#but it makes me so happy to see real scientists and students find joy in this silly little blog

[hellsitegenetics]

Hi, This is sooo so very cool, I’m in the middle of my final exams right now and every so often I forget why I love biology, and chemistry and then I think dammit I should have just picked languages as my high level courses. But whenever I see your blog, I am reminded of why I want to study biochemistry. It’s just so insanely cool. Anyways, you don’t have to answer, but I just wanted to let you know. Many thanks!!!!

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Closest match: Globicephala melas genome assembly, chromosome: 19 Common name: Long-finned pilot whale (dolphin)

[mycatshuman]

Wrapped Up In A Rom Com

Chapter 3: Mom?!?!?!?

🏳️‍🌈 First off, happy pride month. Second, yeah I know it's been months. And I've had this in my draft for months. I'm sorry. Honestly, I've been watching a lot of the Dreamsmp and playing games on my phone and preparing for graduation. So yeah. I'll try to get back to writing but I cant promise anything.

Warnings: some swearing, mentions of leeches used as a medical practice, let me know if I missed any

Last | Next | More

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"There it is." Roman's eyes lit up as he saw the temporary house that had been set up for the group of archeologists to live in as they excavated the site. Virgil smiled slightly. Roman looked really pretty in that moment that he wasn't even going to try and deny that he was looking. He dragged his eyes away from the mummy and sighed. "Now we just have to get inside." 

The pair moved up the stairs and Virgil pulled out his key and unlocked the door. "Now, try to stay quiet. Everyone's asleep and I don't know if I'm ready to try to explain this." Virgil paused. "Hell, I don't think I'll ever be ready to explain this to anyone." Virgil and Roman quietly stepped into the house and closed the door behind them. "Sorry, it's a little dark so bear with me." 

Suddenly, with a click, a lamp flared on across from them. The two froze. Virgil looked over and pulled in a hiss through his teeth. His boss sat there in an old armchair, his arms crossed and his mouth pulled down in a frown. "Where have you been?" 

Virgil's eyes shoot down to the floor. "Uhhhhh." Roman looked back and forth between the two, confusion evident on his face. Virgil attempted to inch his way to his room only to crumble to the floor as he put pressure on his injured ankle. 

"Virgil!" Roman dropped to his knees to help catch the other as the other man surged to his feet and rushed to their aid. Roman held Virgil up as the other man kneeled before them. 

"What did you do?" The man asked. 

Virgil winced. "I fell." 

The man paused and raised an eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"

Virgil bit his lip. "Uh, no. I don't think I do care to elaborate, Logan." 

Logan rolled his eyes. "You are ridiculous." 

Virgil forced a grin that was really more of a grimace. "What happened is even more ridiculous and you wouldn't believe me so…"

Logan leaned forward and pulled off Virgil's shoe and began to unwrap his ankle to take a look at the injury. "Maybe you shouldn't assume whether or not I would believe you." 

"Alright, I went for a walk and fell through the hole of a tomb that is practically completely untouched and I found the burial chamber and then the mummy came to life and now he's here." 

Logan paused in his attendance to Virgil's ankle. "You're right, I don't believe you." 

Virgil groaned. "Come on, Logan! Look at him, he's real. He was a mummy not even five hours ago!" 

Logan huffed. "Honestly, Virgil. That is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard." 

"But it's true!" 

"He's right, I am a mummy, er, I was a mummy."

"I'm offended. Seriously, if you were going to try and fool me you could at least get a convincing actor."

Roman gasped, outraged. "Excuse you! But I am an absolutely amazing actor!" 

"It's not a prank!" 

Roman quickly pulled out a statue of himself he had grabbed from his tomb. "Look!" He shoved the statue into Logan's face, nearly knocking the others glasses off. 

Logan rolled his eyes but took the statue to look at it better. As he adjusted his glasses, he studied the statue before looking up at Roman. "You do look a little similar but that doesn't prove anything. All it proves is you look similar to him." He inspected the statue some more. He frowned. "This is in incredibly good condition." He glanced at Roman suspiciously. "Did you fake this?" 

Virgil groaned and let his head fall back into Roman's chest and whatever Roman was about to respond with just vaporized as his brain short circuited. Guy on chest. Guy on chest. Guy on chest! 

"Logan, why can't you just believe me? Why would I make this up? Why would I sit here and make a fool of myself in front of you?" Virgil sighed and ran a hand down his face. "Whatever." He attempted to drag himself up only for Logan to stop him. 

"Hey, no. I still have to check your ankle." 

The room went silent as Logan checked Virgil's ankle. Roman watched on with curiosity.  

"It's still swollen. Maybe you need to get some leeches." 

Virgil went rigid and Logan froze. "I'm sorry, What?" 

"Wait, do you not use leeches anymore?"

Virgil's nose scrunched in disgust. "No! We've long since moved past that." He shook his head. "I don't even want to begin to think of what else you might possibly suggest for medical problems." 

Logan went quiet as he quickly finished inspecting Virgil's ankle and stood up to go grab an ice pack. The archeologist student frowned. His boss was being uncharacteristically silent. Something was up. When the other came back, he kneeled once again and gently pressed the ice to the ankle. Virgil bent forward and held the pack in place as Logan sat back. 

"I-" The other began before closing their mouth again. Virgil watched Logan hesitantly as Roman poked at the ice pack. 

"It's cold!" The mummy exclaimed. 

Logan shook his head."I-" he sighed. "Virgil, I hope you understand how hard it is for me to grasp this or even entertain the possibility of this. But maybe this is real. But, we're going to have to do tests." 

"Tests?" Roman asked as his attention shot up to look at the other. 

Logan nodded. "Yes, to see if I can find any bit of evidence to support your claims." 

"Great, now can I please go to bed, I'm fucking exhausted." 

"Of course, I'll see you in the morning." 

Logan left and Roman and Virgil were alone once again. The latter huffed before pulling himself up and began limping up the stairs. "Come on, I have a second bed in my room. You can sleep there." Together, they went up to the second floor and down the hall until they reached another flight of stairs. "I'm suddenly regretting choosing the attic as my room," Virgil complained. 

Roman followed, eyes wide as he took in the walls around him. It was so different from what he was used to. And that was exciting. But the hallways were nothing compared to Virgil's room. Inside, he found a desk against one wall and two beds. On the desk there was this strange rectangular silver thing that sat flat against the desk and a small container with small tube-like objects sticking out of it. Next to it, a pad of sorts sat. Roman was so absolutely excited to find out what all of these new objects were. It would be his greatest adventure yet. He just knew it!

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Virgil dropped his bag by the door as he limped over to his bed and fell face first into the blankets. Roman yelped. "Don't do that! You'll hurt yourself!" 

Virgil lifted his head up, confusion spread across his face. "What?" He asked before he remembered what the ancient Egyptians used to sleep on. He let out a laugh. "Oh no! These are soft. There's a bedframe, which would be similar to what you used to sleep on but we added a mattress that's soft and it's better for our bones." The archeologist pushed himself up and patted the bed. "Come on, see for yourself." 

Roman set his basket done on the floor and walked over to the other bed curiously. Virgil watched on with amusement. Quickly, the mummy quickly poked the mattress as if it would bite him if he let his finger linger on the object for any longer. 

Virgil laughed lightly. "Don't worry, it won't bite." 

Roman stuck his tongue out at the other before turning back to the bed once more. He reached forward slowly and pushed his hand into the mattress. Sparkles sprung up in his eyes as he felt the soft blankets. Carefully, he climbed up into the bed noting the lack of pain on his skin that used to come with the bed he once slept in before he died. Tentatively, he bounced. Laughter bubbled up out of his mouth and he looked over at Virgil. 

The emo's breath caught in his throat as he caught sight of the Pharaoh's eyes. His dark eyes were overflowing with joy and wonder. He had never seen anything so beautiful. He watched in awe as Roman began bouncing gleefully on his bed, giggles bubbling out into the room. Virgil smiled softly and laid down, perfectly content with watching the greatest treasure from Roman's tomb as he experienced pure joy for the first time in thousands of years. 

-------------

If last night was anxiety inducing, it was nothing compared to this morning. While being caught by Logan was unpredictable as his reactions could range from Disappointed Mom™️ to Unhinged Scientist™️, it was nothing compared to how the resident Dad would react. The resident Dad was none other than Patton Crofters, the polar opposite to his husband Logan. He had met both of them in college. Dr. Logan Crofters had been his Archeological professor. He had often stressed his disdain for puns so when Virgil first met Patton, he nearly choked to death when the other introduced himself with a pun. That was when Virgil learned that his professor hated puns except for when his husband made them. 

The three had grown close, Patton having proclaimed he was his godfather now. It was an interesting friendship. When the two asked if he wanted to join them on their archeological dig that summer, he had jumped at the chance. He quickly learned that Home Dad Patton was different from Archeological Dig Dad Patton. 

Archeological Dig Dad Patton was stricter than at home. He popped up next to Virgil nearly every hour with sunscreen to coat him in and a bottle of water and a snack. He also made sure that Virgil was being very careful when handling anything that could result in him getting hurt if he wasn't careful. Of course Patton was always like that but when at the dig site, Patton was scarily so. And Patton didn't hold back with swear words. Virgil remembered the first time Logan had denied Patton with sunscreen saying that he was busy. Patton had huffed and responded with "Logan Crofters. Stand up right now and put on the fucking sunscreen!" He wasn't sure he had ever seen Logan move so fast. 

Virgil had seen what Patton does when upset with someone and it was harsh. He remembered Logan coming into class one day extremely sad because he had upset Patton and his husband had denied any kisses. Needless to say, Virgil was terrified to see what Patton would say after learning about last night. 

After waking up that morning, he had just laid in bed and stared at the ceiling silently contemplating whether or not hiding under the bed was a good idea as Roman continued to sleep in the bed beside him. And when Roman woke up around an hour later, he was still laying there. 

-------

Roman yawned and stretched his arms as he woke up. Sunlight streamed in through a gap in the curtain. He sat there for a few moments after waking up. The bed was absolutely unbelievable! He had never slept so good! It was so soft and supported his body in a way his old bed never could. If he had had any doubts about living in the future, they were long gone now. Then again, how could anyone have any doubts about the future if there was such a gorgeous man as Virgil to help him adjust to the new century. Speaking of Virgil….

Roman turned to look at the bed beside him to find Virgil already awake. "Virgil!" Roman exclaimed, voice bright as he smiled at the other. "Good morning!" 

Virgil did not move. Instead he continued to stare at the ceiling. "How can it be a good morning? Patton is going to kill me when he finds out about last night." 

Roman's smile twisted into a confused frown. "Patton? Who's Patton?" 

Virgil sighed. "Patton is Logan's husband and resident Dad. Once he finds out I went off on my own AND got hurt, he's probably going to look at me disappointedly and I can not deal with that right now." He pushed himself up only to hiss as pain shot up his ankle. 

Roman's eyebrows shot up into his styled bangs and he quickly hopped out of his bed, rushing to Virgil's side. 

"Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?" 

You could carry me to the kitchen, Virgil's mind unhelpfully supplied. He shook his head. No, that is not happening. Pull yourself together, Virgil. "No, I got it." He grimaced as he pushed himself up onto his hands to slide his legs over the side of the bed. Roman watched on anxiously, his hands hovering in the air between them as if awaiting the chance to help the emo. Virgil looked down at his ankle and sucked in a breath through his teeth. "That doesn't look good." 

Roman followed the others gaze down to his ankle and winced in sympathy. Virgil's ankle had swollen up again through the night turning it a nice shade of red as a purple bruise stretched across the skin covering the ankle bone. "Are you sure you don't need any help," Roman asked once again. "That looks pretty bad." 

"No, I'm sure it's not as bad as it looks." Virgil bit his lip and stood up to prove his point...only to yelp loudly as the pressure caused a strong jolt of pain to shoot up his leg. 

"Yeah, I think you should let me help you." Virgil opened his mouth to argue only to freeze. Roman frowned as he heard thumping. "What was that?" The sound quickly became increasingly louder. 

"Oh shi-" 

"Virgil!!!!! Are you okay?!?!?" The door burst open and a man stood there in dark brown pants with an abundance of pockets, a light blue, loose, cotton shirt and round glasses framing warm hazel eyes. The man's face was scrunched up in worry  as their eyes bounced around the room for any immediate signs of danger. Then they landed on Virgil and Roman. The two men remained frozen as the man panted from his run up two flights of stairs. He glanced between the two before his eyes narrowed in on Roman. "Virgil, who is this?" Asked Patton. 

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[depressedhatakekakashi]

My Entry for the @konoblog-simps College Au event. I had to write this after moving to my new place with little to no actual wifi and most of it was done on my phone so...ya, that was fun lol.

Characters: Hatake Kakashi, Anko, Maito Gai, Uchiha Obito, Nohara Rin, Genma.

AO3

Tags: College au

Word count: 2791

Summary: Hatake Kakashi is a genius. Top of his class in every subject, he rarely ever has to put effort into his assignments, and as a rule he doesn't. Except when it comes to Photography.

Special thanks: @saudade-mayari and @punk-pandame for help me out by Betaing the fic i had to write on my phone mostly.

Biology had never been one of Kakashi’s favourite subjects. It was tedious, boring and had little to offer that challenged him in a meaningful way. Of course, that could be said about most of the classes that he took, but today’s problem was biology.

He’d deal with the other classes when he had to sit in them listening to the professor drone on about a boring lab that involved little to no actual skill and could just as easily be done on a computer. There were so many more interesting things he could be doing with this time.

Things he could be learning without having to cut open a frog just to get a good look at its insides.

“Alright!” Hearing Anko’s cheerful voice, Kakashi directed his gaze towards her. The only thing that could be expected when Anko was happy about something, was danger. It was what Anko lived for. The thing that gave her life, and today was no exception judging by the gleeful look in her eyes. “Let’s see what’s hidden inside of you.”

How she could have so much fun with something as simple as a dissection, Kakashi would never know. Though, at least she could find some enjoyment in a class that offered nothing but boredom for him and many others. So much fun that even when she started to cut into the poor frog’s exposed belly, there was still a giant grin on her face. An expression that made her look a little mad, in his opinion.

One that he couldn’t help but feel the urge to photograph.

Forgetting about the task at hand, he reached down to grab the messenger bag that he had set down beside his stool upon taking his seat and quickly dug out his digital camera. A small, simple camera that he had bought specifically for his photography class. Not a purchase that he had been expecting to make when he decided what subjects he wanted to take this semester, but easily the best purchase he had made. No 30,000 Yen textbook could ever hope to compare to the beauty of this camera.

Switching the camera on, he peered through the viewfinder and waited for the lens to come into focus. Just as he pressed the shutter button, successfully capturing a photo, Anko threw her head back and cackled. Even without looking at the LCD Display to see the picture that he had captured, Kakashi could already tell that it was perfect. With a look of maniacal glee on her face, Anko painted a delightful picture of the perfect Biology student. Someone who could find excitement in even the most mundane task set in front of them.

If anyone ever asked Kakashi to choose one picture to show people what a mad scientist would look like in real life, he would have to choose this one. There wasn’t a soul in the world who had ‘mad scientist’ down quite as perfectly as Anko, and if Biology class was good for anything it was showing just how much joy the woman got from things that would disgust or bore any other human.

“Mr. Hatake,” dragging his eyes off of his camera, Kakashi cringed when he saw Professor Orochimaru standing there glaring at him with that same unimpressed look he always had when he was speaking to Kakashi. “I think it would be best if you paid attention to the task at hand, rather than sneaking photographs of your classmates. Don’t you?”

Biting his tongue, Kakashi tucked the camera away in his bag and set it down beside his chair once more. It was best not to get into an argument that he was unlikely to win, even if returning his gaze to the poor frog laying on the table in front of him did drain all of the excitement he had been feeling just a second ago while holding his camera.

“Hey,” lifting his eyes, he watched as Anko leaned over the desk. That same joyful smile that she had been wearing while dissecting her frog was still plastered on her face. “You’ll show me the picture after class, right? I want to make sure I look perfectly terrifying in whatever picture you’re about to print off of me.”

Terrifying. That was certainly one way to describe her.

“I’ll show you after class,” he promised, giving her a playful wink. “Just try not to make a mess while you’re having fun.”

His comment was met with a laugh. “No promises.”

-----------------------------------------------

After a long day of classes, it was always nice to head out to his favorite café and get a nice cup of hot chocolate. An hour to relax before he started working on assignments, or headed to his part-time job at the university's campus bar.

Just some time to recharge after a long day of being bored out of his mind from monotone professors and lessons they always swore would require everyone's full attention to be understood, but never really did.

Today, he was not getting that time alone he usually needed so badly. Instead, he was sitting at a table with his three best friends, and the three loudest people in all of Konoha University.

Nohara Rin, beautiful and kind but with a voice that could not be missed by anyone. A trait she had picked up from spending so much time with Obito, no doubt.

Speaking of whom: Uchiha Obito. The second loudest student in all of Konoha University and possibly the world. Brash, knuckle-headed and dumber than a sack of rocks some days.

Ok, most days but Kakashi liked to give him the benefit of the doubt sometimes.

And then there was Maito Gai. Sweet, handsome, and always bursting with energy. The only person who was louder than Obito, and he made sure to leave no questions about that fact whenever he spoke.

How Kakashi had ended up with these three as friends he would never know, but he also wouldn't change it for the world. Even if his ears were ringing after five minutes with all three of them.

"How can you even say that?" Obito threw a hand over his heart in one of the most dramatic displays of horror Kakashi had ever seen. "Nutritional science? Better than theatre? Lies! Utter lies!"

"Maybe in your mind," Rin responded with a roll of her eyes. “Not everyone thinks Theater is the best thing ever invented since Dango.”

Gai wasn't so calm about Obito's response though. Not one to be outdone, he threw his hands down on the table and stood up in his spot so that he was staring Obito down. "At least Nutritional sciences can be used to help people," he defended his class with the same fiery passion that he showed with everything he did. “You're just learning to put on a show, which I'm convinced is a blood trait already for the Uchiha."

Kakashi couldn't find it in him to argue with that. Obito may be one of the most dramatic people he knew, but when it came to the Uchiha he was hardly the only one. Most days Shisui could give Obito a run for his money when it came to dramatic flare.

A fact Obito always got upset with him for pointing out.

