovery Girl, only to have him bleed out there—fuck her if she’s going to spiral again.

She fumbles out her phone and dials Iida.  It rings twice.

“Hello?” Iida answers.

It takes her a precious few seconds to explain, and another thirty seconds to get Iida to stop freaking out.  Uraraka fights down the urge to scream.

“Just get here as soon as you fu—as you can,” she snaps. She tears Midoriya’s shirt off as gently as she can, but the movement still elicits a pained scream from him. “Sorry, Deku,” she says.  “Stay with me, all right?”

Such a stupid thing to say, she thinks, as Iida hangs up.  “Stay with me”, as if that would actually do anything to stop the fucking bleeding.

She folds the blood-stained shirt into a rough compress, trying to keep as much dirt off of it as possible.

“You are going to hate me in a moment,” she informs him. His eyes flicker down to the shirt in her hands.

Then she presses it hard against the wound.

He screams, his hands tightening into fists. She hears his knuckles pop.

Iida arrives at speed a couple minutes later with a rolled-up canvas stretcher tucked under an arm and a roll of duct tape around his wrist like a bracelet.  He screeches to a halt and together they slide Midoriya onto the stretcher, secure the impromptu compress with several layers of tape, then secure Midoriya to the stretcher with the liberal application of more duct tape around his legs and shoulders.

“I sent Todoroki to inform Recovery Girl, she should be ready and waiting by the time we get back,” Iida says brusquely as Uraraka slaps her hand down onto the stretcher, then onto Midoriya.  “I have also informed Momo, who is calling the police and directing them to the location of this criminal.”

“I’m coming with you,” Uraraka says.  She slaps a hand onto her own shoulder and grabs the other end of the stretcher as she feels the familiar sense of queasiness come over her.  She swallows hard.

“Of course,” Iida says, tucking the stretcher, Midoriya and all, under one arm.  “Hold on tight.”

The three of them probably break a couple speed limits on the way back to campus, but Uraraka doesn’t care.  They get back before Midoriya loses too much blood, and that’s what matters.

“He’ll be fine,” Recovery Girl tells them a few tense hours later, with the addition of a very worried and extremely teary Mrs. Midoriya. “My powers don’t do anything for blood loss, so I’m putting a few units of blood into him right now.  My powers also don’t do much for infections, so in case that knife wound punctured anything I’m going to be putting him on intravenous antibiotics.”

“But he’ll be fine?” Iida asks.

“Yes,” Recovery Girl says.  “Shouldn’t take more than a week before he’s out of here.”

She directs a little nod towards Uraraka. “You’ll also be pleased to know that the police picked up the man who tried to mug you.  There will be some legal trouble undoubtedly, you did break his nose and his jaw, but I wouldn’t worry about that.  We have an excellent legal team, and it was self-defense.”

“Is he awake?” Mrs. Midoriya asks.

“No,” Recovery Girl says.  “But you’re welcome to stay with him until he wakes up.  I’ll be in and out periodically to check on him, but feel free to call for me at any time.”

The three of them say their “thank yous” and “goodbyes”, and the diminutive little doctor nods at them and leaves for her office.

“Thank you so much,” Mrs. Midoriya says, bowing deeply and rapidly to Iida and Uraraka both.  “Thank you, thank you, thank you—“

“No, no,” Uraraka says.  “That’s not necessary.”

“He’s our friend,” Iida says.

“He would’ve done the same for us,” Uraraka says.

“Has done the same for us,” Iida says.

It takes them a few minutes of this before they convince Mrs. Midoriya that, no, there is nothing owed between them, no, no, really, it’s fine, there’s really nothing to, no, please stop prostrating yourself, please.  Please.

“I’m going to go in and see him, then,” she says, sniffling a little.  She dabs at her eyes with a soaked-through handkerchief and scurries in.

“You’re not coming?” Iida says as he turns to follow Mrs. Midoriya in and sees Uraraka turn to walk the other direction.

“No,” she says.  “It’d be too crowded in there, you know how tiny those rooms are.”

He raises an eyebrow at her.  “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, no,” Uraraka says.  “I wasn’t hurt, it was just Deku.  I just need to think about some things.”

“If you’re sure,” Iida says.  “I’ll text if he wakes up.”

“Thank you,” Uraraka says, and hurries out.

It’s only when she’s safely within the privacy of her own room that she lets herself break down and cry.

They’d been that close to just dying.  Not in some big and meaningful fight, just a mugging gone bad, and it’d been that close.  If she’d just been a second slower, had let the shock from Deku’s stabbing set in just that little fraction, then they both would’ve been goners. It had been that close, and then she would’ve died with so many things unsaid.

After a while, the tears slow, then stop. Uraraka curls up into a little ball and stares at the wall until sleep claims her.

The knock comes at Izuku’s window, in the dead of night.

He looks up, frowning, from his notes, and stares at his closed curtains.

A second later, the knock comes again, a frantic little rapping lasting maybe a second.

He waits and considers his options.

Well, the security around the school was good enough now that it probably wasn’t a villain trying to murder him.  It was a possibility, sure, but not overly possible.  And there’d probably be more screaming and explosions by now if it was.

“Deku, can you please open your window?”

Okay, so unless there’s a villain capable of perfectly mimicking or imitating Ochako’s voice—wait, wasn’t there that girl with the shapeshifting Quirk, Toga something or other?

Izuku shakes his head and stands, walking towards the window.  Well, he could sit here and indulge his paranoia, or he could go and see what Ochako wanted at this time of night and why she was calling on him from outside instead of coming to his door.

