#I don’t think I used a glue stick in the past decade

[aboutiroh]

Being multilingual is constantly being confronted with the fact that you don’t know a basic word in one of the languages you speak.

Yesterday, while returning from the store, I realized I couldn’t remember the English word for the object I had just bought. This object may have been one of the first English words I learned in school and yet I couldn’t remember it no matter how hard I tried. The best I came up with was ‘tubular adhesive’. I had bought a glue stick.

[liunaticfringe]

(via How Lucy Liu became comfortable with the human body through her artwork | Datebook)

It can be an unsettling experience for any art student, particularly one who’s innately demure about nudity, to sketch the human figure from a naked model for the first time. Of course you’re there to look closely at the body, but is it really OK to stare? And how awkward is it if you happen to make eye contact?

“I think I was honestly in shock the first time,” says Lucy Liu, laughing as she recalls her bashfulness at her first life drawing class at the New York Studio School more than two decades ago. “Here was this person displayed and actually comfortable, and everyone’s just looking like it’s nothing, like it’s a wine bottle or bowl of grapes. But I was like, wait a minute! Where’d the real bowl of grapes go?”

The actress who is perhaps best known for playing a sword-slashing yakuza assassin in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” a sexy PI in “Charlie’s Angels” and, most recently, a socialite on the dark comedy “Why Women Kill,” visited the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville on a recent afternoon. Her first U.S. museum exhibition, “Lucy Liu: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others,” is on view there through April 26.

Few of Liu’s legion of fans have been aware that during her time as an actress she’s had a parallel career as an artist, even though she’s started talking to the press more openly about her art in recent years.

Ever since she was a teenager growing up with her two older siblings and Chinese immigrant parents in Queens, N.Y., Liu has been steadily working in a wide variety of media — broad-stroked figurative paintings, abstract silkscreens, wooden sculpture and meticulous found-object assemblage.

Throughout her acting career, which took off back in 1997 when Liu landed the role of the fierce diva lawyer Ling Woo on the hit series “Ally McBeal,” her art-making practice has been an important, creatively sustaining part of her life.

“I feel an exuberance, and an extraordinary strength when I’m in the studio, working freely and not on a timeline, unlike when you’re on a set and every minute is accounted for,” Liu said. “In the studio, you can suddenly realize 16 hours have gone by and you’ve been in this extended magical moment.”

Liu has exhibited her work in galleries since the mid-1990s, yet she used her Chinese name, Yu Ling, until 2011. “I didn’t use my own name at first because I wanted people to come in with an open mind, a blank slate,” Liu said, noting that she did not want her art to be judged as that of a celebrity hobbyist. “I think (because of some of her hard-edged roles) people expect me to be this hard-ass and my work to be tough.”

Instead, visitors to the Napa exhibition will find that much of Liu’s work, particularly her figurative paintings inspired by Japanese shunga (erotic art popularized in the 17th century), is full of feeling and deeply personal, inspired by her own struggle to come to terms with an upbringing in which any frank discussion of sexuality was taboo.

In a high-necked, billowing white dress, high heels, red lipstick and an above-the-shoulder bob haircut, Liu, 51, sat in a quiet corner of the high-ceilinged main gallery surrounded by her recent large-scale paintings — anonymous, fleshy nudes and faceless family portraits (including a nostalgic one, re-created from a family photo, showing Liu as a toddler in a lavender coat during an outing to Flushing Meadows). A massive riff on Willem de Kooning’s 1950s “Women” series fills the back wall, and Liu’s meticulously crafted “Totem” series of small hand-embroidered spinal columns hangs in an adjacent gallery.

Earlier in the afternoon, Liu was the keynote speaker at the Wine Country museum’s Phenomenal Women fundraising luncheon. She used the opportunity to discuss with the majority-female audience her art-making practice and the themes that run through her work: displacement, a search for belonging and self-discovery, acceptance of oneself as a sexual being, and using art to overcome powerful familial and cultural inhibitions.

She spoke openly about forging a career in the arts that has baffled her parents (her father died in 2017) and how, through her art, she has struggled to overcome her deeply ingrained, and distinctly un-Hollywood, modesty.

“I didn’t know anything about the male body, I didn’t even know about the female body” as a young woman, Liu said. “Growing up, we spoke to each other in Chinese at home, and we didn’t talk about bodies, ever. We didn’t expose ourselves or look at each other. I’d never seen my parents nude. When I got my period, I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ I was so clueless about everything. I think that through the painting of these large bodies and the genitalia, I was able to start to understand that it’s OK. It’s not taboo. It’s not a dirty thing to be a woman and look at a female body or a male body and be curious about it.

“When I started in this business as an actress, people would make fun of me when I was doing a costume fitting because they would have to build a special section for me so that I could change in there. Working on ‘Ally McBeal,’ unlike everyone else who would just take off their clothes no matter who was there, they were like, ‘Let’s bring in the screen, it’s Lucy’s fitting.’ Oh my God, it was so disruptive for them because I had to go behind the screen every time I even wanted to change my shirt.”

Liu first started experimenting with collage as a young teenager “using just magazines, newspapers and glue stick,” she said. “That was my first discovery of art. I didn’t have brushes or paint, and we never went to museums. I didn’t even know what I was doing at first, but I knew I had to express myself.”

The actress and artist, who has never married, moved back to New York from Los Angeles 10 years ago. She paints regularly in a studio in Jersey City.

“As I progressed in the business in the past 20 years, I’ve become so much more comfortable with myself,” Liu said. “I have a  4½-year-old son now, and I let him run around naked, I let him see me naked. I don’t want him to feel uncomfortable with the human body.

She glanced around the room at her painting of two women kissing, another of an undressed woman, reclining with her arms above her head, seemingly utterly relaxed. “We’re all just a part of nature.”

“Lucy Liu: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others”: Art exhibit. On view through April 26. Open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesdays through Sundays. The Napa Valley Museum Yountville, 55 Presidents Circle, Yountville. 707-944-0500. www.napavalleymuseum.org

[sstrongstyle]

𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐲 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: Adam Cole x OC, mentions of Seth Rollins x OC 𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: After nearly a decade of being the golden girl of WWE, Adaline Marin wants out. Their ring was no longer home, haunted by her first love and upon reaching her thirties, the face behind "Aspen Glory" wonders if the passion she once had was still ablaze. Instead, she gets sent down to NXT to join the Undisputed Era. The next three hundred and sixty-five days, all captured by cameras for the history books, become a year of revival, reinvention, and realization with her legacy at stake and a new flame from the past emerging. 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: All characters are referred to by their real life names (for the most part)

CHAPTER ONE.

August 11th, 2019

If Adaline had to force another wide smile for an Instagram selfie to celebrate the bright and beautiful Summerslam week that ended, she was going to completely lose it. The only person who seemed to notice was Trinity and, stifling a laugh at her irritated mood, went out of her way to buy Adaline a drink to help her get through the night. She shot her a relieved look, as she pretended to listen to Nattie talk about her cats for the nth time and trying to stay away from the Total Divas cameras.

"Hey, Addie!" Turning around, she saw that it was Kyle to her rescue. He was waving her over, presumably to join his table on the other side of the restaurant. There, most of the NXT roster and personnel had isolated themselves away from the other talent from Raw and Smackdown.

A thin smile stretched across her face. "I'll be back, girl." A complete lie, as Adaline patted Nattie's shoulder and got up to join her stable mates.

There was a different vibe to the NXT people; the family image and reputation that was painted on the Performance Centre residents wasn't far from the reality. Everyone under the yellow brand stuck together like glue and looked out for one another, something that Adaline hadn't felt in years. Initially, when she was assigned to the roster after nearly ten years on the "main roster," the Canadian felt somewhat insulted. Sure, they wanted a vet to guide the women's division, but she knew it was an excuse for the fact that creative had absolutely nothing for her.

And then, she found out that she was getting put with the Undisputed Era.

Austin smirked when he saw her approach. "You looked like you wanted to die over there." He pulled out a chair for her, always the gentleman.

"Those stupid camera guys put me on edge whenever they're nearby," she grumbled, sitting down in between him and Bobby with her drink still at hand.

"Smile a little. We had a good show," Austin nudged her. "Plus, we're in your hometown."

It was the late hours of Sunday night and as soon as Summerslam went off air, nearly all, if not most, of the on air employees that took part in the event, as well as Takeover, decided to go to a local bar and grill to celebrate. Raw and Smackdown were to follow in the next two days, but they wanted to gather while the NXT talent was still in Toronto. The city was alive and bustling, even dipping into the morning, and so was the entire locker room. Normally, Adaline would embrace the energy and take the time to bask in her surroundings—ever since she moved to Florida, she was rarely home.

Then, they walked in.

Kyle had impeccable timing in calling her over because Adaline was sure that she would have completely frozen up if she was still sitting with Trinity on the other side of the restaurant. As soon as she saw the flash of fiery orange hair, she completely turned her body away from the entrance in the hopes that it would appear as though she didn't notice the pairing appear at all. However, it was hard to do so when a round of greetings emerged from the crowd of wrestlers, upon realizing that the newest company power couple had walked into the room.

"Colby! Becky! Come sit here!" If anyone's voice on the entire roster was going to fill up an entire room, it was Ron Killings. It boomed and demanded attention from the entire restaurant and most people looked up, especially when it was the two biggest faces of the company.

Initially, Adaline thought the only good part about getting moved to NXT was getting away from Colby. He was the only constant in her life for the past decade and moving away to only see him once every few months was. . .different. Ever since the breakup, she wanted to completely erase him from her mind. Sure, that was the game plan for the few times they'd broken up before in the past—which, by the way, horribly failed every time and was the reason why they always seemed to crawl back to each other—but, this time was different. This time, it was for good. Adaline didn't know just how serious that promise was until she heard through the locker room grapevine about them shortly after the Royal Rumble.

"It's natural," Renee had told her one night over dinner at her house. "You guys were together since you were eighteen. Letting go of your first love is hard, especially when you see them everyday at work."

With a mouthful of broccoli, Mox had thought it would be smart to add on. "Yeah, especially when he's walking around backstage with the new chick that he's sleeping with." Though it was meant to be a lighthearted comment towards his former group members, Renee slapped her husband upside on the head for it.

At the restaurant, the only people who didn't care about the couple's appearance—or at least, pretended not to care for Adaline's sake—were her fellow Undisputed members. Bobby and Kyle continued to shovel food into their mouths. Austin didn't even flinch. While the couple entered, Christopher reached over the table to show the group a picture that his son drew of the stable.

Chris grinned. "There's Kyle and Bobby, still with the tag belts, obviously." The duo were at the front and although they were basically scribbles, you could tell which one Kyle was because of the guitar pose that the stick figure held. "There's Austin, with his luscious locks. There's me, handsome as ever. And then, there's you—"

"Um, why don't I have any hair?" Adaline deadpanned, thinking that she was supposed to be Austin in the drawing.

The boys peered over and started laughing. Adaline was clearly the only girl with a pink triangle body for a dress, but was bald. She was in the back, beside Austin, and the five of them were in a square that she assumed was a ring.

Kyle ruffled her hair. "Because you went and made it all white, obviously." The once black haired beauty went all the way in her transformation last month, when she cropped her curly hair to her chin and dyed the locks silver. It was supposed to be a little bonus to her heel turn, but ended up becoming more of a metaphor for her career and being assigned to NXT after all this time.

"Yeah, there's clearly white crayon marks," Austin pointed out.

"What? Oh. My bad." Adaline chuckled a bit, leaning back into her seat. The banter helped distract her easily and she was thankful for that.

She had her reservations about being lumped in as the token female member of a stable again. By the time it was decided that the female was going to be sent to NXT, Adaline had only just recovered from her past in The Shield and worse—Seth Rollins' arm candy. After making history as Smackdown Women's Champion, she thought that this would only be the beginning to the peak. Wrong. Adaline dropped the title to Becky at Wrestlemania and was subsequently shipped off the brand, never to be seen again, until emerging as apart of Adam Cole's crew. She was over it and she hated having sit back and let the men take the spotlight.

But, this was NXT. It was 2019. Adaline had proven that she was a valuable asset to the company, especially after her two years away to share her talents in Japan and thus, creating a deep hole in the women's division of WWE of the time. She wasn't being inserted into the stable to be eye candy or a joke. And, honestly? Adaline loved being around the other Undisputed guys. She was an equal in the group and her time with them completely exceeded her initially low expectations.

Bobby peered over at Adaline, who was just sitting there. "Are you not going to eat anything?"

"No," was all she said.

"We had a good weekend, why are you so down?" he asked, as she called a waitress over to order another virgin mojito.

Adaline was the life of the party. She was capable of shining with the brightest smile in the room, always made sure everyone was included, and was capable of sharing anecdotes that captivated the attention of the entire group. Tonight, she was a shell of that woman.

She replied, "Well, you guys had a good weekend." Adaline's dejected mood came from the fact that she didn't even have a match at Takeover, barely had an impact. It was different now that she was on NXT, knowing full well how methodical and planned out the booking was, as opposed to last minute changes done by Vince on the fly. They simply did not have a place for her on the card and she instead accompanied her members to their matches to support them from the sidelines.

"It's building, Addie and you know that," Bobby pointed out. "You're next in the title picture." And he was right. People in the higher ups were rumoured to be quite high on the Undisputed Era and they wanted all of the group members to be pushed to the top of the pyramid of the brand. They were all next in the title picture, it was only a matter of time.

However, she just wasn't used to it. After being one of the mainstays in the women's division even before the so-called Divas Revolution, Adaline was used to staying at the top. It was a little bit arrogant, but she felt like she had earned her place.

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm just a bit bummed out since everyone else seemed to have had a better time than I did." She discreetly glanced over at the other side of the restaurant, where everybody seemed to be talking about the main event that Colby, the newly crowned Universal Champion, had put on.

The waitress came back with her drink and set it down in front of the Canadian. She thanked her and began sipping on it immediately.

The only person who caught Adaline's quick look towards Colby was Kyle, who slapped her wrist to distract her. "Stop it."

"What?"

"It." Kyle pointed at her with his fork with a cocked eyebrow, causing her to giggle. He knew her too well and didn't want her to dwell on her ex any longer.

She replied. "Whatever. I'm fine," Adaline insisted.

The five talked a little bit more for the next while and it remained on the relaxing side. She chose to not rejoin her friends on the other side of the restaurant for the fear that she would have to interact with Colby. Maybe it was stupid, walking on eggshells around him after almost a year since their breakup and it wasn't always like that, but then he went and started dating her friend. The dynamic was different and Adaline didn't know how to handle it. The awkwardness was natural, but she didn't think it would last this long. She missed Becky and to an extent, Colby, too. Together, though, it wasn't the same.

Upon looking at her phone, the clock eventually had run faster than Adaline anticipated, but the establishment was still open and the WWE personnel dining were still lively and going nowhere. She, however, had an early morning flight to Chicago that she'd been dreading since it was planned. The notion of what was waiting for her at her destination caused a knot to form at the pit of her stomach—selling her house. Adaline took one last swig of her drink, swallowing it down along with the thought.

"I have to go," she announced, which left the boys groaning in protest.

This caught the attention of some of the other NXT roster members. "Don't tell me you're already going," Candice tried her best puppy dog eyes on her from the other table. "We just got here!"

Adaline smiled sadly. "I'll see you guys in Winter Park soon." The next set of tapings weren't until the end of the week, but she was planning to get back as soon as possible. That all depended on how quick the process was going to be once landing in Illinois.

It seemed like she was one of the first ones to leave, as it was still within the first hour of everybody arriving. A chorus of goodbye's followed from the crowd. She stood up.

"Be safe," Christopher said, also standing up to give her a quick hug. Among all of the Undisputed guys, Adaline saw him as a big brother figure the most. He'd known her since she was an annoying eighteen year old who demanded the wrestling world at the palm of her hand—now, she was just an annoying thirty year old who demanded it.

She hugged him back, waved at Kyle, and ruffled Bobby and Austin's hair. "Bye, boys." They responded with their own farewells, dejected that she was leaving so soon—as if the five never left each other's sides in Florida already.

The last beast of the night that Adaline had to conquer was grabbing her purse. It was abandoned when she left for the Undisputed boys and remained nestled beside Trinity at her original table. The occupants also included Jonathan, Nattie, TJ, Claudio, and Stephen. All she had to do was walk past the table before them. It wasn't that hard.

Speeding past them, Adaline could swear that she felt a burning sensation at the back of her head and she could only pray that it was just her imagination and not either Colby or Becky staring. It'd been months since they went public with their relationship and Adaline had effectively avoided talking to either one of them unless she absolutely had to. Maybe it wasn't very mature of her, but confronting that reality was painful and awkward. She tried to relax her body, remaining natural, as she approached her destination.

Claudio was the first one to notice her and must've thought that she was coming over to join them because he scooted over to leave a space for her. Instead, Adaline shook her head and instead leaned over to pick up her small purse wedged in between Nattie and Trinity.

"Already? What time is your flight?" Trinity frowned, watching her friend.

Adaline sighed. "In three hours. I'm just gonna grab my things and haul my ass straight to the airport, so I can sleep on the plane."

Another chorus of farewells emerged. The night was finally over and Adaline seemed to have the least amount of energy out of everybody in the room. Most of them had what was going to be, as it always was, a rowdy Raw show to look forward to tomorrow night. There was still a buzz in the air and she truly wanted to indulge in it, but there was just so much on her mind.

Her lack of spot on the card. Colby. Selling the house that she made home with him. Her upcoming contract negotiations. She just needed some alone time in her rental car with the windows all the way down and the music all the way up.

Maybe not alone.

Upon exiting the restaurant, the midnight summer chill planted a kiss on Adaline and she shivered slightly. That's when she felt the draping of a worn, light jacket over her shoulders. Taken aback, she turned around and was faced with Austin's icy blue eyes. He smiled slightly, his eyes disappearing into crescents.

"Hey."

She raised an eyebrow. "Hey." Then, she hadn't even realized it, but he snatched her keys away from her. "Hey!" Adaline yelled this time, but he was already gone.

Austin said, "I saw you having a drink. Better safe than sorry, right?" He'd already unlocked her rental car and she began jogging towards him.

"You really don't have to," she stated, even though she knew he wasn't going to take no for an answer.

A year ago, there was no way she could've imagined being in this position. Adaline wouldn't have even dreamed of being friends with Austin once again. Yet, she was standing here, fresh off of a Takeover of all things. She couldn't believe it. Something told her that this wasn't the end of this rollercoaster ride and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to not lose herself in the daze.

[jjkpls]

(y)our name 2 - one (m)

> genre : fluff, angst, light smut

> pairing : jeon jungkook x reader (f)

> total words : 6.7k

> warnings/content : friends to lovers, unrequited love, slice of life; a LOT of cursing, oc is... chaotic, thirsty, panicked; Bad Editing Le Retour™

You could not look any less serious. With your badly dried hair, your face glazing from the cream you just applied in a rush and your whole frame, vibrating in childish excitement. “You know what, Guk? We can decide to make it weird or we can decide to be two grownups, responsible and smart and like reliable and- and be like 'Well yeah we had sex, whatever, it’s not gonna change anything!'”

There's a heavy silence blaring in the hallway. You're too ecstatic to let it affect you but still, you wish he'd appear a little less impenetrable. He's not giving you anything to work with. And even though you can't imagine any other alternative than the one you just suggested, he has to confirm he's willing to go along. “Right?” You're defying him with your gaze, hands attached to your waist, head tilted to the side. The smile stretching your lips grow less natural and more rigid. Jungkook simply shrugs, shifting about on his feet.

“I guess you’re right.” He says but he doesn't look like he means it. He looks preoccupied. And a thought, disturbing, invades your mind. Something is burdening him. And from the frown on his adorable face, it's at least mildly serious.

“Are you okay?” You’re pouting as you ask, not meaning to tender him the way you do but you can see his troubled heart all over, in his stance, in his giant eyes. You feel bad for being the idiot concerned about that night when there is something wrong with him. Anything could have happened during those excruciatingly long and testing three weeks. Your merciless dumb ass may have missed a drama in your favourite boy’s life and the fact that you could have actually let it happen breaks your heart. “Is something wrong?” 

He gazes at you, wide-eyed. They’re shining with a curious apprehension. It’s as if he wants to say something. The tiny tremble of his lips hints there is something, just right there, at the tip of his tongue. A simple little push would have the words out. “Tell me.”

Instead, he shakes his head, one of his hands rising to mess with the already chaotic pile of dark locks. “S'nothing. I’m good.”

“Jungkook.” He’s already down a few steps, his back turned to you. “You’re not gonna tell me?” There’s a tiny little edge in your voice, as if your heart's been wounded. It brings him to spin around to peek your way. You’re not that stupid. You know three weeks of break in a friendship that has, in almost a decade and a half, never had any before, must impact it somehow. You detest the idea. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“I know.” He says, softly. He seems all tiny, hunched over as he is, several stairs down.

“Still, you’re not gonna say?” He looks up from his shoes. There's this contemplating pout on his mouth. Again, he looks like he's debating internally.

“If- It’s not important. If I need to, I will, ok?” Your heart stings. But you want to trust him.

“You promise?”

Jungkook rolls his eyes, biting a smile back. “I don’t need to, you already know.” Grinning you jump on the step next to him, wrapping with great difficulty an arm around his shoulders, you lead him down the stairs.

You're rambling loud in the resonating hallway about how you spent the whole night watching your favourite zombie movies in prevision of the day you're about to spend. He doesn't need to hear you say it all as he already knows. His phone along with him didn't have any sleep last night, as you kept sending him messages of extreme importance regarding all the technics and strategies you were actively learning watching the films and how useful they were all going to be for the zombie apocalypse-themed escape game you had made reservations for.

You are so excited, you can't contain yourself. Finding him back after having missed him so much and for so long, you just can't accept to spend any more time without him. Which is ridiculous. You two would have to get back to your lives and go to work for starters, but not now. Now you've dumped your shift on your kindest colleague at work, quite last minute, so you could have the whole day with Jungkook. Planning on going to that escape game you two had been talking about for months, making a checklist of all the places you could visit afterwards to eat and take pretty pictures if he wanted to, adding a list of the potentially interesting movies now in theater if you still have time left. Yes, you really did miss him. You don't want to say it out loud as it's been said enough the night before, but you hope he knows from how hard you hug his arm against your heart that you're still overwhelmed by the joy brought from him filling the staggering void in your chest again as if he'd never left it.

Your phone lights up on a too-familiar face and a name you feel too uncomfortable to pronounce out loud. It’s Namjoon. Again. You see Jungkook’s eyes catch it before you turn it off, and they divert awkwardly as if terrified to meet your own. Your heart stings again. Like a sharp scorching needle piercing through the thing. You can’t bear the awkwardness. You used to be able to talk about anything. Even some things that require litres of liquid courage and lead to consequences such as burning ears and heavy sweating. But never anything has just been brushed over. The realization that something is installing itself between you hits. A new norm, where some subjects must remain unmentioned. It’s horrifying so quickly you blurt out, “We broke up!” Jungkook looks up from his bubble tea, eyes large like saucers. 

“Yeah, I heard so. From Jimin.” He doesn’t ask for more information and it’s upsetting. You want him to know he can ask anything. Anything that is yours, anything that is you is his too. 

