#and then i'll draw some lines wherever i think they look nice and that will be THAT

[vonlipvig]

me attempting to research what the different ranks of the army are so i can avoid summoning the smartasses that will surely comment on how i completely butchered the insignias on the outfit of this fictional woman from a fictional country because i was only concerned with making her look hot.

[dietmountaindewbae]

DILF ALEX PLEASE 🙏🙏

xxvi. teach me, teacher

alex turner x reader

word count: 3091

summary: Watching Mister (Early The Car!) Turner walk around class made you feel in a daze, hoping that one day he'll give you a valuable lesson. 

warnings: sp*nking, age gap, slapp*ng, a bit of v*olence, male dom.

playlist

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The bell rings, and the class is dismissed but you stay until you finish, focused on the details of each trace of your pencil. These past few weeks have been stressful, finals were soon, and the teachers were exploiting you with millions of projects and exams. But the only class you felt like you had things under control was during drawing class, in today's lesson with Mister Turner, you took your time to trace your pencil lines with black marker and some color. You were lost in oblivion when you suddenly heard the heavy door shut close.

"Still here?" Says Mister Turner coming inside with his second cup of black coffee.

"Sorry... I'll be done in a bit Mister Turner" Your soft voice made his ears ring, and his eyes couldn't escape you. Your hair under your ears, your big doe eyes, and long eyelashes, your pink lips, and cupid's bow, the little beauty spot on your chin like a little kiss, and his eyes rubbed down your soft bare legs, that little skirt in your uniform left plenty for his imagination.

Then, out of nowhere, your eyes cross, in the blink of an eye he goes back to grading more papers while you keep drawing. Your heart skipped a beat, and he shuffled in his seat, feeling a drop of sweat running down his forehead, that little scare made his heart jump.

Mister Turner was a nice teacher to everyone, but recently you were falling behind, you had to take your time with each drawing, and he often was right behind you telling you that you should be working faster for the semester you're in. All you wanted from him were his little notes in your papers congratulating you, and now all you got from him was his notices. When he walks into a room, his big voice makes everyone's heads turn, you always follow him with your eyes wherever spot in the class he is standing in when he moves his hands to try to physically explain something that only in his brain was drawn out perfectly, the way he crosses his arms as he speaks or when he puts his hands on his hips as he's explaining any subject at all, he had a way with words no one else had, you knew that he was blessed with some magic or ability no other man had, you often thought about him.

You were needy for his attention but you were too scared to talk to him, whenever he came to check up on you, all you could do was nod and pray for him to accept your work, that's all you ever wanted, that's all you ever needed. And when he leans in closer to you, you cling to his smell of black coffee and strong cologne, you often lose yourself as you look at the chain that hangs on his neck, looking at it bling.

You hear the pen on the paper grading, and you raise your eyes to look at him, and you catch his eyes stripping down your skirt and rubbing his eyes down your legs. His pupils dilate at the look of your eyes and he drags his eyes back to his papers, pinching the bridge of his nose, he felt as if as though he had exposed one of his weaknesses, one of his guilty pleasures, a secret. He could feel a string of tension begin to rise, many questions in his head, but only one way to solve them.

He stands up from his desk, the heel of his boot clashing against the wooden floor, standing next to you, "Hope you're doing the work that you own me" He says very quietly, almost as if he wished his voice was part of the wind that blew against the windows.

"I don't think I owe you anything," You said, looking at him directly, and confidently.

"Last time I checked, you did" He drawls and slowly walks back to his desk, and you put your pen down

"Well, if you let this one slide then I won't tell anyone that you were looking at my legs," He turns and looks at you with big eyes, a subtle smile crawling to your corners, and you put your things back inside your bag, "I'll see you on Monday" Your fingers brushed your hair back, and he jumped out of his chair as he sees you approaching the door.

He chases you feeling the rush of blood in his ears, "Wait" His arm stretches closing the wooden door before you even try to leave, "You're not gonna say anything, are you?" You stayed quiet, looking at him through your lashes, he sighed, regretting ever revealing the truth, he had no care about what the principals or counselors had to say, what he was deeply concerned about was what you had to say about his twisted and cheeky little perverted secret, "I promise I won't do that again" He says it like a promise, but it didn't feel like one.

"I never said I wanted you to stop," You whispered to him, his big brown eyes blinked slowly as the look in your eyes engraved on his, "Now if you don't mind... I-" You tried to open the door, but there was no need to say anything else when it was clear what he wanted from you.

"You should finish your homework, then you're free to go" You turned on the heel of your shoe, and walked back to the tall table pulling your things out of your bag to keep working.

Mister Turner had watched you bloom into an ungodly magnetic girl, always sitting in the back, quiet, and beautiful. Something stirs inside him whenever he sees you putting on your lipstick and brushing your hair, whenever you sit cross-legged and he's able to see a little bit of your thighs. When you came back to school with your hair cut to your chin, he couldn't stop looking at you as you worked, admiring how your hair fitted and framed your face so perfectly, your big eyes took all of the attention.

Now, you both were alone, based on the words you said he decided to test how far he could go, compared to his hand on your shoulder whenever he congratulated you when you turned in good work, or when your fingertips brushed as he thought you how to solve your questions.

With his hands on his hips, he's determined to stand behind you as your hair reveals a little bit of your nape, "Maybe you should trace that line again,"

"Which one?" You asked with innocence.

He takes a step forward, pointing his finger to the line while his other hand lands on your back, his index and middle right on the clasp of your bra, you're eyes light on fire as his gaze turns darker.

"I liked what you did with your hair... looks pretty on you" You smiled as you tried to hide the redness in your cheeks as he dragged his fingers up your back to caress your hair.

"Thank you" You don't utter another word as he keeps playing with your hair, pretending to be way more invested in your homework than his hands on your hair. He catches onto that, taking a step behind you, he tears his hand from your hair, and you try not to act on it, still pretending to be distracted but he could feel how your body yearns for more.

His hand lands on top of yours, taking it away from the table, and putting it in your belly, sliding it down until it's in between your legs, pressing down on your weak spot, you unconsciously rubbed your legs together but he pressed his crotch against your ass, the bulge on his pants heavy and hard, you rubbed yourself against it.

"You can't pretend you don't want some of it" His hand that was on top of yours now slides down inside your panties, his fingers spreading your wetness all over your cunt, "You're crying for more" Your pencil dropped to the floor as he slowly begins to grind his hard-on against your ass, bending your back so your little holes can drool for more. Your voice didn't make a sound but your face and your body were arching for more, "Tell me that you want it" He says, waiting for your consent. He pressed your cheek against the table, pushing his hips closer to where you needed him, "Stop acting like a dumb fucking cock warming whore" You giggled at the things he has called you.

"You really want me to say that, Mister Turner?" You said with a smile on your face, he took his hands away from you, feeling as though he had made a massive mistake, you turned to look at him right in the eyes, rubbing your thighs together, "But what happens if I don't?"

He catches on to your games, and that little playful smile on your face tells him everything he needs to know, "You want to learn that lesson?"

"You're my teacher... teach me" You smirked, his lips hungrily kissing your mouth, his tongue eager to slip inside your lips, crashing against yours but he took over you so easily that you instantly melted into his arms and hands that gripped your short hair so tightly, into his roughness, you were delighted to do so.

He tossed you back onto your table, raising your skirt and spreading your legs open, his hand in between your legs, dragging your panties down to your ankles, "Arch it" His hand pushed your hips down so you were completely exposed to him.

"Is that the way you like it?" You tease, turning your face to look at him, watching his hand stroking his cock very softly. You played around with him, wiggling your hips just to tease him.

You didn't expect him to hit your bum with his rough hands, sliding his fingers inside you testing how wet your walls were, "I see you like learning the hard way, I gotta repeat meself over and over until you understand"

"Until I understand what?" You joked.

"You're in my class, you follow my rules" A laugh bursts out of your lips, causing him to flip out on you, hitting you harder than the first time, you hissed and he kept hitting you and slamming his hand against your flesh harder, pulling your hair back, each time he hits you, a tear rolls down your cheek but more wetness drips down your thighs, something you couldn't understand. All your fantasies were coming true, "You understand who's in charge right?"

Your legs and arms shaking, he turns you over to face him, whipping a tear from your cheek, squishing your cheeks together, nodding your head to tell him you understand, "I'll do anything for it" His little evil smirk spreads across his lips as he sees your almond colored eyes sparkle beneath his touch.

He grips your hips tightly, smothering his lips against your mouth, pinching your cheeks together, and ripping apart the kiss, "There are no other better words" He bends you over against the table, kicking your feet to spread open your legs, grabbing a fist of your hair, the tip of his slippery head right in between your thighs, teasing you slowly until you couldn't help yourself anymore, you stupidly tried to grab him and let loose, he pulls harder on your hair, sticking a slap right across your face, "I told you to not play around like that, you think this is funny?" He spat into your ear, slowly easing himself inside you.

Your teeth bite your lower lip and hum as he gently drags back his dick and slides it back inside your little hole, his fingers in between your legs going in circles, but as he pulls his hips back you can feel your walls tightening around him, begging him to stay inside you, "Oh my fuckin'- please... just please... I need you" You cry out miserably trying to convince him.

"Toughen up, I don't wanna hear a single noise coming' out of that mouth, you understand?" You nod your head as a tear rolls down your face, waiting impatiently for him to fuck you senseless, the anticipation getting the best of you, "You're drooling for more..." He teased your entrance, coating the head of his cock with your juices, "Didn't know you were like that..." Your name rolls out of his tongue like glory, and it sounds deathly and precious.

He eases his way inside you, your breathing gets stuck in your nose, and you try to keep up with the way his hips collide against your bum slowly at first, but with each moment you drag your hips back at the same time as him, he went deeper and deeper, and your legs started to feel it, you felt something burning inside you, something that tingled away in between your legs, and you were oozing for more, for something that put an end to it.

Your body tensed up as he suddenly grabbed a fast and hard pace, you could feel his skin burning against yours, digging his nails into your thighs, tearing and bruising your skin, there was no better pain, no other man that you ever desired. His fingers slipped inside your mouth until your throat closed, a burst of saliva coming out of your mouth as you pushed his body away from you.

He burst into laughter as you try to catch your breath, "What the fuck is your problem?" You gasped for air, "That was-"

"Too much?" He says with a smudged smile, "Thought you wanted me to teach you, you're not up for it anymore?" The cheeky tone in his voice mocked yours perfectly, you knew what this was all about.

"No, it's not that-"

"Oh come on, I knew you weren't serious, always laughing at me like I'm some sort of joke, and now you come here with all of this crying and whining, God! You can't handle anything" Your eyebrows frown together, "Don't look at me with those eyes" All you wanted was to scream and spit into his face all those vile words on your mind, but your tears ran down your face, the anger causing your insides to fire up and evaporate through tears. He set all of that fire at first glance.

He drags you closer to him by the elbow, "You can't say you don't feel what I'm feeling right now" Your nose reddened, his intentions just as clear as his writing on the chalkboard, he wanted you to fight for him "If you want me to be yours, I'll be part of you in any way you want... but just do it now, because I want you" Your arms around his neck, he kisses your cheek tasting your salty tears. But he was on top of you since the beginning, and like the man he is, nothing is really good enough for him, "I said I would do anything for you and I will, just keep me" You blinked your eyes slowly, his arms dragging your body closer to his.

His hands flew across your face, a spank of wind drying up your tears. He bends you over against the desk, hearing the weakness in your voice and the need for him had his mind so fixated on you, this fight had stopped and now he felt like the winner, he liked the triumph and the fulfillment of feeling your body twist and bend just the way he wanted, and you felt happy he could feed of your body like a vulture.

Your body relaxed as his arms hugged you close, lips on your neck, nose in your hair, not a single noise coming out of your lips, your mind was off wondering how long it took him to end you. His body smashing yours repeatedly, you looking at him through the crack of your neck, watching his eyes turn black, "You're enjoying this, you can't hide nothing from me" Your eyes closed tightly as you can feel him forcing himself deeper in that tight space, "You love when I get all mad on you, don't you?" Your cheeky smile burst onto the surface, he had caught you since the beginning, but he didn't want to fight anymore, there was no need for that. He can feel his heart palpitating so fast at the look of your pillowy pink cracked lips, his hands running down your soft hair, your body rocking against his so nicely that it makes his whole body vibrate, he's at a loss for words, so he wraps his arm around your waist, grabbing your hand and closing shut your mouth as your eyebrows push together and your walls began to contract and he pushed himself deeper inside feeling you burst like bubblegum, and your walls began to slowly ease up as your body gets covered with little flickers of electricity.

