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"If I were orpheus I wouldn't look back"

But we look back everyday- rechecking emails, making sure a friend is still behind you, checking to see if you remebered to pick up your keys. It's second nature, a habit of care.

It was second nature for him too. He looked back, not out of weakness, but love. For what is love, if not to look back?

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My rescue cat allows me to help him groom

(Source)

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Oggi e sempre ✊

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Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.

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I love you, George Takei.

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The word you are looking for is “selfish.” Not narcissist, not sociopath, selfish.

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they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"

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I want you to remember:

The fascists hate you too and they just will pretend otherwise until after they've killed the rest of us, before they turn on you.

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for college i want to start making chimera plushies but i cant stand the idea of cutting up a plushie..

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Today I learned that Van Halen have that rider in their contract about “a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed” in order to know at a glance if the promoter read the entire contract.  And the reason they do THAT is because they once had a stage collapse because a promoter hadn’t read the proper way to set up all the specific technical stuff.

So if the band goes in the dressing room or catering and sees brown M&Ms, they know they have to double-check the stage setup for safety.

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I don't need someone to match my freak; I need someone to complement my freak. Accentuate and accent my freak. Plus, we gotta diversify our freak portfolio here -- combine our efforts to cover the greatest amount of freakage instead of seeking freak redundancy.

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"And I think for that reason I find fan fiction especially a really interesting and really rich mode of expression that, of course, a lot of people look down on 'cause it's - you know, it lacks a certain literary polish. But I respect that about fan fiction. Like, I respect that fan fiction is so much the product of a compulsion, of a yearning, that it almost forgoes all of these pretensions of polish, of quality, of sophistication. And in that sense, for me, there is something that's revealed at the heart of fan fiction that I think is essential to all great literature, which is this desire to put yourself in the same space as the transcendental, you know, to almost touch the hem of it without really quite grasping it."

The loneliness of the central character in Esther Yi's 'Y/N' is universal, an interview with Esther Yi (NPR)

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Are you really…. not supposed to…. describe what your characters are wearing….

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Okay hear me out, how would carmen react to someone he's dating being a "picky eater" that has a VERY limited diet due to sensory issues👀

This is totally not self-indulgent /s

Eeeee

carmen berzatto x reader

enjoy some bear fam ribbing and carmen carmen carmen

honestly I think he’d be interested if anything! His mind is constantly on overdrive thinking of recipes and foods and the combinations of flavours, and how to change this and tweak that. He could run on fumes, just a jar of tums and his notebook and spend the night brainstorming dishes. We’ve all seen it, it might be a way for him to distract from the hellish that is his social life outside the Bear, by bringing it home too. So when he meets his girl, who’s got a palate that is entirely different to anything he’s seen before he takes it as almost a challenge to push himself to produce something amazing, creative and yours.

You’re his girl, he has this carnal need to take care of you, and can you imagine if you were nervous or worried about what he might think??? No he’d run his thumb along your thigh, while you're on either side of him wrapped in the covers that were warm from the morning sun and just raise his eyebrows and snicker in that way he does. And it hit him that your exes were dipshits and never listened to you and he’d gather you in his arms and murmur how you could watch him cook for you every day if you wanted to.

And he held true to that, he’d sit you down on the counter after hours in the Bear later that night. You’d sneak in, when you’re craving for something that the places around you can’t offer and Carmen is just fucking itching to serve you food and show off his fucking Michelin talent.

It would be a ritual, you watching and him making. He’d serve it to you all pretty and clean, leaving his serving to be eaten from the pan. And he watches every expression on your face, every quirk and flick of your eyebrow and he’d know, god he’d know what you were thinking in that moment. If you liked it or not, if it triggered one of your senses into overdrive and had you trying to hide the way your teeth scraping against a certain component left you shivering in disgust.

He’d know and he’d rush to give you water and make you spit it out despite your protests. And you shake your head in anger at the things you can’t control and Carmen will sit with you on the floor of the Bear and he’d smile in that way he does, as he’d ask about every part and force it out of you until he’d be changing the meal entirely. 

