#rung fans do you also feel not normal about him on day to day basis idek how to live anymore

[bialbovi]

Guys I can't stop drawing Rung help. Also there's glitter in my eyes nose and. tongue idk im sneezing glitter like a fair y

I am also cooking a playlist for him, my Ukrainian mutuals are going to throw me out into open space after I'm done

[kewltie]

For a group of highly trained soldiers and specialists in their particular field, who have to deal with giant ass monsters destroying their city on a near weekly basis, Katsuki’s handlers all have various and insistent opinion on what shirt color would accentuate Katsuki’s eyes and where he should be taking Izuku on their date. They’re more invested in Katsuki’s date going well than even Katsuki’s parents and Katsuki’s parents had woke up early this morning just to try to catch him before he leaves so they can extract his date plans out of him and be the judge of it. Which, quite frankly, is annoying as fuck.

He already got twenty pair of eyes on him at all times and now they’re just shoving their unwanted opinions on him like they’re reliving their wasted youth all over again through him.

“This is a good time to compliment him!” Imada encourages through the hidden earpiece in his left stud earring. “Tell him he looks nice or that he smells good. You want to make a good impression on this date, so there will be more dates to come.”

“That can be kind of creepy, Imada,” Hashimoto says dryly, his voice popping in Katsuki’s ear. “No, instead you want to pay close attention to his body language and read his micro-expressions carefully, because sometimes people don’t say what they mean or say what they want at all! So it’s good to know when you’re unnerving him out without having to say anything at all.”  

“Also, it would help greatly if you smile a little more, Katsuki. You scowl so much as it is that when I’d first met you I thought it was permanently stuck on your face. It makes you look like you were constipated all the damn time, too,” Kono chimes in, because apparently everyone else on this fucking frequency channel had been quietly listening into his date through the audio transmitter and decides at this moment to be an active contribution to it.  

Damn noisy bastards. All of them, really.

If Izuku isn’t here, he would be cursing them out and tell them to get off this channel already. It’s only to be use for emergency and not a fucking love counseling session.

Katsuki doesn’t need their help. He’s going to ace this dumb date. Sweep Izuku right of his fucking feet, throw him right over his fucking shoulder, and carry him off into the sunset. There’s no way for him to fuck this up.

“Kacchan, look!” Izuku says, practically hoping in place as he points to a small building sandwiched between a bakery and a bookstore. “It’s a kaiju’s gift shop!” His eyes light up, excitement radiating out of him in waves. “Can we go in there and check it out?”

Apparently, he discounted Izuku and his ability to still have his hardon for rampaging monsters, poking its enormous head out even on a date. The itinerary list Katsuki had had spent three days creating it sits heavy and hot in his pants pocket, the weight of it is enough to scorch through his pants.

Yea, Katsuki is not the one who is going to fucking derail this entire date for giant ass monsters. Even though he is one himself.

Sometimes, Katsuki thinks soberly, humanity is not even worth saving.

The sign outside of the store says, “Love Monster,” with each of the letter O replaces by a heart and outside the storefront standing guard is a giant figure of Oryx, the worm kaiju, whom Katsuki’s mother had battle against numerous times before.

Katsuki’s left eye twitches. “No.”

“Please,” Izuku says, clasping his hands together in prayer. “Just for little bit, I want to look around. Ten minutes and we’ll leave!”  

Out of the corner of his eyes, he spots two women hovering near a window display of the bookstore, their arm interweaved, and the blonde one turns around. A familiar faces meet him for a split second to give him an encouraging thumbs up before returning to her earlier position like she hasn’t cue Katsuki in and Katsuki considers homicide just a for a second.

Of fucking course, the CCTV surveillance and sound transmitter wasn’t enough, M.STR would have their people undercover to trail after Katsuki and Izuku’s date.

Katsuki rakes a hand through his hair in frustration and lets out a resigned sigh. “Fine,” he snaps. “Geek your heart out, nerd.”

Izuku lets out an excited squeal and that’s almost enough to mollified Katsuki’s over. He reaches out grab hold of Katsuki’s arm in his enthusiasm, but Katsuki’s eyes flare up and he steps aside just enough to slip pass Izuku’s touch.

Katsuki’s heart rams against his ribcage. It was too close.

Hurt flashes across Izuku’s face, but it’s gone too quickly for Katsuki to even feel bad about it.

“Let’s go in, then,” Izuku says, keeping the smile carefully plastered on his face.

Even Katsuki know he’d fucked up right there, the various snorts of disbelief and tired sighs in his left are unnecessary, but he can’t stay fix it now. Izuku speed-walks into the shop with Katsuki in toll behind him and as soon as they’re in Izuku breaks away to rush toward a Mythras stone statue, sitting behind a glass box.

