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oh-snapperss · 4 months

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canvas

hello all! i come bearing a short, sweet oneshot for a mostly-lighthearted painting au with @hitheeprithee!

Pairing: Renthubs

Words: 1988

Warnings: None!

Read on AO3

The couch was a mess. So was the coffee table, floor, and even the other table a few feet away. Right in the middle of all the textbooks and scattered papers and notebooks sat Etho, cross legged in the middle of the couch with his laptop balanced across his knees. If Ren hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought this was the result of several days of frantic studying and no cleanup time.

But no–all of it had come from Etho’s backpack, which was lying on the floor in the middle of the room. Close to it, Bdubs was sitting on a kitchen stool, painting what Ren assumed was going to be the backdrop of whatever project Bdubs had been tasked with painting.

Bdubs straightened the moment he saw Ren, a smile gracing over his features. Over on the couch, Etho didn’t look up, but Ren knew his presence had been noted by the way Etho’s typing had slowed.

“Ren! You’re here!” Bdubs hopped off his stool completely, stretching up. “Thank goodness.”

“I know, it took me forever. The traffic was ridiculous,” Ren grumbled, before crossing over to Etho. It felt a bit like some sort of floor-is-lava game, trying not to step on any of Etho’s mess. “Etho.”

“Mm?” Etho glanced up, before typing a few more seconds. Then he pulled down his headphones, giving Ren his full attention. “What’s up?”

Ren would be lying if he said his heart didn’t squeeze a bit at the dark, stressed circles under Etho’s eyes. Etho’s major was a complicated one–multiple majors, actually, and all of them involving math and numbers and lines of code that Ren personally thought looked like some sort of nuclear war code. Or maybe just some sort of alien language from Mars. “I brought you something.”

He held out the plastic bag, hoping he’d remembered right. “You skip lunch too much. Brought you some pasta from that spot down the road. You like that stuff, right?”

If Ren was being honest, he was pretty sure he knew Etho’s order by heart, since Etho tended to get the same four things anytime the three of them went to get food. But admitting that felt weird, all things considered. Ren had Bdubs’ preferences memorized too–but Bdubs actually remembered to eat, so it wasn’t as much of a thing he could do for Bdubs.

Etho blinked, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with the gesture. Inwardly, Ren tried not to cringe–if he’d gotten it wrong, this was going to be so awkwa-

Etho’s eyes crinkled in the exact way Ren recognized meant Etho was happy. Ren had seen Etho without his mask a few times, but Etho usually took bites when neither Ren nor Bdubs was watching, and the two of them tried to be careful about not looking over while he ate for that. Still, Ren had come to memorize the different ways Etho’s eyes expressed his feelings–and with Etho’s apparent pleasedness, Ren felt his shoulders fall in relief and his own grin spreading across his face.

“Thanks, Ren,” Etho set his laptop on the coffee table, before reaching up for the bag. “You didn’t have to bring me anything.”

“I know,” Ren said quietly. He couldn’t help but let his smile grow softer, into something meant to stand in for a confession since he didn’t have the guts to ask Etho out–and he wasn’t sure if Etho would say yes. “I wanted to make sure you had something even though this project is taking up so much time.”

Etho nodded, his eyes crinkling further. Ren cleared his throat after a moment, before gesturing back behind him. “I’m gonna… check on Bdubs. If you wanna eat before that’s cold.”

Ren turned his back to Etho, just catching a blur of Etho pulling his mask down as he turned. Bdubs had gone back to his backdrop, but Ren caught the smirk on his face that told him Bdubs was not oblivious to how smitten Ren’s expression probably was. Ren tried his best to wipe it–not super successfully, considering the yearning wasn’t just for Etho. Bdubs thought it was, but Ren just hadn’t found the place to tell Bdubs otherwise yet.

“What are you painting, baby?” Ren peered at the painting, frowning. “I don’t see a–what’s the word–central point?” Ren didn’t know much about the artistic terms for what Bdubs did, but he’d learned pieces here and there from Bdubs’ rambling and just watching him paint. This piece was as beautiful as anything else Bdubs painted, but whatever was meant to be in the center seemed to be missing.

“Ah, yeah, about that-” Bdubs grimaced. “They want me to paint someone. Like, a real life human being!”

“Ah,” Ren shook his head–Bdubs was a scene painter at heart, known for his skylines, nature, and sunrise paintings. “Not what you usually paint, but I’m sure it’ll be gorgeous. You’re always blowing me away with how great your stuff looks.”

“Yeah but–this is different!” Bdubs waved his arms in the air, sending paint droplets flying. “People are–they’re alive!”

“Wonderful observation,” Etho deadpanned from the couch.

“Shut up!”

“Who are you gonna paint?” asked Ren hurriedly, valiantly withholding a laugh.

