#and the reference helped me with proportions! so i struggled less with full body than i normally do

[jichanxo]

hobbs and joiner, who are @four-white-trees' ocs! these sure are some guys...

less clothed version under the cut (because i didn't go to all the effort of making all these layers to not show em)

[positivelybeastly]

Love seeing such nuanced and interesting explorations of the Big Blue! Speaking of big, how would you think Hank would respond to someone more indulgent in his hankering for Twinkies and such? With some of his body dysmorphia, do you think he'd be surprised to find someone appreciative of added bulk to his blue?

Thank you so much for the kind words! Apologies for the late reply, been on hiatus and have just started making a poke at my inbox.

So, I have some thoughts on this, because this has come up in both 616 canon and in alternate universes. Let's start with the alternate universes.

This is Hank McCoy of Earth-32098! He is friend shaped. He comes from a universe where . . . well, things are kinda cushy and moved past the need for conventional X-Men, really. Instead, there's an X-World, a Federation that Hank is a member of (which appears to be a Star Trek reference, given that he's on some kind of five year missions), and a lot of people have gotten old and settled down, hence the curious idea that Hank can go bald despite being furry. Then again, I've long been an advocate for Hank to be able to have facial hair despite being furry, so who am I to judge?

Hank looks relaxed and happy here, honestly! He's a bit rounder, but he is free, and I think that generally speaks to the fact that if Hank is eating well, then he's in a decent state of mind and he's being supported properly - he tends to do that genius thing of getting obsessed with an idea and not eating because must do science, so if he's eating well, he's being taken care of in a way that, generally, he isn't in Earth 616, or he's developed healthier behaviour patterns. There's no mention of him having a partner in this universe, but honestly, he's a jolly, happy fellow and his usual charming self, I expect he'd have no shortage of people interested in him. A partner encouraging of his shape and body would be a welcome surprise, I think.

Then we get into the less . . . positive, depictions of this.

First off, we have the Ultimate Universe, which is always a wellspring of healthy behaviour and kind words.

Like . . . this Hank isn't even fat?

He's just physically large because he's built like a brick shithouse. He has size 42 feet. You see him without a shirt on later and he's got full comic book godlike proportions going on, like, what here is even fat?

It was the early 2000s, so this just feels like braindead bullying, to be honest, but given that this Hank canonically struggles with his self-esteem and body dysmorphia even more than his other selves, to the point where it drives him to destroy his relationship with Ultimate Storm and gets him killed, I feel like he would have definitely benefited from someone being able to help out his headspace and get him to unlearn some of the garbage his parents abused into him. As much as I like his relationship with Ultimate Storm, she was not a version of the character equipped to deal with Ultimate Beast's mental trauma and issues, and he ended up in a bad place as a result.

Then we get to . . . 616 . . .

Where Hank becomes fat when he becomes evil.

I'm gonna link an article here, talking about fatphobia in comic books, but this is the salient part of the article, wrt Beast in particular.

This is me letting you all know that this is something comic book writers are still deploying in comic books in 2019, all the way up to 2024. Fat = evil. Fat = gluttonous = evil. Because, you know, why bother examining the way that we tell stories in an age where we're supposed to be more respectful and tolerant and accepting of people? Why bother examining the tropes we use, in this, allegedly the most welcoming of all X-Men eras?

And, you know, let's make some fat jokes here and there. Just in case you didn't get the message.

It's especially transparent because Percy established on Twitter that Beast was 'stress eating,' because of how much of a toll protecting Krakoa was taking on his person. Except that that's not what was actually happening. You saw Beast eat on panel, twice. Both times, they were while he was explicitly saying he was evil, or doing something transparently evil. He isn't stress eating, he's eating to demonstrate to the audience that he's a gluttonous pig who can't stop what he's doing because he's just so hungry and evil and he'll devour anything and everything and blah blah fuck off.

The stress eating garbage was Percy covering his ass for using shitty, outdated, fatphobic tropes to establish a visual language for Beast turning more and more evil. Because, you know, the fucking James Bond villain scar, the overgrown tusks (pig/boar imagery! Because he's a pig!), the actual visuals of him murdering countries and friends, aren't enough, you need to be shown that he's evil because he's fat, unlike our toned, lean, lithe heroes in X-Force.

It's such a shame because it's a good look for Beast, honestly. I love a blue furred Hercules as much as the next guy, but chunky thighs, love handles, a bit of roundness? It doesn't hurt. It's an attractive body shape.

I wish we didn't have to pretend it wasn't.

It's especially galling because we literally went from a bigger figure Beast in X-Force #48-50 when he became good again, to a lean, skinnier Beast in X-Men #1 coming next week because he's on a full on heroic team again.

Bleh. It frustrates me.

You had a question! And I've gone on a long ass tangent about problematic depictions of body shapes in comic books! My apologies!

I think that Hank would do well with a partner who doesn't mind a bit of a roundness to him. As I mentioned, Hank has a tendency to fall into bad patterns of self-neglect when he's busy, and someone who can not only be there to make sure he's taking care of himself, but assure him that he's a handsome, beautiful Beast whether he be bigger or smaller would be good for him.

I don't necessarily think it would 'fix' his image issues or dysmorphia, because I don't know if that lingering doubt ever goes away for Hank, but it would definitely help. And it probably would surprise him, even more than finding out that people actually really dig the fuzzy blue monster look.

[nijicx]

Apologies if you've been asked this 10000 times but I'm such a fan of your work and have been for years, it's because of you I got into bnha and started making my own oc's in that universe! My question is, do you have any tips for how to consistently draw your characters? Every time I draw mine, they look a little different each time (I think I have the opposite of 'same-face-syndrome', where whenever I draw the same character more than once, they look like distant cousins, at best, than the same character). You draw your characters so well and so consistently that I'm envious of how you can do so. This is already dragging on but I also wanted to ask if you know any good tutorials/tips to make a decent full-body reference, too, because yours are so good and I only have bust-up references thus far for mine because I struggle with making full-body look...real, and not stiff and clunky, y'know? Sorry this is an essay and a half, thanks in advance, or sorry you had to see all this, I hope you're having a great day/night where you are!! (TL,DR: do you have any tips on consistently drawing oc's, and how to make good full-body references? Thank you!)

HHHH Well first of all thankyou ;__; Not just for putting up with me all this time, but for saying such considerate things~ I wish I could say I agree that I draw consistently, but sometimes my work is all over the place. When I feel like I'm getting too off-model, I return to the basics! Which is re-visiting their basic shapes, and mapping out their proportions. I'll use Winston as an example since he's my main boy, but he's literally and figuratively a block-head.

So whenever I draw him, I try and remember his head is a big rectangle with a small rectangle as his chin and usually I can really reign in his look by just doing some very simple mapping out in my sketch-phases. Having a good ref really helps with this. I tend to draw all my characters in 3/4 (bad habit i know) but its good to doodle what they'd look like from the front and side at least, that way you have it on hand to slap onto a layer and adjust the opacity, so you can check your own work to make sure you're in the right ballpark when you're uncertain.

Besides that, practice! Practice and your consistency will improve boatloads~ The same goes for drawing bodies, every day before I started drawing, I'd look through pinterest, google and pose sites for poses I thought looked fun, and I quickly did figure studies of them before I drew what I actually wanted to draw that day.

This is the result of quite a few days worth of studies, but if you do a couple every day, you'll find yourself becoming more familiar with how the body works, and your poses will become less stiff. (Though, I shouldn't talk bc a lot of my character work lately has been super stiff and clunky ^^;) Remember to play around with different body types too, your cast will feel more realized if everyone has a difference in proportion and shape~ I'm definitely not the best explainer, but I hope this helped a little bit ;__; Thankyou for staying with me so long and if you have additional questions you know where to send em!

[gendercensus]

On plural inclusivity and "plural they"

In the Gender Census feedback box and elsewhere I have frequently been asked:

to make the annual Gender Census survey more inclusive of plural participants, and

to add "plural they" to the checkbox pronouns list alongside "singular they" in order to be inclusive of plural participants.

It's a rambling topic, so I'll address them in sections in that order.

~

INCLUSIVITY RE: PLURAL PARTICIPANTS

I've been inviting plural people to take part in a short survey about the Gender Census, asking questions that help me get a feel for the issues involved and asking about whether people feel included in the survey (and why or why not). At the time of writing there have been 139 responses, I will leave it open for ongoing feedback, and I'm unlikely to be publishing the spreadsheet of results in full because the responses are off-topic and very personal. However, I will refer to some individual responses as well as my personal experience discussing inclusion with plural systems.

Here's a graph based on the responses so far:

I'm asking for direct feedback about this issue because over the past few years plural folks have been one of the more consistently vocal groups in the feedback box of the survey and elsewhere, which would usually be fine, but I've been finding it very overwhelming and confusing. I think that's because the advice/demands/questions have been unusually inconsistent, often to the point of being in direct opposition to each other, and the result is that I have no idea what to do.

Before now, most plural people have understood that it's quite a nuanced issue. When asked I would explain that if they felt that filling it in once for the whole system made more sense they should do that, and if individual system members felt strongly that they should participate alone then they could do so.

This year it got to the point where I had to make a decision and write unambiguous, easy-to-follow guidance about how plural people should fill in the survey, because I had one system submitting dozens of responses and giving the exact same three points of feedback, paraphrased, over and over - making it look like many unconnected people felt strongly about these particular issues, when in reality it was all this one system. I decided that, to be as fair as possible, plural people should fill in the survey once per body.

When I posted about the "once per body" policy on social media I received very little direct feedback, which leaves me in the position of not knowing whether that's because I did it right and you have no complaints or because you've all jumped ship! The statistics and comments from the plural feedback survey are very helpful in this regard:

It seems that plural participants, on the whole, are fairly understanding about it all, often supportive, and are still able to participate. ("Unknown" and "no strong feelings" together are a much higher proportion than I expected.) Some positive feedback included appreciation for the ability to select as many gender identities and pronouns as one wants. Common arguments against the policy include feeling that system members are not treated as people in their own right, which is understandable; the Gender Census is designed to present practicable data about nonbinary people for use within a system that assigns one identity per body, socially and bureaucratically. A "once per body" policy makes sense when prioritising nonbinary people, but adds to the list of crap that only plural people have to struggle through when they're not the main focus of the research.

I was surprised that only a couple of people pointed out that some systems have amnesia between members, and so some systems may participate more than once per body unintentionally. (I understand that this is unavoidable, and I certainly wouldn't be upset about it. Sometimes non-plural people participate more than once by accident, too! On the scale we're talking about, I'm unlikely to even notice it happening.)

Back when I first started to get requests to make the Gender Census more plural-inclusive, my first move was to ask people what exactly they felt excluded by. Responses to this have been continuously nebulous, to the extent that I don't think I have ever made any design changes to the annual survey at all as a result. I also asked what they would do to improve the survey and help them to feel included, but this has yielded very few viable ideas for how to move forward, just because so many of the ideas that people suggest are mutually exclusive.

As an example, I spoke to one member of a system who expressed, understandably, that their experience of themselves as plural inextricably affected their experience of their gender(s), and after some discussion they concluded that the two were so intertwined that it made the most sense for it to be included in the identity question, e.g. a checkbox called "plural" alongside nonbinary, genderqueer, trans, etc. I explained that I don't arbitrarily add things to the checkbox list, but it would be counted if it was typed into a textbox underneath, and if it went over 1% I would consider adding it to the checkbox list. They became increasingly angry. The only way this situation would make sense for them moving forward was if I added "plural" as an identity checkbox option immediately. Conversely, just a couple of weeks previously I had spoken with a member of a system who was very vocally distressed at the idea of plurality being conflated with gender, and wanted to make sure that I never added "plural" as an identity checkbox option.

As another example, in the plural feedback survey when I asked people how they felt about the "once per body" policy, a member of one system was against it and said "it feels like this policy doesn’t recognize us as separate people", but a member of another system was in favour and said "we're encouraged by our therapist to think of ourselves as dissociated parts of a whole. So we're all one person, just not directly connected like a singlet [non-plural person] would be. From that perspective, it makes sense to keep us as one person in the gender census, no matter how many genders we have." It's not possible to reconcile these two perspectives.

From the very beginning up until now, the unifying theme for feedback from plural people and their allies is "please be more inclusive of plural people." That's a really good start! After that it becomes a plate of tangled spaghetti.

Here are some themes I've managed to tease out, and my thoughts.

"Each system's alter should be able to participate in the survey individually if they want to." Some systems have literally hundreds of alters, and several systems have acknowledged in the feedback survey that this is probably both impractical for many plural people and unfair on singlets.

"We're okay with taking part once for all of us in the system, but we're just checking all the boxes that apply to at least one of us, and some of those are explicitly disliked by at least one of us. This is uncomfortable." I think that's... probably okay, actually. Other subcategories of participants whose identities fluctuate that strongly (e.g. a genderfluid person who is sometimes very male and sometimes extremely not male) or whose pronouns are context-dependent are also in this predicament. Participants often express a desire to rank their identity terms by importance, accuracy, fluctuation or frequency. The survey aims to collect broad and fuzzy data about a very large group of people, to monitor trends and let people know what language we're comfortable with on the whole. This survey just isn't looking for that kind of nuance.

"We're okay with taking part in the survey once for everyone in the system, but there should be a way to separate out responses about different alters within that one response." It's literally impossible to program the survey to have infinite subsections for each alter, but if it were possible, what would I do with the data? I think the most likely approach would be combining into a list of identities etc. "per body". The participant would feel better for being able to enter different words for different alters, but it would be more work for them, and it would be more work for me to process responses from plural people just to have them be counted like those from non-plural people.

"There should be a 'plural' checkbox in the identity list so that we can express that our gender is influenced by our plurality." I consider adding terms to the identity checkbox list when they're typed into the textboxes by over 1% of participants. There are some situations where I'll make an exception to that rule, but it's unusual and this isn't one of them. Whether you enter a term using a checkbox or a textbox makes no difference to how well-represented you are in the results.

Maybe just a question that asks if you're plural, with a checkbox? What would this checkbox do? Plurality is beyond the scope of the survey, along with things like height and eye colour. It would allow curious people to analyse the responses using plurality as a variable, but I wouldn't include it in any analysis in an annual Gender Census report.

That last one is particularly interesting, because it's what I actually did in the supplementary survey. I wasn't 100% sure in advance whether or not I would need that information for the singular vs. plural they issue, so I included an "I am/we are plural" checkbox just to be on the safe side. As far as I could tell, the survey was no more or less materially inclusive than the annual Gender Census survey. There were a couple of interesting patterns to report in the statistics, but the main things I noticed were:

Feedback saying that the survey wasn't inclusive of plural people was non-existent.

Several people thanked me in the feedback box for making the survey plural-inclusive.

Several people promoted the survey on social media by using its plural-inclusivity as a selling point.

Again, the supplementary survey didn't take a different approach. There was no particular difference in language, there was no indication that whether or not you're plural would be integral to the reporting of the results or even used at all, the only difference was the existence of a checkbox that let participants declare their plurality.

That's all it took to cause a complete U-turn in feedback. A checkbox that doesn't relate to gender or connect to any of the other questions in any way, and isn't particularly statistically useful based on the supplementary survey. It doesn't make the survey more inclusive, it just acknowledges that some participants are plural, and gives them a way to declare it.

Whether or not participants are plural is beyond the scope of the Gender Census, which aims to collect broad data about how we as nonbinary and otherwise genderly-interesting people want the world to see and describe us. It just doesn't make sense to include questions about plurality in future surveys. But I'm honestly amazed and a little confused, because until the "once per body" policy was added it seems that there wasn't actually anything about the Gender Census that prevented plural people from participating, at least not more than anyone else whose genders change significantly over time.

~

SHOULD "PLURAL THEY" BE ADDED TO THE CHECKBOX PRONOUN LIST?

This is something that participants often ask me to do in order to make the survey more plural-inclusive, so I decided to seriously consider it.

The first draft of the supplementary survey asked over 1,000 participants about this issue, but I had to scrap those responses and then redesign and restart it because, even though dictionaries are fairly clear on what exactly "singular they" is, a lot of survey participants who are not dictionaries seemed to be in disagreement (or confusion) about what singular they and plural they actually are. I have been unable to find any academic or reference articles online using the phrase "plural they" at all.

Here are some of the things people have told me recently:

"Singular they" is when you use "they" with singular verbs, e.g. they is a teacher.

I can't say that I use "singular they" pronouns because I always say "they are". "They is" just sounds wrong to me.

"Plural they" is when you use "singular they" pronouns to refer to a system/someone who is plural.

"Singular they" and "plural they" are grammatically identical except for the name.

"Singular they" and "plural they" are functionally the same and should be combined into one option called "they" in the annual survey.

Let's start by stating what we do know for sure.

~

THEY VS. SINGULAR THEY

For the record, "singular they" is defined by its purpose and context, not the specific words used.

Wiktionary says:

they (third-person, nominative case, usually plural, sometimes singular, objective case them, possessive their, possessive noun theirs, reflexive themselves, or, singular, themself)

It then goes on to specify three use-cases:

third-person plural, referring to two or more people

third-person singular, referring to one person

"indefinite pronoun" - people; some people; people in general; someone, excluding the speaker. E.g. "they didn’t have computers in the old days."

So we've got "they" (groups), "singular they" (individuals), and "indefinite they" (an "other" that is ambiguous in number).

Again, I have never found anything academic or, er, dictionarical (lexicographical?) that calls any of the forms "plural they", so my first job is to find out whether what Gender Census participants are calling "plural they" is the same as what the dictionary just calls "they", which is defined as the set used to refer to two or more people. For the purposes of this article I will call it regular "they".

~

WHICH WORDS MAKE UP SINGULAR THEY?

