#have to have a gender crisis on the starting screen first though

[itsyourstarboy]

I'm having a hard week, imma play fable II

[itsgrimeytime]

Home is Where the Heart is (Part Two) || Farmer!Rick Grimes (TWD) x Teacher!GN!reader AU

Part 1...

rick grimes taglist: @golden-hoax

AVAILABLE ON AO3

Inspiration: Like Real People Do by Hozier.

Summary: Your life was spinning out of control, you knew that. After a string of particularly shattering events, you decided it was time to start anew. With a little help from one of your Grandma's rentals, you found yourself in the small town of Alexandria. The last thing you expected was your neighbor, Rick Grimes.

TWS: starting over, swearing, and identity crisis.

[[A/N: pretty is used gender neutrally here, so if you don't like that I'm sorry!!!Thanks for reading !!! For that anon, ly <3, enjoy :))) ]]

You were staring at your computer screen, the empty word document not quite intimidating you but it was definitely... something. The flickering little line that showed where you were typing was starting to get annoying though.

It was a lesson plan, one of the first ones actually, but one you had put off until further notice. Just something about the circulum hadn't sat right with you that day so you pushed it off. And then you pushed it off again, and again, and again-

Needless to say, you were now about two weeks away from your first-ever semester. Solo semester. You'd been a teacher's aide before, but never... never on your own. Just 'a lack of positions where you lived, and you weren't willing to relocate' problem, really. It was exciting and nervewracking and a lot-

Your life couldn't have been upturned at a worse time, honestly. Especially with so little experience on your own, but you told yourself you'd own it. You'd-

Just as you were getting into the groove of your writing process, your laptop flickered off. And then, you noticed the lights were off too. Your power was out.

"Fuck," you groaned out, half tempted to through your head down onto the table.

It wasn't a surprise, really. You knew that the internet wasn't exactly the best out here, and you'd bet that the electricity would be a little spotty too. But just because it made sense, didn't make it any less shitty.

You roamed outside, hoping to possibly get some cell service -to call the electricity company, or maybe your Grandma? Actually, now that you thought of it, you weren't sure that you knew who did the electricity of the house-

"Funny seein' you 'ere," the deep drawl lured you out of your thoughts -southern beyond belief.

You shifted, shading your eyes from the sun but just enough in his direction to see him. He stood tall, the morning looked good on him, his curls freshly washed and shirt unstained. The breeze of the morning tussled him slightly, and despite the warmth, he didn't look bothered by it. Out on the front porch in a set of pajama pants and coffee held gently in his hands -it looked warm, was Rick Grimes.

"Hey," you responded, dumbfounded -your brain had all but flatlined at the man... again.

He looked at you questioning, the slightest raise of an eyebrow -a sort of small smile brushing across the brim of his mug (almost teasing), "You're up early."

"Too early," you groaned, taking a seat on your porch in a delicately colored rocking chair -your Grandma's doing if you had to guess, "-working on some lesson plans I should've done months ago."

"Lesson plans? You the new teacher?"

You laughed, slightly, nervous, "Word spreads fast around here, then?"

"Always," he grinned, "-you'd be lucky to do anythin' out here without commentary."

You smiled, looking out into your yard -the billowing grass and trees were unfamiliar but peaceful. It was nice to just exist for a moment with someone else, even if you hardly knew them, it was nice. Freeing, even.

"What's the lead theory as to why I'm here?"

"Not sure," Rick paused, tilting his head towards you, attentive, "-why you got a good reason?"

"A super mysterious one," you answered back -playfully, "-what do you think I should go with? Spy overseas, or undercover royalty under witness protection?"

He chuckled, lightly, and something in your chest fluttered -the deep timber swimming into your head. He has a nice laugh, you noted somewhere far away in your head. It was just a thought, you'd let your brain get away with it this once.

"You lookin' for better stories or more intrigue?"

"Intrigue," you answered -doing a dramatic gesture with your hands, almost theatrical, "-no one should truly know me."

"Royalty," he responded -unflinchingly, "-ya look the part too."

You gasped, faux-offended, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're pretty," he answered, fluidly -as if the words out of his mouth were nothing but the truth, "-too pretty to be 'ere. Makes more sense."

"Oh," your mouth clicked shut -blush rising on your cheeks (chanting in your head, probably married, probably married, proba-), "-thank you. Good to know what I could get away with."

"Just the truth," he responded, one hand brushing over his beard as his coffee was set down on the top of the fence -a bit precariously.

You laughed, tilting your head back and rocking further from the motion -the buzz in your stomach was a teeny-tiny little thing. It wasn't anything to worry about, you knew better. You knew better than to walk right back into it again, believe and ignore and love-

It wasn't the time.

"Still," you added -smiley and with an accent you couldn't quite name, "-you'll back me up on my backstory? Death threats from my home kingdom ran away for safety."

He grinned -something big and bright, and it made you falter for a moment, "Sure, I'll tell 'em myself if I 'ave to."

You stilled, ever so slightly -eyes heavily focused on the world in front of you, intent like once you looked away it would disappear. Or maybe you would, back in that apartment, back with...

"Everythin' okay?" Rick interrupted, blue eyes intently on you -he must've noticed.

"What? Yeah-" you cleared your throat, blinking away some of the fog in your eyes -hoping he didn't see, "-Sorry, just got lost in my thoughts. I... I really need to get back to my lesson plans actually."

"Well-"

You interrupted, standing to your feet, "How long does a power outage usual last out here?"

He merely furrowed his eyebrows at you, somewhat understanding that something was bothering you but he didn't push, "Just a few minutes at most, maybe an hour if the weather's bad."

"Okay, good," you sighed in relief, before straightening and turning back to him -schooling your face into something more normal, neutral, "-It was nice talking to you, Rick. I'll... I'll see you around, yeah?"

"Yeah," he nodded, a sort of low grumble that seemed almost slurred in the morning, timber that shook your bones, "-and Y/N?"

"Yes?"

"If you ever... need anythin'," he started -carefully, blue eyes flickering over you with a concern you hadn't felt in a bit, "-I'm just a door down. Anythin'."

"Okay," you responded, quietly, genuinely, "-I'll be sure to take you up on that, Grimes."

[saintsenara]

How does your adhd help or make more difficult your job as a doctor?

thank you very much for the ask, pal!

obviously, this answer needs to start with a little acknowledgement of my relative privilege when it comes to my adhd.

like many women, i was diagnosed as an adult, but i was lucky enough that this happened when i was still a student [six year degree coming in clutch - the fact that i had to pay for the diagnosis, not so much], which meant that when i qualified and started actually working, i'd had several years of taking medication and coming up with techniques to manage my life. i can very well imagine [particularly because i know so many people it's happened to] how much more difficult i would find doing my job if i had only recently acquired - or was still waiting for - a diagnosis.

as i've said, the reasons for my late diagnosis were primarily gender-related - i'm a cisgender woman, and so even though i have the more "classic", "male" version of adhd [by which i mean that i'm hyperactive, rather than the inattentive-type manifestation of the condition which is presumed - although not, in my view, entirely accurately - to be more common in women] i wasn't screened as a child because adhd was seen as a thing which boys had.

but they're also because the circumstances of my early life - above all, that my family wasn't housing- or food-insecure, and that my parents were able to have a work-life balance because of this - allowed me to cope well enough with the bad parts of being a child with an undiagnosed neurological disability to be extremely high-achieving while at school. i was in trouble all the time - as most of us were - but this was usually because i spent my time in the classroom messing around, safe in the knowledge that i could race through any work last minute and be completely fine. i was my teachers' nightmare, but it was for the extremely chic reason that all the consequences they threatened me with never came to pass. i was told for fourteen years of schooling that the rug was about to pulled out from under me if i didn't buck up my ideas. instead, i got top marks in every exam, i got into an excellent university to study a competitive subject, i got a first in that subject, i have also - as well as my medical training - got a phd, i'm in an interesting and unusual speciality. i have a lot of letters after my name.

this is because i'm astonishingly clever - and i won't apologise for stating that as fact - but it's also due to good fortune. adhd [especially adhd which is undiagnosed until adulthood] is enormously overrepresented in the prison population, among addicts, among those who have no qualifications, among the long-term unemployed. i think it's important to simultaneously recognise that - while i do think of myself as disabled, and i'm right to - i am very, very lucky in the treatment plan and support system i have. i could be in a very different position had even minor things about my childhood changed.

but with this context taken into account... my view is genuinely that medicine is the number one job for the dopamine-challenged.

i'm not going to go into details about my specialism on the public timeline, but it has several aspects which work really well for my brain.

it's usually very fast-paced and unpredictable. like many people with adhd, i am excellent at working under pressure [and i'm great in a crisis] and very much not excellent without it.

but even when we have slower days it still always feels like i'm progressing towards a tangible goal. like many people with adhd, i'm not great at visualising long-term things - i think in the now and the not-now - but my work relates to cases where the long-term goals and outcome are easy to visualise, and i like that.

it's an area of medicine which is, essentially, puzzle-solving, often in creative and novel ways. like many people with adhd, i struggle to maintain focus on tasks which are too repetitive - but i'm also, as we often are, very good at spotting patterns and details, i have excellent intuition, and i'm a very good lateral thinker.

it lets me be on my feet a lot, to be moving around, and to be doing things physically. my fidgeting has really been cut down by the ol' lisdexamfetamine, but the twitchy impulses which remain are channelled very nicely into being able to do things with my hands and have it count towards my workload.

it's very sociable. i get to spend a lot of time just having a natter with the nurses - and i always have someone around to body double with - but i also get to work with lots of other departments and other non-medical professionals, i teach medical students, i present at conferences, and so on. it's very busy, there's always something new going on, and something which interests me is guaranteed to pop up just when i'm starting to get a bit fed up with a sitting-at-my-desk task...

and the "this interests me" point is the key one, i think.

like many people with adhd, my issue isn't a deficit of attention, it's an inability to easily control the focus of that attention. i have a typically low tolerance for boredom, and i find it extremely difficult both to start and to concentrate on enough to complete tasks which don't interest me.

but i like what i do - i find it fascinating - and that means that i have a lot of attention to devote to it. i can't remember what day my bins go out or what my mam asked me to pick up for her from the supermarket, but i can remember endless information pertaining to the human body, no matter how grim the situation that body finds itself in.

it's taken a bit of trial-and-error to get to where i am - i found the surgical rotations of my training really tough, for example, because surgery is a discipline which is very repetitive, and which lacks that mystery-solving element which so appeals to me - but i'm in a place now where i genuinely think that having adhd makes me a better doctor.

and even the night shifts are worth it to not have to work in an office.

[no disrespect to the spreadsheet girlies...]

[desertpups]

'Only the first step': Pride Tape's impact felt in and outside of hockey

This article was written as part of the Professional Hockey Writers Association and To Hockey, With Love Mentorship Program. See the bottom of the article for more on the program.

A week before puck drop on the NHL's highly anticipated 2023-24 season - featuring the debut of Connor Bedard against Sidney Crosby - the NHL shared a memo with teams: Players were barred from using Pride Tape on their sticks, on top of the ban already in place on specialty jerseys.

"That was the No. 1 story," said Kris Wells, the co-founder of Pride Tape, which promotes equality and inclusion in sports.

Pride Tape has been involved with the NHL ever since former Oilers defenseman Andrew Ference brought it to the fore after participating in Edmonton's Pride parade years ago. However, after 11 years of solid support between the NHL, Pride Tape, and Ference, things went awry in 2022-23 when multiple players chose not to partake in warmups wearing special jerseys on designated Pride nights.

With the ban in place, fans were left wondering: How would players respond?

To a man, they mostly didn't, accepting the ban. Except Travis Dermott.

Eleven days into the new season, the Arizona Coyotes D-man used a few pieces of Pride Tape near the knob of his stick, sending the league into crisis mode. Three days later, the NHL reversed its Pride Tape ban.

For Wells, what was most important about the entire fiasco was the conversation it sparked.

"We often say that wrapping your stick in Pride Tape is only the first step, right?" Wells explained. "The more important step is hopefully the conversation that it engenders."

