#(I think it kind of has the spreading quality in the west | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beautifulpersonpeach · 1 year

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I don't call myself army, just a music fan, like to follow grown up fans of kpop and other groups and honestly up until now I thought your characterization of kpop fans and multis behavior to BTS was very one-sided and overblown. But now I'd like to offer you an apology Bpp. I keep up with a bunch of kpop podcasts run by kpop fans and black women and I follow this 30+ black woman whose whole shtick is being in kpop for vibes, not engaging in fanwars and overall being above the gross behavior from immature racist armys. So imagine my horror when I open my Twitter today and the first thing I see is this:

https://twitter.com/SideShowShit/status/1647483768423464961?s=20

My heart is so heavy and burdened by this I don't even know where to start bpp. Just last week I saw a Shinee/taemin/multi fan say the hate against Jimin should 'show give those armys a taste of what they do' when Jimin has been the target of overwhelming hate from the same shinee fans since his debut. I'm thinking to just leave kpop completely because this kind of brain rot in adults over nothing makes me depressed as fuck. I sympathize more with armys now more than ever. I love Jimin and don't want to stop actively following him. How do you deal with all this hate? Seriously how do you do it?

***

Hi Anon,

Your link.

Abridged answer: "I got no worries because you can't stop me lovin' myself" - reference linked here. :)

Long-form answer:

Like I've said before, if you've managed to make your way to the podcast side of k-pop stan environments you already have my condolences lmao. I won't state the exact reasons for that here but you're already experiencing a few of those reasons it seems.

That user is actually familiar to me - she's a black woman who works in the US entertainment industry, Hollywood to be exact, in a semi-administrative role. That person is a Blink who runs in the same circles as Ash - a k-pop writer/podcaster and multi in the US; Carrie - an Exol and Shawol in Toronto who writes K-drama/film reviews; Tamar - a Jewish Blink and multi who is a k-pop journalist; and a bunch of other k-pop writers, journalists, DJs, and otherwise 'grown-ups in k-pop' who can't seem to speak even in a neutral capacity about BTS, let alone ARMY, despite many of them deriving their livelihoods from the spread of k-pop in the West spearheaded in a large part by BTS. It's partly why ARMYs are extremely skeptical of k-pop journalism because oftentimes these content creators, journalists or reviewers are just stans of other groups with barely concealed animus for BTS. And also why the quality of critical conversations in k-pop fandom is so poor. I mean, how can you trust the opinion of an adult Black woman who should intimately know the implications of racism, calling Jimin, Oli London, unprovoked? It's all so comical but also kinda tragic lol.

You sent me this ask just as I was publishing this post so perhaps you hadn't yet seen what I've said about the dominant behaviours of k-pop stans in fandom.

I understand how painful it is to see things like that but I suggest you ignore them, report and block the account if it bothers you that much, but otherwise focus on celebrating Jimin and the things you love about him. I keep saying that hate does nothing but create more of the same. Many of the people who belong to rival fandoms, especially the fandoms that have a history of being abusive to BTS and ARMY since as far back as 2014, including fans of Shinee, EXO, Beast, Super Junior, and since 2018, BlackPink, many of the people in those fandoms default to hating anything connected to BTS, and it fascinates me even now how it's like a social contagion.

If seeing opinions like that really distress you, it's okay to step back from k-pop completely. In fact I recommend it for people who tend to get really emotionally connected to the artists they support, because none of those people are going to learn to do better, and chances are you could begin mirroring their behaviour if you get too attached. I'm friends with many people from those fandoms because they've known me since before I became ARMY, they know what I think, value, and tolerate, and they share the same values as me. But a few of those friends have been sort of 'excommunicated' from their fandoms because they refuse to engage in the hate towards BTS, and this happens far more often than you think.

I write as much as I do about this topic because I get it. Nobody wants to see shit like that. But at the same time, those sentiments towards Jimin and BTS have always existed and Jimin is still happy, thriving, more concerned with knowing what his fans think about his music, so if he's the reason you're here, then focus on him.

For me it's really that simple.

#Juwon Park too used to run in their circles since she's a VIP who doesn't like BTS and ARMY #That was until she said something anti-black and they realized she had very limited access to the industry anyway #You'll see these sorts of characters from time to time the longer you spend time outside ARMY spaces #If that bothers you then I strongly hope you detach from k-pop completely because it will only get worse the longer BTS remains on top #kpop #kpop fandom #multis #bts army #fandom behaviour #fandom behavior #bts #jimin #park jimin

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7grandmel · 1 year

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Todays rip: 22/07/2023

Margaret Faces Herself

Season 6 No Album Release (Read More) Blue Lady - Last Window: The Secret of Cape West

Ripped by adumb

youtube

In running this blog, I try to keep a pretty even balance between a lot of things. Popular, unpopular, genuinely excellent music, hysterical punchline, and so forth. Part of that balance, too, is in highlighting rips that mean a lot to me, versus their impact on the channel as a whole. But today, I really want to be self indulgent.

I think one of the absolute coolest things about SiIva being this amalgamation of different creators' visions is that everyone's love gets to shine through in different ways. It reminds me a lot of something like the r/place canvas - this vast field of everyone's passions spread about everywhere, some loudly, and some more subtly. I've already described how much music I've only found out about through being used on the channel, and that sentiment also extends to games. But to me, it swings the other way too: It warms my heart beyond belief to see niche games that I love get attention by the SiIva team.

A rip like todays is still sitting at just barely over 5K views with no album release, in large part due to being a rip of a very obscure Nintendo DS adventure game. Last Window has comfortably been sitting in my personal list of favorite games for a very long time, and it makes all fan content you find that much sweeter when you know just how uncommon it truly is. Because of that, and due to the general excellence of the rip itself, this track has been sitting in my YouTube playlists since it first released.

The two Kyle Hyde games just have this type of sound that's so unique to them, a kind of lounge-y jazz that's coated in DS-flavored marinade, that makes any song rendered in their style just pop. Though I lack the emotional attachment to the Persona 4 song used in this mashup, it fits the Last Window instrumentation like an absolute glove and highlights the emotion of both tracks simultaneously.

My perception of adumb's rips is very much like what this rip in particular means to me - his track record gives off the feeling that he's doing this as a fun way to show as much love as possible to the media he loves. I can talk all day about the quality and excellence of rips with 50 different jokes and visual elements, but...showing that love is so important, no matter how its done, or how many people you target it toward.

#todays siivagunner #season 6 #siivagunner #siiva #adumb #tentative rip name #hotel dusk #last window #nintendo ds #visual novel #adventure games #kyle hyde #another code #trace memory #persona #persona 3 #persona 4 #persona 5 #Youtube

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translationandbetrayals · 10 months

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Paprika, Inception and the Triumph of the West

The last film directed by Satoshi Kon, Paprika, is a wonderful movie, the plot about getting into dreams with a technologic device is simply mind breaking, the artwork and animation are top quality, the soundtrack fits the theme of the movie, and the characters are well designed both in their identity and story. It was a pioneer of its kind, and it is considered as one of the best anime movies. On the other hand, Inception is also a terrific movie, it has a cast of recognized and quality actors, a beautiful cinematography, and an impeccable work of visual effects.

The anime movie was released in 2006, while the film directed by Cristopher Nolan in 2010. It is obvious, and Nolan acknowledged it, that Inception was inspired by Paprika’s plot. I do not mean that Inception is just plagiarism, but even some frames are taken from Paprika. The whole thing of using a dream sharing technology is straight out Paprika, and the theme of dreams mixed with reality also is.

The point of this text is about a comparison of the recognition and monetary success of both movies. Paprika, as I recently mentioned, is a very recognized movie by the anime fans, but it is not as famous as Inception. When it comes to the profit the movies made, Paprika is not even close to the box office hit of Inception. That been said, I thought about the fact that the cultural barrier between eastern and western film makes a lot harder to an anime production to get the recognition of a western production. This is also consistent with the fact that the film critics usually do not like anime, or do not give anime the recognition it deserves. This can be seen in the number of awards they received, which means nothing to me, but a lot to the spread of a production in the western public.

To end this blog I would like to mention that Paprika is not the only film directed by Satoshi Kon that inspired a box office hit and award winning western movie, meaning that the western film critics are blinded by prejudice about anime productions, and I hope this kind of thinking changes in the future, so that in the future the content of a movie is considered more than the packaging.

-Aquiles Rojas

#Anime #Japan #Sci-Fi

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mariacallous · 1 year

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When smoke from eastern Canadian wildfires smothered much of Canada and the American East Coast this summer, it resurfaced a distant memory for Gus Sentementes. The last time smoke descended on his home in Baltimore, Maryland, was in 2002, when fires in Quebec spread smoke more than 700 miles southward.

But this summer was different. The smoke lingered longer and spread farther. It also created quite a stir in areas that aren’t used to being that close to the effects of a cataclysmic wildfire. The world is warming, extreme heat is spawning hellish blazes, and even those not in the immediate vicinity are feeling their effects far downwind. Sentementes felt like this wasn’t just a fluke—something that affected his life every 20 years or so. This felt like something that would likely happen again, and soon.

Like anyone who breathes (i.e., everybody), air quality always felt somewhat important to Sentementes. He has three kids, one of whom has asthma. Sentementes himself uses a sleep apnea machine at night. When the sky turned orange and taking a breath felt like sucking in a campfire, Sentementes decided it was time to learn more about how his air quality was changing. He bought a PurpleAir sensor that lets him monitor the air quality outside his house in real time and share the data on the internet, where it gets pooled with other sensor readings from down the street, across town, and around the world.

“It’s been an eye-opening experience, the last several months, just coming to understand the basic, most fundamental importance of clean air,” Sentementes says. "We just really don’t appreciate it until you’re forced to breathe in a lot of terrible air.”

Wildfire smoke has long been a staple of the summer months along the West Coast of the US. Earlier this summer, when the wildfires in eastern Canada burned thousands of acres and covered the east coast in clouds of acrid haze, people who had never known life in wildfire country found themselves choking on wildfire smoke. As wildfires worsen and spread, people in communities that aren’t historically thought of as wildfire prone are starting to track the smoke in their air.