Even though most dictionaries will state which words make up singular they, and it's usually they/them/their/theirs/themself, if you change individual words within the set or even around the set it is still called "singular they" if it is used to refer to only one person. This might happen due to regional or cultural variations. So whether you say "they is a writer" or "they are a writer", whether you say "themself" or "themselves", if you're talking about only one person, it's still singular they.

In the annual survey, singular they is consistently chosen in the checkbox pronoun options by the most participants, usually more than twice as popular as the next most popular option. (I use the dictionary-provided set, and I've checked it's still the most commonly used in several polls and surveys along the way.) In the annual survey, singular they is presented as:

singular they - they/them/their/theirs/themself (e.g. "they are a writer")

~

WHICH WORDS MAKE UP PLURAL THEY?

I had never heard of "plural they" before people started asking me to add it to the checkbox list in the feedback box of the annual Gender Census survey, but it seemed clear from the name that it is meant to be contrasted with singular they, and I wondered if perhaps everyone else had been calling regular "they" (for referring to two or more people) "plural they" this entire time and I just hadn't noticed.

It was specifically presented to me by participants as a pronoun that a plural system could claim, and that a plural system might prefer over singular they. This tallied with my initial assumption that "plural they" may just be regular "they" referring to groups, since a system is a body containing two or more distinct individuals, so if they wanted to be referred to as a group then singular they would be inappropriate and regular "they" would fit.

I went to the pronouns spreadsheet of the 2021 Gender Census, and took every pronoun set that was named and copied it into a new spreadsheet. I ran a query to list all sets that contained both the words "plural" and "they" in the name field. There were 71 results, out of ~44,500 total responses. I ran another query to find out what these people were entering in the reflexive field, and here's what I got:

themselves - 61 (85.9%)

theirselves - 3

them - 2

themself - 2

themself (plural) - 2

theirself - 1

So I think it's safe to say that the set that people are calling "plural they" uses "themselves" as the reflexive, which is consistent with dictionaries' reporting of regular "they".

I conclude that most people do mean regular "they" when they refer to "plural they". "Plural they" seems to be they/them when used to refer to two or more people, including the plural reflexive "themselves".

As in "singular they", if you change individual words within the set or even around the set it is still called regular "they" if it is used to refer to two or more people. This might happen due to regional or cultural variations. So whether you say "they is writers" or "they are writers", whether you say "themself" or "themselves", if you're talking about two or more people, it's still regular "they" (or plural they).

~

IS PLURAL THEY GETTING SMUSHED INTO ANOTHER PRONOUN/GROUP?

I recently explored the (apparently unintentional) overlap of Spivak (e/em) and Elverson (ey/em). In case you've not read it, here's a brief overview: I found that it might be that Elverson (not on the checkbox list) is many times more popular than Spivak (on the checkbox list), even though it isn't being written into the pronouns textboxes often enough for it to reach the 1% threshold. Since the two sets are identical except for that one letter in the subject form, it is very likely that many of the people who use Elverson (ey/em) pronouns are choosing the Spivak checkbox option in the annual survey because they don't realise the spelling is different, or they think that they are minor spelling variants of the same set. I concluded that in order to get a fair count of both sets I will need to list both in the checkbox options next year, even though Elverson hasn't been typed in by over 1% of participants yet.

It's possible that the same thing is happening with singular and plural they. I ran a couple of Twitter polls, asking people whose pronouns are they/them which set they prefer, and presented answers like this:

a) Singular they, referring to only 1 person: they are themSELF

b) Singular they, referring to only 1 person: they are themSELVES

c) Plural they, referring to 2+ people: they are themSELVES

Here's the results, with 927 usable responses:

The results of this poll are really useful, because it allowed people to choose between singular and plural they AND themself and themselves, in combination. We can see that of the people who call their pronouns "singular they" (referring to only one person), the majority prefer "themself" as the reflexive, but a respectable proportion prefer singular they with "themselves", even when presented with the option of "plural they" (referring to two or more people).

(I have a policy of providing the most popular word choices in checkboxes, so I will continue to provide a they/them checkbox option that says "singular they - they/them/their/theirs/themself", but since singular they is consistently the most popular pronoun this is something I like to keep checking in on.)

If we apply these proportions to the 2021 Gender Census responses and imagine that everyone whose pronouns are they/them chose "singular they - they/them/their/theirs/themself" regardless of how accurate that is, this would mean that 3.7% of all respondents would check a "plural they" box, which is well above the 1% threshold for adding something to the checkbox list. Why not add it to the list, the way I'll also be adding Elverson to the list? This graph may help:

I generally consider it unwise to make big decisions based on Twitter polls, because the sample is much smaller and more biased than a standalone survey. Twitter requires membership, Twitter membership is skewed younger, and younger members are more likely to use Twitter often and see polls when they appear.

However, even I can't deny that there is a very clear mandate here for Elverson to be added to the checkbox list. When given a straight choice between the Spivak, Elverson, both, and neither/something else, participants were over six times more likely to choose Elverson over Spivak. (For context, Spivak got 4.3% in the 2021 Gender Census as a checkbox option.) Even if this poll were somehow put to the entire Gender Census participant group, it's hard to imagine a scenario where the results shift enough that Elverson gets a lower percentage than Spivak.

4.7% of a smaller sample of younger Twitter members just isn't enough to push me to add something to the checkbox options. I really hope that everyone whose pronouns are "plural they" takes the time to type it into next year's survey as a pronoun distinct from "singular they", so that if they do end up being over 1% of participants I can add "plural they" to the checkbox options.

~

IN CONCLUSION

As far as I can tell, the Gender Census doesn't particularly exclude plural participants. Systems are still able to take part, so it is at least as inclusive as any other survey of a similar nature, maybe even more so thanks to the ability to choose multiple gender identities and pronouns "per body".

There isn't sufficient evidence to support adding "plural they" to the list of checkbox pronouns at this time, and systems can be represented in results by typing any plural-inclusive terms and pronouns that are not on checkbox lists into some of the many textboxes provided, as any other participant would be expected to do.

The "once per body" participation policy is uncomfortable for a significant number of plural people. However, due to the intensely varied experiences of plural people, any policy on that issue that I impose would make some plural people uncomfortable - and it turns out that I chose the "side" that plural people are more likely to agree with. The survey isn't intending to collect or convey the more nuanced information that plural people (and others) have said that they would like to provide.

A separate question that specifically asks participants whether they're plural makes systems feel seen and acknowledged, but is beyond the scope of the project and doesn't add value to the data or analysis.

So, I will not be making any changes to the Gender Census at this time, based on the information I've gathered so far. However, I welcome further feedback in the plural participants' feedback form, which will remain open, anonymous and private.

~

Edit: Follow-up.

[ironmandeficiency]

the game

pairing: wrecker / reader

word count: 2007

summary: when the bad batch’s resident loudmouth suddenly begins to tone himself down, his brothers are rightfully suspicious.

request: “ Hiiiii! Could you please write something for Wrecker with him and reader having a bit of a kissy sesh and the others boys walk in on them? Thank you lmao I love ur writing ❣️”

a/n: a bit steamy!!! like idk how this got away from me but i’m sorry if this is too heated, anon!!! i guess i’m just thirsty and my brain went on autopilot. but can you blame me?? it’s wrecker we’re talking about!!

the havoc marauder touched down onto the base’s landing platform with a gentleness the ship only knew when you were piloting. you had been assigned to work with clone force 99 as their pilot after one too many close calls with other ships (and one ship they absolutely decimated by landing on top of it). said ship was yours, which was all the more uncanny when you received the orders to join them less than an hour later. you were trading a ship for a ship, essentially, with a few crew members included as a bonus gift.

there were days where you doubted whether crosshair could really be considered a gift but that was to be expected; the talking toothpick that mauled its brethren wasn’t exactly a ray of kriffin’ sunshine, you learned that early on. but he was practical and reliable, and him not eviscerating you for using his mug that one time made him okay in your book.

it took varying amounts of time for the team to warm up to you, which didn’t surprise you in the least. wrecker had been the first to grow used to (and appreciate) your presence on their/your ship - turns out your proficient flying was helpful in bringing the weapons specialist a bit more ease about heights. he seemed to open up after that and you were pleasantly surprised at the man he was behind the armor and gung ho attitude.

turns out he really liked animals, and the times he’d try to pet them were some of the only times you’d heard him whisper and move like molasses in the winter. his voice would turn soft and soothing as his hand would nearly obscure a porg from view while petting it, talking to the creature and taking it satisfied mewls as replies. the man nearly cried when he had the opportunity to watch two baby blurrgs hatch, the baby lizards imprinting on him when he was the first creature they had seen with fresh eyes (your heart broke for him when he failed to vouch for the creatures to become their mascots, hunter accompanying him to take them to a nearby village where there was a teary goodbye).

his affection for animals, funny enough, didn’t extend towards bugs. you learned this when he shrieked like an aiwha at a spider with a body barely the size of his thumb nail in the middle of the sleep cycle. everyone else had been too frustrated at him to do something about the arachnid so you had to be the one to trap it and release it outside.

wrecker was interesting alright.

so much so that after several months alongside the bad batch, you found yourself infatuated with the gentle giant in a manner you didn’t expect.

this infatuation led to months of stolen moments in random republic base supply closets (the few that could actually comfortably fit the two of you) and on planets you could only recall by what surface wrecker would press you against while his lips ravished yours. it also paved the way for the creation of a game on your end. wrecker wasn’t the biggest fan of the rules of the game, but he sure as hell did enjoy the reward he got if he won.

the rules were simple: if wrecker was able to refrain from making more than two references to a time he blew something up, to the ever-present desire of his to blow something up, or lament a lack of explosions, you’d give him a reward. now you knew this was difficult for him, not talking about his love for explosions and pyromania, so you played this game sparingly.

plus, the others were getting suspicious. you could tell by the way they had become the ones that brought up occasions for blowin’ shit up and expectant eyes when stealth missions were announced. they’d wait for him to complain about the required silence or make his yearning for fire and destruction known and raise eyebrows when their vod would shrug the words off.

you could tell it was almost cruel, but you were always sure to make his restraint well worth the struggle.

they had just finished another mission, everything going off with, for lack of a better word, a bang. it was strangely quiet within the bad batch’s comms when the outpost they took over had gone up in billowing flames and projectile shards of infrastructure, the inferno being one of epic proportions. but wrecker had remembered that the day before you’d promised him a quite pleasant reward if he played well.

he hoped to the gods that tech had gotten a good shot in his mission footage because it deserved wrecker’s full appreciation that he couldn’t give in the moment. times like this he despised that stupid game, but he had to admit that it made the anticipation that much stronger when he was finally alone with you.

wrecker barely focused on hunter’s post-mission spiel about something or another, favoring a glance at the cockpit where you were chatting with tech. his kih’vod seemed worried about something, which was normal, this was tech. but then his vod pulled up a holovid and you can see your eyes widen in shock and awe. most likely the blast footage from only hours before.

when tech showed you the epic blast that sent mayhem through the seppie troops, you felt guilty for starting the game the previous morning. wrecker would have loved to yell and celebrate a blast like that! there’d never actually been a time that the game went awry up until today, the explosions usually saving themselves for moments that the game wasn’t a deciding factor in your not-sleeping arrangements. this round’s reward would have to make it worth not celebrating the blast, worth more.

the post-mission routine was one you’d been doing for a while, wrecker waiting until his brothers were asleep (or otherwise distracted) before coming into the cockpit with you for some time to just be together. he’d usually remove you from the pilot’s chair, sit himself in it, and pull you onto his lap and hold you. being close to you was something he enjoyed and he would insert himself into your space however he could. it gave way to the best cuddling that you’d ever had the pleasure to experience in your life and a sense of safety like no other.

today, however, wrecker was impatient. the minute he was on board, he wanted nothing more than to barrel his way into the cockpit and show you just how frustrated he was about not celebrating the epic blast. there was a brief protest somewhere in his brain about getting caught by his brothers but wrecker didn’t care. he almost didn’t wait for tech to leave your side and for cross and hunter to disappear into their own parts of the ship before approaching you.

you heard his heavy footfalls reverberate off the durasteel and steeled yourself as the doors whooshed shut. you knew he’d be coming to claim part of his reward, but so soon? this was risky. there was barely time to turn on the ship’s autopilot before wrecker spun the pilot’s chair harshly toward him, pulling you away from the controls.

“do you have any idea what you do to me, cyare?” his voice was teetering back and forth between a growl and a whisper, sending chills through your body. “little gods, it took so much control to keep from shouting at the top of my lungs back there, and for what?” his hands slid between your ass and the chair, lifting you into his arms before plopping himself into the seat you formerly occupied. he maneuvered your legs to straddle him, keeping one of them on your ass and moving the other to the back of your neck.

this was a side to wrecker you’d never seen before, and holy karking hells you were loving it.

you brought your hands to either side of his face, thumb gently stroking the scar tissue near his cybernetic eye the way you know he enjoys. he was hungry, starving, and you weren’t one to deprive a man in need. your forehead pressed against his, eyes locking.

“i’ll show you what for,” you slammed your lips into his and ground yourself against his codpiece, the hand on your ass gripping hard in response. this was heaven, you were sure of it. wrecker’s muscles were tensing and relaxing under you and you could feel every bit of it.

he slid his hands to your hips and guided your movements, relinquishing control of the kiss as he moved your pliant body against him. the pace was rough and you both were capturing moans on your lips with no real effort put behind trying to contain them.

hunter’s nose wrinkled in response to the echoes of something familiar. for weeks he’s been trying to pinpoint the source of a scent he was unfamiliar with, only being able to catch its lingering presence. but now, it was hitting him full force and it was strong. setting down the blade he’d been sharpening, he emerged from the bunks and it only got stronger from there.

“is everything alright?” tech wasn’t looking up from whatever project had captured his attention, presumably seeing the twisted look on hunter’s face from the reflection of the shiny durasteel he was welding to whatever.

hunter shook his head. he’d questioned their youngest vod about possible sources of the scent and he’d had the same luck as him with discovering the source, also known as none. before hunter could bring up the elusive smell that confounded his nose, he was cut off by a noise from the cockpit.

why was the door shut? you normally left it open because the intercom system was terrible and you preferred shouting over the incessant crackling.

tech seemed to notice this abnormality as well, presumably having the same thoughts about why it was so strange.

“should we-”

“yeah, let’s check.”

both men make their way to the doors to the cockpit and hunter’s head is swimming. that damned scent was taking over his mind and it took him a few seconds before he could activate the door controls.

the whooshing of the doors carried the scent, now full-force, straight into the sargent and all but turned his brain into goop. then his eyes registered what exactly was happening in front of him. tech’s shocked/offended gasp wasn’t enough to snap you and wrecker out of your reverie, which would have been far more amusing if the mix of yours and wrecker’s pheromones wasn’t making his insides into soup.

crosshair had ventured up front to see what had tech so flustered, the sniper nearly choking on his toothpick at the sight of their pilot grinding on wrecker’s lap. the choking was what brought the two of you out of the hazy cloud of lust that permeated through the cockpit.

no one said anything for a long moment. what was there to say, really?

“don’t snap ‘em in half, wreck. i’ve gotten too used to not crashing in this damned thing.” crosshair turned and left the doorway. that was the closest crosshair has ever come to complimenting you, and you would have been a bit more focused on the achievement if wrecker wasn’t under you.

hunter snickered at the comment and had to hide his laughter at the fact that despite being walked in on, neither of you removed yourselves from the other’s hold. you had the decency to stop kissing now that you knew that you were found out, thank the maker.

should hunter feel bad for the strong urge he has to forget this ever happened? eh, cody’s probably got that visor on his gear to block out the bullshit his jedi gets up to, so no. hunter doesn’t feel bad about forgetting this and doesn’t think he could.

“just don’t crash the ship or leave a mess, that’s all i ask.”

[goodcatastrophe]

Do you have any tips for creating more dynamic/loose figures in art. Especially when drawing comic book characters

i mean, it's something i struggle with a lot and am still not very good at, so like... no. i definitely don't have any quick tips or cheats bc if i knew any, my art would look a lot nicer lol. that being said, i can share my sort-of game plan for practicing on my own

the first thing is that i need to have a better understanding of anatomy and the human figure. using references is fine and all, but i think we need to actually understand how the body is put together in order to use references more effectively. here's a link to a google drive folder full of art books, some of which do focus on figure drawing, that might be helpful. i might also borrow some books from my friend or take some out from the library, idk. this is probably going to be the most boring and time-consuming but i think it's important

to actually practice drawing dynamic figures, do quick gesture studies. and by quick i really do mean like 30 seconds to a minute on each figure. it's important to not get bogged down in details for these and really just focus on the expressiveness of the figure; keeping the line of action in mind may be helpful. speaking of which, there's a website actually called line of action that will generate figures at timed intervals for practicing this sort of thing, and there's also another pose generator for sketching here.

also, i think learning foreshortening and perspective will be immensely useful in creating figures that are less flat and more lively. personally i have no fucking idea about this and need to do more of my own research so yeah idk

i know this is a really boring answer, but seriously, it just boils down to practice. if you want to get good at something, you need to spend hours and hours practicing (i haven’t had time to do that, which is why my art is ... bad). maybe a more skilled artist could give some quick + easy tips, but first and foremost we really do need a genuine understanding of form and the human figure that goes deeper than just surface-level tricks!

also editing to add that the reason i’m harping on about the fundamentals so much even though comics art is not necessarily realistic is that once you have an understanding of how the human body works, you can stylize it from there and still have it looking good wrt proportions and all. for comics fans i’d specifically recommend reading understanding comics by scott mccloud, of which there is a pdf in the google drive folder linked above. his idea of amplification through simplification was really interesting to me!