He should know it all. 

“It’s just- he is- he is not an asshole but I don’t know, I guess we didn’t agree on everything. He wanted me to choose between you and him.” Your eyebrows raise, head shaking in remaining disbelief. He had some nerves. You felt bad momentarily because it meant Namjoon believed your relationship to be strong enough to face this kind of ultimatum. But he was so rude about it! So rude and assertive, it didn’t even give you the willing to clarify things up with him, to sort things out, consider a compromise. As if you’d ever sincerely only dare think about giving up Jungkook for anyone or anything else. You would never.

Jungkook smiles around the straw he's gnawing on and you chuckle. You're sharing the same mischievous glance you used to when younger, you would find some shenanigans to ditch a third party you were not inclined to stay with so you two could play and be yourselves exclusively together. Like a secret handshake, you have your secret smile. There you know you'll be fine.

After some time, he feels comfortable enough to bring Namjoon back to the conversation. It's just to apologize again about what happened. He doesn't leave on any more information, any answer to the burning question you've carried with you since the incident but you decide to not push it. It was fucking weird, this whole mess of a situation. So unlike him to hit someone. So unlike you to turn your back on him as if there would ever be a valid reason for you to stop loving him. A piece of the puzzle is missing, however, you trust him with it. Surely, he'll give it to you one day and that's fine.

You're cutting the calm quietness surrounding you with a sudden burst of giggles. He squints at you, eyebrows frowned as if he already knows and it makes you laugh harder.

“Shut up!” He groans while trying to reach for your phone on the table. Your reflexes are cat-like though, and before he knows it, the hilarious video you shot today of him, fighting incredibly poorly a zombie, plays for the two of you to enjoy. He's screaming so loud, cursing a bunch of profanities you've never heard him say, and when his ass hits the ground without the actor touching him you're throwing your head back, crying in hilarity. It's been torturing you for the past two hours. Each time your brain starts to putter, the video comes knocking and you just can't help the bubbling mess to rumble from your chest. You only stop when he starts to threaten you, saying he is going to leave and head home.

You really don't want to go home. Or more like, you don't mind going home but he has to come and stay with you. Why couldn't you have been born as Siamese twins?

Sticking the lollipop out of his mouth, he winces in pure disgust, “That'd be horrible!”

“What? Why? It'd be awesome! We'd be stuck to each other all the time!” Which is an enchanting thought -maybe it needs to be precise. You're sure he thinks the same. The grimace intensifying on his face is just comedy.

“We'd be siblings, by the way. Not best friends. That wouldn't work.”

“Let's hot glue the shit out of our hips so we can test this theory out!”

“What are you even-” You don't interrupt him, he does himself, deeming it's pointless. Halting his steps, sighing deep and loud as he stares down at you like you're crazy. Maybe you've turned a little bit insane. That's what too much Jungkook and sugar do to you: you're sincerely considering the whole hot-glueing thing. “Ok. You're going to bed.” It's a gasp that answers him and like a dad who knows how to handle his misbehaving child, he cuts you off before you even get to say anything.

“___, it’s 3 am. Don’t you have work tomorrow?”

“I start at 5 pm!” You pester, hitting the ground with your foot.

“Still. Don’t be ridiculous. You need sleep.” His huge eyes blink slowly, his face contorting weirdly as he contains a yawn. He's the one who needs sleep but-

“But-”

“You really did miss me, huh?” 

He's all smug eyebrow-dance and wiggly shoulders so you decide to simply be honest, that'll shut him off. “Of course I did!” He tsks, not having expected this as he stares off the distance, looking anywhere but you. You pout, hitting his ugly sneakers with your own boots. “Why do you keep wearing those things?” The offending bulky things are daring you to criticize them further.

“You don’t know fashion.”

“Oh is that fashion? Ok, I guess I really don’t know then.” When you look up at him, grinning, he has that look on. Head slightly tilted to the side, tight-lipped smile, the one that pinches the skin around his mouth into a tiny dot, eyes looking soft but implacable. It’s the look he has when he’s telling you off and it makes you whine indignantly. “I don’t wanna go home yet.”

“But you will.” He decides, sticking the lollipop back against the inside of his cheek, gaze all ominous before he's throwing you on his shoulders. You'd scream if it were not the middle of the night and you didn't mind having people calling the police on you two for night fuss. 

It's not the end anyway. You're dramatic and greedy because it feels natural to be in these circumstances but you know you two will be fine. You should let him go home to sleep without fearing losing him again.

There's no doubt in your mind. Still, instead of your brain to sink in the happiness and let you fall peacefully asleep on your two ears, the uncooperative thing just wouldn't let you rest. Keeping you wide awake and alert, bringing thoughts way too joy-filled to not render you giddy and fidgety. 

I guess it wasn’t that terrible. It wasn’t bad at all. You did apprehend it. Not only were you two to start hanging out again after a pause that felt like an eternity, but you had also to do so after spending the night that you did together. It seemed easy enough on his part. Maybe because he seemed already preoccupied with something else. Either way, it went smoothly. Like riding a bike. Something you never just stop knowing how to do. Jungkook and you, it’s natural. It’s pure fated affection, there’s no place for any lagging. This you confirmed today. 

As the days pass, the routine reinstalls itself, with morning breakfasts shared, impromptu hellos, and stray kitties pictures sent out throughout the day.

It feels wonderful. You can appreciate what you used to have with a whole new level of intensity. It’s like hovering over the Earth on a candy cloud. You’re not lucky, you’re blessed, gifted. Nothing is that upsetting. Nothing is that tiring. Everything fixes before it even breaks because there’s Jungkook and the happiness he brings everywhere along with him. 

You’re not that bad at being cool about the whole one-night thing. Not as good as him but still good enough. You manage to prevent anything potentially compromising to slip, refract any impulsive gesture towards his arms or his chest or his thighs even. You do end up blushing furiously sometimes when an unexpected careless babe falls through his lips, or when he mutters your name quietly to bring your attention to him and the breathless calls from this one night remind themselves to you. And of course, it would be like this. How could it not? How could you just say each other’s name so casually when you heard them being moaned by the other the way you did. That’s what you think. But he doesn’t seem on the same page as you. And that puzzles you. Not greatly, you know him to be more used to unattached sexual affections, but still. 

How could he not be affected when you’re pretty sure you screamed his name? That’s the other thing about the fateful night and its consequences, the more time passes the less you remember every detail of it, and you dread it. You wish it would stay intact, untouched in your head, as grandiose as it was when it happened.

It’s worrying. How obsessed you are about the incident. But not for the reasons one could expect. 

Your friendship is not at stake per se. Or maybe it is in a way, and that’s why you’re not presenting yourself to him with those thoughts. 

It’s not about Jungkook or more so, it’s less about the feelings you adorn for him, and more about his skills. Because he does have skills. You have no idea where they come from. If he’s spent years secretly attending sexology seminars or if he was born an incubus and for some reasons you knew nothing about that, point of the matter is: he blew your mind. He ruined you, opened up a door inside you had no idea was there and it felt so good during and after, that you find yourself feeling miserable at the idea that maybe, you won’t ever fall upon a lover like him. 

Namjoon was fine. He didn’t have the best stamina and was a bit too stiff to plant and bloom passion as intense as Jungkook managed to in few minutes but he was ok. Taehyung was fine too. Perhaps tending to be a bit selfish, forgetting to give back if you didn’t remind him but for the most part decent -he did have a huge shrine that wasn’t so handy in practice but still managed to entice you and make you squirm before you realized that, except for pain and discomfort, the hugeness of it didn’t bring much more. 

And that’s the thing that annoys you the most: they used to be good. They used to be in your mind more than good enough. You didn’t question the possibility of having more. It was alright. You didn’t come each time. You never came more than once in one encounter. But it was fine for your standards. You didn’t know any better, that there could be more to it. Now Jungkook swirled in, wrecked you, leaving you a satisfyingly empty shell lain in a puddle of your own arousal and that’s the mind-blowing sex you want to have for the rest of your life. The thought that maybe he is one exceptionally proficient guy, member of a very rare and exclusive club of fucking abnormally phenomenal lovers that has the secret access to a secret magic to Orgasms -with a capital O because what you thought to identify as orgasms before definitely are not the same things as what you experienced with your best friend- it’s depressing and horrifying and makes you want to start a fucking riot against the universe and maybe against men for not all being as good. Because they should. Fuck, there would be no more cheating partners, no more lonely solo underdogs, eternal peace in the world if everyone dared be as good of a lover as Jungkook. 

Maybe you’re over exaggerating. Maybe. Probably not.

How, how in the hell are you supposed to just brush that memory like a simple anecdote, marking your history like any other tiny souvenir would, like that first time he cried in front of you right after he scratched his hands falling from his skateboard and you had kissed it better, or that time he lied for you so you wouldn’t get your ass beaten by your parents after having skipped two classes to go make out behind the school with Kim Seokjin. 

Well, you can’t. It’s impossible. And at first, it’s fine. It just means you spend a little more time in the shower, you're a little slower at work because you have to constantly bring your brain back to the task ahead, you’re overall a little more angsty and every time you meet up with Jungkook, there’s a little apprehension. It’s a little less 'I can’t wait to see that dumbass’ cute face even though he might bully me for not having showered', and a little more 'I’m going to meet with my good old friend who happens to be the man who fucked my brains out that one time, so maybe I should put on that skirt'. 

The permanent tension doesn’t last that long. He’s too much like he’s always been. You’re too happy with him like you’ve always been.

Things go along as they should. You repress actively your deviant brain, decide you’re going to get over him because he is not the only man on this fucking Earth and there’s no way, there’s no fucking way -it’d be too unfair- he is the only good man worthy of your time. 

Soon you realize that in fact, he is. In a way or another, by some curious black magic or something, he managed to make himself the only man left on this Earth. What a dick, you think. Because now he’s gotten back to his life, his awesome life of an awesome dude, unbothered, untroubled by whatever the fuck happened when you, on the other hand, are all broken. 

There's this thing about you. You used to fall a bit in love with every person you’d see when you'd be single. There would be this tall guy with his beanie low on his forehead pushing his fringe in his eyes, reading some manga on the train, and you’d start making up a sweet history for him and you’d wish he’d look up for a second and fall in love with you too. But he’d leave without noticing you and then this young woman would walk in with a dude on her toes. She’d look saddened while the guy would look annoyed and you’d start thinking about where you’d like to take that girl out and what cute pet name she’d like you to give her when you’re not even into girls -allegedly. You’re desperate for love. You’ve always been. Which could be surprising as instead of having a childhood deprived of it as often have the people who grow to be very demanding when it comes to affection, you were spoiled with it. Instead of curing you, the force-feed love rendered you addicted and you've always wanted more. More people to meet and discover and adore. Rarely enough. Except when you’re in a relationship. You’re not simply loyal you’re fully invested. You want to be good, to be the best, bring the most. You know how to direct all your time and attention and aspiration on one person without wanting to look away. 

And that’s what you need again. Maybe. Someone to prove you that sex is not it all. You never thought that before stupid Jungkook but now, you're questioning it. He did break you. You think constantly about it, not wondering what compliment that one stranger like to hear, what place that other stranger would love you to make them discover, you're wondering if they could make you feel good. If their bodies would be as hard and hot as Jungkook's. If their sexes could fill you up and stretch you, hard and right the way his did. And fuck Jungkook because not only did he change your way of considering people -which is fucked up, by the way, you feel like a creep every time you catch yourself doing it-, he made them all uninteresting. None, even in fantasy, do it for you. You don’t want them to touch you. You don’t want to touch them. You wonder what’s under their clothes without really wanting to know. That’s not that surprising. You’ve always been a very emotional person and perhaps it’s just not something for you. Perhaps you can’t fuck without affection. But at the same time, it’s what you want, it’s what you need. Just purely wild and relieving sex.

It’s the reason why you end up grabbing your phone, tapping your passcode in a fury because the print sensory thingy won't work and you’re already pissed enough as it is. Wrist hurting, breathing laboured, pussy quivering uselessly around nothing, you quickly get to your chat log with Jungkook. You’re mad. It’s the umpteenth time that you try to get yourself off and end up on the verge of crying from frustration because you can, physically, feel yourself craving for a cock to fill you up -possibly his. It’s the worst feeling. A degree of desperation like you never have felt before. And it is insane because never in a million years could you have imagined that sometimes a woman, and you of all, could have your cunt yearning for something that bad. It’s like it builds and builds, not phenomenal but seemingly good enough, and then it snaps but as you come, you feel the lacking spoiling completely your already low-quality orgasm. One of the worst experience of your life. You’re enraged and delirious from the dissatisfaction and that’s why you end up sending him this message:

you : thinking bout u

Read. Right away. There are the three little dots blinking on the screen, your brain adds a mental drumroll to accompany it. And then they disappear. Five minutes pass, you’re dying, feel like your pussy might catch a cold staying open like that -which is quite dumb and lewd but you’re so upset, you spent so much energy on attempting to get off that you can’t even get yourself to roll over to the side (it’s not even like he’s going to teleport himself there and just slip inside at any instant). The dots don’t come back so you decide to text him again, a bit more apprehensively. 

you : do u think about me?

jungkook : are you making a YouTube video?

You’re confused for a while, reading multiple times the text over, simply not getting it until the phone vibrates again in your palm. 

jungkook : like a lyric prank

Ah. 

you : Ah no. And why would I chose a song from 2009 to do that

jungkook : It’s not 2009 and cause you’re lame like that

This is absolutely not going the way you planned, you think finally closing your legs together. Then you remember that you didn't plan shit.

you : 😐

jungkook : What do you want anyway? Why aren’t you sleeping

jungkook : ?

you : I just told you

jungkook : I don’t know what you mean

Is he messing with you? Or does he sincerely not know? Fuck, you hate texting. You never know what the person on the other line genuinely means. You're not being a coward tonight though, so you send:

you : You said to tell you if I ever think about you

The torturous three musketeers are back, cackling right in your face as you stare, for an eternity, wishing for something, anything, to replace them. It’s outrageously long. It’s like he’s typing his eulogy or something. Until the dots are replaced but by worst than any text, no text at all. They disappear and nothing else comes through. The embarrassment is so overwhelming, your body finds the strength to fully wince, your legs jerking up to your chest and your whole body falling sideways from just the cringe. What a fucking idiot. Your face buried in the pillow, you wail and groan in emotional pain. Then it shakes again, the cellphone, the cursed object you shouldn’t be allowed to own. You grab it with your eyes shut close, terrified at what the screen has to show you. When you gather the courage to look, you frown: it’s a link. A URL you don’t recognize. You tap on it, gnawing nervously on your lip as Safari takes forever to load the page and once it's done, and the title of the page appears, you wish it wouldn’t have loaded at all. Fucking hell. You’re going to die. You’re dying of embarrassment tonight, it’s decided. 

'69 Best Masturbation Tips for Female Orgasm'. It’s an article about masturbation. He sent you that. To help probably. Because he doesn’t want to do it himself and doesn't know how to say it. Of fucking course he doesn’t want to and oh-my-fucking-god how could you have been so fucking stupid. 

you : Sorry

There are the dots again but you can’t bear to see them again so quickly you type a desperate:

you : I’m really sorry, didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything. Sorry sorry JK please just forget I said anything sorry good nighttt 😅 😅

It’s the worst moment of your entire life. And this thought, the thought that it’s so terrible, nothing will ever compete for that title, is the sole reason why you decide to not suffocate yourself to death in your pillows. The worst just happened.

You’ll just avoid him. For a few days. If he lets you. He probably will. The poor guy is probably feeling even more awkward than you. You were acting so normal, regular platonic friendliness and suddenly he learns that you’ve been lurking over his ass for all this time. For fuck's sake. You’re the worst. There's a tiny voice in your head that's not a bitch and keeps telling you that a couple of days would suffice and eventually your cheeks’ crimson will reduce and progressively the whole thing will be lost in your memory like those events that sometimes fade so far away, you’re not even sure if they were ever real or simple dreams. Except this one is a fucking nightmare and as you toss and turn around relentlessly for the whole night you’re sure you won’t ever forget it did happen and the shame that you felt. 

And you’re wrong about that. Because as you wake up the next morning after having successfully fallen asleep for an hour around 6 am, the memory is blurry. It’s flimsy. The burning devastating emotions are gone like they hardly ever existed and you can sigh in relief as you stretch out of bed, body sore and rusted but mind fresh and enthusiastic. You feel like you’ve just woken up from a power nap -you know the fatigue will strike you half-dead later, around 10 am or 2 pm, you’re not sure yet-, feeling positive and wanting to move the world with how productive you feel like being today. 

And then your initial hypothesis is proven right. As you reach for your phone by rote, meaning to check the time and your notifications as you usually do, you fall upon the text Jungkook sent you right after you shut your phone off, the night before.

jungkook : It’s okay

That’s it. Hell befalls once again on your stupid self. It’s like last night, all over again. Your eyes well up, aiming to fill up the tenuous rivers dried up on your cheeks. You fall on your face back in bed, yelling full-on in your mattress. It’s horrible. It’s horrible. It’s horrible. 

“Are you okay?!” You hear Eun ask from the other side of the wall. Her voice is all hoarse from sleep and now you feel even worse for having woken her up with your idiocy. Stupid and selfish you are. 

“Yes, sorry!” There’s a loud thump as you assume she lets herself fall back to sleep. You’re glad she’s too tired to register the tremble in your voice and the obvious desperation even you could decipher. 

'It’s okay' with no emoji, no nothing. The emptiest text you’ve ever received. It’s worse than one of those 'ok' assholes send sometimes as an answer to a long invested text. You know what it means. It means it is not okay. He is too sweet to tell you off the way he should or wants to. He knows you’re not an inconsiderate bitch and that you will read through the pixels with this simple two words that it is not okay, he’s not interested and he feels bad but that’s just how things are.

The alarm of your phone rings loud. You’re reminded of your stupid duty you’re supposed to attend to: your job. You feel like a teenager again. Well, in reality, you never really stopped feeling like one. When something would happen, you expected the whole world to stop for you to deal with it. You were too spoiled as a kid. People would actually stop. You remember walking down the playground, eager to play at something but not knowing what and sauntering about looking out for your different options and all the kids, no matter what they were busy playing at would stop and stare, sharing quick nods of approval before one of them, one for each group, would walk up to you and try to convince you to stay with them. Everybody liked you at the time, everybody always loved you without you completely realizing, only occasionally would you suspect it with a sheepish mischievous smile hidden in the corner of your lips. 

And now you’re twenty-three and someone, the person who’s supposedly is always cherishing you, doesn’t want you. Which is fair. Fair enough. You’re friends and it’s weird for him, you get it. But he said that you could call him whenever you thought about him. He said it. And he said something else. You can’t remember properly now but you remember what you thought at the time: that he was suggesting you’d do it again. That happened. Whatever the exact terms were, he did hint at wanting other times to happen. Then again, he did say a lot of things that night. And obviously, those were spurred in the heat of the moment. You guess he’s smooth along with being talented. His words are part of the whole thing and for good reasons, it works like a charm. 

But, therefore, of fucking course, you’d take it seriously. Of course, it’d take roots in your weak mind and bloom into invading, overpowering desires.

You’re pissed at him now, you realize as you struggle to apply mascara from how much your hand is shaking. You’re angry because he is the asshole behind all that. Even if he did not do it on purpose, he’s made you like that, fucking obsessing over his fucking dick like it’s the only one left and you’re meant to save humanity from extinction. He didn’t have to be that good to you. And why would he say those stuff if he didn’t mean them? That’s fucking sick. And why does he not want you anyway? He didn’t have a problem with you being best friends the first time. He sure enjoyed it, right? 

Right? 

Your memory is hazy. 

You’re not sure if you just made it all up from the pleasure you were experiencing. He is good. But maybe you suck? Maybe he just went along and concluded with you because he was too sweet to back up and stop in the middle of the course of action but in fact, he didn’t enjoy it. You didn’t do a lot, that much is true. You didn’t feel too bad about it before because you were sure he still had his fair share of pleasure but now that you’re not sure, now that you consider the idea that maybe your brain affected the real turn of events to spare your ego and feed that magical experience you had, you feel like shit. It must be it. With all those girls, beautiful, liberated you’ve seen him with over the years, he must have had expected and wanted more. He didn’t end up that talented with no one to practice with. And there you were, awkward potato who couldn’t keep the lights on -which apparently was such a big deal-, way more inexperienced than you thought yourself to be, giving him the worst sex of his life. Of fucking course, he wouldn’t want to do it again. 

It’s decided you’re never meeting him again. It’s not his fault. It’s yours. You suck balls. Or rather you don’t and that’s the issue. 

Fuck. This is so embarrassing. It's been a couple of hours since the curse text he's sent, and you don't feel any better. If only you could focus on those dumb coffee orders and forget about your stupid pussy for a second. 

It’s a little easier after a few mistaken cups of weird lattes, when your manager, perched like an owl on a bar stool, starts staring at you like she’s about to fly to you and bite your head off. 

It gets harder when you finish your shift and your mind is left to think about him again and the atrocious humiliation. You’re cringing the whole ride home. Having to stop yourself from growling out loud in frustration, not wanting to freak people out by making them think you’re rabid or something. And it turns the hardest when you have to walk past his door and ignore it, when it’s right fucking there, to quickly flee in your apartment. You’re sweating and shaking once you’re inside, pressing yourself against the door, praising the barrier protecting your ego from him. 

Wow. That’s insane but you don’t want to see him ever again. Or at least not until it quiets down. It’s too much. You know there shouldn’t be a seat for shame in your friendship but you can’t help it. It’s just Jungkook but it’s also the best lover you’ve ever had and, you can't deny it anymore, an extremely attractive man. And you’ve humiliated yourself in front of that man.

It’s the reason behind your avoiding him. You don’t even take the time to think about it and try to rationalize, think about what he might be feeling, think about the implications of your action, about how childish you’re being, you just do it. 

At first, it’s a blast. Knowing you would work hard to precisely avoid him makes it more bearable for your existence. You don’t wake up with an awful tummy ache and a migraine just considering having to talk to him and act fine and casual as if you’re not dying inside. You won’t see him so it’s fine. It requires a little effort though. A little checking the area for safety with an unsuspecting Eun. A little hustling as you have to steal all of your colleagues' early shifts so that you don’t have to be home for breakfast and see him land in your living-room to eat with you. A little stealth when you have to come home as you do in the early afternoons and you don’t know for sure if he’s not working from home, eagerly tending the ear to try and catch you coming home. His ear is very sharp and you know when you don’t pay attention and are loud climbing up the stairs, he can hear you from his apartment. He told you before that he recognizes the sound of your stepping, different from Eun’s and that’s how he knows you’re home safe when you get off work at ungodly hours of the night, and knows to send you a sweet encouraging text when he hears you leave ungodly early. 

It’s because of those messages that you start feeling too bad to handle. The first time, in a panic, you had answered the text with a raccoon gif. He responded with a sympathetic laughing emoji and you decided you sucked faking casualty and would simply restrain yourself from answering his morning texts. It’s been cleared out already that you should not be allowed to use a fucking cellphone. 