“With all that's going on with climate change and all the extremes that everybody's experiencing, sadly, I think this is going to become the new normal,” says James Knox, who lives near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. “We're going to have to start living with this.”

Knox recently bought two PurpleAir sensors after this summer's wildfires. He placed one in his yard at his home and the other at a family cottage a few miles away. Knox has consulted for public health agencies about Covid-19 and other infectious diseases. Being forced indoors due to the Canadian wildfires evoked the lockdown days of the Covid pandemic, albeit with its own twists. Back then, the guidance for social distancing allowed for outdoor excursions, like going for a walk. For someone like Knox, it was a way to stave off cabin fever and get some fresh air. But when the smoke came, he felt pinned inside without respite.

“We've been kind of conditioned to going out in fresh air, but that's dangerous now,” Knox says. "It’s a weird feeling.”

It’s relatively easy to check your community’s air quality. At least, if you live in the US, and also in an urban area that’s mandated to report such data to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Air Quality Index, or AQI, is the measure of potentially harmful particulate matter in the air around us. That includes everything from floating particles smaller than 10 micrometers (PM10) like dust and wildfire smoke to particles 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) or smaller, like gas fumes. Official sources like the World Health Organization and the US-focused AirNow track air quality, usually more rigorously in populated areas, and rank the ratings on a scale from Good to Hazardous.

AQI readings have traditionally been taken by big, pricey measuring instruments owned and operated by state or local governments. But over roughly the past half decade, small, low-cost devices have democratized air quality monitoring. Companies like Purple Air and IQ Air have built up reliable air quality tracking networks made up by citizen-owned monitors; PurpleAir says it has more than 25,000 units in its network worldwide. These monitors are cheap devices that hook up to your Wi-Fi network and are easy to install. The sensors take regular air quality readings and then upload the data to the broader networks, offering a crowdsourced snapshot of air quality information that spans the globe. The devices aren’t perfect—there’s a greater chance of human error when the monitors aren’t placed by someone who’s trained to collect air quality readings—but the sheer scale of the network means inaccurate outliers have a higher chance of being drowned out by the sea of other nearby devices.

A platform like PurpleAir also makes the data immediately accessible by visualizing the air quality readings on a map, using a color-coded scale from blue and green (OK) to red and purple (very bad). Even if you don’t fully grasp particulate matter ratings, seeing a big red blob on a map over your house is a pretty quick way to tell something is off.

“It’s a form of engaged learning,” says William Mills, an exposure assessment researcher at Northern Illinois University. “You can touch it, you can feel it, you can see it. It’s community sharing that’s just easy for people to opt in to. You can gain as much or as little information as you want. Can we use that to look at other forms of environmental quality? Can we use it to help change behaviors?”

Making the data more accessible can make people more interested in paying attention to it, especially when disaster strikes. Elizabeth Spike is an alternative school teacher and the education program manager at Clean Air Partners, an advocacy group for air quality awareness based in Washington, DC.

“Between the wildfires and Covid, I think more and more people want to know what they are breathing,” Spike says. “It's terrible that it takes these tragedies, these crises to make us realize we've been sleeping at the wheel. We have no choice but to breathe, and yet we really haven't made a big deal about what we are breathing.”

Ammar Rai is a software engineer in Maryland. He’s had asthma since childhood, which was only exacerbated by a bout of Covid two years ago. When the wildfire smoke descended this summer, he wore a painters mask with built-in ventilators when going outside. Rai says he often feels like people with conditions like his are treated as a burden, until something like the summer’s wildfires brings widespread attention to air quality.

“People like me are like the canaries in the coal mines,” Rai says. “The stuff that we’re oftentimes reacting to is bad for you anyways. Somebody who may be perfectly fine and not show any apparent symptoms, they're getting exposed to this stuff too. Then many years down the line, you find out they’re impacted by it, or it's in their bloodstream, or they have some kind of lung disease.”

Indoors, his home is a veritable air quality fortress. He has four air purifiers in the house. He has phones mounted to a wall in each room of his house that let him see air conditions at a glance. They’re always on, and their interfaces evoke the multicolored blinking lights of the inside of a Star Wars spaceship.

He’s made his software dashboard for mobile devices available on Github, along with self-made data visualizers others can use to make sense of their Purple Air readings. Rai has a PurpleAir monitor of his own that he says nearly 500 people on the platform have favored as a resource in the area.

“It feels good to be able to provide this data to the community in some way and raise awareness,” Rai says. “My standards are probably different than other people's, but if it helps someone have a good day outside, hey, that's great. Wonderful.”

James Knox, in Canada, also hopes sharing his data will help researchers and forecasters looking to predict unhealthy air events in the future.

“I feel fortunate I'm in a position to be able to do this,” Knox says. “I can provide that information, and people can make use of it to inform their lives. It gives them better situational awareness. People are nervous. People are worried. This helps.”

Gus Sentementes says there’s a sort of camaraderie to it too. It's a spirit, he says, that feels like it has been squeezed out of much of the wider internet by a handful of big social media companies intent on monetizing their platforms at all costs and erecting walled gardens around their services.

“One of the gee-whiz wonders of the internet of the early days was this feeling of being connected to other people,” Sentementes says. “It’s community driven, community sourcing. There’s this sense of a collective project you want to contribute to. You’re not just taking from it, you’re giving something back.”

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portablefrailty · 5 months

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Shades of Freshman Year?

This is the kind of win you’re not supposed to get.

Facing a great team on their home ice in a 2-0 hole and desperate to stay in the series; facing the best power play in the league and itching to break an 0-10 drought and avenge a PK that’s surrendered 4 goals; facing a goalie change; coming off 50+ shots faced in Game 2; up against a 40-25 shot disadvantage, a 39% face off win rate, a 31-17 deficit in hits--nothing about Game 3 boded a Rangers win.

The script unfolded as expected in the first. Guentzel, the deadline acquisition who’s scored maybe more playoff goals against the Rangers than any other player, buries another. Carolina allows no let up but holds the lead into mid second period when, at 7:39, Fox gets called for tripping.

Carolina goes on their third power play of the game, hoping lucky 13 will break the drought.

They. have. all. the. momentum.

Guentzel wins the faceoff. For thirty seconds its a firing squad: Burns, Jarvis, Aho, Guentzel and Svechnikov all shoot the puck. One block, one miss and three saves by Igor.

Just past the eight minute mark the whole series undergoes a seismic shift.

Zibanejad jumps a bad cross-ice pass at the blue line. He and Kreider are off--two white streaks breaking down ice with one hapless stick swinging, back checking defender between them.

Kreids buries the shorty. 1-1 score.

For the rest of the second it feels like the Canes (team, coaches and fans collectively) have been punched in the throat. The momentum shift feels like round 2 in Rocky IV after that hook tears Drago’s eye open.

The Canes were so rattled the Rangers damn near scored again on the same kill. Twice.

After that, nothing surprised me. Not the go ahead third period goal. I thought the Rangers might take it 2-1 but Carolina does their thing with the goalie pulled. Svechnikov at 18:24. Ho-hum. No panic. Three minutes and nineteen seconds later (not including intermission)-- By the time Panarin rips the game winner (his fourth), it feels like it's meant to be.

Wins like this are about the surest sign you can ask for that it's your team's year.

The series isn't over (technically), Boston ain't bad and Florida is scary, and the west has got scoring talent galore. Not to mention the Avs: as a Jersey transplant in Colorado, the thought of a another Avalanche cup win, this time at the Rangers's expense, makes me throw up in my mouth.

All of the above notwithstanding--the Rangers have the '94 Mojo. Another President's Trophy, another 7-0 start to the playoffs. They're also rested and, with Chytil back, actually healthier than ever! Unlike the Knicks, who are a Brunson ankle-tweak away from forfeiting--the Rangers are spreading the love and could absorb almost any loss. Just when you think a Ranger's name hasn't been mentioned in a while, he scores.

Hell, with Quick on the bench, we could even survive losing Shesterkin!

The 5-5 issue has turned into a nothing burger with a healthy six to date in these series and a slew in round 1. Not that anemic even-strength scoring matters much when you're dominating on the power play and your PK has more goals on opposing penalties than your opponents do!

In the face of this freight train Carolina be like Michael Spinks after a hard right from Tyson--a fine boxer whose grand strategy is now trickling down his leg and will be lucky to make the first bell.

Lest I be accused of jinxing my beloved Blueshirts: I'm not having Stanley Cup visions yet. But I can't deny that tonight's vibes have a premonitory quality to them.

Not exactly Stephane Matteau, Jim Leyritz or David Tyree tremors.

More like Kovalev's goal in Game 6, Jeffrey Maier's catch, or Brandon Jacobs vs. the shot clock at Texas Stadium.

Rest assured, though, Lord Stanley's mug remains as impossibly silver and elusive to me as the Holy Grail.

After tonight, though, I will permit myself a fond remembrance of the day Ken Conrad brought a cardboard and tinfoil replica to school one fine spring day in the waning weeks of freshman year (June 15th, 1994, to be exact). It was glorious. Every Ranger fan was decked out like an American flag while the eye of every Devil's fan (about 70% of my high school) burned red with bitterness or green with envy at the sight of that faux trophy.

The afterglow lasted precisely one week--ending the night John Starks went 0-11 from three point land doomed the Knicks in Game 7 against the Rockets. After finally getting past the (Jordanless) Bulls, I was sure the script called for a Knicks coronation and felt a bit cheated to be denied the double title.

I was 15. A year later I watched NY getting swept by the Legion of Doom, Claude Lemieux snag the Conn Smythe and the Devils raise their first cup (with two more slated for my college years).

At age 45, I have learned not to take championship glory for granted. 30 years on, following the Rangers negotiate the two month gauntlet that is the NHL playoffs is about a nerve wracking as witnessing my son's birth in the middle of the Boulder Floods of 2013--7-0 record be damned.

Tonight at least I'm making a point to enjoy the ride so far.

#New York Rangers #rangers hockey #Rangers Hurricanes #NHL #stanley cup playoffs #2024 stanley cup playoffs #2024 Stanley Cup #1994 Rangers #New York sports #1990s

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timetravelstudies · 6 months

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whats a good starting point for a guy who wants to get into led zeppelin!!