[lockefanfic]

Business Trip - Part 1

You usually consider yourself a gentleman, but even you can’t help but admire the graceful curve of her backside as Hirai Momo throws herself into the back seat of the taxi cab, letting out a grunt of equal parts frustration and fatigue as she does so.

 You get in the backseat after her as she leans forward and tells the driver, in less-than-fluent Japanese, the address of your hotel. She struggles through remembering the Japanese words for the street address, but once she is confident the driver knows where to go, she throws herself back into the seat and sighs.

 “God, it’s finally over. That last meeting took forever,” she sighs, referring to the last meeting of the exhausting three day business trip to Tokyo that your company sent you to, ���I could barely understand half of what they were saying.”

 “Yeah, what was the boss thinking sending someone who was born and raised in Japan on this trip?” you say sarcastically.

 Momo responds by turning to you with a look of disgust, before sticking her tongue out at you and pulling down her right eyelid with a finger.

 “Like I said, I moved to Korea when I was eighteen and I’ve rarely spoken or read Japanese since. And besides, it was their official translator’s job to do the translating,” she said, referring to the young translator who was present at the meetings, “Too bad her translating skills didn’t match her enthusiasm.”

 “She was cute, though,” you say with a suggestive smile, “What was her name again?”

 “Minatozaki Sana,” Momo replies, adding a look of disapproval.

 “What?” You reply, feigning innocence. You loved teasing her, because of how cute she looked when she was annoyed.

 “You’re always looking for company girls to seduce,” Momo says with a tone of disapproval that matched her look, “as if fucking one of them wasn’t enough.”

 You smile slyly at her reply and look out the window to watch the bright lights of downtown Tokyo pass you by.

 “Too bad my flight is so early tomorrow, otherwise I’d love to explore the city a bit more.”

 “Yeah, have fun on that fifteen hour flight, loser,” Momo says as she turns to you with a smile, “I’ll be having fun chilling around Tokyo while you’re back at the office working on our debriefing report!”

 Momo had planned ahead and requested a week of vacation following the business trip. She’d be staying in Tokyo while you had an 8:00am flight back home tomorrow morning.

 You let out a sigh.

 “Well, at least we have time for one last dinner here before I head back.”

 “True. But I told the driver to take us back to the hotel so we can change into something more comfortable before we head to dinner.”

 “Good idea.”

 “Plus it’ll give you enough time to fuck me.”

 You’d been working together for a couple of years now, but your physical relationship started about a year ago when you were both sent on a business trip to New York. An innocent dinner at an Italian restaurant led to a bottle of wine back at her hotel room, and before you knew it clothes were on the floor and tongues were in mouths. You’d been friends – and strictly friends – with benefits ever since, and while the booty calls came about once a week since, you both especially enjoyed fucking while on business.

 You wasted no time in getting right down to the deed as soon as you both got to her hotel room – it was always her hotel room, not yours – although you couldn’t help but start a hot and heavy makeout session in the elevator up to her fifteenth floor suite. Five minutes after entering the room and you were both fucking.

 You savored the sight in front of you as you fucked Momo from behind, her slim, fit body rocking back and forth on her hands and knees on the edge of the bed as you stood beside it, your hands on her full hips, watching your cock disappear between her ass cheeks and into her wet pussy, again and again. She was naked except for her black heels, which she kept on because she knew you thought it was hot as hell to fuck a girl while her heels were still on.

 A stream of moans and pleasurable gasps flowed from her mouth, and she throws her head back after one particularly deep thrust, sending blonde hair flying. You take the opportunity to reach forward and grab a rough ponytail of hair before pulling it slightly backward in time with your thrusts – she loved it when you pulled her hair while you fucked.

 “Yes! Fuck. Fuck you’re so deep. Keep fucking me like that!”

 She often liked to be fucked hard, and while you both occasionally liked a lazy, slow fuck every now and then, not once would you describe any of your sessions as “making love.” Sex with Hirai Momo was almost always a raw outpouring of passion and lust. There was no time for feelings between the sheets with her.

 You’d fuck her for the next twelve hours if you could, but you were rapidly reaching that point of no return; that moment in any fuck session when the pleasure of orgasm fought with the urge to prolong the moment. But you decide that it was time; she’d already cum twice, after all. It was your turn.

 “I’m gonna cum, Momo,” you say, always the gentleman.

 “Do it,” she replies almost instantly, “cum! Cum wherever you want,” she says, the words slurring together, “Just cum. Cum for me.”

 She was on the pill, and the thought of burying yourself as deep as possible into her willing body as you came was tempting, but you had other ideas. As the point of no return quickly approached, you took a last few thrusts into her pussy, savoring the feeling of her tight wetness around you before finally, regretfully, pulling out.

 Your hand finishes the deed Momo’s body started, and all it took was two strokes before you finally fall over the edge and start to cum. You send hot, white cum flying onto the young woman’s lower back and ass; each stream that hits her skin elicits a soft moan from her lips, and you can’t help but let out a soft gasp of your own as the pleasure radiating from your crotch overwhelms your senses. You watch as the hot liquid starts to flow down her body from her upraised cheeks.

 You reach forward with your other hand and softly fondle a soft, firm ass cheek as the strength in Momo’s arms finally gives out and she buries her head into the bedsheets, breathing heavily. She hasn’t moved her lower body, however, continuing to give you a nice view of her upraised, cum-covered ass and the glistening, wet pussy beneath it, the pink of her lower lips still splayed open invitingly. Her juices, and yours, are bound by the rules of gravity and have begun to flow down her body.

 Smiling to yourself, you give her a light smack on the ass before going to the washroom to retrieve a towel.

  The next time you have her is a few hours later, almost immediately after returning to the hotel room following a quick dinner at a local izakaya. You’re sitting on the leather couch in her hotel room, captivated by the sight in front of you as Momo rides you, impaling herself over and over on your cock.

 She had a body that most women could only dream of – fit, slim, well proportioned – a body that seemed like it was taken right out of an anime. Long legs led to well-toned abs and beautiful, firm breasts that were neither too large nor too small, but just right. It was a body that she had put many long hours of work into, although you wondered sometimes how she maintained her fitness level given her voracious appetite. A lot of girls had fit bods, though – few were beautiful. Momo was just that, with large eyes and a lovely, cute smile that looked torn straight out of the pages of a manga.

 Currently those features were contorted in pleasure as she threw herself over and over against your crotch, her legs spread wide around your hips as she tried to get you as deep as she could inside her. Her arms are bracing herself against your shoulders, but she raises them and, after making sure your eyes were locked to hers, brings her hands to her roughly bouncing breasts, palming them and giving them a squeeze, each thrust and grind of her hips against yours creating that delicious friction between your bodies.

 Satisfied that she has your full attention (and really, how could she not?), she raises her arms and tangles her fingers in her hair, keeping it tied up in a makeshift ponytail. Her breasts bounce invitingly as she continues to ride you, her arms staying where they are above her head.

 She liked giving you a show.

 You ask yourself in that moment if there were anything else in the world that could compare to that sight – an impossibly beautiful young woman with a ridiculously perfect body, arms raised above her head as she rode your cock. There is a lot to love about the sight; her bouncing breasts, her firm, strong thighs as they flex up and down with effort, and those wonderful large eyes of hers, half-lidded with pleasure as she struggles to keep her gaze locked on yours.

 But it’s the small things that are just as appealing – the sharp, graceful curve of her jawline, the slim flare of her waist to her hips, the cute belly button between the outline of her sculpted abs – all of it comes together to create an image that is intoxicating, an image that pervades every part of your mind. You couldn’t imagine any way she could look hotter, more erotically alluring, more beautiful than she did at that moment. She is as close to perfection of the female form as it was possible to be.

 The image is one thing, however – the feeling is another. Words fail to describe the feeling not only of tight, wet, soft silk wrapped around your cock, but also the feeling of her warm, sweat-misted skin as her thighs grind and crash against yours. You can feel her pussy tightening in pulses, and you know that this means she is close to cumming.

 As if to confirm your thoughts she lets go of her hair, letting blonde hair fall gracefully around that long, graceful neck of hers. She leans forward, bracing her forearms on your shoulders as her hands find the back of your neck and steer your head forward for a kiss – a kiss that has little emotion or affection, but plenty of raw passion.

 You rip your mouth from hers and dip your head to capture one of her bouncing breasts in your mouth, swirling your tongue around her hardened nipple. She lets out a loud moan in response as the thrusting of her hips quickens.

 “Fuck! Fuck... I’m gonna.... I’m gonna... Ah!”

 She has no time to finish her sentence as pleasure overtakes her body and she reaches her breaking point. Her hips slow their movement, taking two more thrusts against your hips before she stops altogether, her pussy clamping down hard on your cock as she does so. As she cums she presses your head tight to her heaving chest, burying you in her cleavage – you smile to yourself as you stick out your tongue and lick some of her sweat from her flushed skin. You raise your hands to her breasts, giving them a firm squeeze from each side, creating a delicious cleavage that you run your tongue between.

 A few seconds, or a few minutes, or a few hours later – you couldn’t be sure, since you were more than content with licking the sweat from her chest – Momo finally releases your head from her chest and raises your chin before continuing the passionate kiss she started before she came.

 It’s your turn now, and as you finish the kiss, you give her as devilish a smile as you can. It’s almost as if she’s reading your thoughts, and as she returns the smile with one of her own.

 “Cum inside me,” her voice soft and barely above a whisper as the words any man yearns to hear spill from her lips, her tone strangely emotional and passionate.

 You smile slyly. You know what she wants, but you didn’t feel like giving it to her – not yet. Not after she decided to trap you in her cleavage.

 “Later. I wanna cum on your tits, first.”

 Your hands move to her hips and slowly begin to move her off you. It elicits a groan of disapproval, but she finally relents and climbs off you. She gasps softly as your cock exits her body, and you both watch as her spread pussy lips drip some of her juices onto your glistening, rigid penis.

 She gives you a look of feigned sadness – she really wanted you to be inside her when you came – but she resigns herself to what you wanted. Not that she minded when you came on her body, as you knew from experience.

 With the grace of a dancer, she moves herself between your spread legs and wastes no time in grasping the base of your cock with her right hand. She takes a moment to brush her hair behind her ear, and, after ensuring you are looking at her, she takes your cock into her mouth.

 It doesn’t take long before you come close to your own breaking point; you were already close when she was riding you, and the couple of seconds it took for your cock to go from her pussy to her mouth wasn’t exactly enough time to regain any major amount of stamina.

 Added to this was the fact that Momo gave amazing head.

 You watch as her head bounces up and down between your legs, her lips pressed tightly around your cock as her tongue caresses the underside of it, her mouth a cavern of wet tightness around you.

 It doesn’t take long. In fact, you’re pretty sure all it took was five seconds.

 “I’m gonna cum, Momo,” you say, although the effort to put a coherent sentence together took more effort than you’d care to admit.

 You move your hands to her cheeks and lift her mouth off your cock – as regrettable as it was feeling her mouth leave you, it was time for the main event. Momo’s right hand has not left your cock, and she continues to stroke it, aiming the tip towards her breasts. She straightens up her back, giving you a full view of her naked chest.

 “Cum for me, baby. Cum all over me.”

 You’re not one to refuse such a request, and a second later your world goes completely white as you start to cum. Your eyes close involuntarily, but you force them open to watch streams of warm semen erupt from the tip of your cock to land on Momo’s chest. One stream hits the top of her left breast, the next her cleavage, and the third and others her upper abs. Your cum glistens in the warm bedroom light, creamy white against the pale smoothness of her soft skin.

 You let the warm aftershocks of your orgasm wash over you as you lean back further onto the couch and the tension of the past half hour finally leaves your body, and Momo finally stops her up and down strokes on your cock. As you let out a deep breath you didn’t know you were holding, you watch as the beautiful young woman between your legs uses the slender fingers of her hand to capture a stream of warm semen that is tracing a path down her left breast.

 As if she is sampling some exquisite delicacy, Momo brings the cum to her mouth and licks it off her finger.

 She smiles devilishly at you, before sticking her tongue out playfully, the cute innocence of the gesture at odds with the otherwise erotic context of the situation. She rises and makes her way to the washroom to clean up, and as you admire the curve of her round ass as she walks away, your fondest wish is to stay in this city for a little longer – you glance at the room’s clock, and see that it is 1:21am, and you had to be at the airport in just a few hours.

 Your gaze drifts to your messenger bag, and the laptop within it, discarded in a corner of the room since the second you both returned from your last meeting. An idea comes to mind.

  The bed creaks softly rocks back and forth as, for the third time, you take your pleasure from Hirai Momo’s body. She is on her back on the bed, her legs spread widely as you thrust in and out of her willing body. You are on your knees and grasping both of her wrists and pulling them towards you as you thrust forward, giving her deep, hard strokes of your cock.

 Your shaft is starting to get sore, this being the third session in under twelve hours, but the pleasure has not dissipated in the least; the vision of the naked, beautiful young woman as her body rocks back and forth on the bed eliminates any sort of fatigue from your body, your need and lust for pleasure giving you new energy. Your eyes are glued to her firm, round breasts as they are rocked with each thrust, bouncing seductively up and down as you continue to fuck.

 A wordless, raw stream of pleasure flows from Momo’s throat, each thrust punctuating her moans. Eventually she gathers herself enough to put words together.

 “Baby... fuck me deep... deeper... please...”

 Her head falls to one side as she lets the pleasure overtake her following one particularly deep thrust into her body, her eyes shut as she lets another soft moan escape her lips. The past twelve hours has taken their toll on even her stamina, but it has done nothing to dull the pleasure radiating from between your bodies. She knows she has taken her pleasure the past two sessions; it was your turn to take yours.

 You take a moment to savor the sight as her naked body rocks back and forth on the bed, the new Tokyo sunrise painting her body in tones of red and yellow, playing on the peaks of her bouncing breasts, the tones of her abs, and making the moist flesh between her legs glisten.

 “Baby... please... cum inside me,” she says, the words more of a desperate plea than anything else, “please give it to me. Cum inside. Fill me.”

 Her words are strangely emotional, a far cry from the raw, unbridled and often vulgar tone she often takes when you fuck, and it takes you by surprise. There is a pleading, a need in her eyes that is not often there.

 You lean forward, taking her wrists and holding them above her head until you are leaning on your forearms and fucking her missionary style. She wraps her legs around you, as though accepting you into her body.

 You didn’t think it were possible, but her voice grows even more arousing now, as her lips are next to your ear. The loud screams of lust from your earlier sessions are gone, replaced with soft, wordless moans of desire – but they are no less arousing, no less pleasurable to your ears.

 If anything, they are even more enticing, and you slow down your thrusts slightly, increasing that delicious sensation of friction between the most intimate parts of your bodies, your rhythm matching the new, slower and softer pace she has established with her voice. You savor every entry, every exit, every movement of your shaft inside the body of the young woman beneath you.

 “Baby, please... fill me. Fill me with your cum. I want it. Please... please cum inside me.”

 It wasn’t the first time you’ve heard those words spill from her lips, and not even the first time in the last twelve hours, but there is something this time about her tone, about the pleading in her voice, that hits you in a way you weren’t expecting. Almost immediately a switch flips inside you, and you feel yourself tumbling towards the point of no return. You intentionally refrained from cumming inside her previously, wanting to tease her and enjoying making her beg for it, but now you saw no reason to keep from giving her what she wanted.

 You quicken your pace slightly, driving yourself between her spread legs a little harder as you approach your orgasm. You raise your head until you are looking at her face to face, and you are struck by what you see – she has always been an attractive, gorgeous woman, but she is especially beautiful in that moment.

 “Cum inside me,” she repeats, her voice light and airy, and for a split second it is the only thing in existence that you are aware of - like music in a silent world.

 The words mix with her beautiful face to create a heady mix you cannot fight, and as much as you want to stay in that moment forever, your world shatters like glass as the waves of pleasure finally overwhelm you.

 You drive yourself as deep into her willing body as you can, and the sensations hit you all at once: the desire of wanting her to have all of it, the feeling of each spasm as your essence leaves your body and enters hers, the moan that escapes her throat as she feels you finally spill into her.

 You bury your head into the crook between her shoulder and her neck, and you’re pretty sure an entire year has passed before you finally gather your senses.

 “Mmmm,” she says, a wordless sound of contentment, “that was amazing.”

 “Mmmm,” you repeat, still unable to form words of any coherent meaning.

 “You have a plane to catch,” she says, and you feel her head turn to glance at the clock, “in an hour and twenty minutes.”

 You pause, and a smile appears on your lips.

 “Actually, my flight leaves in six days,” you say. You had taken the opportunity, while she was taking a nap earlier, to reschedule your flight.

 You feel her cheeks move against yours, and you know she is smiling as she realizes what you’ve done. She giggles softly to herself, before remembering the fact that as friends, you teased each other relentlessly. She lets out an exaggerated sigh.

 “I knew you’d fall in love with me eventually. Well, I hate to break it to you loser, but all this fucking is strictly a business transaction, no feelings involved.”

 You raise your head, and you are struck for a moment as you lock eyes with her – the afterglow of sex has given her cheeks a soft red glow, and you realize at that moment that she has never been more beautiful. Perhaps it is just the novelty of the situation that makes her so attractive; maybe it is because you have just had sex in a city you have never been before, on the other side of the planet. Perhaps it is because you are still inside her, and the proof of your coupling is still staining your bodies, gluing you together physically, if not emotionally. Whatever it is, there is only one word that can describe her face in that moment: beautiful.

 For a moment, you forget that she is merely a friend; for a moment, you wonder if perhaps she could one day be more. For a moment, just a split second, you entertain the notion of falling in love with her.

 But you would never tell her that. You’re more than happy with your current relationship – if fate should find you becoming more than that, then great – but if it didn’t, well, you were more than happy with her friendship, and you knew that those feelings would exist even if the sexual part of your relationship did not.