He's too powerful though. The kindness of his texts and the guilt you’re facing directly proportionate to it adds to the fact that you miss him. It’s been five days and you miss him immensely. It’s when Eun who asks why the boys haven’t been around in so long that you realize you’re really being a bitch. He deserves better than that. Therefore, laying down on the sofa, legs propped on the armchair, naked feet shaking in anxiety in the air, you pick up your phone because you never learn apparently. 

you : you wanna have a ““““spooky””””” movie night? Netflix put up the scream movies + pizzas

It's natural enough. Doesn't mention anything risky and that's perfect.

jungkook : I’m in busan rn

you : What? Why are you in Busan? 

you : And since when?

jungkook : Two days. I’m coming home tomorrow night 

jungkook : For a seminar

jungkook : And you would know if you were not so busy avoiding me

Well, here goes the not-mentioning-anything.

Another quirk of yours: when your mind is set on something, hardly anything can make your aim waver.

you : *gasp* I don’t appreciate being called out like that

Nicely played.

jungkook : Don’t care

But he's going to be difficult.

you :  😐 😐

jungkook : Are you embarrassed about the other night? That’s fucking dumb 

you : You fucking dumb 

jungkook : Why are you so embarrassed? I told you it’s fine

you : But it’s not though. I feel terrible still

jungkook : There’s no reason everybody gets horny

you : But I rubbed it in your face when clearly you don’t want it I’m verysorry 

jungkook : Stop apologizing

And again, as always, it just goes smoothly. You don't understand this. It used to be so simple being friends with him. But lately, it's like everything is a challenge. You always doubt before being proven that yes, things are like they've always been. You have no reason to doubt your friendship, nor him. The weight lifted off of your chest feels incredible as it leaves, bringing a few relief tears to the corner of your right eye. It's the end of it, at last.

jungkook :  who said I don’t want it

a/n : yes, it’s happening, (y)our name is back. Way sooner than expected but it’s kookie’s bday so i felt i had to give him another chance. So, there should be 2 other chapters to follow, all in reader’s pov. I’d really like to know what you guys think. I feel like it’s too messy (it took me a while to write and i’ve been feeling stressed out so i think it transpires too much). in any case, i really hope you enjoyed, i know a lot of you anticipated a sequel so i hope i don’t disappoint. i’ll try to have the second part up next week-end. until then, peace out boys scout!

& a happy birthday to our angel, please bid your well wishes hard enough so they can reach him.

Hugs and kisses and love to you all. 💜

▲  Comment ‘tag’ if you want to be tagged when I post the next part!  ▲  

[therainroguefanfiction]

🎃 Frightful October Act VI, #18 ~ Stranded (Izuku Midoriya)

📑 Table of Contents

Genre: Angst, Fluff, Romance

Word Count: 4,458

Pairing: Reader x Izuku

World: Boku no Hero Academia

Author’s Note: So um, not sure what the hell happened here lmfao I’ve been writing these out on paper and then typing them on the computer to post. I start writing and just keep going until I feel I’ve found a good stopping point. This single fic was 10 pages long, front AND back. I had to cut so much stuff out and shorten it drastically, and it still ended up being okay 4k words. I don’t know what to say, man lol I hope ya’ll enjoy this!

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

“We’re having a school trip tomorrow,” Aizawa announced boredly as he passed out two sheets of stapled paper to each student. On one sheet was a series of four islands and information about each one, while the second sheet was a permission slip. “The Quad-Peak islands have been steeped in mystery for two decades. This all began when four women planned a four day trip to the islands and never returned home.”

A murmur broke out through the class.

Aizawa ignored it, returning to the front of the room. “Recently, four foreign diplomats were out fishing near the islands when the vanishes without a trace. You will be working in pairs to discover what happened to them.”

You hummed thoughtfully as your eyes scanned the paper. ‘Four islands. Four women. Four days. Four diplomats. Four is considered bad luck because it can be pronounced like the word for death. It’s completely baseless, but many people fear the number, so much so that a lot of buildings don’t even have a fourth floor. Is this mere coincidence? Maybe a setup? A test? I need to get some information from Seven about this.’

“Sensei?” Momo raised her hand. “How will our partners be chosen?”

Aizawa didn’t open his eyes as he sat behind his desk. “All Might already chose the pairings. They will be announced before we leave tomorrow.”

Izuku glanced over his shoulder at you, praying to whatever gods he could think of that you were made his partner. He had been crushing hard on you since the day you saved him from a group of thugs trying to rob him. When he came to U.A. and found out that he was in the same class as you, he felt so incredibly lucky and vowed to get closer to you, but you were a loner and he was awkward and shy.

The bell rang and you gathered your things, heading over to class 1-B. Students gave you strange looks as they left the room, but you ignored them, approaching your best friend. Seven glanced up at you, eyebrow raised.

“I got a job for you if you’re interested.”

His lips curled up as he stood, shoving his phone into his pocket. “Can I cover over to your place?”

“‘Course. I’m running low on funds this month so I’m glad you don’t want me to buy dinner this time,” you stepped out of the room, Seven falling in step beside you.

He scoffed. “You spent it all on soda and video games, didn’t you?”

You coughed, turning your head away from him.

With a chuckle, he bumped his shoulder against yours. Seven stood at five-feet-six-inches with blonde hair and rust-colored eyes. The thick square glasses he wore were patterned with a white tiger print.

The two of you didn’t hang out much at school, so as the two of you walked down the hallway, bantering back and forth, the rumor mill at U.A. began to churn. All it took was one person to propose the question, ‘Are they dating?’ before it started to make its rounds around the school. Just like a game of telephone, by the time it reached Izuku, it had been molded into something completely different.

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

As soon as Seven stepped into your apartment, he dropped his bag and tackled the black cat sitting on the couch watching the TV. You sweatdropped as he crushed the cat to his chest, scratching behind his ears and cooing at him.

“Let go of me, you cretin!” The cat in question was your older brother, Shun, whose quirk, ‘Panther’, turned him into a black cat when it manifested. Shun snapped his golden eyes to you. “Control your friend!”

You cleared your throat. “Seven, we have work to do.”

He frowned, not releasing his grip. “What is it?”

“I need you to look up a story,” you explained about the trip and everything Aizawa had told you. You pulled out the permission slip, setting it down on the coffee table. “Can you sign this, Shun?”

Shun wiggled free from the boy’s grasp, his eyes never leaving him as he refused to put his back to the boy. He slapped his paw down onto the slip, angrily. “Why should I? You always let this cretin come here and abuse me!”

“It’s not that bad, Shun,” you commented, quickly looking away when he snapped his glare toward you. “Anyway, Seven provides really valuable information but he won’t help without a little… motivation. Isn’t it your job as my big brother to help me any way you can?”

“Don’t you play the big brother card on me, Y/N!” Shun snapped. “I am not a pet for this cretin’s vain amusement!”

While you and Shun argued back and forth, Seven took out his phone, holding it firmly in his hand. His eyes widened as lines of blue code scrolled by, giving his eyes the appearance of an LED screen. His quirk was ‘Digitizing’. As long as he touched any device connected to the internet, he could quickly search and access any information across the globe. Firewalls and traps were completely useless against him.

“Come on, it’s not like I bring him here every day.”

“Show some respect for your elders!”

“I’ll make you some pan-seared tuna for dinner.”

“Oh my god my mouth is watering just thinking about it – O-Oi, don’t try to bribe me!”

Seven closed his eyes, clearing his throat. “The articles are all real. Furthermore, there have been numerous incidents that have been kept out of the public eye. They were sealed behind some pretty heavy security. The number four was present in every single report.”

Your brow furrowed. “What is the significance of these islands and number four?”

He shrugged. “That’s for you to find out, I guess.”

You glanced at your brother and he sighed, “Hand me a pen.” Groping around your bag, you handed him one. He held it between his two paws and signed his name. “You better be careful. I won’t forgive you if you don’t come home!”

You smiled softly, kneeling down in front of him as you leaned forward on the table. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring you home some fresh-caught fish, okay?”

He huffed, looking away, but the twitch of his ears told you that he was excited about the idea.

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

“Look, there they are!”

The four islands were just in sight across the horizon. They were arranged in a diamond shape, each island representing the four points of the diamond. The ocean spilled into an underwater cavern that was positioned in the center. Each island was huge, expanding in all directions for several miles.

A rickety wooden dock had been built in the sand of the first island. The sand expanded back until it hit the tree line where it changed to dirt. Tall trees lined the edge of the sand, towering high into the sky. The first island gently sloped up out of the water, steadily rising until the fourth island hovered high above the water.

Aizawa waited for everyone to settle. “This is not a vacation, this is a mission. Your job is to locate the diplomats and bring them back safely. This isn’t a competition.” He sent a pointed look to Bakugo who scoffed. Aizawa gave each student an earpiece before assigning them to one of the four islands.

You glanced over at your partner, Izuku. “Ready to go?”

He gave you a hesitant smile, his cheeks warming. “Let’s do it.”

You trudged through the thick sand, feeling it being kicked up as you walked – you had to pause at the tree line to dump it from your boots before continuing. The fourth island was directly across from the first so the two of you headed in a straight line, dodging low hanging branches and thick roots that jutted out from the ground.

After a twenty-minute trek through the trees, you heard feet pounding the ground. Bakugo rushed past you, sending you a grin over his shoulder. He and Hagakure had also been assigned to island four and, of course, he had to be competitive.

Your eyes widened and you yelled for him to stop, but he only moved faster. Cursing, you pushed yourself forward. “Bakugo!”

“Huh?! The fuck are you yell – ” his words were cut short when the ground beneath his feet gave way. He went tumbling over the edge toward the whirlpool in the center of the islands.

You cried his name, diving to the earth. Your hand caught his wrist, but the ground beneath you was giving away and he was too heavy for you to lift. The feeling of falling rushed over you and you used your momentum to kick him. It was just enough for him to grab the ledge, being helped up by Izuku.

Because of the height of the fall, you sank far down into the water, getting trapped in the rushing current. You tried to break free, but it was too strong and it dragged you deep underneath the islands.

Izuku’s eyes scanned the water, waiting for you to resurface. He pressed on the earpiece, but it refused to connect. “Kaa-chan, is your earpiece working?”

The blonde snapped out of his shock and pressed on the earpiece, but his wouldn’t connect either. He shook his head, cursing as he ran a hand through his hair angrily.

Izuku bit his lip, weighing his options. “Kaa-chan, go find Aizawa-sensei. I’m going after Y/N!”

“O-Oi!” But it was too late. Izuku had jumped into the swirling water below.

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

A groan passed your lips, eyes fluttering open. Darkness surrounded you, your wet clothes sticking to your body like glue. Your head throbbed and your body felt like you were encased in ice. It took some effort to sit up and take in your surroundings. ‘Is this a… cave?’ your eyes fell on your partner, half of his body on the rock while the other half was dangling in the water. “Midoriya!”

His face scrunched up as you pulled his body onto land. Green eyes met yours and he sighed in relief. “You’re okay, thank goodness.”

“I am, but what about you?”

“I think so. Nothing is hurting other than my head.”

You tilted your head, curiously. “Why did you jump after me, Midoriya?”

“W-Why?” his cheeks grew warm, a welcome feeling against the coldness he felt.

You smiled softly, pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek. “Thank you. When we get out of here, I’ll kiss the other cheek,” you promised, holding your hand out to him. “Let’s see if we can find a way out of this place.”

The circular cave was large, the ceiling towering above you. Half the cave was flooded with water which opened up to a bigger water source. You could try to get out that way, but it was impossible to tell how long the water went on for. If there were no air pockets, you risked drowning. There was also a strong current to consider.

“Y/N-san, over here.”

You approached the greenette, finding a thin beam of light coming from a crack in the wall. Your fingernails dug at the crack and the rock shifted. Izuku put his fingers beside your own and, together, you tugged the black rock away from the wall until it broke free, falling to the ground with a thud. You could hear the sound of water dripping in the background as the smell of moss invaded your nostrils. The path was long and dark, and you had to lean over to avoid hitting your head.

At the end of the path was another crack of light, brighter this time. The two of you pushed the rock as hard as you could and it fell backward with a thud, filling the path with firelight.

The hole opened up to a circular room with three other holes on different sides. In the center of the room was a pile of paper and magazines lit on fire, the flame dancing across the walls. Empty candy wrappers and chip bags littered the floor.

More importantly, three men were pressed against the wall, ready to strike.

You held up your hands in surrender and the man in the middle wiped sweat from his brow with a dirty handkerchief. “You’re the foreign diplomats that went missing a few days ago, right? We were sent here to find you.”

The men exchanged a look, the middle man speaking up. “My name is Beralt Smith,” his gray hair was messy, standing on end as if he had run his hands through it several times, eyes the color of aquamarine.

“I’m Y/N, and this is my partner, Izuku Midoriya. We’re students at U.A.”

“U.A.?” The man on the left repeated with wide eyes. He was short and plump, his brown hair circling a bald scalp. His eyes were black and beady. Bowing at the waist, he said, “Zachary Qi, it’s a pleasure.”

The man to the right was thin as a pole, round glasses covering mousy brown eyes. His hair was the same color, matted to his forehead with sweat. “Franklin Henry,” he spoke softly, his eyes trained on the ground.

“Wait, where is the fourth diplomat?” you questioned.

The men exchanged a sad look before Beralt spoke up, his voice reflecting the sadness in his eyes. “Benedict Kirkland was bitten by a snake shortly after our boat capsized and we arrived on the island. We did everything we could to aid him, but he succumbed to the poison. He was gone by the time the sun had risen.”

“We’re very sorry for your loss,” Midoriya bowed in respect, you doing the same.

“Thank you.”

“How did you come to find yourselves in this cave?” you asked. “Maybe we can use that route to try and escape.”

Zachary pointed toward the hole on the left, facing North. “Through there is the entrance to this cave. We hid there when a sudden storm rolled across the island, but it’s been completely sealed off by debris.”

You frowned. ‘I think I’m starting to see why these islands are considered cursed land…’

“I’m sure you’ve already checked the other two paths, as well,” Midoriya murmured, thoughtfully. He was determined to come up with a plan to get everyone to safety. He refused to let these men die.

“We did, but it would be best if you checked for yourself in case we missed something.”

You and Midoriya exchanged a look before you examined each pathway, searching for any small chance to escape. To the north, the entrance was blocked by large rubble that wouldn’t move an inch.  To the east was a dead end. And to the south was a small room, barely big enough to fit a single person. Your eyes narrowed at the high ceiling, squinting in the darkness. It was faint, but you could see a light near the ceiling.

Midoriya saw it too as he stuck his head into the room. “Do you think we can reach it?”

“I don’t know, but we have to at least try.”

He nodded as the two of you switched positions. He kneeled down, motioning for you to stand on his shoulders. You did as he indicated, using the wall to steady you. He slowly stood up, gripping your ankles. Standing on your tiptoes, you reached for the light, but it was just out of reach. With a grunt, you lifted your foot, digging it into the wall as best as you could.

“Be careful.”

You climbed the rest of the way, slipping a few times on the mossy stone. Your fingers gripped the ledge and you heaved yourself up and over, fingers digging into the stone. A burst of cold, fresh air hit your face. It was a small cave entrance!

“Y/N-san?” Midoriya’s voice reached you.

You leaned your upper body over the ledge. “It’s open up here! But… how do I get you guys out?”

“Try looking around for something that can act as a rope. But don’t go too far, and be careful!”

You nodded, crouching against the low ceiling as you headed for the low light coming from the entrance. Your breath came out in puffs of air, the temperature lowering as the sun faded across the horizon.

Eyes scanning the area around you, you took notice of a tall tree, its bare branches curling out as if it were reaching for something. Near the top, a thick vine had fallen from the tree beside it, wrapping around one of the branches. You could only hope it would be long and sturdy enough to help.

Activating your quirk, ‘Infernarrow’, a flaming bow appeared in your left hand. You grasped the bowstring and pulled back, a flaming area materializing as you did so. The arrow soared through the air, easily splintering the wood as it pierced the center of the branch. It came tumbling down, loudly cracking the other branches in its way before falling to the ground with a loud thump, the vine falling around it like a snake.

You untangled it and headed back to the cave where you tied one end to a large stone behind you. Laying on your stomach, you peered over the edge again. Midoriya was still there, body shaking as he wrapped his arms tight around his body. His worried expression changed to relief when his eyes met yours.

“I found a vine. It should be thick enough to hold up.”

“I’ll go get the others!” he ducked back into the tunnel, reappearing moments later. Franklin was going first so Midoriya wrapped the vine around his waist. “Put your feet on the wall and hold tightly to the vine. Y/N-san will help by pulling you up,” he glanced up at you and you nodded. “I’ll be here to catch you if you slip,” his bright smile seemed to ease the older man’s fears, but he was still shaking like a leaf.

You sat up, heels digging into the ground as you gripped the vine tightly in your hands. You weren’t nearly as strong as All Might or Midoriya, but you were far from weak and determined not to let the men fall.

The vine pulled taut as he started to climb. He honestly wasn’t that heavy, so you were able to steadily pull him up until his shaky hand gripped the ledge. With one hand still gripping the vine, you extended the other to grab his wrist, helping him up and over.

“I might need your help with the other two,” you said softly, glancing at him as he took a breath.

He nodded, undoing the vine from his waist and throwing it over the ledge. “I-I’m not very strong, but I’ll do my best!” he kneeled beside you, gripping the vine above your hands.

Beralt was up next. As Midoriya wrapped the vine around him, he clapped his hands and took a deep breath. “Now it’s time to see if those rock climbing lessons were worth the money!”

Your body shifted forward at the sudden weight but you pushed yourself back, pulling slower than you had with the previous man. Franklin’s arms were shaking, veins looking like they wanted to burst through his pale skin.

Beralt’s fingers gripped the ledge and Franklin grabbed his arm. Through gritted teeth, the man said, “No disrespect… sir Smith, but… maybe you should… consider better… eating habits!” he gave one final tug and the man heaved himself onto the ledge, breathing heavily.

He huffed, looking embarrassed. “Zachary is the one that snuck all that junk food onto the boat,” he threw the vine over the ledge before settling on your other side, hands wrapping around the vine. “He’s also heavier than I am, so prepare yourselves!”

The third man’s weight did concern you and you briefly wondered if the three of you would be strong enough to pull him up. If you did drop him, would Midoriya be able to safely catch him? Or would the older man’s weight crush the boy without remorse? That thought worried you and you flexed your fingers before resuming your grip on the vine, eyes shining with determination.

Zachary started to climb, making the three of you lurch forward at the sudden weight. The heel of your boot slid before getting stuck in a crack in the rock. You used this to your advantage, putting most of your weight on that side.

“I… can’t -” Franklin’s arms gave out and he fell forward at the sudden lurch of the vine. Both you and Beralt lost your grip but you gripped it again, the vine sliding through your hands at an alarming speed, burning the skin. You winced in pain, your stomach turning. Zachary cried out in fear and you could picture Midoriya being crushed.

“Damn it, STOP!!” you screamed, clenching your hands as tightly as you could, pushing yourself back with your legs. The vine came to a stop and the two men quickly grabbed it, taking some of the pressure off of you. With every move, your hands screamed at you, but you ignored the tears stinging your eyes.

Finally, Zachary reached the ledge, being grabbed by the back of his shirt by Beralt. His face was red, tears staining his cheeks.

Your hands were stinging and burning simultaneously, but you held the vine tight, biting down hard on your lip to try and distract your mind. Midoriya was heavier than Franklin, but much lighter than the other two, so Beralt did most of the lifting. You were thankful because you could feel how your grip had weakened considerably. You felt so thankful when Midoriya pulled himself up onto the ledge.

Midoriya took a breath as he kneeled in the cave, suppressing a shiver. “For now, let’s try and build a fire to keep warm. We can try to find our way when the sun rises.”

“I’ll go look for some wood,” you announced, leaving the cave. Darkness covered the island, the wind nipping at your damp clothes like hungry vultures. It felt good on your hands, though, that felt like they were on fire. You didn’t want to be near Midoriya right now because you knew how much of a worrywart he was – he’d freak out about your hands and the two of you had more important things to worry about.

You weaved through the trees, returning to the branch you had broken with your quirk. The spot was hidden behind a thick trunk of wood, but you only had to lean back to see the faint outline of the cave. You kneeled on the cold grass, holding out your shaking hands. The skin was dark red and was beginning to blister. There were small beads of blood, growing bigger when you stretched the skin.

‘I should wrap them up, but then he’ll definitely notice…’ you sighed. ‘I can’t even use my quirk with my hands like this,’ you cursed, throwing your head back to prevent the tears from falling.

The crunching of leaves alerted you to Midoriya approaching and you quickly flipped your hands over, nearly wincing as the skin rubbed against your clothes. He rubbed the back of his neck, face burning. “You… did a really good job back there, Y/N-san.”

You smiled up at him. “It was a group effort. I doubt I could have done it without their help…” you subconsciously flexed your hand and hissed in pain.

Midoriya noticed. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry!” A breeze whipped around you and you shivered. “I am cold though, so let’s hurry up and get that fire going!” with a grin, you tried to pick up the branch but a wave of pain went through your hands. You tried to hide it, but Midoriya was watching you closely.

He knelt beside you, gently grabbed your wrists. His eyes widened when he saw them. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

“I didn’t want to worry you. And it’s not even that bad…” you mumbled, not meeting his gaze. He ripped the fabric of his hero costume, exposing his knees. “W-Wait a minute, Mido -”

His warm smile made you pause as he ripped it into strips. “We need to cover them so they don’t get infected,” he gently wrapped it around your hand.

“Sorry for the trouble,” you sighed, looking up at the dark sky. “When sensei first mentioned this place, I found it weird that the number four kept coming up. Online, a lot of people speculated that this place is cursed and I think I’m starting to believe it.”

He hummed, beginning to wrap your other hand. “I don’t know much about curses, but I do believe we make our own luck. Even if the world is against us, I believe we can still come out on top as long as we work hard and never lose hope.”

You watched him as several emotions flickered across his face.

His eyes met yours with a fierceness you had never seen from him before. “That’s why I want to… tell you how I feel. I really like you, Y/N-san, a lot. Will you please go out with me?”

“Midoriya… no, Izuku,” you rested the back of your hand against his cheek and smiled. “I would be happy to,” he smiled so brightly it lit up the darkness. “For our first date, what do you think about an island getaway?”

He laughed as he stood up, bringing the branch with him. “I vote for a warmer first date.”

As another breeze passed through the trees, you suppressed a shiver. “Agreed…”

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

You knew that, in the fall, the sun rose in the East, so when the sun started to rise, you had your bearings. The five of you walked for hours until the sun started to set once more. With a stroke of luck, you faintly made out the light of a flashlight sweeping the trees and the sound of a familiar voice calling your name.

All Might found all of you, radioing back to Aizawa and the others that were out searching for all of you. He led the way toward the ship, the three diplomats following him closely as they geeked out about getting to meet the number one hero.

“Do you remember what I said, Izuku?” you asked, softly.

His brow furrowed in thought and you chuckled.

“We found our way out of the cave,” you kissed his left cheek. “We found the diplomats,” you kissed his right cheek. “And we’re on our way home,” your claimed his lips with your own.

Despite his burning cheeks, he pulled you closer to his body.

Maybe he was right after all. Maybe you did make your own luck.

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

[waywardwhump]

Attic Angel- False Wings

@cynicalwhump

Challenge accepted! This piece inspired by this post here. Thank you for the prompt, Cynical. 