Impact on community organizations

The events indeed sparked positive conversations at community organizations like the Steel City Inclusive Softball Association (SCISA) and Queer Hockey Hamilton in Hamilton, Ontario.

SCISA is an organization that creates fun and active environments through slow-pitch softball. For adults 18 and older, the organization prides itself on welcoming all gender identities, sexual orientations, and body types.

SCISA commissioner Jeff Lindstrom decided to focus on softball because it's a sport that can accommodate any skill set.

"One thing I found to be unique about the game of softball is that it's uniquely accommodating for people of all skill sets and experience," Lindstrom said.

And even though SCISA isn't directly involved with Pride Tape, Lindstrom emphasizes the importance of Pride Tape to him and his organization.

"Any of the visual supports of solidarity that make it onto TV screens - onto the big field in front of spectators - really have a lot of power," Lindstrom said. "That's where most eyes are when it comes to mainstream media, when it comes to mainstream sporting events, when it comes to ticketed events."

SCISA started in the summer of 2021 and has seen growth ever since its inaugural season.

Jenelle Lewis, co-founder of Queer Hockey Hamilton, echoes Lindstrom's point about visibility.

"It's very important to show the support for that community when they haven't been so welcomed within the hockey community," Lewis said.

Queer Hockey Hamilton is an organization that's creating an open and welcoming space, as Lewis puts it, "for people to come without fear of the changeroom, without fear of slurs being used on the ice."

Queer Hockey Hamilton is in its first season of play and hosted its first exhibition game in the fall of 2023.

Many members of Queer Hockey Hamilton use Pride Tape. In fact, so do a lot of SCISA members.

"There's lots of other rainbow accessories that people will use," Lindstrom said. "Just being comfortable having that on your equipment and being visible matters."

The future of Pride Tape

After a whirlwind 2023, many have wondered what Pride Tape's future is.

Will it continue with the status quo and provide NHL teams with Pride Tape? Will it expand to other sports?

"If there are athletes out there or teams or leagues that want to get involved, we're more than happy to partner with them," Wells said.

For an organization that's made so many strides since its debut eight years ago, it's in no rush to expand to other sports. In fact, Wells points out a common misconception: Pride Tape isn't about profit.

"Pride Tape is actually not a business at all," Wells pointed out. "Some people believe we were this massive company, but we're just a small grassroots collective, right? Nobody gets paid."

Queer Hockey Hamilton's Lewis can't wait for what comes next. "I would like to see it used during a game," she said.

Like Toronto Metropolitan University's women's hockey team did during its Pride game.

"That's great!" Lewis said cheerfully upon learning the TMU news. "That visibility there is even more important, in my opinion."

For Pride Tape, the impact has been enormous - globally with the NHL and in communities like Hamilton, thanks to Queer Hockey Hamilton and SCISA. The effect has been felt in and outside of sport.

"Pride Tape is now on people's garden tools. It's on their walkers and their canes," Wells marveled. "It's on their water bottles. It's used in physiotherapy clinics. It's on golf clubs and racquetball and dodgeball, and you name it. It's really expanded because, again, it is such a simple yet powerful way to signal you're an ally, right? That you believe in LGBTQ inclusion and human rights."

This article was written by Michael Pagani, who's part of the Professional Hockey Writers Association and To Hockey, With Love Mentorship Program. The program pairs aspiring writers with established members of the association across North America to create opportunities for marginalized people who aren't traditionally published on larger platforms covering hockey. To Hockey, With Love is a weekly newsletter covering a range of topics in hockey, from the scandals of the week to critical analysis of the sport.

[queer-and-dear-books]

Title: Someday

Author: David Levithan

Genre: YA Fiction | Romance | Friendship | Fantasy | LGBTQ+

Content Warnings: Bullying | Physical Violence

Overall Rating: 9.9/10

Personal Opinion: The plot is honestly nothing remarkable but that’s kind of why I love it. I love slice of life and seeing the world through A’s lens, hopping from body to body every day, that’s slices of many lives. But what’s great about this sequel to Everyday is that we get to see others like A too. How do they cope? What questions do they have? How do they live their unusual life? It’s truly fascinating. 

Do I Own This Book? No but it’s on my wish list.

Spoilers Below For My Likes & Dislikes:

Likes:

- I’m going to start with the part that made me the most giddy. Aemon and Liam. Oh my god. They are both entities like A, changing bodies every day. By sheer chance, they met at a book festival and fell for each other. Neither of them thought they could ever have more than words on a screen until Liam finally stopped being a coward (his words) and went to see Aemon/Peter anyway. And boom! They now know each other for real. Oh my god, when I read that part, I about exploded with excitement because it was such a plot twist. And it wasn’t even part of the main plot. It was like a 6 page intermission at best. But I just love love and I love that these two found each other.

- Okay, on to the main plot. It’s honestly nothing remarkable and that’s kind of why I love it. The thing that drew me to Everyday was the fact that it was slices of many lives. The simple, the complicated, the happy, the sad, the good, the bad. A has to live those lives and they did it alone. After sharing parts of themself with Rhiannon, they were not used to being alone again. I felt their heartbreak but I also felt the bits of the people that they embodied. It created this lens that was so unique to reading this book and I was just so enraptured.

- It was also so interesting to see A living the lives of people who are neurodivergent. Of course, I mean, Alvin. Clearly, something is going on with his brain because he was all over the place. There were two pages that had zero indents. It was just one long paragraph crammed into the pages. It was fascinating. And I understood the purpose it had served in the story. It was the story’s way of reminding the reader why A and Rhiannon couldn’t work. Because A had no idea who they would wake up as and what they would be experiencing. Some simply don’t have access to the internet. Others go through a crisis and need  help. It is impossible for A and Rhiannon to always be together because there’s no telling what sort of obstacles an individual’s life will present.

- I know A feels like they fucked up Moses Cheng’s life but I would argue that they helped Moses. First of all, his bullies were clearly racist and therefore deserve to have charges pressed against them for hurting Moses. Second of all, A was right to confess everything that had happened to Moses to the adults. It was the right thing to do and I think it will serve Moses well in the long run. I just hope Moses finds good friends to help him get through life in the future.

- I fucking hate X, oh my god. He (potentially) ruined Pat’s life. He killed Reverend Poole. He kidnapped Wyatt. He beat the shit out of Nathan. But my god, what a wild ride seeing the opposite of A at work. He is evil personified, abusing his power to ruin lives and harm innocent people while avoiding the consequences. But the crazy part is that he’s not wrong about some of his points. I mean, redistributing the wealth to the poor? That’s iconic. He still sucks ass for his violent tendencies though. Of course he identifies as a man too. It’s just like Amanita’s dads said in Sense8, “It’s always a man.” “Violence has a gender.”

- But yeah, glimpsing other entities like A at work was just so fascinating. People like that 98 year old lady who passed away uses God to cope with their waking up every day in a different body. People like Dawn who go to the MET every day and sit in front of the same painting for a constant. People like Helmut who have stayed in the same body for forty years because he wanted to stay. People like Morris who still don't understand how they work yet. It’s amazing seeing them exist because A and X aren’t the only ones. There’s more than just two ways to exist as them. And also A got to meet M on an online chat forum and therefore, neither of them are alone anymore. That makes me so happy too.

- I was worried that Alexander would be heartbroken by the end of this book but he and Rhiannon are still somewhat together. They have something and it’s theirs and it’s implied that Alexander learns about A too. And that makes me happy too. Plus, we also have Nathan and Wyatt starting their own support group of two to cope with being possessed. That makes me happy too. The fact that characters don’t have to be alone with their traumatic experiences makes me happy.

Dislikes:

- As I said, fuck X. I just wish we knew what happened with Pat. I hope he doesn’t remember all the shitty stuff. It’s also implied that he’s gay. And I hate that X used Pat’s body to have sex with a woman. And then treated that woman like trash. Oh my god, I hate X. He ruined another life too! That college guy who had a girlfriend! Oh my god, I hope they’re okay. God, seriously, fuck X. He acts like he’s a gift for “restraining” himself from doing worse things. The things you do are still pretty bad you sicko. 

- That’s pretty much it, I hate X. I hate that he ruined lives. I understand why A feels conflicted about disposing of him but the world is better off without him. That’s it.

[dylanwritesgood]

deep fic asks, 1, 6, 12, 14, please?

Deep Fic Asks Here

Thank you for the chance to chatter, Ashes! <3

1. what's the fic you're most proud of?

I'm usually pretty proud of all of my fics, but Pretty Boy/Polaris (because really, they're one story, just published in two works for rating reasons) is my favorite. It started off as "this is a cute pair" because you can see how upset Gareth is to betray Eddie and Dustin to Jason and like... he looks at Eddie with a mix of annoyance and adoration each time they're on screen and I liked it. And I also headcanoned him as trans before I ended up on ST Tumblr so it was nice to find there was an audience for him.

During the course of writing it, I had lots of chances to research and explore transmasculinity (and experience my own little gender crisis), and kind of work out my own dysphoria with Gareth's experiences--and apparently I wasn't the only one who needed that because I have a small gaggle of 18-21-year-old trans masc readers whom I treasure. I also am really proud of it because I wrote over 100k words (~60k is published), and it's a romance featuring a fat, queer, emotionally messy character who wants and feels guilty for wanting--and I worked really, really hard to portray him as desirable and not buff off the unpleasant parts of him for consumption. Finally, I'm really proud of it because, while it doesn't get a ton of hits or comments, most of the comments I receive are from people telling me they see themselves in Pretty Boy's Gareth and feel desirable too. So yeah, I can't NOT be proud of this fic.

6. what's the hardest part of the writing process for you?

Writing something short. One shot who? I don't know her. I would like to because every new fic is going to be abandoned or a big commitment. I don't plot my fanfics because I'm writing for me first and an audience second. I wish I could but then I wouldn't have 100k words of PB and many of my favorite scenes wouldn't have made it.

Also posting. I fucking hate the work of posting to Tumblr but if I don't post and cross-post and repost and tag like a mad person, no one sees my writing.

12. What’s your perfect environment to create/write?

The physical environment doesn't matter. I've been publishing semi-professionally since middle school, wrote professionally for years at a rate of ~1 million words a year, currently publish academic research, and I've always written original and fanfic on top of that--point is, I can (and do) crank out 2k words on my phone while standing in line at Target because I've had to produce creative work on demand in so many environments I couldn't control. At this point, creativity is a reflex.

The tools do matter. I really like working in Dabble, which is a cloud writing program similar to Scrivener. It's the best solution I've found for how I have time to write--app/browser-based, constant cloud syncing, and an organization system that lets me work in smaller chunks of a larger document. I write on my phone and in my browser at work a lot so it's nice to have a consistent UI to make my brain go "oh, it's Writing Time" and a self-contained system.

And even though I'm pretty goddamn deaf, I'm also in love with my noise-canceling headphones and Spotify playlists because I write in weird places and people let you focus when you have headphones on.

14. Do you compare yourself to other writers? In a positive or negative way?

Um... *awkward laugh* Yeah. I do. I used to compare my style a lot--it was very action-focused and dialogue-heavy, with little narrative to drive the story when the characters weren't actively engaged in Doing Stuff. Obviously, that's not really my style now because I really admired fic writers who wrote a more literary, cerebral style that read less like a script so I kept practicing that style.

Now, I mostly compare myself to others on engagement, even though I try not to because, obviously, my obsession with rarepairs isn't going to net me Steddie or HellCheer numbers. It bums me out a little when I see... not well-written (or at least, not well-edited) fics getting tons of attention because they're x reader or a popular ship when I'm getting less than 10 views/likes/kudos/reblogs/whatevers across multiple platforms and I've put a lot of care into my pieces. I know it's not a reflection of my work's quality and everyone is entitled to put out and enjoy reading less-than-stellar work (and like, I read them and leave notes too, bc content about my comfort characters is still content about my comfort characters). To each their own. I try to remind myself the readers who like my work tend to love it... even if there are so few that I have all their usernames memorized lol.