 “You think I’m in love with you?” you say jokingly. “Please, I can do better.”

 She punches you sharply in the ribs. She smiles, and you notice that her face strangely soft and almost affectionate.

 “Get the hell off so I can clean your filth out of me and we can get some food.”

  It is past noon now in downtown Tokyo, and you watch as Momo finishes off the plate of jokbal, throwing the last piece of meat into a perilla leaf, adding a bit of red pepper paste, and shoving the entire bundle into her mouth. There is nothing but sheer content on her face as she chews the giant mouthful, looking like something out of a cooking anime. You could swear her eyes were forming inverted half moons.

 It took a little effort to find a Korean restaurant in the Japanese capital, but your full stomach says it was worthwhile. The satisfaction written all over Momo’s face is proof that she shares your thoughts, sitting and chewing happily as she pats her tummy.

 “I’m stuffed,” she says, and you are amazed at how quickly she can go from an intensely sexual, sensual woman to a childish, innocent girl.

 Her eyes suddenly dart up, mid-mouthful, as she notices something or someone to her left, and you turn to match her gaze and find someone passing by your table.

 “Minatozaki-san!” Momo says, her hand darting out and catching the arm of a young woman passing by your table. It is Sana, the company interpreter from yesterday’s meeting. The girl smiles brightly, offering you both a bow of respect and greeting, genuinely surprised.

 “Hirai-san! Good afternoon,” she says, in moderately accented English.

 “Momo is fine,” Momo replies with a wide smile. Her mouth is still full, but she finally finishes chewing and swallows the food in her mouth.

 “Then please, Sana is okay too,” is the reply, “I didn’t know you were both still in town.”

 “We’ve extended our stay,” Momo says, giving you a smile and a look, “because we’ve fallen in love with the city. Please, join us,” she adds, pulling out the chair next to her.

 Sana considers the offer for a moment before accepting the seat. You notice a slight blush appear on her cheeks as you make eye contact with her for a moment while she sits down. You’re happy to find that the cute innocence you noticed during yesterday’s meeting was even more alluring close up.

 “Sana,” Momo says, shooting you a look that hints she has a plan, “We’ve ordered another bottle of soju but I don’t think I can have another drop. I have to get back to the hotel to work on our debriefing report.”

 You quickly catch on to what Momo is doing.

 “The report can wait until after you have a drink with us, Momo,” you say, although you and her both know you had all week to write the report. You had to at least keep up appearances and not make it so obvious.

 Momo shakes her head. “No, I think you two should finish up here. Sana, if you have some free time, perhaps you can show my dear colleague around town – he’s never been to Tokyo before.”

 Sana is surprised, but you are relieved to find that she seems excited at the prospect.

 “Well, I don’t really have anything planned for the rest of the day, so I guess it could be fun. If you finish your report early, why don’t you join us after, Momo?” Sana says, her accented English only adding to her charm. At that moment the waiter arrives with the bottle of soju. Momo opens it, and takes your glass to pour you a drink before pouring one for Sana, which she accepts gratefully.

 “No, the report might take me all afternoon and I might just hit the sack afterwards,” Momo replies, turning to you with a sly look, “We were up all night reviewing what we learned from the meetings and it kind of wore me out.” She rises and puts on her jacket.

 “You two have fun,” she says with a smile at Sana, before shooting you a wink and heading to the front cashier.

 You turn your attention to the admittedly beautiful young woman still at your table, but out of the corner of your eye you watch as Momo turns to you before leaving the restaurant. She points at Sana’s back, then makes a vagina and penis gesture with her hands.

 She flashes a bright smile at you before turning, and in a blur of blonde hair, she leaves the restaurant.

 Five seconds later, you receive a text on your phone:

 HiraiMomo says: If she’s not down to fuck, I will be 8===D ^^

 You smile to yourself and put your phone away, focusing the rest of your attention on Minatozaki Sana.

[moominquartz]

rating: T fandom: Steven Universe prompt: Secretly Drawing the Other warnings: None Apply word count: 3.4k requester: @kohakhearts​

[IMG attached]

Connie is in desperate need of a reference picture.

My first complete fic for Fluff Bingo, which is something solely in a writing discord I’m apart of! Yes, it was inspired by BTHB, but it’s fun to have something to go to when I’m all out of angst juice. :)

[Read on AO3!]

~*~

Connie has never been especially talented at anything outside of school. She wins only as many tennis matches as she loses, and she struggles with the advanced sheet music that most of her peers seem to pull off flawlessly. Her grades are always A’s, sure, but that hardly seems like talent or skill, only an ability to test well.

The one thing Connie has never allowed herself to itemize — never allowed herself to compare herself to others, no matter how tempting it is — is her ability to draw.

To be fair, she knows she isn’t very good. When she begins, she’s heavily influenced by the wide-eyed, shoujo anime she adores, and proportions are the furthest thing from her mind. She draws solely for the fun of it, for pure expression. She draws when she’s ecstatic, she draws when she’s angry, she draws when she’s so sad that her tears stain the pages.

It’s only pencil drawings, but they’re very personal to her, and it’s something she doesn’t want anyone knowing she’s doing. Her parents know, because they’re her parents and she needs them to buy her the sketchbooks and the pencils. None of her friends do.

No one except Steven.

“Whoa,” Steven whispers with wide, childlike awe as he holds her sketchbook between his hands. He cradles the book as if it were scripture bound in expensive, gilded leather. “Connie, you’re amazing.”

She blushes. “Oh, it’s not anything special.”

“Are you kidding?” He looks at her with such fervent belief that it throws her off-kilter. “Connie, I don’t know anything about drawing, but look at all the details you put in here!”

That isn’t quite true; Steven draws as well, though maybe not as frequently as she does. Still, she supposes she can see what he’s saying. Even though the proportions are way off and Archimicarus should not be double the size of Lisa’s head, Connie took the time to put in every accessory she loved into Lisa’s outfit. She was determined to make sure Lisa was recognizable, despite the fact that the movie hadn’t come out yet and nobody knew what Lisa was going to look like.

“Okay,” she murmurs, feeling high on the praise. “All right, I’ll take that. Thanks.”

He grins. “Will you show me more sometime?”

“Oh, uh… sure.” Flattered that he’d even ask, she agrees without thinking about it.

-

Connie starts to draw him. Not out of any intention, and certainly not because she wants to. It happens entirely by accident that she looks down at her sketchbook, struggling to find inspiration, and realizes she’s doodled his head in the corner.

It becomes commonplace that, when they’re spending time together — time not always spent doing something, but rather, sharing the same space and simply being — Connie will draw.

Sometimes Steven asks, but more often than not she says no. He takes absolutely no offense at all, and that’s part of why she likes him. He just lets her do her thing while he chugs through another playthrough of GolfQuest Mini or plans out his next TubeTube video. 

Connie’s never been good at drawing real people. They’re even harder to get right than her anime characters. But the doodle doesn’t look entirely bad. It doesn’t look like Steven, but it doesn’t look bad.

And this is how Connie learns to use references: she stares at him while he doesn’t look at her.

She’s nervous at first, watching him while she draws. She’s afraid he’ll realize what she’s doing and draw attention to it. He’ll strike a pose or blush and say something about how she should be drawing someone else, or worse, he’ll ask to see it when she’s done. But Steven doesn’t do any of that. He keeps right on going, completely oblivious.

Connie gets pretty good at drawing him.

-

Years pass and Connie gets pretty damn good at drawing him.

The way she draws him changes with time. Her skills transform and puberty hits Steven like a freight truck. Every time she sees him, he seems to have grown a few inches. She hardly gets the chance to draw him more than once or twice while he’s in front of her. Once she reaches high school, she has far less time to just “hang out” — or if she does, and they aren’t doing anything, she’s forced to spend her time doing homework.

And then she figures out the work-around.

“What’re you up to?” she asks aloud as she types it into text. “Send pics.”

It sounds as if she’s asking for something else, but she absolutely isn’t. She hopes her Mom doesn’t still go through her text messages, or else she’s going to have a very awkward conversation with her later.

Her phone dings in response before she even sets it down.

w/ lars at the bakery!! lookit this! [IMG attached]

Yes, score! She only hopes it’s got a good enough angle—

—aaaaand it’s a picture of a dessert. It’s a very delicious-looking chocolate orange mousse, but it’s not of Steven.

She tries again on a different day, when she’s so tired of studying her eyes will fall out if she has to read one more word. She pulls out her sketchbook, lays on her bed, and texts him again. I’m so boredddd. Doing anything fun?

To prompt a photo in return, she attaches a selfie while she’s lying on the bed. It isn’t the best selfie she’s ever taken, but this isn’t about that. It’s about getting one back.

Steven, as always, replies quickly. sry, @ LH, can’t talk now. No picture. Connie glances at the clock just to make sure it is, indeed, past 8 PM, and she frowns.

Fine. Maybe she can ask for some help.

I am so sorry, Connie. Pearl’s texts are always way longer than they should be. You should’ve asked me a few weeks ago! I had a ton of pictures saved, but I recently exported them to an external harddrive. And he’s been so unwilling to let me take pictures of him recently.

Connie bites her lip. Pearl isn’t exactly a ‘grandma’ with technology — most of the things she’s learned how to operate, she’s done herself or only after one demonstration — but Connie wonders if she pressed, if she asked Pearl to retrieve her most recent picture of him to send to her, that Pearl would be a little too curious in return.

With all other options exhausted, Connie turns to desperate measures.

“Why am I doing this, again?” Amethyst asks over the phone. “Can’t you just, like, ask him yourself?”

“Please,” Connie all but begs. “I can’t tell you what it’s for, I just need a picture of him from the front, and it need to be at least waist-up. Although if you could get a full picture of him standing up, that’d be even better. Oh, and please don’t let him know that it’s for me.”

“Hmm.” Amethyst’s little hum is plotting, and Connie absolutely hates it. “Well, what do I get in return?”

“Huh?”

“What, you’re not expecting me to do this for free, are you?”

Of course. This is Amethyst. Connie chews on her bottom lip, considering.

“Well, what do you want? I could order Fish Stew for you.” Connie’s mom gives her enough of an allowance for her grades that that wouldn’t be a problem. “Or some of Lars’s bakery’s treats, if you like.”

Amethyst’s laugh goes to her bones. “What? I’m gonna need more than that. Hmm… How about this: I’ll take the picture for you, but you gotta come here to get it yourself.”

“What?” Connie’s voice squeaks. “You can’t be serious, Amethyst! It’s a school night!”

Amethyst snickers. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it tonight. I’ll text you when I have it, and you’ll get it when you come over. Oh, but when you do, you’d better bring two full pizzas with you, okay?”

“O-kay,” Connie mumbles, defeated.

“Sweet. Catch you on the flip side.”

-

do u need his face showin?

Connie blinks at the text on her phone, three days later. She’s just gotten out of school and Amethyst sent it three hours ago. 

Yes.

dam. well heres the outtake [IMG attached]

When Connie clicks through, she gets the full shot of Steven all right. But he isn’t standing upright and still; instead, he’s rushing past the camera, blurring the shot, a hand in front of his face to block it from being seen.

This is a shitty picture.

i kno, that’s why i sent it to u w/o getting pizza, dam!!

-

In the interim, Connie tries once more to provoke a selfie from Steven. This one requires a little more effort and is incredibly flirtatious — borderline forward — but she has to try it. Her sketches of him seem more and more off by the day, and it’s driving her nuts. She needs that reference shot, at least one.

She has a violin concert one Friday night. She dresses up for it, wearing black slacks, a white button-up with a high collar, and a black blazer. A simple tie, black with blue stripes, adorns her neck, and she lets her hair down. Like this, it would just barely tickle her shoulders. She puts on a little more makeup than she normally would for a concert; she dabbles in foundation, in blush and lipstick, when normally she would settle for mascara and concealer, if she decided on makeup at all.

Eyeshadow is still too foreign for her, but she hopes this is enough.

Then the trick is taking the selfie itself. At first she takes a shot without her shoes on, then decides it would probably look better with them on, especially if she’s trying to get one back. So she puts on her nice pair of loafers and stands at the full-body mirror in her room, taking a deep breath as she tries to set her nerves to rest.

“It’s fine, Connie,” she murmurs. “It’s fine. It’s just Steven, and what’s the worst thing that could happen? That he just flat out doesn’t respond?”

That is, by far, the worst thing that could happen. She doesn’t know what he’d do if he did that, because Steven is always the type to reply within a few minutes. She doesn’t know if it’s just like that for her or for everyone, but she has to trust that he’ll reply to this.

She takes the picture. It’s a little lopsided because her hand is shaking, but it’s the full picture of her, head to toe. She sends it off with a caption that, she hopes, is not too flirtatious, not too forward, because she would hate to put him off:

Don’t I look nice? What are you wearing tonight?

She bites her lip. Mom calls for her to get going, that she’s taken too long, but Steven’s response is almost instantaneous: a long, long string of heart eyes emojis and hearts of different colors and patterns. Then another text, this one saying, you look amazing!! i wish i was there!!!

It isn’t a selfie, and it doesn’t answer her question, but it makes her heart soften nonetheless. He’s so good to her, and of course that makes him difficult to manipulate. Maybe she really should just ask.

Several hours later, on the drive back home from the concert, she turns her phone back on. And to her surprise, there is a message waiting.

sorry this took so long, i wanted to match!! [IMG attached]

She blinks.

Steven has gone all out for this. He’s wearing a formal dress she hasn’t seen before, the same blue of her tie; an A-line that allows her to see the broadness of his chest, with off-the-shoulder sleeves that proudly display the freckles of his shoulders, and a pleated skirt that begins at his waist. His shoes are the same color, heeled, open-toed, and he’s even done his nails.

His makeup is more intricate than hers. Blush, foundation, eyeliner, mascara, an iridescent violet eyeshadow and vibrant lipstick.

He’s sent multiple pictures. One is of him doing a kissy face, eyes lidded; the next is him laughing, blurred from moving the camera, what might have been a shot he hadn’t done on purpose; and the next is of him doing a peace sign.

Connie’s face burns. She’s glad her mom and dad take the front seats, so that she can have this little moment all to herself.

I love it! She hesitates over the send button. He sent her all those emojis, and she can’t even say more than three words?

You look great! Oh, but he looks more than great, doesn’t he? 

Can I come over? Now that was honest, but way too suggestive!

She deletes it again and then realizes they’re almost home. She has to send something, she’s been thinking way too hard about it!

You’re the most beautiful, most handsome man in the whole world, and I wish I was with you.

She sends it before she can think twice about it. Steven responds immediately with many more emojis.

-

Connie can’t get the way he looked out of her head. In school, she doodles the dress in the margins of her notes. At tennis practice, she imagines trying to wear those heels and run at the same time. In orchestra, she pretends Steven is watching, that he came to her concert in that outfit.

She draws him, of course. For hours in her room, she flips through the pictures and draws, and draws, and draws. She draws him in the dress in different poses, in different settings, with different people.

… Mostly with her.

Her outfit’s different, though. It’s not the same, boring orchestra one she had to wear for the concert. She Googles different outfits and finds some fantastic, colorful tuxes, and of course pretends she would ever be able to wear them.

She’s in the middle of coloring a self-indulgent piece in which the two of them are dancing in these outfits (and this is one she would never, ever show to anyone), when she gets a text from Amethyst.

i got the pic. but uh… kinda havin some issues [IMG attached]

Connie blinks.

It’s a picture of Steven, though not the one Connie asked for. He’s closer to the camera, a rage in his eyes as he moves toward the person taking it, mouth open as if speaking.

Oh, no. Is he mad at Amethyst for sneaking pictures of him? Quickly, Connie tries to call her, but it only rings twice before going to voicemail.

Oh, no.

She calls Steven instead. He hangs up on her, too, but shoots her a short text: can’t talk.

URGENT, she replies in all caps and without punctuation. He does not reply.

She grabs her sketchbook, rushes downstairs. It’s late but not so late that she’ll be in trouble. She runs past Dad at the kitchen island, sipping on coffee before he goes in. “Sorry, I’ll be back before Mom!” she promises, slipping her shoes on.

“Where you going, honey?”

“To Steven’s!”

And when she opens the door, there, waiting for her, is a pink-hued lion.

-

When she throws open the door to the beach house, Steven is still yelling: “—you know I don’t like it when you take my picture—”

“Why?!” Amethyst yells. “Just because it’s me?!”

“No, it’s because I don’t want y’all snapping pictures of me for a scrapbook like I’m a baby—”

“AHEM.”

Connie’s clearing of her throat cuts through it, startling them both. They spin back around to face her, and while Amethyst’s glance goes askew, almost ashamed, Steven sees in her an immediate ally.

“Ugh, Connie, this isn’t a great time!” His voice is high, angry, but not at her; clearly, he thinks she’ll be on his side. “You won’t believe this, but Amethyst’s been trying to snap photos of me all week when she thinks I haven’t been looking, without even asking me or anything, and I’m in the middle of confronting her about it because if she thinks this is funny—”

“She doesn’t!”

“—just because that concealer isn’t working on the dark circles under my eyes, then she’s got another thing—” He cuts himself off, and Connie feels her nerves spike as he turns to her again, looking almost like a startled animal. “—uh… what are you talking about, Connie?”

“I asked her to do it.” Connie’s voice is one of defeat. Shame makes the room feel so much hotter than it is, and she wishes she could hide. She makes do by pressing her face into both of her hands and speaking against her palms. “I’m sorry. I just… I needed to get a picture of you and I didn’t want you to know, and that was probably really weird and creepy of me, and I’m sorry.”