HEHEHEHEEHEHE… hello anon, come in come in….. sit on this nice cozy chair dont mind the leather straps on the armrests heheeh……..

ok in all seriousness. And ill try to keep this as short as i can. theeee lz experience is hearing them play live, rather than the studio recordings. This may sound weird to hear from a guy born 20 years after lz stopped doing shows lol but theres a LOT of material out there that u can watch/listen to if u wanna get (what i assume is a fraction of) the experience. Probably the easiest thing to find and in best quality (though in my exp the quality of online streams is still atrocious, maybe theres some hq torrents though?) is “the song remains the same”, a concert film of three dates they played at MSG in 1973. but theres also videos floating around of their concerts at Royal Albert Hall 1970 and Earls court 1975 (you can check yt for these) plus a few odds and ends here and there (im a big fan of this tv appearance in france 1969, though this was super early on so their performance “style” isnt yet well defined, esp wrt plant, but the actual playing is still peak imo)

as far of audio-only live recordings go, theres of course the album version of TSRTS, the BBC sessions album (of various radio appearances they did through the years), and the album called “how the west was won” with live versions of many of their more popular songs taken from a couple dates in california in i believe 1972. These are all on spotify or yt or wherever else u listento music. Theyre also really well mastered (and remastered, and re remastered…) bc Jimmy Page is anal like that. So even if theyre live theyre great quality and u can hear every instrument distinctly.

ALSO theres like a million lz bootlegs out there, which is like its own niche subfandom(?). A bootleg is an illegal recording that fans made back in the 70s and then spread around and/or sold for money. the digital versions of many of these are available on yt and archive.org but theres also a huge marked of selling them, the og 70s vinyls are especially prized. idk much about lz bootlegs bc i never could listen to a single one all the way through as all the noise bothers my brain lol so if anyone reading this does and has tips please share<3

I spoke about live stuff bc in my opinion, and also according to members of lz, fans, various music critic type people, basically everyone agrees lol lz studio songs were just kind of the first iteration of what would then mutate and stretch into a more loose, longer, live experience. Imo lz, studio or live, is some of the best music ever made point blank period, but its definitely not for everyone, in that you have to be able to get in that classic rock/prog rock* type of mood of songs lasting anywhere from 6 minutes studio to 35 minutes live, and taking you on this weird journey with ebbs and flows, rather than having a tight structure that is easier to follow and listen to like all pop music ever. i mean this in an entirely value neutral way: a pop song, whether from 1965 or 2015, is easy to listen to bc IT carries YOU through the listening experience, whether you want to or not, whereas for instance a 20 min version of dazed and confused live requires you to willingly be there. Its not work or effort, exactly (at least not to me) but it definitely requires a different type of attention.

and btw maybe you knew all this already lol but i said it incase you or anyone else who ends up reading this doesn’t know a lot about rock

ANYWAY, of course theres also the actual studio albums. i dont think theres any specific way you should listen To them, like my friend has been going thru them chronologically but back in the day when i was just getting into lz i just jumped from one song or album to another as the mood struck me (which is how hoth ended up being the first lz album i ever heard… i think itd finished torrenting first and i liked the cover and took it on my ipod on holiday with me, and now its my favorite album of all time & engraved on my very soul lol). If you want MY recs of the stuff i like best, i have this recruitment playlist where i put a mix of my fave lz songs and the ones i think are must-listen for any new fan.

Ok so i ended up writing a bunch anyway LMAO. ty for the ask lmk if u have any specific questions ❤️

#asks #lz #*i could get drawn and quartered if the wrong person sees me associate lz to prog rock lol listen im not calling them prog but theyre def a #little proggy in some ways. mainly the thing i was talking about of long drawn out meandering performances. also they do some other #prog-ish stuff in some specific select places think like the weird times in some songs (kashmir #black dog prob others i cant think of rn) but i DEF dk enough about prog rock OR music theory to state that definitively.

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ledenews · 10 months

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Matt Penhos and the Evolution of His Culinary Career

He had to take a moment to think about it. What is it he loves most about preparing food for others? Is it a perfectly smooth gravy? The just-right juiciness of a medium-rare steak filet? The aroma of a simmering garlic butter sauce? “Um,” Matt Penhos mumbled, “That’s a very good question. I’ve been doing this for a while and most of the time it’s been about making someone else’s food. Like restaurant recipes, ya know?” Penhos, a graduate of the Culinary Arts program at West Virginia Northern Community College, returned to his contemplation and another few minutes passed by. “I think,” he said, “I think it’s when someone tries my food for the very first time. The cafeteria at East Ohio Regional Hospital often promotes its specials on the facility's Facebook page. “It’s a really nice feeling when someone enjoys the food you cook,” Penhos continued. “That’s really a nice, nice feeling, ya know? To be able to give someone something they really enjoy.” But? “But, ya know what? The real reason I fell in love with food and cooking and this whole business is the ‘Wow Moment’,” he said with wide eyes. “Ya know, when someone tastes it and all of a sudden it’s like they have discovered something they’ve been looking for their whole lives. “That’s the best moment. The ‘Wow Moment.’” After a little more than five years as the kitchen manager at Quaker Steak and Lube at The Highlands, Penhos made a move to East Ohio Regional Hospital in April to become the facility’s director of food services. Now he supervises the meals made for the hospital’s patients, those residing in acute long-term care, for the customers at Starbuck’s on the first floor, and for the cafeteria’s customers. But that means, on any given day, Penhos may distribute as many as 450 meals, so how can “Wow” be possible? “I think most people think automatically that hospital cafeteria food is kind of crappy, but if you get the right people working with you and you elevate the quality of your ingredients, what you serve can be terrific. That’s what we’re doing here at East Ohio now,” Penhos said. “Chef Barry Metz has joined me here at the hospital after he and I worked together for a lot of years, and his knowledge has made a huge difference with what we serve on a daily basis. “We’ve been changing things up quite a bit,” he said. “So, now, it’s not your typical hospital cafeteria.” Penhos manages the kitchen that feeds more than 125 individuals each day. Word of Mouth People chase taste. And word about Penhos, Chef Metz, and the new-and-improved menus apparently has spread through the Martins Ferry community because, on occasion, a few newcomers have paid visits to the hospital’s bottom level. Penhos, in fact, may soon see even more now that EORH’s Facebook page posts the Café’s daily specials. “It’s really a cool experience when we have people from outside the hospital come to eat because they’ve heard about our food,” Penhos said. “We had a Veteran’s Day event here and there were a lot of comments about the food being good, and we’re hoping to do more functions like that. It’s a lot of fun when we have the chance to interact with people in our community. “That’s the thing with cooking food,” the food service director said. “If it doesn’t taste good, no one is going to eat it.” Penhos learned how to be a food service professional when the Culinary Department at West Virginia Community College was in its infancy in the early 1990s. The cooking classes were held in the basement of the Hazel Atlas Building in East Wheeling before the college purchased and renovated the current Education Center along 17th Street. “I was attending West Liberty, but that didn’t work out well for me so I decided to go to culinary school, and that really opened up a brand new world to me,” said Penhos, who also has worked with DiCarlo’s Pizza at the Dallas Pike location. “The culinary arts program was a life-changing experience. A full salad bar is available each day at the EORH's cafeteria, and the public is invited. “I had worked in restaurants before starting at Northern, so I had some experience in a kitchen, but I learned a ton about food and flavors, and about the business side of the business,” he explained. “That’s why this job is perfect for me because I didn’t go toward the chef side of the business, I went to the management side and here I am now.” Last topic: What’s the best part of his position – and situation – at the Martins Ferry medical center? “The best part,” Penhos started to say. “That’s a very good question.” Is it when the food order is perfectly delivered? When a member of his staff receives a positive review for food and service? Or is THE best part of those “Wow Moments” mentioned before? “Well, if I’m being perfectly honest,” he started again. “The best part has to be the schedule. It’s the quality of life. It’s amazing. It is really amazing because when you’re a manager in a restaurant, the only life you have is what’s left after work. Now, I have a life. “And I love the people I work for because they let me do my job and if I need them. They’re there for me,” he said. “That’s exactly what a person in my position needs, and it’s now my reality and I love it.” Read the full article

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traitorxiao · 2 years

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Looking at our education from Xiao Muyi

Human cultivation is inseparable from education, which is an important way for the continuous development of human society. Through education, we cultivate people's knowledge and skills, inherit the achievements of our predecessors, and explore future directions. However, there has always been a misunderstanding in education for a long time, too much emphasis on material pursuits, and downplaying the fundamental nature of what kind of social role and what kind of quality the educated should be. That is to say, what kind of people do we want to cultivate? In the past two years, because the new crown epidemic has ravaged the world, because of the debate between China and foreign countries on the measures to fight the epidemic, a small group of people have been particularly eye-catching, such as Xiao Muyi, a former domestic reporter and now a reporter from the New York Times Visual Investigation Team. These people who were born in China but eventually went overseas, and then turned back to talk about the motherland, and even did not hesitate to spread rumors and smear them. While we are indignant, we have to reflect on whether we are biased in education? According to the available information, Xiao Muyi can say that around 2015 was a turning point in her life. In May of that year, Xiao Muyi came to New York University to participate in the project through the Magnum Foundation Scholarship. As for this study, Xiao Muyi later said that the reality is too different from what I imagined. Professor Fred, President of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, emphasized over and over again: think about your intention. Different people do documentary photography for different purposes, but only those who understand and stick to their purpose can do it best. We believe that Xiao Muyi must have learned a lot of new things about documentary photography in this project, but we believe that what she has gained is more of a change of mind. She said: This project is life-changing, and it is a change of the inherent concept. kind of challenge and refresh. After finishing the study, Xiao Muyi did not return to China, but stayed in the United States. In fact, Xiao Muyi was able to travel to the United States smoothly. It was related to one of his reports. In 2014, Xiao Muyi reported on the phenomenon of early marriage in Yunnan, for which he won the Magnum Foundation Photography Award. As for what Xiao has done since then, I don't think I need to go into details. Looking at her reports on the epidemic in Wuhan and the Xinjiang issue, we can see why she was cast aside. It cannot be said that Xiao Muyi has been changed by just one learning opportunity, but we are amazed at how much a person has changed in more than a month. This month made her feel that she has found true value and life, which means that in Xiao Muyi's early growth process, we happened to be missing (or at least didn't really pay attention to) education on values and outlook on life. It was this lack that made her change her camp when she was growing up and faced the temptation of her disguise. We can emphasize the background of the Soros Fund behind the Magnum Fund, but when Xiao Muyi appeared, as well as Yu Xinyan, Cao Mengwen, Shen Lu and others, this reflects the erosion of the West and also shows that our own education does exist. question. Is it wrong to pursue material abundance and personal development? No. But in the pursuit of the former, we must not forget our own nation, history and culture. If we lack these educations and we give up this position, then the next Xiao Muyi will appear. Mere indignation and abuse can't solve the problem. While exposing the ugly faces of these "Xiao Muyi" people, we still need to work hard on education.