(Also sometimes I end up making comparisons when I read something another person has written and it... appears to be heavily influenced by my work. I saw one Eddie/Gareth fic that picked up on my rhythm, emphasis patterns, vocabulary choices... and my bad habits--flattering--and a headcanon list that pulled heavily from All Your Faith and added a little to it--still flattering but less charming.)

[tigger8900]

Pageboy, by Elliot Page

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Elliot Page's memoir, told in nonlinear format, covers topics ranging all the way from his emotionally-exhausting childhood in Nova Scotia to the fallout of his coming out publicly as trans at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. A unique blend of queer and celebrity memoir, we follow Page as he explains how his identities as both a queer person and as a boy(later a man) being forced into a straight, feminine role both on- and off-screen put him in a position of constant crisis. Something had to give, and it did, first in 2014 when he came out as queer and again in 2020 when he came out as trans.

As far as the queer memoir side of things go, this was a satisfying, illuminating read. Obviously Page's experience isn't everybody's experience. He admits that he's privileged in many ways, but he isn't ashamed — nor should he be — in recounting his lived experiences. I was particularly interested in his depiction of life as a closeted queer person, secretly dating women while working in the film industry, as well as how his childhood experiences shaped how he interacted with the world as an adult. I would caution readers that there are many passages — particular pertaining to sexual assault and gender dysphoria — that read as incompletely-processed trauma. There's not a lot of shielding on the emotions. Page provides content warnings at the front of the book, so please, take them seriously.

For the celebrity side of things, I don't really feel qualified to judge. I primarily know Page from his activism, and also I watched Juno one time(hell of a first date movie, let me tell you). So mostly I was interested in how the celebrity stuff interacted with the queer stuff, and all the names just washed over me. The experience worked for me, but I can also understand someone who might want more anchoring being frustrated at the lack of explanation of who most of these people were. And of course there was the obligatory discretion, where "a member of crew" or "an acquaintance" did horrible things. I have no idea who those people were. In a way, the facelessness works. They could be anybody and we wouldn't know, which is the reality, since we know the list of people who have faced consequences for their behavior is woefully limited.

I personally loved the nonlinear format. The chapters are each gathered around a theme, concept, or state of mind, though it's not always obvious when you start off. Sometimes I had to flip back through, looking at the chapter title, before I spotted the connection and understood why the things were arranged the way they were. Another thing that will bother some people is Page's writing style. He frequently emphasizes or describes by stringing together several short sentence fragments. Distinct, painting a picture, individually striking. While Page is guilty of blatant comma abuse, I actually liked it. But I completely understand why it made some readers' skin crawl.

Important question time: do the dogs die? Only the mildest of spoilers ahead. Page owns two dogs over the course of the book. The first is alluded to as passing offscreen, and the second is still alive and well as if the end of the book.

[tsunonotarou]

HEARTSLABYUL | SAVANACLAW | OCTAVINELLE | SCARABIA | POMEFIORE | IGNIHYDE | DIASOMNIA

— finding out their S/O’s lockscreen/background is them

Part one | Part two | Part four

This part will contain Pomefiore and Ignihyde

notes: Ortho's part is going to be platonic!

: gender-neutral reader!

Vil Schoenheit

Says you have good taste

You know that smirk he has on whenever he's pleased? Yea that. He'll do that when he saw your lockscreen/background

Doesn't mind if it's a public picture of him (from magazines, shows, movies etc where everyone gets access to) or a picture of him sleeping, he doesn't mind

But! he does prefer you putting a picture where not everyone gets access to, a picture only a select few friends know or a picture only the two of you know because he likes the intimacy

Why should you use pictures his fans would use when you have so many other private ones, accessible to only you?

Of course, it has to be beautiful and approved by him

After a while if he sees the same picture on your lockscreen/background he'd advice you to change another one. Surely no one would get bored of the Vil Schoenheit but isn't it nice to start fresh sometimes?

When you innocently say you could stare at the same picture all day everyday, always finding new discovers in that picture or simply got lost in his cute smile, he swore an arrow shot through his heart, in a good way. Rook get out of here

"Do what you want." He replied nonchalantly, turning away to hide his blush from you

You asked him if he could put your picture on his lockscreen and he said no

After your pleadings and whines, telling him to put it on for just a moment, just for you to see how it'd look like, he finally did

And honestly, Vil does not want to change it

He'd quickly click his phone off and brush you away, telling you he has business to do all because he wanted to admire it in private

Even though he said he put it on because you asked him to and that he'll change it immediately after, a few days later, you still see yourself appearing on his screen whenever he clicks open his phone

Rook Hunt

Rook's heart would react in a way where it would be seen as keyboard smashing.

Like ARARDRBGJDIDGETIWIFHWOFHDKSLDGWBSKSBFLSFJSBFLALFNSKFPKSF

Of course! He doesn't react in such an unsightly way but his heart flipped so many fucking times and he swear he couldn't take this immense happiness he feels right now

It might not seem much but the act is so sweet! Setting him as your lockscreen and background? To see him everytime you click open your phone? Reminding yourself that he is yours? Absolutely romantic.

Rook loves taking pictures. He loves taking pictures of you. He has thousands and thousands of your photo both in his phone and in his journal. Oh there are some hanging in his room, too! Oh, he has a photo album consisting of only you, too! Oh, there are a few framed ones sitting on his bedside tables too! And-

But to think that you secretly take pictures of him, too?

Rook has really good eyesight, he's also very sharp so he knows whenever you want to take a picture of him. What he does not know that you didn't want him to notice you taking a pictures of him

You thought he looked peaceful reading a book and wanted to secretly take a picture of him like that? He immediately noticed and flashed you a smile. He's so charming! Holding the bow and arrow in the most professional way and his eyes stay focused on the front. You wanted to freeze that moment with your camera? He immediately lowered down the weapon and waved

Well, you took those pictures anyway. But still, you wanted one where he isn't looking at the camera and minding his own business but you never got one

Desperate, you went for Azul's help

The deal was only to work in Mostro Lounge for a month...easy, right?

Well then, you'd do anything for a picture of Rook being unaware of the photographer's presence

It was hard for Jade and Azul to find excuses and cover up when Rook spotted them trying to take a picture of him, and also muffling Floyd when the eel almost blew the plan up, complaining something along the line of "Shrimpy wanted to—"

And also staying hidden because once Rook finds them, he will not stop following and asking questions regarding their real form

(If you think about it the scene would be funny I wish I could draw 🙂)

ANYWAYS so one time Jade finally, finally snapped a photo of Rook

Because the blond was too busy admiring you

Rook's cheeks were slightly pink, eyes in beautiful cresent shapes with a hand supporting his chin, the hunter was lovestruck

Now that you explained how you got this precious photo, his heart bursted even more in happiness

You went through so much just for a picture of him? Technically the octatrio suffered most but we don't talk about that

"I am not embarrassed being caught red-handed staring at my love. Why would I?"

This man never fails to make you fall in love with him all over again

After that he'll (have a hard time) choose one photo of you to set on his lockscreen, having another internal crisis when choosing another photo for his background, because he loves each and every one of the pictures of you!

Epel Felmier

Cries so hard this boy is so embarrassed

It was a picture of him struggling during the daily dance practice with Vil

Composure: gone

You took it when Vil surprisingly lets you stay in Pomefiore's ballroom and stay until Epel's practice is over since apparently the boy does better when you're there

Prefers you taking a "manlier" photo of him as your lockscreen but when you told him he looks cute like this and you like it, a small pink tinted his cheeks

Whatever makes you happy

(IM SO FUCKING SORRY I DID NOT DO EPEL JUSTICE I DONT KNOW HOW TO WRITE HIM 🙇‍♀️ feel free to send hate)

Idia Shroud

W-What's this? He's seen a lot of shows that couples put their partner's photo as their lockscreen, but people in real life actually do that?

Before he met you, he definitely thought it was a little cringe at first, because why would you want to show the whole world who you're with!? Don't they know that some people don't have a significant other and are lonely!?

But it's just so cute when you does it

Someone is actually willing to see his face whenever? Even putting it as your lockscreen!

He's a blushing mess, it's not even exaggerated to say he fainted after stuttering nonsense

Oh...it's a picture of him sleeping while he was cuddled into you

Idia.exe stopped working

Ortho Shroud

(Platonic! Ortho's reaction to his best friend having their picture together as their lockscreen 🥰)

Is so surprised! It was a picture the two of you took on Halloween Week in NRC, doing the 'gao' pose

Does Ortho has a phone? He could do every research he needs on himself so...

But if he does, he'll definitely whip it out and show you that he has your photo together as his lockscreen too!

WHOLESOME FUCKING WHOLESOME JSFHAUSGWGU

After that the two of you will definitely take more pictures together

[baldwinboy5ive]

A few scattered Hawk, Johnny, and Demetri thoughts and headcanons 

How Hawk Will Atone in Season 4

This is a dumbass joke I shared this with some friends outside of tumblr, but I needed to save this for posterity, so I’m posting this here as well even though it’s hilariously outlandish. All because I saw this comment and couldn’t stop laughing about it: 

But it turns out this conversation was happening at the same time as a discussion about Johnny’s and Demetri’s heights, and I pointed out Demetri is actually taller. We were talking about how, especially after critiquing Kreese’s tattoo, Demetri needs to insult Terry as well. Demetri goes up against Terry Silver, annoys the shit out of him, calls the earring tacky, you know - just Demetri doing his little Demetri things, hahaha. Then Hawk swoops in, swiping a sharpened sai from the Cobra Kai dojo wall - Stingray pops out of nowhere just to remind everyone that it’s Raphael’s weapon - and Hawk brandishes it over Terry Silver. It probably looks something like the imagery on the Narmer Palette, which shows the king grasping the head of a conquered enemy by the hair, and raising a mace in the other hand to strike him with, a picture of complete dominance.  

Hawk then leaps at Terry and slices the sai across his neck offscreen. (I recall it was @phoomwhoosh​ who reminded me that the hawk screech sound effect has to be played here, as well.) Next thing you see is Hawk victoriously brandishing the ponytail and yelling in triumph, holding it up for everyone to see, and all of the other students cheering him on, with Terry slumped on the ground, defeated and humiliated. 

Hawk goes up to Daniel-san, reverently lays the ponytail at his feet, and says with a bow, “For atonement, for what I did to your dojo, and for stealing your sensei’s Medal of Honor.” 

Daniel: “........................ you did fucking what now” 

“Babes means babes.” 

“Babes” is gender-neutral. I love the notion of bisexual-even-if-he-doesn’t-even-know-that-word Johnny Lawrence just calling any hot person a babe. He thinks Daniel LaRusso’s a babe. He told Hawk at Valley Fest that the flashiest way to show off the board breaking was to “pull the hottest babe onstage and make them hold it” (Hawk listened). 

Daniel: “Johnny, when you constantly say that you hooked up with plenty of ‘babes,’ do you mean men and women, or -?”

Johnny: “Babes means babes, LaRusso, don’t be weird about it.” 

Just Hawk

Not sure if this is just another dumb joke of mine or a realistic headcanon, but I say Johnny doesn’t actually know Hawk’s real name. Maybe this is realistic, though? Which is sad. I mean, he ignored that kid so much. And I genuinely think it might actually be possible that Johnny never had a single kid fill out paperwork, and only Kreese had them do it once he stepped in (he mentioned Tory’s) and took care of administrative things like paying Johnny’s bills and the like. (Oddly enough, Johnny does know Demetri’s name. Not sure why, but he does.) 

Speaking of names:

The Assassination of Eli Moskowitz by the Coward Demetri Nolastname 

Really, most of the things I desperately want for season 4 are not going to happen, so I’ll just lower all my expectations and just wish for this one single thing: please give us Demetri’s last name. I need to know it! 

Important note: I do not think of Demetri as an actual coward, this is just the same damn dumbass joke I’ve been recycling for years now, starting from way back when I said “The Assassination of Greedo the Rodian by the Coward Han Solo.”

And a tangent: I’ve never even seen that movie, but after hearing Martin Kove talk so much about his love for Westerns I’m kind of interested, haha. 