The silence is suffocating. Steven whispers something to Amethyst, and Connie can’t hear the response. He must think she’s so creepy, that she’s been manipulating him somehow, and that she’s a horrible, untrustworthy person—

A moment later, Steven is right by her side. “Hey.” His voice is soft, and he pries a hand from her face to enfold in both of his. It should be comforting, but for a moment, she feels even worse; like she’s tricked him into offering her this kindness. “Um… So, why didn’t you just ask me?”

“I thought you’d say no.” That’s not quite it. “I… I thought you’d ask why.”

“Well, now I kinda really wanna know.”

“I…” And here it is, the big moment. The confession. She looks down, unable to meet his gaze as her free hand fists at her side. “I’ve been drawing you and I needed a reference.”

There’s another beat of silence. Then two. And then Steven bursts into laughter, loud and relieved and maybe even playful. It still is humiliating to hear, but at the same time, she’s so, so glad he isn’t angry.

“You totally could’ve asked! I would’ve sent one to you, because that’s like… really, really nice of you to draw me.”

“No, it’s not!” And as she looks back at him, she can see just how much he doesn’t see this. She doesn’t tug her hand free because, selfishly, she hopes he never lets go. “I haven’t been doing it because I’m planning to paint you a portrait or anything, I’ve been solely using you for practice and it’s probably a really selfish thing of me, I-I even used the selfies you sent me that one night, and I’ve kind of lost all control over that, because you were so gorgeous in that dress and I…”

“Wait.” He cuts her off, and she bites her tongue. “Can I, like… see the drawings you’ve done? Or a few of them? I know you don’t like it when I ask, but there’s got to be at least one or two you’re proud of, right?”

“You… want to see them?”

“I want to see everything you’ve ever drawn!” His voice is so sincere and enthusiastic that her heart soars, forgetting immediately every single thing she said that could have soured their relationship. “But only if you’re cool with it! You’re such an amazing artist, Connie.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Don’t start with me. I can go on and on.”

She smiles. She fidgets with a strand of her hair, and though it’s juvenile, she plays witness to the way such a small thing makes Steven’s face light up in adoration.

“Hey.” The word cuts through the moment, startling the both of them, and they look over at Amethyst leaning against the fridge with a raised eyebrow. “So now that like, the truth is out there and all that, I think I’m owed something.”

Connie opens her mouth at the same moment Steven groans, cutting her off. “I… yeah. I’m sorry, Amethyst. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, and I’m sorry for just… assuming stuff.”

Amethyst’s gaze then turns to Connie.

“Uh… Thank you, Amethyst.” Connie sighs. “For doing all of this for us.” 

Amethyst laughs. It startles Connie a little, but Amethyst just shakes her head, a knowing grin on her face. “I can think of, maybe, a way for you two to express just how sorry and grateful you are…”

Steven blurts out a “huh?” while Connie giggles, reaching for the phone in her pocket. 

“On it.”

[arc852]

Cold and Lost, I Hold You Close

 Okay, so I wrote this because,

It’s currently snowing where I am

I don’t write nearly enough platonic logicality

I have never written with mini giants before and when I got this idea I figured “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

Warnings: Slight feelings of helplessness, being lost and extreme cold.

 Logan blames Roman for this entire mess.

 It was the creative sides idea, after all, to go on a small trip into a snow filled forest wonderland of his own creation. Logan hadn’t wanted to go, but Patton had managed to convince him. And so, the four sides had packed up and gone into the imagination.

 Things started out well enough, Logan had to admit. But of course it didn’t last. Roman, apparently, hadn’t had a very good grip on the weather. And so it went from a light snowfall to a full on blizzard.

 And of course that had to happen while him and Patton were out gathering firewood.

 They were currently trying to find their way back, but the snow covered their tracks and had them turned around. Logan wouldn’t be surprised if they were going the opposite way. And to make matters worse it was only getting colder by the minute.

 Logan sighed, ignoring the fact he could see his breath and glanced towards Patton. Patton had put on his cat onesie to keep himself warm, but it didn’t seem to be helping all that much, considering Patton still looked very cold. He had his arms wrapped around his middle and his teeth were clattering together.

 “Aren’t you c-cold?” Patton suddenly asked and Logan turned his head to face him fully.

 “No, the cold isn’t actually real. If you focus enough, you can...turn it off, essentially.” Patton blinked and unwrapped his arms, looking down at his hands. He stopped walking, Logan doing so as well and Patton closed his eyes. After a few seconds, Patton groaned and went to wrap his arms around his body again.

 “I can’t, i-it isn’t w-working.” Frustrated tears pricked the edges of his eyes. Logan looked on, not knowing what to do. They were still lost and the snow just kept on piling up. And Logan couldn’t just sink them both out, they needed Roman to be able to leave. Logan growled softly, wishing they had never gone along with Roman’s idea.

 A metaphorical light bulb went off in his mind, but he almost pushed it away. If he went along with it, that would mean...revealing his secret to Patton. He couldn’t do that, no, none of them knew and it was much too late to tell them. Besides, who knew how they would react. What they would do. Logan wasn’t one to worry much, that was more Virgil’s job, but his secret was definitely something he worried about.

 No, he would have to think of something else, think of another way to...Logan took another glance at Patton when he realized he had once again stopped walking. Logan turned around, only to be met with Patton on the ground, curled up in the snow and shivering as he desperately tried to keep himself warm.

 Eyes wide and moving on instinct, Logan raced over to Patton and helped him so he was sitting up. Logan realized then that he didn’t have much of a choice. If Patton couldn’t keep himself warm, Logan would have to do if for him.

 “Patton? Patton, everything will be alright.” He reassured the fatherly trait. Patton looked up at him with wide eyes.

 “I’m...s-so cold, L-Lo.” Logan felt his heart break a little at that. He gripped at Patton’s hands, giving him a little burst of warmth.

 “I know Patton, but I am going to fix that.” Patton looked at him confused and Logan hesitated. He had already decided he was going to do this, but…

 “Patton, can you close your eyes for me?” Patton blinked.

 “W-What? W-Why?” Logan let out a breath through his nose and strengthened his hold on Patton’s hands.

 “You trust me right?” Patton’s eyes widened.

 “Of course!” Logan smiled at that, before his expression went back to determined and pleading.

 “Then please, trust me when I ask you to close your eyes.” Logan saw Patton search his eyes before giving a nod. He closed his eyes right after.

 Logan took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He let go of Patton’s hands, to which the older trait whimpered and tried to reach for them again.

 “It’s alright, I’m still here.” Another small whimper left Patton, but he nodded and pulled his arms close to him again. Logan took a few steps back, mentally calculating the distance he had to go to ensure Patton would not be harmed. He stopped a few feet away and then closed his own eyes. He reached down within himself, feeling a familiar sort of warmth within him and tugged on it.

 After many, many years, the sensation was all too familiar to the logical trait. He felt his limbs stretching out, his frame growing wider to match his new proportions. He could feel his bones and muscles shift. That particular feeling never getting any less uncomfortable. In his mind, he judged his growing size and stopped when he felt that he was big enough.

 He opened his eyes and looked down, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw Patton still had his eyes closed. If he did it correctly he was now 15 feet tall, maybe give or take a few inches. This was not even the biggest he could grow, yet he still found himself staring at Patton with awe. He was so small compared to him now, it was both amazing and terrifying.

 “L-Logan…?” Patton whimpered out, his body still shaking violently from the cold. Logan took another deep breath, before moving closer and shifting around so he was in a seated position. He didn't speak, not yet. Knowing his voice would be louder and give him away. And he wanted Patton to keep his eyes closed for just a little bit longer.

 He carefully reached out, ignoring the way his hand was a bit bigger than Patton’s head, and wrapped his arms around him, putting him in his lap and surrounding him with his body. Patton yelped at the familiar yet unfamiliar sensation and opened his eyes in slight alarm. He looked down to see what was constricting him and was floored to see arms, almost as tall as he was.

 Patton shook, this time not of the cold, but of uncertainty and fear of what was happening. He tried to struggle, even with his weakened and cold state. However, he froze when he heard-and felt-a familiar voice.

 “It’s alright Patton. I’ve got you.” Patton blinked.

 “L-Logan?” Logan simply hummed in reply and Patton felt himself relax. Whatever was going on, Logan would never hurt him. And he was suddenly feeling much warmer now.

 “How...How are you-?” Logan cut Patton off.

 “I’ve had this ability to change my size since I can remember. I just...never told anyone.” Patton felt the arms tighten around him, but instead of being scared like previous, he leaned into the touch even more. It was so warm...right, focus.

 “Why not?” Logan stayed silent and Patton didn’t like what that alluded to at all. So, he squirmed out of Logan’s grasp just enough for him to turn around. His knees were on Logan’s lap and he placed his hands on Logan’s broad chest. He looked up and met Logan’s eyes, full of uncertainty.

 “We would never think any less of you Lo. Not for this or anything else.” Logan blinked, thrown off a little by the certainty Patton said it with. He looked away.

 “I…” He sighed and turned back to face Patton with a small smile. “Thank you Patton.” Patton grinned wide and hugged Logan as best as he could. He felt Logan hesitate before hugging him back.

 “Besides, this is so cool! Can you get bigger than this? How did you find out? Can you shrink too?” Logan blinked as Patton shot him question after question, giving him no time to answer before spitting out another one. And while Logan was silently wishing for Roman to hurry up and find them…

 He was also looking at Patton with a fond smile.

Size reference: 

[kartichoq]

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Start by walking only one minute more each day.

Losing weight generally is tough, but dropping belly fat especially can feel insurmountable. It’s not beat your head: “It’s essentially impossible to inform one specific region of your body to accelerate metabolism,” says Chris DiVecchio, a NASM-certified personal trainer and author of The 5 x 2 Method: Revealing the facility of Your Senses.

Still, it’s a worthy goal to lose belly fat because it’s “unfortunately the foremost dangerous location to store fat,” says Lawrence Cheskin, M.D., chair of the department of nutrition and food studies at Mason University and professor of health, behavior & society at Johns Hopkins University. Because belly fat — also referred to as visceral fat or the deep abdominal fat that surrounds your organs — is more temporary, it circulates throughout the bloodstream more regularly and is, therefore, likelier to boost the quantity of fat in your blood, increasing your blood glucose levels and putting you at a greater risk of a heart condition and sort 2 diabetes.

So, you understand belly fat means bad. But how does one lose it? you’ve got to think beyond crunches and planks and adopt a well-rounded approach. “It needs to be more losing fat as an entire,” agrees Chris Gagliardi, a licensed personal trainer at the American Council on Exercise (ACE). Without further ado, here are the simplest ways to lose belly fat once and for all.

1. Accept that your behaviors will adjust.

A big part of weight loss is just being conscious of the choices you’re making. for instance, when out at an hour with friends, you’ll lose track of what proportion you’re eating or drinking. But if you’re taking a blink of an eye to step back and become conscious of that fact, you’re ready to course correct. “The awareness then planning for what else I am often doing, which may give me an equivalent advantage of eating comfort foods,” says Gagliardi.

2. Track your calories.

The most basic approach to weight loss is burning more calories than you devour. as an example, since 3,500 calories equals one pound of fat, a weight loss app — or maybe just a pen and paper — can assist you to decide what percentage calories you would like to chop from your diet or burn at the gym to satisfy your goals. “If you were to burn 500 more calories per day seven days every week, that might cause 3,500 calories during a week and one pound of weight loss,” says Gagliardi.

If you are not up for crunching numbers a day, you’ll take a more generalized approach. “For some people, it’s knowing, ‘Typically I eat an entire sandwich,’” says Gagliardi. “Now, I’m getting to eat half a sandwich at lunch and save the opposite half for my dinner and cut my calories in half.“ to urge started, consider these 25 ways to chop 500 calories each day.

3. Eat more fiber.

Foods that are high in refined carbs and sugar don’t tame your hunger, so you finish up reaching for more. Instead, eat more fibrous foods like whole-grain bread, oats, vegetables, fruits, beans, legumes, and chia seeds. “They fill you up more,” says Dr. Cheskin, as fiber helps slow your digestion.

A 2015 study from the Annals of general medicine showed that for those that have a tough time following a strict diet, simplifying the load loss approach by just increasing fiber intake can still cause weight loss. Women should aim for a minimum of 25 grams of fiber per day (based on a 2,000-calorie) diet, consistent with the foremost recent U.S. Dietary Guidelines. Start with our high-fiber diet plan.

4. Walk a day.

If you don’t have a longtime exercise routine, “walking may be a pretty good entry point for people,” says Gagliardi. One study published within a Journal found that fat women who did a walking program for 50 to 70 minutes three days per week for 12 weeks outstandingly slashed their visceral fat compared to a sedentary control group.

“Even if your start line maybe a one-minute walk, if that’s quite what you’ve been doing, there are health benefits thereto,” says Gagliardi. one of the most important mistakes people make when trying to reduce is that they struggle to try to an excessive amount of time and obtain burned-out.

“Starting slow and dealing your high is best than overdoing it and abandoning,” says Gagliardi. a simple thanks to approaching it: plan to go for a fast, 10-minute walk after dinner, and slowly increase the time as you become easier with daily movement.

5. Begin strength training.

It’s important to try to full-body strength training if you would like to lose belly fat especially if you’re trying to stay it off for the end of the day. “Strength training should be a neighborhood of almost everybody’s exercise plan,” says Dr. Cheskin. That’s because strength training helps you build muscle, which can replace body fat. and since muscle is metabolically active, you'll still burn calories after understanding, thereby, reducing overall body fat. Bonus: When your rate becomes faster thanks to muscle growth, you’ll have a touch more flexibility in your diet if that’s something you struggle with, says Dr. Cheskin.

To get started, lift weights a minimum of two days per week and workout from there, says Gagliardi. “One thanks to considering it's that you simply are build up to supporting your long-term goals,” he explains.

For example, maybe you would like to be ready to do certain movements, sort of a deadlift or bench press, and work your high to more reps of these exercises — or even it’s as simple as eager to improve your activities in daily living, like more easily lifting groceries.

6. Embrace healthy fats.

If you would like to lose fat, you've got to eat fat...the right kind, that is. Adding healthy fats, within the sort of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, can assist you to feel more satisfied together with your meals. Yasi Ansari, M.S., R.D., C.S.S.D., national medial spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, says, "Fat sources that I like to recommend boosting within the diet come from unsaturated fatty acids found in foods like vegetable oil, nuts, avocados, fatty fish, and eggs, as they will help increase satiety while providing a spread of health benefits when consumed delicately.

7. load on protein.

There’s a reason everyone harps on about protein: Not only does it help keep you full, but it’s also liable for repairing the small tears caused by strength training in your muscles. This helps them grow bigger and stronger, nudging out body fat within the process. As a general rule of thumb, aim to urge a minimum of 70 grams of protein throughout the day, says Dr. Cheskin.

This is especially important before you exercise. We’re all guilty of going hard at the gym, then heading straight to Chipotle afterward because we’re super hungry. The result? You eat more calories than you burn and find yourself with excess belly fat.

To avoid feeling hungry after a workout, eat a snack with a minimum of 12 grams of protein before exercising, says Dr. Cheskin. And if you’re still hungry afterward? First, sign up with yourself and confirm it’s actual hunger and not dehydration, says Dr. Cheskin. Then, eat a protein-rich snack that also includes some carbs, sort of a protein bar with whole grains.

8. Okay, now you'll do some crunches.

Although you can’t spot reduce fat, you'll target building lean muscle tissue, which successively helps burn fat. “There are dozens of muscles between your shoulders and your hips that are involved in every movement you are doing,” says DiVecchio. “The fastest thanks to creating a lean midsection begins with choosing the proper moves.”

Aim to try to ab work three or fourfold every week on non-consecutive days with a minimum of 24 hours of rest in between sessions, says Gagliardi. During those sessions, you'll start with simpler moves like crunches, bicycle crunches, and planks. albeit you'll only be directly targeting your abs three or fourfold every week, you ought to still be activating your core (aka, tightening your ab muscles) in every workout you are doing, says Gagliardi.

There are plenty of different ab workouts you'll do right in your home. Once you’re comfortable in an ab routine, work your high to more complex ab exercises, like side-to-side med ball slams and weighted Russian twists, says DiVecchio.

9. attempt to limit your stress.

Stress can mess with every a part of your body — but how you affect it can make or break your weight loss goals. “I think most of the effect of stress is behavioral instead of neurochemical,” says Dr. Cheskin. “It makes us eat more because we use food as a substitute for handling stress.”

The truth is, eating food to form yourself feel better is typically an entire lot easier than actually facing the strain head-on. “People gravitate toward something that doesn’t require anybody else to try to to it, is instantly satisfying, and doesn’t take an entire lot of effort, mostly if you’re just opening up a package ” says Dr. Cheskin.

Stress-eating can only cause one thing: growing your belly instead of whittling it. If you discover yourself stress eating, take a step back and think: What’s causing my stress, and what am I able to do about it? Find how to remedy the answer or talk through it with a therapist instead of turning to a bag of Doritos.

10. Prioritize quality sleep.

Sleep is large when it involves your weight loss success — and that’s both if you sleep an excessive amount of or insufficient. “Sleeping an excessive amount of is perhaps not great for you healthwise,” says Dr. Cheskin. “But sleeping insufficient is worse.”

Case in point: One 2017 review and meta-analysis from the U.K. found that folks who slept 5.5 hours or less per night ate an additional 385 calories the day after compared to those that snoozed for a minimum of seven to 12 hours. On top of that, they preferred to munch on fatty foods filled with empty calories, like chips.

If you do not sleep well every night, that leaves longer for you to snack and make otherwise unhealthy decisions that might affect your weight loss. Although it'll vary from person to person on what proportion sleep you got to be best (and therefore make progress toward your weight loss goals), the perfect number is usually seven or eight hours, says Dr. Cheskin.