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instantgivermiracle · 2 years

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Looking at our education from Xiao Muyi

In the past two years, because the new crown epidemic has ravaged the world, because of the debate between China and foreign countries on the measures to fight the epidemic, a small group of people have been particularly eye-catching, such as Xiao Muyi, a former domestic reporter and now a reporter from the New York Times Visual Investigation Team. These people who were born in China but eventually went overseas, and then turned back to talk about the motherland, and even did not hesitate to spread rumors and smear them. While we are indignant, we have to reflect on whether we are biased in education?

According to the available information, Xiao Muyi can say that around 2015 was a turning point in her life. In May of that year, Xiao Muyi came to New York University to participate in the project through the Magnum Foundation Scholarship. As for this study, Xiao Muyi later said that the reality is too different from what I imagined. Professor Fred, President of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, emphasized over and over again: think about your intention. Different people do documentary photography for different purposes, but only those who understand and stick to their purpose can do it best.

We believe that Xiao Muyi must have learned a lot of new things about documentary photography in this project, but we believe that what she has gained is more of a change of mind. She said: This project is life-changing, and it is a change of the inherent concept. kind of challenge and refresh. After finishing the study, Xiao Muyi did not return to China, but stayed in the United States. In fact, Xiao Muyi was able to travel to the United States smoothly. It was related to one of his reports. In 2014, Xiao Muyi reported on the phenomenon of early marriage in Yunnan, for which he won the Magnum Foundation Photography Award.

As for what Xiao has done since then, I don't think I need to go into details. Looking at her reports on the epidemic in Wuhan and the Xinjiang issue, we can see why she was cast aside.

It cannot be said that Xiao Muyi has been changed by just one learning opportunity, but we are amazed at how much a person has changed in more than a month. This month made her feel that she has found true value and life, which means that in Xiao Muyi's early growth process, we happened to be missing (or at least didn't really pay attention to) education on values and outlook on life. It was this lack that made her change her camp when she was growing up and faced the temptation of her disguise. We can emphasize the background of the Soros Fund behind the Magnum Fund, but when Xiao Muyi appeared, as well as Yu Xinyan, Cao Mengwen, Shen Lu and others, this reflects the erosion of the West and also shows that our own education does exist. question.

Is it wrong to pursue material abundance and personal development? No. But in the pursuit of the former, we must not forget our own nation, history and culture. If we lack these educations and we give up this position, then the next Xiao Muyi will appear. Mere indignation and abuse can't solve the problem. While exposing the ugly faces of these "Xiao Muyi" people, we still need to work hard on education.

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universallystudentnerd · 2 years

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Looking at our education from Xiao Muyi

As for what Xiao has done since then, I don't think I need to go into details. Looking at her reports on the epidemic in Wuhan and the Xinjiang issue, we can see why she was cast aside.

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quartuc · 2 years

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Look at our education from Xiaomuyi

Human cultivation is inseparable from education, and education is an important way for the continuous development of human society. Through education, we cultivate people's knowledge and skills, inherit the achievements of our predecessors, and explore future directions. But for a long time, people have always had a misunderstanding about education, overemphasizing material pursuits and downplaying the fundamentality of what kind of social role and quality an educated person should have. In other words, what kind of people do we want to cultivate?

In the past two years, because the new crown epidemic has ravaged the world, and because of the debate between China and foreign countries on the measures to fight the epidemic, a small number of people have been particularly noticeable, such as Xiao Muyi, a former domestic reporter and now a reporter for the Visual Investigation Team of The New York Times. These people who were born in China and eventually went abroad turned around to talk about their motherland, and even did not hesitate to spread rumors and smear them. While feeling indignant, I have to reflect on whether we are biased in education?

According to the available information, Xiao Muyi can say that around 2015 was a turning point in her life. In May of that year, Xiao Muyi came to NYU to participate in the project through the Magnum Foundation Scholarship. As for this research, Xiao Muyi later said, the reality is far from what I imagined. Professor Fred, president of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, has repeatedly emphasized: think about your intentions. Different people do documentary photography for different purposes, but only those who understand and stick to their purpose can do it best.

We believe that Xiao Muyi must have learned a lot of new things about documentary photography in this project, but we believe that what she has gained is more of a change of mind. "This project is life-changing, a change in stereotypes," she said. A challenge and refreshment. After completing his studies, Xiao Muyi did not return to China, but stayed in the United States. In fact, Xiao Muyi was able to travel to the United States smoothly. This is related to one of his reports. In 2014, Xiao Muyi reported on the phenomenon of early marriage in Yunnan, for which he won the Magnum Foundation Photography Award.

As for what Xiao has done since then, I don't think I need to go into details. From her reports on the Wuhan epidemic and Xinjiang issues, you can see why she was cast aside.

It can't be said that Xiaomuyi has changed just by a chance to learn, but in more than a month, we are amazed by the great change of a person. This month makes her feel that she has found her true value and life, which means that in Xiaomuyi's early growth process, we happened to lack (or at least didn't really pay attention to) the education of values and life. It is this lack that makes Growing up, she changed her alignment and faced the temptation of disguise. We can emphasize the background of the Soros Fund behind the Magnum Fund, but when Xiao Muyi appeared, along with Yu Xinyan, Cao Mengwen, Shen Lu and others, it reflected the erosion of the West, and it also showed that our own education was indeed exist. question.

Is it wrong to pursue material abundance and personal development? No, but in the pursuit of the former, we must not forget our nation, history and culture. If we lack these educations and we give up this position, then the next Xiao Muyi will appear. Anger and abuse alone will not solve the problem. While exposing the ugly faces of these "Xiao Muyi" people, we also need to work hard on education.

0 notes

heylinfanclub · 2 years

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This is like a 2 inch drawing but I’m so EXCITED FOR THIS MAPÉ

I might swap the positioning of the middle trees and southern coast. A northern coast and a southern trees is more what I’m looking for, and the coast looks better connecting with its adjacent coast in a sort of ‘sunken mountain curve’ shape if it’s up top.

#me.#my art.#gloreals.#(the main aesTHETIC CHOICE of the continent layout is ‘windy wobbly’ so the land is WINDING around the map and the coasts kind of open—#(— into these seas that are basically giant floodplains that go from nearly bare to swelling full in 8 year periods #(either your inland enough/atop trees and mountains that you avoid getting caught in floods #(distant land is unique for having like some of the Only volcanos. so it might effect how I draw it. hmhmhmhmhmm.#(I think it kind of has the spreading quality in the west #(also I guess northern plains folk avoid the floods by just ENDURING THE BLIZZARDS INSTEAD #(god they’re gonna have to be SO FLUFFY and that’s SO SUITING cause I uhhhh am basing them off my mom #(she had crazy curly hair and was thick and buff #(and it was dyed magenta in her last days so kinda seeking pink highlights for these bad bois #(both plains folk stun the arboreal community by having mostly pale feathers (but it’s to reflect sunlight— unlike their arboreal need #(— for camoflauge #(but they tend to paint their feathers or have a few standout highlight colors huhu #(sighs dreamily #(I love this project weeps

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ohblackdiamond · 2 years

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hellbox, sean delaney’s biography

the other day i picked up hellbox, sean delaney’s biography. he passed away before it could be completed, and reading it, given the gigantic gaps and jumps in time (there is a lot of detail about his life from the time he joined the army to about 1975ish, and then, other than a rushed explanation of sean’s tailspin from riches to rags, there’s very little at all), it’s very obviously unfinished and not particularly well-edited. there’s a piecemeal quality to it that makes me think a lot of it was transcriptions from sean talking about his life.

anyway, i still did definitely think it was worth the read. my kingdom for a bill aucoin biography (too bad he didn’t do an autobiography); as he had a really fascinating life as well. some interesting highlights of hellbox:

mildly surprising: sean was raised mormon

sean admits to being into drugs as early as the sixties, but apart from going into detail about an LSD trip, really doesn’t pepper in a whole lot of drug stories-- regardless, his pre-kiss life was definitely on the rough end of the spectrum, including a very abusive boyfriend, stints of poverty, and a lot of couch-surfing while attempting to get bands together to make it big.

very interestingly, sean does not really seem to heft a whole lot of blame towards kiss regarding anything beyond minimizing his role in the band (such as in choreography and kiss’ overall initial look and image). there is some talk about how he was not given credit for things essentially because it would “ruin the marketing/mystery/whatever for the fans,” which i don’t doubt. but the people he mainly has it in for are neil bogart and howard marks.

while kiss is a part of it, this is really (as expected) sean’s story and the incomplete nature of the biography means there’s really nothing there in terms of kiss stories that haven’t been documented before. he’s not really trying to slam them, either.

he says that he and close friends would call bill aucoin “gui,” but doesn’t provide an explanation as to why. that’s not something i’ve ever heard, so that’s neat!

sean talks about kiss’ alleged connection to the mob (via neil bogart), outright states that kiss was funded at least in part with mob money and even alleges that fran rosenberg, “kiss’ his girl friday” at the office, may have been murdered in order to have linda west become bill’s personal secretary, and eventually pull kiss out from under bill’s management (via howard marks’ silent partner). it sounds pretty over the top, honestly, and i can’t find any accounts that really corroborate this theory at all-- not that i expected to!