The chill seeps into her skin. It steals away her heat and leaves her shivering where she’s bound, forced to kneel on a hard, unfeeling floor. 

It’s a familiar position, one that makes her feel sick to keep. With all her physical strength she writhes against the unseen beams, and with all her angelic power, she sends out pulse after pulse in an effort to tear the restraints apart. Yet they held steady. An invisible force keeping her down, crackling against her skin like static.

She’s been like this for almost two full days. Thariel’s body protests the strain she’s putting on it, but still she fights to get free, flooded with terror and the singular need for escape. All she’s done is exhaust herself. 

Limp after her most recent bout of struggling, panting for breath as her eyes stare, unfocused, at the floor in front of her. She doesn’t have to hear him to know he’s back. His presence is strong, his power like a solid thing in the air. Behind her, looming over her like a shadow, and Thariel shrinks.

Curled in on herself, against the energy bindings like a fly in a spider’s web, but no matter how small she tries to be she’s still caught in the open. Still trapped. Her breath catches in her throat.

He chuckles, a warm, light sound. Gentle, even. “Poor thing. You don’t need to be so afraid, you know. I just want to be friends.”

“No,” she says in hardly more than a breath. There’s a shuffle behind her, and she flinches hard. Fingernails dig into the ground in front of her as she leans forward. Any moment, she expects pain. To be hurt, to be punished for her defiance.

But he doesn’t, not yet. 

Lucifer circles around to her front, unarmed, his white suit spotless and without so much as a wrinkle. He kneels in front of her, and now she’s scrambling back, leaning away from him as far as she can go. 

Not far enough. Thariel stares up, wide eyed into a crimson gaze that stares back. 

“It’s a pity you won’t see reason,” he says. “Truly. No matter how many times you get hurt by your own kin, you still want to follow their rules. Even Ranizel’s started to question the way things are run. Did you know that? Someone who hasn’t fallen thinks you’ve been treated unfairly, and he’s not nearly as worthy of a second chance as you.”

He smiles fondly, wistfully, and she can’t crawl away as his hands reach for her face. The flat of his palms against her cheeks, the curl of his fingertips around her jaw. 

Power extends from him, strength from angelic blood, though long corrupted. It washes over her in a wave. Hot, like the water from a bath, creeping under her chilled skin and chasing away every trace of frost. Terror thrashed in her, but then the heat set in, melting the pain in her muscles. It drew away the tension. It left her dazed, boneless in her restraints, soothed in the worst way possible.

His voice is a low hum, a promise of safety and protection. “I can be merciful. I can be on your side. Look at you. All you want is not to be hurt anymore. It’s not a sin. You’ve fallen anyway, what point is there to following their orders? They don’t appreciate it. They want to kill you.”

And Thariel, her voice is a tiny, breathy thing, shaking despite this moment of comfort. “There is a reason those rules are in place. You’re not my friend. You’re the devil.”

He doesn’t look at all disappointed. No. He’s still smiling as he pulls away, and as his hands leave her face the warmth vanishes, abandoning her to feel hollow and cold. It like there’s a hole somewhere near her heart. A void that can’t be filled, torn out of her on purpose. “Yes, I’m the devil. And you’re an angel, aren’t you? You really should look the part if you’re going to insist on holding yourself to their standards.”

“W-what does that mean?”

“It means I’ve brought you something. I thought I’d give you back what you’ve lost.”

Lucifer moves as he talks, circling behind her again. Her bindings tighten, push her upright. They hold her in place as a hand tugs up the back of her shirt.

Her back exposed. The ugly scars where her wings once were. The knob of bone, though sanded down and smooth, near each shoulder-blade. Dead tissue, burnt beyond recognition. 

It’s the worst feeling, to have that part of her be seen. 

But then he touches those old burn marks, and power spiderwebs through the broken nerve-endings, bringing them back to life. Lucifer presses an open palm against the flat of her back, and Thariel cowers, keening as she feels it, too-sharp and too present.

A coil of energy around the back of her neck, bowing her head. Her shoulders are locked into place. Completely immobile, she’s helpless to stop him as he presses something else to her back.

It’s white-hot, sharp, the agony immediate and absolute. Thariel screams, trying to arch away. Thrashing, shoving every bit of power she has in a mindless struggle to be free from the pain, but it doesn’t stop. It spreads outward, coating the entirety of the scar.

And it doesn’t stop when Lucifer pulls away. It lingers, a heated paste that clings and bubbles, searing the flesh with no chance for reprieve. First one scar, then the other, drawing out a wail form her lungs until she has no air left with which to scream.

Thariel prays. 

There’s no connection to heaven, and no one there can hear her, but she’s reaching out blindly. Begging for help and for strength and for rescue.

She feels a pressure at her back. He’s pushing something against the burn, and just like that night in the attic her pleas fall on uncaring ears. In desperation her cries turn to him. “Stop, stop! Please, stop! I’m sorry, please, stop, just stop, please stop-”

Though still restrained, the bonds loosen, and Thariel buckles forward, her head falling onto her arms with an unwilling sob. There’s a weight on either side of her, both strange and familiar, a word just caught on the back of the tongue but too vague to name.

And he’s right to say that she just doesn’t want to be hurt, because between her cries and gasps she’s still begging him. But it’s still a sin; No angel should ask the devil of anything.

“Shh.” His hand is under her jaw, coaxing her up. “Look. Isn’t this what you wanted? This is your reward for following their rules.”

It takes her a moment to see it. To see anything through the pain, and the tears, and the sick coil in her stomach. 

Upon her back, stretching out behind her, are two feathered wings. Plastic, fake. They’ve been glued on. It’s the glue that’s burning her.

When she moves, they move. The feathers drag against the ground, and the pressure tugs at her burns, the nerves still alive and searing. Her damaged skin threatens to tear, even at that small pressure.

She doesn’t think she could take it. She can’t fathom surviving the agony of feeling these false wings torn from her while her back can still feel. As if he knew her thoughts, (and Heavens, he did, didn’t he?) he placed a hand on the curve of one wing and applied the tiniest tug of warning. “Well? Do you like them? Are you grateful for what you’ve been given?”

“Y-yes,” she responds, breath hitching with panic, “yes I, I do. Thank you. Yes, please, don’t take- don’t take them away. Please. I l-like them. Please.”

Relief floods her when he pulls his hand away. He goes back to her her chin instead, and a part of her wants him to fill her with his energy again, to make everything stop, even for a little while.

His eyes are warm, soft things. Caring, like a kind mentor’s. “You claim to follow Heaven’s law, yet here you are. You just lied to me, little angel. Isn’t that against the rules?”

He uses his power to grab at the fake wings, and Thariel’s heart almost stops as he brushes a thumb over her cheek. 

“I can be merciful. I can also make your life a living hell, and I can rip you apart piece by piece until every passing second feels like hours. I can keep you screaming for years. Decades. For eternity. I can keep going until your will buckles and your every thought is dedicated to my will. But you don’t want that, do you?”

“No.”

“Are we friends?”

“...yes.”

“And what do friends say when they give each other gifts, Thariel?”

“T-thank, thank you.”

The pressure at her back eases. He lets go of her wings, and curls a hand behind her head, carding a hand through her hair. “There there. That wasn’t so hard. See? I knew you had more potential than Ranizel ever had.”

“Thank you.”

There is no soothing rush of warmth, and Lucifer doesn’t stay long after that. He has more planned. He wants to see if this threat of his sticks.

When he leaves, she still has full feeling in her back. She still has those false wings glued to her.

And alone with her thoughts, she’s forced to face that she truly is a fallen now. She has made a choice that no true angel would make, and maybe these plastic feathers are a fitting punishment for every time she’s pretended to still be good since her fall.

[sophfandoms53]

this might seem very basic, but please do “i love you 3000” with dewey and his fam?

Alright.. um… ow my heart.. y’all arent ready for the feels in this. Or maybe you are. I don’t know.

Letsago! (Also spoilers for Endgame in a sense)

-

“Great minds think alike. Juice pops, they were exactly what was on my mind.” Dewey said as he finished off his grape pop while ruffling Skye’s hair.

Danny giggled as he struggled to hold his half-way finished stick and Dewey chuckled, “You done with that Dan?” His son chuckled and brought the pop stick towards Dewey who took it and finished Danny’s orange pop, “Now you are.”

The three year old giggled again as he crawled to Dewey on Skye’s bed and stood up, “Upsies!”

Dewey chuckled, picking Danny up, “Alright time for bed you three.” He looked over at Chase who was chewing on his empty stick, “C’mon Chase hop to your bed.” To which the young 5 year old did as Dewey put Danny in his mini bed and tucked Danny in.

“I hopped in Papa.” Chase said.

His father walked over, “I see. Now lets get you under your sheets yeah?” Dewey tucked his other son in tightly, “Ah snug as a rug in a bug.”

Chase cuddled into his pillow, “It’s snug as a bug in a rug, dad.” He laughed as he corrected his father.

Dewey playfully rolled his eyes and zooshed Chase’s hair, “Yeah yeah.” He turned around, heading towards the door.

“Daddy?” Skye called, getting her father’s attention, “Tell us a bedtime story.”

“A story?” Dewey asked while kissing her forehead, “Alright. Once upon a time, a group of three children went to bed. The end.”

Chase scoffed, “That’s the same story you told us last time. I bet it’s not even a whole story.”

“C’mon that’s your favorite story.” Dewey chuckled “I love you three tons.”

“We love you, 3000.”

He was slightly taken aback. “Wow… 3000.. that’s crazy..” His heart accelerated. He loved his children incredibly and 3000.. that was a huge number. Dewey shook his head chuckling, “Now you three go to bed before I sell all your toys. Night kiddos.”

“Night Dad!” His kids said as he walked out and heard them giggling

Dewey walked into the living room and he saw Webby sitting on the couch reading one of her novels. He smirked walking behind her, and placed his hands on her shoulders, which startled her slightly but she looked up at him.

“Not that it’s a competition but… they love me 3000.” Dewey said looking down at Webby.

She smirked, “Oh really?”

“Yerp.” He smoothed down her hair, “You were somewhere in the low 6 to 900 range.”

Webby laughed, placing her book down and Dewey hopped over the couch and sat next to her. “What were you reading?”

She shrugged, “Just a book on composting…”

Dewey nodded and there became an awkward silence in the room. He anxiously rubbed his hands together debating how to tell Webby the news. He then decided to just go for it.

“I figured it out..”

Webby perked.

“Time travel… I figured it out..”

She was astounded. Her husband. Dewey Duck. Cracked Time Travel. “Wow.. that’s… amazing.. and.. terrifying all at the same time.”

Dewey nodded as he swallowed. His insides twisted, his nerves taking over. HE figured it out but.. that didn’t mean they could fix what happened.

Seeing her husbands stressed state, Webby placed a hand on his shoulder, “We got really lucky you know? I mean we’re married and have three beautiful children.”

A small smile made its way to Dewey’s beak, “Yeah… I know..”

“A lot of people didn’t get that lucky Dewey..”

He shook his head, “No…. but I can’t help everybody.”

Webby narrowed her eyes, “It sort of seems like you can. I mean you-”

“Not if I stop.” Dewey interrupted, looking Webby right in her eyes, “I can put a pin in it right now and stop.”

She cupped his cheek, “Dewey, trying to get you to stop has been one of the few failures in my entire life.”

He gently held her wrist, “Something tells me I should put it in a locked box and drop it at the bottom of a lake and go to bed.”

“But would you be able to rest?” Webby asked, “Knowing that you didn’t take this chance?”

He sighed.

“I..” He began before Webby shushed him

“Dewey.. look at me.” She spoke softly, “Just do what you gotta do. Like you’ve always done, and I’ll have your back.”

He smiled softly and nodded. 

This whole thing had so many variables. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to pursue and help his brothers in their cause or just shove it all aside and continue his life with Webby and their kids. She did bring up a good point that made Dewey think.

Would he be able to rest?

-

Family and friends all gathered in the living room. All dressed in black, and stood close to each other. Many returned and other’s… well..

Mrs Beakley walked downstairs carrying his metal helmet and placed it down on the table, positioning it in the right direction. She clicked a button and the hologram message started.

Webby held her children close as the hologram of their father appeared. He was shuffling through cards before sighing and placing them down.

“What did I write these cards for..” Dewey’s hologram spoke, “I just gotta go with this.. as crazy as this all is… just go with it. Okay..” The hologram sat down and he faced the family.

“Hey everybody… If you’re playing this then.. we did it.. We actually pulled off Huey and Louie’s insane plan…” He went silent for a moment, took a deep breath, “But.. that also means something happened to me.. and.. I don’t really know.. I mean I’m in your past right now so.” He chuckled, “God this whole thing is confusing. I can’t even believe I even have to record this but… I figured I’d leave a proper goodbye for you all.. since I most likely won’t have time to say much..”

The whole room was silent. It was still an unbelievable circumstance and the fact Dewey recorded a whole message, knowing he wasn’t gonna make it out.. no one needed to say anything to express their heartbreak. The tears and small breaths said it all.

His hologram began to talk again, “Everyone want’s a happy ending right? It’s what we all expect. It’s what we’re all told. But something people don’t talk about is that there are a variety of happy endings, and ours is one of them. I’m hoping that if you guys play this, it’s in celebration, of your happy endings.” The hologram smirked and stood up, “And I hope there are some tears shed for ol’ Dewford here but you get what I’m saying.-

“That’s how I Dewey it.” Everyone said, along side Dewey’s hologram.

Light and heartful chuckles filled the room as everyone exchanged smiles. He brought them back together. If Dewey were here, he’d be smiling too. He always wanted to be the glue that held the family together, and he’s being just that, even if he’s not really present.

Dewey’s hologram began to walk around, “In all honesty guys, I hope families are reunited, ours included. I hope that we.. somehow, someway get a normal version of our planet restored.. if there ever was such thing.. I have no idea I’m not geologist.. I think that’s what it’s called.” He paused, “This world.. is strange man.. If you would’ve told me ten years ago that we weren’t alone.. especially to this extent.. Seriously I feel like we get a new member every week.. I wouldn’t  have been surprised. I mean, think about it. All the forces of darkness and light that have come into play the past decade? And for better or worse… that’s the reality Skye, Chase and Danny are gonna have to grow up in…”

He sighed and his hologram walked toward his brothers, “Like I said before, I found time to record this goodbye… in case of an untimely death on my part.. I mean not that death is untimely.. it happens to all of us eventually.. And this whole time travel thing that we’re gonna try to do tomorrow it’s.. It’s got me scratching my head about this.. But I want you all to understand that I’m going into this adventure and mission like it’s my last, because it might actually be. I don’t want any of you to blame yourselves for what happens to me, looking at you Webby.” The hologram pointed at his wife and she gave a sad smile, “This is the hero gig right? Part of the journey is the end. And I have this feeling that everything is gonna work out exactly the way it’s suppose to.”

“Huey and Louie.. who I hope are standing here when this plays or else I’m gonna look stupid.” His brothers laughed, and lucky enough they were right in front of his hologram. “My dear brothers… what a ride this has been huh? I mean who would’ve thought the world and.. the whole universe would lay on our shoulders.. I sure didn’t. It’s a honor, really, and being able to go through this whole adventure with you two.. has been the greatest honor of all. Thank you both for being by my side, and helping me learn what it’s like to be a true hero. You have been fantastic brothers. Huey, I hope you have been reunited with Shelly and the two of you have great future, just know I will be there on your wedding night. Keep an eye on the cake.” He winked, “Thanks for being my voice of reason when Louie and I couldn’t exactly see eye to eye.”

Dewey’s hologram turned to Louie, “Oh Louie. We have had an… interesting past few years. Conflicting views, secrets, lies, betrayals. Yeah.. it hasn’t been easy between us but… I want you to know that.. when all this is over.. we’re okay. Everything we’ve been through has brought us to this point and.. you deserve a fantastic future. I love both of you.”

The hologram hugged the two of them, but because it was a hologram, they couldn’t exactly hug back but that didn’t stop the tears that formed in their eyes and fell down their cheeks. Dewey’s hologram pulled away sniffling, “Now.. here’s the harder part…” They all watched as he walked in front of Webby.

Her throat tighten and she held Skye close against her chest while Danny held her arm with Chase holding him. “Webby, Webby, Webby..” He paused and chuckled, “Barely even started and I’m already crying… that’s what’s making this whole thing hard.. is knowing that.. I’m leaving you.. and I don’t want to do that.. this part..” He gestured between them, “This is what sucks about all this because.. I still want more time to be your husband.. I want to continue to be a father.. I want to be the role model our children deserve… but it seems it’s not gonna work out the way we planned.. when does it ever? God Webby.. I… I just.. ugh! This goodbye is harder than I ever thought..” He rubbed his face, “Okay okay..” He knelt down and looked at Webby, “Again I hope you’re in front of me.. Webbigail Vanderquack Duck… man… words cannot even begin to describe how much I love you and how much this pains me.. I wouldn’t be where I am without you.. all these years together.. as friends, as daters, lovers, husband and wife and as parents… you’ve brought out the best in me.. and I wouldn’t change a thing from what we have been through. All the dark times, all the tears, laughs and smiles, it made us who we are.” He blinked and his tears continued to fall, “I truly do wish there was another ending for us… but it’s like you said.. not everyone is that lucky.. Webby, I’m so sorry.. for the pain and confusion you’re going through.. I know this is gonna hurt you.. but I’m always with you, whether it’s our rings, your necklace, or even our kids.. I’m right here.. I’ll always be here when you need me.. Those three are our legacy and I know you are going to continue to be a fantastic mother, and I know you’re gonna be there to guide Nathan as well. Never stop being the strong, independent women you are, Webby. And one last thing.” His hologram leaned forward, “I’ll always love you. Know, that I lived and walked on this Earth loving you and that I will die, still loving you.” His holographic hand held her cheek and he kissed her forehead.

Webby bit her beak, holding back her sob that had been building up throughout Dewey’s entire speech. Tears poured our of her eyes and she sniffed. She didn’t expect this to happen so soon.. but his message gave her comfort, and she was sure he had more recordings, this is Dewey after all, duck likes to talk.

He turned to his children, smiling at them. The trio stared at their father’s hologram both in confusion and awe. “Kids… I know right now you might not know what’s going on.. but I can assure you, one day you will. Thank you for being my three little blessings on this planet. I couldn’t have asked for better children to call my own. When you guys are older, there are some messages I left to help you guys in case of an emergency or you just wanna talk. Until then, Skye. Chase. Danny-.”

“I love you 3000.”

With that, the hologram shut off and the room was filled once again with silence and sniffles. Webby looked down at her wedding ring and smiled sadly,

“We love you 3000 too Dewey, always.”

[theritualofourexistence]

Grandmom

When I talk about my family, there are a couple different things I find myself saying often.

First, my family is my most valuable gift. I am so, so grateful to be a part of the family I have, and they mean more to me than anything else in the world.

I’ve also been known to joke pretty casually that divorce runs in my family.

While I usually say that with a smile, it’s not inaccurate. My parents are divorced. My parents’ parents are divorced. Though I would never imply that divorce was easy or straightforward, it has brought some pretty incredible people into my life.

When I was born, I had three full sets of living grandparents and a set of living great-grandparents. On my dad’s side, I had Grammy (his mom) and Pap-Pap, Grandpa (his dad) and Nana, and Grandma and Poppy (his mother’s parents). Today, four of those six people are still living, which is something I treasure beyond words.

My mom’s mom passed away when my mom was only 19, so I never had the chance to meet her. My mom, though, speaks very candidly about knowing that Dotty is still around and has been with her (and all of us, really) during the most important moments in our lives. My mom’s dad, my Pop-Pop, married Irene after he and my mom’s mom divorced. By the time I was born, the drama of that divorce was long gone and my mom’s whole family had developed a very special sort of relationship with Irene, my Grandmom. Irene made this easy. I think loving was a very simple thing for her. Not that it wasn’t a sacrifice, just that it came very naturally.

My mom was sick around my birth so my first home on this whole earth was actually under my Grandmom’s roof.

My Pop-pop had his first major stroke when I was only a couple years old. I wish that I remembered him better when he was healthy, but most of my memories of him are of him in a wheelchair. He could be difficult (that’s putting it mildly), but my Grandmom cared for him through three major strokes and countless mini strokes, right up until he passed away at home in 2004. I remember saying goodbye to him. We didn’t have much of a relationship, but I was old enough to recognize the impact his passing had on my mom and her family. I think he was very, very lucky to find Irene. Really, I think the whole family was lucky that he did.

My Grandmom has been dealing with multiple medical issues including crippling arthritis for a lot of years now. She has never complained about this pain. In fact, I’m not sure I ever witnessed her complain at all. The last few years have been especially hard as she lost her driving privileges and her mobility began to decline. She didn’t like being stuck at home. That did not, however, stop her from continuing to mentor younger members of her church who were seeking spiritual grief counseling. Over Christmas she said that it was harder over the phone but that it was worth it. It made her feel like she was doing good work, that she had some value. I mention this specifically because it goes back to what I said about her ability to love. I don’t know that I would call this fierce. I would call it calm but strong. She managed to love everyone the same way, the same amount, with the same steady current of support.

On Monday, my Grandmom had a stroke.

She began to decline a few hours after reaching the hospital.

She passed away yesterday.

I know she is at peace. And for that I am so, so grateful. I will miss her… really, I already do.

It hasn’t been a secret that she has been ready to go for a while. Not in a morose way, but in a peaceful, acceptance-of-mortality way. Often, at family gatherings, when you asked how she was doing, she would say with a laugh, “Well, I’m still here and I still remember my name!”

I am grateful that my Grandmom didn’t spend more than a few hours unable to recall her name.

Because of this peace she had made with her eventual passing, I had the privilege of saying goodbye slowly, over a couple of years. I’m very grateful for that too.

She was a genuinely remarkable woman and she shared a deep, deep love with a family she didn’t have any responsibility to embrace. We certainly embraced her right back though.

She’s been the matriarch of the family for decades. For those of you who know my love of musicals, it’s funny, but she brings to mind a specific character from one of my favorite shows. I haven’t thought about this until her passing, really, but I find myself thinking about it a lot over the past few days.

I don’t have any claims on an abuela. That is not my story. But Abuela Claudia’s trademark song in “In the Heights” is “Paciencia y Fe.” Though my Grandmom and Abuela Claudia are more different than they are alike, if there is one person in my life who has demonstrated patience and faith, it’s my Grandmom.

It’s no secret that I run hot. A lot of people in my family do.

But my Grandmom was able to care so, so deeply in the most rhythmic, steady way. I’ve used that word “steady” a lot already, but I can’t seem to find a better way to say it. She was a pillar. Unshaking, constant.

For myself, a lot of my personal rhythm is sort of like learning how to drive stick. It’s jarring at times and there is jolting and horrible sounds and stopping and starting and stalling.

My Grandmom was never like that. If I’m learning stick, she was a train on a well-known track. She was the metal core of a building’s supports that takes the vibrations of an earthquake and disperses them safely and evenly. She was the strongest roots of a tree, the calm surface of a deep lake, she was the roof of the house in Glenolden that has been in my family longer than I have.

My family will miss her anchor in our lives. But we will be fine because of how she built us up.