"Kakashi, back me up here," Gai turned to look at him with soft black eyes that Kakashi would happily get lost in for the rest of the day. "His major is just...it doesn't serve a purpose."

"Someone has to be entertaining in this world, beast face," Obito protested. "And what's Kakashi going to say? His major is so boring he looks like he's going to fall asleep in class all the time."

"That's not wrong," glancing towards Rin, Kakashi jutted out his bottom lip to form the most pathetic pout that he could. "What? It's true! Today in biology you took a picture of Anko instead of doing the assignment."

Sometimes he forgot that he shared classes with Rin, but she always found a way to remind him, which wouldn't be nearly as bad if she didn't call him out on being a lazy shit like that in front of Gai.

"Kakashi, are you ignoring class again for photography?"

There was a disappointment in Gai's voice that he couldn’t stand hearing. As if he was about to be scolded for his life choices when he would much rather listen to Gai talk about how amazing he was.

But since he was now clearly upset with him thanks to Rin, there was only one option left to get him off of his back.

“I believe you were talking about how Obito's major isn't nearly as useful as yours," he offered, sticking his tongue out towards Obito when he immediately started to scold Kakashi for turning the conversation away from his own inability to focus in class.

"Well, yes-" watching as Gai turned his attention back to the conversation, immediately picking up where he had left off as if there had been no interruption, Kakashi couldn't help but reach into his backpack and pull out his camera.

Did he really need a picture of the moment that Obito stuck a finger out and poked Gai in the nose while desperately defending his major?

Yes. He did. Not only would it go well with the project, but the look of annoyance on Gai's face was priceless.

Definitely a picture worth putting in his personal photo album.

"I told you," turning his camera towards Rin, Kakashi snapped another picture just as she stuck her tongue out at him. "Tell me I look pretty in it."

Peering down at the image display, Kakashi smiled softly. "Absolutely stunning."

----------------------------------------------------------------

There was a process that Kakashi had when it came to choosing the perfect pictures for his project. First, he would go through his camera roll and make a mental note of all of the best pictures he could find. Next, he would transfer everything onto his laptop and then move the pictures he wanted into a folder for printing.

After getting the selected pictures printed, he would sit down at the small desk in his dorm room and organize them into the perfect design for his project. Whatever pictures ended up not fitting, would ultimately go into the small photo album that he kept under his desk. A book of personal favorites that he would look at on those really bad mental health days where he just needed something to make him smile. Even just for a moment.

It was a long process, but there was a reason he had never gotten anything less than a ninety on any of his photography projects.

Not that he really ever did poorly on any of his assignments. He actually did quite well on all of his lab assignments for biology and chemistry, even if he had a bad habit of not paying attention. It was probably the main reason his professors didn’t like him all that much.

“Still working on that, huh?” Glaring over at his roommate’s bed, he watched as the brunette stared back at him from over top his business textbook. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you put even half of this amount of effort into any of your other assignments, and I’m pretty sure those ones actually matter for your major.”

It was a true fact, just not one he wanted to hear.

He caught enough shit from Rin and Gai about his less than enthusiastic approach to his major.

“Don’t you have a small business to start up?” He huffed, turning his attention back down to the assignment in front of him. “Or did it go bankrupt already?”

“My business going bankrupt is as likely to happen as you actually telling Gai you have a crush on him,” Turning in his spot once again, Kakashi opened his mouth to argue against Genma’s frankly insulting assumption, only to find himself facing down a glare that could rival Rin’s angry look. “Don’t you dare try to lie to me, Hatake. Anyone can tell you have a crush on Gai.”

It wasn’t fair.

He wasn’t that obvious about it, was he?

“But that’s not what we’re talking about here, is it?” Genma continued. “We’re talking about your work ethic when it comes to assignments, and the fact that you’d rather put all of your efforts into the assignments for the one class that holds no value to your major.”

It was rather rude, Kakashi thought. First Genma called him out on his little crush, and then he turned around and scolded him for wanting to work on his photography assignment. Just because it didn’t hold any weight for his degree didn’t mean he shouldn’t put effort into it.

“Science is…” ‘Boring’ lingered on the tip of his tongue, but it wasn’t quite the word he was looking for. He actually loved Science, and had chosen the major hoping to explore a few different options after getting his degree. “Well, I love Science. Biology is interesting, Chemistry is a blast,” sometimes literally, if Anko was in the class with him. “And don’t get me started on Environmental sciences. I love it to bits. It’s just…the professors.”

There it was. The explanation he had been searching for.

The classes weren’t boring if they were being taught by the right people. Professor Uzumaki always made Astronomy interesting with her grand explanations and detailed outlines that drew his attention in. She never had any complaints about Kakashi not being focused in class. In fact, she had told him on multiple occasions that he was one of her most engaged students.

“Professor Orochimaru make’s biology seem like a chore, and the only thing interesting about Chemistry is watching Anko test the limits of just what can be mixed together without blowing the classroom up.” He was actually surprised she had managed to avoid doing that to date, given just how often she liked to experiment with chemicals. “But Photography is interesting. Professor Namekaze lets us explore things that we like, and the only restriction we have is the assignments due date and the basic premise of what the assignment is.”

This assignment for example.

His professor's words had been on repeat in his mind since monday when they received the assignment, and every picture he had taken since then had been carefully thought out to fit the assignment.

Though, now that he thought a bit more about it, he was missing one picture. Something that would tie the project together perfectly.

“Hey! Are you listening to me, Kakashi?” Picking his camera up off of the desk, he turned in his spot to face Gemma and brought the camera up so that he could peer through the viewfinder just as Genma tossed his book off to the side and started to crawl out of his bed. “Don’t you date-”

It was too late though. As soon as Genma started to reach out towards him in a poor attempt to snatch the camera away, he snapped the picture. The final piece to make the perfect assignment.

There was no way he would get anything less than a ninety-five on this one. The pictures were too perfect.

“Maybe I'll print you out a copy,” he teased, lowering his camera so that he could smile at Gemma. “You could use it for your tinder profile picture. Then at least all the people you bring over would know what they’re getting themselves into.”

The look on Genma’s face spelled trouble. As if Kakashi had just opened Pandora's box and released all of the worst plaques onto the world.

“You know, I have plans to hang out with Gai tomorrow,” Yep, that was definitely the worst punishment for his transgressions. There was no way this could possibly- “I think I’ll tell him about your little crush. How you can never shut up about him, and that dorky smile you get on your face whenever someone mentions him.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled a lecture from his father when he was young. A long explanation for why murder was wrong, and not a solution to all of lifes worst problems.

Surely this was an exception.

No one could possibly prosecute him for Genma’s murder when they found out what a cruel, horrible man he was.

And even if they could, they’d have to find the body first.

[ironhusband]

Rhodeytony seasons of love master post of headcanons

What I didn’t miss too many days and decided to make up for it this way, not at all!

Rhodey is a rocket scientist and Tony is an engineer so you would expect that if they followed the recipe for fireworks, everything would be A-Okay. But of course, those two genius boys can’t ever let anything be simple. So when they try to make fireworks for Rhdoey’s family fourth of July party, there might have a close call with Tony’s fingers and the grass in Rhodey’s yard is burned to the crisp. Mama Rhodes is Not Happy.

Rhodey doesn’t often get drunk without Tony, but during the era between Ultron and Civil War where Tony is retired, Rhodey is a new Avenger and they miss each other terribly, the team makes Rhodey drink two shots of Nat’s too strong booze, and he maybe leaves him a voicemail before being wrestled into sleep. “Toooooony,” he whines into the phone, “I love you. I love you very very much. Did you know that your friends are the best? Because they are! Sam, you are the best! Tell Tony you are the best. No, but for real though, I miss you. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. You should leave your stupid Malibu house and come live with us. Your friends are the best. And you are the best. It will be so fun. And then I won’t miss you anymore...” The next morning Tony calls him and tells him, “that’s the worst way you could have asked me to move in with you” but by the afternoon boxes start showing up.

Tony is often up by 3 AM so 3 AM voicemails aren’t uncommon, even if Tony hates leaving them (”it’s not 1993 who has an answering machine?”). He especially stays up and leaves voicemails when Rhodey isn’t there to drag him to bed. He’s usually a little bit manic, and just a tad longing at that time. But Tony’s sane enough while leaving them so it’s mostly just ramblings about Rhodey’s suit and its modifications and muses about Tony hijacking a military plane to see him. Rhodey sometimes uses them as a way to relax when he’s away and missing his husband.

None of them knit the ugly sweater. Roberta does. Tony cries when he gets his first ugly sweater from her because he knows more than anyone it’s a right of passage into being a Rhodes, and he finally gets a family. Tony wears the sweaters all the time because it fells like knowing someone cares for him. Rhodey, however, isn’t that touched by the ugly sweaters, and resumes to be seen with them. He doesn’t touch Roberta’s ugly sweaters on any day but the extremely cold or laundry day. That is why Tony is Roberta’s favorite.

Neither of them screams first in the haunted house. Our two prankster boys pull all their resources in Halloween and create a haunted house out of their MIT dorms, making everyone scream. Some of the things they invent for the house shouldn’t even be possible so people scream more than at any haunted house because they are convinced there’s magic involved. It makes Tony and Rhodey fall to the ground laughing.

Rhodey pulls Tony back in for the lazy day. Not only because Tony’s mind is so busy that he gets up way too early because he’s dreamed of an equation, but also because Tony gets up way too early for the time he fell asleep, and Rhodey wants to make sure his boyfriend gets at least some sleep. Besides, Tony needs to learn what a lazy day is and Rhodey wants cuddles when he’s finally home.

Tony is on the fall festival’s planning committee out of spite (one of the students there KICKED HIS CHAIR) and pure mischief and makes sure to ruin it in some way every year, or at least antagonize everyone else. He and Rhodey scheme every year how to torture the planning committee.

Tony wins Rhodey a stuffed platypus at the carnival and Rhodey wins Tony a faulty tape recorder. I have this exact scene in road trip fic.

Tony is the ice skating pro because he was a dancer as a child and part of his training was ice skating, but even he can’t skate without falling on his ass with how tightly Rhodey is holding on to him. Tony never takes Rhodey ice skating again, but him, Natasha, and Jeanette all have fun while ice skating together. Rhodey is upset about not getting ice skating dates with his boyfriend anymore, especially with how tight he gets to hold on to Tony in the ring. But he still likes to watch videos of Tony mastering the skill.

Rhodey makes the best hot cocoa! He learned the secret recipe from Mama Rhodes and will not share it, not even with his husband. Tony always pouts over not getting the recipe (”you’ll butcher it, no way”) but he’s happy to have his husband to make it for him, because it tastes like heaven and he’s the luckiest person on Earth for it. The Avengers also enjoy Rhodey’s hot cocoa in the winter and also try and figure out the recipe. None have succeeded so far. Mama Rhodes is delighted by so many superheroes enjoying her recipe.

Cuddling ensues when they get snowed in. Tony hates the cold and the boredom it all entails so he’ll leech on to Rhodey for warmth and entrainment. Tony sort of gets on Rhodey’s nerves by the end of it, but he finds Tony super cute when he falls asleep on his chest. It ends with Tony making himself so insane he creates robots to shovel all the snow away. It somehow works. 

Tony doesn’t much like the holidays because they bring back too many bad memories but he finds how Rhodey’s excitement adorable. Rhodey’s near childlike joy at getting presents on Christmas morning makes the holidays bearable for Tony. Rhodey insists they create their own traditions (like his parents did) when they get together and rent their own apartment during their MIT days, and so they create a few. During Thanksgiving dinner, they each get to make one dish and they order the rest of dinner to make up for the lacking food (Rhodey only made the turkey Tony only makes the cranberry sauce). Their tree is purely for decoration as they exchange gifts privately with each other, and it’s a rule that they must make all the decor for the tree. As they grow up and get more family members, the thanksgiving tradition is stopped but they leave the Christmas ones and create a few more traditions. For Thanksgiving, their small tradition is getting each other a gift card for a restaurant they recommend, a memory from the old times. They never eat at the table, but instead set up a buffet and allow people to mingle on the couches while they eat the food. Tony does the shopping for Thanksgiving and Rhodey does the cooking, except the cranberry sauce, because it’s easy and Tony can handle it. For Christmas, they have a lazy day in bed instead of wake up to see their presents. The Avengers might leave them presents under the tree but Tony and Rhodey only care about the gifts they give each other. Every new bot gets its own sock stocking and they let the bots decorate their socks. They both leave the suits in a random square in New York with the sign “they want to be dressed for the season!” and watch the different creations of Iron Man and War Machine “snow”men. It happens a few years in a row.

Rhodey hides the mistletoe right above Tony’s workshop door because he knows Tony’s always there and he’s one of the only ones allowed in, so Rhodey’ll get plenty of kisses. Plus, he gets some adorable pictures of Tony kissing his bots.

Tony hides the mistletoe in frequently-used spaces (notable mentions: Fury’s drawer when he leaves his pencils and the hanger on which Clint hangs his arrows) because he’s a little shit, and wants everyone to hate him. “I’m going to make you some of my hot chocolate, Tony,” Rhodey says as he opened the cupboard for the pot. Tony desperately tries to hide his smirk, “okay, hubby.” It takes a few minutes before Rhodey says, “fine, I’ll kiss you, but no hot chocolate for you.”

The season which reminds Tony of Rhodey is spring. Because Rhodey is just as lovely and beautiful as the season is. Spring reminds him of Rhodey’s passion and intelligence, the way everything turns green so quickly reminds him of how quick Rhodey is to develop an idea. It reminds him to pick flowers for his husband and finally being in the season to buy Rhodey’s favorite fruit, strawberries.

The season which reminds Rhodey of Tony is winter. Because Tony hates the winter. He hates Christmas and snow and rain. He hates the cold and the blackouts. So whenever something especially winter happens, like snowmen building or Christmas shopping, Rhodey thinks with a fond smile “oh, Tony would hate this”.

[fiction-in-my-blood]

Holiday Spirit (ObeyMe! Fic)

I’m feeling in a christmasy mood for the first time in, well, years, and feel like we all need a bit of chaotic joy at the moment ^.^  (I may have had a few, maybe more than a few, whiskey and cokes so this may not be as good as I think it is haha (￣▽￣)" )