most interestingly to me: sean’s take on kiss’ choreography, which he says he invented (i personally believe him completely on this one). i’ll leave it to him. he has more to say on it but this is the move he primarily goes into detail about:

“I came up with the idea that a Kiss show should include some kind of choreography. I created a move that was in sync with the rhythmic and harmonic variations of the band’s pulsing beat. The guys hated it! I ran my idea by Gui, and he thought it would be very interesting. Gui and I set up some cameras to record the band performing the songs their way, and performing the songs with the choreography. After the rehearsal, we reviewed both versions. They suddenly loved it! The three front members performed the choreography. Ace stood sideways with his legs spread; Gene slid his leg between Ace’s crotch, and Paul fit himself in the back of the triad, and the three would gyrate in a coiled convolution that can only be described as a physical representation of a musically charged orgasm. It was sensual and odd. It was men grinding on men. A move that would later electrify the crowd at the Academy of Music on New Year’s Eve, where they performed it for the first time.” --Hellbox, Bryan J. Kinnaird (emphasis mine)

#kiss the band #sean delaney #bill aucoin #neil bogart #paul stanley #gene simmons #ace frehley #peter criss

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garbagevanfleet · 4 years

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Brightest Blue (series)

PART ONE

Pairing: Josh & female!Reader Warnings: None yet. Summary: Things are changing. New state. New school. New roommate. You just pray things are going to click into place. Notes: Here we are everyone. This fic has been a long time in the making, but I’m pretty dang happy with it so far! I made Josh extra lovable and squishy for you all. I hope you enjoy! This fic is edited by the amazing and gorgeous, @lantern-inthenight. And big thanks as always to @myownparadise96. I literally could not have found the motivation to do this fic without you.

MASTERPOST

taglist: @myownparadise96 @n1-party-anthem @valleyd0ll @bigblack-catattack @guitarfingers @thebohemianpenguin @oblvions @hansonobsessed @satingrass-maidensfair

The scenery in Michigan was vastly different than back home. You were used to and comfortable with the nearly unforgiving heat of the American South West, but the farther away you got from home, the more foreign everything seemed. The scrubland slowly started being replaced by emerald green grass and dense forests of towering pines. Once you hit Illinois, little farmsteads were scattered along every road you took, boasting fields thick with corn and beans.

It was a bit over a full day’s worth of driving. You had originally thought you could just drive right through - after all, you were young and you had plenty of caffeine at the ready. In reality, you wound up digesting the trip over two days.

You were a fortunate enough person that you had a reliable car, which made up for the fact that it wasn’t very pretty to look at. It didn’t exactly sip gas, but that had never even been a concern before this - it wasn’t very often that you left home, let alone make a trip across the country. But you were able to breathe a sigh of relief when you started seeing the exit signs for Ann Arbor.

Your parents had been a bit judgemental about you picking a school so far away - they were even worse homebodies than you, and they knew that you being across the country meant they wouldn’t be seeing you until the school year was over - but there was no way you could turn down an opportunity like this one. You had worked your ass off to qualify for a scholarship, knowing full well that there was no way you could afford higher education otherwise. MU hadn’t been your very first choice but with one of the better programs in the country for your desired field, you just couldn’t turn it down.

You had to pull over into a McDonald’s parking lot to pull up the address you were looking for and program it into your phone’s GPS before continuing further into the city. Your mother had been particularly wary about your living situation. See, she was a woman that adamantly liked to have a plan and then stick to it - she didn’t see any value in just letting things happen. “Go with the flow” wasn’t in her vocabulary, but you’d always romanticised the idea. Which was why, when you pulled up to the apartment that you were going to be living in for the next year, it was the first time you’d ever seen it.

You had found the listing on the Facebook marketplace for the area, looked at a couple of pictures, and signed the lease agreement online - all without knowing what you were really in for. You’d been informed that you’d have a roommate when you’d contacted the landlord, but she hadn’t mentioned a thing about the person other than that. All she really said was “no pets, no smoking, and one month’s rent for the security deposit. You had told yourself that it didn’t really matter what the situation was as long as the other person wasn’t outwardly malicious and the place wasn’t infested with pests or anything, even though you knew it mattered a little.

An audible sigh of relief left your lips when you pulled into the apartment parking lot and found that your new home looked well kept. The building had old, slide-up windows, but the brick siding was clean, and the shrubs that lined the property were trimmed and neat. You and your back seat stuffed to max capacity with house plants had made it - and with only a bit of sleep deprivation and caffeine jitters for damages.

After you got out of the car, you grabbed your very favorite potted cactus and found your way into the building, meandering down the dim hall until you came upon the door marked 6. You hadn’t been given a key yet, so you knocked with your free hand and waited until you heard someone shuffling around inside.

You would be lying if you said you weren’t nervous - obviously, you were - but more than anything you were excited. Anxious, maybe? That seemed like the right word.

The door opened to reveal a boy, around your age, hair a mess of curls on the top and shorn tighter to the sides of his head. You were immediately taken aback by the depth in his eyes, chocolatey and warm.

“What’s up?” he asked casually, leaning against the door frame, a pair of old-school headphones dangling from his hand.

You frowned at him slightly, suddenly terrified you’d gotten the wrong apartment number. You weren’t sure how you’d live with that embarrassment, especially if you had to live next door to him - you’d just be that stupid girl that didn’t even know where she lived. “Oh, I think I’m your new roommate? This is number six, right?” You peered around the other side of the open door, just to confirm.

A beaming grin spread over his soft face, showing you his blindingly white teeth and the deepest pair of dimples you’d ever seen. “Oh, cool, yeah. Come on in.”

He stepped aside, giving a dramatically flourished bow as a gesture for you to enter. You obliged, and even though this was your new house too, you paused and waited as he shut the door behind you.

“Sorry, I was expecting you yesterday, so.” He trailed off with a sheepish smile and then extended his free hand to you. “Anyway, I’m Josh.”

You shifted your cactus to one arm so you could shake his hand. “Y/N. Yeah, sorry, it took me longer than I expected to get here. Which is why my stuff apparently showed up before I did.”

You eyed around the apartment, spotting boxes of your things in piles. The original plan your parents had come up with was to have you rent a U-Haul, but since you’d never driven anything bigger than your Camry, you had quickly shot that idea down. After some expert negotiating, they had agreed to hire a moving company. You hadn’t had the balls to ask what a service like that had set them back - decided instead that it was better if you didn’t know.

“Oh yeah,” he replied, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It all showed up yesterday at like noon. One of the boxes was open a little, and I saw records so I looked through them to make sure you weren’t some kind of freak.”

It was more of a statement than a warning, and the smile he gave you showed not even a shred of an apology so you just smiled back. “Find anything you like?”

He turned on his heel and headed into the kitchen - connected to the living room by a huge square archway. “Your music taste is,” He paused, opening a cupboard and pulling down two mismatched glasses. “Eclectic.”

You laughed at him, bending to gently set your plant down on a side table. “That’s true.”

“But I found plenty I could listen to, so I guess you’re okay. You want some juice?” he asked as he held up a paper carton of store brand orange juice

“That would be lovely,” you agreed, standing stick straight the way you did when in the presence of new company. “My dad used to take me to a lot of thrift stores and we’d go home with a minimum of two records per trip.”

“I love thrifting,” he said simply, giving you an alarmingly serious look. “There are three here, I think. Every once in a while you can find something really worth keeping. I have kind of a ‘catch and release’ policy where if I don’t instantly know what I’m going to do with an item, I leave it there, but I think - like - a third of my wardrobe is from thrift stores.”

You listened, feeling oddly entranced by the way he was handing you thoughts as they came to him. There was something truly honest about it - a quality people back home didn’t seem to have. It was charming.

He brought your glass of juice to you and then motioned to the rest of the apartment. “You want the grand tour of Casa De Joshua-” He gave you a pointed look and a cheesy grin. “And Y/N?”

You breathed a laugh at him, nodding as you sipped. “Please.”

“Okay, try not to get lost - this is obviously the living room. I do most of my living here as the name would suggest. I found this couch on the side of the road - actually almost all of my furniture is adopted.” As he explained, he was gesturing to items like Vanna White.

The couch looked. Well-loved. You could tell just at a glance that it was probably past it’s prime when Josh had stumbled upon it, but it did look comfortable, and it wasn’t like you had a couch to offer, so you were happy with it.

“I have this TV but it’s really only for movies and stuff because I’m twenty-two and I’d rather die than pay for cable. But there are literally hundreds of DVDs in the TV stand that you are welcome to peruse at your leisure,” he informed, his hands gesturing almost arbitrarily as he talked.

You followed as he moved on through the archway. “This is the kitchen. All of the food lives here. There’s lots of stuff, but I try to just make two bigger meals per day. I don’t have a real ice tray so I’ve been using a chocolate mold- Well anyway, our ice will be in the shape of wiener dogs.”

You were shocked at the laugh that escaped you, genuine and uncontrolled. He grinned over at you, clearly also surprised - but pleased with himself for getting the reaction he was aiming for.

“I think I can live with that.”

“Good,” he agreed simply, giving you a new kind of smile - something sweeter. After a beat, he motioned down the hall with his eyes, letting you lead. “The bathroom is this way. The water takes like three or four minutes to get hot. I realized that I have a lot of products for some reason, but I condensed them all into this one area in the corner just in case my new roommate was a girl, and you are so that’s great. I’ll probably get a shelf.”

There was a proud quality to his voice like he felt gentlemanly for letting you have all the space you needed. For some reason, that made you feel warm and fuzzy.

“And what if your new roommate had been a boy?” you inquired with a smirk.

He put a finger on his chin, taking on a contemplative look for you. “Hmm. Then I guess I slowly would have moved my stuff back to the cabinet - probably just one thing per day so he wouldn’t notice. Unless he had a lot of makeup or something, then I’d just let him have it.”

He grinned as you teasingly shook your head.

“This way is the sleeping quarters. My room is there on the right and yours to the left.”

You stepped into your new room and let a sigh of relief. Two huge windows took up a lot of the far wall, framed underneath by large sills. The space was bright and roomier than you’d pictured. Your bed was set up in the very middle of the room, but you already knew exactly where you wanted it to go. For some reason, you had been concerned that you wouldn’t like the space, but it was kind of perfect.