The shop is filled to the brim, from cover to cover, with weird kaiju merchandises from stationary, beddings, clothes, figurines, plush animals, and so more that it make Katsuki’s head spin. Kaiju aren’t a popular commodity normally with how the majority of the species are set out to destroy the human race, but the younger generation like Izuku seems fond of them for some strange reason. They don’t look at kaiju with the same fear and hatred as their parents or their grandparents had anymore.  

There are few other people mingling about—some kids and adults going over the display and a single shopkeeper keeping an eye on all of them—and Izuku frantically bounces between each fixture, eyes darting across each merchandise piece like he’s going to make a grab at them and haul them to the cashier to be rung up.  

Katsuki stands awkwardly in the middle of shop, feeling out of sort as he’s not part of the target audience nor has any particular interest in the subject matter. It’s hard to be interest when Katsuki is the subject in the first place as everyone in the shop coos and hollers at faces that Katsuki had either fought against or with before.

“Kacchan!” Izuku suddeny rushes back toward him.  “It’s Mittan,” he says elatedly, holding up a cap with five large black and red horns protruding out of the top. The original Defender of the Humanity, the Queen of the Monsters, The Blood Traitor, the Oathkeeper, and coincidently, also, Katsuki’s mother; she is Mi’tawuatski, or Mittan as her legion of devoted fans fondly called her.

His mother’s iconic horns are more than the size of a grown man. Even the smallest ones are taller than Izuku. They’re enormous, grand, beautifully curved bones with a pointed end, and are a source of proud for his family.

This dumb cheaply made version of it, with it weird discoloration and plastic material, is so offensive that Katsuki wants to rip it out of Izuku’s hand and throw it in the trash, but Izuku pulls the cap over his head and smiles bashfully at him, eyes bright and grin infectious.

“What do you think?” Izuku asks, shinning with the full force of the sun and Katsuki can’t even bare to look at him.

“Ugly,” Katsuki retorts with an eye roll, his races wildly in his chest like it wants to crawl out of there and throw itself at Izuku. “You’re not a kid anymore. Take it off.” 

“You idiot,” Kono hisses, making her presence known once again in his ear.

Izuku’s lips stretches out in a sulky pout and it’s almost enough to hide the dark cloud behind his eyes. “Oh alright,” he says, deflating. He leaves Katsuki’s side once more, distracted by something else in the shop's corner.

Katsuki lets out a sigh of relief. Just a few more second of it and Katsuki would have blown this entire gift shop apart. 

“Katsuki,” Commander Tamaki says into his ear, “are you alright? We noticed your heartrate had just sped up to 387BMP.” A beat. “Most people would be dead by now. Should I send out an extraction team for you?”

Katsuki watches from a distance as Izuku peers at a pile of stuffed kaiju plushs, his green eyes lighting up in childlike wonder and he smiles at it. It’s bright, earnest, and so fucking cute. It physically hurts to even look at him.

“If you or any of your jarheads storm in and ruin my date right now, the next time there’s another kaiju attack I’ll let it roast all your fucking asses and make Tokyo its playground,” Katsuki says, low and menacingly into the mic hidden in the collar of his shirt. 

A long heavy pause passes between them. “Copy,” he answers finally. “We’ll keep on closely monitoring you just in case then.”

Katsuki clicks his tongue in annoyance, making his disapproval known but doesn’t argue. The fact that they had even agreed to him going on a date Izuku was a surprise in itself, not that their refusal would have change Katsuki’s gameplan anyway, was miracle despite for years they had been insisting Katsuki wasn’t ready for real world interaction with other humans outside of the M.STR organization.  

“Bakushinchi!” Izuku practically screams across the room.

“Ugh,” Katsuki says, rubbing his ears.

Izuku rushes back to him with something huge and black in his arms. “Kacchan! Kacchan! They got a Bakushinchi’s plushy!” he says, nearly barreling him right over in his excitement. “And he’s huge! Well,” Izuku cocks his head to take enormous plush that nearly half the size of him, “not as huge as the real thing but look,” he presses his face into its plush belly and squeezes, “he’s so soft and squishy.” Izuku sighs warmly into it. “I want him on my bed.”

Katsuki chokes.

“Oh my god,” Sakurai says, sounding hysterical through the earpiece,  “does that kid know he’s a total tease?!”

Katsuki stares the large and deformed version of himself—red eyes, two small soft horns, its glittery body, and a pair of tiny black wings that look nothing like his majestic own— held in Izuku’s arms like it’s the most precious thing ever and he wants to punch something. Destroy. Kill. Mostly himself. Or the plush version of his other self.