Which, on second thought, doesn’t exactly do much for his paranoia.

He twitches aside the curtains and comes face-to-face with Ochako.

He blushes despite himself—she is really close, even if they’re separated by a window screen and a couple panes of insulated glass, and the sight of her expression, so focused and determined, sets his heart to skipping, and—oh for crying out loud, he shouldn’t be creeping on his friend like this.  She wouldn’t want him to.

“We need to talk,” Ochako says.  “Meet me on the training field in ten minutes?”

Izuku opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it and shuts it.  He nods.

Ochako takes a deep breath and returns his nod.  Then, she loosens her grip on the windowsill and drops gently away into the twilight.

Izuku quickly tugs on a sweatshirt and his shoes and slips out of his dorm.  He closes the door carefully behind him so that the click of the lock doesn’t betray his exit, then makes his way down the corridors and stairways with his heart pounding in his ears and slips out of the dorms through a side door.

The campus grounds are quiet and cool past curfew, brightly lit by tall gold-shining lamps every few meters along its broad, winding paths.  Izuku makes his way to the field by sticking to the edges of buildings and skirting the edges of shadows, alert for patrolling security and for other, more subtle sentries.  After all, who knows what the inventors in the Department of Support might’ve dreamt up?

Still, he makes it to the field without incident and without any of the teachers popping up to reprimand him.

Ochako is waiting for him beside one of the long flights of stairs leading down to the field itself, at the edge of one of the pools of light cast by a lamp.  Her eyes flicker up to meet his; her hands momentarily twist as they curl into fists around the hem of her shirt.

Izuku swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Um,” he says after a minute or so of silence between them.  “So, uh. Hi.”

Ochako meets his eyes again for a second, then looks down and away.

“So what did you want to talk about?” he says.

Silence.  Her fists clench tighter.

“Are you okay?” he says.

Ochako finally replies, her voice quiet but firm and steady.

“I’m not,” she says.

Izuku takes a step closer to her, his hands half-raised to clasp her shoulders in a gesture of comfort.  “What’s wrong, then?”

More silence.  Izuku drops his hands back down to his sides even as Ochako’s loosen from their fists and drop down to hers.

“Uraraka?”

She finally looks up at him with tired but steady eyes, her expression resigned, her jaw set.  The tension drops out of her shoulders completely, though she still looks hunched and small.

She just doesn’t look afraid anymore.

“You,” she says.  “That’s what’s wrong.”

Izuku blinks.

“Or,” she amends hastily, “I should say that my feelings about you are what’s wrong.”

“Your feelings—“

“I love you,” Ochako says.

Izuku’s heart swells, so much so that he finds it hard to breathe or speak properly for a moment.  His vision blurs.  Oh, for crying out loud, he is not going to start crying now, he is not.

“I don’t know when I started seeing you as—as more than a friend,” Ochako continues.  “All I know is that one day I woke up and—well, things were different.”

Her hands close into fists on the hem of her shirt again; she looks down and with a small effort forces her fingers to uncurl, one by one.

“You were just—“ she looks up at him, then back down to her hands again “—a light in my life, all of a sudden.  And I wanted to be close to that light.  So close.”

She looks up at him again, and holds his gaze.  Izuku thinks his heart might explode from his chest when a smile, small and flickering, finds its way to her face again.

“I thought that would just go away,” she continues, standing a little straighter now.  “And I tried to ignore it when it didn’t and I tried to just move on with things like everything was normal.”

She gives a little shrug.  “And it didn’t work.  Loving you is a hard habit to break.”

“Um, Ochako—“

She holds up a hand and Izuku stops.  “Please, let me finish,” she says.  “I didn’t want to tell you this because I didn’t want to make things weird between us and I didn’t want to, well, make you feel like you had to respond or anything.”

“So what changed?” Izuku asks.

“I realized that I’d regret it more if, y’know, something bad happened to one of us and I never let you know,” Ochako says.  “And a part of it, well, was just me needing to be honest with myself, just me needing to stop denying that I want to be with you. As more than a friend, I mean.”

She inhales deeply and then blows the breath out through her mouth, squaring her shoulders.

“So there,” she says.  “I just needed to let you know.  I mean, I don’t want to make you feel like you need to return my feelings or anything—”

“I love you too,” Izuku says.

Ochako freezes with her mouth open in a wide O, the words that had been about to escape coming out as a mere squeak instead.

“I didn’t know when I started to see you as more than a friend either,” he continues, as a blush scorches its way across her cheeks and lights the tips of her ears aflame.  “I mean, I’ve admired you since the day we first met—your drive and determination, your kindness and selflessness—“

He stops, feeling his own blush creep up over his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he says, dropping his gaze. “I’m probably not saying this very—I’m probably not being very clear.  I don’t really have a lot of experience—I’m not really used to this kind of thing.”

“Neither am I,” Ochako says, with a quiet smile that Izuku just sees in his peripheral vision.  He blushes harder.  “I mean, I’ve had crushes before, but I’ve never really felt anything this strongly before.”

“Honestly,” Izuku says, “I never thought that I’d ever be on the receiving end of something like this.”

They stand there for a minute more in silence, both of them almost glowing brighter than the lamp they’re under.

“So,” Uraraka says.  “What do we do now?”

“I, uh,” Izuku says.  “I don’t know.  I never thought that I’d ever get this far with, uh, anyone.”