His eyes feel heavy as he smothers his cock in all your wetness, his gasps for air humming your name, playing around with your clit, and you were so sensitive and he couldn't get enough, but you were willing to handle more just for your man. His body was slowly losing balance and he grunted and you could feel him sliding outside of you so easily, feeling something warm splash into your inner thigh. That last warm breath of lust breezing your cheek.

"Here" He whipped down your thigh, and you adjusted your panties and your hair, and as you turned around, he pulled you close to him, giving you a gentle and caring kiss on your head. Your hearts warm up to each other instantly, "You did great, me darlin'"

"Thank you" That's all you needed to hear from him. He didn't call you by any other thing but his.

A/N

This was a special one, dedicated to my girl, my real, my best friend, and ofc thank you anon for your request but this was like two birds in one bullet sort of thing. She's my number one fan, and I gotta thank her for reading all of this, and for making me feel good about telling her about this, I thought I would take many things to grave but turns out, she's taking some of mine and I'll be taking some of her's, because that's what love is.

I lob u 😈💋

[lorata]

Do you have any Claudius+Lyme or stand alone Claudius snippets/ficlets you haven’t posted publicly?

uhhhh my notes say i never posted this one (ancient, 2014)

a tiny ficlet of 9-month-out victor Claudius building his treehouse

Lyme's face when Claudius asked for an order of wood and nails and assorted construction tools was pretty priceless, but in the end his mentor just stared at him for a minute, then grinned and said she'd see what she could do.

A week later she shows up at Claudius' house with everything in a big wheeled crate, and stands there with raised eyebrows as Claudius beams and rifles through the contents.

"Do I want I know?" she asks, poking at a two by four. "It doesn't look nefarious but you never know, and I always get the creative Victors."

Claudius wouldn't have described himself as 'creative' in anything besides killing, and he ducks his head under the praise, ambiguous or no. "Nothing nefarious, I promise I'd consult my mentor on all nefarity." (He's pretty sure that isn't actually a word, but Lyme says nothing and that's good enough for him.) "I just wanted to try building something, and the snow's all gone."

Plus it was a little weird, watching the snowmen melt and deform as the weather warmed. Claudius might be a killer and have murdered adults and kids without even a flinch, but apparently his brain draws the line at torturing snow people. Victory does strange things to a guy.

"Okay," Lyme says, and ruffles his hair. "I'll be at home if you need me. Do you want help wheeling this ... wherever?"

"No, I can do it," he says, even though it will probably take him twice as long as it would Lyme, but that's kind of the point. After the long, cold winter and the horrible stretch of his Victory Tour, Claudius is getting a little twitchy. Lyme isn't smothering him or anything, it's not about her at all really, but Claudius is starting to feel like he can't tie his shoes without her. It'd be nice to make something himself, even if it sucks.

After Lyme leaves, Claudius hauls the crate out down his front steps and onto the path, leaning forward to drag it through the grass when the wheels stick in the soft terrain. The best trees in the Village are in the apple orchard, and whenever Claudius wants some time alone but not really, he climbs up into the branches and lies back watching the sky appear and disappear behind the waving leaves. He's not going to start nailing wood to trees randomly in the Village, though, and so Claudius picks the big one out back behind his house, the pine with good, sturdy branches that are just a bit too high for him to reach without a ladder.

Not that Claudius has any idea what he's doing, but it can't be that hard. Tributes have made traps in the Arena with far less than this, and with a heaping amount of Games-crazy and threats of death if someone walks in on them. All that will happen to Claudius is he might get snickered at, and while he hates that, it won't kill him, and he can even whack them on the head with pinecones and not worry about fatal retaliation.

It's actually pretty fun, even if Claudius is making a mess. He nails a few boards to the trunk to give himself a way up to the branches, and after that he climbs up and brings one board at a time after him. By the afternoon, Claudius has managed to construct himself a platform that doesn't wobble too much and a sort of a railing-thing to lean against. It looks completely ridiculous, kind of like a construction supply store threw up all over the place, but Claudius stretches out and inhales the sweet smell of the wood and the pine needles around him, and yeah, fuck the haters.

Brutus stops by a little while after Claudius reaches his stopping point, and he stands on the ground and looks up while Claudius munches on the sandwich he half-assed and brought up with him. "I heard you were building something," Brutus says. "That's quite the thing you've got there."

"What do you think?" Claudius asks, which is kind of a dick move given that Lyme will skin Brutus alive if he's mean and they both know it, but it's fun to provoke Brutus. "I made it myself."

"It sure is a thing," Brutus says diplomatically, and Claudius strips a twig of its needles and showers them down on Brutus' head in retaliation. Brutus just brushes them aside without comment. "Lyme said you wanted to do it yourself, but I can give you some tips if you want. You've done okay, but there's a couple load-bearing spots you should shore up if you don't want it to come down the next time we get a bit of wind."

Brutus has never really shown any inclination to bond with Claudius, and Claudius sees his mentor's handwriting in the casualness of Brutus' hands-in-pocket stance, but sure, why not. "All right," he says, scrambling down and nearly twisting his ankle at the bottom because the last step is maybe a bit too high. "This isn't some kind of code for 'kid your treehouse sucks and I'm gonna build it from scratch' though is it?"

Brutus raises an eyebrow, and okay, maybe that was a little over the line. Apparently the nice weather has made Claudius cocky, and maybe Lyme should ship him off to the Capitol for another lunch with President Snow to remind him where he stands. Claudius clears his throat and tries to look apologetic, and Brutus just lifts the other eyebrow and without saying anything manages to convey that he doesn't buy one second of Claudius' bullshit.

(Lyme will get mad if Brutus kills him, right? Claudius clings to this. If nothing else, he'll be avenged, probably.)

Finally Brutus just snorts. "No, it's not, smartass, if I thought it wasn't safe I'd say that, not pussyfoot around it like a baby. You did a good job, mostly, it just needs a bit of reinforcement. If that's okay with your highness."

Claudius coughs and runs a hand through his hair. "Okay, yeah. Sounds good."

They work in silence for the next part of the afternoon; Brutus isn't chatty and Claudius would have no idea what to say to him anyway, and by the time they're done it's still Claudius treehouse, just a little bit more sturdy. Claudius scrambles back up and flops down onto his back, and Brutus packs up the tools and tells him he'll drop them just inside the door for him.

Claudius' muscles ache and he has a sliver somewhere in his hand that defies him when he tries to pull it out, but it's a good day, a productive one. He stays up in the treehouse, watching the clouds, and after a while he rolls over and peers down at the sound of footsteps.

"Hey you," Lyme says from below. "Can I come up?"

He waves her in, and Lyme climbs up the tree with only a few of the handholds and far more grace than anyone her size and bulk should be capable of. Claudius hopes it's not weird that he still wants to be her when he grows up. "Looks good," she says, testing the floorboards with her foot. "How do you feel?"

"Good," Claudius says, and Lyme smiles and runs her fingers through his hair. "It's nice to build stuff."

He doesn't finish the sentence, but he doesn't have to. The number of Victors with creative talents pretty much tells him that it's understood, and sure enough Lyme nods. "It is," she agrees. "You wanna spar for a bit? I haven't fought you since breakfast."

Claudius laughs, because it's nice to have a mentor who wants to spar with him as much as he does her. "Can we stay up here for a bit first?" he asks. "It's -- I liked having time to myself, but I'd like to share it now."

Lyme flops down and tugs him with her, slinging an arm around his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his hair. "Sure thing, kiddo," she says easily. "You did good today. I'm proud of you."

"You're proud of me every day," Claudius says, and he never would've dared to be this cheeky when she first pulled him out -- wouldn't even have been able to process it a year ago, when just the thought of her as his mentor made him shaky -- but now it comes out without thinking.

But Lyme doesn't scold him, doesn't even laugh, just gives him a sharp smile and tugs him in close. "Damn right," she says, leaning back against the railing, and Claudius tucks himself in against her side.

[sforzesco]

hiii so. i really really admire you because of the depth of research you put into your art (even as someone who tends to fall down deep research holes i'm in Awe) but also because of the art itself - and i wanted to ask if you had any recommendations for someone who wants to get better at drawing? (books to read, things to do?) especially for figure drawing as you have (to my untrained eye) one of the best balances of style realism and naturalness and in general just overall make some of the best art i've ever seen methinks

this is really high praise, thank you so much!

as for art advice and recommendations for getting better at drawing, I 100% believe in carrying around a sketchbook wherever you go. if the pressure of having nice pages is something that bothers you, get a stack of sticky notes because you can cover up mistakes and re draw over it immediately, and squares of color will add some fun to a page later when you flip through everything.

ideally, I think there's a balance to skill building and having a good time, and I tend to split my own sketchbooks between life drawing (frequently I'll draw windows I think look neat or my morning coffee) and doodling shit for fun. I try out a lot of different styles and draw a lot of nonsense just because it felt like a good time. I do a lot of edward gorey type stuff because the line work process is comfy.

one way to go about doing this is to pick a direction (so to speak) that seems interesting, and build along side it! when I first decided I wanted to take art more seriously, I started looking up pictures of renaissance statues and drawing those. trying to draw those. it took a long time to get my art to look anything like a bernini statue, but I had a lot of fun learning that I really enjoyed drawing hands! comics are another good one, naoki urasawa's work is fucking genius level to me, I regularly revisit monster and do studies off of literally everything he does.

(I also keep a separate sketchbook for figure studies. this is mostly because I really enjoy drawing the human figure, this is very relaxing for me personally: I rotate between doing gesture drawings, contour drawings, and longer anatomy studies)

finally, I have found reading books on art history to be critical in my own process. so much about art history will tell you how to convey a million words into a singular composition. idk how much of that will be of interest or help to you, but I personally found it helpful, especially in understanding how to read things visually, which in turn helped me figure out how I wanted to tackle drawing something

and! two books I've found invaluable for anatomy were george bridgman's constructive anatomy and michael d. mattesi's force: drawing human anatomy, although I might recommend morpho's books above them now, like oh my god morpho is so good.

OH the other thing. this is something I picked up from when I was taking an animation class in art school, but sometimes I'll put on a movie or show I really like and do thumbnail studies of the frames while I watch. there's a lot to learn in a frame! shapes are important. god I love shapes.

[fae-iii]

Mienfoo Postmortem

Real excited about this: I finally got that time lapse thing to work in Aseprite! It turned out to be super easy with the things I learned from the Buizel animation. There's some parts where I was playing with different palettes and the gif goes mostly black and I couldn't figure out how to get those parts to display properly without hand-editing each one of them, but other than that it's pretty cool. Thing for next time, I guess?

I think I'm getting pretty good at finding a process that works for me. One cool thing I've been able to do recently is, like what I did with the arms, putting little placeholder shapes in so I can visualize where a thing is gonna be and then working towards that. Idk where I started doing that, I guess I just did it a little bit and then more and more on each subsequent piece and I'm starting to get pretty good at it; I think!

You see me do a few things in there like I tried to make the eye in vain before I got a real start with the head, I could do things more efficiently in places like there. Speaking of heads, I'm getting pretty good at these musteline heads! "Sneasel and Mienfoo have two different head types;" they're surprisingly really similar and I feel a lot more appreciative of the pokemon designers skills… at design!

Idk, it's not 100% accurate of a head to the official design and you can see me try to correct that a bit in the timelapse, but what I got feels really nice and has a certain- hmm, idk, je ne sais quoi, lol. It just comes across as a mildly different artstyle, I think.

The left leg kinda looks weird, I think? I didn't really have any idea of where the underlying knee bones are on Mienfoo to really match it up with my reference photo (I was gonna link it; it was on pinterest which I don't really like and the link is now dead, so I guess it's not important anyway). Also the neck band is kinda weird, but it looks OK.

The tail, lol, I kinda panicked because I almost forgot it, I think you even see me put in a little shading before I start on the tail. I struggled with it a bit before my pea-brain made the connection that it was kinda like the ribbon feelers on my Sylveon piece and I just took the end of a ribbon from there and chiseled away and added to it, lmao. I think, on the Sylveon piece, my brain was truly firing on all pistons with those ribbons.