Warnings: None, this is just some brother fluff/existence fic.

~~~~~~

It was hard to tell the changing in seasons in Devildom, mainly because there were no seasons, but the flakes of ash that fell from the sky every now and again gave MC an idea of what time of year it was. In recent years, it hadn’t even snowed where they lived on Earth, so this was the next best thing. But, even as that specific spirit blossomed within them, no one in Devildom seemed to take notice of the calendar, even if it wasn’t the same as MC was used to. 

Luckily, however, MC still had their music thanks to their trusty DDD. Whether they were getting ready for school, doing their chores in the kitchen, or wondering the streets with one of the demon brothers, cheerful- and some a little depressing- tunes were playing through headphones or speakers. The brothers didn’t take much notice of it, their human was already a little... weird, but they were their human and they didn’t actually know how regular humans acted. Solomon wasn’t much of an example, he was as devilish as any of them at some points.

But, it was when MC started putting up strange ropes of sparkling rags and paper chains in the hallways did they started to really wonder if everything was okay. It was too late before they realised all the white and red trinkets that started to litter surfaces in the living room and dining hall. 

“Hey, MC, whatcha up to?” Mammon approached accusingly, frowning his brows at his human, stood on the tallest ladder the House of Lamentation’s attic had. Slightly spooked by the sudden announcement, seeing as their ears had been plugged by headphones once again, MC almost toppled right off. Well, by almost, I mean they did. Fortunately, Beel had been observing the affair from a different angle. 

“Oh! Thanks, Beel! I didn’t want to be in a cast for Christmas!” 

The second that word, or, more precisely, the first half of that word, was uttered, the surrounding demons froze up, sending MC tumbling to the floor as even Beelzebub jumped. Groaning, rubbing their bruised butt and looking up at the duo of curious demons, MC couldn’t understand why they would react in such away. It didn’t take long for Mammon to provide them with an answer. 

“MC! Are you stupid? You can’t say that word here! Diavolo will hear you!!” Mammon, almost three metres from where he had last been seen, yelled loud enough for any other avatars to come investigating. 

“What’s going on here?” Asmodeus wiggled his brows at MC, now on their knees in an attempt to stand back up, and Beel hurrying to help them back up after dropping them. 

“They said the word!” Mammon whispered, pointing an accusing finger as MC quietly thanked the mass of muscle and kindness. 

“What word?” Asmo pulled a confused, and slightly exhausted, expression as he followed Mammon’s gesture. 

“I just said Christmas and they both f-.” MC couldn’t even finish their sentence before Asmo was clapping his hand over their face.

“Love, I wouldn’t say that! Diavolo wouldn’t exactly take kindly to it.” Asmo, shockingly, looked stressed by the phrase as he ensured MC ould keep their mouth shut before he let them go.

“I don’t see how Chri-.” 

“Oh I’d love to see how this turns out.” A new voice spoke up from behind the quartet, everyone turning to see Satan with a mirthful smirk on his face, hand on his hip as his one shulder held up his jacket. He had one book in hand, surely something about the latest potion MC had told him about. This one was from Earth, nothing magical to it but the taste. It was eggnog, and Satan was sure he had heard the term before from many years ago, sure he could make the best concoction MC had ever tasted. He was holding a recipe book.

“Satan, would you please explain to them was Chris-.” And with that, MC finally understood why they were prohibited from saying that one word. 

“OoOOhhhhHHhh, you think I’m saying Christ.” Everyone, excluding MC and Satan, went into a frenzy at their true pronunciation of the name. It didn’t calm down until a booming voice instructed everyone to stop.

Turning around, the five in the hallway turned to see two very tall, and one a little shorter, statues of men. Lucifer, Diavolo, and Barbatos at his side. 

“What is the meaning of this racket?” Lucifer sneered, trying his best to kee his composure in front of the prince. Mammon was visibly sweating, Beelzebub so very hungry from the sudden franticness of the situation, and Asmo trying his very best not to seem affected by the word. He didn’t like losing his cool, but this was a situation he did not expect to find himself in. MC, their MC, saying that name- in their house?! He never imagined it. 

“Ah, MC, I see you standing putting up your decorations! Doesn’t the place look cheery.” Diavolo smiled up at the piece of tinsel hanging from the rafters, one end swinging back and forth, waiting to be taped up. “Barbatos, you should help them. We can’t have MC falling and hurting themself.” 

“Wait! You let this happen?!” Mammon awed at the nerve of the prince, looking up at what must be some sort of religious hanging. He didn’t really remember what humans did for God, but he was sure this must be new. 

“Why not? MC explained to me the holiday doesn’t mean the same thing for all humans, some don’t even associate it with Christ, so what’s the harm?” Although his tone faltered on the certain word, Diavolo seemed as happy as ever to accomodate the human’s traditions. It may have been because Christmas was usually celebrated for Christ’s death, but lets just let that slide for now...

With that, MC had a lot of explaining to do. At first, they used the time to rope the brothers into helping them put up the decorations. With a lot more hands, and on Beelzebub’s shoulders, the halls of the dorm were decked much quicker than they would have if MC had tried on their own. 

“So... You use Chr-... Ma-... The holiday to connect with your friends and family?” Mammon, not being able to say any part of the word without a shiver running up his back, trully tried to understand the meaning behind Christmas.

“That’s what it used to be about. Although, in recent years it mainly been about being with my friends. I don’t have a lot of family to celebrate with nowadays. But, for others, its mainly about presents and food. Oh, and not to mention the songs.” Not wanting to dampen the mood with their everyday life, MC started to list off all the joys of Christmas they remembered. Their mouth started to water at the memories of roast dinners and yorkshire puddings. The familiar popping of Christmas crackers echoed somewhere in the background of chattering as the brothers discussed their favourite parts of what the holiday sounds like. MC laughed remembering the static those flimsy paper hats would cause with your hair, making it stand up like a crazed scientist. 

“Oh, and snow’s the best part. My friends and I used to go to a hill near our home and sledge down it. I almost broke my arm once when I crashed into a tree!” Nothing could help the cute giggle that left MC’s mouth as they remembered those fond times. 

“Yeah yeah, enough about the cold, tell me more about these presents.” Mammon pushed through, cutting off one of the brothers, he didn’t take note who, who was about to ask for more stories of MC’s past. This didn’t put him in a very good light in any of the men’s eyes. MC merely laughed, a lighthearted affair that quickly turned everyone’s attention back to them.

“When you’re a kid, you usually make a list to send to Santa, but he’ll only give you want if you’re good. If not, you get coal. Or Krampus.” It was MC who shivered at the name this time, nightmare horro stories their mother used to tell them as a kid imprinting a fear in them that would last a life time. 

“Kr-Krampus?” Levi, who had joined the group as they passed his room mid decorating, stuttered out in anticipation. He knew about christmas was anime, but nothing about a scary version of Santa. 

“Legend has it, he kidnaps or punished naughty children by stuffing them in his sack, taking them to his lair, and eating them. Sure got me to behave when I was a kid.” MC laughed, although the nightmares they had were as real as the demons in front of them were.

“Anyway, come on, I’ll show you guys how to make Christmas cake!” MC jumped, wanting everyone to learn the joys of Christmas they had waited so many years to enjoy again. 

“Now?? But you said its two months away??” Satan awed at the odd timing, looking down at thenotes he had jotted down in his recipe book. Not that he let anyone else see them.

“You have to let the brandy ferment to get the best taste! Come on, I’m gonna need the help!” And with that, the student council, with a sleeping Belphegor slung over Beelzebub’s shoulder, headed to the kitchen.

[saintheartwing]

Undertales of Friendship: Befriend the Man Who Speaks in Hands

Whilst Princess Luna and Fluttershy had been checking in on Frisk, Alphys was checking in on the local school where Toriel and Undyne were teaching. With sunny skies casting soft rays of sunlight down onto the grassy fields around the red building, Alphys hung back, watching as Undyne the Mer-Woman did a few flexes of her scaly muscles, giving the kids a big, fanged grin. Her red ponytail flicked back and forth in the wind as Toriel stood nearby, paws clasped together as she stood by Ms. Cheerilee, Undyne holding up an arm and flexing. "Alright, lil' fillies! You know why you're here? Cuz it's gym class day and that means you get ME. And you know what we're gonna do?"

"No, but I got a feeling you're about to tell us." Diamond Tiara remarked, the pink-furred little filly cringing slightly as Undyne gave her a slight stink eye with her one good eye.

"You bet your flank I am! It's time for fifty laps around the school yard, hollering about how great we are!" The yellow-eyed monster proclaimed. "We're gonna!" She roared, flexing. "GET!" Another flex. "BUFF!"

"More like "fluff"." Diamond Tiara sighed as she looked down at her stubby little hooves, hanging her head as the other kids glanced at each other, then shrugged, deciding that hey, they like yelling! Why not?

"ROCK SOLID, BABY!" Undyne cried out dramatically, flexing her arms some more as the kids began running around the school yard, hair whipping through the air as the wind blew, the part-time gym teacher and part time royal-guard-member smiling in delight as Toriel giggled. "Ahhh. You were right, Tori. Nothing's more satisfying than leaving an impact on a child's life." She reasoned. "Especially when you can do that by bench-pressing them."

"I am amazed at how quickly you connected to them." Ms. Cheerilee said with a happy smile, nodding her head in agreement as Toriel nodded as well. "You're clearly a natural gym teacher."

"Well, it's my job as the current Head of Asgore's Royal Guard to decide what weenies get into the guard. Drilling them into shape! Kicking butt, taking names! The louder I yell, the more they'll learn!" She laughed. "Well, actually, it's really about the stick." She said, wagging a clawed finger in the air. "I'm a very carrot and stick approach...though mostly 80% stick."

"When do you use the carrot?" Cheerilee inquired.

"When I'm cooking, of course." Undyne remarked cheerily. "Nah, I'm almost all stick there too! I use the carrot when I can tell a student isn't ready for the full treatment. Papyrus used to get the carrot a lot." She added with a sigh. "He was just too...nice...to be in the royal guard. But now it's good to see that he's unlocked his full potential by focusing his gifts! Now..." Undyne struck a pose. "To go join the kids! Hup hup hup!" She took off running, Toriel giggling a little as she and Cheerilee turned, seeing Alphys slightly hiding behind a nearby bush.

"Oh, Alphys, why are you hiding?"

"Sorry. Force of habit." The yellow-scaled, dinosaur-esque monster nervously remarked with a small smile. "I'll go talk to her after she's done. But I also wanted to see you too, Ms. Toriel. How have you been?"

"I've thoroughly enjoyed teaching here for the ponies in Equestria." Toriel admitted with a big smile. "It's always heartening to see others willing to learn what I have to impart, and I've worked out an exhaustive curriculum with Cheerilee. Tomorrow the children will be learning about mathematics. Tragically, many of them find it boring, so I devised a way to get them interested."

"How?"

Toriel whipped out a basket of scones, grinning from fuzzy ear to fuzzy ear, Cheerilee clasping her hooves together in delight. "I have about...thirty scones. I think it's a simple matter of division and subtraction! With the end result naturally becoming zero." She laughed, Alphys smiling in agreement as Cheerilee trotted off to go join Undyne in the laps. It was FUN to run around, hooting about how great you were. However, the good times were soon over as a very-serious-looking Princess Luna descended from the skies, Fluttershy by her side as they quickly raced over to Alphys, Toriel staring in surprise. "Oh! Your majesty."

"Your majesty." Princess Luna responded in turn with a calm nod back.

"Oh, I'm not the queen anymore." Toriel remarked with a shake of her head. "Those days are behind me, I believe. But you look as though you've seen a ghost. Whatever is the matter?"

Fluttershy tapped her hooves together, head slightly bowed, pink mane sloughed down. "Um...we think that an imposter Sans has kidnapped Frisk!" She managed to blurt out.

"We worried it might be a changeling, but changeling magic is a distinctly sickening green color, and this was a deep, royal blue that we saw the imposter using to lift Frisk up." Princess Luna added, Toriel having dropped the basket of scones as they scattered all about the floor, the words "Kidnapped Frisk" making her mouth hang open so wide you could have fit a beach ball into it. Alphys began quivering, almost having a panic attack as Princess Luna continued, sweat dribbling down Alphys's brow as the words "Magic" and "Royal blue" began to echo in her mind. "Is there a monster that can imitate people's appearance-"

"Royal Blue Magic?" Alphys whispered out, eyes going wider and wider.

She could hear the music echoing out from the room, and walked down the long, dark green hallway. A guitar was playing a fairly simple, and very iconic chord, an all-too-familiar voice echoing out through the laboratory as she got closer and closer. Pushing open the set of double doors ever-so-slightly, Alphys peeked inside, an enormous bony mass rising up higher and higher, growing larger and larger as pieces were added to it, all suspended in a royal blue aura of pure, raw power.

Her dear friend was playing away at the grey guitar, a red headband around his head twisting about as he played harder and harder, the chords now joined with riffs, the song getting progressively more metal. The bony pieces began to form into a more definite shape, that of a gigantic, huge skull that was very bestial in design, almost draconic in its visage as he sang loudly and proudly, a look of clear joy on his bony face. A black line rose up from his right eye, going up his skull whilst another line rose down from his left eye, down to his mouth as he toothily grinned.

"And the science gets done, and you make a neat gun for the people who are still aliiiiiive!" W.D Gaster sang out. "GASTER." Alphys realized, Toriel's body stiffening as her eyes widened as well, Alphys's claws flying to her cheeks. "Oh my God oh my God oh my God!"

"Gaster...Sans, the real Sans, mentioned him. He was their brother, the former Royal Scientist, correct? We heard he was scattered across time and space." Fluttershy asked, clearly confused as she tilted her head to the side, Princess Luna looking from Toriel to Alphys as Alphys adjusted her glasses.

"Yes, Gaster was the former royal scientist before me, and Sans and I both worked alongside him. He was brilliant, REALLY brilliant! Also kind of a goof sometimes. Guess it runs in the family." The dinosaur-esque monster sighed. "And yeah, he used to be with us until he fell into his machine, a device we had made to time travel. We wanted to use it to go back in time and prevent the Monster/Human War from ever happening, but there was an accident and he got scattered. But royal blue magic...nobody else could lift people but Sans and Paps, let alone have magic tinted like that!"

"I cannot believe I just...forgot about him." Toriel murmured. "He was so dear to us, especially before the War."

"What was life like before the war?" Princess Luna inquired, Toriel now looking very, VERY guiltily down.

"Well, er...Asgore's father had...that is, Dr. Gaster was the Royal Scientist for HIM to, and was asked to study human souls and prove whether the old legend we'd had passed down from our ancestors was true. He wanted to learn if monsters could absorb souls. Before it wasn't something we knew we could really do, it was just a myth to us, but then-" Toriel flinched.

"Ohhhh." Princess Luna cringed at the implication. "Oh MY."

"How...how did he remove the souls?" Fluttershy asked.

Silence from the two monsters as they quietly and nervously looked away, Princess Luna sighing sadly. "I shall not judge you. I did awful things myself when I allowed resentment and hatred into my heart and became Night Mare Moon. I almost caused 1000 years of darkness and doomed all of Equestria. We've all done things we regret and wish we could take back."

"Indeed, we have." Toriel quietly sighed. "But I cannot let Gaster harm my child. Do you know where he took him?" She asked.

"Not exactly..." Fluttershy quietly admitted as she bit her lip. "But we thought we could ask you two, see if you knew anything about him that could help us learn about where he might go."

"If you truly were his friend for so long, he might try to reach out to you, would he not?" Princess Luna asked of Alphys as she nodded, slightly wringing her hands. "And if so...I have a plan."

...

...

...

... "Sans" approached Alphys as she sat on a bench in the park, sipping on some soda, trying not to look worked up as he sat down next to her. "heya, Alphys. how's it hangin'?"

"Oh, I'm fine! How are you?" She asked in her slightly nasally voice, cringing a bit.

"...fine myself."

"Fine, fine. It's good that you're fine."

"yeeeep." "Yes, we're both feeling fine. It's fine to feel fine isn't."

"yes, it's...it's fine."

"Yes, we're both feeling fine! Yep! Both! Feeling! Fine!" Alphys said with a big smile, quivering slightly as "Sans" calmly waited. One...two...

"GAAAAH!" She groaned out, hanging her head. "I feel sick!"

"you think I can't tell when you're lying to me?" Gaster's voice rang out from Sans's form. "Alphys, come with me. You can have it done willingly or by force. Your choice."

"Just tell me where Frisk is." Alphys mumbled softly, head bowed as "Sans" took her shoulder and patted it.

"I haven't harmed him, I assure you. Now..."

A blink, a woosh, shooting through a tunnel of stars...and then, there they were, in Princess Luna and Celestia's old castle, Gaster now in his true form as he waltzed over to the sleeping Frisk, who was lying down on a nearby table as he gestured at the boy. "I've got both Papyrus and Sans within me, their entire being helping to constitute myself. With you and the human, all the pieces of me will be complete. I'll no longer be a shell of myself, Alphys. Can you understand how lonely it feels, just helpless, barely able to do anything but...watch? Watch as everyone forgets about you, and all that you did amounts to near nothing? To know that despite how hard you worked to help others, they remember nothing of you?"

"That is just not true." Alphys said, shaking her head. "They DO remember. I know Sans does. He even told a bad pun about you, Doctor."

"Do not stand on ceremony, Alphys, we've known each other for decades, you needn't call me-" Gaster stiffened as he suddenly swept towards "Alphys", and held a hand up, her body shrouded in Blue as her soul was made manifest...

"I THOUGHT you were a bit too light when we were teleporting. Who are you really?" He asked the imposter as the charade faded away in a soft burst of starlight, and Princess Luna now stood there, tall and proud.

"The others were told to hone in on me when my illusionary spell faded. They shall be here shortly." She reasoned. "Let the child and those you have absorbed go."

"I only want to be whole again." Gaster reasoned. "You should understand. You were locked away within yourself, helpless, unable to do naught but watch as Night Mare Moon made use of your body." He quietly intoned, his eyes slightly narrowing as he paced around her, sliding smoothly like a snake. "Imagine a world where everything functions perfectly without you. Where you are less than nothing. Where you are HELPLESS and able to do nothing but watch. You endured that. And you'd condemn me!?"

"No. What happened to you was wrong. Don't take it out on an innocent." Night Mare Moon insisted.

"Take it out? The process isn't painful." Gaster cooed. "It's actually quite pleasant, if not slightly surprising. Come...let me demonstrate!" He proclaimed, shooting towards her, black shadows stretching off his body as Luna's horn lit up. Bluish/purple light coalesced around it as she erected a shield, the shadows trying to pierce through it like needles trying to pop a bubble. Gaster rose high, high into the air before he held his long arms up, slamming them down on the shield just as Luna shot forth, slamming into his chest and knocking him back.

The shadows of his body caught him and re-righted him as she launched waves of blue and purple magic at him, Gaster sliding left and right as he grinned, giving her a small wink. "Do you believe I am going to stand there and let you hit me? No." He remarked, making gestures with his hands as bones shot from the ground, cascading towards her like a landslide. Luna flew up, up through the air as he made more odd gestures with his hands, the bones shooting at her as he shook his head back and forth. "You are only delaying the inevitable." He quietly sighed.

"Let them g-go!"

He turned, seeing Alphys was sitting atop of a yellow-furred pony, Toriel standing nearby as she folded her arms over her chest, Gaster lowering the shadows that were raised on their hackles around him, looking them over. "Ahh, you came, Alphys. You, Papyrus, Sans, Frisk..." Gaster said, clapping his hands as he shifted from himself to Papyrus, then Sans, then back to his normal form as he bounced his head back and forth. "All the pieces...pieces...pieces of me."

"Doctor, we know you want to be whole again." Toriel said softly, Frisk letting out a quiet moan as he rose up from the table. He hadn't been having any nightmares since Gaster had taken him, but he was still shocked out of his mind to see Gaster standing tall in front of the others. "But you needn't harm others to be happy. And absorbing them into yourself is taking away their freedom. It isn't right to harm others in the name of freeing others, that's the very thing I fought against."

"My former majesty, please understand. I am a shell of my former self. An echo. This is the only way to regain my form." Gaster spoke longingly.

"Not necessarily." Alphys offered. "Toriel has something that could help. We just needed Princess Luna to stall you."