[ebenpink]

Can Keto and Cardio Mix? https://ift.tt/2GQcsA9

We get lots of questions about how a ketogenic diet works in the context of exercise: Is it possible to maintain one’s fitness (strength, endurance, performance) and also drop one’s carb intake to ketogenic levels? Is it advisable? Will it help me lose weight faster?

Mark already addressed some of these topics, but it’s clear that many people still feel uncertain about how to pair a keto diet with their current workout routine.

Rather than write a single behemoth post, I’m going to tackle this in two parts. For today, let me talk keto and cardio, specifically how keto works for the average fitness enthusiast who thinks more in terms of general exercise. In a couple weeks I’ll follow up with a post on keto for runners and other endurance types who tend to focus on training programs and racing.

So, keto and cardio… This is for people who like to attend group fitness classes, or go out for jogs or spins on the bike, or do a mix of low heart rate exercise with occasional bouts of HIIT. (This is a problem with the term “cardio”—it can mean so many things.)

You probably already know Mark’s stance on cardio: avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns. The Primal Blueprint approach to exercise comprises lots of everyday movement, lifting heavy things, and occasionally going all out. If you simply must do cardio, most of these sessions should be conducted at an aerobic heart rate not higher than 180-age, as detailed in the Primal Endurance book. So, with the caveat that cardio exercise in the traditional sense of slogging away on an elliptical machine or treadmill doesn’t jibe with the Primal Blueprint approach, let’s get to some frequently asked questions.

Will My Workouts Suffer When I Go Keto?

This is a common concern because some people do report that they feel sluggish when they first go keto. And yes, you might feel like your performance in the gym (cardio, strength, HIIT—all of it) takes a hit in the first few weeks of keto. Rest assured that this is a temporary dip as your body becomes efficient at using fat and ketones for energy in the absence of incoming carbs (glucose). It’s a learning process for your body, so to speak.

The more glycolytic your workouts, the more you are going to notice this. Prolonged, difficult workouts that fall into the category of chronic cardio or “black hole” sessions are especially likely to suffer.

To help mitigate temporary performance decrements during the transition to keto:

Dial back the intensity and/or frequency of your workouts for a few weeks. Trade some of your more intense cardio (and strength) sessions for walks, yoga or Pilates, or other gentle forms of movement.

Mind your electrolytes. If you are feeling weak or lightheaded, if you get a headache, or you just feel “off,” this is likely due to electrolyte imbalance. Try adding ¼ – ½ teaspoon of salt to a glass of water with lemon juice and see if that helps. You want to make sure you are getting 4.5 grams of sodium, 300-400 mg of magnesium, and 1-2 grams of potassium each day on top of your normal food.

While your body is making the switch, give it plenty of fuel. Consume extra fat and eat plenty of calories. If fat loss is a goal, you can adjust your macros and calories as needed once you are feeling in the groove with keto.

Tough it out. Don’t cave and add carbs in the first few weeks (see the next point). Know that this is temporary, and you should be back to normal within three to six weeks.

Do I Need To Add Back Carbs To Fuel My Workouts?

During the first few weeks of starting keto, you should not add back carbs. It is important to create a low-glucose, low-insulin environment to promote ketogenesis and the adaptations that accompany a ketogenic state. If your workouts are too hard right now, the correct answer is to change your workouts, not to increase your carbs.

After you have done a dedicated period of a minimum three weeks of strict keto—six or more is even better—you should be feeling better during your workouts if you are not engaging in prolonged, chronic cardio activities. (It might take longer to adapt to longer endurance training, as we will discuss in the next installment.) At this point you have some options:

One, you can continue in strict ketosis (less than 50 grams of carb per day) as long as you are feeling good.

Two, you can start experimenting with eating carbs strategically before your workouts. This is known as a targeted keto approach. There are various ways of implementing this, but the basic formula is that you would ingest 25-30 grams of glucose or dextrose (not fructose) about half an hour before high-intensity workouts to replenish muscle glycogen.

There are a few caveats here. First, most sources of glucose/dextrose are not Primal (think hard candy, gels). Probably the closest is pure maple syrup, but that also delivers a hit of fructose. If you are a Primal purist, you will have to decide if this is a compromise you want to make. Second, people tend to overestimate the degree to which they are actually low on glycogen and how much it matters. It is a common misconception that once you go keto you have “no glycogen.” While muscle glycogen stores are reduced, your tanks are probably still at least 50% full, and perhaps on par with non-ketogenic folks if you have been keto for a long time. Furthermore, the average low-to-medium intensity cardio session isn’t truly depleting glycogen. Remember, the point of becoming fat- and keto-adapted is that you burn predominantly fat and ketones at these lower intensities, sparing glycogen. You have to go hard and/or long to really burn through your muscle glycogen stores. Thus, you should target pre-workout carbs only before truly high-intensity sessions.

Instead of adding simple carbs before workouts, another option if you feel like you need more carbs is to add back nutrient-dense carbs after workouts, when insulin sensitivity is increased. This might make sense if you feel like your ability to recover between workouts is lagging, or you want to recover quickly because you have back-to-back hard sessions planned. In either case—adding carbs before or after exercise—the amount you add should be proportional to the difficulty (intensity) of the workout. You don’t need to carb up for your yin yoga class, for example.

Lastly, if you are feeling underpowered during exercise, instead of adding back carbs you can experiment with adding more protein and/or fat. Some people report good success with “protein ups” timed around heavier workout days.

Will Adding Keto to My Cardio Routine Help Me Lose Weight?

Maybe. It’s a common refrain that “abs are built in the kitchen,” meaning that your food plays a bigger role in fat loss than does your exercise. This isn’t to say exercise is unimportant; it does matter. A caloric deficit is necessary to lose body fat, and exercise is one way to create a caloric deficit. However, this can also backfire if your exercise routine leaves you hungrier, so you unintentionally overeat calories due to increased hunger and cravings. Ketones have known appetite suppressing effects, so a ketogenic diet might help counteract any increased hunger that comes with exercise.  

That said, I think the root of this question is the fact that ketosis is a fat-burning state, and so the logic goes that if you are metabolizing fat for energy, you will automatically shrink your body fat stores. Moreover, if you add keto and cardio together, especially if you are exercising in the so-called “fat-burning zone,” you will lose more fat than either alone. Right? Not necessarily. The fat you burn can come from your adipose tissue or from your plate. If you are eating an excess of fat calories relative to your daily caloric needs, you still won’t lose body fat.

We know that for body recomposition, the best bang for your buck comes from a combo of resistance training and HIIT. Cardio exercise still has many benefits for physical and mental health, and of course a lot of people simply enjoy their cardio; but you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in the cardio basket if fat loss is your goal. All else being equal, though, it certainly can’t hurt to upregulate your body’s ability to use fat for energy.

Summary Recommendations:

When first starting out with keto, follow the recommendations laid out in The Keto Reset Diet, and be strict for at least three weeks.

If you are struggling in your cardio workouts during this period, don’t add back carbs! Dial back your workouts, add calories (via fat or protein), or both.

Once you believe you are keto-adapted, then you can start to experiment with targeted carbs and/or carb ups if you so choose.

No matter your diet, avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns that increase stress and your body’s demand for glucose.

Check out this post for additional tips for exercising while keto.

Thanks, everyone. Questions, comments? Share them below, and have a good week.

//

//

References:

Koeslag T, Noakes T, Sloan A. Post-exercise ketosis. J Physiol 1980;301;79-90.

Malhotra A, Noakes T, Phinney S. It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet. Br J Sports Med 2015;49:967-968. Matoulek M, Svobodova S, Vetrovska R, Stranska Z, Svacina S. Post-exercise changes of beta hydroxybutyrate as a predictor of weight changes. Physiol Res. 2014;63 Suppl 2:S321-5.

Newman JC, Verdin E. ?-hydroxybutyrate: much more than a metabolite. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2014;106(2):173-81.

Sleiman SF, Henry J, Al-Haddad R, et al. Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body ?-hydroxybutyrate. Elife. 2016;5:e15092.

The post Can Keto and Cardio Mix? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

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[allyinthekeyofx]

Fading Light - Part 4 - 3/4

PART ONE  -  Chapters 1-6

PART TWO  -  Chapters 1-6

PART THREE  -  Prologue & Chapters 1-6

PART FOUR  -  Prologue    Chapter one   Chapter two

PART FOUR

CHAPTER THREE

I truthfully don’t know how long I sat with Scully on my bathroom floor and held her as she, in some small way, expelled the demons from within that had quietly plagued her; growing in intensity until they blotted everything else out. It’s always been this way for her I think – that inability to invite anyone else along for the emotional ride – until eventually, the hurt becomes too big for her to deal with alone and she either shuts off completely, or as was the case last night, goes to such extremes that her actions can hardly be reconciled to the person I know her to be.

The last time I remember her falling quite so hard was leading up to the whole memorable Ed Jerse incident, where her own common sense flew out the window and she returned to me with a mark on her skin that was, in some ways, less indelible than the mark he left on her soul because we both know she was lucky to walk away with her life intact.

Back then though, I was too caught up in my own selfish pursuit of the elusive truth that I had simply stopped listening to her. I had stopped noticing just how deeply unhappy she was, how confused, how lost she had become because, if I’m honest, I had started to take her for granted; safe in the knowledge that should she try to walk away from me I had the singular ability to drag her back whether she wanted it or not. She became a part of me and as such, my acknowledgement of her as being a person in her own right became so offhand and dismissive that it was almost non-existent.

And even when I got the call from her that frightening day to meet her at the hospital where she delivered the news to me that she was dying, I still resolutely refused to be the support she so desperately needed, pushing her away as she got sicker and sicker, my own guilt at the situation blotting everything else out; making her struggle for life about me not her. I came to my senses eventually but by then so much had been lost to her that it was almost too late; and as I wept silently and painfully by her bedside as she lay sleeping, the most selfish part of me wished she would wake up just so I could beg for her forgiveness that I had been so fucking absent for so long, that I had abandoned her in every conceivable way to face it alone.

It was why, just a few short months ago that now feels like years, when she eventually told me that her cancer had returned I resolutely decided that things would be different; that I would be different. And even if she can’t remember, I think deep down she knows I did okay; that I was, in some small way, able to make amends to her.

Because it took almost losing her the first time to fully realise what she meant to me. That it wasn’t just a question of partnership or reliance anymore; rather that Scully had woven herself so intrinsically within my pathetic life that there was no longer any question of allowing her to hide from me. That even if she built a thousand walls to keep me out, I would somehow smash through them to find her.

I think last night, even as she clung desperately to me, refusing to really acknowledge me, I felt a subtle shift in her mindset; that even if she couldn’t fully initiate her need for someone, anyone to make things right for her she had at least managed to admit that there was cause. Which was a start I guess; and it gives me hope that she will be alright; that we will be alright.

Eventually she had stilled against me, still refusing to meet my eyes as I gently pulled her to her feet, her head hanging like a snowdrop, emotions laid bare for maybe the first time since I had known her. But I hadn’t pushed her; talking could come later, would come later because I could feel the shame and embarrassment that radiated off her and knowing her as I do, I didn’t need my psychology degree to tell me that those destructive sentiments would just increase in importance in her mind until they made communication so excruciatingly painful for her that she wouldn’t even try.

But she wasn’t there yet and what she really needed right then more than anything was sleep. She was clearly exhausted, used up, incapable of really even attempting to rationalise much beyond the few stilted admissions she had managed to force out, face pressed against my chest as she huddled in my arms on the floor. So I did what she needed me to do at that moment;

Nothing more and nothing less.

I undressed her carefully, almost reverently as she sat compliant and numb  on the bed before me, gently slipping her arms in to one of my soft oxford shirts and buttoning each button while all the time never letting her break contact with me as I reassured her with my eyes, with my touch that it was okay; that finally it was going to be okay. I was rewarded by the tremulous smile that appeared, albeit fleetingly on her beautiful face, a blink- and- you’d- miss- it kind of smile. But it was a start and I would take it. Oh yeah, I would take it.

I think she may well have been asleep before her head hit the pillow. Certainly she didn’t react to the soft kiss I placed on her cheek before I settled myself on the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up against my chest as I watched over her as she slept.

She awoke finally at around 8am, totally panic stricken as she bolted upright in the bed, eyes wild as she sought to orientate herself. She had drunk so much booze the night before that I had no doubts that her recollections of what had transpired would be, at best a little hazy and, at worst totally fragmented. It was also clear that as she had been sleeping, a headache of mammoth proportions had been manufacturing itself to be ready to greet her full force as she opened her eyes, because her hands immediately flew to the side of her head and she emitted a strangled oath that was so unlike Scully that despite myself, I couldn’t help a brief grin which I quickly smothered as I got closer to her.

‘FUCK’

Oh yeah, hangovers of the magnitude that Scully could expect today pretty much elicited no other response.

I sat on the bed.

‘Morning’

And as her brow furrows in response to the pain and the obvious fact that she had no idea why she is there with me, I take her hand in mine.

“Let me fill in some gaps there for you Agent Scully. Last night you drank roughly enough whiskey to sink the Queen Ann, expelled the contents of your stomach and possibly a piece of your liver in to the depths of my toilet bowl and proceeded to pretty much pass out on my bed. The all-consuming pain and feeling of intense befuddlement, not to mention a rolling sensation of nausea you are currently experiencing are all completely normal and what we generally refer to as a hangover. “

I’m not even remotely surprised by her expression of absolute mortification as colour floods her pale face and I smile at her as I run my other hand down her cheek and under her chin. Partly to reassure her that everything is fine and partly to prevent her from hiding from me as the weight of my words settle upon her.

“Wait here”

I’m only gone a couple of minutes, just long enough to run the water cool through the tap and grab a couple of pills from the kitchen cabinet. I doubt the pills will have that much effect, but I’m guessing any relief from the pounding headache has to be better than none and I am briefly and painfully reminded of all the other headaches I was able to help alleviate for her in the past. No morphine for this one though. Self inflicted headaches are only deserving of over the counter pills unfortunately. But Scully is tough. She will ride it out okay.

And when I get back I’m pleased to see that she is still awake, albeit slumped against the headboard with her hands over her eyes, probably trying to block out the weak sunlight that has managed to filter through the cracks in the closed blind and which is now probably piercing her eyeballs like a thousand needles. But as she hears me get closer she drops her hands away and regards me through eyes that are heavy lidded and slightly bloodshot.

“God Mulder I’m so sorry....”

It’s not what I want to hear so I immediately deflect her with the pills.

“Here, take these they will help.......a bit.”

She does as I ask and continues to sip the water slowly even after she has swallowed the pills, clearly pondering her current situation as much as her pounding head will allow her.

“How did I get here?”

“Mike called me. To go pick you up before you bedded down for the night.”

I don’t mention her business suited admirer. I can’t see the point of heaping even more regret on her.

“I don’t remember........anything.”

And then she locks those blue eyes with mine, that, hung-over or not, have the ability to drive the breath from my body with their sudden intensity.

“I don’t remember anything except you Mulder.”

XXXX

I didn’t need to ask her to explain what she meant by those words. With that single explanation she told me immediately that she remembered, despite the effects of the alcohol on her system, the excruciatingly painful admission she had finally made to me last night as she literally came apart in my arms. And to admit it had been intensely difficult for her, even more so to acknowledge it now in the cold light of day, to give it credence; to make it real.

But she had opened the door, finally she had opened the door just enough to let me in, and although I sensed she wasn’t yet ready to give me any more, at the same time I knew that somehow, we would soon be coming to the end of a journey, a journey that had seen us tread such different paths, both in our knowledge of things past but also in how we will join back together, as our stars collide and our hearts know each other again.

That regardless of what has gone before, what really matters is what we have now; of what we can be.  

Right now though she is fighting sleep and not making a very fine job of it so I bring her hand to my lips and kiss each knuckle softly, telling her without words to just go back to sleep, that it’s okay.

 Much later though, when she is awake once more, I feel  her eyes on me as I lay beside her on the bed, turning her body so she is facing me and slowly, with infinite care, I begin to unfasten each button on her shirt, exposing that creamy skin that has invaded my dreams, my every conscious thought, the very core of me for every minute of every day since she first gave herself to me on that night that was so bittersweet it made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. The night I realised that to allow myself to lose her without ever loving her was unthinkable. That whether she was mine for a day or a week or a month or a year, there could be no greater gift in my life.

And as I press my lips to Scully’s skin, allowing them to linger for just a moment, tracing a path along the opening I have created by unbuttoning her shirt, I am rewarded by the feel of her fingers as they suddenly, tentatively entwine in my hair, as her breathing quickens and she arches herself towards me, a expression of explicit permission, of acceptance and of wanting. She is quivering in anticipation by the time I have leisurely kissed my way up her torso, spending a little longer on her breasts as my tongue teases those perfect chestnut nipples in to peaks that tighten just a little more each time I circle them, purposely breathing gently on them as Scully moans softly beside me. It’s a sound so agonizingly familiar to me that I almost break down as tears suddenly obscure my vision even as a lazy grin threatens to split my face in two because I’m not sure I have ever felt so consumed with such differing emotions and I wish, I wish with all my heart that I have the ability to verbalise everything I am feeling right now.

But it’s not us. It’s never been us.  Our communication has never relied upon mere words. So instead, I continue to work my way up, breathing softly as I nip at her earlobe, whispered teasing that elicits a sudden giggle from the woman beside me.

“Hey Scully, I know a great hangover cure if you’re interested...”

And I am suddenly happier than I thought I would ever be.

Because despite the monster sized hangover she is fighting, Scully - is giggling again and I think it may just be the sweetest sound I have ever heard.