I think the art journals have run their course, I've internalized a lot of the stuff I would've written down in there like, "You can draw lines with the line tool" or "this sucks, but maybe It'll get better :)" so I don't think I'll be doing those that much if at all. But I guess doing a little post-mortem longer than the main post is a fair substitute, lol!

Also, I think this might be the last piece of art I'm sharing this year (maybe making if I don't get my ducks in a row). And what a year it has been! ~47 pieces according to my archive on imgur. That's 47 more pieces than I did last year! I don't think I'm gonna do a recap of this year of art until whenever it was I posted that Gastly art and then, for "accounting purposes," I'll do recaps at the ends of years after that.

Look at me making big, multi-year plans :3. I really wanna stick around and I hope anyone following me wherever does too! Thank you for a- ok, well; it could've been better mental-health-wise and things still feel pretty rough, but I'm getting it figured out- great year! Let's hope for an even better one in the far-flung future of 2014, babey!

[andmaybegayer]

@blackhawk-4904 said on this post:

#8W… wow! #wonder how that little power draw performs for more intensive workloads

It takes so little to get me to measure something. Here's some notes I took while doing these measurements. Pretty graph up front:

We've got power from high to low on the x-axis, blue line showing absolute performance in Cinebench measured on the left y-axis, and orange line showing relative performance to the 20W run in percentage points on the right y-axis.

These would look nicer but the power cut and I don't want to figure out how to install GNUplot on Windows. It's a mingw thing.

For context, the top score of 5300 here is about what you'd expect to get from a stock 6700k, which was a top of the line processor in 2015 that drew about five times as much power.

You can see that efficiency goes way up as we drop power right up until 5W, once we hit 3W efficiency takes a dive because of a variety of reasons. If you're wondering why efficiency dives at 25W, check the 25W section of the results for an explanation. Now, more details about testing method and the raw data, as well as a semi-rambling conclusion.

I'm back in Windows to investigate the sensor hub so I'm going to use Windows benchmarks, namely Cinbench. If you want to copy these numbers, fortunately RyzenController (a frontend to RyzenAdj) works on Linux and Windows and have identical interfaces wherever you use it.

Test Setup

Constants

Laptop is plugged in to power, set in HP's performance mode and maxed out the performance slider in Windows. Set up in tented mode for maximum cooling performance. Only one run each, so give these numbers maybe ±5% leeway for run to run variation.

Numbers

I'm not taking detailed power metrics, aside from the one time I note it I'm just assuming that the power controller is holding it dead at whatever I set. That's true for most metrics, although there's about a 200mW negative offset in the measured value so if you really want to adjust for that. My performance numbers are coming out of Cinebench R23. The numbers I got on default settings seem to agree with consensus, so I think I got it set up right.

Comparisons

I'm going to treat the flat 20W score as my baseline for power and performance. I'll also provide a power/performance ratio that is basically a reference to how well this setup uses each watt compared to the baseline, so e.g. a 120% ratio gets 20% more performance per watt. Cinebench scores are roughly linear, if I remember correctly.

Results

default power settings:

spikes to 25W and 4GHz briefly, sits at about 20W and 3.1-3.3GHz for most of the test.

Score 5209, 97% performance, variable power.

25W flat limit:

pretty much the same as default, there's pretty hard baked in limits in the processor that would require a change in the overall TDP-up/down setting that aren't possible without bios flips that this laptop doesn't support.

Score of 5423. 102% performance, 125% power. Ratio of 82%.

(note: this power value is exaggerated, actual power would probabaly be like 21W. No reason to set this mode.)

20W flat limit:

I'm going to use this as my benchmark point for power and performance, since it seems to be the maximum the cooling system can deliver. Nice and flat at 3.1-3.2GHz.

Score of 5316. 100% performance, 100% power. Ratio of 100%. Mathematics, everyone.

15W flat limit:

Base clock town more or less, this device is rated for 2.38GHz at 15W, and this sits at about 2.7-2.9GHz for the bulk of the run.

Score of 4789. 90% performance, 75% power. Ratio of 120%

8W flat limit:

Well controlled, no real spikes, sits at about 2.1-2.2GHz.

Score of 3607. 68% performance, 40% power. Ratio of 170%.

5W flat limit:

Also controlled, below base clock and sitting at 1.4GHz more or less dead, which is nothing to sneeze at. Given that idle power here is about 2W we're not much above quiescent, and basic life support power is taking over as the main source of power consumption. I think this is about as low as I'd go and I'd probably set up 8W base or 5W base 8W long-term boost if I was trying to save power, you're losing a lot of performance for not much less power, you'll see the efficiency ratio is barely any better than 8W.

Score of 2351. 44% performance, 25% power. Ratio of 176%.

3W flat limit:

the lowest you can go with RyzenAdj, well, well below base clock. Horrendously slow, cinebench took FOREVER, I am demonstrating serious commitment by waiting this one out, welcome to one fifth of base clock town, each core is only pulling about 200mW, and clocks down to 430MHz, since 430x6 is only 2580 you could definitely just run one core six times this fast, probably for only a watt more and you'd lose the multithreading overhead. This definitely wastes power by just taking so goddamn long to do anything. Dont do this.

Terrible score of 682. 13% performance, 15% power. Ratio of 87%.

Conclusion

You can get significant efficiency improvements on this thing by slightly limiting your power. Dropping to just 15W already represents a 20% efficiency gain, and at 8W you gain 70% efficiency and only give up about 30% of your absolute performance.

If the kind of tasks you're doing are going to demand the whole-ass processor, 8W is probably the sweet spot, great performance and efficiency. If you're just tooling around on the desktop, watching a movie, editing text, etc. 5W has a decent overall power drop that might arrest some unwanted power spikes but is otherwise not a huge improvement over 8W.

I'm probably going to go with 8W base with a tightly constrained 15W boost setting, since 15W achieves a huge proportion of the overall performance and will probably help with some bursty workloads.

[aviul]

💕 self-love time! talk about which ones of YOUR creations (edits, artworks, fanfics) you like the most then send to other creators to do the same 💕

oh?? am i to toot my own horn? guess i'll have to! [please imagine an off-key clown horn noise here]

im afraid to venture too deep into my finished arts folder (might get lost in there… or just forget what i was doing) so i think i'll just look at more recent stuff that came out lookin nice. far cry brainrot still hasnt left me and i have ventured into the dreaded "horribly self-indulgent nonsense" territory. i am pretty happy with how this one came out. (i've had some internal struggles with art semi-recently but i think this turning out better than expected got me over the worst of it) other video games have managed to squeeze arts out of me too, and i feel like this simple lil portrait of my silly little flying skykid turned out neat. for a long time ive yearned to really get that sort of "controlled mess" type of drawing where you just sort of… do whatever and paint outside the lines and over them and wherever you please and still have the shapes make sense when viewed as a whole. i kinda managed some of that here, which i am still weirdly giddy about. for some more original stuff, i am still very fond of this weird meaty mushroom snake pal and this leaf guy. just some funky lil dudes. i like weird little creatures and i really should draw them more often. some of my favourites from this years abstractober are days 3, 6, 9, 14, 21, 23 and 30. out of non-abstractober abstract arts, i still vibe with this one. the palette came out weirdly nice.

thanks for sending this!! i am my own worst critic so it really doesn't hurt to make me look at the positives sometimes c:

[im too chronically shy to send this forward but anyone viewing this is formally invited to toot their own horn as well]

[amischiefofmuses]

Ghost Rider - A stream of consciousness while watching.

Decided I'mma post my notes I made while watching the movie, might do it for every movie rather than spam the feed with liveblogging me watching it. Some of it has absolutely no context and I want it to be known that especially for this one, I don't know the comics for ghost rider AT ALL so this is a blind reaction with only the movie itself as source material. I'm starting with movies not tied to the MCU or XMCU for now - then I'll be working my way into those too.

Younger Johnny is actually a decent enough actor, even if the film is super cheesy. The penance stare sequence with evil laughter, gunshots, a baby crying, screams, just so over the top I actually giggled.

Little disappointed that the cop checking his speed didn’t cut to it saying 666 - feels like a missed opportunity to lean into the silliness. So many unneeded flashbacks, yes I know what happened 5 minutes ago thank you.

The old guy is an actually decent actor, I like his vibes - wish he was the ghost rider the film focused on ngl. THE MIRROR SCENE WHERE HE’S CLACKING HIS TEETH TOGETHER AND MAKING FACES TO TRY AND TURN INTO THE GHOST RIDER, HELLO? Kjashdkjsha No wait, this whole scene of him trying to gain control is goofy. Good lord.

The ‘YOU’ thing is meant to be iconic, instead it’s so ridiculous- maybe because it’s cage. The prison scene, good lord, this man cannot act. ‘Don’t put me in here’. Pffttt. Criminals are angry he didn’t die in a jump??? ‘NICE JACKET.’

Modifying the jacket?? What ARE his powers? He can manipulate things like that just because he MUST look edgy????

I ALMOST DEFINITELY HAD A CRUSH ON BLACKHEART, this is the first time I remembered a line and it was that ‘Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I’ve sinned a lot’. Come on now young magnus, you gay as hell. No wonder I watched it so much.

The zoom on the guard pfftt. Goofy af. Finger waggle was kinda cold tho. If he didn’t blow things up wherever he went then maybe he wouldn’t draw so much attention smh. Flipping the cops off while driving away on top of the water was FIRE.

Remembering another line - ‘The suspect is going UP’, the delivery was great. Pulling in a helicopter, how strong is he actually????

I do think the elemental nature of the villains is p cool and their designs aren’t too bad, they are defeated shockingly easily though. The chain as a tool/weapon is also damn cool. Leave the old man alone dammit, stop kicking him. I know he’s a ghost rider but damn.

THEY DID KILL HIS FRIEND. I KNEW IT. Blackheart faking the penance stare working on him, this sassy little fucker. I really do have a type.

ALSO why is the old man hot, I hate it here. I would smooch that grandpa. Music choices bang HARD. Hate that carter slade only rode with him there and left, I was so hyped for the team up goddammit.

Bike giving him encouragement. Hell yeah. I’d love that tbh. Also is the bike sentient then???

DRAMATIC WILD WEST EYE ZOOM PFFTT. Reading the contract was a bit underwhelming, they could have added some latin fanciness in there or smth. ‘This is the contract. All of you,,, come to me!’

The red effect on blackheart’s eyes when he turns into legion, LMFAO NO. Turning the gun to a hellfire gun? Again, sir, what ARE your powers? Another penance stare, fuck yeah gimme the silliness.

His fire turning blue when he looks at her is cute af honestly, that is cute.

THE POSE. THE POINT. It’s kinda growing on me. Also I hope it’s acknowledged that he’s a known criminal now because,,, oof? Not gonna be easy if he can only be Ghost Rider at night. I LOVE THE ENDING SONG. Getting it later.

[tealfling]

I HAVE THOUGHTS!

So Rolan hands the player Tav 400 🪙 💰. That isn't a small of gold.

And as mentioned before, it's a pretty reasonable amount of gold for that part of the game. But when you compare it to what Alfira gives Tav for saving Lakrissa, it kinda pales in comparison. On the other hand, Bex gives us cookies for saving Danis (those are the world's best cookies, even though it's probably stale you cannot change my mind).

How do I think he acquired that much gold?

He says himself he's admired Lorroakan for years. So I think Rolan was always hoping to get an apprenticeship.

He's also not young, or at least older than Cal & Lia appear to be. To me he's always given off a mid-late 30s vibe.

I think Rolan has been heavily saving that gold for years. That's the money he was going to use to get his family out of poverty. So really it's not Rolan's gold, it's their gold. 400 split between 3 people is not that much and a more reasonable number per person.

Rolan seems like a hard working person, to the point that his fans collectively think he overworks himself if he becomes Master of Ramazith's Tower. But also the dialogue (and I think some posted dev notes) also leads us to believe he worked his ass off to get noticed by someone that would give him an apprenticeship. I always imagined before he had one or two jobs he worked while teaching himself magic.

Now let's talk about his clothes a little. A while back, someone posted about his robes and I went into a bit of a deep dive there. He's not wearing wizards (simple) robes, he's wearing Wild Magic Sorcerer robes.

Which could be just an aesthetic choice from the devs, it separates Rolan from all the magic of the game that use the wizards simple robes or the simpler sorcerer robes from draconic/storm. But it also just looks more expensive. It has that nice metal mantle artists hate to draw.

It could have been the only robe available wherever he got it from. But I think it was a choice because of how it looks more expensive and how it might be perceived as they're robes of naturally strong magic users.