“This hasn’t ever been something that I’ve really thought was important,” Uraraka admits.  “Until now, I mean.”

“So how do you want to go ahead with this?” Izuku asks.

Uraraka chews at her lower lip, and Izuku finds himself reflecting on just how ridiculously adorable the expression on her face is in an attempt to distract himself from his suddenly racing heart.

“Maybe just,” she says, “take it slow?”

“Take it a day at a time sort of thing?” he says.

“Do what comes natural?” she says.

“But keep it light and casual?” he says.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding perhaps a little too vigorously. “Yeah, that sounds good.  I mean, we both still need to concentrate on school and stuff, and uh, stuff.  We shouldn’t let, y’know, us get in the way of that.”

“Light and casual,” he repeats, nodding in sympathy with Uraraka.  “Uh, Ochako?”

“You can call me by my first name,” Ochako says. “I mean, we’re, uh, together now, right?”

“Um,” Midoriya says.  “Um, right.  Well, you can call me Izuku, then.”

Again, there is a silence.  The two of them try to fight down the tides of embarrassment and general, overwhelming emotion pouring over them and after a minute or two, mostly succeed.

“We are very, very new to this, aren’t we?” Ochako says.

“You’re honestly the first girl that I’ve been able to talk to for more than ten seconds without freezing up,” Izuku admits. “And maybe we don’t know each other as well as we’d—“

He searches for the word.

“Like?” Ochako suggests.

“—as well as we’d like,” Izuku says.

“Well, that’s what dating is supposed to be about, isn’t it?” Ochako says, giving him a small smile.  “Getting to know each other?”

“Yeah,” Izuku says.  He returns her smile, a little hesitantly.  “So, uh.  Do you want to get to know each other a little better, uh, next Saturday?”

Ochako’s smile widens into something brilliant and golden, and Izuku finds himself answering it with one of his own.

“I’d love to,” Ochako says.

“Oh my god,” Mina groans, flopping face-first into Momo’s bedspread.

“What is it now?” Momo says, not looking up from the article she’s idly scrolling through.

“Okay so Midoriya getting stabbed and all was horrible and awful and I really hope that it never happens again,” Mina says.  “But come on, him being in mortal peril?  Ura staying by his bed for a week all teary-eyed while Recovery Girl healed him back up and made sure that he wasn’t going to have an infection?  The situation was perfect.”

“So?”

“So why aren’t they smooshing booties yet?”

Mina lets her head flop back down and screams into Momo’s bed.

“You’d better not be getting any spit on my sheets,” Momo says calmly.

“Okay, you know what we need to do?” Mina says after a minute, popping back up. She drops her fist into her open palm.

“Step up our—“

“Step up our game!” Mina declares.  “We need to get these two adorable losers together at any cost.”

“Oh,” Momo says, without much enthusiasm.  “Wonderful.”

Unbeknownst to them, in a clearing in the forest just outside of the main campus, Ochako and Izuku are laughing with each other, sitting side by side, their eyes bright and their smiles wide.  Ochako’s hand sits atop Izuku’s, their fingers interlaced as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

The world is not well, they know.  Outside of their little sanctuary the world seethes with hate and rage and cruelty.

But for now, in their own little world, all is well.

#uraraka ochako #midoriya izuku #bnha #uravity bang #long post

[nativeamerican]

Tribal College Week

Every winter, during the second week of February, tribal college presidents, student representatives, and a myriad of others passionate about tribal education trek out to Washington, DC to visit Capitol Hill for National Tribal College Week. This week, also referred to as the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Winter Meeting, is an intense hive of advocacy, House and Senate meetings, and networking. Everyone who attends these meetings serves the larger purpose of moving tribal colleges forward, which in turn helps move Native communities forward.

One of the more compelling aspects of the winter meeting is the unique role that students play. Each of the 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) participating can choose to send a student or students to DC; these students then accompany their college’s representatives to various advocacy workshops, committee hearings, and congressional delegation meetings. It is at those meetings where the key mission that students serve becomes apparent. This is where they share their tribal college journey with others. By sharing their own narratives, students are empowered and provide a moving testament to the diverse and often misunderstood impacts of TCUs.

OWNING MY STORY

In 2014, as the outgoing Diné College student body president, I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to AIHEC’s winter meeting. I admit I wasn’t entirely sure what “Capitol Hill advocacy” entailed; words like advocating, legislating, and policymaking can sometimes take on nebulous definitions. After some prodding for a clearer description of my role, I was informed that I would be there to share my story about how tribal colleges affected me.

I spent the next few weeks mulling over this, namely, how would my story benefit anyone? It’s a winding and weird narrative. It lacks the glamour of Western success and perfect scores; it is void of the genius of wunderkind and the cheery comfort of normal. Dormant worries that I held prior to stepping foot on a tribal college campus began to creep in. Worries that I wouldn’t talk right, I wouldn’t look right, I wouldn’t act right. I just wouldn’t be right.

Up until that point, my knowledge of AIHEC revolved primarily around the annual spring student conference, which is a large gathering for tribal college students to bond and compete in various events. I attempted to compensate for my unfamiliarity with AIHEC by poring over the organization’s website and various related links mined from Google searches, hoping to gain more insight as to what I would be getting involved in. One of the most informative resources is AIHEC’s preliminary pre-meeting webinar. From logistics such as hotel accommodations and meeting times to detailing advocacy strategies and underscoring the key goals of the meetings, the webinar helped us prepare for Capitol Hill.