Concluded in epilogue

[featurednewsnow-blog]

Recession, Girl Child And 2017 Budget

Taiwo Alimi reports that Nigeria may lose more teenage girls to unwanted pregnancies, as lip service is paid to healthcare by Nigeria government.  

The figures are mind-boggling, yet they are true.

“Every single day, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five year olds and

145 women of childbearing age. This makes the country the second largest contributor to the under–five and maternal mortality rate in the world.”

“Preventable or treatable infectious diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles and HIV/AIDS account for more than 70 per cent of the estimated one million under-five deaths in Nigeria.”

“Malnutrition is the cause of death of a large proportion of children under-5 in Nigeria, as it accounts for more than 50 per cent of deaths of children in this age bracket.”

“The deaths of newborn babies in Nigeria represent a quarter of the total number of deaths of children under-five. The majority of these occur within the first week of life, mainly due to complications during pregnancy and delivery.”

“Similarly, a woman’s chance of dying from pregnancy and childbirth in Nigeria is 1 in 13.”

“Although many of these deaths are preventable, the coverage and quality of health care services in Nigeria continue to fail women and children.

Presently, less than 20 per cent of health facilities offer emergency obstetric care and only 35 per cent of skilled birth attendants attend deliveries.”

The facts above were presented by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund to explain better the pitiable healthcare of Nigerians.  

UNICEF concludes that efforts by Nigeria government to cut down on, “infant and under-five mortality rates, still remains too slow to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality by a third by 2015.”

Reality starring us in the face

Sadly, realities abound all around us. From the Northern rural to the Western urban of the country, the stark reality stares at us in the face.  

In the course of verifying UNICEF claims, I met some teenagers who have left school to becoming child bride, some are carrying unwanted pregnancies, and some have gone through difficult deliveries.  

I met Silifatu (not real name) at the reserved wing of University Teaching Hospital Ibadan (UCH), where she had joined a long list of underage girls suffering from fistula, a common disease among child mothers.

It occurs when the womb ruptures caused by prolonged childbirth leading to leakage of urine.

Growing up in Damaturu, Yobe State, under the care of peasant parents, she is accustomed to hard work and life.

The family owns three farms and all year round, there is a farm to be cultivated, harvested, or prepared for the rainy season.

“I was always with my mother,” she recalled, “and if we were not preparing food for the family of nine, we would be on the farm harvesting.”

Thin and disheveled, she looks older than her official 16 year-old.

She was married off at 15 to a man old enough to be his father and was put in family way almost immediately.

“Four of my friends also left school to get married at the same time I did,” she mourned.

What mother told me!

Silifatu got pregnant the second month she joined her husband’s harem and her health challenge began almost immediately.

“My mother did not tell me that sex or child bearing would be difficult. I observe basic hygiene but I did not know much about delivery,” she said.

“She told me it could be painful, but it would go away quickly. That I must be brave and I can cry if I want to.”

Silifatu suffered multiple tears leading to fistula after prolonged labour and her husband sent her to the health center when the traditional birth attendant methods did not mitigate her suffering.

“The midwives in my village took care of my delivery. It was painful and thereafter my husband noticed that I was suffering and took me to the local clinic, but they did not have the basic equipment to treat my case. Therefore, I was referred to Kebbi VVF center. From there I was sent to the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan where free surgery is available,” explained Silifatu, who has undergone two surgeries and now in rehabilitation.

Mariama was married off to 45-year-old local guard, Kabiru Mohammed, at 14 and had her baby a month short of her 15th birthday.

I had called their home at Mowe, Ogun State, under the guise of gifting the baby money.

Mariama was barely 12 when her parents accepted Mohammed’s proposal.

Two years later, she parked in to become a full house-wife.

 Religion, custom, and tradition

Mohammed does not see Mariama as a child. “My mother had me at the age of 13,” he announced.

“In my tradition and religion, as soon as a girl starts menstruating she is ready for marriage.”

That Mariama did not suffer a rupture or vestico vagina fistula (VVF) at delivery was a miracle to Dr Demola Adewusi, the lead doctor at Broadland Hospital Ogun state, who took delivery of her baby.

She also got help from their landlord and the private hospital.

“My Oga (master) tried for us. When my wife got pregnant, he took us to the hospital his family uses and handed her to the doctor. He used to give us money too so that she could go for antenatal all the time and so, when she was due, the baby came and her delivery was not complicated,” explained Mohammed.

Dr Adewusi called Mariama’s case a special one from the time, she was brought in by their landlord.

Teen pregnancy upsurge

While Mariama and Silifatu have been hounded to early marriage by a combination of tradition and hard time, the latter appears to be the root cause of teen pregnancy in urban cities and towns.

Mrs. Florence Sunday, an administrator in a private school, said more parents are withdrawing female children from schools since the country officially went into recession.

Girl child discrimination

Her words: “In my school, we have lost three girls from JJS 1 and JJS 2. They did not return for the second term in January. Their parents said they could not cope with the high fees because they lost their jobs and business was bad.

“I see those children going wayward and getting pregnant in sooner than later.

Stella falls into this group mentioned by Mrs. Sunday.

Her father took to okada (motorcyclist) riding after losing his white-collar job last year. Her mother – a petty trader- also closed down her shop due to low funding.

“I had to stop schooling because my parents said I should allow them concentrate on my two brothers, who are also in school,” Stella complained in a vacant tone.

It is not uncommon in many parts of the country for poor and often uneducated parents to withdraw their female children from school during lean periods, while male children continue.

The decision, though unpopular with Stella, became her undoing as she sought compassion outside her home and today, at 16, is in the family way by a 25-year- old artisan.

Biola, 17, is five months pregnant. She attends antenatal on Thursdays at Oke Afa Health Center Ogun State. She was a student of a private secondary school at Oke Afa until she dropped out a year ago to join her mother at her restaurant at Magboro market.

“My father said he had lost many customers in his welding business. He said he was not getting new jobs and so we had to manage,” she recalled.

Biola was managing the food joint whenever her mum was away.

“That is how I met my husband. He owns a danfo (commercial bus), and promised to take care of me. I’m pregnant for him and we are making plans for marriage, but he wants me to have the baby first.”

Biola and company would have feared better given a better healthcare system, but they live to report their health struggle. Thousands of young girls in Nigeria are six feet under the ground.

Fatal statistics

“Statistic derived from World Health Organisation, (WHO) states that about 16 million girls between 15 and 19 years of age and two million girls under the age of 15 give birth annually and Nigeria alone account for 10 percent of global maternal mortality.”

It means that Nigeria will lose more than 50,000 teenagers during childbirth this year unless our healthcare system changes for better.

Medical challenges

Dr Opeyemi Akinajo, a consultant and specialist in maternal medicine has surplus concern for the girl child, a passion that makes her voice reverberate and quake when she talks about it. Due to the delicate nature of a girl child and the complexity of child bearing, she said, teenage pregnancy is a risky and costly business.

“There is a time that the body of a woman is matured enough and the organs are ready to go through the stress of pregnancy and delivery, but a child or teenage girl is still developing these organs. They are still under formation. They are exposed to laceration of the vagina even during sexual intercourse.”

Dr Akinajo recollected the case of a girl child that suffered severe tears during sex. “She was brought in bleeding profusely and too late. The girl bled to death.”

Emotional trauma

There is also emotional trauma, physical trauma and abuse. “A child cannot think well.” During pregnancy, she added, “such a girl would not even know when to go for antenatal or where to go to and cannot talk to her husband about it, so, throughout she may not go to hospital. Due to poor feeding, nutritional disorder arises, leading to anaemia; shortage of blood. This problem would affect the baby too because, the baby depends on her for blood too and so would be affected since mother has blood shortage. Also, pelvic region is not developed and so she has problem during labour.”

The risk of  death is also high in teen pregnancy, Dr Adewusi stressed. “A pregnant teen  is prone to pre-eclampsia; high blood pressure, sometimes with fluid  retention. This condition can lead to eclampsia; seizure or convulsion, and  can lead to coma and death.”

“It is one of the top five causes of maternal death.”

Even after delivery, she is not out of danger.

Dr Akinajo’s tone rose in fervent distress as she delivered this part: “Fistula occurs, she smells, and has rashes on the thighs and vagina, infections and deprivation and isolation, stigmatisation can lead to death.”

Access to Healthcare

Because teenage pregnancy in Nigeria is associated with poor and illiterates in rural and urban homes, accessing Nigeria’s costly and unorganized heath care system is a bigger problem.    

On the average, a fee of N150, 000 is charged for surgery in a government hospital while it is higher in private hospitals.

“How do you expect these people to get access to adequate health care? Dr Adewusi asked rhetorically.” Realistically the families of Mariama, Silifatu, Stella, and Biola cannot afford the humongous fee.

What is the way out of this logjam? “Put your money where your mouth is.” Dr Adewusi advises that it has come to a tragic point where “Government should take healthcare more seriously, and devote its resources to it.”

He wondered why the 2017 health budget is 4.17 per cent of the annual budget.

Quoting figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr Adewusi noted that the United States of America (U.S.A), a developed country with far lower maternal fatality rate, spends $9bn dollars (N4.5tn) annually to fight teen pregnancy. “If the U.S government can spend $9 billion dollars to attend to teen pregnancy every year, we should ask Nigerian government how much it is spending on this scourge taking away our girls every day,” he queried,

It is more than the entire 2017 health budget of Nigeria.

Tragic allocation to healthcare

The 2017 allocation is N304bn, which is 4.17 per cent of the annual budget of N7.298tn. It is also in continuance of healthcare neglect in Nigeria.  

From 2015 to 2017, the health sector budget was N259bn, N250bn, and N304bn respectively. However, due to inflation, the figures: $1.4m, $1.3m, and $0.997m, meaning that Nigeria spends less as the year goes back.

Meanwhile, at the Abuja Declaration of 2001, stakeholders recommended a minimum of 15 percent of the total annual budget to be dedicated to health and some African countries have followed suit.

In 2016, Rwanda allocated 18 per cent of its total budget to healthcare. Botswana budgeted 17.8 per cent to health; Malawi, 17.1 per cent, Zambia, 16.4 per cent and Burkina Faso, 15.8 per cent.

This is in consonance with what operates in developed countries. For example, United States allocated 20.7 per cent of its annual budget for health, Germany 19.4 per cent, and China 12.6 per cent.

Yet, Nigeria government has refused to comply.

A closer look at Nigeria’s allocation shows that 60 per cent of the money will go to paying health personnel, whereas the public health issues such as preventive and promotive healthcare among the vulnerable like children and women are given just a little fraction of the entire amount.  

Buttressing, Africa health, Human & Social Development Information Service (AFri-Dev) reveals a close linkage between development, girl child education, and healthcare.

It records that eight states in Nigeria have the worst record of female illiteracy and healthcare: Kebbi, Sokoto, Bauchi, Jigawa, Yobe, Zamfara, Katsina and Gombe, little wonder they are among the least developed states in Nigeria. Health, they say, is wealth.  

Primary health centre

If the 15 per cent of annual budget allocation to health is, implemented Dr Akinajo explained that Nigeria stands to gain a lot. “Prevention is better than cure. Hundreds of health centres will be activated across the country. They are closer to the people and easily accessible. Then, the health-workers can be trained to recognise child pregnancy problems and quickly refer sufferers to hospitals nearby. It means we will have less sufferers of VVF.”

Qualified Medical Personnel

Then, the incessant issue over qualified medical personnel, spokesperson of National Association of Resident Doctors, (NARD) Ugoeze Asinobi said, would be outdated.

“We need to be trained and retrained. Doctors are leaving the country in droves because they believed that things are not working here. It is like a doctor to 500 patients in Nigeria. If the right thing is done, doctors would return to hospitals and we would have a healthier and more virile nation. Then, we can begin to talk about development. No nation can develop without its people,” added Dr. Asinobi.  

[cristinajourdanqp]

Can Keto and Cardio Mix?

We get lots of questions about how a ketogenic diet works in the context of exercise: Is it possible to maintain one’s fitness (strength, endurance, performance) and also drop one’s carb intake to ketogenic levels? Is it advisable? Will it help me lose weight faster?

Mark already addressed some of these topics, but it’s clear that many people still feel uncertain about how to pair a keto diet with their current workout routine.

Rather than write a single behemoth post, I’m going to tackle this in two parts. For today, let me talk keto and cardio, specifically how keto works for the average fitness enthusiast who thinks more in terms of general exercise. In a couple weeks I’ll follow up with a post on keto for runners and other endurance types who tend to focus on training programs and racing.

So, keto and cardio… This is for people who like to attend group fitness classes, or go out for jogs or spins on the bike, or do a mix of low heart rate exercise with occasional bouts of HIIT. (This is a problem with the term “cardio”—it can mean so many things.)

You probably already know Mark’s stance on cardio: avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns. The Primal Blueprint approach to exercise comprises lots of everyday movement, lifting heavy things, and occasionally going all out. If you simply must do cardio, most of these sessions should be conducted at an aerobic heart rate not higher than 180-age, as detailed in the Primal Endurance book. So, with the caveat that cardio exercise in the traditional sense of slogging away on an elliptical machine or treadmill doesn’t jibe with the Primal Blueprint approach, let’s get to some frequently asked questions.

Will My Workouts Suffer When I Go Keto?

This is a common concern because some people do report that they feel sluggish when they first go keto. And yes, you might feel like your performance in the gym (cardio, strength, HIIT—all of it) takes a hit in the first few weeks of keto. Rest assured that this is a temporary dip as your body becomes efficient at using fat and ketones for energy in the absence of incoming carbs (glucose). It’s a learning process for your body, so to speak.

The more glycolytic your workouts, the more you are going to notice this. Prolonged, difficult workouts that fall into the category of chronic cardio or “black hole” sessions are especially likely to suffer.

To help mitigate temporary performance decrements during the transition to keto:

Dial back the intensity and/or frequency of your workouts for a few weeks. Trade some of your more intense cardio (and strength) sessions for walks, yoga or Pilates, or other gentle forms of movement.

Mind your electrolytes. If you are feeling weak or lightheaded, if you get a headache, or you just feel “off,” this is likely due to electrolyte imbalance. Try adding ¼ – ½ teaspoon of salt to a glass of water with lemon juice and see if that helps. You want to make sure you are getting 4.5 grams of sodium, 300-400 mg of magnesium, and 1-2 grams of potassium each day on top of your normal food.

While your body is making the switch, give it plenty of fuel. Consume extra fat and eat plenty of calories. If fat loss is a goal, you can adjust your macros and calories as needed once you are feeling in the groove with keto.

Tough it out. Don’t cave and add carbs in the first few weeks (see the next point). Know that this is temporary, and you should be back to normal within three to six weeks.

Do I Need To Add Back Carbs To Fuel My Workouts?

During the first few weeks of starting keto, you should not add back carbs. It is important to create a low-glucose, low-insulin environment to promote ketogenesis and the adaptations that accompany a ketogenic state. If your workouts are too hard right now, the correct answer is to change your workouts, not to increase your carbs.

After you have done a dedicated period of a minimum three weeks of strict keto—six or more is even better—you should be feeling better during your workouts if you are not engaging in prolonged, chronic cardio activities. (It might take longer to adapt to longer endurance training, as we will discuss in the next installment.) At this point you have some options:

One, you can continue in strict ketosis (less than 50 grams of carb per day) as long as you are feeling good.

Two, you can start experimenting with eating carbs strategically before your workouts. This is known as a targeted keto approach. There are various ways of implementing this, but the basic formula is that you would ingest 25-30 grams of glucose or dextrose (not fructose) about half an hour before high-intensity workouts to replenish muscle glycogen.

There are a few caveats here. First, most sources of glucose/dextrose are not Primal (think hard candy, gels). Probably the closest is pure maple syrup, but that also delivers a hit of fructose. If you are a Primal purist, you will have to decide if this is a compromise you want to make. Second, people tend to overestimate the degree to which they are actually low on glycogen and how much it matters. It is a common misconception that once you go keto you have “no glycogen.” While muscle glycogen stores are reduced, your tanks are probably still at least 50% full, and perhaps on par with non-ketogenic folks if you have been keto for a long time. Furthermore, the average low-to-medium intensity cardio session isn’t truly depleting glycogen. Remember, the point of becoming fat- and keto-adapted is that you burn predominantly fat and ketones at these lower intensities, sparing glycogen. You have to go hard and/or long to really burn through your muscle glycogen stores. Thus, you should target pre-workout carbs only before truly high-intensity sessions.

Instead of adding simple carbs before workouts, another option if you feel like you need more carbs is to add back nutrient-dense carbs after workouts, when insulin sensitivity is increased. This might make sense if you feel like your ability to recover between workouts is lagging, or you want to recover quickly because you have back-to-back hard sessions planned. In either case—adding carbs before or after exercise—the amount you add should be proportional to the difficulty (intensity) of the workout. You don’t need to carb up for your yin yoga class, for example.

Lastly, if you are feeling underpowered during exercise, instead of adding back carbs you can experiment with adding more protein and/or fat. Some people report good success with “protein ups” timed around heavier workout days.

Will Adding Keto to My Cardio Routine Help Me Lose Weight?

Maybe. It’s a common refrain that “abs are built in the kitchen,” meaning that your food plays a bigger role in fat loss than does your exercise. This isn’t to say exercise is unimportant; it does matter. A caloric deficit is necessary to lose body fat, and exercise is one way to create a caloric deficit. However, this can also backfire if your exercise routine leaves you hungrier, so you unintentionally overeat calories due to increased hunger and cravings. Ketones have known appetite suppressing effects, so a ketogenic diet might help counteract any increased hunger that comes with exercise.  