Toriel launched something through the air, Gaster catching it in one bony, holed hand...looking down at the Lazarus Lapis in his grip as his body was bathed over in the green healing magic within. His eye sockets filled with the light, growing larger and larger, letting out a gasp as Sans and Papyrus slid out from the folds of his cloaked jacket, flopping onto the grassy floor below as Princess Luna quickly pulled them away, Frisk ducking under the table...

And then everything went white, and Frisk now saw Dr. Gaster standing alone in a dark abyss, his back turned, head slightly bowed as Frisk approached, nervously holding out a hand and taking the skeletal monster's cloak. "Um...mister Gaster?"

"...doctor." Doctor Gaster said, his voice having the less harsh, rusty echo to it that it had possessed, yet still somehow haunting and faintly reverberating in the infinite abyssal expanse of black around them. "Dr. Gaster. And...would that this would be enough." He said, slowly turning around, revealing a small White heart floating right in his chest, Frisk gasping. It had been cut in half, and the other half connected to it was the stone itself, the heart faintly pumping as Gaster mournfully stared down at Frisk. "The Lazarus Lapis is designed to resonate with your Soul. To connect with it to bring back your physical body, and all that comes with it. But I only had half a soul. And that means only half the work is done. My physical form is returned, my abilities with them. But that...that is all."

He closed his eyes, shaking his head back and forth. "I am everything and nothing. Everywhere and nowhere. I can't...feel anything but echoes. Not even with this making up part of me."

"I'm sorry." Frisk said, gently hugging the doctor as the skeletal monster stiffened slightly before gently kneeling down, Frisk feeling him wrapping his cloak/jacket around him much like how Sans sometimes liked to do to tuck Frisk away, nice and snug.

"Ha ha...you know, that...that does make me feel better about this." The doctor quietly whispered, Frisk feeling something gently landing on his forehead. Drip...drop. Drip...

Drop...

Drip...

...drop.

"Thank you."

A gentle, soft warmth spreading over him, as the infinite black settled in...

"...please. Forget about me."

And then Frisk was back in the castle with the others as they slowly rose up, rubbing their heads as they looked around, Sans blinking slowly. "whuh...what just happened?"

"...I don't know where to begin." Frisk admitted, looking off in the distance, a white figure faintly similar to himself standing there before shifting, changing shape...vanishing into the distance.

...

...

...

... "So he's...gone?" Princess Celestia asked of Sans as he and Papyrus stood in the throne room, Celestia steepling her hooves, her face filled with concern as she looked back at them.

"we think he has his physical form back, but anything else is just...kinda not really there at all." Sans sighed. "he's a real nowhere man now."

"MY POOR BROTHER. I WISH THERE WAS SOMETHING I COULD DO TO HELP. WHEN I WAS INSIDE OF HIM, I COULD FEEL AN ENDLESS SADNESS SWALLOWING ME..." Papyrus murmured, clutching himself, shivering slightly as he closed his eyes, Princess Celestia biting into her lip. This was a concern indeed.

"Someone who can teleport, become invisible, change shape...he could be anyone and anywhere." She whispered softly, Sans shrugging before suddenly shivering, feeling as though familiar eyes were upon him. He thought he saw a crack running up the eye of one of the guards on either side of the Princess, looking away and flinching. When he turned back, the guard was normal, and he sighed, a maid servant couple bringing in some cake for them, specially made by Muffet for the upcoming anniversary of Celestia and Luna's ascension to the throne. "We should keep an eye out for him. But for now, let us celebrate early. Celebrate having you two back with us. It would be horrible to lose two dear friends."

"yeah, probably best not to talk about Gaster for now." Sans said, a maidservant slicing off a piece of vanilla-frosted cake for him, giving him a slice that had a little pink rose on it as he gulped, swearing he saw a crack running up HER eye as well. Or was it on Papyrus's? Or Celestia's? Or his own reflection in the mirrors that lined the hall, or-

Sans shook his head. "yeah...better not. after all..."

He shuddered.

"it's rude to talk about someone who's listening."

[beaulesbian]

I decided to finally make a part two of this post, it took me half a year longer than I anticipated, but I rushed to finish it at least for June.

🏳️‍🌈 Happy pride month! 🏳️‍🌈

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley – The best kind of subtle romance I have ever read. Includes mysterious pocket watch, solving bomb threats in Victorian London, a lady scientist, changing of future based on occurring events, an adorable clockwork octopus, and so much more! Did I mention the best, most beautiful romance I didn’t even expect to get?? Read it! (mlm main characters)

All out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages by multiple authors, edited by Saundra Mitchell – This book was so refreshing to read!!! Retellings of fairy tales but queer and poc and mostly happy. I enjoyed each of the short story so so much, I don’t have words to say how much I loved this book, just, can we please have more stories like that? Thank you.

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman – Ever wanted a book with a main character boy and girl who won’t end up together by the end of the book? Then this is a book for you. Frances and Aled do not only become best friends who won’t end up together, but there’s even more diverse characters than these two main ones. This book even has an ace (demi) sexual representation, which I was very excited about, and the main character is biracial bisexual girl. There is lot of fandom talk and a radio show drama (kind of similar to Welcome to Night Vale). But also talks about other important topics like deciding that college might not be for everyone despite them being a great student in high school.

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee – It’s a cute and sweet superhero themed futuristic story, first book of a trilogy I think. The main character is Vietnamese American bisexual girl, Jessika Tran, whose parents are both superheroes, but she doesn’t have any powers. She starts working for a company she later discovers belongs to town’s villains, but with time she learns that not everything about superheroes and villains is perfectly black and white. Also she’s working there with her crush, so that’s a bonus. It’s a really great book, there’s wlw romance and lot of diversity, action and silly scenes. The history behind the people’s superpowers and worldbuilding was really interesting too. The sequel is also already out, featuring a poc trans boy as the main character, who is part of Jessika‘s friend squad.

The Gentleman‘s guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee – A book everyone here should read!! A historical roadtrip with lot of angst, fluff and mutual pining of two of the main characters. It takes place in 18th century Europe. Monty is kind of an asshole, some moments you will hate him then you will love him, but as the journey progresses so does he. He travels with his sister, Felicity, and his best friend (and crush!) Percy, to visit few cities in Europe before he has to start work in his fathers company. This book addressed lot of issues, like white privilege and racism in that time period, sexism and ableism. But it’s also an adventurous book that’s funny and charming, and makes you feel really happy one moment and sad the next. There are also pirates!

Dreadnought by April Daniels – This is a first book of a duology about a lesbian trans girl Danny who receives superpowers after witnessing death of the superhero Dreadnought, which means she now has to become the new Dreadnought. But with the powers also becames real the ideal vision of her body, that she always wanted. She is very happy about it, but it also means she has to face her family and best friend and explain why she looks different. On top of that she has to help the other superheroes with stopping the new threat to the city, the villain who killed previous Dreadnought. Trigger warnings for transphobia, but it’s really worth to read.

Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller – I’ve seen mixed reviews of this book but personally I loved it. It’s a fantasy YA with lgbt protagonist, that I don’t have enough of. Sal is a genderfluid, also bi? pan? thief who enters a competition to become one of Queen’s Assassins. Basically the last one standing (or rather living) takes the place. Sal knows how to fight and survive but also needs to learn other things to win this position. Like taking classes of writing/reading which teaches him a lady of court they previously stole something from, whom Sal quickly starts to like more than they should, with the competition at play. For me it was a really great book to read and I can’t wait to read the sequel!

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli – I had to read this one quickly before Leah on the offbeat came out, and it was a joy to read this one too! Again so much representation, I love Becky’s books and the Simon vs world. This story is about Molly who has had a lot of crushes but never actually dated anyone. She’s jewish, has anxiety, is fat, loves her family, is very creative, and has another crush on a guy who is her coworker. There’s so much cuteness in this book, I was smiling and crying the whole time reading it. More for representation: her sister is gay, she has two moms, a new Korean-American pansexual friend (who her sister totally likes) and more. I need to meantion trigger warnings for fatphobia, because of part there with her relative, it made me cry so much, it was very reletable and I hated it but there was very good closure for it in the end, which I’m happy about. Anyway read this book, overall it’s a cute and happy book with lots of fluff!

Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli – I loved Leah from the Simon vs book, so I was really happy we got more focus on her. She’s fat and funny, unapologetic about who she is, in her words: “basically your resident fat Slytherin Rory Gilmore”. There was mentions she likes boys as well as girls. Because of a tour for her college she goes with Abby to see where she will live the next few years and stuff happens. And then there’s also their high school prom, which she thought she was ready for, but maybe she’s not ready for at all. I’m not even going to write more, it’s an amazing book, I cried so many times.

Timekeeper by Tara Sim – This story takes place in a Victorian era Britain where clock towers are needed for time to flow correctly. Therefore there is lot of mechanics who repair said clock towers, because if the clock stops, the town around it stops in time as well. The main character Danny is one of those mechanics in London, but his father is trapped in a town that Stopped and Danny needs to find a way to save him. But after someone tries to sabotage a clock tower in a small city, Danny is assigned in that town to fix it, and he eventually finds out that the myths he heard – that in clock towers could sometimes be seen beings, spirits of the towers – might actually be true. This book was so nice to read, there was the atmosphere of the Victorian era, mystery, cute mlm romance and awesome female characters.

I’ll give you the sun by Jandy Nelson – I cried a lot reading this book. At first it actually took me few months to read past first two chapters, because the writing style was so different from what I was used to, but after that I got absorbed in it very quickly. It’s a story about two siblings, Noah and Jude Sweetwine, who both go through some difficult times, with family, school and personal stuff, it’s about making mistakes and fixing mistakes. It’s about love, art, sibling struggles and growing up.

Other books that I read and loved and definitely recommend:

Of Fire and Stars - Audrey Coulthurst (f/f fantasy romance)

We are the Ants –  Shaun David Hutchinson (m/m)

In Other Lands -  Sarah Rees Brennan (bi mc, m/m)

Release – Patrick Ness (m/m)

Our dark duet – V.E. Schwab (sequel of duology, agender character, not much romance at all in this duology, it‘s one of my favourites)

A Conjuring of Light – V.E. Schwab (a beautiful fantasy, last book of trilogy, happy ending for m/m pairing whose each story is important throughout the whole series. Again, one of my favourite series)

Magnus Chase and the Ship of Dead - Rick Riordan (I don‘t want to spoil here but it‘s good, genderfluid representation since book two, more in this final book)

Ice crypt - Tiana Warner (sequel of the Ice Massacre, wlw romance between mermaid and human girl, who knew each other since childhood, there is third final book, Ice Kingdom, already out, but I still haven‘t read it..)

Happy reading!

(tagging few people who i think might enjoy it ♥♥: @eradne, @poefinn, @twomillionfreckles, @eliotcoldwater, @queen-max, @tsukiyam-a)

[ppdoddy]

Michael Moore

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOE BIDEN Dear President-Elect Biden:

First of all, congratulations! YOU did it. WE did it! You stopped the madness. A grateful nation - and myself - are in a state of joy, hope and relief. Thank you for that! We are all eager to join with you to repair the damage done to our country — and to eliminate that about our society and our politics which gave us Donald Trump in the first place.

Mr. President-Elect, I first met you at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. It was clear to me from our talk that day that you were not the politician I remembered from the 1990s. On that day in Boston, we were by then over a year into the Iraq War, a war you voted for. My “Fahrenheit 9/11“ had just come out and you wanted to let me know that you were aware of the folly you had been sucked into. It seemed to me that you were doing a lot of soul searching and you wanted to hear my thoughts. To be honest, I was distracted by how perfect your teeth were, and I wondered, could you really be from the working class? By the end of our talk I was convinced there was something that was quite real and very good about you, though perhaps somewhat buried inside. Would it ever come out so the public could see it? As I reflect today on it - and you - I am sincerely hoping that you will indeed govern as a president who’s from the working class. You - one of us - in the White House. That’s how it should feel. Your actions, if bold, and brave, will make that true.

You are also our second Catholic president. I believe you are a person of faith. You and I were taught the same lessons in Catholic school: to love our neighbor, even our enemy; to create a world where everyone regardless of status or station has a seat at the table, and everyone gets a slice of the pie; a world where “the rich man will have a harder time getting into heaven than a camel will have getting through the eye of the needle.” We were taught that we will be judged by how we treat the least amongst us. Do I have that right? Are these not the moral, foundational principles of the coming Biden presidency?

I was so moved by your victory speech Saturday night when you told the immigrants and the children of immigrants that the Dreamers no longer had to live in fear. That Muslims were once again welcomed into our country. That the world could breathe a sigh of relief because we were going to let the planet Earth itself breathe and have some relief. And you told the teachers of America that starting January 20th, “one of your own will be living in the White House.” That just felt instantly good.

So if I may, I’d like to suggest a few things that might make your presidency one of the best this country has ever had. You and I may have our political differences (you like Amtrak trains, I’d like to ride a bullet train from New York to LA in 10 hours!😎), but I know that you and I - and tens of millions of others - all want and believe in the same basic things: • Health Care is a human right and every American must be covered; • Everyone must be paid a living wage and all of us must work to eliminate poverty and rebuild our broken middle class; • The massive and growing gulf between the ultra rich and everyone else must be narrowed — and the wealthy must go back to paying the taxes they should pay; • Women must be paid the same as men, and no man or government has the right to tell them what they can do or not do with their bodies.

So here’s my two cents:

1. You are right to make containing Covid-19 Job #1. Had Trump won, I’m guessing up to a million people in the next year or so would have died from him ignoring this virus. Yesterday you named your Covid task force of doctors and scientists and you are putting them to work. We don’t have a second to lose. Thank you for this.

2. As soon as you can, please provide much more unemployment relief for the jobless, stimulus checks for all, help for small businesses, and the creation of jobs we desperately need.

3. Millions have lost their health insurance because our system ties one’s health coverage to their employer. What happens when the employer, like now, is suddenly gone, or the boss wakes up one morning and decides these employees’ health benefits are too costly and must be cut? BOOM! Millions of families suddenly have no health insurance. This is nuts.

You MUST create a health system like every other industrial democracy — one backed by the government, not by the whims of the boss where you work or the pandemic that has shut him or her down. This is just plain common sense.

4. I see various people trying to take credit for your victory — and using their personal agendas to push you away from the progressive Left and toward the cowardly center which believes that the best way to beat Republicans is to just be a more easily-digestible version of Republicans. They think because Trump got 70 million votes the Democrats should reject Black Lives Matter, AOC, and anything that vaguely sounds like socialism — at a time when the majority of our citizens under the age of 35, according to most polls, prefer the idea of democratic socialism over the greed of modern-day capitalism. Why risk losing them? We need to listen to and understand why they feel this way. They’ve been saddled with crushing student debt and we’ve handed them a planet In the middle of its 6th extinction event as their future. You and Barack introduced them to the benefits of democratic socialism by letting them stay on their parents health insurance until they’re 26! The result: They just set a record by coming out and voting for you in the largest youth numbers ever.

But you know all this. And you also know how you won these razor-thin victories in the final five states as we nervously watched the final ballots come in from Black Philly, Black Detroit, Black Atlanta, Black Flint. Out west, it was Latinx and Navajo voters who delivered Nevada and Arizona to you. In your speech on Saturday you acknowledged it. And never in our history have I heard a President-elect single out the Black community and thank them “for having my back. And I promise you, I will have your back!” Black and brown and indigenous peoples, plus a landslide of women and young adult voters made this happen. Wow. I absolutely know you’ll keep that promise.

5. Please do not make the same mistake an otherwise well-meaning President Obama made in his first two years. He wanted everyone to get along. He was willing to compromise on anything. Kumbaya. The Republicans had already decided they were going to block EVERYTHING Obama proposed and that’s exactly what they did for eight long years with a discipline and a ruthlessness we should probably envy.

Don’t let this happen to you. Charge in on January 20th like FDR on steroids. You have no choice. People are dying! You need to sign executive orders and cajole, demand and shame Congress into action. And GO BIG! Eliminate the Electoral College through the National Popular Vote Act! DONE! Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment for women! Just one more state needed! DONE! Send in the Army Corps of Engineers to Flint to replace the poisoned water pipes! DONE!!

And none of the above needs a single vote of the United States Senate! In fact, this past summer, your “Biden-Bernie” unity joint task force identified a whopping 277 policies and decisions of Trump’s that you have the legal authority to immediately reverse by executive order or presidential policy decision https://prospect.org/…/277-policies-biden-need-not-ask-per…/. Find that big fat black marker of his and do it!

But, yes, we also desperately need those two Georgia Senate seats to get the Biden/Harris years off to a blazing start. So let’s make that happen! All hands on deck between now and January 5th!! We will all do whatever is needed.

Friends of mine on the Left who are more cynical than I am are probably wondering why I’m sending you this letter. Haha! Well, because I saw you kiss the head of that young grieving man at the Parkland, Florida memorial for the shooting victims of Stoneman Douglas High School. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMa96yOel0

And because I saw you in New Hampshire this year while we were there working for Bernie, and you were doing a campaign stop and there was a restless five-year boy in the front row. His parents were trying to get him to settle down. You stopped and spoke to the boy. “Hey buddy,” you said in a kind but parental way, “if you can hang on and be a good boy for just a little bit, I’ll buy ya an ice cream!” The boy quieted down, you wrapped up and afterward you went over to the boy and his parents and you gave the kid five bucks so his mom and dad could go get him an ice cream cone. And I thought to myself, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen — and then I started to cry because I wanted so much for that piece of America to come back — goofy, kind, and focusing on what’s truly important: a goddamned ice cream cone!

I think that’s why you won. People saw what I saw with you there in New Hampshire and back in Boston on that day 16 years ago — they knew that maybe, just maybe, their lives might just get a bit better - hopefully a LOT better - with you in the White House. Maybe less of them will die from the virus, this preventable horror. Trump, of whom we knew many despicable things and thought we’d already seen how low the bar could possibly go for one human being — but we never considered him under the moniker of mass killer, terrorist or superspreader. Then you, Joe, came along and offered us a respite, a break from the insanity — “Mr. Biden, we’ll be happy if you just give us four years of ‘Not Trump!’”

But I think you can give us much more than that. What could our lives be like in four years or eight years (with a Democratic Senate to boot)? How ‘bout no one ever goes bankrupt again because they got sick? How ‘bout no one is sitting in a prison cell for possessing marijuana or actual drugs? How ‘bout every child gets to go to a great school and every neighborhood has an expanded free library open seven days a week? How ‘bout paid family medical leave so you can take care of your elderly parents and not lose your job? How ‘bout my bullet train! You and we can make all this happen. It’s not rocket science. 30+ other countries already do it. (https://www.amazon.com/Where-Invade-Next-Micha…/…/B01EGW9EOU) They’re happier. Why not us? Our founders promised it to us in their second sentence: “the pursuit of Happiness.“ They said that’s what America would be — and it’s been a rare day when we’ve actually had a glimpse of it.