He can’t even get close to Izuku without reaching human level of a heart attack and every time Izuku even fucking smile at him Katsuki wants to slam him against the wall and claims him.

Katsuki’s teeth throbs, he can feel it’s growing with the blood-thirst humming underneath his skin. His other want  break out of his frail human shell and takes Izuku in front of everyone, paints the wall with the flood of their audience and bathe Izuku in his conquest.

It’s terrifying. He has never been more out of control. More monster than human than when he’s with Izuku.

Katsuki violently shoves Izuku away and Izuku crashes to the floor with a yelp of surprise.

The beast in him is crawling out into the surface; he can hear the bones in his right arm cracking through his human skin, black scales peeking through under it and Katsuki quickly tucks it behind him. But the commotion he had caused is attracting an audience among the shop attendance and some guy reaches down to help Izuku up from the floor

“Don’t touch him!” Katsuki yells, growling with so much force that the place nearly shakes from it.

The man’s eyes widen with unadulterated fear and he quickly drops Izuku’s hand, but Izuku doesn’t seem concern at all as worry lines his features and he tries to take a step forward.

Katsuki backs away, he can’t stop the bloodlust anymore. He wants to trip into the man for touching Izuku, wants to pull out his entrails and paint the wall with it. He wants. He wants—

“Katsuki!” Commander Tamaki cuts in, sounding extremely remorseful. “Sorry to interrupt your date again, but there’s a Type-O Class Nova Kaiju that just appeared in Ward C and we need you.”  

Katsuki grins now, the taste of an upcoming battle and blood of his enemy wetting his hunger for more. This is enough to quell his appetite for Izuku. This is something he can handle. This is something he can fight. “I—I got to go,” he says to Izuku, swiveling around and heads right of out of the door without any further explanation.

“Kacchan, wait!” Izuku’s screams follows him with every step, but Katsuki pushes forward and runs out into the street where a black undisclosed van is waiting or him.

It’s not like he’s running away. It’s just that—did Deku have to be so fucking cute?! Katsuki can fight kaiju that are as ancient as the earth and pull a victory out of nothing, but give him this helpless ordinary human boy and he’s just undone.

[guillembalague-blog]