When I was a kid, we would play with my uncle’s old Legos in her basement. She would always get our favorite treats, Yoo-hoo and crumb-top donuts and all the yummy things we didn’t get at home. She and I made our Christmas punch together every year. She iced my finger and put a band-aid on it when I was stung by a bee for the first time. Every Christmas she would leave us a special gift by our bedroom door, either pajamas or slippers to wear when we gathered as a family to open gifts on Christmas morning.

My Grandmom has been a part of every Christmas I’ve ever had.

She was very quick to laugh, even when her physical condition started to decline. It’s her laugh that I know I will remember most often and most easily. Her laugh, and of course, her love.

No one in my mom’s family would be who they are without her. That’s the sort of quiet, strong impact she had.  She wasn’t the star on the stage, she was the stage manager—making sure everything went off without a hitch. It seems like the right thing was never a hard thing for her to identify. Not that she didn’t have to make hard decisions, just that she always handled them with grace.

Even when she chided me for misbehaving, she did so in a way that never made me feel bad about myself. I never doubted her love or her pride in me, in our family.

She knew when to push and when to leave something be. She loved to play games, I remember a lot of rounds of Upwords, and she loved to watch the birds in the backyard. I remember quiet conversations at night at the small table in the kitchen with just the light on above the sink. I remember that she came out to the bar with me and my parents when my 21st birthday happened to fall on the eve of my brother’s high school graduation. I have never been a drinker and even that night I don’t think I finished my beer. But she could tell that I was feeling low because I had spent my birthday playing second fiddle and she did what she could to soothe that. I remember just sitting quietly with her, so many times in so many ways over so many years. Being around her was peaceful.

She lived to welcome so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I truly just feel so fortunate that I got to be one joint on the web of people she knew and loved during her life. I share no genetic material with my Grandmom but that did not stop her from gluing my whole family together and very gently and carefully holding every piece in place until the glue set firm.

She may be gone but the glue remains, stronger than ever, fortified, eternal.

Thank you, Grandmom. You’ve played an instrumental role in giving me my greatest gift, my family. I wouldn’t be me without you. I’ll keep loving you from here, just like I know you’ll keep loving us from wherever you are now. It’s easy for me to imagine you blending into the bright force of light that is the love flowing in and around and through all of us. I will spend my life striving to have the impact on others that you have had on so, so many people. In a world where peace and love and strength are priceless currency, you were and will always be one of the biggest diamonds I’ve ever seen.

Once you’re done telling Pop-pop all about the Eagles winning the Superbowl, you’ll have to give him a kiss for me.

We miss you, but we’ll be okay down here. Thank you so much for everything you gave to us. It is such a blessing to know you’re now basking in the peace you so often provided for others here on Earth.

I love you, Grandmom.

[froggybaek]

set it off - optional bias

♛➩ genre: v sweet fluff, maybe a hint of angst but not really, friends-to-lovers

♛➩ pairing: neutral!reader x optional bias [male]

♛➩ warnings: H/N is where you insert your bias’ name

♛➩ summary: you hadn’t been home to new york in months, busy building your photography business by travelling all over the country. now that you have the time to relax, you decide to venture back to where it all began - back to the place you called home, to your family, to him.

♛➩ word count: 3.1k

 When you were younger, you were praised for your determination to fulfill whatever goals you set your mind to. Your parents prided your headstrong attitude, your teachers favored you for your hardworking work ethic, and your peers either respected or despised you as a person. As a child this made you wonder if it was all worth it - worth the harsh whispers in the hallways of your middle school, worth the occasional and “totally accidental” shove you received in passing to your next class.

 At one point, it had all become too much for you. Just touching the youthful age of fourteen, you were ready to throw away your passions simply to appease your fellow students; but then, someone very important to you had said something that would stick to you like glue for decades.

 “Everyone has something they’re passionate about, Y/N. Hell, your bullies do to - they’re just hesitant to admit it in fear of not being popular. One day, they’ll come to respect what you love, you just have to keep doing whatever it is you do so you can show them.”

 A soft sigh escaped your parted lips upon reminiscing the memory from - how many years ago had it been?

 Glancing outside the bedroom window on the second floor of your house, you spot a group of teenagers that couldn’t possibly be over the age of fifteen huddled together. Two of them carried blue, plastic grocery bags in their hands, filled to the brim with what appeared to be rolls of toilet paper. One of the girls held up and began passing around black masks to her friends. Once they were all disguised, they started to walk down the street towards the cul-de-sac - ah, so that was what they were up to.

 Most of the houses on your road looked fairly similar, built with quaint white bricks, a gray foundation, and black tile roofs. Yet at the very end, resting in the center of the cul-de-sac, was the Orion family home. Decked out with a wacky treehouse in the front yard, a mesh fence, red brick, and an eyesore of a yellow roof, the Orions had always been the boot of childish pranks since, well, forever.

 For some reason, they never complained - in fact, an old friend of yours was convinced that they didn’t mind having their house egged and strewn with toilet paper, since it gave them something to do besides sitting around and staring at their television all day. Seeing that damned eyesore of a house after such a long time stirred up a plethora of old memories, but you figured that you could think about them later; after all, your cookies would burn if you didn’t get back downstairs and take them out of the oven.

————————————————————————

 Woven basket hanging off your arm, you quietly walked down the familiar street, the soles of your shoes squeaking every now and again on a puddle from the storm the night before. Red and white mailboxes lined up in an orderly fashion in front of each green lawn, most of them decorated neatly with brightly colored flowers and the occasional birch tree. A stray cat snored peacefully on the front porch of the Clover household, a baby blue bowl perched on the steps. Two giant dogs, Lissa and Chrom, barked at you as you walked past their territory, the pale yellow bells attached to their respective blue and orange collars ringing in your ears.

 Soon enough you arrived at your destination, one that you regarded to be something like your second home when you were growing up. The practically ancient tire-swing swayed in the gentle breeze that swept past your figure, a few tendrils of the rope having long since untangled from the bundle that held the swing on the crooked branch of the single tree in the front yard.

 “I bet that I can push you all the way to the branch, Y/N!”

 You playfully stuck our your pink tongue to the boy, tossing your book onto the grass so you could clasp onto the ropes of the tire-swing. “No way - you aren’t that strong, H/N.” You giggled teasingly, suddenly regretting your words when he purses his lips and steps forward to push the tire, the strong force sending the swing into a wild circle.

 The cheeky boy laughed at your screams, pushing you even stronger than before when the tire comes back around full circle. “Haha, take that, Y/N - oh shit!” He cursed loudly when your body somehow managed to fling itself off the tire-swing, the frail boy just barely catching you with his own body before you both fell to the ground. “I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

 Now, what the worried boy hadn’t expected, was for the person in his arms to burst out in giggles. “... did you hit your head on something before I caught you?” He pondered aloud with furrowed eyebrows, sitting up and perching his chin on your shoulder so he could sent an inquisitive look your way.

 “N-no, I didn’t get hurt - that was super fun!” you cheered loudly, clapping the palms of your hands together in excitement, “let’s go again, H/N!”

 “H/N, did you say a naughty word!?” His mother shouted from her bedroom window, causing both of you to look at each other and go pale in fright, though your giggles never let up.

 Looking over to that same exact window with a faint smile, you notice that the blinds are open, the silky white curtains being pushed apart as an older woman with graying hair peeks out of her home to investigate the strange person in her front yard. As you get closer and closer to the front door, your appearance strikes a chord in her, demonstrated by her mouth gaping open and how she speeds away from the window to quickly open the door for you.

 “Hey-”

 “Y/N, it’s really you!” the woman nearly screeched in utter joy, throwing herself into your arms and pulling you into a bone-crushing hug, “it’s been so long, dear! You know, you and H/N have really become the pride of the county now that you’re both all grown up.” She showers you in kind praises, a hint of a blush spreading across your cheeks. Although, something she says catches your attention.

 “Thank you, it’s absolutely wonderful to see you too, but... well, what exactly has H/N been up to lately?” you question her innocently, following her inside and chuckling softly at the sight of her husband slumped over on the couch, snoring loudly with their three cats resting on his belly.

 She leads you into the kitchen, helping you set down the basket you’d brought with you and laying out a plate to set the cookies on. “Well, while you’ve been building a reputation for your amazing photography, our little tike has been working his way up the ladder at the local hospital. He’s their star surgeon!” His mother sighs with a cheery smile, bouncing on the heels of her feet as she takes one of the baggies from the basket and plates the fresh cookies. “Oh, but you both have outgrown this place. You’re both so busy, and now he’s got his own fancy penthouse in the main part of the city.”

 The... city?

 “I ain’t never gonna live in the city! It’s way too loud, has too many people.” H/N declared out of nowhere, nodding his head in certainty, straightening his posture against the trunk of the dead tree he’d been leaning against.

 You were sat next to him, legs crossed neatly as you quietly flipped another page in the book you were busy reading, somehow managing to keep a keen focus on both the words on the pages and the bubbly boy beside you. “Mhm, whatever you say. By the way, you’re using improper grammar.” You corrected him blandly, making your friend puff out his cheeks in annoyance at your small smirk of amusement.

 He huffed dramatically, slumping over to cuddle into your side. His eyelids were constantly fighting off the drowsiness of his body, but he was determined to stay awake. “Yeah, yeah - whatever you say...” the boy trailed off with a yawn, now completely latched onto your arm, “I don’t know how in the world anyone can like living in the city. It’s way too obnoxious, with all the lights, sirens, and people. In fact, I think I want to live in the country.”

 “Mhm.”

 He snorted at your hum of acknowledgement, knowing that you were still listening to his rambling. Most others would assume you weren’t paying them any attention, but they couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Since he was, of course, your best friend in the whole wide world, he knew when you were and were not paying attention to his words. “You’re going to come with me, right? I mean, when I move out, someday. We can buy a farm and raise tons of animals, it’ll be fun and peaceful. We can have cows, sheep, pigs, ducks...”

 H/N continued to list off the perks of living together in the south, where there was tons of land just waiting for the two of you to build on. At some point, though, he felt your head slowly fall against his, which had been resting on your shoulder for some time now. Upon glancing down at your lap, he’d noticed that the book you’d been reading was closed over a hand you used to keep your place, your other hand placed on his thigh.

 Seeing you so... at peace, so relaxed even in sleep, the teenager halted his ramblings to save them for another time, eventually falling asleep curled up next to you.

————————————————————————

 After you’d listened to the woman you were happy to call a second mother tell stories for at least another hour, you ended up asking her for H/N’s address. Even now, sitting in the yellow cab that drove you to your destination, you couldn’t understand why he had decided to move into the bustling city. New York was already loud and crowded, so why had the boy who told you that he would find a place down south in the country settled down in a supposedly luxurious penthouse in the heart of New York City?

 The traffic was absolutely horrid. You’d dealt with your fair share of traffic mishaps, considering it was unavoidable when you had gone to so many places over the years, but this reached a whole new level of aggravating. Not to mention, your childhood friend had the worst temper when it came to driving... although, judging from how his mother had described his situation, he probably had enough money to hire his own personal driver so he wouldn’t feel as exasperated with the city traffic.

 Still, you had to admit that New York City was stunning, even in the shimmering daylight. You simply couldn’t wait for the sky to turn a dark black so you could take some unique shots with the various neon lights and abnormal amount of just as unique people.

 “We’re here.” Your cab driver hums, pulling up just in front of the parking garage. You stumble out of the vehicle, not forgetting the tip, of course, and begin to make your way up.

————————————————————————

 It isn’t difficult getting to the penthouse where H/N is staying, thankfully enough. The only other person in the elevator had been a pair of boys who literally couldn’t keep their hands off each other - you dreaded to think of what they did after you left.

 But here you were, nibbling on your bottom lip as you stood at the front door, your fist lightly knocking on the sheer white wood. Within seconds the door creaks open, revealing a man that somehow looked no different than before, but also much more mature than you could've imagined growing up.

 Just like his mother, a wide grin spreads across his lips at the sight of you and, before you could possibly protest, (not that you would), he throws himself into you, squeezing you tightly against his chest. “Y/N - I can’t believe you’re here.” He breathes out in disbelief, pulling back after a moment, though his hands rested on your hips.

 “I have some time off... I figured visiting wouldn’t hurt anyone.” you admit with a hint of a teasing smile, sensing that any potential awkwardness at slipped away the second he hugged you. “You look - amazing. Not the same awkward, bumbling senior, huh?”

 H/N playfully narrows his eyes at your jab, eyes flickering all across your face as he responded, “nope, and you’re certainly not the lonesome, pessimistic teenager anymore, are you? I mean, you are running only one of the most popular photography businesses in the country.”

 “And you’re a surgeon living in the damn city, of all places.” you retort quickly, quirking an eyebrow up at the man, “I suppose we both grew up, didn’t we?”

 He falls silent for another moment, amused by your sharp wit that, apparently, never left even though you were an adult now. “I suppose we did, then. But - I hope you didn’t grow out of fireworks. I was actually getting ready to head to the park and watch the Valentine’s Day firework show, I’d love it if you came with me.”

 “I would love to.”

————————————————————————

 The walk down to the park was oddly... peaceful. For one, H/N had lent you one of his coats, adamant that the weather would only grow colder during the show. You didn’t want to admit it, but the kind, simple action had made your heart flutter. Not only that, but he’d insisted on having a mini-photoshoot on the way there, posing like a model each time you pointed out a spot that would make for a great photo.

 Walking side by side with the man, who definitely looked like he’d matured but certainly held onto his silly, childish side, you felt more relaxed than you had in years. You forgot how happy he made you, how much your lips would begin to ache because of how much he made you smile and laugh at his stupid puns and corny jokes.

 “Here, I know the perfect spot.” He said out of the blue, dragging you to a vacant spot under a tree. Digging into the bag he had slung over his shoulders, the giddy man pulled out a thick, midnight blue blanket, laying it over the prickly grass before he pulled you down to sit next to him. “The show will start soon, I think. The fireworks they put out are beautiful... I’m glad I finally have someone to watch them with.” He murmurs quietly, offering you a small smile of content.

 You were thankful that the shade of the tree and the general darkness hid your now tomato red cheeks, especially since he would no doubt tease you for being so - so nervous around him.

 As teenagers, you’d grown to care for H/N in a way that you couldn’t quite understand. After all, he was your other half, always making you happy on dreary days and offering his support in most of your endeavors. Sure, other boys were nice enough, and some had even confessed to you - but for some strange reason, you only had eyes for the person you called your best friend.

 There had been a time, quite similar to the scene you were in now, where you’d realized your true feelings for H/N. How you wished that you would’ve acted on them, back then...

 “Hey, what’s wrong?” He’d asked you gently one summer’s night, the boy having been lying down with his head resting on your lap while you stared at, well, nothing. Ever since you both had come back to his place after a pool party a mutual friend had thrown, you'd been down in the dumps. He wasn't about to push you for an answer, since he knew that you were pretty out of it, but if he could possibly can an explanation sooner rather than later, he figured he could help you be less upset.

 “I - well... your cousin, she uh... she said it was weird that I haven’t had my first kiss yet,” you finally admit with a sniff, looking anywhere but down where the boy was lying in your lap, “she’s right, you know. I’m almost seventeen and I haven’t even kissed anyone, it’s - hmph!”

 You barely have time to register what’s happening before H/N cups your cheeks and pulls you down to his level, his lips connecting with yours. He kisses you until neither of you can breathe, slowly parting your lips.

 “See? Now you’ve had your first kiss - and she can shove it, by the way. I didn’t have my first kiss either.” He admits to you casually, diverting his attention to the fireworks his parents were setting off by the pool, leaving you dumbfounded and shy.

 Snapping out of your daydream, you bring your fingertips away from your lips, glad that he didn’t catch you reminiscing on the kiss from so long ago. “S-so... why the city? I thought you wanted to go to the south and raise cattle for the rest of your life.” You question him in burning curiosity, desperate to get your mind off of the haunting memories.

 “Honestly? I didn’t want to go down there alone… I guess I wanted to wait for someone special.” H/N mumbles after a second of thinking about your question, tilting his head back so he can meet your gaze. In the reflection of his eyes, you see a bright blue firework go off in the distance, the start of the Valentine’s Day show. “There was someone who I thought could come with me, but they ended up pursuing their dreams before I could ask.” He continues slowly, a faint smirk twitching onto his lips.

 “O-oh,” you stutter in bewilderment, “what... happened? Do you still care for them?”

 “Oh yeah. There’s no way I could move on from them, even if we never officially were... anything,” he chuckles, “actually, I saw them for the first time in years today. I thought we’d left it at an awkward note, but the second we started talking again, it’s like all the feelings rushed back - for me, anyway. I’m not so sure if they feel the same way-”

 You mirror his actions from all those years ago, bringing your hands up to gently cusp his chilled cheeks in the palms of your warm hands. Without much warning, you lean forward and press your lips against his own, smiling as he hums in delight into the kiss.

 A firework shoots off in the distance, the red sparkles forming a cheesy heart in light of the holiday - but you’re both too busy making up for lost time under the shade of the tree.

[tiny-smallest]

nonfluent

Rating: T Characters: Gaster, Sans, Papyrus (barely, as he’s a wee infant) Warnings: mentions of child abuse (and nope not who you’re expecting either) Description: Good people don't always make good parents, even when they love their children. W. D. Gaster is no exception, though he does try. Oh, does he try.

Also on AO3!

I could have SWORN I uploaded this here but I suppose not? I can’t find it in my tags? So... enjoy this thing from roughly 2015-2016! Featuring scientist Dadster.

One more day.

He has to give it one more day.

Of endless numbers, of problems with solutions seemingly at his grasp, only to slip away at the last moment.

One more day of the endless hum of machines, of the blue paper of blueprints, and their white pencils, and terrible coffee.

He’s so tired, but he must give it one more day, at least, bare minimum, for he owes that much, especially to his own.

“daddy look i-”

“Not now, Sans.”

“but i can help, i can-” There’s a crash and he whirls around in his chair. The boy is on the floor, in a lab coat far too big for him (how did he even get it off the hook...?) surrounded by stacks of paper. Thank goodness he didn’t fall far or knock over anything important.

“Stop while you’re ahead. I brought you plenty of toys; please utilize them instead of destroying my workspace.”

Science is far too serious to allow for little bones running around willy-nilly trying to "help." A glance over his shoulder shows the child glaring at his “invention” of popsicle sticks and glue. Despite the fact that he is right, that such a devise is utterly useless to him, that he cannot allow Sans to simply run around the lab doing whatever he pleases...

There is a pang. He cannot keep doing this; the boy will be hurt. Surely there is something else he can do?

All problems (except the barrier) have a solution. Think. What is it that he can do here?

Wait. The lab coat. The invention. Sans wants to imitate him. Maybe there is something less dangerous he can imitate.

His eyes light on the tiny toy violin, a knickknack really, that a colleague had given him for his desk. A congratulations for a job well done at a piano recital long, long ago...

... Hm.

Music isn't going to save the world. Music isn’t going to get them past the barrier, if such a thing is possible. Music isn’t going to win the ensuing war. He should not be spending time on music, not when he has work to do, or sleep to catch a bit of.

But it's safe for little bones, so when he comes home that night, he finds their dusty old piano and spends a night fixing it.

Music is safe for little bones, and the act of cleaning it reminded him of the beauty of the instrument, and so every night, he can put aside hands shaking with fatigue and a mind berating him for slacking in order to pick his son up, and set him on his lap, and teach him a simple song.

The first song he teaches him is You Are My Sunshine. Sans listens, enthralled.

"Music is the language of emotion," he tells his small son as his long fingers guide his hands to the keys. Such tiny, delicate hands.

"And as with all emotion, sometimes it is the truth, and sometimes it's a lie. But this song, from me, will never be a lie."

He nods as if he understands, but he is so tiny. He cannot possibly understand.

That is fine. He will in time, and they’ve nothing but that.

Music cannot save the world, but that is okay too, he supposes. They can sing as tiny hands find their way to the proper keys, and he can smile at the small voice rising in harmony with his own.

Sans does not seem to have any interest in learning anything but that one song. But as long as his son is happy, and they can enjoy replaying this one every evening, everything is fine.

Someday little bones won’t be so little anymore, and he will teach him the proper way around a lab, but for now, this is how they’ll connect, and...

He is finding that chasing that endless answer is easier, that one more day is easier, if there is this to look forward to. Who knew such preciousness existed in this world? It was as if he had known on some level, protecting it, but was seeing it through a fogged window, never engaging with it.

Now that window is clear. And, as the days pass, he realizes that so is his conscious, too.

He is so bad at emotion when it comes to the language of normal speech.

"Wear your coat."

He never planned on having a child.

"Your vegetables are good for you."

He never planned on surviving to adulthood, truthfully.

"No, growing boys need sleep."

His parents had sucked the life from him, a drop a day, until the idea of spending decades in his own bones felt unbearable.

"Fine, one more story."

Open affection frightens him. He cannot stand touch.

"All right. One more song."

Even the words ‘I love you’ feel too much.

"You're grounded. No, I don't want to hear it; what you did was wrong."

As if the words themselves would peel away too much of his Soul, and reveal the shriveled underside.

"Here, I made you tuna fish today. And I included a ring pop. Please don't propose to the teacher again as a joke; I'll die of shame."

He cannot bear to do that.

"Your report card is wonderful. You did well. I see you excel in science."

But he finds other ways to tell him those three little words.

“That was beautifully played.”

He hopes it is enough.

It happened again it happened AGAIN.

One child was hard enough; now he has two!?

How could this experiment go so wrong!? As desperately as he runs the calculations, he can’t find an answer. Does the universe enjoy seeing him suffer? It’s the only reason it would give a man like him not one, but two gifts he does not deserve and can’t properly care for!

He struggles to breathe as the walls feel they close in on him. Smuggling the infant home proved to be an ungodly difficult challenge, not because the baby made noise, but because the trembling of his limbs would not cease. At least he managed it by some miracle, but his knees protest moving so much as another step once his front door closes behind him.

He looks so much like him.

That face shape must be so similar to what his own parents saw when-

No, no, he needs- he needs control again he needs to calm down he-

“daddy?”

He raises his head, staring, as Sans pads down the stairs in bunny slippers and a t-shirt with a pun on it. He hands the child to him quickly, struggling for breath.

“Take him to your room. He can share the bed with you.”

Sans doesn’t argue. Frightened eyes stare up at his father, then to the baby, and then he disappears upstairs and leaves Gaster to his shuddering breaths in front of the door.

Over the next few weeks, he prepares a room for the infant. A cradle, toys, infant safety measures. But the rest, and indeed, as much as possible, he leaves to Sans.

When the infant cries, Sans is there. When the infant is hungry, Sans, clever child, easily figures out how to feed him. Gaster supplies everything that’s needed, including a babysitter on school days, and Sans does the rest. He avoids both children... easy enough, with his workload.

The window isn’t foggy, but now, it is closed. Panic walls him in.

And, selfishly, he does nothing to stop it.

“why don’t you ever tell me you love me?”

Why are you in an unauthorized area in the middle of the school day asking such a deeply personal question?

But the words, thankfully, don’t leave his mouth. He is too busy staring at his son in a dumb stupor.

“where did i come from?”

“Why does any of that matter?” Oh, no; the wrong response. He knows as it falls from his mouth, but there’s no taking it back.