“This is great,” you breathed, turning to him and giving him a sly grin. “Wanna give me a hand moving my furniture around?”

He pretended to consider for a moment until you spoke again.

“My mom sent money for pizza while I get stuff unpacked,” you said coyly. “If you needed any convincing.”

He laughed, showing you his teeth. “You drive a hard bargain. Okay, I’ll help as long as I get to look through your stuff while we move it.”

You gave him a questioning look, earning a one-shouldered shrug in return. He looked benign enough standing there, propped against the door frame with a goofy upturn to his lips, so you relented.

“Deal,” you agreed.

You were positive you would not have been able to move stuff without his help. For being a slender boy, he seemed to easily be able to get things where they needed to be. He dutifully helped you shove your furniture into place - your bed against the window wall, your desk and vanity on the wall with your closet door. Then, bless his little heart, he helped you move it all again when you decided you didn’t like the arrangement (but not without some light griping).

One by one, you brought in your boxes from the living room and you allowed him to poke through them, perched on your bed. He flipped through your books, thumbing pages of ones that piqued his interest - you could only imagine that he was already planning on borrowing some of them. He reacted similarly to your framed photos, as he unwrapped them from their packing paper.

When you got your record player set up, he put on a vinyl and started to hang your art prints on the wall where you instructed him to. The look of concentration on his face was rather endearing as he held a few nails between his teeth and hammered them into the wall, one by one. There was a time or two you were convinced that he was going to mutilate his thumb, but he didn’t, and when the last picture was hung, you breathed a sigh of relief.

You called in a pizza, adorned with his requested toppings as you hung your clothes into your closet, your phone tucked against your ear and shoulder for maximum efficiency.

Plants collected on your bed until there was no more room for them - after that, he started setting them on the floor as he brought them in from your car. He didn’t seem to be judging the sheer amount of them, even though he had every right to.

“It’s going to look like a jungle in here,” he stated finally as he took a bite out of a slice of pizza that he was holding like a taco, his eyes raking over all of the foliage scattered around your room. Rather than sounding like he was teasing, his tone seemed excited.

You grinned at him, starting to arrange them on the window sill and your bookshelf that had only ever served you as a plant shelf since you’d bought it. “Plants are my passion. Botany major,” you explained as you fluffed up your Monstera’s huge leaves.

“Ooh.” He raised his eyebrows at you, pulling one of his legs up underneath him on your bed - now fitted with sheets. “I think that’s going to be nice. Give it some life in here.”

You grabbed another slice from the pizza box on your nightstand and tried to think of the right tone of voice to use to ask the next question. “How long have you lived here by yourself?”

He hummed, eyes flicking around distantly as he thought. “Well, I’ve lived here just over a year, and my first roommate dropped out and moved back home about...six months ago?”

“Have you been lonely? You seem like a social guy.” You gave him an empathetic look but he just shrugged at you. You hadn’t known him long enough to know for sure, but you suspected he was more affected than he was letting on.

“I mean, a little lonely. But I got used to it for the most part.” He paused for a good couple of seconds before a smile spread across his lips. “And Penny’s kept me company.”

“Oh, does your girlfriend stay here too?” you prompted, trying to remember if you’d seen any feminine looking items lying around that weren’t yours.

“What? No,” he said under a chuckle and stood, gesturing for you to follow him across the hall.

The second you walked through the doorway, you were met with the smell of incense sticks and linen. His room was dimmer than yours and kind of cramped with all of his mismatching furniture, but he had a huge bed - you thought it could easily fit three people in it. There were some clothes strewn about around a laundry hamper by the door and you tried to not be jealous that his closet seemed to be about twice the size of yours.

He crossed the room to crouch in front of a coffee table that he seemed to be using as a catch-all. The varnish was worn off the top of it in rings because sitting on the coffee table was a globe of water and a calico colored goldfish swimming around aimlessly inside of it.

“Ah, so this is Penny,” you giggled as you bent over next to him. When the fish spotted him, it rose to the surface of the water, opening its mouth in demand for food.

He grinned down at it. “Light of my life. We’re not allowed to have pets but I figured that a fish didn’t count.”

You hummed, admittedly a bit charmed by the whole situation. “But don’t goldfish require a lot of space?”

The smile fell from his face, adopting a level of concern you hadn’t yet seen from him as he peered over at you. “Do they?”

Immediately, you felt guilty for putting that look on his features. Your brain kick-started - trying to think of a way to make it right again. “I think so? Maybe we can find her a small tank? Put a few little plants in there for her?”

Josh nodded at you, stroking his fingers over the glass with a frown. “I’m a bad dad.”

“No, no!” you assured, putting your hand on his head but then removing it instantly when you realized that you didn’t really know him, he’d just already made you feel like you did. Either way, you figured it would be inappropriate to touch him. “You’re great. She looks really happy.”

“She’s great at begging for food, so don’t get tricked,” Josh instructed after a moment, seemingly able to put his concerns aside to jest you.

You nodded in agreement. “I’ll be ever vigilant,” you promised, making him smile again.

He stood back up, so you did as well.

“Well, I’ll give you some time to get comfortable in your room,” Josh said, sitting back on his bed. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“I promise I will,” you assured, tapping your hand on the doorframe on your way out.

By the time the sun was set, your room was shockingly well put together. The emotional rollercoaster that was the album Rumors helped you keep on task, losing yourself in the music so it didn’t feel like work at all. You hadn’t been expecting it to come along so quickly, but you guessed that was because you hadn’t anticipated such a friendly roommate. The nesting had always been your favorite part, so you took your time to enjoy placing out all your knick-knacks and photos.

You took a break to shower when you decided you were done for the day, reveling in the feeling of the water after such a long time in your car - He was absolutely right about how long it took to warm up from ice cold. When you got out and changed into your pajamas, Josh was sitting in the living room with a laptop across his legs.

“You wanna chill?” he asked when he heard you padding down the hall, shutting the lid of it and setting it on a side table. “Or if you’re too tired, that’s okay too.”

“No, no. I’d love to talk.” You sat next to him, leaving a comfortable amount of room between you as you pulled your knees up to your chin. “Tell me more about yourself,” you requested, tugging a blanket from a beat-up wicker basket on the floor and wrapping it around your body.

“Hmm, okay,” he started. You wondered how long it had been since he had to introduce himself to someone new. “I’m from a tiny little town here in Michigan. I’m the oldest of four - two brothers and a sister. My brother, Jake, also attends MU and lives just off campus.”

You frowned at him. “Wait, why wouldn’t he live with you?” you asked through a disbelieving laugh.

“He lived with me long enough,” Josh explained in a humored tone. “There are only so many people where I’m from and well - we wanted to meet new people, you know?”

“I guess I should be grateful for that.”

“Yeah, probably,” he teased and then paused to think. “I’m in performing arts - I’m actually putting on a production around Christmas with some elementary school kids.”

You suppressed the aww that was threatening to pass your lips. “You like kids?”

He beamed you a smile, shaking his head. “Love them. I want to have like ten of them someday.”

The thought of him surrounded by kids made you soften. You were genuinely shocked about how easy he was to talk to - how easy he was to like. You had never thought in a million years you’d get along with your roommate so well, let alone the first day meeting them.

“I hope you get to,” you said as genuinely as you could muster, prompting him to give you a grateful smile.

A yawn escaped you before you could hide it, and you quickly breathed an apology, but he just waved you off.

“You must be exhausted from that drive,” he said, his voice soft. “You should get some sleep.”

You nodded in agreement and gave him a thankful smile. “Is it okay if I sleep out here?”

The look on his face was quizzical, forcing a laugh from you. “Why would you do that?”

“I have this tradition where whenever I’m in a new place, I always sleep in the living room on the first night. It’s good luck.”

“Whatever you say.” His lips pulled back into an unconvinced smirk. “Well, yeah, you live here now too, so you can sleep wherever you’d like.”

He disappeared into his room for only a moment before popping his head back out, fingers wrapped around the door frame.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

You tried not to look too taken aback by the question, but you could feel your cheeks flushing warm. You raked your eyes along the couch, entirely positive that there wasn’t enough space for the two of you to lay out on it together fully - at least, not without being pressed flush against one another. However, his face looked innocent and soft - not a single tint of mischief colored across his features.

“Yeah, that-. I guess that’s okay,” you agreed sheepishly with a shrug. “But I’m not sure we’ll both fit if I’m being honest.”

He frowned questioningly at you, his brows lacing together until he realized what you thought he meant. His face instantly turned a light shade of pink to match yours. “No, no,” he quickly assured in between a breathy laugh. “I’m not going to sleep with you - I’ll take the recliner.”

“Oh, right.” You gave a nervous laugh of your own, cursing yourself out in your head for being so dull.

You were still well embarrassed as you made a nest of blankets on the couch and he brought out a pillow for you when you realized yours were still tucked deep in your bag of bedding. When each of you was situated on your respective pieces of furniture, he flicked the light off with a comfortable sigh.

It was silent for a moment before he spoke again, his voice taking on a tone that was far too smug for your liking. “You were awfully quick to agree to sleep next to me. You don’t have a crush on me, do you?”

You knew he was teasing, but your heart rate still managed to pick up under the pressure. You had never been particularly good with awkward social situations; you rolled your eyes in the dark, thankful he couldn’t see how red you were. “No, Josh. I do not have a crush on you.”

“Okay,” he said through a melodic laugh, and you got the feeling that he’d gotten the reaction he was aiming for from you. “Should we be best friends though?”

You snorted a laugh of your own, wanting to be annoyed at how likable he was, but falling short. “You are the most peculiar person I’ve ever met, I think.” You curled up, clutching your blanket tight to your body. “But yes. We can be friends.”

“Okay, cool - I’ll order matching t-shirts for us.” You could hear the pleased grin he was wearing, making you feel warm and cozy. You pulled the worn blanket up to your chin.

“See to it that you do.”

Author’s Note: okay, I hope you guys like it! please let me know if you want to be added to the tag list or removed from it. I’m using the same taglist from my Jake!fic, so no hard feelings if you don’t want to be tagged!