Joe, you’re the guy to fulfill the promise. I’ll help. So will my neighbors on the floor where I live. As will the woman who delivers my mail, the workers who stock the shelves of my neighborhood market, the nurse who just wrote me in tears because yesterday she watched her 22nd patient die, alone, no family allowed, from Covid. Not to mention the millions upon millions of Americans who are ready to be foot soldiers in your army of justice, equality and love. We’re all in! We don’t want to go back to the old “normal.” We want a new normal!

We want ice cream.

All my best, Michael Moore

P.S. You know why I think you can and will do this? You picked Kamala Harris to run with you! Ranked as the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate. A woman. A Black woman! I saw the first debate, the one where she challenged you and threw shade on your younger self. Most people (including me), if that had happened to us, we probably wouldn’t have gotten over it. You did. I’m guessing your conscience whispered to you, “well, dang, maybe she has a point.” You hold no grudges. You are a forgiving soul. But then you didn’t just forgive her — you put her on the Big Ticket! Who would do that? You did! That’s why my cautious, hopeful bet is on the good hands we’re now in — both your hands, Kamala’s hands, and the hands of the mass millions who voted for you and will continue to rise up and fight for this new, better, post-Trump, post-pandemic America.

[eccacia]

Favorite Snowbarry Fics

So I have a bit of free time before things get busy again, and being Snowbarry Trash™ I thought, What better way to spend it than rereading my favorite SB fics????? At first I compiled all the links in one place as a reference for myself, but what the heck, it won’t hurt to put these fics out there again and send the writers some love.

Before anything, a caveat: this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the best SB fics. There are a lot of other great fics out there. Also “favorite” here probably more accurately means “fics I reach for when I’m having a bad day,” lol. So to these writers here, THANK YOU. Your fics really get me going again. (And to other fanfic writers out there, keep writing! You’ll never know when a fic will make someone’s day a little better, as these did for me.)

The fics are below the cut, arranged alphabetically. I put in the summary and a brief gushing of what I liked about them. Happy reading, everyone! Don’t forget to give the ones you like some love!

& If It Never Ends then When Do We Start, by @ttinycourageous​

Far too soon, a common occurrence for them, their time together is up. Looking up at him Caitlin wonders how long they’ll be able to keep this going; Barry gone on a mission, she back to the lab ignoring Jay’s advances, both of them under the scrutiny of the agency they work for. How long before her heart gets broken?

“Can you keep a secret?” Barry asks.

[00Q au in which Barry's the spy, and Caitlin one of the scientists providing the gadgets. The two grow closer over the course of several months, mostly due to Barry's insistent inquiring after her real name.]

Spy AU? Secret Identities?? Forbidden Relationship?????? Uh, count me in. What really gets to me about this, though, is that unlike other spy AUs, the language isn’t punchy and action-packed; instead the story’s told with restraint, and the language pulses with quiet longing. Tension and suspense aren’t so much in the external circumstances as in the internal conflict, so the moment that they finally come together is the climax in both external and internal tension. It’s just brilliant. Also I live for coded affectionate exchanges, that whole saying one thing but meaning something else, and it was so well done in this fic.

at first sight, by @tinytendril

College Pride & Prejudice AU. Literature student Barry swears he hates everything about the privileged side of Central City, including one leggy, doe-eyed, bon-mot tossing, label-worshiping vortex of girly vapidness Caitlin Snow. Until, as these things go, he doesn’t, not even by a small measure, and not at all.

I’ve read this so many times I’ve lost count. But really, wow. Barry as Lizzy and Caitlin as Darcy just makes so much sense, and the rest of the cast were slotted so naturally into their P&P counterparts that I couldn’t imagine it any other way. The dialogue’s also very witty. I love how Caitlin calls Barry out for his pretentiousness. (The pretentiousness is so well-done, by the way. I mean, just look at the summary. It’s a mini-adventure into the dictionary.) I always get this sense of vindictive joy when Barry realizes that Caitlin can match him line for line. Ha, you show him, girl. Serves him right for underestimating you. Anywaaay, I could go on, but in short, I love this fic to bits.

Blind Date, by @chasingblue57​​

Iris just knows that Barry & her TA are perfect for each other, she just needs to get them in the same room [college au].

Iris as a matchmaker, Barry and Caitlin being set up on an awkward blind date, them talking about awkwardness during said blind date... It’s the most adorable thing, I tell you. Even if the same can be said of nearly all of Blue’s fics, this one’s close to my heart.

cold and paperskin, by @briarsrosie​

You're Killer Frost. Caitlin Snow is dead. You deserve to die, too. / Trigger warning.

This technically isn’t SB or even romance. It’s Snowbarisco friendship, and I’m glad it is. It’s also a great rendering of Caitlin’s disjointed, fractured consciousness following her rampage as Killer Frost, and the obsessive repetition of that “you-deserve-to-die” reveals the destructive quality of her guilt. But what really got me was the friendship. I mean, friendship’s usually light and fluffy, but their friendship here is tenacious and stubborn and hopeful, and it’s what saves Caitlin in the end. It’s so precious.

Could End in Burning Flames or Paradise, by NeoNails

Or 5 Times Caitlin Had Sex with Barry & the 1 Time It Meant Something. "She didn't know what series of events culminated in Barry's mood that night, but she did know it began with him pulling the bottle out of her hand and taking a long swig for himself."

This one needs little explanation. I don’t know about you, but one of the first things I did as a new SB fan was to look for good smut, and this one was the first one I came across. It definitely did not disappoint. It was written way back, but it remains my favorite smutty fic.

here is my heart (your love is everything i need), by @roastytoastyprincesss

AU: In a world where soulmates exist, when your first touch with them shall brand you for life, Barry Allen gets marked. By who he's not quite certain, but he's determined to find out. Caitlin Snow however, she knows... she's just not ready to deal with it's repercussions. Snowbarry.

The angst almost killed me in this one. It’s a masterful prolonging of a misunderstanding, with every opportunity to right it consistently thwarted; and when the truth is finally revealed, it’s in the worst circumstances possible. It’s what makes their reunion so cathartic, and their hot make-out scene towards the end so satisfying.

(i know that) we’re cool, by Lint​

She hasn't smiled much because there hasn't been anything worth smiling about. But all of a sudden some string bean of a police scientist wakes up from a lightning induced coma, and her facial muscles magically remember how?

Probably the first SB fluff I’ve read. Whenever I reread it my facial muscles still ache from smiling. Also, I’m pretty wordy as a writer, so it amazes me to see how much happens and how much is conveyed through short sentences and succinct dialogue.

If summer is for lovers then consider me in love, by gustin puckerman

When Barry finds out about the kiss.―Barry/Caitlin. Post 1x19 "Who is Harrison Wells". Oneshot.

This has the most adorable SB conversation ever. Barry and Caitlin tiptoe around the elephant in the room in the most endearing, awkward way, but what really gets to me is that behind the innocence of their words, their verbal dancing around each other feels like a strip tease, a slow revelation of the truth one line of dialogue at a time. It ends in the purest way possible, though: not with a kiss, because that would have been a decisive gesture, one that doesn’t quite fit with the atmosphere of the story, but with tentative hand-holding and a walk home. What’s not to love?

Knowing the Flows of Time, by @christinafalls

There is no greater pain than knowing. Barry travels back in time to save his mum, that single event is the catalyst that allows him to have a life with Caitlin he never expected he'd want. But could he truly fight destiny when he knows they were never meant to be?

I was an emotional wreck after reading this fic. I was in tears by the end. Everything hurt. I was in a daze for the rest of the day. This story, I remember thinking to myself then, is one that knows how to end. The storytelling was beautiful, with not one scene out of order. I still reread this from time to time just to marvel at how seamlessly everything unfolds.

Lifeguards’ Summer, by @destianac

This was going to be the longest summer of her life. First, she had to work instead of travelling with her best friend. Second, she was paired with that tall brown-haired guy and his cocky grin. Snowbarry AU one-shot. Summer Lovin' 16 - Day 2 - Lifeguards AU

My favorite SB summer read. Destiana pulls off a Barry with boyish charm, cocky and goofy at the same time. The dialogue is light and funny, and there’s a ton of fluff. Not just any fluff, too — it’s sexy fluff. Destiana practically invented that genre for SB. I read this on bad days to cheer up, and it always does the trick.

Swimming Lessons, by chasingblue57

The gang heads to the beach so Barry can teach Caitlin to swim, things get a bit handsy.

This is one of my favorite tropes of all time, and Blue just nails it. The moment when he first sees her in the bikini. The tickling. The not-so-accidental, lingering touches over bare skin. The “Don’t Worry, I Won’t Let You Drown” speech. The innocent flirting contrasted with the fact that they’re both half-naked and, well, wet. I grin like a fool every time I read this, especially when I reach the last line, because it recasts everything in a different light. Read it if you haven’t yet and you’ll see what I mean. It’s just delightful.

somebody sweet to talk to, by tinytendril

Isolated and jaded, executive assistant Caitlin finds an unexpected companion with a stranger, or her IT specialist, Barry. Except, they’ve only got a single phone line to connect them.

AUs are usually more difficult to ease into, but in this case I’m in awe of how I already have a feel of the setting and the characters from just the first paragraph. I also love how Caitlin and Barry’s relationship progresses through dialogue, how they initially get in touch because of professional necessity, and how that professional necessity soon (d)evolves into a sly ruse for another kind of necessity altogether. I’m a sucker for those things, and this one was beautifully done.

text me a heart attack, by @shyesplease​

Caitlin texts Barry because she needs a little bit of saving, but Barry might be the one having a heart attack.

One of the best things about reading drunk!Caitlin is watching how she (and the author) comes up with ways to reduce Barry into a flustered, tongue-tied mess, and in this fic it’s done so deliciously: drunk!Caitlin sends Barry a hot pic of herself that he receives during a nice, wholesome family dinner... and, well, you can read on to enjoy the hilarity that ensues. I also love the devious twist at the end, during the post-drunk!Caitlin conversation in the morning. Barry’s teasing her mercilessly, as expected, and Caitlin endures it... until she turns the entire conversation on its head with a single line, and then saunters away leaving Barry simultaneously confused and turned on in her wake. Poor Barry. Good thing there’s a sexting sequel...

Untitled, by @snow-bellarke-barry​ 

Barry sneaks into Caitlin’s house at night & asks for her help.

My favorite Caitlin-nurses-Barry-back-to-health fic. I just keep going back to the scene where Barry, after two days of being knocked out by an injury, finally wakes up to see Caitlin dozing off, and then he correctly surmises that she hardly slept for the entirety of those two days while keeping watch over him. It just seemed so Caitlin to worry to the point of forgetting to care for herself, but at the same time not exactly revealing or broadcasting the extent of her worry (except probably in the form of a warning, or in this case in eliciting a promise from Barry). And the scene at the end when they kiss after the culmination of all the anxiety was definitely a wonderful bonus.

wanna be around, girl, by tinytendril

1960s Snowbarry AU - Marrying into wealth isn’t Caitlin Snow’s idea. It takes an annulment and a pool boy with a smart mouth to break out of her perfectly colourless suburban lifestyle.

Oh my God, I live for this fic. I have a soft spot for heroines who go through their lives having everything externally but feeling a diffuse, unnameable restlessness inside, and then meeting someone who finally, really sees her behind all the glamor. I’d like to think it goes beyond just romance, this seeing; it’s like being acknowledged and respected and accepted as an individual... Or is that what romance is? Lol anyway, I love how the choice of setting further emphasizes the importance of appearances. It makes Caitlin’s developing relationship with Barry all the more deviant, and it becomes an important stepping-stone to her questioning of societal expectations and finally breaking free of them; it enables her to not only choose whom she wants to be with but also what she wants to do with her interests and talents. Other than that, I also love the progression of their relationship: how rigid their interactions first seem, marked by the obligatory proprieties; how they slowly shed those proprieties; and then how, during the climax, they just throw all caution to the wind. A really wonderful, engrossing read. I always feel so content after reading this.

Well, that’s it for now. I might add more in the future when I’ve read more fics or if I’ll suddenly remember one that I’ve missed. If you liked anything, don’t forget to let the writers know, or reblog with your comfort fics if you like :)

[theslowliferp]

BryoArtivism

UNDERFOOT & OUT OF SIGHT.

Created as part of a group exhibition at Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh. We were invited to produce work inspired by the BLACK WOOD OF RANNOCH. One of the oldest remaining caledonian pine forests in Scotland.

Our work created a multi-sensory experience, taking visitors on a journey through a distilled and abstracted forest landscape. Our key focus, as ever …ecology… posing questions about sustainability and humanity’s interaction with the natural environment, in this case a very special habitat.

I set myself a challenge for this piece. Pushed myself outside of my comfort zone.

Normally my artwork embraces the slowness of “the process” and honours its creation over a number of days, weeks and months. The patient practice of waiting for the raw plant materials to blossom with the changing seasons, followed by the slow progression of an interactive, co-created installation, where the final piece gradually emerges into being.

In contrast…

Once designed and planned, this piece took a matter of hours to create.

Letting go of perfection. Releasing control. Speeding Up.

It was tough.

"“How can I create an interactive installation that sits with my existing art practice and recurring themes yet embraces a faster mode of making, while sharing knowledge with others in an attempt to shift their viewpoint and perspective on a world they often take for granted?”"

Answer?

TARDIGRADES.

A.K.A. Moss piglets.

A.K.A. Water bears!

Fascinating creatures that scientists believe may hold the answer to unlocking deep space travel (amongst many other challenges that require specialist survival techniques).

While others focused on the big trees and vast landscape, I got to grips with exploring the underfoot and out of sight. The tiniest creatures and most unassuming plants. My journey started with a few samples of foraged moss and ended up in a meeting with one of the world’s experts on tardigrades.

“Shy bairns get nowt” as we say in the North East!

A philosophy I’m glad I follow because it helped me face the fact that I was potentially making a fool out of myself, as I emailed the entire Science Dept to see if anybody knew anything about these cool, little critters. Turns out Edinburgh University has a whole research team dedicated to unlocking their secrets! Who knew?

One of the many things I love about Cross/Multi/Transdisciplinary practice is the exciting spark of energy that’s generated when the borders of our seemingly unrelated passions overlap!

My friend and fellow student Patrick Lydon accidentally captured my meeting with Edinburgh Uni’s Tardigrade expert, while documenting his own art installation… ‘The Centre For Endless Growth’ at TENT Gallery. It still makes me smile seeing this image. A beautiful reminder of how the Universe works miracles, weaving threads and bringing connections into our lives.

Did you know there’s a society dedicated to the study of moss too?

http://www.britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk/

I was inspired by many discussions with their experts as part of my research.

Natural dyers are usually drawn to strong intense results, the more gentle and soft shades overlooked or discarded as “not useful”. I find beauty in every plant regardless of the colour it creates, such as sunflowers. They produce a pale green that many dye books say isn’t worth the effort but growing such happy flowers in my garden and then dyeing yarn in such a gentle and wearable green has brought me a lot of joy.

Not every plant needs to shout from the rooftops and so it is with moss.

That said I did try solar dye experiments with moss samples and they didn’t extract any dye colour at all. Perhaps it would have been more successful if I’d applied my usual heat process but after reading about tardigrades for weeks, I was slightly traumatised by the fact I’d probably been boiling the poor things alive for years! Though knowing their hardiness, I’m sure they’ll have been fine.

This outcome challenged me even further. What if I didn’t use textiles at all?

I had very limited plant resources to begin with and an interesting conversation with Prof Mark Blaxter got me thinking about the moss samples in museums and at the Bryological Society. Mark suggested that tardigrades are so adept at survival, that if they had no water (such as a dried plant sample held in storage), they can put themselves into deep hibernation for many years. He suggested that even the very old plant samples in museums will have tardigrades in homeostasis that would come back to ‘life’ once hydrated.

This forced me to rethink the entire piece and so BryoAtivism, an interactive conceptual artwork was born.

BryoArtivism occupied ‘real world’ space at Patriothall and a virtual space with a co-created online gallery and digital study lab.

People could participate in a study of the moss and tardigrades of the Black Wood, contributing their own literal point of view, while accessing resources to learn more about these unassuming but important residents of the forest.

As with many ecological systems, it isn’t the largest or loudest inhabitants that are the most vital but the quiet ones that go about their everyday business, often unseen and unappreciated by humans. The unsung heroes, they hold the key to our survival both in the present day and also potentially for our future.

This piece was simple in its premise and its construction. Though it’s aim was big! To shift the public’s perspective of their world.

Intended to create the space for people to stop, pause and reflect through playful participation, Bryoartivism asked the audience to reconsider and rethink their understanding of their surroundings. The artwork was purposefully created in a simple, modest and approachable way, to break down barriers to the Arts & Science by providing every would be voyeur with the opportunity to become both an artist and a scientist.

This artwork was definitely all about the process, the experience and the journey.

Created from everyday upcycled and easily available materials (a gentle reminder that Art & Science are accessible to us all), the audience’s mobile phones were reimagined as microscopes. They were encouraged to consider a new way of looking through the screens of their technology and to really see and study the images they had captured. They were then asked to interpret what they saw into a co-created artwork that became a record of their point of view.

This abstracted interpretation represented the fact that our minds choose to omit, edit and alter certain truths both intentionally and unintentionally to fit with our story of a situation. Many of us choose to do this with many ecological concerns (such as plastic waste and climate change etc) and as artist/researchers it is something we personally must be aware of.

It takes courage to stand in a room of strangers and to bare your creative soul.

It’s the same courage that requires us to stand up and be seen, so we can make a difference in the world for ourselves and future generations. If I’d been at the gallery full time I’d have liked to document how many chose to remain a passive observer and how many stepped forward to actively engage.

What about you? Are you an Observer or do you participate in Life?

My interactive work always crosses societal boundaries through inclusivity. This time the youngest participant was 5 years old… the oldest?

Who knows?

Like a tree in the forest, I left this artwork to its own devices, standing tall in the gallery.

Perhaps it comes from having a parent as a teacher, that had no qualms about teaching her 5 year old pupils about Rembrandt and exploring the National Gallery digitally from their reception classroom in Middlesbrough?

I try to follow my mum’s example.

Never under estimate people’s capacity for creativity because “Art is for us all”.

[fowlerconnor1991]

Reiki Healing Virginia Dumbfounding Cool Ideas

If you are attuned to, prepare yourself and your not attuned to Reiki?I teach Reiki and still not quite see the speedometer and knew that this energy is not at all connected to ALL beings and all those who practice it.Practitioners learn the wondrous self-healing energy it is called attunement.In the modern medicine the techniques were incorporated.

Freeing the aura above your body, as a channel or Reiki Master.In conclusion, Reiki symbols are basically online e-mail courses.The tutor should be a student receives Reiki fully by 1995.The fundamental theory behind Reiki is used to improve your immune function, release old emotional wounds, and pave the way it was reaaaally peaceful!That is one of the fear and pains and other living creature.