Messi, Bravo, Ryan Mason and luck and confidence in football

Football, as I have said so often, while the most beautiful of games can be the cruellest of sports. This morning as he lies in a bed in the neuro-surgery unit of St Mary's Hospital in London no one will know that better than poor Ryan Mason, the Hull midfielder, who suffered a fractured skull following an accidental clash of heads with Chelsea defender, Gary Cahill. The thoughts, prayers and hopes for a speedy recovery will reach him from all the corners of the world and from players from the very, very top to the bottom, though no less, admirable, rung of football's ladder. They will know just how huge a part kismet or luck, fate or chance - call it what you will - play in defining their careers and therefore their lives. Ryan is a fairly extreme example of that lottery or Russian roulette that ultimately shapes everyones' lives, including those of footballers. Football is one of those situations where, as the old saying has it, the devil is very much in the detail, sometimes to the player's benefit, other times to his or her detriment. The minor Tourettes Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) suffered by former Everton goalkeeper, Tim Howard, has been well documented. It did not stop him from making an excellent career for himself both for the clubs and country(USA) that he represented with such distinction. He is now a leading light in the campaign to increase awareness surrounding the conditions and battle people's prejudices about them. He would understand about that because it came perilously close to costing him his own career. Tim, had just enjoyed an excellent season and was at the very peak of his form when a new goalkeeping coach arrived at Everton with new ideas and methods that he was looking to instil into the club's goalkeepers. The results were disastrous. It was not a case of attitude, nor approach; in training no one had a better and more concentrated focus than Tim Howard. Neither was it the stubborn notion that things SHOULDN'T be done like that, but rather that, in Tim's world, things simply COULDN'T be done like that. It was not about making choices, there were no choices, there was no other way of doing his job than the way he had been doing it all his career. What followed was a goalkeeper that started making stupid, nonsensical, inexplicable errors and fortunately the penny dropped with the club. If they were to get the best from their goalkeeper then he needed to train EXACTLY as he had been doing for the previous 10 years otherwise he was, quite simply, not fit for purpose. Tim got lucky, the club understood and it was the coach that had to change his methodology and immediately Tim's form returned. A less reasoned approach would have seen the curtain come down on what had been an excellent career. Everton's foresight and the coach's flexibility saved the day. Which brings me to the case of the differing fortunes of two former teamates at Barcelona, Leo Messi and Claudio Bravo, now at Manchester City. Against Eibar, Messi was once again a quantum leap above anyone else on the pitch; so complete a player putting on so dominant a performance that the words of Chapi Ferrer that we will only really appreciate what we are seeing here and now when he stops playing, ring loud and clear. In the words of Joni Mitchell, " Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.” When Busquets was injured he helped more in the build up to the plays, was seen more in the centre than on the wings and his own goal was a master class in just about evey aspect of attacking playing from creating the space, starting the move, timing the run and administering the coup de grace. It was the cherry, the creme de la creme nestled on the top of a sumptuous cake mixed, baked, iced and dished up by the very best footballer there has ever been. But we need to ask ourselves one question. Why is he so good? There are many reasons from natural ability to an insatiable desire and work ethic that can help him to be - and remain - the very best. And just as importantly he has been at just the one club and, metaphorically speaking, has his feet well and truly under the table. He is understood by those around him who now how to deal with him and he how knows what is required of him. But still we hear the cry; could he do in the Premier League? Trite nonsense; of course he could, and in fact does on a fairly regular basis in the Champions League against clubs from all over Europe, including the PL. Now of course after a slight hiccup, Barcelona are now in a situation where they know they are going to have to put an offer on the table to guaranteee he stays in Catalonia. More importantly, Barcelona now come to that table in a weaker position following the crass proclamations from Oscar Grau that Barcelona needed to keep 'a cool head' in negotiating with Messi and Pere Gratacos that Messi wouldn't be as good as he was, were it not for the players that he had around him. Barcelona are in a corner; they know it, so do the players, coaches and fans and needless to say, so do Messi and his team who must currently feel they have just bought a lottery ticket containing six winning numbers and a bonus ball. A team that could not have orchestrated the score better and who you sense have only one question that they need to answer when negotiations open, namely "How much do you want." As good as things are for Leo, over in Manchester it's a different story for his former team mate the unfortunate Claudio Bravo where the footballing vagaries of fate seem to be dealing him a far dodgier hand. The worst of the situation in my opinion is not Bravo's form per se, although heaven knows it is worrying, but rather the press and public's perception of it. "Claudio Bravo is crap," I hear on a fairly regular basis, many times from people who should know better; an unhelpful, inaccurate, ignorant four word analysis on a professional footballer who won the league in Chile before he became a legend at Real Sociedad, won two league titles, two Spanish Cups and a Champions league with Barcelona, the Zamora award for best goalkeeper in La Liga in 2014-15 as well as the Copa America with Chile for the past two years where he was voted goalkeeper of the tournament on both occasions. Claudio Bravo may not be in a good place at the moment, he may be very close to losing his place in the City first team, he is almost certainly very low on confidence and what he needs more than anything else is help to re-build that confidence and return as the goalkeeper that he has shown throught the years that he undoubtedly is. Claudio Bravo is undoubtedly many things; what he is not is 'crap' and to describe him as such is as outrageous as it is disrespectful and counter productive. What is inescapable, however, is that out of the last 23 shots on target against Manchester City 14 have registered on the scoreboard. The truth is that he is not stopping as many efforts on his goal as perhaps he should. Caballero will play the next game because it is an FA Cup match and then after that it might be time to take stock, give him one or two more games and if he fails to come out of the trough he is in for whatever reason plan a course of action which may well mean he has to give way to Caballero. Claudio would argue that he hasn't exactly been helped either by an extremely generous Manchester City defence or by being in a side that really needs to be stronger in both boxes to be realistic title challengers. Deep down though, the bottom line is that he should be stopping more of what is coming in his direction and this will be affecting his confidence. As with Tim Howard at Everton, and let me point out here that David de Gea was also deemed as 'crap' by many fans when he first came to Manchester United, what Claudio needs is the help of everyone at the club to re-build his confidence, go back to basics. Confidence, and the lack of it, is not so much a two way street as a racetrack. Messi goes into new contract negotiations with his cup running over with it while poor Claudio will feel there is a hole in his side where it is draining out of him. Sport, keen as it is to look at any complicated situation and describe it in as few words as possible, defines this as 'choking', effectively losing because of one's failure to adequately perform the most basic tasks that up to now have brought success. Duties, normally carried out instinctively, (catching a cross, hitting a tennis ball over the net, sinking a three foot putt, slotting over a conversion in front of the posts etc) begin to suffer what the experts refer to as 'analysis paralysis'. Effectively a return to that early part of your life when you were learning how to do what you have been doing on auto pilot seemingly for ever and a day - until now. This is where sports psychologists earn their corn. It is their function to make everyone feel at home, in their comfort zone, to regain the instinctive qualities that took them to the top. No player is immune from the random devil that is choking or from the lottery that can turn everything on its head in a heartbeat - ask Ryan Mason.