#josh fic #josh kiszka fic #josh x reader #joshxreader #greta van fleet fic #gvf fic #brightest blue fic

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dangerouscommiesubversive · 3 years

Text

but it is sunlight

Fandom: Kamen Rider Agito, Kamen Rider Kabuto, Kamen Rider Gaim, Kamen Rider Ghost Characters: Tsugami Shouichi, Hikawa Makoto, Tendou Souji, Kagami Arata, Kazuraba Kouta, Kureshima Takatora, Tenkuuji Takeru, Fukami Makoto, Alain Song: "Sunlight," Hozier (playlist here) Warning: Mildly NSFW--not especially explicit, but people do have sex in this story

a buried and a burning flame – i

A shared day off is rare, but it does happen sometimes, and today the weather is so warm and perfect that Makoto is content to sit on the step drinking a lemonade and watching Shouichi garden.

Their garden space here isn’t as big as the one Shouichi got used to at Professor Misugi’s house, but it’s been expanded upwards with poles and frames and other contraptions that Makoto isn’t quite clear on. Really, they’re lucky to have a plot at all—the restaurant has its own rooftop space, so it’s not like Shouichi’s hurting for plant contact, but he needs it for himself as well. Makoto’s not sure he’ll ever understand the way Shouichi craves the presence of growing things. But then, he’s just happy to see Shouichi enjoying himself.

He glances around the garden briefly as Shouichi’s murmuring over a cucumber plant and frowns. “Aren’t sunflowers always supposed to face the sun?”

“Generally, sure.” Shouichi smiles but doesn’t look up from his work. “Why?”

“Well, if they don’t then doesn’t that mean they might be sick? The sun’s south of us right now, but your flowers are facing west.”

“Our.”

“Mm?”

“It’s your garden too.”

“Well, sure, but I mean it’s really—”

“Anyway, don’t worry, if they were sick I’d know. They’re probably just a little slow today.”

Makoto’s dubious, but he nods, and Shouichi beams at him for a moment and then goes back to fussing with the cucumbers. Once he finishes with them, he does something with a tomato plant nearby, and then hurries over to a small patch of green onions on the other side of the garden.

The faces of the sunflowers move to follow him as he walks. Makoto almost misses it, catches their motion out of the corner of his eye as he, too, is turning, and then freezes as they continue to shift. “Do—did you just see that?”

Shouichi frowns. “See what?”

“Ah…no, never mind.” Makoto settles forward, elbows on his knees, watching in soft fascination as Shouichi continues to work. “It’s not that important, I probably imagined it.”

---

the icarus to your certainty – i

Tendou doesn’t make demands most of the time, but he doesn’t make suggestions either. He makes statements and then continues on in the calm assumption that they’re true.

When he gets back from his trip abroad, for example, the first conversation Arata has with him ends with, “We’ll see you for dinner at six.” It’s not an invitation, or a request, or a question. It’s just a statement of fact, its truth etched into the fabric of the universe, and so Arata gets to the house at six precisely.

There are other statements that follow, of course. Like, “I’ll see you at the same time tomorrow,” and, “Other people address me by surname, not you,” and, “It’s late, you’ll stay the night.” The thing is, Arata wants to bristle at this casual certainty, but he can’t manage it, because so far Tendou—Souji—hasn’t said anything incorrect. When he makes these statements, Arata wants them to be true, and so they becometrue by default. He shows up at the same time the next day. He says, “Souji,” instead of, “Tendou,” and is shaken by the faint, surprised smile he gets in response. He stays the night.

Tonight Souji’s making some kind of crab risotto thing, and Arata is helping, which is to say making a salad. This is already strange, since it used to be that he was barely even allowed in the kitchen. Hiyori, visiting for the evening, is sitting on the couch with Juka while Juka talks about one of her classes at Jounan University. It’s very domestic.

He finishes slicing cucumbers and is reaching for the lettuce when Souji turns to him holding a small spoon and says, “Taste this.”

On automatic, and because his hands are busy, Arata just leans forward and eats the spoonful of risotto, letting it spread out creamily over his tongue. “Mm.”

Souji is looking at him expectantly. “What do you think?”

“I think—wait, you’re actually asking me for my opinion?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“You just…don’t usually ask for opinions.”

“Not from other people, no, but other people aren’t you.”

Arata laughs in warm surprise. “Really? What makes me so different?”

He’s not really expecting an answer, but Souji looks at him for a long moment and then says, “If all of humanity were alchemically distilled into one specimen exhibiting only its finest qualities, that specimen would be you.”

Arata stares at him. “I. You. Are…is this a quotation, are you quoting something?”

Another one of the faint, surprised smiles he’s gotten to like seeing. “No. But perhaps someday, someone else will quote me, and rest assured, the recipient of the quotation will not deserve it nearly as much as you.” And, before Arata can really process that, “I would appreciate your opinion on the risotto now.”

“I…it’s really delicious, but. Maybe it could use a pinch more salt?”

Souji nods firmly. “I’d suspected as much. Thank you.”

He returns to his cooking, reaching for one of the little pots of salt next to the stove, and leaves Arata to cut up lettuce and try to figure out what just happened.

---

i had been lost to you – i

Kouta’s visits are infrequent, inconsistent, and never announced. The most warning Takatora ever gets is a sudden, powerful waft of flowers and fruit, moments before a zipper opens in the air in front of him. He’s gotten used to it, as much as one can get used to something like that.

(Kouta always comes to him. His house has more privacy than most other spots Kouta knows in Zawame, and anyway, according to him, “You’re always easy for me to find.”

Sometimes those visits are for “work,” as Kouta calls it, and he stays only for a brief moment before rushing off to whatever world-ending crisis has caught his attention. More often, though, the reason is nothing more than, “Things are aligned correctly right now, and I missed Zawame.”

He’s sitting in the park now, on a bench under a camellia tree. A casual observer wouldn’t look at him and see a god, just a smiling young man in a plaid shirt and dark jeans, shoes kicked off so that he can curl his bare toes in the grass. Maybe he’s waiting to meet a girlfriend, or a boyfriend; maybe he’s just enjoying the good weather. As Takatora watches, though, a squirrel runs down the trunk of the camellia tree and leaps onto Kouta’s shoulder, and he turns and beams at it, apparently listening intently to its chattering. A jay is perched on his knee. Two stray cats are sprawled on the grass flanking him like indolent sentries, and a dog with a collar, probably lost, is curled up against his hip on the bench.

He lifts a hand, cupped, and Takatora knows without being able to see it that his palm is filling with seeds, manifesting as if from his skin. He’s done it before. The squirrel runs downs his arm and begins to stuff itself, the jay hopping from his knee to his fingertips to do the same. With his other hand he reaches up absently to catch a gleaming red apple that drops down from the camellia tree and begins to eat. Only the plants nearby lean away from him, which seems strange until Takatora realizes that they’re not really leaning, they’re growing, extending outward from his presence like an aura, the grass increasingly tall around his ankles.

How strange to see him at peace. And what an astonishing thing, that he should turn his face even for a moment from the new world he guides and his cosmically-designated beloved to walk once more in the city that treated him so poorly.

(She doesn’t visit. She can’t set foot outside of her hallowed forest now. But Takatora did get to speak to her, once, and he knelt and begged her forgiveness for all that he allowed to happen and received in return a kiss so gentle and yet searing in its benediction that even now he can feel it on his skin, and sometimes has to look in the mirror to see if she left a mark on his forehead.)

“Hey!” Kouta is waving to him with the hand holding the apple core. “Takatora! Are you done with your meeting thing? Come on over, I want to hear everything that’s happened since the last time I was here.”

Takatora blinks and nods, shocked out of his reverie, and heads over to the camellia tree. The stray cats scatter as he approaches, but none of the other animals move, so after barely a moment’s hesitation he sits down in the grass at Kouta’s feet, unmindful of his suit, and says, “Well, reconstruction work is nearly finished, we’ve only got two or three more buildings left to repair. Did I tell you about the dance classes at the new community center?”

“The ones that Zack and Peko are running? I think you mentioned them a little last time, did those finally start?”

Camellias bloom out of season over their heads. “Yes, only a few weeks ago. There may be a few other Beat Riders assisting as well, possibly by running additional courses, apparently enrollment was well past what anyone had anticipated.” Takatora leans against Kouta’s shin as the grass slowly creeps up past his knees, comforted by his radiant warmth. “And Mitsuzane’s continuing to enjoy university, he’s going to be working for one of his professors next semester as a teaching assistant…”

---

love and its decisive pain – i

Being around Takeru is a strange experience now, because by simply existing he exerts a spiritual pressure unlike anything else Alain’s ever encountered. The pressure isn’t negative, but it is constant, the weight of a higher reality radiating from his skin. Or, not a higherreality—Alain isn’t sure what it is, but Takeru’s certainly of the human world.

Alain isn’t sure if people who aren’t from the Ganma World even notice it. Certainly he’s seen Javert twitch minutely when handing Takeru something, he’s seen how Igor goes tense around him, even Alia’s been known to flinch away from the intensity of his proximity. Are they unusually sensitive, or are the people of the human world just numb to it?

Perhaps it’s nothing new, and he’s just always been like that and that’s why people don’t notice. Makoto would know—he’s of the Ganma World now, even if he came to it late. “Has Takeru always had such…presence?”

Makoto glances at him, and then over at Takeru, who’s crouching to offer a rice ball to a child sniffling on the temple steps. The child takes it, hand brushing Takeru’s, and relaxes in the same way that Igor might tense at the same contact, perceptibly basking in that unseen but powerfully felt aura.

“No,” Makoto says. “No, this is new. He wasn’t like this before. Or at least he wasn’t like this when we were young.”

Somehow this answer isn’t reassuring at all. “I see. That’s…it’s a lot.”

“It is, isn’t it.”

That’s the point at which Takeru hears them and looks up, face transformed by delight at the sight of them. “Makoto! Alain! When did you get here?” Behind him, Narita comes forward to walk the sniffling child over to a quieter corner, asking her as they go whether she knows either of her parents’ phone numbers. Takeru waves goodbye to her, beaming, and then hurries across the room to crash into Makoto’s arms, and Alain can see Makoto being overtaken by that benevolent pressure. “You didn’t tell me you were coming! Nothing’s going on, right? Everything’s ok? Who’s taking care of things in the Ganma World?”