Rolan is actively trying to be perceived a certain way. It is completely to impress Lorroakan and be seen as a talented magic user.

"Ugh, I would die if I met Lorroakan smelling of this place. I'll never get the smell out. I should burn these."

This line is very telling. He doesn't want to be grouped in with other refugees. While they probably do wash up, they still probably smell like sweat, body odor, and just outside. I don't think he actually plans to burn his robes, babygirl is just being a dramatic little brat.

Also, let's put it out there that Rolan is a Tiefling. Now the Grove is the worst of it for obvious reasons, but there are several other parts of the game where there is blatant racism against tieflings.

Playing as a tiefling, you can ask Rolan if Baulder's Gate even welcomes tieflings. To which he says they might stare, but it's not as bad as other places.

I've seen at least two really good posts talking about how Rolan presents himself and tiefling racism from the perspective of the black community. If I remember after work to look for them I'll see if I can link them in the comments.

And then you find out Lorroakan is just some dude that took over the empty tower bc no one stopped him?! (That's another post...)

Back to the gold.

Why does Rolan give Tav all his gold?

Well. We find a man on the edge that thinks his family is probably dead and is willing to die just to find them anyway. He repeated tells us Cal & Lia mean everything to him. What's the point in his apprenticeship if he can't make their lives better? If they aren't saved he's not upset with Lorroakan for beating him, and will side with him against Tav. In saving his siblings, you save him. And that's worth all his gold.

But yes, we should be able to throw the bag of gold at him and tell him we don't need his gold. That he should keep it for them. That's what Coren does in my HC.

Still, I believe Rolan first bruise was not inflicted by Lorroakan, but by Tav when he threw a bag of coins at him for saving his brother and sister. He was unprepared and missed the blow.

By the way, he gave us a pretty decent amount of money, I can't remember someone giving us that much money for a mission before. Which begs the question, how did he get that kind of money? Was he rich before all this happened? Or he was simply ready to give us all his money? Or did he search the corpses on the way to last light? Or are there other possibilities?

[yurtletheturtlehenderson]

COSMIC - S1:E2; Chapter Two, The Weirdo On Maple Street - [Pt. 1]

A Will Byers x Male!Reader Series

𝘠/𝘯, 𝘓𝘶𝘤𝘢𝘴, 𝘋𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯.

|| 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐏𝐎𝐕 ||

The booming clap of thunder and the steady drumming of rain hitting the windows can be heard. The poor girl sat before us, shaking, her breath heavy and ragged. She was now wearing Mike's jacket; he had given it to her when we found her shivering in the rain. The four of us stood in front of her, gazing at her in awe and bewilderment. Lucas and Mike were to my right, Dustin on my left. Mike finally broke the silence.

"Is there a number we can call for your parents?"

"Where's your hair? Do you have cancer?"

"Dustin," I warn. Although, I'd be lying if I said it hadn't crossed my mind.

Before I can stop them, the boys continue to ask her all sorts of questions without even giving her a chance to answer.

"Did you run away?"

"Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"Is that blood?" Lucas slowly extends his arm towards the girl's face; before I can stop him, Mike beats me to it and smacks his arm away.

"Stop it! You're freaking her out!"

"She's freaking me out!"

"I bet she's deaf." Dustin then turns to look at the girl and quickly claps his hands in her face and she flinches back, clearly even more frightened, if that is at all possible.

"Not deaf." He says weakly, shrugging his shoulders.

I draw the line there. "Dustin, seriously? Do you not hear yourself? How would you feel in her position, huh?"

"Y/n's right, okay? Enough, both of you." Mike defended me and looked to Dustin and Lucas as he spoke. "She's just scared and cold." He pointed in the girl's direction as he said this.

Hearing him say that made me realize she was still in nothing but a soaking wet t-shirt and Mike's jacket. I turn to Mike. "We should probably get her some fresh clothes. Do you have any down here?" I ask.

Mike nods and heads towards a laundry basket across the room. I look back at the girl and I see her close her eyes and flinch, shrinking into herself a little as another clap of thunder boomed from outside. I cautiously took a step around to the side of the coffee table and took a seat on the edge so I was near her eye level but not so close I was invading her space.

"Hey, it's okay," I try, my voice gentle. "It's just thunder. You're gonna be okay. You're safe now."

I send her a warm, reassuring smile. She says nothing, but I swear I see gratitude in her eyes.

Mike returns with some fresh clothes.

"Here, these are clean. Okay?" She cautiously takes the clothes from him and looks at them. After a moment she brings them to her face and softly rubs them on her cheek. My sympathy for her grows stronger, who knows how long it has been since she's had a proper set of clothes. She sets them aside and shrugs Mike's jacket off of her shoulders. She rises to her feet, reaching for the bottom of the t-shirt she was wearing, clearly about to undress in front of us.

"No, no, no!" We all yell.

I jump to my feet in surprise, ripping my gaze away in panic while also attempting to reach for her hands to keep them in place. Mike tries to do the same, but he's a bit more shaken up. Meanwhile, Dustin and Lucas began freaking out, their heads turned so as to not see anything. Dustin could not stop saying, "Oh, my God!"

"See over there?" Mike points to the bathroom just across the room. "That's the bathroom. Privacy. Get it?" He asks. The girl looks ashamed and confused. She looks to the bathroom and then to me, her eyes pleading. I can tell she's afraid to be alone. I take a quick, deep breath and look at her. "You... want me in there with you?" I ask gently.

She nods and we are all surprised to hear her speak. "Yes."

"Really? Umm," I look to the guys in shock who all wear the same expression as the scene unfolds. Panicking, but also realizing by now she doesn't understand why I would be, I look back to her only to find fear in her eyes and I feel a wave of guilt. A sigh escapes and I nod. "Yeah, uh, okay. I can do that, but, you're still gonna need some privacy, okay?" I grab her clothes off the couch and I lead her to the bathroom and she looks around in curiosity.

I gesture around the bathroom awkwardly, not really knowing what to do.

"Here, I'm not gonna look, but we should close this so they don't accidentally see anything. Okay?" I gesture to the door.

Panic flooded her features, and for the first time since we found her she wore an expression of absolute certainty, speaking for the second time tonight. "No."

"Hey, its okay, it's just so that you can change in privacy. You know, so they don't accidentally see you changing? How about we close it most of the way? That way you have privacy, but you know you can still get out. Does that sound good?" She hesitates then nods her head slightly. I push the door in so it's cracked open.

I handed her Mike's spare set of clothes, doing my best to offer a small smile. "Alright, here you go,"

For a moment I think, just maybe it's okay to slip out and let her change. But then I see the look in here eyes, and it hits truly me why it's so important to her someone stays.

My smile feels a little more genuine now and it almost seems to put her at ease, just a little. "Don't worry, I'll stay."

I cross over to the other side of the bathroom, taking a seat on the closed lid of the toilet with my back turned to her. For extra measure, I even clamped my hand over my eyes, still trying to figure out my day took such a weird turn. I can her start to move around and figure she's started changing, and briefly I think of how scared she looked when the thunder rumbled.

It reminded me of how bad thunder used to scare me as kid; like really bad, and how Mom helped me through it. Even kept me company until I fell asleep, and it all made a little more sense why she asked me. It was the same reason I recognized the look in her eyes almost at once; Anxiety and genuine fear. Like I did when I was a kid, I needed that company around just to know I wasn't alone.

It only makes my mind race with a million different questions but, they're all silenced when I hear voices coming from the other room.

"This is mental." It was Dustin.

"At least she can talk." Mike defended.

"She said 'no' and 'yes.' Your three-year-old sister says more." Lucas counters. I bite my lip, trying not to yell at Lucas. If he heard her say 'no' to me from the bathroom, that obviously means that we can hear him. As much as I love those guys, they can be really insensitive.

"She tried to get naked." Dustin argued."She brought Y/n in there with her!"

I can feel my face heat up and I wish I could melt into a puddle where I sit. At least that way they could just flush me and be done with it.

"It's not like that! She's just scared," Mike defended.

"There's something seriously wrong with her. Like, wrong in the head." Said Lucas.

"She, just went like..." and then I could barely make out the muffled sound of something falling.

"I bet she escaped from Pennhurst."

"From where?" Mike sounded just as exasperated as I was feeling.

"The nuthouse in Kerley County."

"You got a lot of family there?"

"Bite me."

"Seriously though, think about it. That would explain her shaved hair and why she's so crazy."

"Why she went like..."

"She's an escapee is the point. She's probably a psycho."

"Like Michael Myers."

"Exactly! We should've never brought her here."

"So you just wanted to leave her out in that storm?"

"Yes! We went out to find Will, not another problem."

"I think we should tell your mom." Dustin offers.

"I second that."

"Who's crazy now?"

"How is that crazy?"

"'Cause, we weren't supposed to be out tonight, remember?"

"So?"

"So if I tell my mom and she tells your mom and your mom..."

"Oh, man."

"Our houses become Alcatraz."

"Exactly. We'll never find Will."

There's a brief silence, and I think about everything I just heard. Mike had a pretty good point. And I don't blame Lucas for being skeptical, I just wish he wouldn't be so harsh sometimes. If I can hear their conversation, that means she can. I can't imagine what she must be going through right now.

"All right, here's the plan. She sleeps here tonight."

"You're letting a girl --"

"Just listen! In the morning, she sneaks around my house, goes to the front door and rings my doorbell. My mom will answer and know exactly what to do. She'll send her back to Pennhurst or wherever she comes from. We'll be totally in the clear. And tomorrow night, we go back out. And this time, we find Will."

I feel a light tap on my shoulder and I turn around to see the girl had changed. She had sad look on her face and I don't blame her at all.

"Feeling better?" I ask. She meets my eyes for a brief moment and nods, looking back down at her feet.

I sigh and lower my voice into a whisper, trying to undo all the damage the boys just unknowingly caused. "Hey, I'm sorry they said all those things. You'll be in good hands here with that boy Mike; the guy who gave you the clothes, he's really nice, and it sounds like you'll be staying with him."

I stood up, eyeing the door and my friends who I could barely see through the slat we left open and I turned back to her.

"By the way... You don't have to answer any of those questions if you're not ready. That was unfair of them to do that. If you ever need anything... or someone to talk to, even after we get everything sorted out, well, I'm here." I shrug, giving her a reassuring smile before opening the door, leading her out of the bathroom.

Lucas and Dustin were standing at the bottom of the stairs, ready to head out. I follow their gaze to find Mike had made a small fort for the girl.

Mike was helping the girl get settled inside. "Here you go. This is my sleeping bag."

"You really think she's psycho?" Dustin whispered.

"Wouldn't want her in my house." Before Lucas could head up the stairs I spoke up.

"We heard everything."

Lucas and Dustin stopped and looked at me, worried.

"What?"

"All those nasty things you were saying back there, we heard every word. She heard every word... Just go. Dustin, I'll catch up in a few minutes. Bye." I threw them a flat, angry look as I shook my head and walked away. As I made my way over to the fort I took note of the silence behind me, followed by reluctant footsteps up the stairs.

"Hey, um, I never asked your name." Mike said trying to make conversation. I kneeled down next to Mike.

The girl looks at us both, then without saying anything, she pulls up her left sleeve to reveal a tattoo on the inside of her wrist. It read '011'. My eyes widen in shock.

"Woah," I can't help but gasp.

"Is that real?" Mike asks excitedly as he reaches over to touch the tattoo. She quickly retracts her arm and looks at Mike. There's an awkward silence apart from the booming thunder outside.

"Sorry, I've just... never seen a kid with a tattoo before." He apologized sheepishly.

"Can I ask what it means?" I say.

She looks at me and then points a finger towards herself.

"So, that's your name? Eleven?" I confirm.

She nods her head and then looks down at her lap.

"Eleven. Okay." Mike says, perking up. "Um, well, my name's Mike. Short for Michael, and this is my friend Y/n. He's Dustin's brother." Eleven looks over at me and I smile politely, giving her a small wave.

"Maybe we can call you 'El.' Short for Eleven." Mike offers. She nods her head in agreement. There's a silence and I can tell Mike likes her already.

"Um, well, okay," I say, trying to break the silence. "El, it was nice meeting you. And, like I said, if you need anything at all, I'm here. And so is Mikey here, of course," I say, looking over at Mike, giving him a knowing look, a smirk on my face. "Unfortunately, I have to head home so, I'll see you guys later."