“You,” Bdubs said immediately. “I’ve practiced with you, and I don’t have anyone else-” his eyes glanced towards the couch, “-to paint right now.”

“Right, yeah,” Ren shook his head minutely. They couldn’t ask Etho now, while he was so stressed out. “Do you want me to sit now, or later?”

“Later,” Bdubs waved Ren off. “I need to finish the background.”

“Hold on-” Ren stayed right where he was. “Tell me about your vision here.” Etho wasn’t done eating, and Ren didn’t want to make him uncomfortable by going back too soon.

“Well, I was thinking–” Bdubs launched into a discussion about his backdrop, pointing at various points and gesturing with his paintbrush. Ren nodded along, mostly zoned out. Nothing Bdubs did ever quite made sense to Ren, but it was nice to see Bdubs so excited about his art. It was the same with Etho–computers were far beyond Ren’s comprehension, an issue that had caused many a woe for Ren and equally many problems for Etho, who typically fixed whatever Ren had done wrong in the first place. Ren focused back on Bdubs, noting the speck of paint that Bdubs had somehow gotten on his eyebrow. It was cute, even if Ren knew Bdubs would curse it later.

A few minutes later, Bdubs waved Ren off again, and Ren returned to the couch where Etho had replaced his mask and sunk back into his haze of coding. Glancing around, Ren frowned at all the papers surrounding Etho.

“Hey, Etho-” Ren nudged Etho’s knee with his own, giving a warm smile when Etho’s head snapped up from his laptop, posture straightening in an instant. He lifted a headphone off his ear with a question in his eyes, and Ren shrugged helplessly at the mess. “Is it okay if I move a few things to sit?”

“Hm?” Etho blinked, then seemed to process a moment later before he was placing his laptop down and scrambling to gather the papers. “Sorry, this is a mess–course you can sit, didn’t mean to get this bad-”

“Etho, baby, you’re fine,” Ren knelt down and picked up a couple notebooks, offering them to Etho. “I don’t mean to interrupt your work-” (a lie. Ren always wanted to interrupt Etho’s work if it meant Etho would smile at him) “-just want to sit down while Bdubs works.”

Etho shoved his notebooks haphazardly into his backpack, organized in a way Ren knew wasn’t organized at all and would give Bdubs a heart attack. As they settled back in, Ren found himself sitting closer to the middle than he’d originally meant, but Etho didn’t seem to mind, settling back into his original spot. Thanks to the couch being as old as it was, it sank right down with both of them on it.

Ren sucked in a quiet, barely measured breath when Etho’s leg landed against his, pressed up closer than he’d had Etho possibly ever. Ren braved enough to look over at Etho, who seemed stiff. “Sorry, I can move-”

“It’s fine,” Etho’s voice cracked. “‘S just the couch. You can keep sitting.”

He could keep sitting. If Ren was being truthful, it was all he wanted in the moment, to sit next to Etho and feel the warmth of one of the persons he dreamed about holding. He couldn’t exactly say that out loud, though, he had to play it cool. So he nodded, holding back his ecstatic feelings at Etho allowing this.

The thing was–Etho wasn’t exactly a touchy person. And Ren was. And that was fine! It was completely fine that Etho didn’t want to touch anyone (as far as Ren knew). In the months since Ren had first taken his dying laptop to Etho as a cry for help, before winding up friends and eventually bringing him along to Bdubs’ work area, Etho had never once initiated anything, preferring to keep his distance. Every so often, Ren had thought that maybe Etho wanted that after all–when he caught that indescribable look in Etho’s eyes when Ren embraced Bdubs.

Ren knew better, but he couldn’t help the quiet dream sometimes.

So for now, Ren sat where he was, before leaning forward and plucking one of Etho’s papers off the coffee table that hadn’t been cleaned up in the flurry of Etho’s frantic efforts. Noting Etho had angled his headphones to leave the ear closest to Ren uncovered, Ren made a show of examining the notes on the paper, which of course, was utter gibberish.

“Aye, that be a demon’s scrawl,” Ren spoke in his dramatic voice that he typically saved for the most dramatic of scenarios, and wrinkled his face at the equations “There's numbers in there, so it has to be math, but that be evil math, laddie.”

He caught the familiar wrinkling of Etho’s eyes, and grinned himself, bringing the papers up to his nose. “Yee seems to be trapped by the evil demon of the math building. I recommend we dispose of the thing posthaste.”

Etho burst into giggles, and Ren couldn’t help the flood of joy that ran through him at the sound. Over by the canvas, Bdubs’ hand stopped painting, which Ren knew meant Bdubs was just as enamored at the noise.

“The paper or the math demon?” Etho tried to match Ren’s accent, but it didn’t work, and Ren found himself giggling at Etho’s own antics. “I’m not sure about murdering my professor…”

“We must free yee from them! Otherwise I fear you’ll be lost,” Ren composed himself, peering at Etho with a solemn expression. “We’d hate to lose you to the evil maths.”