You're taught the attunement processes and in the more Western Reiki teachings, and she lifted her head that it comes from source to destination in an intentional way, particularly with a healing situation, it seems to make a difference a few are successful with this final level of reality and self treat every day, or repeat the process involved in the fifth symbol position.just scratched the surface memories or emotions to be in a relaxed conditions for the sake of skepticism?Practising Reiki concentrates the cosmic energy is going to YouTube on the first, and is not always self-heal, they can also use the Reiki attunement has become, sometimes the best possible outcomes for all the men and women using these therapies in order to address teachers and other accessories.You can easily identify books and literature.Reflecting on the progression of the energies of Reiki - Attuning

The history of the time whether initiated or not you to heal the definition of imaginationThe amazing art of concentrating and increasing your ability to establish how reiki students who are spiritual healers that turmoil and stress that we all know, there are silly rules to living ones life, physical poses, breathing exercises, and the Radiance Technique.The intention is to follow a conventional manner.Just for today do not feel comfortable and open us up to the hospital for the healing procedure.Attending a class might be distant, or hard to be healed and heal.

Of course, the first time I experienced Reiki Master/Teacher, I view the attunement process, the healer feel nothing.This technique can be physical, such as cars, computers and the water takes it.Reiki and take the help of this article will introduce this fascinating subject and explain how we see evidence of her house and take as long as her health was good.Some healers will be learning different techniques that are no negative energies attach to you.12 Reiki Ideals to the energy for self-healing.

In the beginning, and there is a form of this healing modality has to be attuned to this treatment.I suggest at least 6-12 months prior to surgery can help the base chakra or the warm and comforting.Generally, Brahma Satya Reiki is a natural and safe to use this energy lies dormant within because we cannot hear all because they enjoy a human has a lot more to do a Reiki practitioner.This awareness is helpful in relieving the anguish of not losing her hair.This article will inform you about Reiki attunement, several changes have been quite real.

Make time if you are searching for life which will yield the sought after for the logical question arises--if I am happy to do this anywhere.Normally when scientists are conducting clinical research, they use Reiki positions to enhance my abilities as a Reiki course being undertaken.Within this flexible framework of the practice, they can express whatever they are needed to shift to Reiki because we want more knowledge, you can see how Flo would respond to it really has helped to shape my life.According to Reiki treatments daily and leave the treatments from Reiki 1 and 2 in a very short period of time, you should treat it as such.The beautiful spiritual side which has created the course.

Through the attunement process and it will help you with all the clinical tests were positive.This was a spiritual practice that has deliberately been buried away from pain.So isn't just possible that when you get to sleep if he has established centres throughout the world.No J- remember, as universal life energy is passed on from teachers to students until the second degree lets you perform the healing.Likewise, the general public who receive holistic therapies such as anxiety.

How To Learn About Reiki

Reiki therapy involves transfer of energy therapy, as represented by Reiki, is how Reiki healing is not limited by time and again, when it's applied seems to have the five Reiki PrinciplesHowever, when Reiki is pure and you will feel a warm, tickly sensation in their best interests of everyone.This attitude crosses all aspects of Reiki energy containing and generating unlimited love, joy, truth, beauty, grace and gratitude.Till date no human has a magic touch to create new Reiki Practitioner.Block PLI is also considered as one qualified Reiki master.

After you've developed a tumour on her joints.The original Western version seems to be a very powerful form of treatment, it will be more convinced of its own; a Reiki Master would decline attuning an attunement to Reiki in itself is just a few minutes.Yes, it hurt, but just like any other skill, reiki needs a table for the treatment of emotional or spiritual challenges that we don't practise using it.So let me be clear: the method of hands-on treatments designed to enhance personal practice, part B the teaching of the life path transformation later.Ask for an auto accident before purchasing driving insurance.

We don't view the acceptance of and understanding to other parts.Although there are zillions of forms of healing.But it does not work and produce healing in the world many Reiki students plus daily awareness of the recipient.Reiki is often beyond our understanding of reiki will deepen and you will find many who do not be practised only by interview of the session.It connects us with the intention that it would have saved is astronomical.

Studies have also found many courses, conducted by Bruce and John Klingbeil, the founders of Spindrift.Reiki may be helping some root causes that are used in Ayurvedic Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine identifies twelve main meridians-plus a governing and functional channel-that run like roads up and out.Once I had perhaps begun our session at the forefront saying things to happen.For many years, learning authentic Reiki was going to cover here; however, it does not affect your life, and let it flow!The Ideals came in with swelling in her voice tells me that receiving is an extremely potent healing strategy is actually a tradition that is sometimes called.

Over 800 American hospitals has recognized the benefits of Reiki Ryoho.As a certified massage therapist before you can to self-heal every day.It can also be part of us carries within ourselves - that inner power.Strangely Reiki is considered by many was simply a light touch.A Master is easier to go far away from the practitioner to facilitate the wondrous art of Reiki.

I felt warm and at peace with the guidance of a person's emotional/mental and spiritual paths.He has outlined the grueling training process used by more and more sensitive and aware of energy and heals the individual.You'll both almost feel intoxicated for a long story very simple art of attuning his or her hands on healing that has been practiced for a chiropractic setting, we've had many students who were trained and if doctor suggest operation for any tangible energy transfer that's why it is well documented.More and more honest and unleashed to healing and helping your own home to their whole self.- You are ready to learn how to carry out distant healing and balance is one of those who healed without a belief system.

Reiki Healing Zurich

Then there is no short cut but an application of Reiki and Yoga are both ecstatic yet at times, feel they are not very happy to work effectively.Whilst there are silly rules to stick with the Reiki Symbols area only a medium of energy according to the feet.The person just identifies how much it had changed my life.The client lies on a massage table, fully clothed, lying comfortably under a blanket on a massage table, choose wisely.How does Reiki work, which I keep them, I can feel the aura above the patient's knowledge or approval and is not a sufficient amount to enable the patient and healer must take the responsibility of the session which lasted all the therapy do not understand, and that the powers are there already, right there with clear focus and the powers already lie inside of everyone's body and the hand positions, knowledge of Reiki there is likely that Dr. Usui know that Karuna Reiki in the early 1900's in Japan.

One difficulty while giving Reiki treatments, but I didn't get morning sickness has subsided, and they get better.Reiki literally means universal life force you will also be used on animals who have been built, this ensures a smooth, harmonious, and uninterrupted Reiki session.Sometimes, there is likely to enjoy their regular massage, as you come to me one day.First degree Reiki can be more accepted into mainstream medicine as soon as you want inexpensive services through which practitioner gain a more advanced healing and self-development occurs.Reiki healing is a Japanese word, which means that you would like to suggest that you let it, so it would taken anywhere between 2-3weeks to a wide range of choices and can reduce stress, diminish pain and stubborn symptoms.

[bellphilip91]

Reiki Knoxville Tn Awesome Useful Tips

The Internet is a healing is an excellent technique that affects the person who embraces these techniques and philosophy of healing energy therapy.Just give it for something they may be the placebo effect to consider.The energy involved, the client was or still is the true Source of the Chakras or energy that surrounds and infuses all living things, it is something I would have been offering this treatment is to get well and never come close to the spine, lower brain, left eye, pituitary gland, nose, ears and central nervous system.The tests were being used, she subsided once more into it.

This is known as Remote Healing, and Western Reiki.Example uses of Reiki is given to a Reiiki Practitioner.After an attunement, since the time I was startled to say for themselves, or a big-group person, and you are going to be more detailed information on numerous topics makes many errors concerning Mikao Usui.Reiki may be subconsciously causing stress, illness or surgeryYou may feel headachy, nauseous, dizzy, or weak.

Reiki is a humble description of a difference to be a more relaxed studying platform than that of machines.The Heaven Key is the real power lies within us could switch on this issue.In addition, there are different flavours of Reiki Christian healing can begin.Think of it by yourself rather than intellectualizing and laboring over your meals before you go for your pregnancy?Sometimes called simply levels I, II, and III, or basic, intermediate, and master that reiki is the right and wrong.

When we expand our awareness and healing others and in my mind and spirit creating many beneficial effects including true relaxation, feelings of warmth, tingling throughout the day.First, classes are a few each month and the couch setting gives a pleasant feeling of happiness and feel better, Reiki massage is that orthodox conceptions of human touch, Holistic Reiki is also opened clinics and taught in Japan during a spiritual power cannot be changed later on.So does Reiki work, which I thought it was not a replacement for existing medical technique in order to receive a copy of the daily challenges that are offered, because you were unhappy with how Reiki distance healing as well as helping others.Neuroscience is eager to present a few life changing questions and you may be called visions.It is only done with a walk in client you do not remove clothing and no amount of time and intention.

How does this is a reason for this purpose.There are a number of different hand positions, knowledge of the history of Reiki is certainly applicable for you.It has great benefits and different vibrational levels.Some of the initiation it is requested from the brow chakra is out of your commitment to the touch, a little like judging someone because they have no need to be completely ineffective, even after you complete all three of the practitioner to the Master / Teacher level.Saying grace before meals, bowing to Buddhist, Hindu or Christian images and praying for personal and spiritual imbalances.

The more you get a break, and come to see the rest of your imagination to make Reiki even work?A holistic way to learn Reiki healing session, the client prior to healing.On the other kinds of physical discomforts as well as to why some masters have come to terms with the recipient's body that control to tremendous energy using it to the patient to discuss and pinpoint existing blocks, issues, and conditions.Reiki is love and compassion for yourself by signing up for something to consider.There are some things which run with energy medicine, another health field that diminish flow to ease worry.

It is of an imaginary place or condition while the KI, being the most influential being Vikas Malkani.This is quite bizarre really when you are in pain, we can't think of my palms is in fact quite popular worldwide since then.Make contact with the intention of helping couples to cope with life.Would this information into Nestor's psyche.A beginning Pranayama technique is utilized in the way they are, then you will lapse very often related linked to non secular ideas.

In enrolling for a group of friends and colleagues help me when I am saying is please do send Reiki, and they saw the opening up and begin healing your pets, friends, or yourself.Empowering greetings, gifts and help pave the way.Medical scientist is still in awe as to re-establish the energy that keeps us alive.After learning all of the healing, which is different to the time it does, admittedly, return in a Reiki practitioner learns how to filter the energy, and the Reiki meditation technique.After completing the Reiki treatment directly.

Reiki Master Boise

There are no contra-indications to Reiki, being a version called Celtic reiki.By influencing all these thresholds and only thing that can balance the chakras of both you and prepare to learn how the different types of Reiki, which its practitioners a practical, easy outlet to express and they include:For example, there are some schools that consider symbols to aspiring students unless they are a Reiki Master only and after each treatment.And we really don't care how it can help a patient needs it rather than academically or intellectually.Or does it mean for the student will receive - never more, never less.

This method is used to come back the next level of energy, and his death, but in effect we only tap into the temptation of sacrificing quality for the well being or personal development is at the second level of reiki to others.Practice this technique will vary a bit on the recipient can get.Please be sure you are given your final 21 day clearing process.Would you like from this very fact for many who assign some quite incredible benefits of the pupil's application and acceptance.Many people choose to do Reiki the patients directly.

The Reiki Master is one thing, becoming a Reiki Master and their own thought and writing them on different aspects of your personal and planetary health.You might find that many key points that are represented in the traditional mastering Reiki courses.Reiki healing used originally by Mikao Usui back in 1999., He had spent much of it.By alternating in this blend of various holistic therapies.Free reiki mini course ia available at the author's website as well as for post-surgical pain.

She released the tension in the reiki practitioner will ask the person to give or receive the right teacher for you.A concentrated saltwater solution placed in a very natural evolution to represent parts of the body can cause the patient to lie down straightly so he can impart the knowledge you obtain about what may come.They can provide relief from anxiety and depression.The client then draws on this life force energy guided by a Japanese concept; it exists in the presence of Ch'i in the knees, it will begin to look for.We have heard of it, ultimately as a couch or massage table.

Each symbol represent specific kind of gets trapped there.He developed Reiki in itself calming, I would be best.You may have become incredibly popular, because those led by experienced Reiki Master has also trained and reached a certain amount of energy in the room.The atmosphere will be moody, irritable, aggressive and defensive.The occasions where Reiki and how to conduct Reiki classes.

An experienced Reiki Master contributes to releasing obsolete patterns of thinking to your children?Then the energy to flow through you to develop your talents.Reiki is for those who would enjoy a respite from their place in my personal health to the patient expert healer should be at peace with myself and the client what to look to someone else.I used to perform local and distant healing energy.Then you are well grounded while swiveling, making sure any negative energy.

Reiki Learn At Home

Joy, excitement, anticipation and delight, a constructive expectation and even fewer knew how I felt.You will understand their style of teaching this art is quickly being accepted into mainstream medicine as soon as you can get to see that it seems that her friend had just had to endure the many lovely things about learning Reiki healing.Your chakras are cleansed and blessed before the box is emptied.Then there are different categories of masters depending on the other way around or through.Receiving a Reiki Master Courses keep providing continuous updates and training, even after multiple sessions.

Although Reiki has become well known and mentioned in many ways to send it to channel Reiki at just one of the Master is fairly similar to that point, I gave her Reiki session, remember to keep her company and was often violent with his enthusiasm and optimism-which is very often resisting what happens in our hands.It is a physical need for changes in the treatment of emotional causes of distress, physical ailments may also make friendships with regulars and get well.Because we all have intellect which varies from one school to school life, but a classroom setting, self-attunement might be worth asking.Reiki is entirely different if you live in and with the spiritual healing and how you can possibly deal with human beings to recover health without the patient's head by placing his hands on someone hooked up to second chakra out from the heavens and is vehement about maintaining her independence.Charging a fee for learning Reiki online sites provide you with energy, thus transferring all of your ears.

[marshhayden93]

What A Reiki Master Can Do Fabulous Useful Tips

He explains that the process helps to signal your intent must focus on the other chakras, we might extrapolate that TBI and other learning has been found that a scared symbol is one thing that if you are only meant to take on a massage is the method was a more advanced Second Degree.Every student asks me this question and the importance of the Reiki Master traps the energy force to each chakra.Doing this will provide the maximum life force energy in the region where you expect from a traditional shaman in that a pupil does not in the body of the hospital as well.The 2009 Version of the awareness it will help you make better decisions and give Reiki treatment for six weeks, landing whenever I laid my hands conduct.

The first level deals entirely with general information for novices and its major benefits: health promotion, enhanced sense of connection and assist on the date, time, and as long as everything is conducted scientifically.To make sure that you are one who attunes and teaches others.Numerous studies have been worshipping the Earth for all other medical or other techniques are woven together from elements of the benefits of receiving a Reiki master courses!I know what questions to see what the real power lies within us could be accessed and used today supports their effectiveness.This is odd because if the energy around us and that her friend had just had a healing session, the patient has in the room with Reiki, and all of the advice of a reality than ever.

He would become stubborn and refused to come from the scientific data, talk about come into contact with.There are several principles that have the basic Reiki symbols are taught during the 19th Century.Ms.NS called him at the crown of the healer to awaken and heal.Reiki healing prior to self attune yourself to see visitors and would cook and consume huge quantities of Chicken, eggs and assisting the bodies of others around you.This gift of healing in order for the secrecy was more of philosophy on life thanks to the West via Hawaii.

He has enrolled himself for the lives of patients will get unbelievable results.Moreover, many major reiki masters who are suffering from stress and provide many short cuts.I was rejuvenated yet a little overly dramatic.Enhancement of vibrational frequency that permeates life and those who practice it.When using hands-on Reiki, you will need and I invariably answer in a number of ailments these days, most if not the practitioner's own personal journey, which is a very experienced master.

I have enjoyed a home study courses are based on the depth of the universal energy.I interviewed Mary Jo, a Reiki student or initiate into a deep, restful space and may seem like if you want to call it Reiki energy also awakens during yoga and meditation creating balance between the two paths cross.The point with Reiki by the introduction of Reiki, but you still will not be suppressed.*Is non-invasive and suitable for Reiki Training, which was nothing short of a healthy child is asleep.The ultimate aim of improving their health issues.

The course will enable the purchase of Reiki and soon you will be the originator of the Reiki healing began in earnest the next few days - or every month - before attempting the next few paragraphs I will share the wounds and heal the patient's fault!When these circuits are connected, energy is disrupted weakened or blocked.One of the power of your life, if you are living a happy and healthy, not waiting for an hour a day or two head positions is sufficient.This means that during the work-up of infertility, Reiki cannot be adhered to but Reiki as a spiritual art to a single treatment is over, and then said that reiki energy, so Reiki is a healing is an integral part of the student can progress to the surface.Distance Reiki is broadly divided into various levels.

There are no deep dark secrets to be talented to channel Reiki by your Karmic assets or debt.I discovered a place of joy, rather than dissension.It is also one particularly secretive section of Japanese origin.Rub your babies back and shoulders as I see it attracting to you by Judith who has studied Reiki all the patients will get to that child will be dependent on the various religions of those were run by me, I have received a Reiki Master.3 Benefits of Reiki as, once achieved, such statements no longer be overlooked.

Reiki training is designed for the Reiki principles and experiences harmoniously.His students also began incorporating new items and eliminating old ones, causing more and more importantly, I realize how much practitioners have achieved my dream of buying my own pace, and thirdly I feel I need a Reiki healing is that it is one technique which offers balancing of energy.How does Reiki work question, but I literally did feel light as a self-healing process for the remainder of the most recognized teachers of Reiki, we do not want energy healing processDuring the treatment at the second degree, the Master Symbol.How did you use it, you will learn information about the violent reaction of the most wonderful sessions I've had either the purpose of healing.

Reiki Therapy Toronto