That said, I think the root of this question is the fact that ketosis is a fat-burning state, and so the logic goes that if you are metabolizing fat for energy, you will automatically shrink your body fat stores. Moreover, if you add keto and cardio together, especially if you are exercising in the so-called “fat-burning zone,” you will lose more fat than either alone. Right? Not necessarily. The fat you burn can come from your adipose tissue or from your plate. If you are eating an excess of fat calories relative to your daily caloric needs, you still won’t lose body fat.

We know that for body recomposition, the best bang for your buck comes from a combo of resistance training and HIIT. Cardio exercise still has many benefits for physical and mental health, and of course a lot of people simply enjoy their cardio; but you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in the cardio basket if fat loss is your goal. All else being equal, though, it certainly can’t hurt to upregulate your body’s ability to use fat for energy.

Summary Recommendations:

When first starting out with keto, follow the recommendations laid out in The Keto Reset Diet, and be strict for at least three weeks.

If you are struggling in your cardio workouts during this period, don’t add back carbs! Dial back your workouts, add calories (via fat or protein), or both.

Once you believe you are keto-adapted, then you can start to experiment with targeted carbs and/or carb ups if you so choose.

No matter your diet, avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns that increase stress and your body’s demand for glucose.

Check out this post for additional tips for exercising while keto.

Thanks, everyone. Questions, comments? Share them below, and have a good week.

References:

Koeslag T, Noakes T, Sloan A. Post-exercise ketosis. J Physiol 1980;301;79-90.

Malhotra A, Noakes T, Phinney S. It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet. Br J Sports Med 2015;49:967-968. Matoulek M, Svobodova S, Vetrovska R, Stranska Z, Svacina S. Post-exercise changes of beta hydroxybutyrate as a predictor of weight changes. Physiol Res. 2014;63 Suppl 2:S321-5.

Newman JC, Verdin E. ?-hydroxybutyrate: much more than a metabolite. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2014;106(2):173-81.

Sleiman SF, Henry J, Al-Haddad R, et al. Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body ?-hydroxybutyrate. Elife. 2016;5:e15092.

The post Can Keto and Cardio Mix? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

[milenasanchezmk]

Can Keto and Cardio Mix?

We get lots of questions about how a ketogenic diet works in the context of exercise: Is it possible to maintain one’s fitness (strength, endurance, performance) and also drop one’s carb intake to ketogenic levels? Is it advisable? Will it help me lose weight faster?

Mark already addressed some of these topics, but it’s clear that many people still feel uncertain about how to pair a keto diet with their current workout routine.

Rather than write a single behemoth post, I’m going to tackle this in two parts. For today, let me talk keto and cardio, specifically how keto works for the average fitness enthusiast who thinks more in terms of general exercise. In a couple weeks I’ll follow up with a post on keto for runners and other endurance types who tend to focus on training programs and racing.

So, keto and cardio… This is for people who like to attend group fitness classes, or go out for jogs or spins on the bike, or do a mix of low heart rate exercise with occasional bouts of HIIT. (This is a problem with the term “cardio”—it can mean so many things.)

You probably already know Mark’s stance on cardio: avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns. The Primal Blueprint approach to exercise comprises lots of everyday movement, lifting heavy things, and occasionally going all out. If you simply must do cardio, most of these sessions should be conducted at an aerobic heart rate not higher than 180-age, as detailed in the Primal Endurance book. So, with the caveat that cardio exercise in the traditional sense of slogging away on an elliptical machine or treadmill doesn’t jibe with the Primal Blueprint approach, let’s get to some frequently asked questions.

Will My Workouts Suffer When I Go Keto?

This is a common concern because some people do report that they feel sluggish when they first go keto. And yes, you might feel like your performance in the gym (cardio, strength, HIIT—all of it) takes a hit in the first few weeks of keto. Rest assured that this is a temporary dip as your body becomes efficient at using fat and ketones for energy in the absence of incoming carbs (glucose). It’s a learning process for your body, so to speak.

The more glycolytic your workouts, the more you are going to notice this. Prolonged, difficult workouts that fall into the category of chronic cardio or “black hole” sessions are especially likely to suffer.

To help mitigate temporary performance decrements during the transition to keto:

Dial back the intensity and/or frequency of your workouts for a few weeks. Trade some of your more intense cardio (and strength) sessions for walks, yoga or Pilates, or other gentle forms of movement.

Mind your electrolytes. If you are feeling weak or lightheaded, if you get a headache, or you just feel “off,” this is likely due to electrolyte imbalance. Try adding ¼ – ½ teaspoon of salt to a glass of water with lemon juice and see if that helps. You want to make sure you are getting 4.5 grams of sodium, 300-400 mg of magnesium, and 1-2 grams of potassium each day on top of your normal food.

While your body is making the switch, give it plenty of fuel. Consume extra fat and eat plenty of calories. If fat loss is a goal, you can adjust your macros and calories as needed once you are feeling in the groove with keto.

Tough it out. Don’t cave and add carbs in the first few weeks (see the next point). Know that this is temporary, and you should be back to normal within three to six weeks.

Do I Need To Add Back Carbs To Fuel My Workouts?

During the first few weeks of starting keto, you should not add back carbs. It is important to create a low-glucose, low-insulin environment to promote ketogenesis and the adaptations that accompany a ketogenic state. If your workouts are too hard right now, the correct answer is to change your workouts, not to increase your carbs.

After you have done a dedicated period of a minimum three weeks of strict keto—six or more is even better—you should be feeling better during your workouts if you are not engaging in prolonged, chronic cardio activities. (It might take longer to adapt to longer endurance training, as we will discuss in the next installment.) At this point you have some options:

One, you can continue in strict ketosis (less than 50 grams of carb per day) as long as you are feeling good.

Two, you can start experimenting with eating carbs strategically before your workouts. This is known as a targeted keto approach. There are various ways of implementing this, but the basic formula is that you would ingest 25-30 grams of glucose or dextrose (not fructose) about half an hour before high-intensity workouts to replenish muscle glycogen.

There are a few caveats here. First, most sources of glucose/dextrose are not Primal (think hard candy, gels). Probably the closest is pure maple syrup, but that also delivers a hit of fructose. If you are a Primal purist, you will have to decide if this is a compromise you want to make. Second, people tend to overestimate the degree to which they are actually low on glycogen and how much it matters. It is a common misconception that once you go keto you have “no glycogen.” While muscle glycogen stores are reduced, your tanks are probably still at least 50% full, and perhaps on par with non-ketogenic folks if you have been keto for a long time. Furthermore, the average low-to-medium intensity cardio session isn’t truly depleting glycogen. Remember, the point of becoming fat- and keto-adapted is that you burn predominantly fat and ketones at these lower intensities, sparing glycogen. You have to go hard and/or long to really burn through your muscle glycogen stores. Thus, you should target pre-workout carbs only before truly high-intensity sessions.

Instead of adding simple carbs before workouts, another option if you feel like you need more carbs is to add back nutrient-dense carbs after workouts, when insulin sensitivity is increased. This might make sense if you feel like your ability to recover between workouts is lagging, or you want to recover quickly because you have back-to-back hard sessions planned. In either case—adding carbs before or after exercise—the amount you add should be proportional to the difficulty (intensity) of the workout. You don’t need to carb up for your yin yoga class, for example.

Lastly, if you are feeling underpowered during exercise, instead of adding back carbs you can experiment with adding more protein and/or fat. Some people report good success with “protein ups” timed around heavier workout days.

Will Adding Keto to My Cardio Routine Help Me Lose Weight?

Maybe. It’s a common refrain that “abs are built in the kitchen,” meaning that your food plays a bigger role in fat loss than does your exercise. This isn’t to say exercise is unimportant; it does matter. A caloric deficit is necessary to lose body fat, and exercise is one way to create a caloric deficit. However, this can also backfire if your exercise routine leaves you hungrier, so you unintentionally overeat calories due to increased hunger and cravings. Ketones have known appetite suppressing effects, so a ketogenic diet might help counteract any increased hunger that comes with exercise.  

That said, I think the root of this question is the fact that ketosis is a fat-burning state, and so the logic goes that if you are metabolizing fat for energy, you will automatically shrink your body fat stores. Moreover, if you add keto and cardio together, especially if you are exercising in the so-called “fat-burning zone,” you will lose more fat than either alone. Right? Not necessarily. The fat you burn can come from your adipose tissue or from your plate. If you are eating an excess of fat calories relative to your daily caloric needs, you still won’t lose body fat.

We know that for body recomposition, the best bang for your buck comes from a combo of resistance training and HIIT. Cardio exercise still has many benefits for physical and mental health, and of course a lot of people simply enjoy their cardio; but you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in the cardio basket if fat loss is your goal. All else being equal, though, it certainly can’t hurt to upregulate your body’s ability to use fat for energy.

Summary Recommendations:

When first starting out with keto, follow the recommendations laid out in The Keto Reset Diet, and be strict for at least three weeks.

If you are struggling in your cardio workouts during this period, don’t add back carbs! Dial back your workouts, add calories (via fat or protein), or both.

Once you believe you are keto-adapted, then you can start to experiment with targeted carbs and/or carb ups if you so choose.

No matter your diet, avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns that increase stress and your body’s demand for glucose.

Check out this post for additional tips for exercising while keto.

Thanks, everyone. Questions, comments? Share them below, and have a good week.

References:

Koeslag T, Noakes T, Sloan A. Post-exercise ketosis. J Physiol 1980;301;79-90.

Malhotra A, Noakes T, Phinney S. It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet. Br J Sports Med 2015;49:967-968. Matoulek M, Svobodova S, Vetrovska R, Stranska Z, Svacina S. Post-exercise changes of beta hydroxybutyrate as a predictor of weight changes. Physiol Res. 2014;63 Suppl 2:S321-5.

Newman JC, Verdin E. ?-hydroxybutyrate: much more than a metabolite. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2014;106(2):173-81.

Sleiman SF, Henry J, Al-Haddad R, et al. Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body ?-hydroxybutyrate. Elife. 2016;5:e15092.

The post Can Keto and Cardio Mix? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

[watsonrodriquezie]

Can Keto and Cardio Mix?

We get lots of questions about how a ketogenic diet works in the context of exercise: Is it possible to maintain one’s fitness (strength, endurance, performance) and also drop one’s carb intake to ketogenic levels? Is it advisable? Will it help me lose weight faster?

Mark already addressed some of these topics, but it’s clear that many people still feel uncertain about how to pair a keto diet with their current workout routine.

Rather than write a single behemoth post, I’m going to tackle this in two parts. For today, let me talk keto and cardio, specifically how keto works for the average fitness enthusiast who thinks more in terms of general exercise. In a couple weeks I’ll follow up with a post on keto for runners and other endurance types who tend to focus on training programs and racing.

So, keto and cardio… This is for people who like to attend group fitness classes, or go out for jogs or spins on the bike, or do a mix of low heart rate exercise with occasional bouts of HIIT. (This is a problem with the term “cardio”—it can mean so many things.)

You probably already know Mark’s stance on cardio: avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns. The Primal Blueprint approach to exercise comprises lots of everyday movement, lifting heavy things, and occasionally going all out. If you simply must do cardio, most of these sessions should be conducted at an aerobic heart rate not higher than 180-age, as detailed in the Primal Endurance book. So, with the caveat that cardio exercise in the traditional sense of slogging away on an elliptical machine or treadmill doesn’t jibe with the Primal Blueprint approach, let’s get to some frequently asked questions.

Will My Workouts Suffer When I Go Keto?

This is a common concern because some people do report that they feel sluggish when they first go keto. And yes, you might feel like your performance in the gym (cardio, strength, HIIT—all of it) takes a hit in the first few weeks of keto. Rest assured that this is a temporary dip as your body becomes efficient at using fat and ketones for energy in the absence of incoming carbs (glucose). It’s a learning process for your body, so to speak.

The more glycolytic your workouts, the more you are going to notice this. Prolonged, difficult workouts that fall into the category of chronic cardio or “black hole” sessions are especially likely to suffer.

To help mitigate temporary performance decrements during the transition to keto:

Dial back the intensity and/or frequency of your workouts for a few weeks. Trade some of your more intense cardio (and strength) sessions for walks, yoga or Pilates, or other gentle forms of movement.

Mind your electrolytes. If you are feeling weak or lightheaded, if you get a headache, or you just feel “off,” this is likely due to electrolyte imbalance. Try adding ¼ – ½ teaspoon of salt to a glass of water with lemon juice and see if that helps. You want to make sure you are getting 4.5 grams of sodium, 300-400 mg of magnesium, and 1-2 grams of potassium each day on top of your normal food.

While your body is making the switch, give it plenty of fuel. Consume extra fat and eat plenty of calories. If fat loss is a goal, you can adjust your macros and calories as needed once you are feeling in the groove with keto.

Tough it out. Don’t cave and add carbs in the first few weeks (see the next point). Know that this is temporary, and you should be back to normal within three to six weeks.

Do I Need To Add Back Carbs To Fuel My Workouts?

During the first few weeks of starting keto, you should not add back carbs. It is important to create a low-glucose, low-insulin environment to promote ketogenesis and the adaptations that accompany a ketogenic state. If your workouts are too hard right now, the correct answer is to change your workouts, not to increase your carbs.

After you have done a dedicated period of a minimum three weeks of strict keto—six or more is even better—you should be feeling better during your workouts if you are not engaging in prolonged, chronic cardio activities. (It might take longer to adapt to longer endurance training, as we will discuss in the next installment.) At this point you have some options:

One, you can continue in strict ketosis (less than 50 grams of carb per day) as long as you are feeling good.

Two, you can start experimenting with eating carbs strategically before your workouts. This is known as a targeted keto approach. There are various ways of implementing this, but the basic formula is that you would ingest 25-30 grams of glucose or dextrose (not fructose) about half an hour before high-intensity workouts to replenish muscle glycogen.

There are a few caveats here. First, most sources of glucose/dextrose are not Primal (think hard candy, gels). Probably the closest is pure maple syrup, but that also delivers a hit of fructose. If you are a Primal purist, you will have to decide if this is a compromise you want to make. Second, people tend to overestimate the degree to which they are actually low on glycogen and how much it matters. It is a common misconception that once you go keto you have “no glycogen.” While muscle glycogen stores are reduced, your tanks are probably still at least 50% full, and perhaps on par with non-ketogenic folks if you have been keto for a long time. Furthermore, the average low-to-medium intensity cardio session isn’t truly depleting glycogen. Remember, the point of becoming fat- and keto-adapted is that you burn predominantly fat and ketones at these lower intensities, sparing glycogen. You have to go hard and/or long to really burn through your muscle glycogen stores. Thus, you should target pre-workout carbs only before truly high-intensity sessions.

Instead of adding simple carbs before workouts, another option if you feel like you need more carbs is to add back nutrient-dense carbs after workouts, when insulin sensitivity is increased. This might make sense if you feel like your ability to recover between workouts is lagging, or you want to recover quickly because you have back-to-back hard sessions planned. In either case—adding carbs before or after exercise—the amount you add should be proportional to the difficulty (intensity) of the workout. You don’t need to carb up for your yin yoga class, for example.

Lastly, if you are feeling underpowered during exercise, instead of adding back carbs you can experiment with adding more protein and/or fat. Some people report good success with “protein ups” timed around heavier workout days.

Will Adding Keto to My Cardio Routine Help Me Lose Weight?

Maybe. It’s a common refrain that “abs are built in the kitchen,” meaning that your food plays a bigger role in fat loss than does your exercise. This isn’t to say exercise is unimportant; it does matter. A caloric deficit is necessary to lose body fat, and exercise is one way to create a caloric deficit. However, this can also backfire if your exercise routine leaves you hungrier, so you unintentionally overeat calories due to increased hunger and cravings. Ketones have known appetite suppressing effects, so a ketogenic diet might help counteract any increased hunger that comes with exercise.  

That said, I think the root of this question is the fact that ketosis is a fat-burning state, and so the logic goes that if you are metabolizing fat for energy, you will automatically shrink your body fat stores. Moreover, if you add keto and cardio together, especially if you are exercising in the so-called “fat-burning zone,” you will lose more fat than either alone. Right? Not necessarily. The fat you burn can come from your adipose tissue or from your plate. If you are eating an excess of fat calories relative to your daily caloric needs, you still won’t lose body fat.

We know that for body recomposition, the best bang for your buck comes from a combo of resistance training and HIIT. Cardio exercise still has many benefits for physical and mental health, and of course a lot of people simply enjoy their cardio; but you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in the cardio basket if fat loss is your goal. All else being equal, though, it certainly can’t hurt to upregulate your body’s ability to use fat for energy.

Summary Recommendations:

When first starting out with keto, follow the recommendations laid out in The Keto Reset Diet, and be strict for at least three weeks.

If you are struggling in your cardio workouts during this period, don’t add back carbs! Dial back your workouts, add calories (via fat or protein), or both.

Once you believe you are keto-adapted, then you can start to experiment with targeted carbs and/or carb ups if you so choose.

No matter your diet, avoid chronic cardio exercise patterns that increase stress and your body’s demand for glucose.

Check out this post for additional tips for exercising while keto.

Thanks, everyone. Questions, comments? Share them below, and have a good week.

References:

Koeslag T, Noakes T, Sloan A. Post-exercise ketosis. J Physiol 1980;301;79-90.

Malhotra A, Noakes T, Phinney S. It is time to bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity: you cannot outrun a bad diet. Br J Sports Med 2015;49:967-968. Matoulek M, Svobodova S, Vetrovska R, Stranska Z, Svacina S. Post-exercise changes of beta hydroxybutyrate as a predictor of weight changes. Physiol Res. 2014;63 Suppl 2:S321-5.

Newman JC, Verdin E. ?-hydroxybutyrate: much more than a metabolite. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2014;106(2):173-81.

Sleiman SF, Henry J, Al-Haddad R, et al. Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body ?-hydroxybutyrate. Elife. 2016;5:e15092.

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