This preparation certainly helped me navigate the alphabet soup that is DC vernacular: from DOI, BIA, BIE to AICF, AIMS, TCUP, the acronyms flow freely. It also helped me grasp the general idea of what higher education funding looks like in the federal context. Yet, one thing that reading material couldn’t prepare me for was the sheer scope of issues surrounding American Indian higher education. While AIHEC’s importance is evident at the student conference, the organization’s power and magnitude are on full display in Washington, DC. From highly scheduled itineraries packed with meetings with U.S. Senators and House Representatives to the breadth of institutional knowledge TCU presidents shared during our visits, National Tribal College Week was like a deep-sea dive for someone like me who was used to splashing around in puddles.

FINDING MY PLACE

In a place like Capitol Hill where there is an array of issues at any given moment, it can be easy to get lost in the shuffle. Tribal colleges in particular face an assortment of unique issues that are often overlooked or else misunderstood—whether because of a complete disregard for community definitions of success or a clumsy attempt to measure us with the wrong metric. By having students there in person, sharing their own stories, whole new dimensions can be added to people’s perceptions of what a tribal college is and what success truly means to some of us.

Yet how would or could my story benefit anyone when it feels so undone and unpolished? How does one package all of the confusion, anger, frustration, elation, and joy I’ve experienced into a neatly composed soundbite? You simply must speak of what you know.

In my case, what I knew was how at Diné College someone told me for the first time that I was more than smart, that I was a “good egg.” How I had a bed and a room and I didn’t have to worry about where I was going to sleep for the next few months. How I could just focus on the tasks at hand and how I was free to pursue my curiosities and figure out what I wanted. How I could ask questions and people didn’t chide me for not knowing what the GRE was or how to fill out an application for federal student aid. Nobody tried to touch my hair, tell me about their Cherokee princess grandmother, or refer to me as Pocahontas. Nobody gasped when I talked about my childhood like it was some absurd reality or pushed me to leave the reservation for “opportunity.” Instead, people encouraged me to create opportunity on the reservation. I went to school with students who understood, with faculty who understood.

SOME ADVICE FOR THE JOURNEY

If I am able to provide advice for tribal college students on the AIHEC winter meeting, I would say first that if you are offered this opportunity, take it. In fact, with most opportunities in life, take them. Don’t be swayed by the “imposter syndrome”: don’t fall into the self-defeating trap of questioning whether you look or sound the part, wondering what you have to offer, or worrying about measuring up to others. Remember, your story is important. You matter.

The second tip is to take advantage of this opportunity to network with other students and organizations in Washington. On the first day of Tribal College Week, there is an open AIHEC Student Congress (ASC) meeting held at night to which all students are invited. I realize the lure of sightseeing around the nation’s capital or going out to eat is tempting, but you will have other chances to do that during the week. Attending the ASC meeting is the main opportunity to voice your opinions to your peers, to brainstorm, to network, to hear what is going on at other TCUs, to talk to your student congress and find out how you as a student are represented. And find out why you are there! What are the priorities that AIHEC is looking to promote? You want to be prepared and informed. Check the AIHEC website periodically before your trip for more information and any changes to the itinerary.

Another piece of advice: dress professionally. Wear clothes that make you sit up just a little bit straighter, whether that means traditional wear or an ironed button-down with your grandmother’s necklace. During my first trip to Washington, I didn’t have a clue what to wear, as my closet was primarily host to faded hoodies and beat-up sneakers. I couldn’t afford to invest in a suit at the time, but I was able to find a blazer at a thrift store. I proudly wore jewelry from my family and paired this with my wrapped moccasins that I had made in class. I recall the seam breaking on my moccasins and borrowing dental floss from a student at the hotel so I could repair them at the last minute.

I admit I had never worn a suit before and at first I felt nervous, like I was committing fraud by wearing such a costume. I had this ridiculous worry that someone would see me in my suit and just know that I didn’t belong. Granted, I did find out the hard way that you’re supposed to cut those white strings on the blazer vents and that you should never substitute tape for a lint roller. But the point of this is to be proud and comfortable in what you are wearing, whether it’s a thrift store blazer or a woven biil dress. Your clothes merely serve to border the picture that is you and your story. Your words and how you conduct yourself are really what matter.

Also, keep in mind the amount of security you will have to go through at the numerous government buildings. All your metalware, from belts to large jewelry, will have to come off each time you need to enter a building, and there will usually be a line of people waiting to get through the metal detectors behind you.

As for the weather, it rains a lot and sporadically so it might be worth packing a small umbrella. It is also winter in DC during Tribal College Week and therefore pretty cold, so bring a heavy jacket or wrap. In 2014, I thought I was being clever by just bringing a rain coat, thus saving me the hassle of dragging along my winter coat. However, the “snowpocalypse” storm quickly refuted this. We landed on a Sunday to clear skies and by Monday it was gray, with snow quickly piling up and intermittent freezing rain. We still had to walk to our meetings, albeit much more quickly. Don’t risk it: bring a coat—and gloves.