I smile and grab my jacket. As i head for the stairs, I turn to both of them and send them a little wave. "Bye!"

Mide nods at me, the girl, El watching curiously as I go. That's the last I see of them as I dissapear up the steps.

I could hear Mike stuttering a 'goodnight' to El as I make it to the top. Clearly, I caught him off guard. I smile to myself, thinking.

'Ohh, he has so got it bad.'

I parked my bike in its usual spot and made it through the front door quiet enough so my mom won't hear.

Most of the lights were turned off, my mom must have gone to bed already just as I suspected. I heard an obnoxious meowing near my feet and look down to see Mews. I kneel down and pet this attention starved cat knowing that's the only way she will ever quiet down. I don't know how she can be attention starved when Mom doted on her as much as she does.

Mews lets out a deep purr and leans into my hand as I give her head a few scratches. I take off my shoes and set them by the front door before sneaking back into my room.

I flip on the light switch and stare at my slightly messy room and sigh at the events of today. I close my door so I can change into my pj's and tidy up a bit. Once I'm done I open my door so it's ajar, knowing that Mews likes to come and go throughout the house as she pleases. I sit down on the side of my bed and sigh heavily.

My eyes are fixed on the floor, particularly the different shadows that were being cast from my lamp on my bedside table as my thoughts wandered back to the fruitless efforts of tonight.

The stress and constant worrying have taken its toll on me. It breaks my heart to know that my best friend is somewhere out there lost and probably hurt. I guess a big part of me was sure that we were going to find Will in those woods out by Mirkwood tonight. I should have known better.

I feel something on my leg and I look down to see tear stains on my pajama bottoms. I hadn't even realized I had started crying. I sniffle, wiping my nose and grab the stuffed duck that was sitting on my bed. Will had won it for me. I give it a tight hug, a small smile creeps its way onto my face at the memory.

- 𝗙𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗛𝗕𝗔𝗖𝗞 -

It was the first Saturday of summer vacation and the five of us had gone to the arcade for a much-deserved celebration. We all filed into the arcade, I followed Mike, Dustin, and Lucas as we made our way to Dustin's favorite game Dig Dug, Will and I side by side, buzzing with the excitement of the new summer ahead of us.

There was a brief moment of comfortable silence as we looked around the arcade. We passed by all the familiar games including the infamous claw game. I spare a glance at its contents and notice an adorable bright yellow duck perched in the front of the glass.

I smile and point at the stuffed duck. "Oh! That duck is so cute!" I admired it for a brief moment and catch up with Dustin, assuming Will is still next to me.

( hats off to the folk who understand this reference!! 😎 )

About twenty minutes later I had just beaten Mike's high score on Pac Man. All the boys watched over my shoulder and I couldn't help but cheer out. "Ha! Say, Mike, how does my dust taste?"

"Oh, whatever. You only beat me by," he leans over my shoulder to look at my score. "Holy crap! 1300 points?! Alright, well done." He sighs.

"Hey Will, you owe me 5 bucks!" I turn to my friend only to not see him there. I look around in confusion.

"Wait, guys, where is Will?"

They all shrug.

"I don't know, the last time I saw him he was with you. When we got here." Lucas shrugged.

I look around until I spot the familiar bowl cut by the claw machine. He must have won something since he was leaning down to grab some prize from the machine. I quickly grab my tickets and abandon the machine and meet him by the claw, he made eye contact with me and quickly put his hands behind his back.

"Hey, man. Where have you been? You just missed it. I just annihilated Mike in Pac Man. It was awesome!"

"I, um... Well, I, uh," he scratched the back of his head awkwardly as he stammered.

I breathed out a soft laugh. "Will, it's fine, you're not on trial or anything."

"Well I noticed you seemed to really like that duck and it seemed easy enough, and um, and so yeah, I played a couple rounds and, well here." His words sort of spilled out of his mouth and he quickly pulled out his hand from behind his back and handed me the cute little stuffed duck from earlier. A huge, beaming smile finds it's way onto my face as I take the duck from him.

"Oh, wow!" I gasped as I took the duck from him. "That's awesome, thank you! I love it! Aww, it's so cute!" I gave the duck a big squeeze and held it under my arm.

"Yeah, uh no problem. So you said you beat Mike's score? That's great! By how much?" He seems more relaxed now that he's changed the subject.

"You'll never believe it, 1300 points!" I said smugly.

"No way! Y/n, that's awesome!" He gave me a big smile.

"I know right? Anyways, come on, let's hit up Space Invaders. We've got more records to beat." I motioned towards the machine, but Will doesn't move. His smile only falters. "What's wrong Byers? Come on, we better hurry before someone else gets to it." I give him a smile, silently urging him to come along.

"Yeah, umm about that... I don't have any money left. I um, I kinda spent it all on the claw." He said sheepishly.

"What?" I stare in disbelief. I can't believe he would do that.

"I'm sorry, I just thought that—" he stammered.

"No, Will, hey! I'm not mad!" I soothe as I reach out and put a hand on his shoulder to calm him.

"And please, don't be sorry. If anything, I'm sorry. You spent all your money just to get this duck. I know you guys are tight on money right now, and well, I—" I stopped, completely appalled at his actions. "Thank you. That means so much to me. You're amazing." I smile and pull him in for a hug.

The hug lingers for a few moments longer than necessary but not enough to make it too awkward. He was hesitant to let go it seemed. I finally broke the hug and gave him another big grin.

"Come on, I am playing Space Invaders with my favorite person, whether he likes it or not. I've still got a buttload of coins."

"But, you don't have to do that."

"You didn't have to spend all your money getting the duck but you did anyway." I point out. He smiles at this.

"Besides," I continued. "You know me, I'd feel way too guilty if I didn't repay you in some way for the duck. This way, we'll be even. What do you say?" I playfully elbow him.

A big grin breaks out on his face. "Yeah okay, cool. Thanks."

- 𝗘𝗡𝗗 𝗢𝗙 𝗙𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗛𝗕𝗔𝗖𝗞 -

I smile fondly as I give the ever so slightly worn duck a squeeze. It quickly became one of my favorite things. A quiet sob escapes my lips as I hug the duck.

"Y/n?" My head shot up to my door to see Dustin poking his head in my room, concern etched on his face.

I sniffle and quickly wipe my nose with the back of my hand as I attempt to stop my sobs.

"Sorry," I mumble, figuring I'd annoyed him.

"Y/n, what's wrong?" Dustin asks worriedly, he takes a seat next to me, not before closing the door behind him.

"I'm sorry, I just," I am unable to hold back another sob, I lean into my brother's shoulder. He wraps an arm around my shoulder as he tries to comfort me.

"Seriously, are you okay? What's the matter?"

"I miss him," I wail. I can feel Dustin's body stiffen for a brief moment at the mention of Will. He sighs and runs his hand up and down my shoulder, trying to comfort me.

"I know," his voice sounds hoarse, like he's trying not to cry. "I miss him too."

"What if, he doesn't come back?" I choke on my sobs.

"You shouldn't talk like that. We'll find him. You know him, he's good at hiding. If something did get him, you just know he's hiding. That's why the clever bastard never bites it in our campaigns, even when we do."

I breathe out a soft chuckle at this. Dustin has a point. It seems no matter what kind of trouble he gets into during our campaigns, he always seems to find a way out. It's become a running joke in our party.

My smile falters. "But what if..."

"Y/n, you can't keep doing this to yourself. No more 'what ifs' it's not healthy, and—"

"Well, I can't help it, Dustin!" I snap, cutting him off. "I just... I just can't. You don't understand. You think I like it when my brain won't stop plaguing me with these god awful scenarios that gnaw at me every second? I can't help it, it's so draining! Why do you think it takes so long to come down from my anxiety attacks?"

My eyes are welling up again and my vision has become blurry. All I can do is look down back at the ground.

Dustin only sighs. "I'm sorry. I had no idea."

I sniffle and sigh. "I'm sorry too. It just gets so frustrating not being able to communicate my feelings with people who don't deal with anxiety like I do."

"I just... I just hope he's okay." Hot tears slide down my face as I stare at the wall. I heard a sniffle come from Dustin. We stayed like that for quite some time, longing for our friend.

______________

A//N: I put this in because I think it's important that I share this with you all. I don't ever see any fics with a reader with an anxiety disorder and I thought it was important that I do because as someone who struggles with anxiety and someone who has anxiety attacks all the time, I often feel disconnected from the story, anyway I thought that I should shed some light on the subject as well as let readers with anxiety disorders feel included and represented as well as let you know YOU ARE NOT ALONE AND YOUR DISORDER DOES NOT DEFINE YOU. PLEASE DM ME (A LIVING BREATHING PERSON WITH AN ANXIETY DISORDER) IF ANY OF YOU WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE WHO STRUGGLES WITH THIS AND/OR YOU WANT TO ASK QUESTIONS TO LEARN MORE.

[catzula]

A kiss to warm your heart

A/N: Ahh I missed writing for Bakugou and its been a while since I had this much fun writing anything, I hope you guys enjoy it too >:(

And uh lets not make this one flop pls 😦

Pairing: bakugou x reader

Warning: cursing

Genre: fluff! Mutual pining, some jealousy but not very prominent

Synopsis: going to a skiing trip for the weekend with you friends sounds like a good idea (not as much when you realize your crush, Bakugou Katsuki is coming, too!), but it's a bit hard to actually get to skiing when you can't ride the chair lift.

"Dips on the bed next to the window!" Mina rushed into the room, throwing herself on the said bed. You sent her a fake pout as you settled on the other bed, not really caring about it's location, but it was fun to guilt-trip Mina. She gave you a crooked grin as she laid her luggage on the ground, already unpacking.  

"Change into your skiing clothes, Kiri told me we're going to go skiing in about half an hour."

"What? No! We just came, I'm tired." You protested, throwing yourself on the fluffy hotel bed, groaning and hoping you looked as yitrd as you felt so she would leave you alone.

"Y/N, stand up and wear your ski clothes? Please?" Mina held you by the arm, lulling you off the bed and thinking you were a little too strong for your own good.

"Oh, come on," she groaned when you sent her a 'leave me alone, I'm tired' look, "We're only here for two days, and we should use every chance we have! Also, it's tea time, and they are serving those little free cookies, so I'm sure you'll feel better if you just ate one."

"Yeah, all I need is cookies." You scoffed, making her grin. "Nope, all you need is Bakugou." Mina turned to the mirror and fluffed her hair, trying to look as indifferent as she could, failing at hiding her sly grin as she gave you a few seconds of silence to reconsider. 

You sighed as you rushed down the stairs, evening your pace with Mina's. You always hated walking in ski clothing since it made you feel like a burrito: overheated, wrapped with layers and layers of clothing which rustled each time you moved, and very uncomfortable.