“because the kids at school say you’re a mad scientist and you made us. but if you made us you’d love us, right?”

Within seconds he tries to figure how schoolchildren could know his sons are the results of illegal experimentation, but for once, logic decides to remind the rest of him that paranoia has the wheel at the moment.

“but you never say you love us and you won’t stay with us.”

“I have a lot of work. And you, young man, have school.”

“it’s recess.”

“That doesn’t mean you can waltz off school grounds!”

“why not? you get to mix up kids in your stupid lab!”

This is not at all where he wants this going. He rubs his temples.

“Sans-”

“you don’t even listen to me play anymore! you missed my science fair! and i spend all my time with papyrus but you don’t take more than five minutes every day to check with us!”

“I said, I’m very busy.” The excuse is hollow. Sans is turning blue with fury and his eye is

glowing?

“that never mattered before! why does it matter now!?”

“I-”

“you didn’t want us, did you!? either of us! you don’t love us, so why did you make us!?”

“I didn’t mean to-”

“you didn’t mean to.” He had not meant it in the context Sans was taking it as. He had meant ‘I did not mean to be so awful, to make you wonder these things.’

But Sans... clever child... is beginning to realize another possibility to explain their existence.

“... we were an accident. that’s all we are to you. accidents.” He eyes his father with a look that chills him to his core, and as Sans turns and begins to stomp away, he finds his feet moving, an arm reaching for his son’s shoulder, no, wait, don’t go; he’s sor-

“get OFF OF ME!” Sans’s low voice rises to a shriek, and he whips around, eye surging with magic—why oh why had he given his son those abilities-

He grabs his Soul, he feels the PING more than he hears it, and the feeling of the metal floor beneath his feet being stolen away is frightening enough until he realizes his son still doesn’t know how to properly use that blue magic of his, does not know how easily the grip slips or the right amount of force to apply or-

And then suddenly, air whistles around him, and his son grows smaller and smaller as he falls, until the child is only a dot, and before the blinding agony overtakes him, he realizes that there will never be one more day; he will never get to give Papyrus those piano lessons or even teach Sans a new song, if he’d ever wanted to learn one, and now the window will close.

Forever.

[pcttrailsidereader]

How an App Made Hiking Easier (perhaps too easy)

An excerpt from Taylor Gee’s article in The Guardian examining the unintended consequences of Guthook Guides’ maps that have made outdoor adventures far less wild.  I must admit being old school myself and even feel sometimes that all of the information on Halfmile’s maps makes me feel a bit lazy.  Guthook Guides’ seems, at times, to remove the mystery from the trail.  What’s your reaction to Gee’s critique?

In March 2012, the Pacific Crest Trail changed for good when Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, about her 1995 thru-hike of the trail, hit shelves and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. [Between the book and the movie] from 2013 to 2018, PCT applications nearly quadrupled.

But Wild wasn’t the only thing that transformed the trail that March. The same month, a thru-hiker named Ryan Linn quietly released an iPhone application called Guthook Guides. It took the entire set of tools needed for thru-hiking – a map, compass, guidebook and water reports – and consolidated them into a single virtual location. It functioned offline and crowdsourced updated information about trail conditions and campsites when online. Such an app might have been inevitable, but for ultralight-obsessed thru-hikers, it was a revolution.

Linn’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. In the last three years, the app has been downloaded 337,000 times, and in 2018, a survey of 500 PCT hikers found that 85% used the app. What started in 2010 as a passion project is now a company that employs five people full-time and has mapped more than two dozen long trails around the world.

But as the the app’s empire continues to grow, many thru-hikers worry about its unintended consequences. They see themselves and fellow hikers depending on their phones to decide where to sleep and eat and to discover exactly how far, down to the tenth of a mile, they are from those places. They fear that American thru-hiking, once the ultimate test of self-reliance, is no longer as wild as it once was.

While attending Vassar College in 2002, Linn joined an outdoors club. The upperclassmen decided that the new recruits needed intimidating nicknames. One day, Linn and two other club members were driving past a hunting and fishing store and pulled over to wander the aisles for inspiration. Linn became “Guthook”, and it stuck through college and afterward, when he hiked the AT in 2007 and the PCT in 2010.

It was while hiking the PCT that Linn met Paul Bodnar, a guidebook author who was collecting GPS data on trail with the intent of updating a PCT guide he had published in 2009. In the era of “there should be an app for that”, it didn’t take long for the two to start talking about what a smartphone-based guide would look like. “We figured it would be something for us to do on the side, in between seasonal work,” says Linn, who since college had been doing various trail-crew and outdoor-education jobs.

After they finished their hike, Linn spent the next year and a half using the GPS data Bodnar had collected to create the first version of Guthook Guides, learning to code as he went. Visually, the app looks similar to the paper topographical maps hikers have used for decades. Virtual icons along the trail designate campsites, water sources, intersecting roads, and trail-town information. But unlike paper maps, Guthook Guides is GPS-enabled, and users can click on an icon to learn more or add a comment. The ability to leave comments, in particular, made Guthook Guides more than a guidebook. Hikers could tell other users whether a water source had gone dry, the quality of a campsite, and the friendliness of local businesses.

After the 2012 release, the app made just enough money for Linn to pay a friend to collect data while hiking the AT in 2013. (The app is free to download, but users must purchase guides for each trail.) The AT guide was released the next year. In 2015, Guthook Guides became available on Android phones. By then, Linn and Bodnar, the app’s co-creators, understood that Guthook Guides was no longer a side project. They went all in.

A sense of surviving in the wilderness is a major reason why a 2,000-mile hike is more than just a feat of athleticism. Taking a wrong turn, getting lost, navigating back – all that misadventure and the intellectual challenge of sorting it out makes for better stories than does walking in a straight line dictated by an app. Yet thru-hiking the PCT last year, I had to stop myself from checking the Guthook app as often as every hour. At one point, my hiking partner even instituted a no-Guthook rule, with the hope that we’d reclaim some sense of agency over our endeavor. Our self-imposed app ban didn’t last, because pretending we didn’t have this all-knowing resource in our pockets felt somehow inauthentic. Especially when most everyone else on trail was embracing it as reality.

It’s hard to overstate the impact that Guthook has had on the experience of thru-hiking. I talked to nearly a dozen hikers and trail managers who all seemed simultaneously concerned that the app enables hikers to lose self-reliance and awareness of their surroundings but couldn’t deny its supreme usefulness.

[PCT hiker Eric] Lee compares the impact of Guthook Guides to what Google Maps has done for driving. “We no longer have to think about landmarks and turns and street names. We just type our address into the phone and press go,” he says, noting that it undoubtedly makes thru-hiking an easier, more stress-free experience. But because of the app, he sees more hikers today who are not as viscerally connected to the trail. “They’re walking from waypoint to waypoint. It’s just a set of numbers.”

This effect has led to some pushback against the app. “I’ve encouraged people to not use it,” says Lucas Weaver, a 29-year-old fiber-optic technician who used Guthook Guides while hiking the Continental Divide Trail last year. “I’m not saying don’t get it, I’m saying don’t let it dictate, don’t rely on it.” Weaver is glad he hadn’t yet downloaded the app when he hiked the AT in 2015. “Being out there without any guide or technology makes it more adventurous,” he says.

The app’s popularity has coincided with the use of phones creeping into trails more generally. Now hikers have Instagram accounts to update with selfies, blogs to write, and loved ones to keep in touch with.

Sometimes use of the app enters into the absurd. “We came across many hikers who would use the app to the point they would lose common sense,” says Jen Nicholson, a 29-year-old physical therapist who also thru-hiked the Continental Divide Trail last year. She recalls hikers who insisted on walking five feet off to the side of the trail because their GPS told them that’s where the path was.

Then there are the stories of hikers relying on trail apps who lose or break their phones or even just run out of battery. For those who forgo paper backup maps to save weight (I was guilty of this myself), a dead phone makes getting lost more frightening than thrilling. Rachel Brown, membership-services manager for the Continental Divide Trail Coalition, recalls encountering this multiple times when hiking the trail in 2015. A friend of hers lost her phone, spent hours searching for it, didn’t find it, and had no backup maps. “She ended up camping out at a really confusing trail junction for three days until somebody else came,” Brown says. Another time, Brown hiked with a man who dropped his phone into a creek. “He ended up sticking like glue to my partner and me,” she recalls. “It was a little frustrating for us, because it kind of felt like we were babysitting. He was always there.”

Perhaps most telling is Guthook’s own experience. Last summer on a backpacking trip, Linn found he had drifted off of a poorly marked trail. “I stopped, and I was about to grab my phone,” says Linn. “Now I have to really consciously tell myself, ‘No, no, no. You just noticed you’re off the trail, go and find it.’” Linn is thoughtful about how his app has affected life on trails. “There are downsides to every new technology in the wilderness,” he admits. “Probably people are using Guthook a little more than I would have wanted.”

For all the good and the bad attributable to Guthook Guides, the consensus is things are just different now. In 2003, Eric Lee accidentally turned off the PCT and hours later ran into another hiker who told him he was going the wrong way. Lee didn’t believe him. “We brought out paper maps and discussed it for 15 minutes” before the other hiker convinced Lee of the truth. Back then that was part of the experience, and maybe even charm, of the trail. “Today that would never happen,” says Lee. “But I’m OK with that.”

[folklorecostumes]

REPUTATION LYRIC INSPIRED TOUR OUTFITS AND POSTERS PART 2

A lot of these posters are pictured in either giant bubble letters, rep font or in calligraphy. Can’t do any of these? Download the rep font or font you wish to use, type up what you want in a big enough font size, print, cut, and trace, or glue them down up to you! Of course, write these however you wish!

Hello all! Thanks for waiting so patiently for this list! Because of how long it is and how very excited you all have been waiting for this we have decided to post it into 2 parts to keep the excitement going. Part 1 is linked below! Please enjoy all the ideas we listed below, feel free to send us others you may have and want to share with the swiftie world. We apologize if the formatting on this looks bad on mobile, we are trying to actively make it easily accessible and readable across all platforms!

And lastly, enjoy and tag us in these recreations! We want to see them! We want to help them get seen by Taylor!

Find the Reputation Part 1 list here.

Find the 1989 idea list here and here.

Find the Red idea list here.

Find more costume and poster ideas and tips here.

lovelovelove,

- Reputation Costumes.

GORGEOUS:  

1.  “Gorgeous” – Few options:

      → Draw/or print the baby emoji onto a poster with a speech bubble saying the word gorgeous.

      →  Poster spelling out gorgeous between you and your friends.

      →  One poster with the word gorgeous on it. This song really sounds very bubblegum-y pop so pink and glitter and fluff and flowers can be associated with this. Keep that in mind when designing your poster.

     →  Create your own gorgeous inspired Taylor merch. Get an idea based on how her current merch looks and design a shirt similar but instead of saying like “rep” everywhere it’ll say gorgeous.

2. “Made fun of the way you talk” – Poster with a multiple taymojis of Taylor with speech bubbles including all the extra hashtags, replies, reblogs Taylor’s ever used or said. This includes (find more on tumblr or I’m sure there are screenshots of these all somewhere since she like cleared her tumblr):

     →  Mom-croon

     →  Bae

     →  Emojis

     →  “I think for me, um…”

     →  Pop Tart Squad 4 Lyfe

     →  Can’t find my chill ever

     →  Shifty Swifty Strikes Again

     →  No it’s Becky

     →  Brb going to buy more cats now

     →  Merstare

     →   I stalk because I care

     →  They see me lurkin…They hatin…

     →  Welcome to moo York

3. “Magnetic field being a little too strong” – Glue magnets onto a shirt and create a poster cut into the shape of a giant U-shaped magnet with that lyric written in it.

4. “Whiskey on ice” – Poster of a tumbler filled with whiskey and ice. The lyrics can be written into the ice cubes.

5.  “Sunset and Vine” – Few options:

      →  One person dresses up as a sunset, see the idea above for the “grey days clear” lyric in So It Goes…

      →  Another person dresses up similar to Poison Ivy from DC Comics or one of the other poison/vine related looks listed above for Don’t Blame Me.

      →  Poster with a map street view with a pin at the intersections of Sunset and Vine.

      →  Dress like you’re favorite vine!

      →  Poster cut out to look like a vine video post, you can take pictures with it as if you’re in the vine. Have the caption of the vine video be a cute lyric from the rep album!

6. “You’re so gorgeous, I can’t say anything to your face” – 2 options:

      →  Wear a morph suit or shirt consisting of only Taylor’s face over and over—can be where she’s making a funny/weird face or can be just a normal shot of her face. Have a poster saying “you’re so gorgeous” to go along with this.

      →  You and a friend can have two posters, one that says, “You’re so gorgeous, I can’t say anything to your” and have an arrow pointing over to your friend. Their poster will be a giant cut out of Taylor’s head.

7. “Cause you’re so gorgeous it actually hurts” – Poster saying Taylors so gorgeous it actually hurts. Can have a friend hold one that says “(Honey, it hurts)” or you can write that underneath the main lyric in the ( ).

8. “Ocean blue eyes looking in mine” – Poster of eyes, draw them big enough where you could draw waves of water where you’d shade it blue for eye color.

9. “There’s nothing I hate more than what I can’t have” – Typically we don’t recommend this simply because it canget fans overlooked, however it’s funny and cute so here it is: Write this lyric with “(t-party, club red, loft 89)” underneath in a small font, cross them out like that too since we won’t know the name of the after party show!

10.  “Guess I’ll just stumble on home to my cats” – Buy 2 cheap plush cats, maybe at a local dollar store, glue the heads of it onto a poster (or cut holes into the poster and stick the stuffies through, make sure they’ll stay all night though) and write the lyrics. Draw paw prints along the poster. Could pair with cat shirts and cat accessories. Could also glue multiple mini plush cats to an outfit and pair with a poster cut into the shape of a paw print. @taylortreasures has created an outfit similar to this!

GETAWAY CAR:

1. “Best of times, worst of crimes” – Set of posters for you and a friend to match with.

       →  Times poster could consist of multiple watches/clocks drawn throughout the words

      →  While crimes poster could have things like handcuffs, stolen money bags, cars all drawn throughout it. Turn these poster ideas into two unique outfits!

2. “Struck a match and blew your mind” – Set of posters:

      →  Poster in the same of a match with a flame.

      →  Poster drawing out the words “mind blown” in pink. See link to get a good idea, don’t draw the bitmoji.

3. “Ties were black, lies were white” – Dress up fancy for this! Think Blank Space video but before the outfits get torn up! Poster can read, one a white poster board, “lies were” and then leaving the rest blank. Could write “white” in glow in the dark paint/tape that would only show after the lights go off.

4. “X marks the spot where we fell apart” – 2 options:

     →  Treasure map idea, see End Game “bury hatchets” idea!

     →  Write out your stadium(s) name and draw a giant red X over it and write  “where we fell apart” underneath.

5. “From the first Old Fashioned” – 2 options:

      →  Dress old fashioned—so like pick a decade and go with it! May we recommend the 80s ;)

      →  Poster in the shape of a tumbler that appears to be filled with an “old fashioned”, be sure to include the small details like a lemon rime/wedge and a cherry!

6. “Never had a shot gun shot in the dark” – Poster of the night sky with cutout bullet holes in it. Write the lyric out in mini glow in the dark stars to stand out!

7. “Drivin’ the getaway car” – Few options:

      →  Poster in the shape of a car. Think of a 1969 Camaro or another vintage car that’s often seen in movies involving getaway cars. The lyrics from the chorus can look like its spray painted on the side of the car or front depending on how you face it in the poster.

       ���  Poster of the front of a car that’s cutout so you can wear it to look like you’re sitting in the car. Could have fake money hanging off the edges to make it look like money is flying out.

        →  Poster with any of the chorus lyrics with a little drawing of a car speeding away with money flying out or drawing of tire tracks on the ground. Perfect for the “we were flyin’ but we never get far”

8. “Don’t pretend it’s such a mystery” – Few options:

        →  Poster of the side of the Scooby doo van with the lyrics above the word Mystery that’s painted onto the van (omit words “the” and “machine”)

        →  Make a Clue game board involving Taylor scenes from videos/tour pics etc and you can even include Olivia in a little detective outfit and a magnifying glass. Have a few game cards flipped over on the board with the lyrics being written across them.

9. “Think about the place where you first met me” – Met Taylor before? Or even some of her band members, dancers, parents, team? Make a poster with any pictures of these events and the lyrics!

10. “Sirens in the beat of your heart” – Draw a heartbeat line emitting from a police car or the red and white lights attached to the top of them (think the portable round ones’ undercover cops would attach to their cars). Put this idea onto a poster. Could even cut out the shape of the red and white siren lights and the heartbeat line and use glow in the dark tape/paint to make it stand out.

11. “The great escape, the prison break” – Dress up as runaway prisoners or thieves on the run! You can make posters in the shape of giant money sacks.

12. “A circus ain’t a love story” – Few options:

       →  WANEGBT tour outfits from Red tour worn by Taylor and dancers!

                  → This includes ring leader, clowns, acrobats, etc

       →  Traditional circus outfits

       →  Love Story, a classic Taylor song! Dress like the music video or past performances of this song.

       →  Romeo + Juliet

13. “Hit you like a shot gun shot to the heart” – Same concept as above, however instead of a night sky poster, have a large cut out heart with bullet holes in it.

14. “We were jet-set, Bonnie and Clyde” – Dress as the infamous Bonnie and Clyde!

15. “Put the money in a bag and I stole the keys” – Bank robber with a money sack poster. Reference the poster to either show it’s a friend’s (or Taylor’s) money and have novelty keys hanging off the tie of the bag.

16. “I was ridin’/cryin’/dyin’ in a getaway car” – Few options:

      →  Poster using a car emoji, the crying emoji and the skull emoji in the lyrics.

      →  “I was crying to getaway car” pun on you enjoying the song poster

     →  “I was dying to hear getaway car” poster

KING OF MY HEART:

17. “I made up my mind, I’m better of bein’ alone” – Poster saying you’re better off being a swiftie.

18. “We met a few weeks ago.” – Tribute to if you’ve met Taylor/her team/parents/band/dancers/etc on a poster or shirt.

19. “Callin’ me baby like tryin’ on clothes” – Poster board that’s interactive! Make a cut out Taylor (using the IKP outfit from 1989 tour will be the best option to start) and attach multiple tour outfits or appearance outfits she’s worn with double sided tape or some other adhesive and allow fans to try different outfits on Taylor!

20. “Salute to me, I’m your American Queen” – Few options:

         →  Dress up as a Queen/royalty

         →  America/4thof July inspired outfits

         →  Crown and sash/Pageantry. Sash can say “Miss American Queen” You could even have a fake acceptance speech written out on a poster board that says like “And I want to thank Taylor…”

        →  Poster cut out into the shape of a crown.

        →  “you traded your baseball cap for a crown” relate KOMH to Long Live.

        → Poster saying this lyric and have American Queen colored in red, white and blue.

21. “You move to me like I’m a Motown beat” – Motown beats originated in gospel music but also in the 1970s music industry, use these two to inspire decade looks! The 70s were big on disco.

22. “With their range rovers and their jaguars” – 2 options:

       →  Poster in the shape of the range rover or jaguar emblem.

       →  Wear or make merch that looks dawns these brands emblems.

23. “You are the one I have been waiting for” – Poster ideas:

       →   Typically, we don’t recommend this simply because it can get fans overlooked, however it’s fun and cute so here it is: Write this lyric with “(t-party, club red, loft 89)” underneath in a small font, cross them out like that too since we won’t know the name of the after-party show!

       →  Taylor’s the one I have been waiting for on a poster.

24. “King of my heart” – Few ideas:

      →  Giant heart shaped poster with a king’s crown and mini robe attached to it.

     →  Poster using the crown emoji and the heart emoji.

     →  Going with a significant other? Have them dress up as a King (or Queen) and have them hold a fake heart (think the vampire diaries but less gore ha) or hold a cutout heart poster. You can wear heart shaped sunglasses (think heart eyes motherf*cker vine) and shirt with these lyrics and an arrow pointing to your significant other.

     →  Going alone but like the above idea? You can say you have Taylor’s heart or she has yours instead.

25. “I’ve been waiting” – Poster including how many days you counted down for your tour date(s).

26. “Late in the night, the city’s asleep” – Poster using the visual opening for WTNY that showed the landscape of the city at night. Use glow in the dark stars over the skyline and hole punch the lettering when writing out the lyric.

27. “Your love is a secret I’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep” – 2 ideas:

      →  Make a poster using this lyric and draw out the emotions of hoping, dreaming and dying. Think of the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil sort of imaging.

     →  “Taylor’s love is a secret I’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep”

28. “With a school girl crush” – Dress up as if you’re trying to impress your crush on the first day of school! Have a poster that consist of those passing note questions you’d send your crush but have them addressed to Taylor. (ex. Do you like me? Circle one. Etc)

29. “Drinking beer out of plastic cups” – Red solo cup poster.

30. “Say you fancy me, not fancy stuff” – First fancy in the lyric draw heart and draws in the sentence and the second fancy draw diamond rings, luxury items etc. with a large red X through them.

DANCING WITH OUR HANDS TIED:

1. “Oh twenty-five years old” – Poster with your age in replace of the 25 lyric.

2. “My love had been frozen” – Few options:

       →  Poster in the shape of a heart that is frosted over and turning blue.

       →  Poster with these lyrics but the word frozen is drawn like the movie poster font for the Disney film.

       →  Winter wonderland type of outfit or poster. Think Snow Queen.

       →  Dress as Elsa, Anna or Olaf.

3. “Deep blue, but you painted me golden” Few options:

      →  Two matching posters saying Deep Blue and Golden painted in the prospective colors.

      →  Matching outfits made from the prospective colors.

      →  “Deep Blue” think the deep sea.

      →  Dress up as a painter.

4. “Picture of your face in an invisible locket” – Make a poster cut out in the shape of a locket, have it folded to open up like an actual locket and have a picture of Taylor in it.

5. “But we were dancing” – Poster with these lyrics, have the dancer emoji drawn on it.

6. “Dancing with our hands tied” –  2 options:

        →  Poster in the shape of a pair of hands tied together.

       →  Poster with these lyrics. Have it split up if you’re going with a group of friends.

7. “Yeah, we were dancing, like it was the first time” – First Taylor show? Make this poster dedicated to seeing Taylor for the first time!

8. “Through an avalanche” – Poster in the shape of a mountain top with the words of the lyrics to appear to be snowballing down the side of mountain.

9. “I’m a mess, but I’m the mess that you wanted” – 2 options:

       →  Dress up like you’re a mess and have a poster to match with the lyrics.

       →  Poster that says you’re the mess Taylor wanted.

      → You’re a mess because of Taylor poster.

9. “Cause its gravity, oh keeping you with me” – Poster with these lyrics but have them begin to fall down and off the poster. Have cut out letters dangle off the poster.

10. “I’d kiss you as the lights went out” - few options:

        →  Poster in the shape of lips painted red. Use red reflective tape to make it stand out.

       →  Poster adorned with miniature red lips all over it. Use glow in the dark tape/paint on the words “lights went out” so it stands out.

       →  Make a cut out poster of the lyrics “lights went out” and fill the letters with glitter, as much as you can. Do a matte finish or laminate it so you can shake it up and have the glitter move around.