Demetri’s Future

This one comes straight from @idontknowkaratebutiknowcrazy​ and I love it so much that I have majorly latched onto it: Demetri becomes a standup comic when he’s a little older. The credit for this idea goes fully to her! And it truly is an amazing idea. @idontknowkaratebutiknowcrazy​ also suggested Demetri becoming a comic book creator, which I also love so much, but he could be both! Because whatever he ends up doing, he can definitely do standup on the side. And, man, I just rewatched The Assassination of Eli Moskowitz by the Coward Demetri Nolastname (again: not actually a coward) and his delivery is SMOOTH as silk. He’s so good. And obviously very engaging with the crowd. 

If only I could write fics, I’d love to write this one: Demetri starts finding some success after awhile, and his binary boyfriend Eli attends some of his sets, and they both watch a lot of other comics because of Demetri being in that world now. Some of them kill, some of them bomb, and some are just average. Demetri does all three, sometimes all in the same night. Eventually, Demetri has a big night where he headlines a show, and a bunch of their friends come, along with their senseis. Demetri spends a good portion of his set roasting Sensei Lawrence. (The man spent years listening to and following orders from a dude with an inaccurate cobra tattoo, for crying out loud - round pupils, REALLY.) Sensei LaRusso loves it. Eli’s so proud of how well Demetri did in his headline show, but because Sensei Lawrence was in attendance too, Eli says to everyone else later: “I’ve never seen someone kill that hard, and then be killed that hard after the show.” 

Hawk’s Just a Simple Man, Trying to Make His Way in the Dojo

Hawk’s trying to figure himself out. He has a bit of an identity crisis when he’s in the transition period between Cobra Kai and Eagle Fang/Miyagi-Do/Whatever the Fuck, and is still figuring out who he is, and whether or not he still does or does not like Nerd Shit. Even more confusing is: does Star Wars count as Nerd Shit? It’s pretty nerdy, yeah, but is it really Nerd Shit when it’s so popular and almost everyone watches at least the main movies? 

And Johnny was really at the actual perfect age for watching Star Wars when it came out. Look, I don’t care how much the guy rewatches Iron Eagle on a loop, Star Wars was a cultural juggernaut when it happened (and never went away) and - really, I don’t care who you are, Star Wars is for everybody. I’m even hearing Johnny’s voice in the bit where he goes “It doesn’t matter if you’re a freak, or a nerd, or a loser... all that matters is that you become badass!” 

It DOESN’T matter! It doesn’t matter if you’re a freak, a cool popular kid, a loser, a weirdo, a nerd, a normal everyday average joe, or anything at all really - you can watch and like Star Wars, haha. 

Sure, maybe Johnny didn’t watch many, if any at all, of the movies past the original trilogy, but here’s another headcanon. He really enjoyed at least the OT, and once Hawk and Demetri find out, it starts to crack at the walls Hawk put up around himself about all the Nerd Shit. He still isn’t sure whether it’s okay to like Star Wars because it’s cool, or whether it’s okay to like Star Wars because he really is still into all that nerd shit... but then Hawk eventually comes to terms with all of it by realizing that it doesn’t actually matter what kind of labels get put on all of this. After all, Sensei Lawrence doesn’t care that much, despite how much he throws words like “loser” around. To him, it was just a cool movie. (Later, when Hawk gets much more comfortable in his own skin, then he can enjoy the truly nerdy shit like Clone Wars and Rebels ahahaah.) 

So far, they didn’t really do too many of these kinds of training exercises on the show, but Mr. Miyagi blindfolded Julie Pierce and trained her to use her other senses. Perhaps Daniel got some of that training off-screen too, and begins to teach it to the students. They all start with a kata and blocking drills with their eyes closed. Hawk has some trouble at first, and it’s actually Johnny who says “If you keep opening your eyes, I’m gonna come over there and put a bucket on your head like Obi-Wan did to Luke. And we used that bucket for washing the cars for like the hundredth time.” 

“Sensei, you know Star Wars?!” Hawk says incredulously. 

And then it’s everyone else who’s incredulous: who the fuck doesn’t know Star Wars? 

And that’s how that all began. 

[mingkily]

｡☆✼★━ my baby, my home | p.sh ━★✼☆｡

navigation

starring: seonghwa x reader

fsk-0: fluff | mentions of covid, online uni and social distancing

volume: 1.5k words

vip access: @treasure-hwa & @barsformars & @midnightseonghwa & @multidreams-and-desires & @yunhoiseyecandy

“drink some more, you sound like a toad”, a loving little jab that made you roll your eyes but do as he said, because you were croaking a little; but he loved you anyway, even when you sounded like a toad. would love you if you had no voice at all, too.

sometimes you felt like seonghwa was a chronic mum friend, unable to stop pampering people even when they didn’t need it; possibly a side effect of living with seven other men of which at least five were more like boys, despite each being a legal adult. and sometimes, that was annoying you a little, because you didn’t need to be treated like a child and it did feel a little condescending at times.

today, however, was not such a sometimes.

you were crying into his chest, frustrated because this stupid pandemic had made it impossible to have a normal life, and while you’d grown somewhat used to it your studies had started, something you’d been excited for until the very first course was online already, making it impossible to get to know new people, and that was one of the things you’d been most excited for. and it felt so stupid, being upset over this when there were bigger problems - like people dying, for example -, but it just felt like the biggest problem in the world right now. it was the biggest problem in your world.

“it’s just so bad, hwa”, you sniffled, “all i see is blank screens and names that don’t tell me anything, and the teachers talk about random campus things as if any of us had had a chance to go there for more than five minutes, and it just makes me sad”, complaints that felt so childish, but he didn’t think any worse of you for it. he had a job, had chosen not to study, and even for him it was hard not seeing the usual people. and people still came in, just less frequently. he still had company. he couldn’t imagine how it was for you, sitting home all day staring at a screen in the empty apartment while he was at work. he could understand why you felt lonely, really.

“i get that, baby. i can’t say anything to make it better, either. but i’m here, and you can cry as long as you need to. or, tomorrow i’ll have to go to work, but if you need me i can call in sick. can’t possibly leave my baby alone when she’s sad.”

he was too great to comprehend, rubbing your back soothingly while you covered his favourite shirt in tears and snot, patient and warm and you almost told him to take the day off and just cuddle you, but you stopped yourself before you could do that. you felt pathetic, yes, but not that pathetic.

“i love you, hwa”, you hiccoughed, “and you smell really warm.”

“i smell warm?”, a little confused, but happy about the compliment nonetheless - if it was a compliment and not you trying to tell him that he was sweaty, which might very much be.

“yeah. like home.”

that was without a doubt a compliment, and seonghwa smiled against your hair.

“maybe that’s because we’re home, baby”, the reminder of sharing a home with him making both your hearts beat the tiniest bit faster. neither of you had expected this would be where you’d be when little freshman you had fallen in love with him, a senior because he’d skipped a class, and transferring from an all boys school to your mixed gender high school because his family had moved. but here you were, in his arm and in your common flat, living together and him comforting you through the crisis you had about having to start university during covid.

“maybe”, his comment having succeeded in making you smile, even though he couldn’t see it yet, “or maybe it’s because i love you.”

“i love you too. my baby. my home.”

together with his gentle movements on your back and the barely there rocking back and forth you did feel a little like a baby, but not in a bad way. you appreciated it, in this moment, appreciated feeling like someone was taking care of you. you liked not having to take care of yourself in this moment, having him there to take care of you when you were sad and honestly didn’t feel like you could do much other than cry. it was incredibly comforting to be pampered, wrapped in his arms and a soft blanket and him now asking if you wanted hot lemon water. you weren’t sick, but your throat probably hurt from sobbing so much, and he was always so mindful and so sweet.

“please”, you croaked out, though you didn’t really want to let go of him, in a little bit of a conflict because you knew you’d have to let him go if you wanted the water, but you also didn’t want to let go ever, especially if you didn’t actually have to.

but the desire for hot lemon water won, especially knowing he’d hold you again while you drank it anyway, so you moved off his lap, sat on the bed and kissed his cheek softly and shortly before he went to the kitchen, ready to pamper his baby some more.

“here. hot water with lemon. but be careful, it’s really hot”, your boyfriend told you a few minutes later, in the living room now because you’d missed him and had moved to the couch to at least be able to watch him while he prepared the drink for you.

“thank you, hwa”, leaving the cup on the table as you wrapped your hands around his neck instead to kiss him, your face snot-free now because you’d cleaned yourself up on the way since you passed the bathroom anyway and felt gross.

“you’re welcome”, seonghwa mumbled against you once you broke the kiss, smiling because it did seem like you were feeling better now, “how are you?”

he still wanted to make sure, of course he did.

“i’m better. but it’s still just… hard. i don’t know what to do. i don’t know how to meet people. and i feel a little lonely because it feels like i only have you and the boys, which is great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re your friends most of all, and i know it’s not how it is but i always feel like i’m intruding a little.”

“i understand”, he murmured against your hair, having pulled you against him again, into his chest with your face near his neck, “as you said, you’re never intruding, they all adore you almost as much as me, but i get it. you want your own friends. don’t want to always be stuck hanging out with me and my friends or being all by yourself. yes, i know you’re not stuck with me and you like it and you love me”, chuckling defensively when you raised your head and were about to protest, “it’s just that having a group of people for yourself would also be nice. i get it, don’t worry.”

he was way too perfect to be real, but you enjoyed this dream while it lasted. enjoyed being with seonghwa as long as you could. and were now going to enjoy the hot lemon water, prepared with lots of love and the water kettle that your boyfriend refused to get rid of and just the right amount of lemon.

“thank you, hwa”, not sure whether it was for the water or his words or both - probably both, “i love you.”

“i love you too. but baby?”, suddenly having an idea that might help and might get you some friends of your own, telling you once you hummed in acknowledgment, “how about you ask the teacher if you could suggest something like a book club or a study group or something? you could do it online, and then in really small groups offline once you know each other. social distancing and all, of course, but i think that might be better than having no one to talk to at all. and a study group would be useful, too, especially now in the beginning.”

that was a great idea, actually, one you hadn’t thought of because everything had felt so hopeless now that university had started and you hadn’t even seen anyone’s faces yet, and you rewarded him for it by setting down the mug and kissing him again, covering his face in hot, slightly wet kisses, the hot water he’d made you having heated up your lips enough for him to feel, and it was a nice feeling. warm and cosy, in a way.

“that’s such a good idea, you’re so smart! you should be in uni, not me!”, you praised him, eyes bright and face lit up by the smile he loved so much.

“you know you’re just as smart. now drink some more, you sound like a toad”, a loving little jab that made you roll your eyes but do as he said, because you were croaking a little; but he loved you anyway, even when you sounded like a toad. would love you if you had no voice at all, too.

and how could he not? you were his baby. you were his home.

[elitegymnastics]

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. 

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz. 

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant. 

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did. 

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen. 

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

[stupid-stew]

two vent fics in as many days? me? nooooo.

the answer is actually yes. i am in crisis all of the time. here take a gender one because why the heck not it's 4:30 am and i have nothing to lose. luz, toady you are me. there is also a little bit of parent eda because what do you take me for? a fool? (Pronouns? AO3 link if that floats ur boat)

Luz Noceda had a lot of problems.

Sure, she was stuck in a hell dimension with no way home in sight, where her best chance of surviving was reliant on her having magic, of which she had none, and was separated from her mom, and was currently blaming herself for her surrogate mom having lost her magic, but that wasn’t the point right now.

Right now, Luz was focused on herself. That’s usually how these nights ended up, with her so lost in thought that she circled back to the root of the problem, she didn’t know who she was.

That wasn’t entirely true, she was Luz Noceda, average teen, lover of Azura, daughter of Camila, professional witch in training, student at Hexside School of Magic and Demonics, foe to an unlucky few, friend to most, the girl who had managed to outsmart the emperor and get herself stuck so far from home she might as well just give up now. Luz knew what she was, she was what other people knew her for, but who was she? Anyone’s guess, suggestions much appreciated.

She had grown up in an environment that exposed her to many different people, the internet. Yeah, maybe she had seen a lot of stuff way before she should have, but she also had the whole world at her fingertips, many types of people and experiences just on the other side of her screen, and it had led to some amazing things. Her mom had also been a big help, allowing Luz to question and experiment any which way she pleased, as long as she was happy and safe. That had helped Luz figure out who she liked, she was comfortable telling her mom she liked girls confidently at the ripe age of 10, Camila had of course been nothing but accepting.