"Free cookies, you say? Are there brownies, too?"

~~~

You knew she wanted to talk about something by the way she kept turning at you and fidgeting her hands. "What is it?" You asked when Mina glanced at you for the fortieth time the last few minutes. "If it's about you-know-who, I don't wanna hear it, though." 

"Mina-" you started to talk, but she stopped you before you could argue, although you were itching to go downstairs already because you felt like you were going to have a stroke if you stood indoors with these clothes. "Don't Mina me, and you know this is your best chance to confess to him! What are you even waiting for, for him to confess first?"

"Uh, yeah?" 

"Oh, come on!" She groaned, emphasizing the last word. "If you want to tell him, this is your chance!" 

"Well, you're out of luck, then." Mina booped your nose. "We are talking about the worlds biggest tsundere after all. I doubt he'd say anything before you do."

She was right, and you knew it. "I know," you admitted, rolling your eyes at the way she grinned proudly. "But I'm not- I don't want to damage our friendship, you know? And I'm not ready for a rejection." You laughed wryly to ease the tension you were feeling. 

"Rejection? Are you serious? You guys are so obvious that even Denki asked me if you were secretly dating. You are almost already dating, just neither of you accepted the feelings towards the other." 

Well, it was true. You and Bakugou were a little closer than friends, maybe, but him every so often flirting with you or you meeting his gaze whenever you looked at him (which happened quite often, you had to admit) didn't necessarily mean he liked you back, did it? 

"I'll- I'll do my best." You smiled at her, trying to change the subject since you were in the entrance of the sitting area. "Let's go eat something already. Do you see them?" 

"Oh, I see Kiri." She spotted, grinning when she saw Bakugou frowning right next to him. "Look, Bakugou's there, too. Hey guys!" She waved at them, running towards the duo and pulling you along. You could see how his gaze snapped up at hearing Mina's voice, the red eyes finding yours immediately and a smirk replacing the frown on his lips. 

He had no right to look this good even with snowboard clothes. His spiky hair messy because of the big ski glasses that rested on top of his head, the black, skin-tight thermals enhanced his well-built body, and his orange-striped ski pants looked like they fit him perfectly. You had to admit you were maybe a bit excited to see him snowboarding down the mountain.

"What, see something you like?" He grinned, whispering so only you could hear, frowning almost immediately after that when he turned to Mina. "Took you guys long enough."

"Yeah, don't tell me that, it was her who needed 30 minutes of convincing, although it was pretty easy to convince her after I said- well, never mind what." She grinned villainously when you sent her an 'I'll push you of a cliff if you say one more word' look.

Bakugou quirked a brow at the pink-skinned girl's sudden change of behavior but decided not to think about it much. "Oh my God, I'll pass out let's go ski already!" Kirishima chimed in, pulling on the thermals he was wearing that clung to him like a second skin, and you could feel the eyes that were looking his way as you walked through the lobby. "These clothes are waaay too warm to be wearing inside." He added, fanning himself with his hands.

He was right, and you felt suffocated, too, the clothes too warm, too tight, too much and too heavy, there were too many things to carry with you, all your hands occupied with another ski gear, and you were itching to throw them and run outside to the snow screaming.

You were glad when your friends complied, all making their way to the ski room. You spotted Mina running towards you, and her ski pants pouches were suspiciously full with something that resembled cookies. You quirked a brow at her, pointing at her bulky pockets, only to earn a grin from her. "You know, its a little snack for us to eat when we get hungry or bored on the longass chair lift ride."

"Hey Mina, send me a cookie!" Denki waved to you, making Mina grin knowingly. "See? There's demand."

You chuckled as you entered the ski room. Bakugou was already sitting on the bench, a jet black snowboard right beside him, the crimson of his eyes contrasting with the black of his board and clothes beautifully. His eyes raised to you when you entered the room, a smirk finding its place on his soft lips when your eyes wandered over the pretty snowboard. 

You couldn't look away as he leaned forward to tie his shoes, arms flexing as he tightened them to fit his legs better, and your need to go running to the snow and maybe scream a few minutes had suddenly increased.

You were approaching him when you felt someone lightly touch your arm. It was a guy around your age, you noticed, smiling widely at you, and you could tell he worked there by the tag on his chest. Shindou Yo, it read. "Can I help you?"

"Oh, thank you." You muttered, feeling somewhat shy after taking a glance at his smiling face and noticing just how handsome he was. You followed him to the counter when he told you to come with you, making you forget the existence of the crimson gaze that was following you wherever you went. 

You didn't feel it, but Bakugou watched you as you gave your name and room number to the charming boy, unaware (or maybe aware?) to his flirty remarks as he pulled out the skiing gear you rented, smiling and giggling as he said something Bakugou couldn't quite hear. You finally realized the dirty looks the blonde was sending you as Shindou kneeled before you to help you wear the ski shoes and gears, but even then, you only smiled and waved at Bakugou, not noticing how he gritted his teeth. 

"Oh, fuck this." Bakugou muttered and raised to his legs, grabbing his snowboard and storming out of the room when Shindou laid his hand on your thigh to 'support' himself to stand up. "Bakugou?" You furrowed your brows and tilted your head when you noticed him sprinting outside. You quickly realized the rest of your friends had left, too. 

Thanking Shnidou, you stood up, running out of the room, only to sigh in relief when you noticed your friends had gathered right outside of the hotel, Sero trying to help Denki wear his ski gears, but both failing miserably. 

"Y/N, right here!" Mina called and waved at you, and it was hard not to see her in her shiny silver puffer jacket. "Oh, I thought you guys left without waiting for me." You spoke, breathless when you finally arrived next to them. 

"Aw, we would never!" Mina chuckled. "Bakugou would, though. Did, also." 

"What, he left?"

"Yep, said he was going to leave ahead since quote unquote, he couldn't wait for slow extras like us."

You frowned, you thought you would be together the whole day! So he wasn't going to stay with you guys for not even five minutes? "I'm going after him." You informed Mina, skiing as quickly as you could down the small slope, in which's end stood the beginning of the chair lift. 

You quickly spotted the spiky ash blond head, holding the giant indigo snowboard in his hands with a very grumpy look on his face. You sighed, and he looked pissed. "Bakugou!" You called out, trying to get to him before his turn in the line came, not so nicely pushing people in front of you to draw near him. 

"Bakugou!" You called once again, and this time you were sure he had heard but ignored you. "Hey, asshole!" You spoke, this time in a normal voice since you had finally drawn close to him, touching his arm to get his attention. 

"What're you doing here?" Bakugou asked without taking as much as a glance at you and making you narrow your eyes. "What do you mean, what are you doing here?" You snapped.

"I said, what are you doing here? What, did your new boyfriend leave you already?"

"New boyfriend? What the hell are you talking about?" But instead of getting a rational answer, instead of getting any response, you watched as he gave you a soft 'hmph!' and turn back in front of him. You would've pushed the subject if it wasn't your turn in the line, and you were already regretting this as you entered the chair lift right after him. 

~~~

"What the hell is your problem?" You muttered after sitting in silence for a good 15 minutes, you still had about 5 minutes till you landed, but it was enough for you to have and end this conversation, you thought.

"What is my problem? What the fuck is your problem? You were the one who chased me till here, after all." Bakugou growled in response, pulling the black ski mask down to his chin as he spoke. "I chased you because you left us and went ahead! We came here as a group, so why would you go off alone?"

"And what the fuck is this new boyfriend shit you're talking about?" 

"Oh, you just had to bring him up." Bakugou muttered under his breath. "Shut up, idiot. We're going to land in a minute, so raise your legs." He instructed, pulling the safety bar over your head when you complied. 

"You ready?" He asked when the chair came to the smooth surface, knowing very well how you struggled each time you landed from these things. "Okay," he answered when you nodded, instinctively taking your hand in his gloved ones, "one, two, jump!" 

He jumped with you, holding and pulling you to himself when you lost your balance despite his instructions, and you could feel the breath he exhaled as he chuckled on your hair. "Don't laugh!" You frowned, only making him laugh harder. "Whatever, come here so the next ones to jump won't run into you." Bakugou pulled you to the side. 

"Oh, look, Sero and Mina are in the ones right after this one!" You told and pointed to your friends, Mina waving in her hands in her seat like mad and shaking the chair in mid-air.

"I'm never riding this thing with Mina again." Sero took a breath of relief as they jumped down from the chair, too. "Don't worry the next ones are the single chair ones." Mina assured him with a cheeky grin, her response making both you and Bakugou gulp audibly. 

"Oh, fuck."

"Oh, no!" You cried out.

"What's happening?"

"Oh, that's okay, Y/N, even I fall sometimes!" Mina assured you, not aware of how your situation was. "No, you don't understand." You told her. "I suck at them! I have the 1 out of 20 chance of arriving at the end of them without falling!"

"Oh my god." You rubbed your temples.

"She can't ride those single seat ones for her life." Bakugou answered instead of you. 

"Yep, she's not even exaggerating." Bakugou assured her. 

"Are you sure, you know we can help-"

"Shut up, raccoon eyes." Bakugou growled at her, making her shrug and wait in the line. "Okay, now." Bakugou turned to you. "Stop being so stiff. It's fucking easy if you just relax."

Mina quickly became aware of how sincere you were with your 18th failed attempt at the single-seat chair lifts. "You guys go ahead," Bakugou finally told them. "I'll help this idiot and come right after."

"I'm sorry for not wanting to fall on my butt again!" You gritted through your teeth as you nervously eyed the lift. "You won't fall on your ass if you just do as I say!" Bakugou snapped back. "Look at me, dumbass. It's alright."

He frowned when you stood still. "Look, I'll sit at the one right after you, okay? I'll catch you if you fall."

"Promise?" You asked, smiling when he nodded. "Well then, let's do this."

You watched as Kirishima went first, Denki going second, Mina following him, and Sero going right after. "Your turn, dumbass." Bakugou nudged you. "Look, we can try it a few minutes later if you don't feel ready-"

"No, no, it's okay." You smiled. "I can do it if I know you're there to catch me."

And you did. 

For the first time that day, you managed to go more than a meter, still as stiff as ever, but a feeling of relief bubbling inside of you as you knew Bakugou was right behind you. "Whoo!" Mina cheered when she noticed you were riding it without falling the past minute.

"Did she do it?" Denki shouted from in front of you, and you giggled when you heard Kirishima whistling from the beginning of the line. "Did she do it, did she do- fuck!" You heard Denki's muffled curse, eyes widening in horror when you realized he fell as he tried to look back at you. 

The idiot he is, Denki didn't even think of skidding to the side so he wouldn't cause Mina to fall, too, but he did. Mina accidentally kicked the blond, who sat dumbly on the floor, with her ski gears when she tried to raise her legs so she wouldn't tangle with him, but she did anyway. 

"Oh, fuck, stand aside, stand aside!" Sero cried out, but the two on the ground were panicking and weren't thinking as they kept sitting in the middle of the path. Luckily, Mina managed to throw herself into the soft pile of snow the last second before Sero crushed into her, but Denki wasn't as quick. 

"Denki, don't you fucking dare!" You shouted.

"You fucking idiot! Stop it, you're going to make me fall, too!" Sero shouted when he noticed Denki was sitting there intentionally, reaching and grabbing Sero's seat, making the gear pull the both of them.

You would've laughed at the sight if you weren't so scared of falling, since watching Denki hang from a seat by hands and the rest of his body get dragged on the snow, his face and body buried in the snow and screams muffled by all the snow he was eating as Sero slapped his fingers and tried to kick him off, was a sight to behold. But you let out a silent scream when Denki let go of Sero's seat, eyes finding you, his next prey. 

"Kick him in the fucking face!" Bakugou shouted from right behind you, but you had lost your balance before you could even comply. Letting go of the rope you were holding on to, you let yourself fall on the snow and immediately retracting to the soft snow pile off the road. 

"Bakugou?" You turned around, and Bakugou couldn't help but think how cute you looked, face red from lying in the snow, hair tangled. "Did Denki make you fall, too?" You chuckled, not even trying to stand up, snow was pretty comfortable, you realized.

"You could say that." He shrugged.

You were laying face down on the snow, chest heaving as you waited for your heart to slow down. "What the fuck are you doing there, or are you dead?" You heard a familiar voice call from behind you. 

"What does that even mean?" You smiled knowingly. "Or did you jump after me?" 

"Hm, and what if I did?" He kneeled on the snow, leaning in, his face so close that his warm breath and caramel scent the only two things you could register for a few seconds. "I promised I'd catch you if you fell."

Bakugou hadn't expected to hear you chuckle when he said that, and he wasn't sure if he was happy or angry about it. "Well, you didn't do a good job, did you? I am lying in the snow, after all."

You had a point, and knowing that caused Bakugou to frown. "I'm leaving you here." He sighed, standing up and cruelly kicking some snow on your face, too.

"Hey, no, wait! Come back, Bakugou!" You cried out. "I can't stand up, my legs stuck!" It was true since your ski had sunk in the snow at a very odd angle when you threw yourself over it, making your ankle hurt when you moved it even an inch. "Bakugou! Please!" You called out one more time, not expecting him to sigh and turn back to help you. 

"How did you even do this?" Bakugou asked as he examined your leg, touching and pulling it slightly, rolling his eyes when you whined to tell him it hurt. "Stop being a baby."

"It hurts!" You answered at the accusation, feeling somewhat awkward as he inspected your legs closely, as you lay there watching the sky or playing with the snow, making snow castles, groaning every so often when he pulled at your leg. "Okay, I'll take off your ski now- Y/N, what the fuck? Stop playing with the snow and help me!" 

"What am I supposed to do- ow!" 

"I don't know... talk about your new boyfriend or something." He spoke, narrowing his eyes at the thought and pulling your leg a bit too harshly. "I untied the ski, but you have to pull your leg." He instructed. 

"I'm bored of this new boyfriend issue, I don't even understand what the hell you're talking about!" You whined as you did as he said and pulled your leg despite the sharp pain. You actually did have an idea of what he was angry at, but it was so dumb, you didn't even want to think he was jealous of a guy you talked to for 5 minutes tops.