During your visits be on time! If this means setting multiple alarms and asking the hotel to provide you with a wakeup call, do it. Time in DC is monochromatic; things are very exact and focused. There is little to no concept of a grace period or a “maybe it starts around 2 p.m.” If you have 15 minutes to meet your senator and discuss budget cuts, you have 15 minutes to meet your senator and discuss budget cuts. Your congressional delegate serves a lot of people—it’s their job! So there are many other meetings they need to attend to and constituents they need to serve. Aside from time being so focused and precise, it is also scarce. Keep this in mind when sharing your story. For some states like Montana and North Dakota, where there are a larger number of tribal colleges, your meetings will be tightly packed and choreographed. There are multiple schools, students, and representatives in each meeting, so to avoid wasting time in front of the congressional delegates, a separate state meeting is usually held the first day of the Capitol Hill visit. During such visits, speakers are assigned orders and representatives are chosen. Montana, for example, has more TCUs than any state with seven; this means that it is especially imperative as a student representative to be mindful of your time limit. If you are at a 15-minute meeting with 9 minutes devoted to sharing student stories, and there are three students selected to speak, this means that you will have 3 minutes to share your story, unless you are told otherwise. Please be mindful of the other students whose stories are equally important and allow them time to share also.

Remember why you are there. You will be talking to congressional delegates who might not align with you politically on all issues. This was perhaps one of the harder things for me to learn— to hold my tongue. Having to refrain from making comments about policies to your senator while she or he is listening to you might feel akin to starving inside a bakery. But one of the many things I have learned is that there is a time and place for everything. There is also a way to make your passions known without hijacking the purpose of these meetings. You probably wouldn’t go to a vegan restaurant to endorse hamburgers. So it might not be best to attend meetings centered on education to push for the environment.

With that said, you can still take advantage of the opportunity by talking to others. I felt so strongly about certain policies and wanted more information that I asked each of the representatives along with their staff interns if I could have their business cards. This networking led to an internship the following summer in DC, where I was able to research the very policies that bothered me. That was the appropriate place and platform to pursue my interests, as I was representing myself and not a larger organization.

At this point in my college career, I have been fortunate to attend three AIHEC Capitol Hill meetings representing two different tribal colleges and the AIHEC Student Congress. Since my initial meeting, my college track has changed dramatically: I have gone on to pursue internships in the capital, spending two intense summers interning through Quality Education for Minorities where I contributed to research on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) inclusion at TCUs, and landed an externship at the Indian Health Service headquarters in nearby Rockville, Maryland, which focused on civic media and LGBT issues. I have been invited to the White House a few times, including the 2015 White House Tribal Nations Conference, a 2016 Office of Science and Technology Policy meeting, and I was recently nominated to attend the White House Summit on the United State of Women. I also participated in an upcoming national PBS series focused on underrepresentation in the technology industry; introduced the Second Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden, at the 2015 Achieving the Dream’s annual Institute on Student Success; traveled internationally for research under the National Science Foundation Partnerships for International Research; and I have spoken on numerous panels. Recently, I was a summer scholar at the National Science Foundation, focusing on data curation.

I have gone from confusing the GRE with GED to applying to graduate programs. My obnoxious loud behavior that stemmed primarily from just wanting to be heard has been curbed over the years. While at times I may still be a bit obnoxious, I don’t feel the tired drain of having to perform routines just to get people to listen. I am now in a position with opportunities—and offers! I am able to create opportunities for my peers and share what I’ve learned with my networks. I have set my sights on earning a Ph.D., and while still far off from accomplishing that goal, I feel confident that I can. Hopefully one day I can come back and teach at the very tribal colleges that helped me so much.

If I had to identify the pivotal experiences in my college education that have helped guide me to my current course, aside from having an amazing support network of TCU friends and internship mentors, I would single out attending Tribal College Week. This was more than just an intensive experience in policy and leadership. It also served a larger purpose: it helped me connect and create networks with other students while exposing me to a wealth of Indian Country leaders to look up to—from the various TCU presidents to distinguished faculty who have worked within their communities. It was where I realized that it is possible for people like me to one day create and affect change. Washington, DC and the world as a whole sometimes feel light years away, but they are actually just there waiting for people to seize opportunity. You just have to speak up.

- Robin Máxkii 

Originally published in Tribal College Journal

https://tribalcollegejournal.org/storytelling-capitol-hill-recollections-recommendations-tribal-college-week/

#tribal college

[rebelstreetclothing]

https://rebelstreetclothing.com/blogs/news/every-man-should-date-a-goth-girl

She changed my life in ways she could fathom, although I don't have any idea who that eighth grader was.

It was I was introduced to a particular -- Fashion? Lifestyle? Fetish? -- that's since become my greatest aesthetic quirk. All men have a kind -- a few are into your regular breastaurant waitress mold, others are to the tatted up neo-pin-up template, and many others are all about the artsy-fartsy nerd chic -- and it was here, I assume, that I developed mine: the all-American goth chick.

Now, at the moment, we did not call them "goths." In actuality, we did have an term of both genders, who wore three pounds of eyeliner everyday and wore all donned spiky jewellery. Some called them "the other children," some called them "skaters" (which none of them possessed skateboards, apparently, meant very little) but by and large, the other students called them as either "the freaks" or "the weirdos." The rest of the kids before Columbine -- were terrified. Rumors spread that They did needle drugs and hung out together on the weekends and practiced magic charms. While blaring Marilyn Manson they chainsawed hobos behind Costco to passing. Granted, the worst items they actually did was smoke cigarettes away from the movie theater and perhaps shoplift a couple of malt liquors, but they embraced the paranoia and dread the other pupils fostered for them. In a way, it made them over the junior high totem, which makes them a more effective caste system force than even the preppiest of preps.

And there was something about that I discovered inherently attractive. I found them alluring, while everybody found the women to be terrifying. Others believed their morbid, sadsack dispositions was the turnoff, but I thought it strangely entranced.