That was easy enough, right? She knew exactly what she was, who she liked, hell she could figure out most people just by looking at them, so why couldn’t she figure out herself?

And that was where Luz was at, laying on the floor in her makeshift bedroom in the owl house, once again wondering what in the hell was a gender.

Luz was no stranger to this internal battle, it sort of came with the whole territory of figuring out your sexuality, but for the life of her she didn’t even know where to start.

Ok, she thought to herself, let’s start from the top. I don’t know where the top is. What is the easiest way to go about this. Most people start with pronouns, maybe that’s a good place to start? Luz let out a groan, this was going nowhere. Back on track. she/her. Simple enough, good solid pronouns. That’s what most people have called me forever. I'm comfortable with it, other people are comfortable with it, no, what other people think doesn’t matter, this is about me. Focus, Luz. Ok, she/her, fine. Though not always, doesn’t always feel right, how can words feel right or wrong that doesn’t even make sense. Whatever, most of the time she/her equals a girl.

Luz shivered at that, girl, the word had never felt right to her, something about it was gross in her mind. She had always hated being referred to as girl or daughter, but never had the guts to speak up about it in the moment. Luz chuckled to herself, and look where we are now. she/her moved to the maybe pile for now.

Next on the list was he/him. Luz smiled at that. Being a somewhat androgynous child for most of her life with short hair, being called her mother’s son at the grocery store was a fairly common occurrence. She recalled one time she was out with a couple of friends and some sweet old lady had said to them “you ladies have a nice day.” and then looked at Luz and added “oh, my bad, and gentleman.” Luz had to leave the store at that, her friends had assumed she was upset that the lady had called her a gentleman, but that wasn’t the case. She was more upset about having been singled out than anything, in fact she hadn’t at all minded being called a gentleman. It didn’t feel completely right, but it didn’t feel completely wrong either.

Ok, so pronouns, this is Luz, he is my apprentice. Eh, feels about the same as she. That’s so lame I was hoping there would be some sort of difference. The only discomfort is that i’m used to she, god my head hurts just thinking about this. Luz rolled over to her other side and covered her head with her sleeping bag. How can I feel literally the same about the two, I haven’t even left the binary, there’s only two options, one should be right, the other should be wrong. This is the same idea as answering an either or question and both options are the same but both are neither right nor wrong. It doesn’t even make sense. If the binary isn’t going to give me my answers then I need to step it up.

They/Them was dangerous territory for Luz and she knew it. This wasn’t her first time around the block, she knew that she loved they/them pronouns for herself. “This is Luz, they’re my apprentice.” God it just felt so right. She could never figure out why, much less bring herself to even try, which was probably how she kept landing herself in this situation. Laying up at night, staring at the ceiling, running pronouns, of all things, through her head over and over. It probably would have been easier if she had someone to tell her how gender was supposed to feel. What it was supposed to identify, what it was supposed to offer for her identity, but alas. It had been easier with her sexuality, she knew from the moment someone had told her that liking girls was even an option that was who she was. She was confident in that, it was simple enough. So why was this still so hard?

Luz took her head out from under her sleeping bag and rubbed the heel of her palms over her eyes. I know I like they/them pronouns, they’re my favorite, they feel so correct, huh go figure I finally got my answer, words can feel right. Still not sure how… anyways, what the hell do I do about it? Ask people to just change the way they refer to me? That’s absurd. Luz knew it wasn’t absurd. Not in the slightest. She knew she had done it for plenty of people before, people she had known for years. It wasn’t hard, it was actually pretty easy and she was glad to switch around how she referred to them no matter how many times they asked. So why can’t I just do the same. Most people see me as a boy or a girl, it’s fine, it’s ok, well at the very least I can deal with it. What are they supposed to do? Just not?

Luz sprawled out on her back and shut her eyes as tight as she could. She knew she had met plenty of people who were non binary, and somehow she had been able to erase the idea of them being either a boy or a girl out of her head almost completely. It’s just how it had worked, was it because she didn’t really see herself in that way either? Maybe I’m just making it up. Maybe it’s all in my head and I’m stopping myself from causing a lot of problems, what if I’m wrong, what if I make a mistake and have to ask people to change around again? I barely figured out what pronouns I prefer, ok well I’ve known for a while, but I still don’t have a label. Non binary? Maybe? I wish I knew what gender was supposed to feel like. She placed her hands behind her head and sighed. If you asked me what gender felt like to me I either wouldn’t have an answer and would start crying or would just scream shrilly at you for a few minutes. Pronouns don’t equal gender but what are either of those. If I use they/them pronouns do I have to identify as non binary? I don’t even like labeling my sexuality and I know what that is. God, I haven’t even scratched the surface of how I present mysel-

Her thoughts were muted by a knock at her door.

“Luz I know you’re awake.”

It was Eda, of course it was. Who else would be awake at this hour and hear her singular sigh from the hallway?

Luz pushed herself up from off the ground and slowly opened the door.

“Can’t sleep?” Eda asked.

Luz just shook her head. She didn’t have the energy for words at the moment.

Eda sighed and stretched out her arm to reach behind her head and pull out a clock from her hair. “Me neither, looks like it’s too late for either of us to be awake. Want some tea?”

Luz nodded and followed Eda down the creaky stairs and to the kitchen. Eda immediately found a kettle and started filling it with water to boil while Luz took a seat at the counter. They sat with just the sound of the running tap for a few uncomfortable seconds before Eda asked the question Luz had been dreading.

“What’s keeping you up?”

Shoot. Can I talk to her about this? It’s Eda, she doesn’t care, does she? Nobody here seems to mind anything, cool non binary witches. That’s so rad. I don’t want to bother her, what if she doesn’t understand, so I have the energy to explain? How would I even go about dropping this if it goes south?

“Hellooooo? Isles to Luz?”

She was snapped out of her thoughts by Eda waving her hands in her face, she looked… worried? Oh, I haven’t answered her question.

“Hm? Oh, it’s nothing.”

Eda didn’t believe her for a minute.

“It doesn’t seem like nothing.”

Luz just sort of turned her head away and shrugged. Eda knew she couldn’t pry it out of the kid. Instead, she just decided to finish making the tea. The two of them sat in silence while the tea bags steeped, which gave Luz a moment back to herself to question her next move.

Eda handed Luz the steaming mug. “You can talk about it if you want. I’ll listen.”

“I don’t know how to do this.”

Eda grinned. They were getting somewhere, whatever was keeping the kid awake this late at night was reaching the surface.

“Just go for it, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Sooo many things Eda.

Luz decided to just start out simple. “Do you know what pronouns are?”

Eda nodded. Ok, good.

“Ok, what are your pronouns?”

Eda was taken aback by this a little, nobody had asked her that in years. What was the kid dealing with? “Well, I use she/her pronouns, but I’ve never really felt attached to any of them, so whatever works just works I guess. Same for King, I don’t really think he cares much as long as you’re referring to him as royalty.” Eda snorted with laughter.

Luz was kind of in shock. Does she feel the same way I do? How did she pick? “How did you know?” the words just kind of fell out of her mouth in a mess.

“Know what?”

Eda looked at her with confusion.

“What pronouns you use?”

“I don’t know, here nobody really cared that much, why should I?”

Then Eda remembered.

“Ooooh yeah you humans use them for that whole gender identity thing. We kind of have that here but it’s not as big of a deal, you guys have all those labels, yeah?”

Luz swallowed deeply and nodded.

“Is that what’s keeping you up?”

Another nod.

“Do you wanna talk at me? I know you do better with your words than your mind, I can do the dishes while you talk if you don’t want my focus.”

Luz was now completely dumbfounded. In the last two minutes, Eda had told her that not only was gender a human thing, but that she was willing to let Luz process it the way that she needed, how had she known? Wait…. Just how similar are Eda and I? Luz couldn’t help but wonder.

Luz nodded and Eda got up without a word and headed straight for the sink.

“I don’t know. Back in the human world, people have a lot of words that they use to describe their genders. I don’t understand any of them, I know their definitions, but I don’t know how to relate to them.”

Luz paused and Eda gave her a gentle hum of interest as a signal to continue.

“They’ve just never made sense to me, I don’t know why and I don’t know how but it’s incredibly frustrating. I gave up on trying to get it and moved on to the things that I do get, which is limited to pronouns. You’ve got the binary pronouns like she and he, usually those fit the words girl and boy, not always, sometimes people use more than one set of pronouns, but the thing is I can’t pick. They feel the exact same to me. There are other ones, the most common being they/them, and I really like those, Eda I really really like them.”

Eda smiled at her, glad to see Luz’s face lighting up.

“But I don’t know. I don’t know if I should use one set, multiple. It’s really bothering that so many people back home understand, they just seem so sure of themselves, they know who they are, they know that they’re a boy or a girl or neither or even both, there’s even more genders to be a combination of, but I can’t. I think there has to be something wrong with me because I know it shouldn’t be this hard but it is, it’s always on my mind, and I can’t stop it or make it make sense. I haven’t even begun to entertain the idea of asking people to change the pronouns they use for me because I can’t tell myself what label even goes with what, and I feel stupid.”

Eda stopped what she was doing.

“You aren’t stupd Luz.”

“How can you say that when I don’t even know who I am, I can’t even figure out what words I want people to use when they refer to me.” Luz sounded exhausted.

Eda turned around and looked her in the face, dead serious. “You aren’t stupid, you just don’t know who you are,” she dried her hands on a towel and sat down across from Luz. “and that’s ok. I know it’s maddening not knowing, but you’re allowed to feel that way, if you don’t have all the answers, what’s gonna happen? Are you gonna die?”

Luz rolled her eyes “sometimes it really does feel like it.”

Eda stood up. “Well we can’t have that, no dead apprentices. You seem to have been thinking about this for a long time, you just need a little bit of a push. Pick some new pronouns.”

Luz stared at her, “what?”

“You can’t figure out how the feeling works, or if there even is one, that’s ok. But, you know that there are some words that fit better than others. You might not be able to tell me why, but you know what they are. What are they?”

Luz didn’t know what to do, she hadn’t prepared herself for this. She was ready for Eda not knowing what was going on, not this. She’s right, time to rip off the bandaid.

“I don’t know…”

“Yes you do.”

There really is no getting out of this one.

“I don’t know, I guess they/them feels ok? Better than the others?”

“And so it shall be.” Eda stated matter-of-factly.

Luz shifted uncomfortably in her seat, “but I don’t know, I’m really used to she/her, they don’t fit quite right but they’ve never really felt wrong enough to get rid of completely.”

Eda shrugged, “you don’t have to. You can use both if you want.”

Luz wasn’t sure, she knew Eda was right, but she couldn’t help but recall the time someone had told her that adding they/them to your pronouns was performative and accomplished nothing. Screw them.

“Ok.” It was simple, but it’s all she had.

“Anything else I should know?”

Luz took a deep breath, she was in this far, might as well keep it up.

“It really bothers me when I get referred to as a girl, I know that I don’t know what labels go where, but I know that one is wrong.”

“Good to know.”

This was going way better than Luz expected, but now all her thoughts were out and she had a little bit of a resolution, she was finally starting to feel how late it was. She yawned, “I think I’m done for the night.”

Eda put on a mock offended look, “But you didn’t even touch your tea? I worked so hard on that for you!”

Luz gave her a weak smile. “It was never about the tea, was it, you just wanted me to talk.”

Eda reached out and ruffled Luz’s hair, “It worked, huh?”

“Yeah I guess it did.”

“Good.”

They emptied their cups into the now pristine sink and went back up the stairs.

“Thanks Eda.”

“Don’t mention it.”