11. “If I could dance with you again” – Print out the photo of Taylor performing Holy Ground on the Red Tour, print it large enough that you can make a cutout silhouette of her dancing as a poster. Don’t have the resources to print it big enough? Try your best to sketch the outline! Incorporate the lyrics either into the silhouette or have it as a sort of a halo written around the entire silhouette of her!

DRESS:

1. “Our secret moments in a crowded room” – Poster with the words secret moments being suffocated by a multitude of things such as confetti, glitter, charcoal etc. Have the words pop out of whatever you chose to relate to the sense of a crowded room.

2. “There is an indentation in the shape of you” – Poster cut out into the shape of the indent of a person lying in bed.

3. “Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo.” –  2 options:

        →  Wear those gold jewelry type tattoos people wear to music festivals!

        →  Poster asking Taylor to make her mark on you with her signature.

4. “All this silence and patience, pining and anticipation/pining and desperately waiting” – Few options:

        →  Poster of these 4 adjectives for you and your friends to hold!

       →  Desperately waiting for rep room.

5. “Say my name and everything just stops” – 2 options:

       →  Say my name, Beyonce/Destiny’s Child connection.

        →  Say Taylor’s name and everything just stops.

6. “Only bought this dress so you could take it off” – 2 options:

       →  Poster in the shape of a dress, possibly little black dress since Taylor has referenced those forever.

       →  Make an outfit that you can transform from dress to whatever else you want! Think tear away tour outfit!

7. “Carve your name into my bedpost” – Poster of a headboard with Taylor’s name or initials into it, make it look carved in. Could even carve out lyrics or the word reputation.

8. “And if I get burned, at least we were electrified” – 2 ideas:

       →  Two posters of the words Burned and Electrified. Have burned be made or engulfed in flames and have electrified have lightning bolts striking off of it.

       →  Make the poster idea above into an outfit. Use reflective tape and cut out pieces into the shape of flames or lightning bolts and attach them to the outfits.

9. “I’m spilling wine in the bathtub” – Poster in the shape of a wine glass. Cut it so it’ll be on an angle and have red or rose wine sloshing out of the rim.

10. “Flashback when you met me” – Met Taylor/her team/parents/dancers/band? Make this a tribute to them!

11. “Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me” – Make a poster using headlines about Taylor and have them slashed up and covered with positive memories and headlines and all her success. Have reputation written in the middle of it.

12. “My one and only, my lifeline” – Poster made of these lyrics. Could also say Taylor’s my one and only, my lifeline.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS:

1. “It was so nice throwing big parties” – Posters made to look like balloons, party favors, etc. Think Gatsby and vintage since this is a popular theme in this song.

2. “Everyone swimming in a champagne sea” – Make a poster in the shape of a giant champagne bottle and have confetti looking like its pouring out of it.

3. “Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year” – 2 options:

       →  Dress vintage and 1920s Gatsby like.

       →  Use the Great Gatsby font and make a poster using these lyrics.

4. “So why’d you have to rain on my parade” – Make an outfit that looks like you’re a part of a parade celebration and hold a poster in the shape of a rain cloud with raindrops dangling from it. Use reflective or glow in the dark tape for the rain drops to stand out.

5. “This is why we can’t have nice things” – Poster of these lyrics but instead of the word nice, replace with drawn items or emojis of things like rings, money, designer brand labels.

6. “But you stabbed me in the back while shaking my hand” – 2 options:

       →  Related to back to Bad Blood, check out our 1989 costumes post to get some ideas.

       →  Where a fake knife attached to the back of your shirt, you can find these sort of props at a Halloween/gag store or at like Party City.

7. “Get you on the phone and mind-twist you” – Cut out of an old fashion rotary phone and have a speech bubble coming out of the speaker portion of the phone to make it look like the person on the other line is saying “mind-twist you”

8. “So I took and axe to a mended fence” – 2 options:

     →  Could recreate a blank space music video or tour look

     →  Poster in the shape of an axe.

9. “If only you weren’t so shady” – Poster in the shape of sunglasses with these lyrics reflected into the frames.

10. “Here’s a toast to my real friends” – 2 options:

    →  Poster with these lyrics and champagne glasses clinking drawn throughout

    →  Poster in the shape of a champagne glass clinking with another, could even make two (or more) separate ones for you and your friends to match.

11. “He-said-she-said” – few options:

    → He said she said is typically hearsay/rumors, so you could dress up as a news reporter.

    →  Using the NYT’s font aka reputation font as a background/filter for the lyrics in a poster. Think of how it looks on the right ride (Taylor’s left) on the album cover.

    →  Poster of a fake headline regarding Taylor. Could recreate the back of the reputation magazine covers. Have the headline be the lyric.

12. “Here’s to my baby” – Poster idea. Do what you think works best with this as it’s a very simple line.

13. “Here’s to my momma” – Poster dedicated to Mama Swift.

14. “Had to listen to all this drama” – Drama poster, it’d be a cool idea if you bought all those crappy tabloids and sort of papier-mâché the word out of all the headlines revolving around drama.

15. “Because you break them” – 2 options:

    →  Poster cutout of a broken fancy item. Could be a broken award, broken watch, etc anything fancy that you deem making.

    →  Make an outfit out of the idea above, wear broke items glued to you.

CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT:

1. “My castle crumbled overnight” – Poster in the shape of a castle, could have pieces hanging off or broken to represent it crumbling. You could also dress up as a princess/prince.

2. “I bought a knifer to a gunfight” – 2 options:

   →  Foam knife/sword accessory

   →  Poster of the knife emoji

3. “They took the crown” – Crown shaped poster or plastic crown to wear!

4. “My baby’s fit like a daydream” – Few options:

    →  Fit is British slang for attractive or good looking. Make a pun of the word fit and have a poster that looks like a guys six-pack abs.

   →  Poster in the shape of a thought bubble with the lyrics “my baby’s fit” could even use all or some emojis in replace of the words.

   →  Could dress up as a sort of fairy/daydream-y/soft type of persona. So wings, pastel colors, definitely having jewels glued around your eyes and such! Have fun with this look, for makeup lookup festival looks or mermaid looks to get an idea.

5. “I’m the one he’s walking to” – Poster replacing the lyric “he’s” for “Taylor’s. Could have foot tracks painted around the lyrics or even use high heel cutouts from magazines and catalogs rather than painting foot tracks.

6. “Call it what you want” – Paint this in a pretty pastel color in a calligraphy font. Have the background of the poster have a soft feel to it, like cloud and starry like. Could even make a 3D type poster and have plush either as the background or as the letting.

7. “My baby’s fly like a jet stream” Few options:

    →  Poster in the shape of a plane/jet with these lyrics behind the plane in a loop. Think of how planes on maps so dashes to track their paths.

    →  “Taylor’s fly like a jet stream”

    →  Couples costume of a pilot and attendant.

8. “High above the whole scene” – 2 options:

    → Poster of a skyline. Can be whatever city skyline you’d like, maybe even emphasis in the building windows/lights which city; it’d be cool to reference your tour stop! Have the poster cut out to mimic the buildings rather than drawing in a sky.

    →  Could make a poster of a bird since they fly above the scene, as well as planes like referenced above. Could relate this back to 1989!

9. “Loves me like I’m brand new” – Few options:

     →  Not necessarily tour outfit related but don’t want to dress up? Simply buy a nice outfit and only where it the day of the show! It’s brand new. Could even be Taylor merch.

    →  Poster of a giant price tag that has Love written as the amount. The product into written on the tag could say like Taylor Swift. Size: Reputation Stadium Tour

    →  Taylor loves me like I’m brand new.

    →  Poster of a new package or wrapped gift with the tag saying “love you – (name or xoxo)”

10. “All my flowers grew back as thorns” – 2 options:

    → 3D poster of like a thorn-bush or vine type thorn with only a few flowers still left on it. Have the lyrics written or painted out in a deep green cursive font, intertwining with the thorns.

     →  Buy or make a skirt and attach fake flowers to the entire skirt so it is covered. Buy or make a top and attach plastic “thorns” or vines around the top and have them hang off of it so it looks like they are slowly taking over the flowers. Have the top be very dull and lackluster in color but have what is remaining on the skirt be full of color.

11. “Windows boarded up after the storm” – Poster of a broken windowsill with boards covering up the cracked window. You could even make the boards openable like a book so that when you appeared into the window you could see the fire that is referenced in the next line. Have caution tape covering the planks but have the lyrics written repeatedly over the caution tape.

12. “He built a fire just to keep me warm” -  See idea above OR make a poster in the shape of the flame emoji or a log campfire.

13. “All the drama queens taking swings” – Dress up as a baseball or softball player and have your team name be Drama Queens. Make a baseball bat poster with the word reputation on it.

14. “All the jokers dressing up as kings” – Dress up as a joker/clown/fool but masquerade as a king so also were a crown and possible a cape. Make a sign that says “King of Reputation” or that displays the lyric.

15. “They fade to nothing when I look at him” – 2 options:

     →  Poster with these lyrics where it looks like the words are fading off the poster. Use glow in the dark paint/tape to have it still show after the lights go down.

    → They fade to nothing when I look at Taylor.

16. “I did one thing right” – Poster that says Swiftie or Proud swiftie, meant to represent you made the right choice in being a fan of Taylor.

17. “I’m laughing with my lover, makin’ forts under covers” -  Make a poster that is drawn like a bed fort, so multitude of different blanket patterns etc and attach a speech bubble to the top of the poster to show either “hahahaha” or “* giggling *”“* laughing *” to make it look like there’s laughing underneath the sheets.

18. “Starry eyes sparkin’ up my darkest night” – few options:

     →  Dress up in a costume that is galaxy themed. So tons of stars, especially glow in the dark ones, have glitter, moons, a tutu and have it all be in a navy blue. Your matching poster can be in the shape of a shooting star with the lyrics “Sparkin’ up my darkest night.” Use reflective tape or glow in the dark paint to stand out!

    →  Poster cut out of eyes and have the galaxy drawn in them rather than simply coloring in a regular eye color.

   →  Could have a lit match or sparkler shaped poster.

19. “I want to wear his initial on a chain round my neck” – Make a poster of Taylor’s initial’s and wear them like a necklace. Think back to when flavor flav wore a giant watch.

20. “Late November” – Poster of this exact lyric but have it big enough where you can decorate inside the words and have it fall themed.

21. “Would you run away with me? (Yes)” – Make a poster asking Taylor if she’d run away with you. Have it set up like a check yes or no question and have a paw print or 13 stamped in the yes box.

NEW YEAR’S DAY:

1. “There’s glitter on the on the floor after the party” – Few options:

     →  Glitter, glitter glitter! Wear sparkly outfits (think NYE) and have body glitter all over you. Have fun and extra glittery makeup looks and have a poster of these lyrics written out in glittery puffy paint.

    →  Have a poster made that looks like you’re staring down at hardwood floor and have a spilled glitter container open, glitter all over the bottom of the floor with the lyrics written out (think written out as if someone took their finger and just wrote it out in the pile).

     →  “After the party” – reference the end of your show with this, rep room.

     →  “There’s swifties on the floor after the party(concert)”

2. “Girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby” – Poster cut out and drawn to look like you’re carrying a pair of high heels. Look at some of the heels Taylor’s worn for previous tours and outfits and recreate them on a poster.

3. “Candle wax and polaroids on the hardwood floor” – Few options:

     →  Burning candle poster, could be a simple candle, could be in a jar like the ones she uses frequently, or it could be decorated with things that remind you of Taylor and Reputation.

    →  Polaroid poster (1989).

    →  Poster of burned out candles and dried wax on the floor (look up the candles Taylor loves to have in her home and create the logo for the posters) and polaroids scattered on a hardwood floor (reference the opening lyric idea to get how to picture this.) Have the polaroids be pictures from the reputation magazine.

4. “Don’t read the last page” – Poster of the opening/dedication page of a book with this lyric written in it. Either make it look like the author purposely wrote it, OR have all the prewritten info from said book be information about Taylor and the reputation tour and use her handwriting from 1989 and have it look like she handwrote “don’t read the last page” as a note to the next reader. Make it look three dimensional by having the page look like it’s about to be turned to the next.

5. “But I stay” – Make a poster of these lyrics but make it big enough that you are able to write inside of each individual letter. Write the speech Taylor gave about how she felt her hands were tied behind her back but swifties always defended her (it’s a clean speech). Could even write long live lyrics.

6. “I want your midnights” – 2 options:

     →  An analog clock striking midnight

    →  Or a digital clock (think the old digital though where the numbers physically flipped rather than it being just animated) and have the numbers look like they’re changing from 11:59PM to 12:00AM.

7. “But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you” – Poster of a recycling bin that is piling up with empty champagne and wine bottles. Have all the labels on the bottles be song titles or lyrics!

8. “New Year’s Day” – Few options:

     →  Dress up like its NYE/NYD. This means glitter, 2018 hats and glasses, champagne, confetti and streamers, dresses or skirts and crop tops. It also means holidays, so you could reference a few other things as well with this.

     →  Poster drawn out of the NYE ball dropping. On the countdown screen you could either write the lyric (full or just NYD) or you can write how long you waited for your show.

     →  Simply just sketching out the words New Year’s Day however you may want.

     →  Midnight kiss, so a poster of lips.

     →  “Ring” in the new year. Could be a poster of a bell or a ring.

9. “in the back of the taxi” – Dress up like a taxi or make a poster of the backside of a taxi with the silhouette of two people sitting in it. Have the license plate reference reputation or swifties. Be sure it’s a NY plate.

10. “I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town, babe” – Few options:

     →  Could do a large poster that looks like a champagne glass with a tag/ribbon hanging off the stem (think like seating cards) that says Toast of the Town.

    →  An award poster (like an Oscar or such) but instead of it saying Best Picture etc it’ll say “Toast of the Town: (name)” You can either write your name or Taylor’s name or even Joe’s.

    →  Poster of a cut out magazine cover you can take photos in (or make it look like an Instagram post) and have the little blurb on the “cover” say this lyric. Make the magazine a reference to the rep mags.

11. “If you strike out and you’re crawling home” – Baseball or softball player costume with a poster in the shape of a bat. Could even have two posters for you and a matching friend where the bat is broken in half and you’re each holding a split end.

12. “Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you” – Few options:

     →  Reference long live. Whether it’s by poster or you want to recreate the long live tour outfit!

     →  Poster of the word memories but have it being spelled out by photos from previous tours, Taylor with fans, from previous album booklets. Tumblr likes/posts, etc.

    →  Met Taylor/her team/band/dancers/parents/etc? Wear an outfit or make a poster using pictures and memories from that moment.

    →  Poster of the word memories being hugged/squeezed. Don’t have to draw the entire body, just arms wrapping around the word.

     →  Have a poster in the shape of a jar and have it labeled Memories and then fill it with your favorite Taylor memories. So love the Speak Now album? Write the words Speak Now in big block/bubble letters in the jar. Keep doing this with words of memories you like. Don’t have the words overlap, simply cut off a word if it doesn’t fit. Make it seem full but not unreadable.

13. “And I will hold on to you” – Poster of this lyric just as is. Maybe make it written on a music sheet or on piano keys. Could also write Taylor will hold on to you or I will hold on to Taylor.

14. “Please don’t ever become a stranger” – Poster dedicated to her 6 albums.

15. “Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere” – Poster collage of all the photos of Taylor laughing.

16. “You and me forevermore” – Poster of the word forevermore. When I hear this line, I think of a clear night sky, glitter, love, passion so incorporate that into this creation. Maybe have it made out of stars or hearts, or have it made out of flowers. Whatever you envision when you hear this.

THEMES OR GENERAL IDEAS:

1. Make poster that looks like the popup stage in the reputation VIP tour box, make it out of papier-mâché newspapers.

2. Snake poster.

3. Use the dialogue from the LWYMMD end scene as funny posters.

4. Meredith and Olivia posters.

5. Reputation/REP poster cut out using the rep font.

6. “There will be no further explanation. There will be just reputation”

7. Lots of gold and metallic colors, glitter.

8. TS/TAS Initial Poster

WHY SHE DISAPPEARED POEM:

1. “Pavement she once decorated as a child with sidewalk cross” – Poster that looks like a sidewalk drawing.

2. “Her skin was spattered with ink” – Use body paint to spatter ink on your arms and clothes. Make a poster using the same idea. Maybe use the word snake in some of the spatters.

3. “She rose slowly” – Poster of a flower slowly blooming.

4. “Avoiding old haunts and sidestepping shiny pennies” – 2 options:

      →  Poster of a ghost (think emoji)

     →  Poster of a penny or writing out this piece of the poem using pennies (or drawing them if you don’t want to waste the money)

5. “Way of phone calls and promises” – Relate this back to All Too Well or LWYMMD. Have a phone poster with a speech bubble writing this line.

6. “Waded out into the dark, wild ocean up to her neck” – The ocean is almost all unexplored so have fun with this line. You could do mythical mermaids or sirens. Or you could make an outfit out of seashells and seaweed. Your poster could be a cutout of a wave.

7. “And in the death of her reputation, she felt truly alive” – This is a GREAT quote for a poster and to really sum up the entire reputation era.

IF YOU’RE ANYTHING LIKE ME POEM:

1. “Cross your fingers” -  Poster of crossed fingers.

2. “Wish on lucky numbers” – Poster of a number cutout related to Taylor. (13, 22, 1989)

3. “Rest in Peace, to your naïve bravado” – 2 options:

     →   Poster of a gravestone addressed to your naïve bravado.

     →  Dress up as a zombie (zombie Taylor) and where a tombstone or have written on shirt “Here Lies my Naïve Bravado”

4. “Secret garden gate” – Poster of a flower garden. Have it three dimensional so use craft flowers.

5. “Each new enemy turns to steel” – This line reminds me so much of Yellow Flicker Beat by Lorde in the line “I’m locking up everyone who ever laid a finger on me” Maybe make a poster combining these two ideas.

6. “You’ve grown to hate your pride and to love your thighs”

7. “But Darling, it’s going to be okay”

[moonhurts]

+ Loss

╰ ⟨ RE: CAMDEN LAHEY ⟩

what do you do when you’re only eight years old and you lose your biggest hero?  when cam goes away after joining the army, i think subconsciously, even as a young child, isaac knows he’ll probably never see him again – which is why he begs and pleads for him to stay.  camden was his hero; the big brother that gave him shoulder rides, protected him from his mother and father’s arguments, bought him spider-man comics, and never pushed him away like so many other older siblings would do with their younger siblings.

they were allies in this home war, after all.  it makes sense that camden would be drawn to fight in an overseas war instead.  people are always drawn to the familiar.

it’s the first major loss isaac experiences, and it hits him like a ton of bricks.  but he isn’t alone in his grief, and camden’s death?  it has a domino effect in the lahey household.

‘promise you’ll come back?’‘of course i’ll come back, squirt. who else is gonna look out for you?’

╰ ⟨ RE: HIS MOTHER ⟩

it isn’t even six months on that he loses his mother.  the same year, just a different season.  she succumbs to the pressure – the loss of her eldest son is the breaking point for a woman suffering from ongoing emotional abuse, and the threat of it turning into something even worse with the explosive outbursts of anger becoming mr lahey’s own way of dealing with his grief.

all isaac wants to do is go back to the time where they’re dancing in the kitchen in their socks, waiting for their latest baking experiment to finish cooking.  he wants to see his mother’s laugh again, and feel her fingers brush through his hair.

instead, isaac’s mother ends her own life when he’s eight years old, only two weeks before christmas.  isaac finds her.  he’s confused by all of this loss.  it feels like a bad dream he can’t wake up from.  the domino effect continues.

‘i love you, little bird. i’ll always love you.’‘if you loved me so much, then why couldn’t you stay?’

╰ ⟨ RE: HIS FATHER ⟩

it’s interesting, because isaac loses his father when he’s eight years old too.  the difference is, unlike his mother and brother, mr lahey’s body keeps on breathing.  it’s his mind – his empathy, love, compassion – that dies.  isaac’s life is never the same after his mother’s funeral.  that impulse control?  that lid on his father’s anger?  it disintegrates.  it confuses him.  an eight year old child who loses his hero, his mother’s kind eyes, and his father’s loving touch – all in a six month timespan.  the first time his father hits him, it’s filled with apologetic eyes and an ice cream to soothe the broken trust.  

it’s an ongoing cycle.  broken trust, new toy car.  broken bones, a trip to the arcade.  broken skin, gentle hands cleaning him up again.  it doesn’t last.

by the time he’s sixteen, there’s no more apologies.  isaac’s punishments aren’t recognised as mistakes anymore.  but despite all of this, isaac can’t help but wish for the return of the father he still remembers when he looks at the family photograph on his bedside table.

when his father is murdered, it’s shocking, but it also isn’t shocking.  it hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as the loss over eight years ago.  it’s been a long time coming, and isaac’s gotten pretty good at sensing death and its incoming scythe.  it’s a relief, but it’s also a chapter closed on his life – one that holds fond memories and painful ones all in the same sentence.

‘your father used to lock you in the freezer in the basement to punish you.’‘he didn’t used to.’

╰ ⟨ RE: ERICA REYES ⟩

he finds a new home, a new family, in a twin soul with beautiful everything.  they heal together.  they comfort one another.  they touch each other without intent, be it hand holds or hugs from behind, both knowing the other has never really experienced positive touch – at least not in this decade.  erica and isaac share their dreams, let themselves get whisked away by the possibilities now that they’re no longer weak and pathetic.  they’re like minded.  they understand why the bite is a gift – how it’s changed their lives for the better.  they’re best friends.

erica’s death is the first surprise isaac’s experienced in a long time.

someone with such a bright smirk, so recklessly full of life, shouldn’t die so young.  and he certainly shouldn’t have been the one to find her body, discarded in a supply closet as if it were garbage.  when he finds her, it horrifies him so much that his brain lapses – that it gives him psychogenic amnesia as a coping mechanism, because it traumatises him that much.

the fact that isaac’s mind didn’t lapse on a single memory of his abuse, his mother’s death, anything else horrific in his past, speaks volumes about how much erica meant to him, and how profoundly her death affected him.

‘i’ll see you ‘round, lahey.’‘yeah, yeah. don’t get into too much trouble without me.’

╰ ⟨ RE: VERNON BOYD ⟩

boyd and isaac’s relationship is a subtle one, read between the lines with quiet undertones.  they probably weren’t extremely close before erica’s death, though obviously amicable and friendly.  erica would’ve been the glue sticking these two together.  her loss would have driven them even closer, if only to see the remnants of a beautiful girl in the eyes of someone who’d known her just the same.  boyd and isaac wouldn’t have spoken a lot, but friendships don’t always need to be spoken to develop into something strong – someone to lean on.

the thing about boyd’s death is, it doesn’t really shock isaac.  it hurts him, obviously, but it also could be seen coming from a mile away.  all the threats.  the looming alpha pack.  boyd’s survivor’s guilt.  isaac sharing of it.

when boyd tells derek it’s okay, isaac gets it.  it’s clearly far from okay, but he gets it.  they’ve both watched the guilt of erica’s loss eat their alpha alive.  it’s a final, selfless act to vindicate him of any guilt.

it messes isaac up.  there’s a pattern in his life, see.  everyone he gets close to dies.  maybe he’s the catalyst.  maybe it isn’t derek’s fault.  maybe it’s his.