She was the first crush of my own adolescence. Even now, I've no hint what her name was, but I won't ever forget seeing her at the bus stop for the first time. Curling her auburn coif out of her eyes -- showing a pair of peppers outlined in what I presumed was an whole bottle of dollar store lashes -- she smiled a sinister smile and asked me, with the playful lunacy of Harley Quinn, "what you staring at, curly?"



I never reacted. But each time she saw me in the hallway, she would take me that half-playful, half-evil smile and say something along the lines of "hello, curled, how you doing?" I guess she thought she was freaking me, but deep down, I adored the focus (god knows, she was the only girl in the sixth grade who ever acknowledged my life.) Forget tans, forget the blindingly blonde hair and forget that all too dull "girl next door" look -- I was eternally enamored by the women who seemed more Morticia Addams compared to Christina Aguilera.

During high school and college, I more or less homed in on each of the pale girls who wore Invader Zim tops and loathed their parents. Really, my very first makeout was having a woman wearing a literal pentagram on her brow and I had been introduced to the joys of carnal pleasure with a young woman whose whole makeup chest was full of nothing but novelty Halloween lipsticks and nail polishes. Throughout these relationship sojourns, I discovered a seldom spoken truth concerning the "goth girl" motif/stereotype. Actually, I soon learned that there are really five genuses of goth woman, each with her Own idiosyncratic quirks:

THE RICH, SUBURBAN GOTH -- Her father makes $150,000 a year and her mother lets her spend $500 at a time on naturally Hot Topics buys (usually, Hello Kitty-branded lip gloss and anime-inspired belt buckles.) Really, she likes to wear a lot, although she claims to be a poetic soul. She's at least three Nightmare Before Christmas posters in her room along with the heaviest ring she listens to is AFI.

THE POOR, ANTI-SOCIAL GOTH -- She lives in a trailer park, works part-time in the local grocery store or hole in the wall restaurant (usually on the rear of the home -- they do not want her spider tattoos creeping out the clients) and has attempted at least 80 percent of all of the drugs known to man. The only thing in her handbag are the cigarettes at 7-Eleven, a few wadded bills and a switchblade. She will break up, if she does not have at least one felony on her record.

THE ARTISANAL GOTH -- She gets good grades, she is most likely the best actress in the theatre department and she spends her evenings studying Dante's Inferno from the original Italian, as it is more atmospheric like that. Her dream is to obtain a art endowment to produce the world's biggest ball of sculpture.

THE FASHIONISTA GOTH -- She's hyper-concerned about her looks. You absolutely can't leave the home till she has her winged eyeliner down. Every day she paints her nails and she makes at least one visit to Ulta. From the time she graduates college, she is usually evolved into a "health goth" or abandoned the aesthetics entirely for a new lifestyle that allots for pink and yellow wardrobe options.

THE UNKEMPT GOTH -- The reverse of this fashionista goth. She apparently just wants to kiss you shortly after she sucked down a Camel cigarette or peeled off her lips her dragon-shaped bong. Her jewelry is pewter, she farts in public and she spends at least half of their afternoon playing League of Legends. She like the poor goth, except sans the penchant for criminality. After all, to do so you must get up off the couch.

Yeah, sometimes you get a mix of three or two of these, but by and large? Each subset has its advantages and disadvantages, its flaws and benefits, something to admire and love and something to detest and hate. And men, I think you owe it yourself to experience all five of those sub-goths before you get your bachelor's degree. Why? Because goth women -- for better or worse -- represent the most varied range of feminine character types. While some are pretentious and -- ironically -- stuck-up some are cool. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you think notions that are existential that are profound and they will -- by design, perhaps -- make you want to kill yourself. Even as fleeting, transitory relationships, they offer you something to consider about both the fairer sex and that what you are as an individual. You date nothing but club women or cheerleaders or nerds for a year, and you won't learn any nobler truths. Spend a year dating only goth women, however, and an whole cosmos of previously unrevealed knowledge befalls you. Hell, you may even find one which is just the ideal match, and who knows?

But maybe the biggest motive to date goth women even though you're a young dude? Because, to put it simply, existing at age 25 stops. They're professionals today, and they must terraform themselves to that dull, staid, office drone appearance. Adios blouse with sayonara eggplant eyeshadow and the shoulder pads. The ring comes out, the Doc Martens proceed the Cureshirts and the thrift shop are locked away never to see the light of day. You can always locate a bubbly cheerleader or artsy geek kind when you're 30 and 40. But the red-blooded goth? You have got up until your senior year in school, and that is pretty much your last opportunity to land one your own age.

For those of you have been pursuing a darker kind? Bear in mind, the clock is running out, and the sands of time are falling by a lot. And you don't need to visit your grave not knowing what it is like to make out with a woman wearing lipstick to midnight, do you?

Rebel Street Clothing

[aithom2]

Artist Series: Joy Ray

Joy Ray

I’m back with another incredible artist for you all! Back in September, I had the pleasure of meeting painter and mixed media artist Joy Ray in her studio in Kona. We had a great few hours talking about her art and the art world in general!

Joy is relatively new to the art world, but has truly jumped in headfirst and is already crushing it. She recently started working towards an MFA through the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently has her first solo show happening in Los Angeles! You can see more about her impressive solo show here.

I found Joy’s art like I’ve found most of the artists I’ve photographed so far, through Instagram. Another artist who I’ve photographed shared some of Joy’s pieces and I knew I wanted to photograph her at work. The foundation for her work is perhaps most easily described as painting. Paint is essentially how most of her pieces begin, after all. However, there is much more to her art than just painting, especially as she continues to develop her practice.