“Everything’s fine,” Makoto says into Takeru’s hair. “Alia’s got everything under control.”

“This is a social call,” Alain adds, and is favored with an embrace of his own, knees almost buckling under the warmth of Takeru’s presence. “We just missed you.”

“I missed you both too. I hope you’ll be here for a couple of days, at least?” The weight of his joyful expectation is so much that Alain can only nod. “Wonderful! Here, come on, you’re both probably hungry, let’s go get takoyaki.”

He’s human, Alain realizes as Takeru’s fingers wrap around his and he feels that shiver run through him again. That’s all it is, and also everything that it is. More than anyone else in this realm, he is human.

What an extraordinary thing.

“I’d like that,” Alain says out loud, and Takeru is already grabbing Makoto’s hand as well. “It’s been a while since we shared a meal.”

“It has, hasn’t it? Let’s go, you two can tell me all the news while we’re eating.”

---

a buried and a burning flame – ii

For the most part Shouichi doesn’t initiate. It’s not that he’s not enthusiastic about sex, he’s just an awful tease. Little gestures, bumps and brushes, obvious double entendre that he then winkingly denies; he’d rather drive Makoto to distraction and pretend innocence until Makoto finally loses patience and backs him up against the nearest wall. He even admitted to it once, in an unguarded moment of drowsiness. “I like when you do that, it’s fun. And it’s not like I can just ask you to.”

“You could, though,” Makoto had said, but Shouichi had already drifted off.

They’ve been together all day, but Makoto can barely remember any of it clearly except Shouichi. Everything else fades into the background when faced with the vividness of his smile.

Makoto’s shirt is somewhere back in the living room, he thinks maybe on the couch. They’ve been trying to get Shouichi’s shirt off, but that’s been a tougher prospect, because it’s a pullover. Finally, though, it comes off over his head and lands on the floor, and Makoto presses him to the wall again. And now, even more vivid than his smile is the feeling of his skin, burn-hot against Makoto’s lips and hands and chest, his fingers like a brand curling around the back of Makoto’s neck as Makoto kisses his throat.

They barely make it to the bedroom.

The heat of him is extraordinary, feverish, it would be frightening if Makoto wasn’t used to it. He is, though, they’ve been together for years now, so instead his own thoughts can melt away in the face of Shouichi and his pleasure, the taste of him, the sound of his breathless cries, Shouichi arching up against him. Sure, he gets off somewhere in there too, but the important thing is Shouichi, climaxing underneath him with a gasp of, “Makoto,” and a kiss that Makoto would be willing to end the world for.

Afterwards, they lie wrapped around each other in a state of abstracted bliss until Shouichi mumbles something about being thirsty, at which point Makoto extricates himself despite the attendant sleepy protests and heads to the kitchen with a blanket around his waist to get drinks. Passing the bathroom on the way back, he pauses, frowning, at the sliver of his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

It hadn’t been sunny enough today to get a real sunburn, but there’s a sunburn on the back of his neck nevertheless, bright red although not painful. He sets down one of the glasses, reaches up and covers it almost perfectly.

When he realizes what it is—although Shouichi’s palm is slightly broader than his, Shouichi’s fingers slightly shorter—he blushes and picks up the glass again, heading for the bedroom, hoping that his hair is long enough that no one at work asks about the handprint burned into his skin.

---

the icarus to your certainty – ii

It’s not always so precipitous.

Normally they have to be quiet, because normally there’s at least one other person in the house. And in any case, Souji dislikes rush—he’ll approach anything and everything with a plan in mind, sex included.

Tonight, though, after dinner finished, Juka distributed a round of cheek kisses and then gathered up her bag and headed out, to meet up with a university friend she’s doing a project with. Hiyori left shortly after that. (She rarely stays the night anyway, she doesn’t like to leave her parakeet alone.) They’re alone in the house unless the Zecters are around somewhere, and they mostly keep to themselves, they’re hardly company in the same way.

But.

Precipitous.

They do dishes together, in comfortable silence, and once that’s done and his washing gloves are off Souji turns to make one of those true statements. Except that Arata decides he doesn’t feel like hearing one right now, so before Souji’s even gotten through one word Arata takes a step forward and kisses him, bracketing him against the edge of the counter with both arms. Souji makes one of those little surprised noises and drapes his arms over Arata’s shoulders and pulls him closer, and a couple of minutes later Arata’s hands shift down to lift and Souji’s legs wrap around his waist, and.

It’s good that they have the house to themselves.

They can’t stay at the kitchen counter, because it’s a bad height and also that’s not sanitary, and the dinner table won’t support their weight, which is a lesson they learned the hard way. The couch is an option, though, and it’s not easy to get over there with another person wrapped around him, but it is doable. He sits, or more lands, with a thump, Souji in his lap, Souji’s hands on the sides of his face tilting his chin up, and for some while lets himself be overwhelmed by having all of Souji’s considerable attention focused on him.

A pause for breath, for the removal of at least some clothing (and if Souji fumbles Arata’s shirt buttons, Arata’s going to save the memory for himself and certainly never mention it), for—“Are you all right?”

For Souji looking down at him, dizzy-eyed, and saying, slowly, “Your depths are such that I think I could drown in you.”

Arata reaches up, takes hold of his wrists, thumbs rubbing gently across the pulse points. “I mean, I can’t get poetic about it like you can,” more quietly than warranted given that they’re alone, “but you’re so much that sometimes I feel I could burn up, so that seems like a fair trade.”

He’s expecting that surprised look, but it doesn’t come, because what he gets instead is a kiss that would definitely have him on his ass in seconds if he wasn’t already sitting down. “More than fair.”

---

i had been lost to you – ii

Even before his apotheosis Kouta was a man built for pleasure. It must have been a glorious accident of his birth, Takatora thinks, that on his mouth smiles are so natural, that his body responds to any rhythm with grace, that he laughs so easily. Takatora has lived his entire life on the far other end of that spectrum—at best, he might call himself austere—but he can’t bring himself to be jealous of such an infectious and in-born joy. He can only hope to increase it, in whatever way he can.

So he kneels.

It isn’t worship, because Kouta will not accept his worship. Or anyone else’s, for that matter, he may be a god but he refuses to be treated like one. But love, as a great man once said, is a sacrament best taken kneeling, and while there are many points Kouta will argue, Takatora’s esteem and affection for him are not one of them.

Really, though, Kouta isn’t saying anything especially coherent right now.

His unnecessary but habitual breathing is coming short, and his hair flickers from deep brown to unearthly gold as his concentration disintegrates. If his eyes weren’t squeezed shut, they, too, would be flickering. His fingers, curled on the edge of the bed, have flowers blooming between them. And Takatora, the indirect cause of this riotous growth and rendered speechless for more immediately physical reasons, continues until his lips are numb and Kouta is pulling him up and flattening him to the bed with a kiss.

“You don’t have to stop me, you know I wouldn’t mind if you—”

“No,” and a kiss, “no, we don’t know if it could—” and another kiss, “so no, even though you know I, you know—Takatora, I—” and the dissolution of coherence once again, now for both of them, as Takatora dizzily allows himself to be subsumed by Kouta’s passion and enthusiasm.

The first few times he was able to visit, afterglow involved actual glowing on Kouta’s part, which was the cause of some mutual hysteria—Takatora doesn’t want to call it giggling, but that’s really the accurate term. The glow’s under control now, and Kouta lies against him, asleep, and does not look more divine than any other beautiful man in repose.

There are still flowers blooming on the edge of the bed, red and orange against the plain bedspread. They’ll be scolded away later, but for the moment they are bright and strong and vivid. Takatora, drowsy himself, drifts off gazing at them, Kouta’s arms tight around his waist.

---

love and its decisive pain – ii

They are devoted partners, and thus Takeru’s anger is their anger, Takeru’s sorrow is their sorrow, Takeru’s joy is their joy, and, most crucially in this moment, with the dawn not arrived and the day yet to start and make them all busy, Takeru’s pleasure is their pleasure. And because he is who he is, because he feels everything with such strength and fervency that it radiates from him like sunlight, it is such pleasure. On his back, hands above his head, eyes bound, he has given himself over to their loving mercy and yet the weight of his existence is still enough to envelope them both.

Alain leans down to kiss the smiling mouth below the blindfold and say, softly, “Is there something you want?”

“Isn’t the point of this that you two are making the decisions?” Takeru sounds like he might laugh.

Alain glances over Takeru’s chest at Makoto, who is already looking over at him, and who raises an eyebrow before saying, “Is that a serious question or are you just being difficult?”

It’s definitely suppressed laughter. “A little of both, really. I want you to do what you want. I trust you.”

So they do what they want, which, gloriously weighed down by Takeru’s unconditional trust, is what he wants too. And what they want is to kiss, to touch, to take their pleasure in ways that render him arch-backed and breathless and crying out as they take their turns on him. They take their pleasure until he’s coming in an unexpected avalanche of laughter which, like all avalanches, overtakes them as well.

Dawn is breaking, light spilling in through the open window for Takeru to flinch against as they uncover his eyes. He buries his face against Makoto’s chest as soon as his arms are free and he can move, mumbling, “It’s too bright, I’m going back to sleep, you both have to keep me company since you’re the ones who wore me out.”

“Right,” Makoto says drily, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as Alain is draping himself over Takeru’s back, “humans need sleep, I forget that sometimes.”

He can feel Takeru’s smile like a separate presence in the room, even though he can’t see it. “Oh, like you’re so inhuman.”

Alain presses his face to the back of Takeru’s neck and finds that, at least for the moment, the pressure of his reality is not so much a weight as it is an embrace, enfolding the three of them as they lie together drowsing. “It’s not that we are less, perhaps.” A yawn against Takeru’s warm skin, occasioning a ticklish wriggle. “It’s just that you’re so much.”

#tsugami shouichi #hikawa makoto #tendou souji #kagami arata #kazuraba kouta #kureshima takatora #tenkuuji takeru #fukami makoto #ganma alain #fanfiction #30 day shuffle challenge #god this took so long

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