"Ah, fuck." You moved your now fee leg, brows furrowing when you felt a sharp stab of pain. "I think I injured it."

"I'll take you back to the hotel." Bakugou sighed, sitting on the floor to untie his snowboard as well. "Can you walk?"

"I'm not sure." You answered honestly. It hurt a lot to walk in unpressed snow since it was already hard to walk in it without being injured. "Okay, wait a second." He stood up, leaning towards you. "Bakugou what are- oh." You stood still as he snaked his arms beneath your leg and back, pulling you to himself and lifting you to his chest. 

"I'm willing to bet you won't be able to walk." He huffed, his warm breath touching your neck. "Yeah, but are you sure you'll be able to carry me all the way to the hotel?"

You smiled when he quirked a brow at you as if to ask, are you challenging me?"

"Who do you think you're talking to?" He smirked proudly. "Are you okay? Comfortable? Is your leg okay?" 

"I'm fine, don't worry." You chuckled, leaning back into him and relaxing between his arms. It felt nice to be in his hold. "Let's go, quick, since I'm sure my new boyfriend's very worried too." You teased, your words bringing his movements to a halt. 

"I won't have mercy and drop you face into the snow." He growled, but you grinned cheekily. "No, you won't."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Hm," you nuzzled to him, you could hear his quickening heartbeats. "I think you like me a bit too much for that." You muttered, feeling braver than you probably should, trying to hide your nervousness with a smile. 

"Well, maybe I do." He whispered, his eyes locked on your lips. "But I have another way to get back at him."

"And what's that?"

"I can kiss you, you know. Make him as jealous as I've been feeling this whole day."

You leaned towards him as well. "I'm not complaining." You smiled, closing the gap between your lips and smiling into the kiss. Bakugou could feel the warmth of the kiss spreading to his chest. 

[rainbowmatic-stumpomatic]

*you're sitting alone in your room, maybe you're working on something for school or job, or maybe you should be listening to music and doing a hobby. Maybe you're even just staring at one of the your walls where you swear the previous night a whole had opened up and the eyes of millions appeared in the darkness.

whatever you're doing you notice a radio somewhere in the room which is funny since you don't want to re-do it like that and even if you do the one you have doesn't look like that. Slowly the radio begins to crackle to life and something clicks in your mind, drawing you in as you hear voices pipe up from the speakers*

Dallon Weekes: hello listeners my name is [REDACTED] but you can call me Dallon Weekes, and I'm here with a new co-host why not introduce yourself

Ryan Seaman: uh, right. I'm um... I'm [REDACTED] oh that's right you can't hear that.... Okay then I'm Ryan Seaman and I'll be the co-host with Dallon for now on here on I Don't Know How Radio

*there is the sound of scuffling and quiet mumbles but sounding like a chorus of voices regardless, your unnerved by this that you still listen intently as a state secrets were being told*

Dallon Weekes: tonight hearing Cain the sky is clearing the star shine like glitter on your old kindergarten project when your teacher made you make constellations. Not sure if anyone remembers Tak four-nine-eight but if you do that means you were in my grade and well maybe we should have told miss Kravitz about what Austin Brown was doing when he went outside the next day

I'm sure some of you may be wondering where [REDACTED] is but rest assured that he is fine. The boss and him disagreed on something and well he's no longer at the radio station at all. You can still find them of course down at the old Cafe near the cemetery to be exact, our Westside cemetery the please don't bring up the radio station. my boss informed me that if you do then his head will explode, which I'm sure just means you're giving me migraine but it would be a shame if you had to trouble the new young couple who moved in to clean it up!

Oh well listen to me going on and on, why did I give Ryan a shot at talking? remember everyone know mean letter sent to the station or else we will find you and I'm sure mr. When's wouldn't have a problem with me asking if I could borrow Bowie for a bit has anyone seen him lately? Such a lovely dog! He's growing again now he's roughly at nine feet and a second head is finally opened its eyes!

*the feed is cut suddenly whatever trance you were in his interrupted but what sounds like screams there static but just as fast as you were throwing your caught again as a radio host coughs*

Dallon Weekes: aha, my apologies, went off topic there. Go ahead Ryan

Ryan Seaman: um, thanks Dallon... So the... The weather this week has been pretty hectic right? I hate to be the cleaners with all those fish and frogs being dropped from the clouds today.... Wait wha.... What that's...that isn't normal

Dallon Weekes: of course it isn't Ryan! that's why you're telling the weather report, to report the strange weather

Ryan Seaman: oh, yeah I guess. right so like I said fish and frogs are raining from the clouds today around seven and didn't stop until ten-thirty. The cleaners had their hands full today because night school got out early-wait night school? What did they get out at-

Dallon Weekes: Ryan focus please

Ryan Seaman: the students are snatching up frogs and throwing them at each other, apparently when frogs make impact they pop into little green cotton balls. Who knew right, you think they were full of blood and guts but apparently these were special cloud frogs

*you notice Ryan son and mechanical then, as if a robot had taken his place momentarily. There is a static again though faint music is heard through it almost like a soft music box with its metallic notes*

Dallon Weekes: that was only had for the weather today, I'd say Ryan too great for his first time wouldn't you all? Anyway on to the news! We've got quite the interesting plethora today folks; like Ryan said some night school students thought it would be fun to throw frogs at each other like water balloons but instead of Gore like one might expect cotton balls dyed neon green fell to the streets. several students have now made themselves Cotton bowl rabbit pets and animal control is scratching their head as to whether they can detain these creatures and if they can even be classified as animals

next we have Cain's annual town meeting and I hope all of you will be willing to come seeing as how it's not only a welcome to Ryan but also to discuss what to do about the town hall infestation. I don't know about you all but the thought of skeletons just walking about is a bit unnerving to me especially since I'd rather not have to awkwardly handsome and back their arm if it falls off. the mayor thinks maybe we could use the old Craven estate to house them until they can find places for themselves, which I think is a nice idea but we have to make sure the floors were secure no one likes following through.

Ryan Seaman: skeletons are just piles of bones though they can't move on their own

Dallon Weekes: *laughs* well of course Ryan! that's why they're ghosts are possessing their skeletons, come on, everyone knows that kind of logic. but Ryan makes a good point if we do decide to send them to the Craven estate I ask all of you here and Cain to please participate and make sure none of them are injured and reduce the piles of bones-oh? Hang on...well hello! We've got a c aller! A little early I admit but alrighty. Hey Ryan, why don't you take it?

Ryan Seaman: yeah okay *a phone line clicks* hey, you're on the air

A female voice, young and probably in middle school: hi I know this is really early for the caller segment- oh and um, welcome to Cain! I think you're doing a really great job so far. anyway I don't know how long you've been here, but there's the cemetery south of town where some of us go to the library nearby and the zombie guy is back

Ryan Seaman: oh uh- first thanks for the compliment but I haven't been in Cain long...I think... so what zombie guy? Oh and who's calling

The caller: my name is Jenna,Jenna Wilkins. I don't know the zombie guys name, I can tell you his hair is green though and he has white eyes. Dallon did a segment on him last week weren't you liste-

Dallon Weekes: thank you for calling it another sighting, Jenna! It is very much appreciated. Can you please tell us what the zombies up to?

Jenna: oh, yeah sure. He's uh.... Well he's just walking like he always is. I mean he waved to me and my friend when we were leaving the library but he's not doing much like always

Dallon Weekes: well it's nice to know he's so friendly! Thank you again for calling in another sighting, Jenna, I hope you have a nice day

Jenna: wait but-

*the call is disconnected is a heavy sigh that clearly means irritation followed by slightly feared whimpering but not from the sigher*

Dallon Weekes: how about we do our caller segment now? however I'm going to put a rule down, don't ask Ryan questions about how long he's been in town. That's quite rude of all of you so I ask that you respect my rule. Ryan I think we have another caller, line four?

Ryan Seaman: hi, you're on the air

The caller: hey Jay Rockport. I don't know what that Jenna girl was talking about but uh, the zombie guy was just outside my work? He always stares about this one window of this abandoned apartment. there's a priest who always hangs around outside there too but the zombie kid just takes off running-and I mean it when I say running, we're lucky he doesn't try biting anyone

Ryan Seaman: but that's kind of impossible don't you think Mr. Rockport? Zombies can't teleport-wait zombies aren't even-

*again there's an explosion of static that makes you jump, what the hell just happened? it doesn't make any sense what you're seeing but the radio looks as if it's glitching and turning into mist all at once. In a hurried tone, you hear the first host again*

Dallon Weekes: thank you all for tuning in! I'm afraid we have to cut the segment short too many callers are causing our signals to ah-malfunction! Yes, a malfunction! tune in tomorrow at the same time as always to hear stories from a town with a modern day Cain

*first you blink, a little confused to be truthful, because what just happened within maybe the last hour? At least it feels like an hour to you. Frowning, you sit up and think you must have just fallen asleep wherever you were. for some reason a part of your mind is telling you to look at a certain area of the room... But for what? There's nothing there, you must just be really tired. So you walk yourself to your room and curl up under the covers, letting sleep slowly blanket you into a dreamless night*

[estrxlar]

The Ghost Of You

13 - A Skilled Opponent

This chapters songs:

Oblivion; Grimes

Drain You; Nirvana

Safari; Tyler The Creator

Reminder I recommend you listen to the songs of chapters while you read, personally I love all of them and think they match! ^^

- K. S. Perspective

Things were going exactly how I expected them to. The first years were dumbfounded by Seijoh's sudden power over them, causing them to stress and yell at each other. But we didn't fear, for Daichi knew how to shut them up. Tadashi and Y/n would let out a squeak every few seconds something exhilarating would occur on the court, scared by the tension between both teams. It was surprising that Y/n had become so friendly with the first years. I'd thought of them as weird the first time I met them.

We had just won the first set, and we were about to win the second as well. It came as a surprise to Takeda what Hinata could do with his jumping skills, therefore I had to do some explaining. But overall, the game was going well.

"Wow, Kageyama is way better than Seijoh's setter," Ennoshita commented as he handed a yellow water bottle to Tanaka, who wiped his forehead with a towel.

"Yeah, and it makes up for the fact that our receives could use some work." Daichi comments, walking towards where most of the players huddled. "You know, we might win this practice game."

Suddenly, Y/n hands him a water bottle, popping into the conversation. "Be careful there, Captain. I wouldn't get too comfortable. That setter there isn't their official."

As if on queue, girls' screams are heard from above in the bleachers. I glance towards the entrance doors: where all of them were looking. There stood a tall brunette guy, waving hello at his fangirls.

At first, all I wondered was how he would change the outcome of the game. But then when I glanced towards Y/n, who was hiding safely behind Kiyoko with wide eyes, I grew curious as to what his intentions were.

"Ah! Oikawa, finally you're here. How's that leg doing?" The coach yells out to him as our team regains their focus on talking to each other. I kept my eyes safely on him, observing his motion.

He held up an 'OK' with his long fingers, grinning at his coach. "Never been better!" His cheerful tone says.

"You should have been here earlier. They brought Kageyama as you asked them to. It's embarrassing for our setter not to show up," The coach scolded. I look towards Tobio, who's making an ugly face at Oikawa.

"Look, I don't know if it's because he has all the girls, but I already hate this guy." Tanaka leaned over my shoulder with his wicked stench.

"Their team captain, huh?" I cross my arms in annoyance, grinding my teeth.

Kageyama nods at me, saying, "yeah, his name is Toru Oikawa. And he's a super offensive setter." Kageyama explained. "Top of his class in attacking and team-play, too. And his attitude is shameful."

"What? Really? Is it worse than yours?" Hinata asks in a surprised tone, Kageyama groaning.

"Worse than four eyes." He responded while Tsukki growled at the conversation.

"Since you know him I'm guessing he went to Kitagawa First as well, right?" Tanaka mentions, wrapping his fingers with bandages. "That must mean Y/n knows him! You think you could give us some advice?"

Y/n froze in her place, wide-eyed and flustered. "Uhm...yes. But we're not close or anything. H-honestly I don't know much about him."

"Doesn't look like it," Daichi quickly taps her shoulder then points to Oikawa who's staring at her with the same expression she made when he walked in. "He's staring right at you."

Something was going on between Oikawa and Y/n, and I was sure I'd get to the bottom of it by tonight.

- Y.L. Perspective

'Great, what a hassle.' I tell myself as Toru and I stare at each other. I wanted nothing but to evaporate into thin air, pretending I was never there. But I knew I couldn't. So, I brush it off as if I wasn't having a heart attack internally, facing my team while they conversed about Oikawa himself.