Joy’s work is subtle yet complex. She works almost exclusively with a monochromatic pallet of shades of black and white which helps to make her pieces bold and striking. Nature and hidden forces are regular themes in her art and her paintings frequently draw to mind decaying structures or abandoned objects.

One of the things that drew me to Joy’s work is her unique approach to the canvas. Instead of utilizing a traditional canvas, Joy pulls together a variety of materials that she stitches into a single piece. Before that happens, though, she paints them all to fit with her monochromatic pallet. All of her surfaces are thus treated more or less the same, making textures and materials that are dissimilar feel as though they belong together or have at least been melded together over time. She also uses fabric that will be used later as a drop cloth of sorts, catching whatever paint that seeps through and showing brush marks on the edges. This simple act leaves behind remnants and fragments of what was initially painted. Once combined in her pieces, it provides a hint of something that was once there but nothing more, a theme that consistently runs through Joy’s work. The body of work featured in her solo show, titled Ghost Visions, plays with that idea throughout the paintings. It feels as though something was there and left its mark, but it’s unclear what or how.

Around her studio are stacks and stacks of various types of fabrics and materials that she has collected and prepared to be used in her paintings. She frequently uses denim from thrifted clothing items, but also incorporates a range of fabrics, including vinyl. Finding used or thrifted materials is of significant importance to Joy, especially in her latest body of work, because of the inherent yet unknown histories that found materials have. The jeans that she finds in a thrift store have their own past life and story, even though the details are unknown to her. The particular history doesn’t matter, and in fact, the mystery is perhaps more valuable than a known narrative.

All of Joy’s work is extremely rich with texture, in part a result of adding additional textures to her fabrics. She does this in a variety of ways, but frequently she mixes sand into black paint to create the gritty texture you see in many of her paintings. While I was there, she prepared one piece of denim by taping some lines and layering the sandy paint on thick, building up a robust, textured layer of black paint to stand out in contrast to the smoother white denim.

One of the next steps in Joy’s process is to stitch together the individual pieces of fabric to make a larger composition that will later be stretched onto a canvas. Sewing and stitching were what actually got Joy started more seriously in art and it is still an integral part of her process. At times the stitching is simply used as a practical way of connecting two different pieces of fabric, but she also purposefully leaves the stitches visible to add even more texture and interest.

Recently, Joy has started to experiment with sculptural work, specifically found object sculptures. Just like the materials she uses in her paintings, the importance of a history already tied to an object is important in her sculptures. Viewers are left to wonder what the story behind the object was and are allowed the room to fill in their own narrative.

In order to help the sculptural work fit together with the wall pieces, all of Joy’s found objects are painted either white or black, frequently with texture added. Raw, rugged texture and grittiness is a consistent visual aid for Joy and it is no different with her found-object sculptures. It brings about thoughts of something left behind in nature, in the process of decay and being lost within the earth. In fact, while prepping the stuffed animals for her solo show, she rubbed them all in the dirt to help give the appearance that they had been forgotten about.

Once they were sufficiently dirty, she began the process of wrapping them almost in a paper mache-like manner and then binding some of them with string. I loved the contrast of a cute, cuddly, childhood toy being made to reflect something darker and almost sinister looking.

Joy has also started to experiment with metal sculptures etched with script-like shapes. This idea is something that Joy introduced me to and is something that I am now in love with. It is called Asemic writing, which means, “having no specific semantic content.” It is essentially a form of abstract calligraphy to suggest writing, but it has no inherent meaning. Writing in a variety of forms has been part of many of her pieces before, but I am very excited to see where she takes this new idea and the new materials in her work!

Thank you so much to Joy, for participating in this project! You can see more of her work at her website and on her Instagram account.

[awkwarddystopianwarlord]

People Have Different Tastes

Something that has always bothered me is when people end up absolutely befuddled because I didn’t watch a certain children's show or listen to a particular song. I’ve had numerous people gawk at me because of this as though it’s some unspoken requirement of humanity to all watch and listen to the same things. What’s popular to you doesn’t necessarily mean it’s popular to someone else. Granted, I know there are videos that go viral and songs that make it to the top ten and shows that people rave about worldwide. I have still managed to avoid that though, for the most part. It isn’t intentional, I just generally immersed myself in what I found interesting to me. I grew up listening to what my mother played from her ipod or CDs and I watched more movies than I did TV shows. I never really had a vessel to explore music tailored to me or videos I personally enjoyed until I was in about ninth or tenth grade.

I received an ipad for christmas and downloaded a knock-off version of youtube that allowed me to play music while using another app. That was when I started exploring. When my younger sister was looking up epic music to use jokingly in a school project, I found that I actually really enjoyed it. Epic instrumental music and movie scores were the shit I loved to listen to. It took me a wee while actually to branch out from that and find songs with words. I wanted something with the same feel, same use of instrumental abundance. The band Of Monsters and Men took me in a different direction though, interesting sounding vocals. I’m a sucker for accents so listening to foreign bands gave me that satisfaction. I never fell into a boy/girl band phase, I either wanted a mix of both or just a strong male or female vocalist. So when One Direction became a sensation, I just pretended to be a fan. I wanted to be a part of the community of people that adored one thing, whether it was a band, a song, a show, a clothing trend. It simply never fit with what I enjoyed though. There were rare moments when I felt that inclusion with appreciating something but it was often few and far between.