‘think she’s watching over us, annoyed that we haven’t ran?’‘probably. guess we’ll find out someday.’

╰ ⟨ RE: ALLISON ARGENT ⟩

this is where it gets really messy.  so you like a girl that almost killed you violently, using ring daggers.  a girl that’s also your new alpha’s ex girlfriend.  a girl that probably could never really like you back, but hey, you go for it anyway, because what’s life without a little bit of risk?

there’s probably an underlying part of isaac that genuinely believes someone like allison couldn’t die.  she’s terrifying, capable, strong in ways he’s only dreamt of becoming, and very talented with weaponry -- distance based weaponry.  isaac gets involved, because how couldn’t he when he can hear the way her heartbeat speeds up whenever he gets too close, or see the way she flushes along her throat when he says something risky.

it all works out, in the end.  it pays off.  they agree there’s something between them -- something that’s building, a culmination of thoughts and feelings, ready to bloom into something new.  they agree to explore that.

and then allison dies.  the real kicker here is, he genuinely thought he’d be the one that dies.  he was so ready for it, with the familiar feeling of knives against his skin.  but allison wasn’t having that.

she died saving his life.  she died, because she was too distracted by taking care of him to take care of herself.  

her death is absolute confirmation.  his suspicions have now become fact.  isaac lahey is a death curse.  he’ll never let anyone get this close to him ever again.

he ruined scott’s life -- the loss of his soulmate, confessing her love in her dying breath -- simply because he couldn’t take care of himself, and cursed a girl to die a death that should’ve been his.

‘try not to crash.’‘yeah, been there, done that.’

- ̗̀  meme: send '+’ & a word for some meta! ̖́ -    ╱     accepting.

[badbackgroundscience]

Did you try peanut butter?

It’s probably best that the MCU didn’t introduce Baron Zemo by having him walk on the backs of indigenous South Americans and lament a piece of fabric has been glued to his head for the past two decades while never thinking to find a chemical that could remove it.*

In the comics, Zemo was “Hitler’s greatest scientist” who was so hated by literally everyone that he constantly wore a sheet over his head to protect his identity. Cap found him working on a substance called, uncreatively, Adhesive X. Zemo tried to shoot him, but Cap’s shield broke the chemical vat and a whole load of the stuff got all over his head.

He’s now hiding in an uncharted South American jungle,** and only now learns Cap’s still alive. So he sends a group of baddies to New York we’ve all seen before: the dude who injected eagle blood into a horse and made it grow wings capable of flight, the dude who melts stuff, and the dude who’s slightly more radioactive than average.

Said baddies spray some of the Avengers with Adhesive X, but Iron Man cuts the ground around them and drags them back to his mansion with a truck. They contact Paste Pot Pete - the totally infamous supervillain who’s tried to kill a teenager (no, not that one) a couple of time - for a solution. He has one.

And it works.

The team makes quick work of the villains by swapping who fights whom (compared to their previous appearances), and Zemo ends up getting away with a canister of tear gas instead of Pete’s “super-dissolver”.

Before we get to any science, I want to point out a completely useless fact:

Helicopters get their name from the greek words for helix (elix, ἕλιξ) and wing (pteron, πτερόν). In other words, it’s not heli-copter. It’s helico-pter.

So it should really be called a helico-hovercraft.

There. Pedantry over.

Now let’s talk about adhesives.

Humanoids have been using gunk to stick two things together since time immemorial (or at least 200,000 years ago). Yes, I do mean more than just humans -- Neanderthals were using a birch-based tar to stick the stone bits of their tools to wooden handles (aka “hafting”), too.

The oldest compound adhesive (i.e. an adhesive made of more than one substance) discovered is a blend of plant gum and red ochre (a variety of iron oxide), with the latter added to make the organic bit less susceptible to breaking down upon exposure to water. It was found in a 70,000 year old axe in South Africa.

The first commercial glue venture was established in 1690 (in Holland) - those adhesives were animal-based. Starch-based adhesives were used on the first US stamps, circa 1840. Basically, there are a lot of ways to make adhesives...even those based on a blend of urea and formaldehyde, which was a thing in the 1930s.

There was a lot of development in synthetic adhesives during WWII, so it’s actually not totally random that Zemo was developing a fancy new glue.

While there are a bunch of different types of adhesives, they all ultimately work because of the physics principle called adhesion - the tendency for particles of different substances to stick together. That sticking can come about by a few different ways, over different lengths, including...

mechanical adhesion - interlocking surfaces together because it fills the voids/pores of the surfaces

chemical adhesion - electrons in the two surfaces get shared or transferred, forming covalent or ionic bonds (respectively), or hydrogen bonds 

dispersive adhesion - different molecules in the two surfaces are weakly attracted to one another because said molecules have one side that’s got a slight positive charge (and the other has a slight negative charge).*** This is aka Van der Waals forces.

diffusive adhesion - the molecules of the two different surfaces get all mixed up in each other’s business, lets Van der Waals forces do their thing without a separate adhesive.

Lots of things stick to each other with no extra compound, e.g. (small enough) water droplets on a window. Some things you want to stick together, but they naturally don’t. That’s what adhesives are for -- acting as an intermediary.

Of course, anyone who’s accidentally superglued their fingers together knows that you don’t always only glue the things you want to. So you gotta find a compound that can break the adhesive down.

Some adhesives break down because of intense temperature changes, or exposure to light. Others require being dissolved (or otherwise broken down) by some kind of solvent. 

We have no idea what Zemo tried previously -- if he tried all possible solvents that wouldn’t melt his face off, too -- but lucky for the city of New York, Paste Pot Pete found a universal solvent that wasn’t water.****

We don’t know exactly how strong Adhesive X is, but we can at least pretend to know by searching for Nature’s equivalent:

Nature’s strongest adhesive is produced by the bacteria Caulobacter crescentus, which requires and average ~70 Newtons of force to separate each square millimeter of the bacteria from its glued-to surface. 

We don’t know how much surface area of Zemo’s head is glued to that hood, but each square centimeter would require 7000 Newtons of force.

That’s equivalent to ~1,600 pounds. 

Yeah, he’s definitely not pulling that off.

Finally, I just wanted to show you that Tony makes lead balloons:

Can a lead balloon float?

Sure, as long as the lead is thin enough and the gas inside is sufficiently less dense than air.

For example, a 1 micometer-thick***** lead balloon 4m in diameter would have a mass of 5.7 kg. Assuming you only pumped in so much helium that the pressure on the inside was the same as the outside, you’d have an additional 6 kg of helium. Altogether, your balloon would have a buoyant force equal to 115 mN. 

That’s a pretty small number, but it’s bigger than 0, so the balloon floats.

Of course, the helium in this instance is only used to inflate the balloon and maintain its structural integrity. Hydrogen is less dense, and would therefore provide extra lift. It’s flammable, though.

That’s all from me -- go watch Deadp2l.

* Yes, dear reader. Despite what might be implied in the previous panel, behold:

** This isn’t completely random, as come the end of World War II, a number of Nazis fled to South America. 

*** More complex molecules might have more than one positive/negative section

**** Water is often called a universal solvent ‘cause it dissolves a lot of stuff. But it also doesn’t dissolve a lot of stuff.

*****I realize it’s difficult to make a balloon one millionth of a meter thick. If anyone can do it, Tony can.

Avengers #6 - Writer: Stan Lee, Art: Jack Kirby, Ink: Chic Stone

[marjaystuff]

Elise Cooper Interviews Kristin Hannah

Firefly Lane and Fly Away

Kristin Hannah

St. Martin’s Press

Re-published 2021

Literature

9780312537074

Firefly Lane and its sequel Fly Away, by Kristin Hannah, were written over a decade ago.  But they have come back into relevance after Netflix adapted these novels for a TV series. Although the Netflix series is good, those who have not read Hannah’s books are missing the essence of the stories. Hannah has a knack for a descriptive writing style that draws out the characters through a storyline that is heart-warming and heart-wrenching.  

Throughout both books, spanning a period of about thirty years, two girls, Kate Mularkey and Tully Hart, different as day and night, have weathered the storm of friendship, jealousy, anger, hurt, and resentment. Kate has always been in Tully’s shadow, being the shy girl with thick glasses who is lonely and uncool.  Tully is the “cool girl” with ambition, brains, and beauty. But these two become best friends forever, known as TullyandKate. As they grow to adulthood, they make different choices in life.  Tully chooses to make her career her life’s one true love, while Kate is content to marry, have children, and be a stay-at-home mom, a reflection of her own family as she was growing up.  In a sense, Kate’s family adopted Tully and showed her a loving environment, something Tully did not have with her own mom known as Dorothy “Cloud” who was never there for her daughter.

The sequel novel, Fly Away, shows how Kate was the glue that held everyone together.  After not able to have Kate around, her family, and her best friend, must navigate their own lives, wondering how they can get along without Kate’s presence. Sixteen-year-old Marah is devastated. Her father, Johnny, strives to hold the family together, but even with his best efforts, Marah becomes unreachable. Nothing and no one seem to matter to her. And Tully has turned to drugs and booze.  A tragic accident has Tully facing her past and her pain, as she has visions of her friend, and must decide whether or not life is worth living.

Readers will be touched greatly, something no TV series can encompass. Her books have a way of creeping into people’s hearts and feelings as they navigate the emotional ups and down with the characters.

Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for writing these books?

Kristin Hannah:  I started writing these stories in 2006.  These are the most autobiographical of my books.  I wanted to explore my generation of women: what was it like in high school, college, having an early career, and motherhood.  I wanted to show the impact of family and how my mother’s breast cancer affected us.  

EC:  Are you Kate or Tully?

KH:  I am Kate, although I wish I had more Tully in me.

EC:  How would you describe Kate?

KH:  Serious, level-headed, moral, a straightshooter.  She lives too much in her head and does not like to make dangerous choices.  I think of her more as a caretaker than a follower.

EC:  How would you describe Tully?

KH:  Broken and ambitious.  She grew up with the feeling that if she is successful and famous, she will be unconditionally loved.  I do not believe she is insecure although her past suggests she should be considering she grew up with a mother who seemed not to care or love her.

EC:  There is a powerful quote in the book that best describes the relationship between Tully and Kate.  Can you explain?

KH:  You must be referring to this quote, “That was the thing about best friends.  Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips are down, they were there, making you laugh, even in your darkest hours.” Kate knew how broken Tully was and wanted to be there for her. On the other hand, Tully wants to push Kate to get outside of herself and strive for things.  But in the end, Kate’s journey in life, her real joy in life was to be a wife and mother. They needed each other, but in different ways.  Kate and her family kept Tully human and grounded her, allowing places for Tully to come home to.  They had a deep and true relationship throughout their lives, even when they went on different paths and lived in different places.

EC:  What about Tully’s mom versus Kate’s mom?

KH: Kate’s mom is the stand in for my mom.  A salt of the earth person who is loving and straight forward and strove for both girls to reach big.  She was always there for Kate, but was also a little starry eyed around Tully, making Kate a bit jealous at times.  Tully’s mom, Cloud or Dorothy is a tragic character.  At the very best she is an uncommitted mother and at worse a very bad mom.  She was not there to educate, protect, or love her only child.

EC:  What about the relationship between Kate’s daughter, Marah, and Tully?

KH: This was another point of contention between Kate and Tully.  Kate saw it as her job to raise Marah to be a good moral thoughtful human being and to live a good life.  Tully gets to be the aunt who flies in on her private jet.  But there’s no doubt about the love these three share; it’s just that love is sometimes bumpy and takes a while to work out.

EC:  What was wonderful about these books is how you contrasted a stay-at-home mom versus having a career.  It seems the Netflix show missed this important point.

KH:  Actually, I don’t agree that the series has missed this point.  I think we don’t know yet how much the series will stick to the novel on this storyline.  Because Season one only tells about 1/3 of the book, the idea of Kate as an at home hasn’t really come up yet.  There’s a lot of story left to see.  We haven’t seen Kate as a young mother yet.  But I think the series wanted to show that Kate was a talented writer and producer in her own right.  She could have gone into the working world and have been very successful.  But the choice she made was to be an at home mom.  At the end of Firefly Lane as Kate looks back on her life, she is very certain she made the right choice and feels good about it.  

EC:  Would you say the second book, Fly Away, explores memories, regrets, second chances, forgiveness, and grief?

KH:  The first book, Firefly Lane is about finding love in life, and Fly Away is about losing it. Without Kate’s friendship, Tully has to grow up.

EC:  Both books delve into the relationship between Kate’s husband Johnny and herself?

KH:  They had a true love.  It had some miles and bumps in it but in the end, theirs was a great love.  

EC:  Another contention was how the relationship between Johnny and Kate was portrayed in the series?

KH: The novel is one thing, and the series is another.  The series structures the story differently than I did.  The novel is chronological in nature; the series runs on three timelines, so people are seeing the story in an order I did not write.  I am hopeful that the 2/3 of Firefly Lane still to come to screen will show the depth of the Johnny and Kate’s love affair since this is important to me and my readers.  I do like the series and feel that it is very true to the friendship between Johnny, Kate, and Tully, an inseparable trio. The first season explored the friendship. If there is a second season it will hopefully show the love story. I, personally, adore the casting of the show and can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

EC:  Why did the series have the three different timelines throughout?

KH:  If they had made the timeline like the book there would have been a lot of the fourteen-year-olds.  I also felt it would have been more ordinary that way.  Yes, the series would have been more faithful to the novel, but a series has a life of its own, too.  I understand, why readers love the book—I do, too—and honestly, it’s hard to adapt a beloved novel.  I think the series did take the material and make a great TV show while still being respectful to the underlying plotline, and the four women who played Kate and Tully are amazing. I am like everyone else who wants a season two because they left it hanging in the middle. Like, you, I am looking forward to a deep focus on a season two that focusses on the Johnny-Kate love story.  

EC:  Can you give a shout out about your next book?

KH:  I have been doing a lot of publicity and the pandemic has knocked me for a loop.  I am just now thinking about some things.  I had originally seen Firefly Lane as the start of a trilogy.  So, I will never say never about writing a third book.  I would also like to write Loreda’s story, the daughter in The Four Winds, my current book. But neither will be the next book I write.  

THANK YOU!!

[vestedbeauty]

Scared of Fading Away in Midlife? Empower Yourself Now to Do What You're Here For

New Post has been published on https://vestedbeauty.com/scared-of-fading-away-in-midlife-empower-yourself-now-to-do-what-youre-here-for/

Scared of Fading Away in Midlife? Empower Yourself Now to Do What You're Here For

Midlife is the time to step into your purpose, to empower yourself to fulfill your mission, to become everything you were meant to be – and to do what only you can do.

“Men age like a fine wine, and women age like milk.” The whole idea of women becoming invisible in midlife reminds me of the fish that doesn’t know it’s swimming in water. It’s like some weird myth, an odd and awful fate we’re told is coming for us all. 

Sure, we all hear stories of the middle-aged woman who got passed over romantically or professionally. Or others who feel unheard or dismissed. Some get up in arms and rail against being deemed irrelevant. Some retreat quietly to the wings. Totally their choice. 

But I’m going to call bullshit on this so-called inevitability. I think it’s a cop-out. We were each put here to find and fulfill our purpose. Into every one of us, greatness has been sown. It’s our responsibility – duty, even – to nurture our gifts and unleash them in the world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past few months. Now, it’s time to share. Maybe it’ll help you, too.

Timidity Spawns Invisibility 

As a little kid, I was so shy that my dad finally took me outside to meet the kids when we moved to a new neighborhood. The thought of just walking up to them, introducing myself, and playing kickball with them was terrifying. Eight-year-old me remembered earlier rejections and decided it was safer to stay home and read instead of taking another risk. 

I’d somehow gathered that blending into the background was the safer choice. Well, if by ‘safer’ you mean lonely, isolated, and robbing the world of your unique gifts, talents, perspectives, and presence… sure. So, while I was mortified at the moment, that forcing out of the nest was absolutely the best thing.

I wish I could say I learned that life lesson for good at age eight. But no.

That preposterous timidity grew like an invasive plant species in my life. It led to lots of people-pleasing, kept me on the sidelines when a big part of me wanted to join the game, lured me into lots of self-induced isolation, and probably cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Life is too short to play small. There’s a big difference between playing not to lose – and playing to win.

So, Timidity, you’re on the shit list. Sure, you meant well, and I appreciate the good intentions. But it’s time for you to scram.

Behold, four challenges I have thrust before your eyes! Should you accept, you will utterly transform how you show up in the world and what you create in it.

Challenge #1: Know Thyself, Own Thyself 

You can’t empower yourself to live a wildly satisfying second half of life where you make your best contributions to the world if you don’t even know what you want. Ask a hundred midlife women, “What do you really want?” and the most common answer you’ll hear is, “I don’t really know.” (Doubt it? Ask where they want to go out to dinner! You’ll get the same answer.)

Some of them are lying.

They know. They just don’t feel comfortable saying what they want – even to themselves. Maybe, like me, at some point, they taught themselves that resilience and strength meant getting by on life’s scraps, essentially saying, “I require no maintenance or care. I’m fine.” Try that with your car and see how it goes.

Some have put others’ desires before theirs for so long that they don’t even realize they no longer hear their own wishes’ voice. They’ve heard how unselfish they are, what a great mom because they live to serve, what a great woman behind the man… that kind of invisibility-inducing false compliment might be the deadliest of them all.

Ask little kids what they want, and they’ll rattle off a list like they’re paging through the old Sears catalog at Christmas. (Remember them?) They haven’t learned the warped rule that you aren’t supposed to want anything. 

Getting back in touch with what you want… what you REALLY want… takes practice. 

Like when atrophy sets in, it can feel weird exercising your “what I want” muscles. It can even feel selfish and wrong to verbalize what you want. But I’ll challenge you on that. Your desires don’t disappear just because you won’t admit them. And that’s a good thing. What you want is unique to you, and it’s part of what drives you to make your extraordinary contribution to the world. Becoming aware of what you want will propel you to make it so.

Do This to Empower Yourself: Get quiet with yourself (getting outside helps). Imagine there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from having whatever you really, really want. Then say it. Write it. Even tell someone about it.

Challenge #2: Watch Your Mouth (and Keyboard)

Self-deprecation works great for comedians. But in real life, it’s a cop-out. 

How’s it show up?

Mild insults we use to belittle ourselves

Ways we undervalue ourselves

Excessive modesty

Always asking permission

What is self-deprecation, really? It’s a way to kick yourself first, so nobody else feels the need to do it. It’s bowing and scraping before a perceived audience of ruthless critics so they can see you’ve already eviscerated yourself… so they won’t. After all, it somehow feels less painful if you cut yourself rather than someone else doing it.

But here’s the thing.

There is no audience. Not one that matters, really. And certainly, not one that knows the truth about you better than you do. Haters might hurl insults at you, but the old “I’m rubber. You’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you” saying is dead-on here. Seriously, humans typically criticize others for the same flaws they’re trying not to see in themselves. That becomes clearer as we age (both when we give and receive criticism).

You do not need to hide. Certainly not behind a wall of your own insults. The words you use about yourself will empower you to stand sure or leave you cowering. Be careful which you choose. 

This may be a tough habit to break. It will take practice and vigilance.

Do This: Start with what you write – particularly on social media or in emails. Draft your words normally, whatever way your brain sends them to your fingers. Read what you wrote. Would you want some stranger to say these things about someone you love? If so, delete those bits and rewrite them in a way that empowers you. Write with abandon; edit with ruthlessness.

Challenge #3: Rock Those Big Kid Pants

We all have weird leftovers running our lives. (Not that plastic container in the back left corner of the shelf in the fridge.) Somewhere along the line, someone made an off-handed remark or otherwise slighted you – and you tucked the memory away so deeply you might not even remember it. Find them and you’ll empower yourself to break into a new level of freedom.

I have a weird example. 

When I was a kid, I remember our family getting a gas grill. My dad told my brother and me not to touch it – a smart and reasonable safety warning.

I obeyed. Until I was like 45 years old! It wasn’t a conscious thought, “I’m not allowed to touch a grill.” But it was in there – this hesitance to ignite a propane grill.

I remember telling a friend in Fiji about my weird aversion to grills. She’s a no-nonsense, very bold woman. She kind of looked at me like I was nuts, then said, “Sue, you’re a big girl now.” And, of course, I am. It was time to recognize that bizarre ‘rule’ I was living under and choose what works better.

Maybe you have some similar holdovers from childhood that you’ve bizarrely held onto. Worth looking at and challenging. 

Confession: I still have never watched “The Bad News Bears,” but I have watched “Grease” (waiting for a bolt of lightning to strike!).

Do This to Empower Yourself: If you encounter some weird resistance that takes you back to childhood, take a look at it. Maybe it serves you, like “Don’t touch the hot stove.” But perhaps it’s a limit you can lift safely. Doing so can empower you in a surprisingly satisfying and seemingly small way.

Challenge #4: Be Your Own Champion

“What a bitch.” Many women (myself included) surrender a lot of personal power because we don’t want people to perceive us as bitches. That avoidance keeps us quiet. It leads us to ignore red flags. It puts us in unsafe situations.

As a college student at Rutgers, I remember walking through New Brunswick to get from one campus to another. Sometimes men would whistle or call out. It felt terrifying. I’d just grab my pepper spray tighter and walk faster, hoping they’d lose interest and go away.

But looking them in the eye and saying, “Fuck off” or the equivalent never crossed my mind. Standing my ground seemed more dangerous because they might see it as a challenge (maybe it was).

That same aversion to offense contributed to me going bankrupt decades later. I ignored red flags with the two men I’d partnered with on a real estate investment. I didn’t feel comfortable saying, “Wait. No fucking way. You guys are nuts if you think I’ll be the only one at risk here.” But, I told myself I didn’t know as much as they did… and that they were probably right and this was probably normal… and that I couldn’t speak up without risking the deal.

I’m not suggesting we should go around screaming like shrews. There’s more power in quiet strength. I don’t feel like I need to shout to be heard. But there’s also no reason to stay silent when I’ve got something to say. 

If you take a self-defense class, they’re going to teach you to shout something like,

“NO! DON’T TOUCH ME.”

There’s a reason they have to TEACH that – especially to women. Many of us have learned to be quiet – even when there’s a lot at stake. It can feel bizarre to hear yourself shout like that. Do it anyway. 

Do This to Empower Yourself: Next time you’re alone in your car or home, practice. Stand your ground. Use your deepest, strongest warrior-like voice, and shout, “NO. BACK OFF” or whatever you want to say. Repeat until you feel strong. You would do this to protect your kids… learn to do it for you, too.

Trust Yourself, Empower Yourself

Hey. This second half of your life is going to go fast. Faster than the first half – and that’s crazy even to consider. 

You aren’t done. If you were, you’d be gone.

You’ve got exciting adventures ahead, lives to touch, creations to make, delights to enjoy, crowning glories to achieve. Midlife is not the time to shrink back. 

Everything you’ve learned and done until now has perfectly positioned you to find and fulfill your purpose. You’re here for a reason. Deep inside, you have a voice that’s urging you onward. It may take practice, but you can learn to hear yourself – and trust yourself. You owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and the whole wide world to empower yourself to be and do and have what’s on your heart.