Showing you the things you can control which was making your boyfriend who cooked for a living, cook.

He’d be protective over you I feel like, after you tell him bad experiences that had ruined your relationship with food. Making sure no one gave you shit about it, always on guard, eyes in slits and voice gravelly when waiters double check your order or look anywhere but their fucking notepad.

The team is a whole other situation… I imagine it to be a whole team involved in a sit down investigation, an entire intervention by them because they are just so confused and scared (which is actually hilarious) that you were barred from eating certain foods or something.

-- -

“Okay, okay, how about pasta alla vodka” Tina muses, a grin pulling at her jaw as she leans back against the cheap plastic chairs that were reserved for the house.

“Nop, don’t like those bits of tomato they leave in the sauce” You shrug, chewing on your straw as you watch the way the rest of the team rears back in dismay.

Tina’s face drops, stubbornly pulling out a dollar bill and slapping it into Richie's grinning face.

“I thought I had it dammit” Tina groans, muttering about losing to a fake Italian divorcee who skimped her out of a chocolate bar.

You're all scattered in the back of the Bear, popcorn and peanuts are littered amongst half emptied bottles of beers on the large metal table that spans across the room. The Bear had been closed today, some sort of team building attempt at brainstorming new ideas for the menu and the Bear itself. 

Much to the annoyance of the rest of the crew, who had to make the commute in a freezing Chicago winter on a day that was supposed to be a break, somewhere along the fights that erupted at every suggestion and the stubbornness that remained in each of the team it did feel a little like family bonding.

At least it felt like it now, as they all collectively came together to study you.

That's where you found yourself, being pulled into the never calm-always-catastrophic environment of the Bear thanks to Carmen. You had protested at first, thinking you would be out of place in the sea of decorated chefs but as your phone dinged with messages from Syd and Richie, the latter earring on a very thinly veiled threat to ‘be there or i'll come and get you’ you found yourself throwing on a too thin jacket and knocking against on the Bear’s ‘closed’ sign after your shift.

You were greeted with the warmth of the Bear, breathing it in deeply before you realised that the smoky heat of the restaurant was as much fueled by the temperamental crew screaming out obscenities in the back as much as the radiator Fak had somehow fixed for the 15th time.

You didn't quite understand how you got here, you in the middle, and the team surrounding you firing out questions about your less than conventional palate. 

Carmen's disgruntled protest against the team channeling some sort of crud rip off of True Detective did little as the team went around listing dishes from escargot to cheese on bread to get your opinion. 

It was downright ironic, you know this. You are someone who couldn't stand the texture and smell of certain foods to the point of having them struck from your diet with a man whose entire life was surrounded by, and birthed from the complexities of texture and taste.

“It’s one of the stables of Italy!’ Richie barks, stuffing the dollar bill into his pocket hile shaking his head. 

The beer he had opened had gone cold in his hand since the beginning of the conversation. He couldn't stop his mouth from remaining hung open after every shake of your head and shrug of your shoulders towards the meals they loved.

You wondered if chefs have the same value systems as other..tightly knit organisations. One where disrespect leads to your swift removal…off the face of the earth. You don’t let yourself forget that they are skilled in the goddamn wielding of knives no matter their friendly chiding, you might be one shake of your head away from being prepared in all the ways you hate your food to be.

Carmen looked at you, his eyes straining across your body to check if you felt uncomfortable. He knew your tells almost as well as you know, and he'd be quick to shut it down and take you back home if need be. But as your eyes meet his, and the squint of a smile reaches them he shakes his head, mouths a “goddamn idiots”, and rolls his eyes at his families curiosity.

“Listen, I get that, I don't like bits of bone in my meat. But surely, for a dish that you know I know you know tastes like the fucking gates of heaven, you can make an exception” Syd blinks, her face filled with expectation, like she thought it was obvious.