I watched Nickelodeon as a child, but it was mostly Spongebob Squarepants and iCarly sprinkled in between. H2O: Just Add Water was a favorite as well. I still managed to miss a ridiculous amount of shows there though. Still managed to baffle people with my lack of indulgence. The thing is, I watched an episode or so and then I was done for the day, so that episode was from the one channel I knew to get to. Netflix wasn’t a thing yet, hell, flat TVs weren’t a thing yet. Channel 37 was all I knew so dammit that’s what I hit on the remote. Also, like I said, I was also a big movie fan. I watched Titanic religiously with my younger sister, we were about four and six years old. Eventually our parents banned us from it because they were so sick of it. Our love for it was rediscovered two years later so that was a fun thing to relive. We liked Disney movies but not as much the old classics like Snow White, more like Mulan and Pirates of the Carribean. This of course led me to be considered a fake Disney fan since I wouldn’t watch as many princess movies. Barbie movies on the other hand were a blast to watch but that doesn’t count, so again I was on the edge of the crowds.

I never bothered to follow clothing trends, I was poor, then I moved to a small town where going to Vancouver only happened twice a year for us. Buying the next trendy thing wasn’t something I could do when most of my clothes were hand-me-downs or from what I found at the thrift store. On top of that, I have a habit of wanting to look like the last character I saw in a movie that I like. I’m a fiend for overcoats because of that. I was more interested in looking like I popped out of another time period than keeping up with a trend that would last a week and come around again ten years later. If there was an in-style look I fancied, I always ended up acquiring it late and then it didn’t even matter if I caught up, the world already moved on.

Video games were never really present in my life, until we got a Wii. That became addicting for awhile but even then, my parents never really had to urge me outside much because I loved being outside. I thrive among trees, grass, and creeks. I would wake up early and sneak out of the house before my sister woke up just so I could have an hour of poking around ditches and bushes with a stick, pretending it was alive and I was narrating its existence like the gent from Planet Earth. My group of friends would play manhunt in the woods or make up civilizations in my backyard. We would be out in the neighbourhood streets from late morning to twilight. Of course those that didn’t do that as kids wondered why I was so horrible at video games and never saw all the episodes of anything because I was never in front of the TV that much. Even though I had a small herd, I still felt isolated from the much larger herd of people familiar with something I wasn’t.

I’ve been in dance classes all my life from when I was two so no, I don't know how to navigate an Xbox. I grew up listening to Enya, Simon and Garfunkel, and opera, so no, Katy Perry wasn’t someone I jammed out to. I’m a shy, awkward introverted bookworm so no, I never went to parties. I don’t have a lot of money so no, I don’t really buy brand name clothing. I’m not trying to sound like I’m such a one-of-a-kind, not like the others, clearly a quirky and unique person. What I”m trying to say is, there are loads of people like that, loads of people that find joy in the less known, the more obscure, the sub-genre of things.

People forget that just because they grew up one way, knowing the things they learned and seeing the things they saw, does not mean everyone else did too. The world is a grand place because there is so much to offer, so to ridicule, tease, taunt, shame those that dwell in something different than you is stupid. We don’t all have to agree with one another’s tastes but we should at least appreciate the fact that we have different tastes and aren’t instead clones that all march to the same destination without knowing why. So whilst someone plays Assassin’s Creed or goes to a club or reads a book or takes a hike or browses a mall, I’m writing a blog and doing any of those things is wonderful.

Do what makes you happy, and be happy that others are doing what makes them happy because the happier we all are, the more tolerant we’ll be of everyone’s differences.

#rants #writing #friday post #weeklyblog

[farmgirlandbutternut]

(Farm Girl) One of the fun finds from my recent thrift shopping run with Butternut. Thrift shopping is still a source of anxiety, though I have gotten better at just tuning it out while sifting through dresses, skirts, and sweaters. Focusing on the joy of finding stuff I want to wear and reflects how I feel. I still don't think I'd be comfortable alone. It is a powerful reminder of the limitations we place on male bodied folks and masculinity (even as Butternut would point out I have quite a "feminine" figure and identity, and she's not wrong 😳😍). I was hoping to go thrift shopping wearing what I felt like wearing -leggings, skirt, bulky sweater, but sat in the car for what felt like hours (probably 10 minutes) realizing my anxiety was quickly going to spiral into full blown panic attack. On with the jeans. Don't get me wrong, I really like jeans. But even things you like can feel inauthentic. Add it to the list of things I've adopted to hide my gender identity, the fear of being "found out", even as I am fully aware none of those things have to be gendered at all. It's a complicated soup of imposter syndrome feeding thoughts of getting scoffs and worse from women, anxiety about hypermasculinity resulting in similar reactions from men. Clothes shopping is always an emotional experience and I remain hyper alert to any potential threat. I feel so much joy in the dressing room and have gotten to the point I can at least check out on my own, but it's a long, slow slog. As much as I'd like to be solid in myself and "above" gender expectations and others' perceptions, I can't deny being passable and unremarkable are still major major desires. I just want to be, without the act of being inciting a whole slew of anxiety in myself or reactions from others. Getting there, with Butternut holding my hand the whole way 💚💜💚💜. It is okay to go slow, painfully slow even, step forwards, step backwards, not "get" anywhere in any particular timeframe. Healthy reminders from an amazing partner 💞.

#farmgirl #genderqueer #genderfluid #trans #fall outfits #fall fashion #leggings #autumn fashion #mtf #girlslikeus #thrift shopping #gender #gender norms #hypermasculinity