[littleoddwriter]

Finally | Dan Torrance x Gender Neutral!Reader

"also,,, could you do a merge of "ldr" and "first kiss"? like, I'd love to have a fic where they've been dating for a while and then they finally get to meet? Dan torrance x reader would be !!! but tbh I'd be happy with any of ewan characters but idk I think it'd be nice and soft and emotional and it's something I think about,,,, a lot." @theamazingspideymerc​

summary; You met Dan on an online site for Anonymous Alcoholics and you finally meet IRL after months of being in a LDR. 

notes; TW // Mentions of being ex-alcoholics (idk how else to phrase it, but,,,). Gender Neutral!Reader; Anonymous Alcoholics; Online Dating; Long-Distance Relationships; First Kiss; First Meeting IRL; Kissing; Hugging; Emotional; Happy Tears.

Reblogs > Likes. Thank you!

You had met Dan by pure coincidence on an Anonymous Alcoholic site, where you had signed up on to hear - or rather read - stories from more people than just the ones at the local meetings. It was basically like AA meetings in real life, just without the anxiety of actually sitting or standing in front of a small crowd. It definitely made for a nice change and addition to your routine. A few weeks into the online AA program, you had shared your story more fully. It was freeing, but anxiety had a tight grip on you, not knowing how people would react. Even though, realistically, you all sat in the same boat, you were anonymous and no one would really dare to judge anyone. Dan - like so many others - had replied to your story, shared his compassion with you and so many sweet words, it made your heart skip a couple of beats and forced a big smile onto your face. He seemed so nice, really. You wanted to get to know him, but you didn't want to be creepy or come on as too much, so you had replied as calmly as possible to his comment. That was how it had started. You kept talking in the comments first, then you moved on to the direct messaging system of the website and continued talking there about everything and anything. It was nice. He was nice. Every day, you would come home and turn on your computer, feeling giddy with excitement. You loved receiving messages from him; it brightened up each day of yours. You told him as much, one day, when you felt brave. He made it so easy for you to be honest with him. He didn't make you feel like he was going to reject you for little remarks like saying that he made you really happy. Eventually, you thought that perhaps what you felt for him went a little deeper than simple friendship and appreciation. It brought you a bit of a crisis for a while, as you tried to figure out what to do. The good thing about this whole thing was that you hadn't met face to face yet. You knew what the other looked like, you knew where the other lived - no actual addresses but country and town - and therefore, you could simply just avoid ever having to tell him how you felt. You could avoid the embarrassment and the rejection. It felt wrong to avoid it, though. You weren't sure why, but something told you that perhaps the feelings for him weren't entirely unrequited. One day, he asked if he could tell you something personal that he was scared of sharing with you. Your mind had been racing with the possibilities of what he could be meaning to tell you. What you received was a pretty long text in which he confessed that he felt a deep connection with you, a pull; and that he had thought it impossible to fall in love with someone without knowing them in person, but he might have been proven wrong after all. By you. He said he loved you and that he felt that you might not reject him, but instead share those feelings. You sat in front of your laptop for a little while, just staring at the screen, at the message. For a few seconds, you really believed that you were just dreaming; but then another message came in and said that if he was wrong, he was really sorry and that he didn't want anything to be ruined by his little confession. It made you think that perhaps it was real after all. With trembling fingers you replied. You spilled out everything that had been piling up for months. You started dating just like that. You started moving past text messages and instead phoned more frequently. When you had heard his voice for the first time, your breath came to a stutter. God, his voice was so fucking soothing. Not too deep, a little raspy, gentle, beautiful and so nice, for the lack of a better word. Every word that left his mouth sounded so genuine. You could have listened to him for hours on end. Months later, he told you that he had a week off from work and was wondering if he could stop by your home, so that you could finally meet in real life. Of course you agreed to that immediately. Now here you were, waiting for him in your apartment. You had exchanged addresses a while ago, sending each other gifts and such every now and again. Half an hour ago, he had called you from a gas station, telling you that he would be there in about forty-five minutes. You couldn't wait. You were incredibly nervous. You fixed your hair and outfit every few minutes, went through your apartment and looked if anything was out of order or looked weird or messy, and if anything embarrassing was visible. About to fly off the handle with nerves, the door bell suddenly rang. You took a deep breath and walked towards it, turned the handle with trembling fingers and opened the door. In front of you stood Dan in his plaid shirt, blue jacket, washed out jeans and boots. He was even more gorgeous in real life than in his photos. You had never worked up the courage to actually video chat. Sending him photos of yourself had already been hard enough. He understood. He was always so fucking understanding. And now here he stood, right in front of you, smiling so gently. You could detect some nervousness in his eyes and the twitch of the corner of his lips, though. "Hey," he rasped eventually. "Hi," you replied quietly, shyly. Fuck, that's not how you imagined it to go, but you were so fucking dumb-founded by his presence. "Can I?" He asked, opening his arms in invitation, making his intentions clear to you. You could only nod. He smiled and wrapped his arms around you, one going around your middle, the other around your back, his hand buried in your hair at the back of your head. Automatically, your own arms wrapped themselves around his waist, pulling him flush against you, gripping tightly on to his jacket. You inhaled his scent, a little musky from the long drive, some lingering aftershave and just so him. Obviously, you couldn't possibly have known that yet, but you just knew. He leaned back a little, so he could look at you. A soft, gentle smile decorated his handsome face and you couldn't help but smile back. Then, ever so slowly as if to give you a way out - even though you didn't want anything more - he leaned down and pressed his lips against yours in a chaste kiss. People always described it as fireworks exploding; and while you didn't think it was wrong, what you really felt was electricity that went from your lips and through your entire body, lighting you up and making you melt into the kiss. Never had you experienced something so beautiful and fulfilling. You kissed him back gently. Then again. And again. The two of you kept smiling and chuckling through it, teeth clanking together sometimes, but neither of you cared, too happy and ecstatic at finally being together. Eventually you realised that you were still standing in the open doorway and that anyone who came into the apartment building, and by your floor, would have been able to see you. So you pushed him back, gently, and bid him inside, chuckling nervously. When you had closed the door behind Dan, you went back to kissing each other. So much had been pent up over months and now it was just coming right out of the both of you. Emotions flooded you. Anxiety and uncertainty, but also hope and love. So much love. It was overwhelming. Tears started burning your eyes all of a sudden, while you were kissing each other. A quiet sob left your lips. Immediately, Dan stopped kissing you and looked at you, concerned. "What is it, darling? Have I done something wrong? Too fast?" You shook your head, smiling, as tears rolled down your reddened cheeks. "No, I- God, sorry. I'm just overwhelmed is all. I love you, Dan. Shit," you said in between little sobs and snivels. Relief washed visibly over Dan as he grinned, oh, so beautifully. "Good good, I got worried there for a moment, y/n. I love you, too, sweetheart." Faintly, you noticed that tears shone in his eyes as well. You reached up to his face and cradled it with your hands, ever so gently, looking at him with a genuinely soft smile on your face. "I honestly couldn't be happier," you whispered, kissing him again. "Me neither," he replied just as quietly in between kisses. It was the start to one of the happiest weeks of your life.

[shikagemaru]

Been having an identity crisis recently. There's It a whole lot of things adding up to that. Call it a rant and ignore it if you want. There's only like 3 of you guys anyway.

I would put a readmore here if I knew how to do that on mobile (thanks for sucking, only social media app I feel at all comfortable with)

•It really doesn't help that the past 7 years of my life have been completely stagnant. Since I haven't been able to work my wife and I have had basically no freedom of our own.

•2 years ago I was put in jail because a pair of psychopaths decided to go from 70 to 0 on the highway in front of us, and get out to try attacking us. I tried backing up to go around but obviously the car behind me was too close and the highway was at speed in the right lane. So I had to go around on the grass while these 2 crazy assholes were approaching while shouting threats. One was coming for my wife's window. So I did what I had to and bumped one of them. He wouldn't move and our safety was more important than him being hurt a little. There was a high speed chase through our community, and while we're on the phone with the police these two are trying to force us off the road. The cops even see one of them hanging out the window shouting threats at us. We pull into a mcdonalds parking lot and after talking to them for a bit the cops arrest me because he said I "ran him over" on purpose. He was so uninjured that he refused medical care at the scene, but he kept telling people I ran him over. They were also both arrested btw. I was held without food or mpving air for over 13 hours and I have a history of heat stroke and hypoglycemia (it's bot exactly that, but it's like living outside of a big city and tellinf people you're from there instead of the local podunk you actually live in). Long story short it was torturous, and then I got put in actual jail. They didn't care that I have a long list of disabilities. When I was released I had to wear an anklr monitor while taking weekly drug tests. The numbers on the drug test kept reading that I was using weed even though I wasn't. It was insanely stressful as the numbers didn't change from one week to another. My fear was that because I was rapidly losing weight from stress that the thc being held onto in the fat was being detected. NOPE. turns out one of my DAILY meds was testing false positive. "Shouldn't they know about the false positive drug and account for it?" Youd think. But when they scanned my medication bottles that one came out blurred and they never entered it into their system. In case there are any lingering feelings that I was guilty, the court case more than handled that. The prosecutor was the kind of scumbag that, before my trial, tried prosecuting this guy's mother-in-law for assaulting him when she tried taking her grandkid out of his arms because he was using the baby to shield himself when the family confronted him about having a fake medical license and it ruining all their lives. It turns out I was put through hell and all he was seeking was "anger management counciling" because he believed that I, the guy protecting his wife, had road rage issues. One listen to the 911 calls would have straightened thst up. My lawyer kicked his ass just a little more than I did on the stand. Long story concluded, thanks for the ptsd. The nightmares have been lovely. So is panicking whenever a door closes kinda loud.

•Last year I was able to self diagnose myself with autism. For those who don't know, the vast majority of autistic people self diagnose, largely due to "experts" on average not being well educated on what autism is outside of the stereotypical cases. Most women aren't diagnosed until adults. Most "high functioning" (which is an awful description when you lesrn that it was created by a literal nazi to separate autistic people into "kill these ones" and "don't kill these ones" categories) people aren't diagnosed until adulthood. And by then actually getting the diagnosis is a challenge. And frequently it involves exercising privelege to get the right people involved.

So knowing what I know now a lot of my life suddenly makes sense. People accusing me of being manipulative when I literally don't know what it is that makes them think that? Severe miscommunications? Obsessing over specific topics to the point where people want to avoid me? Always being "the weird one" and as a result being a social outcast from day 1? Despite being considered very intelligent, I've been super easily manipulated by people my whole life. I can barely ever tell a person no, even if I know I should. Hell. There have been entire relationships I've had with people where I thought we were friends and they didn't think the same thing. Learning who or even how to trust becomes a challenge.

Yeah, it all makes sense now. I want to say "i don't know how they didn't see it", but I do. The 90s was shit for mental health. Since they knew I had tourettes (thanks for that, universe) and adhd, my obsessive tendencies were labeled ocd. Actual adult relationships have gone entirely to shit because of miscommunication. People seem to think I mean one thing when I mean another entirely. People think I'm angry when I'm not. I've basically been told never to be passionate about a topic.

How does a person handle that? It doesn't unfuck relationships with people. Once someone thinks you're lying and manipulating that's it. Nothing you can ever say will ever dissuade them. It doesn't matter that they were the ones that misunderstood. Somehow it becomes the fault of the autistic person. And good luck if you're ever autistic and have a panic attack. So I'm trying not to care about that. It's hard. It's especially hard knowing that things didn't have to, and may not have gone the way they did if i had known about it earlier. I wish I could rebuild certsin relationships. My wife and I used to fight, but since we realized that both of us have these triggers because we're both autistic, we resolve almost every misunderstanding like a walk in the park. But that doesn't work with people you haven't spoken to in years. Even if a lot of it was frankly their fault.

•And the latest fuckery? I have no idea what gender I am. If I had the power to shapeshift I'd probably change on a daily or hourly basis. I had an alt account years ago where I posted fanfiction. Some people in the community assumed they knew my gender and pronouned me as such in the comments. That was the first time I had ever experienced gender euphoria. I was....upset, when someone corrected them. Would have been nice if they asked me first. I enjoyed the confusion quite a lot actually. And since I have a terrible time coming up with names for things (my screen name is from 20 years ago and I never figured out a new one) so I don't know where I would start building up a new persona. And for what? To get the rush of people not knowing which pronouns to use? I hate it. I want it. I don't know if I can ever come out as trans. People think trans means m2f and f2m, and it doesn't really matter to the public consciousness that there's more to it than that. I want to scream at people that I'm trans, but i don't know what I even want my body to look like. If I woke up tomorrow and I was suddenly transformed would I be happy? I have no idea. No? Yes?