-

The scoreboard was now 14-15. As nervous as I felt around Oikawa, I was enjoying the game. The determination that each player showed reminded me of how my band and I would act when we were younger and wanted to learn new chords or songs: convinced they could do the best.

And it didn't seem like Oikawa's reputation had changed. Many—many—people had come to watch him play today. I only hoped that my being here wouldn't determine the game overall. A couple more points and our team would be the one to win.

Oikawa is quickly called into the setter position on the court, ready to show off his skills to our team. With mighty power, he threw a power serve to the blocker, Tsukishima, who let the ball ricochet off his hands and into the bleachers above him.

Everybody stood shocked at his serve, glancing at each other with wide eyes. Daichi wove his hand in the air to tell the players to simply brush it off.

"Now I get it. Number 6, and number 5. You two must be first years, your receives are horrible," Oikawa comments from the other side of the net, drawing everybody's attention.

'Looks like you've matured in play style, Oikawa. You're able to land the ball wherever you'd like and trash talk about it after. Same petty boy I remember.'

Every serve Oikawa threw at our players was followed by another point to Seihjo's team. I could do nothing but watch as the boys grew angrier at him and wince at every serve.

Eventually, Hinata became fed up with Oikawa's shitty attitude, yelling "Hey, Great King! Why don't you aim the ball for me instead?! Or are you too scared?!" The team groans at his stupidity to blabber something at him.

"This is embarrassing." Daichi groaned. "Okay, let's fall back as a group. Tsukishima, you stay close to the sideline." Tsukki nods at him, everyone getting into their assigned positions.

"Now, bring it!"

-

"All together!" Daichi called out before the line of players bowed towards the opposite team.

"Thank you for the game!"

After a long and exhausting practice game, we all made out way out of the gym and back to Takeda's van. Everybody felt groggy and icky but pleased with the practice they had gotten from today.

Hinata skipped in front of the groggy players, saying, "That was so nerve recking, but I had so much fun! What did you guys think?!"

"Fun."

"Practice."

"Nice."

Many boring replies are heard from the team, upsetting Hinata. "Nice?! That's all you guys have to say? What did you think, (Y/n)?" He suddenly called out to me, many players looking my way for a response.

"Uhm, yeah. I thought that was pretty fun, way better than sitting at home all afternoon." I rub the back of my neck, uncomfortable by the eyes laid on me.

"Yeah! I thought so too!" He exclaimed and continued skipping. Despite the awkward situations I faced, today was nice and eventful. Happiness rested in my heart, prideful that I had gotten myself out of my comfort zone to do something a part of school.

"You know, to be blunt, we're lacking something vital to play and actually win a real game against the Seijoh team with Oikawa on it," Daichi explains to us before we're stopped at the gate by the one and only.

"Ooh, spoken like a captain," Toru says, smirking at himself while he leaned on the brick wall. I quickly squeezed in between Kiyoko and Ennoshita, hiding from him.

Tanaka scoffs at his oversized ego, taking a few steps towards the brunette as a threat. "What's with you? Looks like you wanna pick a fight!"

"Yeah, what's you're problem~" Hinata crept up from behind him to back his upperclassman up against a strong opponent.

Oikawa doesn't seem to be at all scared by the two of them. "No need to get yourselves worked up! But hey, short stuff," he focuses on Hinata. "That last one-touch and broad jump was pretty ace!"

"R-really," He stood in disbelief from what the guy commented on his volleyball skills. I wouldn't blame him if he felt flattered by his message.

"Yeah! But you know, next time try using full force from the start. You haven't seen our real setup. But don't worry, we'll be practicing serves till then."

'He's right, next time we'll be dealing with his serves the entire game.'

"That combination attack is pretty amazing, but you're gonna run out of steam at some point. You're gonna need better receives. After all, I'm not the only one who does power serves. The inter-highs are coming up and I want you to make the cut. So listen carefully." He points at Kageyama in a dramatic form. "My special protégé, I wanna crush you fair and square at an official game where we both play the setter."

"Well then, we can train to receive!" Hinata said, grabbing onto Tsukishima, who slapped his hand away. 'Wouldnt that mean Koushi won't be able to play? How much is he gonna control on our side without thinking of Sugawara?'

Just as Oikawa began to walk away, he sharply turns, staring at Hinata right in the eye. "Just so you know, receives aren't something you can master overnight. I'm sure your captain can attest to that."

I glance over to the mentioned, observing his angry expression. If he were a cartoon, steam would be flossing out from his ears.

"The tournament is coming up. I look forward to seeing all of your improvement." Oikawa speaks once more in his playful tone,

"Oh, and Y/n, I'll see you around." And with one last smirk, he leaves us all in a crowd of anger.

"Look, don't let him get to you. Agitating others is like a hobby to him." Kageyama told Daichi. But to his surprise, he grinned in eagerness.

"Hah, he's right. There isn't much time until the Inter-high tournament. But luckily, we have someone coming back soon." Tanaka clapped his hands together, leading us all to continue our walk to the bus. "Karasunos Guardian."

-

After a long car ride full of sound asleep teenagers and bumps along the road, we had finally come to a stop at Karasuno high where all of us ran towards the locker rooms to get home as soon as possible. I waited for Sugawara to be done changing in the girl's room where Kiyoko and I hung.

"So, what was with that Oikawa guy? It was so obvious you two have history. Especially after he called you out like that after the game," Kiyoko says, pulling her leggings up to her waist. She continued to get dressed while I sat on a bench with my things packed up.

I shrug, too tired to respond fully. "Honestly, I'd rather not even say anything until I discuss it with him. Let's just say he started some drama a few months back. It began this whole fight between a few of my best friends and ruined my relationship with him."

"And that relationship was..?"

"Just friends. But he wanted more, that's what caused everything." I groan, feeling agony in my feet. The number of times I stood up in excitement during the game was painful. I look to Kiyoko who is fully dressed and ready for take-off.

She closed her locker and walked towards me to ruffle my hair. "Careful! You'll make a mess of it.." I quickly pat down my hair.

The two of us leave the building and head towards the gym where the rest of the team said their goodbyes to each other, each of them slowly pulling away in groups to walk home.

As Kiyoko bid me farewell, Sugawara crept up behind me, tapping my shoulder lightly. I quickly turn to face him in pleasure that he had arrived at my side. But I hasn't expected for him to seem so worried. "Hey, can we talk?"

-

Ty for reading :)) I hope you have a good night or day, whichever one. Love you! Don't forget to vote! <3

- estrxlar

[musicoccurred]

Mixtapes

The mixtape, a word that is dependent on who's using it and when. I'm middle-aged and came up in the 80s and 90s so it means something different to me than a kid today or a band camp rapper. Having said that, let's take a look at the different usages of mixtape and see if we can crown a winner of the top type of mixtape.

For those of us with achy knees and patches of gray in our hair, a mixtape was, first and foremost, actually on a tape. Now there were themes involved just as there are now with some of the others I'll mention in a bit. For instance, every Sunday there was Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 radio show. I would often drop a blank cassette in my boom box and hit record. I would then go watch TV in the living room and keep an ear out for the telltale 'click' of the tape running out. I'd run back to my room, flip the tape, and hit record again. You have to understand, before the internet, geez that never not sounds old, the radio ruled. Even with albums, cassettes, and later CDs you still listened to the radio all the time. That's why I love XM so much, there's something about having someone curate music for you. And even today with every song available at the tap of a finger there's something awesome when your jam comes on the radio. It just hits different. I digress. So now at the end of the countdown you have the top 40 songs of the week, or however many you had enough tapes for... You can now make a mixtape of your favorite tracks. Radio also had "Request and Dedication" shows where you could call in and request a song and give a little dedication to your amore. You could record that and toss it at the beginning of the mixtape and good things happen. Another type would be artist specific. Say you were a Michael Jackson fan, you could take Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad and make a tape of your favorite songs from each. Another would be genre, when I was first getting into blues and jazz, I'd borrow tapes from my Mom and friends to make mix tapes. And last but not least, the mixtape for your love interest. These were the ultimate, you'd diligently record songs from the radio and mix in a song or two from either an artist she didn't know or an obscure song from a known artist to show you were a deep brother. You weren't done yet! You'd then work hard on the label and of course the note to go along with those 10 songs that perfectly sum up your feelings for that person. On a side note, I'd like to take this opportunity to say if you were the object of my unrequited affection and received one of these, I apologize. Unless you liked it, then, hey girl.

Next up we have the burned CD mixtape. It is the evolutionary cousin to the cassette mixtape. While it took a while for CD burners to become ubiquitous, they eventually showed up, primarily in PCs. What was lost in recording from the radio was picked up by being able to download from Napster and pass along. Additionally, you could write or draw on the CD itself and the labels, if you went that route, were larger for track listing and any other info you wanted to toss in there.

Now we're moving on to the streaming portion of the discussion:

Note: I'm using playlist and mixtape interchangeably here.

One step removed from the burned CD and what seems lightyears beyond the cassette technologically is the custom, personally curated playlist. This can be a playlist you do for yourself; I have several in Spotify. I will sometimes dump an entire artist's collection in there to shuffle, or perhaps include only the tracks I like best. I also have one for jazz and one for funk called 'greasy.' But in the spirit of this piece, I'm thinking of a playlist that you create for someone else and share the link with them. I actually like this, not only can you send them a custom mix of songs that can express how you feel about them, but you can update the playlist anytime. It can be romantic or simply sharing new tunes with a homie.

Next, we have the algorithmically created playlist. When you sign in Spotify (I'm assuming other services offer similar features) and you get the daily list or the multiple "just for you" selections, this is what I'm referring to. Spotify uses the data from your listening habits to create playlists with songs from artists they think you'll like. It's pretty accurate with a few swings and misses. I have to say I'm a fan of including these playlists as well as listing other artists similar to the one you're listening to. I've discovered so many new bands this way. Alternatively, there are playlists that are created based on other factors. I work out with playlists on Spotify and XM such as Hip hop workout or Lithium Workout. These are likely created based on a beats per minute count. Some don't really fit the workout but have a faster beat. Overall, I like this style of mixtape/playlist.

Finally, we have the artist mixtape. This is generally hip hop but isn't necessarily limited to any specific genre. I relate it to an EP being released prior to an LP back in the day. Some of these have very rapid turnarounds, like a day or two so sometimes the quality of the mix isn't that great but topically it's right on time.

So how do these rank in terms of which mixtape format is best? Let's find out!

5. Artist Mixtape - This may be one of those "not for you" cases but I'm not a fan of most of these I've heard. Some are pretty good, but most feel rushed or worse, don't have a cohesive feel to the tracks. The ability for artists to drop tracks near instantly is pretty amazing and I do like the idea of it. We'll see how that continues to develop.

4. Algorithmically created playlist - While I use these pretty much every single day, they lack the human touch - hello, algorithm - which is what makes the mixtape great.

3. Burned CD - I probably surprised you here with this at number 3. I do think it has a lot of strengths and is still a physical object that gives the human touch. But there were some issues. If you're old enough to have gone through the burned CD era, you'll know the pain of burning a CD for it to simply not work. Sometimes the person you gave it to had a CD player that wouldn't play those or you needed a CD -R or +R or RW, it was awful.

2. Personally curated playlist - While fully digital and not that personal this does have the ability to add and remove songs as you go. Plus, when you email the link to the person you can toss in a nice note about how you thought about them when making it.

1. Cassette - I mean come on, it's called a mixTAPE right? Clear winner here. Yeah, I'm old but there was something about it.

Epilogue:

I listen to either streaming music or records. I'm resisting the urge to get back into cassettes even though I have a couple decks and tapes. My cassette collection didn't survive growing up. Honestly, I have no idea where they went. I still have my CDs but before I would play a CD, I would stream it. There's something human about playing a record or a cassette. We are a touching, feeling creature and it means something to flip that tape over or to hold the liner notes on a record. I think that's lost on the younger folks. As everything is digitized and available on a screen it loses some of its meaning. I like buying concert tickets online but man, there's something about lining up at Macy's or JC Penney's or wherever your ticket office was and buying a physical ticket they handed you. When I have the option, even if it's a couple bucks more I still try to get physical tickets. In 20 years, I can look at that stub and remember the show, I can't do that with a barcode on an app.

What's your favorite format or mixtape/playlist?

-js