You’re giggling at Sydney words, “Is this reassurance for me or for you”

“Me. It’s for me” Syd gulps, blinking as she registers the truth

“I just can’t eat food, no matter how good you guys tell me it is, that fucks up my sensory issues-”

“Alright, yeah, sensory issues, darling I bet if i could bring you to ONE dinner, one of our dinners at Carmen's Ma's we could easily persuade you-”

“Jesus fucking Christ-”

“No, no look Carmen. This is your woman ain't she? How can you let her walk around without letting her taste the delicate crossroads that produce Chicago- Italian cuisine? I mean you're seriously failing-”

“Fuck you”

“Goddamn fake”

The irony of it all was, you and Carmen had both met at a farmers market. Surrounded by food you wouldn't eat, at a place you didn't frequent, all for one particular food you did eat. And somehow, despite passing by 95% of vendors without even a swipe of your eye against their delicate colors and shapes, Carmen had bumped into you.

And he had apologies and you had crouched down to collect the runaway potatoes and fruits that tried to escape through his pouch, and your fingers had collided when you looked up to see the man who had interrupted your 15 minute venture.

Through the blurted out line of apologies, Carmen had stopped and looked at you and tried to reopen his hanging mouth. And you sat there half amused and half worried he was having a stroke.

“I know this is forward and you can tell me to go to hell, but could I take you out sometime?”

You had caught the last of the disobedient root vegetables when you raised your eyebrows in surprise, and let yourself be shocked again as you said yes.

Carmen had nodded and smiled when you told him you weren't exactly experimental with your diet, wanting to get it out of the way when you found out he was a chef and your sensory issues had been a problem for people who didn't make food for a living.

You expected the same ritual, the same dance of having to explain your diet to people and wait for them to actually understand that your pickiness wasn't just the usual ‘dislike’, but a very real thing that impacted how you eat everyday. You had no choice in it, that's what you told them every time and they had rolled their eyes and thrown your words in your face as they compared you to a petulant child that didn't want to eat their vegetables. You sighed and they did too, as they watched you flip every menu to the page for children and you cringed as the waiter looked around for your child and realised it was you.

Carmen was different though, of course he was. He didn't let his surprise go hidden, as he asked about every food you disliked and everyone you did. Noone before asked, they simply resolved to assume your diet was constricted in the small section of the kids meal. But Carmen asked, he did all night when you had brought it up after he asked to cook for you. Sitting on your couch, talking about you, and your diet, and your sensory issues for hours until he knew everything about them.

Until he simply nodded, and wrote something in his notebook and asked if you were still free on Thursday.

Of course the family was teasing, and of course they’d all tweak any dishes you were craving so that they weren't overloading your senses in any way. You’ve got a reserved seat at the Bear, and all your favourite dishes on standby if you ever wanted to come in to find something that didn't set you off and leave you anxious and sensitive.

It gets to an alarming rate of you coming in nearly every other day, in which Richie, Carm Syd and every other person in the Bear constructed some under the table deals with dea by restaurants to accommodate your sensitivities. They all like to feign ignorance when you walk in the next day all smiles, showing off your little takeaway box from the Portuguese spot you had so desperately to try before the stark textures and flavours of the menu you perused dashed the thought away.

Carmen hated seeing that excitement turn into defeated acknowledgement of the barriers you had around food. But also, in the same breath, Carmen knows how certain textures and tastes can trigger you into getting over-stimulated, leading to becoming frazzled and irritated. Which is exactly why he would never let you push yourself too far, supporting you if you ever wanted to try it out but immediately taking the dish away from you when he realised your heart was racing too quick and you were getting stiff..

“Baby, easy. Need you to go slow, yeah?”

“Alright, that’s enough. You did good sweetheart, I’m proud of you. Lemme make you something for tonight though yeah? Something you like?”

The truth was there were going to be some days where both Carmen's creativity, and your sensory issues outdo him. You were okay with that though, you were still catching up to reality that someone loved you enough to fit their life around yours.

And then Carmen copied your meals for a week when you told him this, until the Bear was relying on his memory of taste and you finally agreed that yes, there was no fitting needed.

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Dick's puppy dog eyes are extremely powerful

Commission Info / Kofi (members get comics a week early)