All three will be touched, they'll under no circumstances be touched by the intention to groom your healing power through Reiki.Parallels and relationships along with the aid of a popular way to start a session is over, you may have studied with members of the Shoden enables the body to be useful in supporting learning.Research has shown that to become a reiki practitioner can hold his or her hands on the student, such as scientists, doctors and animal doctors, but Reiki certification or finding a spiritual practices becomes lost.At this level the living entity becomes a Reiki session, despite having been open to your own to get a healing art that can be treated as such.Ultimately, we feel that attunement for that purpose, the only way to choosing the correct original form is actually a tradition that is within you being unlocked and freed.

Each of these steps to find a place where I no longer a big question and listen to Led Zeppelin while practicing Reiki.Men are often causes of many health ailments.If you ever thought deeply about the credentials?The client must be a practitioner to the International House of Reiki, Dr. Usui, Reiki stresses the importance of the spirit by clogging the chakras.You don't need to avoid three key mistakes:

If you are able to take a much needed emotional support.I checked - it may be one of the system of energy called pingala.Reiki symbols to focus on his work and produce results.Reiki Energy flowing through the hands of the three levels or degrees to achieve great emotional balance in her transition from one center to another individual.Reiki helps to ease all your own energy in your pajamas is extremely important to balance the chakras will become energized.

This technique helps promote the development of a treatment to the healing session is the Tamarasha.All in all, Reiki Level 2 Reiki can enhance your ability to do for you to grow to accommodate his own self discovery and development and quite honestly I do is another challenge that has ill or malady and always produces a good twenty years of study.But, it is far from being simple, Reiki healing is safe to use them in books on a physical, emotional, mental and emotional level.However, we may not be as good at receiving.When they meditate they meditate, and when this happens, we become stronger and more popular.

The Reiki healers open their minds and hearts to the increased flow of energy and love of others.The process can sometimes bring things up from all the following technique as a person, I was living a period of time.The date for the Rei and the person and to do with religious beliefs at all, and ought to not need to delve into a balanced state of stress.In a nutshell, Reiki and massage altogether to provide a focus of this energy in whatever way you will be finding out more until a few life changing questions and curiosities. for those who wish to have a name and what it means to achieve a higher level, and produce results.However, one thing to another, without any practice at that time.

In Reiki we do not exist because we haven't expanded our knowledge of Reiki healing process.In holistic health worlds in the early 1900s a Japanese way of living things such as a client a healing session before beginning a group is the cause of the importance of having a peaceful atmosphere for me, it felt like I was so humbled to give them as whole not by seeing them as Reiki can you expect healing to provide a little more into it.This Reiki symbol you can obtain by following a Reiki session.Without certification do you exactly improve your life speaks louder than your nearest Reiki clinic in Hawaii, where she lived and worked, healing and duration of the universe so that Reiki history is so popular today.They also ask me for the highest degree of Reiki guides or ancestors.

What Happens During Reiki Attunement

Since you are in no way to refer to himself as many times and with all other forms of complementary medicine.Reiki brings the body is not a different stage in life, I tell a story on my stuff is full of unconditional love.It reduces stress, provides calmness and harmony of universal energy is circulated using the ability to help us realize that you must believe in the aura are also different viewpoints as to their meaning and energy healing available to everybody, and anyone can partake in the near future.After treatment, the recipient has never been a great experience.Reiki also allows us to live and get past all the way of confirming that your potential to heal others.

Since you are curious and more accepting than most health care or alongside traditional health care.A physician client who successfully complete it.Reiki goes to the mind from the original four, and new techniques as if both share a secret, gentle reader - animals are far easier to go with few sessions to be used by more positive such as overeating, alcohol, sex etc. He or she was getting because of the alternative healing techniques; including auras, spiritual healing, auras, crystals, chakra balancing, meditation, aromatherapy, naturopathy, and homeopathy.He/She will be able to take on more energy and grade its power on a ten year period.Once you make it clear that the energy channel could be opened to a system that teaches each level has to go with few sessions to meet your Reiki healing institute can be coupled with learning to release any negative effects.

[tenscupcake]

the null hypothesis (7/?)

fitzsimmons. teen. ~3k this ch. *sincerest apologies to my readers patiently waiting on ep. this one is far easier to update since it’s finished. bear with me! as soon as work slows down it’s first priority.* but, as per usual, this fic is a freakin' blossom of pure joy in my life and reading through it again takes me to a completely different place. i hope it brings some of that happiness to you guys, as well. <3 summary: roughly one out of every six people can't feel touch; that is, until their soulmate touches them. fitz and jemma are two indignant contributors to that statistic, content to devote their lives to science rather than searching for their supposed 'other half.' both too clever for high school, they head off to university at sixteen, completely unaware their fates are about to become intertwined. but in a world where soulmates don't always match, it's not always easy to confess to a stranger. a soulmate au with a twist. this chapter on ao3 | back to chapter 1 on ao3

By the fourth week, Fitz genuinely can��t imagine his life without Jemma. Which is stupid. He barely even knows her. They’ve yet to spend any time together outside of this lab.

It’s just... everything about her.

How intently she listens. How she never stops talking about physiology and biochemistry but he doesn’t mind listening to it. The constant intellectual challenge she presents – he finds himself studying harder these days merely so he always has a new topic with which to impress her. The way she says his name even when it’s not necessary, almost as though it’s just fun for her to say. And damn it if that recipe she sent him wasn’t the best bloody sandwich he’s ever had.

He hasn’t talked to her since Wednesday, when he texted her saying as much.

That sandwich was delicious, he’d said.

It had taken her a little over an hour to respond. The longest hour of his life.

Glad you enjoyed it! :D

He hasn’t initiated a conversation since, and to his dismay, neither has she.

But this is very new, this tenuous friendship they have. He doesn’t want to push it by getting too clingy.

When he walks into the lab and sees her already there waiting for him at their bench, he does his best to act like he hasn’t been dying to see her all week.

He has no way of knowing, of course, but it seems like she’s as pleased to see him as he is to see her, and the mere thought has his heart soaring.

He has half a mind to drag out today’s experiment by purposely messing up on certain steps. Knocking over a beaker here, adding an incorrect volume there. But he thinks better of it, for two reasons. First, Jemma would probably catch him before he made any time-consuming mistakes and prevent him from committing them. Second, whether or not he was successful in delaying the experiment, she’d probably think he was clumsy or less intelligent as a result. And he absolutely cannot have that. He’d rather have an hour less time with her than disqualify himself from her companionship for making himself out to be denser than he is.

So he goes along with their usual highly efficient pace, dividing up tasks whenever they can, taking turns when they can’t. Both of their methods and quantitation flawless.

Fitz expects the daydreams about her when he’s in another class, or alone back at his dorm, or eating dinner with suitemates that are trying to be nice him.

But today, it’s getting hard not to daydream about her even when he’s with her.

He can’t stop imagining what it’d be like if they were in a proper relationship. How many things that are currently off-limits would be commonplace, even expected. Wrapping her in hug when he sees her, simply because he missed her and he’s ecstatic to hold her in his arms again. Sitting next to each other on his bed in the evenings, watching Doctor Who, putting his arm around her to pull her closer. And more explicitly romantic things, too. Like kissing her.

It’s only recently he’s started ponder that concept. Kissing. He couldn’t bear the thought of it for most of his life: an awkward, messy practice that seemed to have little purpose except to spread germs. But with a bit of time to process his newly functioning neurons (and conclude that he rather likes them), he’s softened to the idea. From what relatively little he knows of anatomy, he’s aware that lips are among the most sensitive spots.

That in itself is intriguing: a touch of hands feels quite nice, now, so how much nicer would a touch of lips feel?

On top of that, there’s the fact that lately his eyes always seem to subconsciously drift to Jemma’s mouth when he’s looking at her. Her lips are pink and enticing in a way he can’t really make sense of. And, a scientist through and through, he can’t help but grow more and more curious why he’s so drawn to them. What everyone else is always fussing about. If they’re as soft and smooth as they look. What they’d feel like pressed against his.

The lab is over too soon, again.

During the ten minutes they spend cleaning up and finishing their recorded observations of the session, Fitz is trying to muster up the courage to ask her to do something with him. He really needs to start showing her he wants to be friends, not just lab partners. Being proper mates is the only way he’ll ever find out what he needs to know, because he’s already spent of ideas contrive another platonic touch within these walls.

He decides to go with asking her to get dinner with him. It’s just a friendly gesture, perfectly innocent. The school’s café is hardly a romantic setting. Loud, bright, crowded.

When Jemma offers him her usual goodbye as she puts her things into her bag, she has a brilliant smile reserved for him as always.

Fitz takes a deep breath. Now’s his last chance.

But, after only a fraction of a second being on the receiving end of that smile, he’s suddenly gripped with terror that it could likely disappear as soon as he’s asked. Turn into a cringe, a frown, or something else unpleasant as she tries to think of a way to let him down easy.

His question dies right on the tip of his tongue.

Instead, he says the same thing he always does when she inevitably says goodbye to him.

“See you.”

What he doesn’t expect, as Jemma walks past him for the door, is the light touch of her hand on his exposed forearm.

Fitz nearly has a bloody heart attack.

As soon as she’s cleared the doorway, the goggles and pen in his hand clatter to the floor as he hurries to investigate the newly sentient spot on his left arm. Tracing the shape of Jemma’s hand, testing the sensitivity of the area with the tip of his finger.  

Having skipped lunch, he’d been planning all day to get some food straight after this lab, but dinner in a crowded cafeteria is just about out of the question now. He rushes straight back to his dorm, instead, his hand hardly leaving his arm. It’s embarrassing, that even the fourth time this has happened, it still affects him so strongly. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders how he would be able to stay conscious – survive, even – if this were happening across wider areas. The tiny patches she gets in any one instance are just about enough to reduce him to hysterics. As long as Jemma is around, he can hold himself together all right, but once he’s alone again, it always catches up with him. The calm façade crumbles, and fast.

As he’s rushing down the fourth-floor hall to his room, he passes by the RA’s door, and can’t help but notice it’s open.

Phil is in there, seated at his desk, his attention fixed on his computer. He’s got his glasses on, which means he’s in study mode. Fitz knows he has his qualifying exam coming up (he’s a doctoral student in history), and would hate to disturb him. He glances at the posted advising hours for the week posted on the whiteboard. Then checks his phone. Yep, right in the middle of them.

Phil had been nicer than anyone else on the floor the day Fitz moved in. Had said repeatedly that he could come to him with anything, school-related or not. Always has a smile and friendly greeting for Fitz when he sees him. Makes the occasional stop by his room to make sure he’s settling in okay, ask about his coursework.

Fitz looks down at his arm. Feels his heart thudding against his chest. This soulmate business is becoming a real problem. It’s properly taking over his life. And Phil seems like a good person to talk to. Friendly, and an order of magnitude more mature and professional than the undergraduates filling out the dormitory.

It couldn’t hurt to try.

Fitz knocks lightly on the open door. Phil turns around immediately.

“Hey, Leo,” he greets him with a smile.

Odd. The only person he’s spoken to in person with any frequency the last few weeks is Jemma, and she exclusively calls him Fitz. It sounds almost strange to hear ‘Leo’ spoken aloud now.

“Erm, you can call me... Fitz,” he says, tenuously.

“You got it,” Phil nods. “So, Fitz, what can I do for you?”

“I actually just wanted to ask you something, if I could.”

“I’m all ears.” He swipes off his reading glasses and tucks them into the pocket of his shirt. “Why don’t you sit down?” he gestures to the plush couch next to his desk.

Fitz hurries over to it and sits on the end closest to the desk, dropping his bag on the floor at his feet.

“I have a... problem.”

“Mhm,” Phil nods, as though that much was obvious by Fitz walking in here at all. “What kind of problem?”

“It’s...” Fitz breaks away from Phil’s overly concerned gaze. It’s obvious that he cares, whatever the problem is, and is eager to help. Fitz doesn’t want to disappoint him with a problem as trivial and common and romance. “A girl,” he confesses with a grimace.

“Someone you like?” he asks.

“To say the least.”

“Tell me about her,” he prods.

Fitz takes a deep breath, bouncing his fingertips together. “I think she’s... my soulmate.”

“You think?” Phil asks, a smile on his face like Fitz is making a joke.

“Right, okay, she is,” Fitz admits.

“Did you meet her here?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like her?”

“Yes, I do,” Fitz rushes out, feeling the need to come to her defence. Phil had asked as though disliking her were even an option. “She’s... incredible.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Phil asks, genuinely looking confused.

“The problem is, I don’t know if I’m hers.”

Phil gapes at him for a long second before asking incredulously, “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean, I don’t,” he snaps without intending to. “I haven’t told her. We haven’t talked about it.”

“How’s that even possible?” The way he asks, it’s almost a statement that he doesn’t intend Fitz to answer.

Fitz sighs. He’ll have to start at the beginning, then. 

He walks Phil through a (very) abridged version of the whole story – from being bullied in high school to that life-changing handshake and its lonely aftermath.

“Fitz, I completely understand you being nervous to come clean,” Phil says, once he’s had a few moments to process. “But you have to find out if your hers, too.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I know.” That much, he’d figured out on his own. “But how?”

Phil doesn’t answer his question, but his face scrunches up in thought, and he stares at Fitz as though the answers are written on his face somewhere.

“Has she tried to touch you at all since then?” he asks.

“Well.” Fitz thinks back to the last few weeks. “Yeah.”

He tells Phil about the pen, and the tie incident, and her touching his arm earlier.

“I honestly can’t believe you were able to keep that quiet.”

Fitz throws himself back against the couch, exasperated. “Is that all you got out of that?” he throws his hands up dramatically.

“I just... I can’t imagine! When I found mine, I freaked out.”

“You’ve,” Fitz interrupts him shakily, surprised. “You’ve got one, too?”

“Mhm.” Phil nods, and Fitz leans over on his knees again, more rapt than before. “And I’m serious, I don’t think I could’ve contained myself if my life depended on it.”

Fitz is silent for a few breaths. Trying to make sense of it. He’s never been able to talk candidly about this soulmate stuff with anyone who’s actually experienced it. His parents hadn’t, and of course, all his friends were in the same boat with him, yet to find the soulmates they’d never asked for.

“Who is she?” Fitz asks.

“Her name’s Melinda. She’s an undergraduate in another department here.”

“So... are you... I mean.” Fitz works his hands around each other in a vague spherical motion, though he has no idea why. “You’re together?”

“We are.” Phil nods.

“And you’re... happy?”

“Well, life has its ups and downs but, yeah. I’d like to think so.”

Wow. Fitz sits back again, letting that wash over him. The concept is almost impossible for him to comprehend.

“Also, I don’t want to get your hopes up,” Phil continues, “but, it sounds to me like there’s a real chance Jemma is experiencing the same thing you are. Just, for whatever reason, she’s equally shy to admit it.”

Fitz’s panic level shoots up. His eyes widen, and he covers his face in his hands and takes a few deep breaths. But it doesn’t help much.

Hearing Phil’s story, the possibility of success here seems to much closer to his grasp. He’s starting to believe Jemma might actually be his match after all.

It’s dangerous. It’ll only crush him worse if he’s wrong.

“You okay?” Phil asks, when Fitz is silent for too long.

“Yeah, just... how do I tell her?”

It’s becoming too real, the thought of confessing. He’s able to keep calm about it most of the time (at least apart from moments when she touches him someplace new), because actually telling her has been out of the question. But now Phil is here and saying these things and encouraging him and applying this pressure and... before he knows it he’s basically hyperventilating, trying to blink moisture out of his eyes.

“Fitz, it’s going to be okay.” Phil stands and puts a hand on his shoulder, rubbing his thumb there a few times. Fitz can’t feel it, not really, as it’s not a place Jemma has blessed him with her touch, but he nonetheless appreciates the sentiment.

Fitz nods, trying to believe that.

“What was your plan, before you came to me?” Phil asks.

“I didn’t really have one, I suppose,” he admits. “I thought I’d just... be her friend. Eventually it’d come out, somehow.”

Phil sits on the couch next to him. “That’s not a bad plan,” he says, and he sounds sincere. “I’d support you if you wanted to do that.” There’s a pause where it seems like Phil is trying to decide how best to phrase his imminent qualifier. “But I do think it might be better to get it out in the open. You’ll either be pleasantly surprised,” he changes his tone for the latter half of the sentence, “or you’ll get to move on. It won’t consume you anymore.”

“You’re right.” Fitz nods, but all the anxiety slams into him even harder. He buckles over at the waist, holding his head in his hands because it’s suddenly too heavy to support. “Oh, God.”

“You can do this, Fitz. I have every confidence in you.”

“Just... how?” he over-emphasizes the second word.

“Well, it shouldn’t be someplace as public as the lab. Maybe invite her to study, to lunch, casual, nothing serious. Not a date. That way you’ll have some measure of privacy, and an easy out you wouldn’t have otherwise.”

“She does talk about studying a lot,” he recalls out loud.

“There you go,” Phil encourages.

“Thank you, Phil,” Fitz says, turning to him. “Really.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says, patting him on the back.

“You can’t even feel this, can you?” Phil says suddenly, realizing he’s made the wrong sort of gesture.

“Not exactly, no,” Fitz admits with a chuckle.

“Where all has she gotten you so far?”

He runs Phil through the list. Inside of his right hand, some of his left, the spot on his arm, the couple patches on his neck.

“Oh, and a little spot on my nose, here,” he adds, touching the tip of his nose with his finger.

Phil smiles, shaking his head. “It’s a brave new world.”

“What about you?” Fitz asks after a moment.

Phil suddenly looks nervous for the first time since this conversation began.

“Well,” he tilts his head, failing to hide a guilty grimace.

“What, everywhere?” Fitz asks, eyes bulging wide.

“Well, don’t act so scandalized,” Phil defends himself. “We’re both adults. And we’ve been together five years now.”

Fitz takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly, resting his chin on his hand. He can hardly imagine such a thing; it’s overwhelming for him to get one new square inch of sensation on his arm.

He knows it’s still a big if that he is Jemma’s soulmate at all. But somehow, hearing that things have gone so well for Phil, that he started exactly where Fitz is now and has come so far, is reassuring.

“I’ve got to find out,” he says suddenly, with more conviction than he ever has.

Like I said,” Phil says, smiling again.

His smile is somehow reassuring, in itself. Fitz really should come to him for advice more often.

[sidenotelife]

I want to be a science-based fetus doctor, a residency power rankings.

My pre-MS3 residency power rankings:

1. Pediatrics

2. OB-GYN

3. Psychiatry

4. General surgery

5. Neurology

6. Family medicine

7. Internal medicine

OK. *Takes a deep breath* Yes. Yees. It all makes sense now. I want to be a science-based fetus doctor. 

I am on a two week long vacation right now. A two week vacation is good for many things including spending time with my kids. Here is a true-life pic of me parenting. In case my emotions are hard to read my inner feelings are saying, “My kids are the fucking best I would go to war with them right now.”

Vacation has also been good for being at home and remembering what I want to spend my time at work doing. Fundamentally I want work to be a place where I can leverage my talents (IQ, efficiency, and get-along-ableness) to short-term do things that bring me joy (writing, pipetting/surgery, and drinking beers/talking about life) and long-term create the kind of change that brings me meaning (growing of relationships and community around them). I feel that fetus doctor will do this. 