I don't know who I am or how to even identify. I'm a disabled, autistic, lgbtq ethnic minority with no financial freedom, and my 40s are approaching. Life is a challenge. Sometimes I wish I could just Danny Phantom it up. And by sometimes I mean daily.

[yuthoe]

aaa okay so looked at the rules and could you do their idol crush admitting that they’re their type but with yuto, wooseok and kino? 🥺

HELLO, I FINALLY DID IT, SORRY FOR THE LONG WAIT.It’s almost 4AM here and I wanted to get this out in case I become unproductive again when I wake up. I was halfway through Kino’s part when I realized the reader should be gender-neutral, oops. It’s too late for me to edit it again right now, so it’s gonna stay like that. I’ll take care next time, tho.

WARNINGS: none. WORD COUNT: 842, 971, 632.

—

Yuto

“Yuto-ya,” Hui called from his spot on his tiny couch in Yuto’s studio. It’s one of his rare days-off, but he isn’t in the mood to go into the city, and staying in the dorm is too boring since everyone else is busy with their other stuff. So he just decided to tag along with Yuto to his studio and listen to him make some songs. He might even sneak in a nap or two since he hasn’t been sleeping well later—but all thoughts of sleep fly out the window as soon as he sees on his phone a newly uploaded video starring you, known in Pentagon as Yuto’s crush. “Yuto-ya, come here!” he says, tossing the stuffed teddy bear at the boy sitting by the computers.

The toy hits Yuto square in the head and he jumps, turning the seat around in confusion. “What is it, hyung?”

Hui turns the phone so the screen is visible to Yuto. “Isn’t this Y/N?”

A quick glance and, yes, it’s you. Yuto likes to think he can find you in a crowd, no matter how many hairstyle changes you gave or how much you try to blend in with your clothes, but that just comes off kind of creepy. He has watched a lot of your interviews; and you have a lot of them, being a big figure in a famous idol group. He’s just so captivated by your range, your stage presence… It just gets him breathless whenever he sees you perform.

Your group is in the middle of a comeback right now, and Yuto has been religiously keeping up with any promotional material for your group that’s been coming up, but he’s just been super focused on his music today that the only thing that shocked him out of the haze was the teddy bear thrown at his head. Yuto stares at the tiny phone screen for a second longer before getting off the office chair and squishing beside Hui on the couch that isn’t really made for someone of his size.

The video continues playing as his leader turns up the volume. Your group is sat on swivel bar chairs in a white studio set. Gosh, you look radiant, as always. The pleasantries are over and the topic has gone to the announcement your company made about being able to date openly. Yuto isn’t lying that there was a tiny spark of hope that lit up inside him when he first heard of the news. But of course, that was just wishful thinking, since he doesn’t think you actually know him anyway. Sure, you may have heard of Pentagon the group, but there isn’t as big a chance of you taking an interest in him.

Being seated on the farthest chair from the hosts, your answer is saved for last. The other members of your group dodged the question by saying they weren’t really looking to date anyone or dropping names like J.Seph from KARD or Vernon from Seventeen being their ideal type of guy. You take a second or two more to think about your answer and say, “I’d like to get to know Yuto from Pentagon more.”

“Oooohhh,” the hosts exclaim. “He’s one of the rappers isn’t he?” one of them asks.

“Yes,” you say politely, smiling. Yuto isn’t sure if you’re actually red in the face or if that’s just the blush on your cheeks. “I really like the flow of his raps, and his voice is really nice.”

“Ahh, so you’re saying you like tall guys, yes?” the other host teases.

You laugh, slightly embarrassed. “I guess? I don’t really have a type, but Yuto was the first person to pop into my head who I am really interested in and would like to get to know.”

The hosts nod in approval, and your group members seated around you slap you playfully for admitting something like that.

Hui releases a high-pitched siren sound and playfully slaps Yuto playfully on the arm with his free hand. “Do you hear that, Yuto? Seems they like you, too. I wonder if we can go to one of their recordings for this comeback, hmm… Or maybe if our comebacks coincide you can talk to them then, huh?...” Hui continues to rattle off possibilities of Yuto getting into contact with you.

Meanwhile Yuto is still staring at the screen, frozen. The video continues to play, but he isn’t registering anything. Did you really just say, out loud, with a mic on, that you want to get to know him more? Like, he isn’t hallucinating that? Those words really came out of your mouth?

His chest is tight. It burns, but it’s also light. Yuto can’t put into words the feeling. Your sentiments are intangible, and there weren’t even any promises of actually going through with meeting up or exchanging numbers…

But it made him giddy. Indescribably happy.

He lets slip the tiniest of smiles as he continues watching the video and Hui mutters to himself about possible get-togethers with your groups.

Kino

It’s been a habit of Kino lately to listen to podcasts when he gets back to the dorm, as a way to unwind after a busy day. Not because he listens to them (although he does find time to listen and pay attention some other time), but the sound of amicable voices in the sometimes empty dorm is a comforting presence.

One of the podcasts he’s been listening to lately is called Ladies’ Room. His sister told him to listen to one of the episodes, and he found the discussions fun and educational, so he decided to just follow it and he’s updated with the latest one. So when a notification pops up on his phone about a new episode with a special guest, he immediately blasted it on his Bluetooth speaker.

“Hey, guys! This is Soo Ri and you’re listening to Ladies’ Room,” the host’s voice, like a droplet of water falling into a crystal clear puddle, slithers out from the speaker. “Today, we’re talking about love and relationships with a very special guest… idol-slash-actor-slash model, Y/N!”

“Hello, everybody!” you say, in a sweet cadence like a breeze rustling windchimes.

Kino almost drops the container of microwavable tteokkbokki he’s holding and looks at his phone, scandalized, as if it personally offended him. Obviously, it wouldn’t be a stretch for you to guest in podcasts, and even less of a stretch for you to guest-host this particular podcast, but Kino is still surprised. He can’t deny that it feels nice to know that he found you so unexpectedly.

Kino can’t remember when he started taking an interest on you. There was just one time when everytime he turned on the TV he would see your face—in a commercial, a variety show, a drama, that he finally decided to check you out. And from the first music video he clicked, he was hooked on you. Your way with words, your voice, your personality all just made him really want to know you more.

He doesn’t call it a crush, although to Yuto and Wooseok, the only two other people who know about his fanaticism, it comes off that way in droves. He shakes his head and finally unfreezes, putting the tteokbokki in the microwave to heat up. His ears automatically pick up the conversation.

“I know you must be really annoyed and fed up by questions like these, since I watch a lot of your interviews and the hosts ask about it a lot,” Soo Ri begins. “But what’s your stance on ideal types—like your ideal guy, or girl—and do you have one yourself?”

“Aahh, yeah, I do get questions like that sometimes, but they’re in different contexts, so I don’t really mind them.” Kino thinks that’s a polite answer and mentally claps. He hears you take a deep breath before saying, “I don’t think having an ideal type is realistic, though. I mean, that’s what ‘ideal’ means: it’s your idea of perfection, the best. I guess it could be like a blueprint for what you want in a partner, but I don’t think it’s possible for you to be able to tick off all those boxes.”

“Oh, yeah, I get what you’re saying. That’s a really good point.”

“As for my ideal type…” You hum, seeming deep in thought, but not enough to cause dead air. “It’s not really an ‘ideal’ type,” Kino can almost hear the air quotation marks when you said the word and it makes him smile, “but Kino from Pentagon has a lot of the qualities I like in someone.”

By now, Kino had taken his food from the microwave and taken a bite. He freezes with a mouth stuffed with tteokbokki. The spicy soup stinging his lips assures him that he is definitely awake and definitely not dreaming. Did she just—?

“Yeah,” he hears, desperately trying to tune back into the conversation. “He has a very bubbly and fun personality. He’s humble and loves his members and his fans. He’s also very good at what he does—I’ve listened to some of his stuff on SoundCloud, and they’re really good,” you say, and Kino thinks he should probably start chewing before he chokes on the rice cakes. “I mean, his dancing is excellent, his voice is so nice, and he’s also super cute.”

At this, you and Soo Ri both laugh conspiratorially, as if sharing a secret only between you two, as if this podcast isn’t going to be uploaded somewhere anyone who has access to the Internet can listen to, somewhere Kino can access at a moment’s notice.

Kino’s sure his face is as red as the tteokbokki soup right now. Literally no one can see because he’s the only one in the kitchen, but his face is on fire. He continues chewing and stuffing the rice cake strips into his mouth as he spirals into a crisis. His idol crush actually likes him back? He doesn’t think you actually like him, but you did say that there’s some aspects of him you like. That’s kind of similar, right? Right?

The whine comes out garbled from his full mouth. On one hand, he feels way lighter, bouncier, more energetic at knowing that the idol he likes knows about his existence and that she actually likes things about him and openly talked about it on a podcast, oh my goodness is this really real, like no one is messing with me right now?

So Kino sits there, lost in thought as he continues spearing food with his chopsticks, thinking. About how to reach you, maybe get your number, maybe propose a tiny collaboration? Maybe? About how he’s going to act in front of you in the off-chance that you do meet, as you and Soo Ri continue chatting in the background.

Wooseok

He can’t help stealing glances at you—you look really good in this comeback, and it takes everything for Wooseok to not be too conspicuous and focus on the interview that coincidentally has Pentagon and your group as guests. He’d like to think it’s a dream, but really, it feels more like a nightmare because he’s seated right next to you and his members literally won’t stop looking back and giving him mischievous smiles, or turning their chairs towards your group and making small talk, trying to drag him into the conversation and he feels like a fool because he seems incapable of replying with more than two-syllable words.

And it somehow gets worse during the segments. Not that the hosts are bad—they’re really good hosts. It’s just that there’s a segment where they read selected fan mail, so they would all have to answer it because they don’t really want to disappoint the fans by deflecting. The first few were harmless: what food they like eating during summer, if you were an animal what would you be? But then it went from zero to 100 real quick as the third question is read by your group’s leader, “Which idol is your ideal type?”

Everyone can’t help but make exclamations, oohs and ahs as they think of an appropriate answer. The hosts are gracious and give everyone ten seconds or so to come up with their answers before coaxing out some people’s. Eventually the line snaked to you and you timidly replied, “Wooseok-sunbae,” while avoiding his eyes.

If Wooseok could see himself in a mirror, he would see his eyes bug out and threatening to pop from their sockets, mouth desperately pursing to prevent the huge smile forming on his face. He doesn’t know how to react—what should he do, Cube didn’t train them for this. He needs help and Shinwon keeps slapping his thigh and arm like that isn’t the most obvious thing to do when they’re being filmed.

He can tell you’re embarrassed. You’re facing the hosts, your back to Wooseok, though he’s assuming your face is super red right now, and it’s not because of the blush. He kind of just wants this to be over so you can have a reprieve, but the hosts (being hosts), ask you to elaborate.

“Um, he’s a really great rapper, and he seems really caring,” you say softly. “I watched a program with him once taking care of his cats, and I thought it was really cute.” Wooseok recalls that show and his chest loosens slightly at the mention of it, touched that you remember that tiny segment he did. He really loves his cat, and he’s not gonna admit it, but he likes that your takeaway from the program is that he looks cute playing with tiny animals.

“Ooh, yes, we love guys who are nice to animals,” one of the hosts says, and turns directly to Wooseok. “Wooseok-sshi, since she mentioned you, we’ll leave you for last, okay? So we can properly build up the hype for the viewers back at home.” The boy nods; at least this gives him time to think of nice things to say to you amidst the flurry of thoughts running through his head at the moment.

He imagines talking to you after filming is over and exchanging numbers. He imagines hanging out with you if you have any free time. He imagines maybe doing a small collaboration with you, wishes it were possible. The images he conjures up make him smile, even if he is still kind of embarrassed—he was never one of the cucumber-cool members of the group—but he decides that since you threw yourself off the boat, he might as well throw himself off and join you.