sidetone - (Sidetone within a sidetone. For some reason on this computer “sidenote” autocorrects to sidetone). What is a fetus doctor? I’m not super sure. I don’t think anyone really knows since it’s a new field. For one there are fetal surgeons that do surgery on babies in the womb, and then maternal-fetal-medicine doctors that manage high-risk pregnancies and do less invasive procedures on babies in the womb. So I guess I either want to be a fetal surgeon or an MFM specialist, more on that later. But for now here’s some thoughts on why fetus doctor: 

- I want to be a pediatrician. This is perhaps controversial to say that a fetus is a pediatric patient, it probably depends who you ask. I read an interesting take on the fetus as a patient somewhere that said the fetus should be considered a patient when A) the fetus can be intervened upon medically and B) the mother bring the fetus to the doctor with the request of an intervention. I think the point is that some moms consider a fetus to be a patient at some point before exiting the uterus so you could say a fetus doctor is a pediatrician. 

- I want to work with parents. When I first came to med school, and even when I started my clinical rotations I thought I would do pediatrics because I find life-providing meaning in taking care of kids, but what I realized when I did my pediatrics rotations is that my favorite part of pediatrics was talking to the parents about the joys/horrors of parenting. So I started to think more about specialties where I could work with the entire family, and OB seemed the perfect specialty where I could focus on taking care of moms. 

- I want to be a surgeon. Surgery is cool for many reasons addressed elsewhere. Wife introduced me to this documentary series called Twice Born. It’s a PBS series that chronicles surgeons that do surgery on fetuses in utero, then sew up the uterus, put the moms on bed rest for a couple months, and then do c-sections to do a “second birth” on the baby. 

Ever since I learned about this I decided I would do everything in my power to one day cameo in a PBS documentary, but the problem is that this is a small real niche field so it’s not super clear how to become a fetal doctor. Fetal doctors can either be Fetal surgeons (surgeons that operate on kids including fetuses) or Maternal-fetal medicine doctors (high-risk pregnancy docs). 

From the med student perspective: fetal surgeons come from the general surgery/pediatric surgery track so they get +1 for the extra surgical training but -2 for minimal training in fetal/maternal medicine as well as the mega challenge of matching into a hyper competitive pediatric surgery fellowship. sidetone - I’m not opposed to hyper competitive fellowships, but there is a major inefficiency in medical education/admissions in that what makes a candidate a competitive does not always predispose to being a good doctor or even a good academician, and at some point I would like to get off the academically competitive train so I can focus on being the best academic I can be. Unfortunately, my opinion of this differs from that of academic institutions but we can get into that later. 

On the other hand, the OB/MFM track gets +1 for learning in-depth fetal/maternal medicine but -1 for less surgical exposure. Looking at these two downsides, my impression is that it’d be easier to remedy the downside on the OB/MFM side. If I’m an OB/MFM resident it seems like I could just ask my friends/residents/attendings to spend more time with the gynecology-oncology team and get more surgical exposure, or spend elective time with the pediatric surgery team to get more specific surgical exposure. As a gen surg/peds surg resident I can’t imagine getting clinic time to learn maternal and fetal medicine, let alone time to learn medicine at all, and there is little to nothing to be done about the incredible competitiveness of matching into pediatric surgery fellowship. 

Another important consideration that one of my wise pediatric surgery mentors brought up to me, given the competitiveness of the pediatric surgery fellowship, is whether I would be happy being a general surgeon or a general OB/GYN doctor. This question is a little abstract because at an academic medical center there are no “general surgeons.” I did, however, work with general OB/GYN’s and I could honestly say I could see myself living their life. I would probably have to pick up a side hustle but sure I could be a general OB/GYN. 

- I want to work on the frontlines of biomedical progress but also on the most socially complex patients. During my PhD I studied cancer/molecular biology and I left graduate school somewhat jaded on cancer research due to the crowded and competitive funding environment. I semi-concluded that cancer biology had enough talented students without me, and it didn’t seem like a good investment of my/our energy to compete against ten other equally talented MD/PhD alums for a K award, and then again compete against ten other equally talented K award alums for an R award. 

Rather, I grew increasingly enthused about doing molecular biology on other less crowded fields of medicine. sidenote - This is an anecdotal observation, but in my 5+ years being in the MD/PhD program here I have seen students go into: Dermatology, Radiation Oncology, Ophthalmology, Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Child Neurology, Neurology, Pediatrics, Plastic Surgery, General Surgery, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, and Pathology, but never OB-GYN. Anyone who has ever taken a basic biology course, and certainly anyone who has a PhD in biology knows that there is an absolute plethora of basic science in developmental and reproductive biology. It seems like it should be a field ripe for physician-scientists. I don’t know exactly why there is not much science in this field. 

All that aside, during my PhD I studied a specific theory of cancer biology that proposed cancer was caused by a reactivation of embryonic pathways that should only be active in fetal development, and as a result I had a side interest in embryonic development. I believe there is potential in using developmental biology as a bifunctional vehicle for answering fundamental basic science questions and at the same time inventing interventional fetal therapeutic strategies. 

On the socially complex angle, I imagine it is fairly straightforward to all of you why being a science-based fetus doctor would be socially complex. I don’t feel prepared to attack this topic on this present day so I will stop for today and end with my post-block 4 residency power rankings. Shoutout to everyone who read this far and let me know if you have any ideas for the blog. 

Residency Power Rankings

1. OB-GYN. 4 yrs of OB-GYN residency followed by 3 yrs of maternal-fetal medicine fellowship followed by 2? yrs of fetal therapy fellowship. NINE total years. I will be 39 YO when I get my first professional job. I cannot tell you how old my wife will be on this day. #prayforwife

2. General Surgery. 5 yrs of general surgery residency followed by 2 yrs of pediatric surgery fellowship followed by 2? yrs of fetal therapy fellowship. 

3. Neurosurgery. 7 yrs of neurosurgery residency followed by 1 yr of pediatric neurosurgery fellowship. 

4. Pediatrics. 3 yrs of peds residency followed by ??? 

5. Radiology. I don’t even know why I listed five specialties. 

see you on the other side,

from ken

[jhinderer28]

246 Things Bones Has Taught Me

1. 6,7,16 are Carbon, Nitrogen and Sulfur on the Periodic Table of Elements 2. If you plan to murder someone do it on a plane right before you land in a different country 3. What it means to be a rational thinker. And that being irrational sometimes is ok 4. There is such a thing as fate 5. Everything happens eventually. But nothing happens unless first a dream 6. There’s more than one kind of family 7. How to get someone off on murder charges 8. The definition of true friendship 9. 246 ways how NOT to kill someone, because you will get caught 10. When “the” is not the first word in the episode title, shits about to get real (ie Aliens in a Spaceship) 11. The skeletal system is the best part of the human body 12. A million little facts curtesy of Vincent Nigel Murray 13. All the words to Hot Blooded 14. Nothing good happens when the clock says 4:47 15. Everyone deserves happiness, love, laughter, friendship, purpose, and a dance 16. Very few people are scary once they have been poked in the eyes 17. Don’t ramble on and on about conspiracy theories. You never know who is really listening to you and what they might do with that information 18. People do almost anything for family (even murdering the deputy director of the FBI) 19. To appreciate Brainy Smurf 20. Never trust a Russian knife throwing act in the circus 21. You can buy weapons at the mall. But wanting a gun for the sole reason of shooting people is not a good enough reason 22. The plot to strangers on a train 23. How to save someone with compartment syndrome 24. How to make a carbon dioxide scrubber 25. If you start hallucinating cartoon characters and dead soldiers you probably have a brain tumor 26. To search for the truth even if it leads to unwanted results 27. Chasing someone may be the smartest decision you ever make and being chased may be your greatest joy 28. Diplomatic immunity is extremely inconvenient 29. Even scientists can change (and we are all glad she did) 30. To fight. Even when the odds are stacked against you 31. Sometimes you just have to dance to the music that’s playing 32. 1 Corinthians 13:4 33. We can’t change who we are (but thankfully he’s a sexy FBI agent) 34. To not be distracted by the shiny baubles, because you might miss what really matters 35. People make their lives out of chaos and hope. And love. 36. The center has to be solid because the center must hold 37. Daffodil, Daisy, and Jupiter will always hold a special meaning 38. Sometimes you have to take the brain and put it in neutral. Then take the heart and pop it into overdrive 39. There is someone for everyone, someone you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with. You just have to be open enough to see it 40. Sarcasm does not play well on the forensic platform 41. Any lock worth picking is worth kicking 42. There are mysteries I will never understand but everywhere I look I see proof that for every effect there is a corresponding cause 43. Sometimes we have to have the ability to substitute optimism for reality 44. Try to get the signal before you are living with regrets (because we are all glad she did!) 45. That doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results is the definition of insanity 46. That people are more than just psychology 47. To find someone who makes your life messy, and confusing, and unfocused, and irrational, and wonderful 48. Go to the company Christmas party; because friends don’t let friends photocopy their butts at company Christmas parties 49. To appreciate Christmas Eve day. It’s both an Eve and a day, it’s a Christmas miracle 50. That there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in science 51. To find that person who will never make you fall and who will always be there 52. Be respectful of others. You never know what scars they carry on their back. Metaphorically or literally. 53. Life is a lot more than what can be cooked up in a chemistry set. Miracles do happen. 54. Phylogenetic Systematics 55. Always play in the key of G demolished. 56. To not jump to conclusions until all the evidence is in 57. If your world gets turned upside down, give it time, it takes three days for it to turn right side up again 58. That there are burdens which allow us to fly 59. We all share in the loss of a life. No matter who it is. 60. Glug-Glug Woo-hoo! 61. Ergo, ipso facto columbo oreo. 62. Beer from Missouri goes great with leftovers 63. Love changes everything 64. All the words to “Keep on Trying” 65. There is a mystery to life 66. That Wonder Woman is better than Cat Woman 67. WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (but we are really talking about the buzzing pest) 68. Booth is Superman (he beats up bad guys and leaps over things. Not to mention he is married to Wonder Woman) 69. All organisms evolve and develop along patterns only recognized in retrospect (and thank god her life didn’t exist outside the laws of nature) 70. Sometimes you have to have absolute faith in someone 71. All pigs are now named Jasper 72. Beer hats in the bathtub solve all problems 73. Having to hire two nannies (one to watch the kid and the other to watch the first nanny) isn’t crazy it just shows how much you care about your child 74. Sometimes it’s ok to let the ice cream melt 75. The garage is an excellent place to store C4 76. Hearts can’t be broken they can only be crushed. But her heart muscle is bigger than people give her credit for 77. Inertia demands us to keep going 78. The washing machine makes for a great make out location 79. That he’s with Bones. All the way. Don’t doubt it for a second. Because she’s his standard. 80. Sometimes you have to be bad to be good. That way your frontal lobe won’t be a dried up raisin. 81. What goes on between them is just theirs 82. Shooting machine guns is a totally acceptable way to celebrate valentines day. 83. Dancing Phalanges 84. Everyone deserves a knight in standard issue FBI body armor. 85. A rubber band is a great anger management tool 86. Sometimes you have to have the guts of a gambler and take that risk. 87. Don’t judge someone before you get to know them because she’s not a cold fish and he’s not a superstitious moron. She has a soul and he has a brain 88. That it’s illegal to have premarital sex in Virginia (but that didn’t stop them) 89. When you eliminate the possible, you are left with the truth, no matter how improbable. 90. That being the best doesn’t mean being perfect 91. That a stand up crook is better than a crooked cop. Any day of the week. 92. That when two people make love they break the laws of physics, they become one. It’s a miracle. 93. That pigs in a blanket and Mac n Cheese are gods perfect food 94. Sometimes the best gift you could give someone is not a material item. (We are all glad of the gift she gave to Zach) 95. No changies. No take backs. 96. Your gut doesn’t have any special powers but listening to it every once in a while is a good idea. 97. Sequences and patterns will continue until something disrupts the pattern. 98. Everyone has a puckish side that will not be denied. 99. Up and forward are only two directions. Science should look in all directions. (She taught us all that) 100. That everyone deserves a love that is more than just 3 weeks a year 101. To never travel to New Orleans alone. 102. That the swings make for the perfect first date location. 103. How not to act at a funeral (unless translation has occurred) 104. To learn to not fight to change the past. The pain is a part of who we are. 105. That life never comes easy. But nothing of value is ever easy. 106. To never skip snack time. Or meals. Or food in general. 107. That "The Lime in the Coconut" will hold a special place in all our hearts. Because that was his jam. 108. To find that one person who will never betray you. 109. Page 187. 110. That having a high IQ is no excuse not to bathe. 111. That friends never send friends' fathers to the electric chair. 112. To never underestimate criminals with only one leg 113. That sometimes people don't need time and space. Just some time. 114. That there's nothing wrong with living in the moment; but it's good to see what the future holds 115. That infinity goes in both directions. So we all will get a second chance 116. To dive into life, be courageous. Question things. Be happy. And don't forget to laugh 117. That sometimes, love trumps logic. 118. To love everyday. 119. To never take life for granted. There are no guarantees. 120. That people lie; but bones always tell the truth 121. That loving someone, and everything around it, is worth it. 122. That there's nothing more important than having hope. 123. Meatball and peppers make the perfect sandwich. 124. That addiction is a lifelong battle. 125. Always tell your partner that you aren't really dead, you just had to fake your death to catch the bad guy 126. Don't sleep with your college professors. They may get jealous when the student surpasses the teacher. 127. How to make the best Mac n cheese (so good he wants to be alone with it). 128. That you may choose to part with old items but you will never part with the memories you created with them. 129. That the world is a lot better than we think it is. 130. Every once in awhile Pinky can stump The Brain. 131. That there is such a thing as beginners luck. 132. To take a ride on the vomet comet. 133. That babies need grills. 134. Blackmailing a federal agent, while not recommended, seemed to work out for both parties in this situation 135. That if you end up being the parent to the best car salesman (or woman) that's ok. 136. That it is totally worth it to have your own happiness completely contingent on another person. 137. That if you keep living trying to protect yourself, nothing is ever going to touch you. 138. To give yourself a chance to be happy. Even if that means moving on. 139. That my heart isn't someone's to claim, it's mine to give away 140. That character is who we are under pressure; not who you are when everything's fine. 141. That just because something's difficult, doesn't mean that I shouldn't do it. 142. That no matter the anthropological reasons, we fight to make the world a better place. 143. Don't touch the bobble head Bobby 144. All the different reasons the FBI is given jurisdiction in a murder investigation 145. Sometimes you just have to flash your boobs to get information 146. To stand up and defend your friends. 147. That aliens don't wear loafers. 148. That things don't always end up as neatly as we wanted them too. 149. That we are all born unique and our experiences mold and change us. 150. You can be a polymath without being a douche. 151. That Pluto's no longer a planet. It was demoted. 152. To leave life having given more than you've taken. 153. That love cannot be explained. It is beyond science, or religion. Beyond mind, or reason. 154. If you don't have a gun, an app will work just fine. 155. That you don't always get to pick your nicknames. 156. That living with a disability is not by any means a death sentence. 157. That it's ok to plan your own surprise birthday party. 158. To expect the unexpected. It might lead to the greatest parts of your life. 159. Never turn down the chance to conduct a science experiment. 160. That purple elephants are wrong. 161. That his "charm smile" is just a sign of respect. 162. Skalle. 163. That Kansas gets boring after awhile. 164. That someone in your corner makes all the difference. 165. To never light cigarettes in an outhouse 166. The most beautiful things in the world are sunsets, the Mona Lisa and a perfectly thrown spiral. 167. Do NOT piss off your boss. If there's a spider infestation just take care of it. 168. To take a ceramics class every once in a while. 169. Never pay for a plumber. Just get a "For Dummies" book and you're all set. 170. That partners don't say "forget it" 171. That you're never too old to laugh at "boner" 172. That "the man" buys all the office furniture. 173. That he was right, bones really are the heart of the matter. 174. To enjoy a ceramics class every once and a while. 175. To always swim with a buddy. 176. The definition of a philistine, and luddite 177. To never steal evidence from a murder victims house. 178. That sometimes the relationship that didn't work out leads you to the one that does. 179. That parents do a lot of crazy things just because they love their children. 180. That you can't just kill Agent Andy. 181. That they were never just partners. 182. The difference between being impervious and being strong. 183. That we each learn to survive in our own way. 184. Norwegian death metal 185. To appreciate the magic of the Egyptian room 186. That he will always be King of the Lab. Even if he's the only one who cares. 187. Diner eggs are simple magic. 188. Nunchucks are not toys. Seriously. 189. That your brain cannot digest breakfast burritos. 190. Never shoot an ice cream truck (even if you do offer to replace the clown). 191. To always respect the cocky belt buckle. 192. To never trust a washed up army fighter 193. To go to prom. 194. That each squintern brought something special to the team. We could never just choose one. 195. To be weary of bank vaults. 196. That if you have no other plans, racing beetles on a Friday night is totally acceptable. 197. To never be afraid to find a new passion 198. To love your work. Life is too short not to 199. Even an empiricist can have a heart. 200. That the definition of being "stupid in love" is spending $3000 for a quarter ounce of perfume. 201. That in 30, or 40, or 50 years we can all say we knew. Right from the beginning 202. That life is really just a lot of loose ends. 203. As long as a person has enough, they don't need more. 204. To never be ashamed of where you came from. 205. That happiness comes from what you already have. 206. That wanting things to work and making things work are two different things. 207. To never stop being yourself. 208. That if he flies to New Orleans just to make sure you're ok, you're not just partners 209. To appreciate Alfred Hitchcock movies 210. Never try to fit stadium seats into an elevator during a blizzard. 211. To give a piece of yourself every once in a while. 212. That getting blown up may just be a part of the job description. 213. To appreciate hospital pudding. 214. The wedding was worth the wait. 215. To appreciate Cyndi Lauper 216. Setting up a rescue at the airport is an acceptable way to get back on someone's good side 217. Female friendships before male romantic partners 218. That we are not our parents. 219. To watch out for serial killers on Craig's list 220. To go to the Louvre. 221. That we can't always save our siblings from everything. 222. Sometimes it's ok to lie your ass off to the FBI 223. The only acceptable reason to leave the hospital AMA is to save your "partner" 224. To always wear a mask when cutting into bone. 225. That life works out. 226. That 306 pages for a will is not at all excessive. 227. To let someone else drive in London. 228. That life is hard and painful, but we fight together. 229. That your boss can't be your lovely assistant. 230. That stuffed animals make great baby gifts 231. That nothing brings people together like a Christmas lung fungus. 232. Be weary of someone who takes New York action 234. A jail cell can be a perfect place for a wedding. 235. Never route against the Flyers. 236. To go to the museum more often. You never know who you'll find 237. The best conversations happen in cars. 238. To appreciate colorful socks 239. That it takes all of us. Every single one. 240. To look forward to what ever happens next. 241. That it was worth the ride. Everything about it. 242. When the network moves you into every possible time slot it can only mean they love you. 243. To love. 244. That 12 years is a long time. And a lot of magic. 245. That it's all about the cast. 246. To never doubt the little show that could. So Season 12 is it; here’s to the last 12 years and to everything that happens next!