[knightofameris]

hidden mist — clint barton

Setting: AU (mix of MCU and 616 comics, clint has no family, he’s a mess, and kate’s a thing along with lucky) Gender: Neutral Contains: slight body horror (like Red Skull peeling off his mask), fighting, curse words, not necessarily fluff? but kinda at the end? more so action-y Word Count: 2.2k Prompt: “I’ve never known more about what isn’t going on in a situation” for @\amandarosemire‘s 500 follower writing challenge! Sorry it took me so long but I finally grinded it out kshlksg [this is a repost to a new account, sorry amanda!]

Summary: Everything’s a little confusing when your boyfriend finds out you’re in the middle of a cold war of sorts. Especially when you’re a highly trained agent. But at this point, nothing’s surprising to him or to Kate.

a/n: i love clint and the mcu did him dirty. Be sure to check out amandarosemire’s writings! She’s amazing at writing and I’m always so taken aback when reading her works. [reblogging from old blog]

Let me know if there are any mistakes, regarding the gender of reader, grammar, spelling, or with the story. c:

Enjoy! 

☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆

❝ who do you choose to stand beside you in times of crisis? who would you trust? ❞

☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆

If someone were to ask you which other Avenger you would want to be beside you while the building you were stuck in was burning down with people pointing guns at you, the last person they’d expect you to answer with would probably be Hawkeye.

You see, if you had Iron Man with you, he could easily just fly you out after using his targeting system to take out the enemies. Captain America could just throw his shield at the enemies and then carry you out the safest way possible. Thor could summon some lightning, take them out, and then again, you’d be flown out of the building. Natasha’s clever, you probably wouldn’t even end up in this situation if she was with you.

But you were and the building was on fire and guess who you were stuck with?

Hawkeye.

Well, both Hawkeyes, but only one of them is really the Avenger here. Or well, Kate is an Avenger-in-training. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point is, you, Clint, and Kate, were all royally fucked.

Their bows laid at their feet, their arrows scattered about. You? The gun you held was pointed at the man you were supposed to be protecting—Mason Wu.

“Mirage,” Mason licked his lips, “I thought your job was to protect me?”

“Mirage,” Clint deadpanned. “Babe, you’re Mirage?”

“Now’s not the time Clint!” You muttered through gritted teeth just loud enough for him to hear. “You weren’t even supposed to be here!”

“Ugh, ‘babe’?” Kate groaned. “How did you even get into a stable relationship?” You shot her a look.

“You’re not supposed to be here either, Katie.” The glare from your eyes caused Kate to shut her mouth, not even wanting to correct you into calling her Kate. She gulped and you saw a bead of sweat fall down the side of her head, but you knew it wasn’t from the nerves.

You felt the temperature rise and with it you readjusted your grip on your gun, your clammy hands feeling uncomfortable.

“What’s going on, Wu?” You demanded. You eyed him carefully as he seemed unaffected by the flames. Rather, he seemed at peace, almost delighted, to see you working up a sweat. He grinned and with a wave of his arm, water seemingly came out of thin air and killed the fire. Wu then clenched his fist, all the water dropping to the ground and then dissipating into thin air.  Then a stream of water flowed up his arm and under his suit.

You, Clint, and Kate watched in mute horror when water started coming out of his eyes, nose, and mouth only for what seemed to be his skin to come off. As if it was in slow motion, he peeled off his skin. You furrowed your brows, your mouth turning downward in disgust. Clint letting out an ‘ugh’ noise and Kate gagged.

A light blue crystalized humanoid was underneath with what looked to be water inside of him. Whatever face he had, you knew he was smirking.

“I’ve never known more about what isn’t going on in a situation,” Clint whispered. Kate slapped his hand with hers. You sighed, hanging your head down.

*** [E A R L I E R  T H A T  E V E N I N G] ***

“I just have to attend the charity event that Roxxon’s holding, I’ll be back before you know it.” You leaned down and kissed Clint on the cheek and he frowned for a quick moment, putting his arrow down on his lap. You pulled away just fast enough to see the frown etched on his face and you tilted your head. “What’s wrong?”

“Roxxon?” Clint asked, turning to look at you.

You sighed, “Yes, I know they have had their fair share of misdoings with the Avengers, but I’ll be safe.”

“No, uh-” Clint furrowed his brows. You stared at him, waiting for him to finish his reply.

“What?” You asked. You let a small smirk make its way onto your face, knowing that he had a mission that night at the same charity event. You weren’t too worried though, even with your boyfriend as an Avenger you were able to keep him away from your other life. Something you decided personally. You just wanted to get a taste of a normal life.

As normal can be, living with Clint and sometimes Kate.

He shook his head, “Nothing, nevermind.” Clint picked up his arrow again, attaching on a new gadget at the end.

“Alright,” you replied, adjusting the cuffs on your suit. You headed out of your shared apartment. “Make sure to feed Lucky, and tell Kate to clean up her PI work off the counter, it’s a mess.”

You closed the door behind you and glanced down at your watch. With a sigh you began to head towards the elevator and over to the charity ball, hoping the mission would be a breeze.

After all, it was just protecting a guy from any possible assassins. How hard could it be?

*** [P R E S E N T  T I M E] ***

It was very hard, if the man you were protecting is out to get you. At this point, everything that you felt you needed to do was for self-preservation and to keep Clint and Kate safe and alive. Whatever the mission was before is now called off and something you’d have to talk to Fury about yourself.

But you know, even if you were asked which Avenger you’d want to have beside you in a burning building with guns pointed at you before this entire situation, you’d probably say Hawkeye.

Wu began to walk around you, Clint, and Kate; his hands clasped behind his back.

“It’s simple, really,” he grinned. “All I really want is you (Y/n) (L/n).” Your face remained stoic, watching him circle you. You wish you could just take him out there and then but with all the guns pointed at you and you didn’t even know how vulnerable he is, you didn’t know what to do.

Unbeknownst to you, Clint already had a plan in mind.

He clasped his hands behind his head and sighed, “Look, the whole villain monologue thing gets really old. Why do all villains like to listen to themselves talk?” Clint patted Kate’s arm. She glared at the older man and Mason Wu’s grunts jolted, their fingers lightly placed on the trigger. “Look-” Clint bent down and began picking up his arrows after pushing his bow off to the side “-I just want to pick up my arrows because they’re perfectly good arrows so you can go ahead and monologue and—DUCK!”

A white smoke screen appeared after Clint jammed one of his arrows down on the ground. Clint tackled into you, causing your breath to escape your lungs. Mason Wu’s grunts already began to open fire, shooting each other instead since they were all in a circle.

Kate kicked over Clint’s bow towards him while scrambling to grab her own. You looked up at Clint, who laid on top of you while the guns were still going off.

“You’re gonna have to explain every—”

“Later! Let’s move!” You shouted, shoving him off. You began crawling towards cover, with Clint and Kate trailing from behind.

The smoke began to dissipate and by this time the three of you were already hidden away.

Mason growled, looking left and white, his suit tattered and ripped apart. “Idiots, they’re all idiots!” He glanced down at his subordinates who were either dead or groaning and about to die. He sighed, closed his eyes, and let out a huff. “Guess I’ll have to do this my own way.”

A wave of water shot out towards you. Your eyes widened as you jumped over the mostly destroyed bar and began running, water lapping at your legs. You turned your head and tried to shoot him but the bullets ricocheted off of him instead.

You cursed under your breath and for once in your life, you were unsure of how to get out of this mess.

Clint watched as you ran, somehow avoiding the water. Kate whispered at him from behind a different table, a few feet away.

“Try electrocuting him,” Kate whispered. “Water types are weak against electric types, right?”

Clint scrunched up his face at her. “What?”

“Like in Pokemon!”

He grumbled, examining his quiver at the tip of each of the arrows.

“Clint, hurry up!” Kate exclaimed, her eyes wide-eyed, looking back and forth from where you were running, and quickly running out of endurance and already being taken by the water, then back to her mentor. A small glint caught her eye. Thinking fast, and seeing how Clint was still mumbling to himself while trying to find the right arrow, she dove out of cover with her bow and grabbed the electric-arrow.

“Grab them, Clint!”

Clint’s head jolted to where Kate was, out of cover. He saw you in a very compromising position in a water bubble, way above the ground. Wu grumbled, his piercing eyes (eye sockets?), moving towards Kate.

Kate’s arm was pulled back, and Clint sprinted towards you. You, who was too focused on not drowning.

You watched him with fear in your eyes. The water already surrounded your entire body and you didn’t know how much longer you can last without air. He grabbed an arrow and pulled his arm back. At first, aiming towards you then to the part that linked the water bubble to Wu. He shot at it and immediately the water link froze over.

Kate let go of her arrow. Wu screamed in pain, as his entire water body began to get electrocuted.

You screamed as you went into free fall. Clint quickly jumped up on tables and then a shelf, launching himself towards you and grabbing you. He wrapped his arms around you as you both fell and he turned himself to take the brute of the impact on the ground.

By this time, Kate had frozen Wu in a bunch of frozen arrows and trudged her way over to the two of you.

You groaned and rolled off of Clint. You turned to face him who held his chest and his face was scrunched up in pain.

“God, that’s going to leave a bunch of bruises,” he groaned, slowly sitting up.

You laughed, “I’m glad you’re okay, thank you, by the way.”

“It was a good thing we were placed on this mission then,” Kate said. “Otherwise you’d be dead.”

Your eyes narrowed at her, “I would have been fine. I had a plan.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Clint rubbed the back of his head, groaning again as he felt a jolt of pain shoot through him. You turned to glare at him but your eyes softened as you saw the amount of injuries littered across his face and body.

“You never found out about me being Mirage.” You smirked, placing a hand on his shoulder then running it up to his neck, your thumb stroking his cheek. His eyes met yours.

“Yeah, well,” he leaned into your touch, using his hand to hold onto you, “isn’t that sort of your thing? Mirage? Looking like different people?”

“Usually, yeah. But—” you frowned, really taking in the amount of injuries on his face “—Is this how you’re always riddled with bandaids?” Your eyes bounced back and forth between Kate and Clint. “Why-how? I go on as many missions as you guys.” The two archers exchanged glances then shrugged. You sighed, shaking your head.

Sirens began in the distance and a SHIELD helicarrier from above shone a light on the burnt down building. The three of you glanced up. You hung your head then went to stand up. Your stuck your hand out to Clint and he graciously took it. His weight was significantly more than you expected and you stumbled into him as he stood up.

He smirked, looking down at you. “You know, you can always kiss me better.”

You rolled your eyes and Kate groaned, hitting her forehead with her hand. “Are you in high school still? Why are you flirting like a high schooler?”

“What?” Clint arched a brow. “Oh, come on, they always work on you.” You looked down at his chest, biting the bottom of your lip. You placed your hands on his chest, slowly snaking them around the back of his neck and his hands rested on your hips, pulling you in closer.

Both of you ignored Kate pretending to throw up on the side.

“Do they?” You tilted your head with a smirk, looking up at him.

“Usually.”

And this was one of the times his flirting did work.

He leaned into you, his lips on yours. You closed your eyes, pulling him ever so closer into you. His lips were rough and you could swear it was cracked from the earlier fighting but you knew he didn’t really care. Especially when your tongue darted out over his lips for a second. When it came to you, he’d throw out his well being as long as you were safe. Of course, it applied for you, too.

For any mission of yours in the future, for any catastrophic event, if you were stuck in a burning building with guns pointed at you again, you’d want Hawkeye to be the one standing next to you. Clint, specifically, as much as you loved Katie.

But you know, even if you were asked which Avenger you’d want to have beside you in a burning building with guns pointed at you before this entire situation, you’d probably say Clint Barton.

a/n: i love clint and kate and i tried doing my own type of characterization between the comics and then the possible better version of the mcu. i don’t think this is my best version i’ve written of clint compared to my other works but i had fun! i tried grinding this out and i had a lot of struggles writing for him. but i did it !! love this dumb bird boy

don’t forget to like, reblog, or leave a reply !!! it means the world to me, seriously. it does. so much.