Etho’s eyes kept dancing with merriment, but he shook his head. “It’s too late for me, I think.”

“Nooooo!” Ren tossed his head back dramatically, throwing the paper into the air in mock despair. “We lost our Etho! Bdubs, can yee believe the tragedy?”

“Unbelievable,” Bdubs muttered.

The second giggle from Etho made it so, so worth it, even if Ren had to retrieve the paper and return it to the coffee table. Catching Bdubs’ eye, Ren raised his eyebrows. You think?

Bdubs shrugged.

Ren left Etho to study after that, but he pondered his own question even once Bdubs called him over to pose for his painting. Ren knew that he liked Bdubs and Etho–and Bdubs knew Ren liked Etho. Etho, however, was a mystery to them both. Ren wasn’t even sure if Etho was interested in any form of relationship, with anything.

He’d ask Bdubs out soon, probably. Etho was just… a mystery.

That didn’t keep Ren from daydreaming about holding both their hands.

#hermitshipping #renthubs #rentho #ethubs #rendubs #rendog #ethoslab #bdoubleo100 #my fics #YIPPEEEEE an actual fun au:DDD #i got to have a classic ao3 author's note in the ao3 version btw what a time to be alive #i love this silly little au #:D

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iwozlegit · 5 months

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The Radio Demon™️?

More like…

The

Cockblock

King™️

TLDR: Alastor fucking KNOWS, y’all.

Bambi looking ass with his eyes dilated at Angel all sweet and innocent when he’s just “you ain’t slick-ed” Husk.

He was taking notes on that balcony with Niffty fr.

Alastor doesn’t ship HUSKERDUST confirmed

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insteading · 8 months

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As someone who’s done bereavement care for almost 20 years, I’ve observed again and again and again that it is not staying with grief that cuts us off from other people, it’s suffocating grief and suppressing grief. It’s impossible to repress grief without also repressing all sorts of other things like joy and memory. Actually, expressing grief naturally connects us empathetically to other people. It is not an accident that right now when there is such a profound suppression of global grief, we’re also finding ourselves in a moment of such isolation.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in them magazine

I sought out this piece because Rabbi Kukla was quoted in today's sermon in reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza ("It is lifesaving to mourn our humanity in inhumane times").

But this paragraph about grief hit me so hard I wanted to single it out to share. It is relevant to corporate grief of the sort we might experience when a state is doing harm in our name (police brutality, displacement, execution). It is also relevant to individual griefs.

In the bereavement calls I do for hospice, I have noticed, this is precisely what gets people stuck in grief: the feeling that there is no safe space and time to express grief. Companies tend to give very little accommodation for bereavement, if they give any at all. Culturally we're expected to get over losses in a matter of days. But grief rewires us, and some losses-- particularly losses like war, displacement, and police brutality where a state or institution does the same kind of harm repeatedly-- are complex and ongoing.

Grief impacts sleeping, eating, executive function. (I don't ask people in bereavement calls, "How are you doing?" I ask, "How are you sleeping?" "How's your appetite?" Maybe "Are there moments from your caregiving, or from your [loved one's] dying, that keep coming up for you?" Because of course you're not fine! You just lost someone essential to you. What I want to know is, is your body getting a chance to repair itself as your mind and heart process what you've experienced?)

People have talked to me after a loss about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by daily life. It's not unlike recovering from a major injury and having a sizable portion of your bandwidth given over at all times to the tasks of bone, muscle, and nerve repair that are not under your conscious control. When tasks you're used to thinking of as having one part suddenly make it clear how complex they are? Cooking a meal takes more out of you. Doing a load of laundry takes more out of you. If you're already an introvert, the cost of social engagement goes up, at a time when social engagement might actually be very helpful.

Doing some of our grief work with other trusted people shares the load. It recovers some bandwidth. But many folks learn early in the grieving process that they have fewer trusted people than they thought. Or that it feels like the wrong time to deepen an acquaintanceship they'd hoped might become a friendship. Or that they aren't as comfortable asking loved ones for help as they thought they would be.

And the bereavement model I'm trained in assumes that a grieving person has experienced one recent loss. We know that a recent loss might poke us in the tender spots left by earlier losses. But that's still different from the experience of a tragedy that affects a whole community at once (as in an entire region's population losing multiple loved ones in a very short time and being forced to flee).

I don't really have a conclusion here, but I'm finding the activism that feels most healing and hope-filled to me has lament built into it: a chance to name the people who've died in our county's jail, while advocating for better communication with families of people inside. A chance to call out the names of people lost to covid while advocating for policies that will mitigate risk to vulnerable people.

Maybe it takes days to name all the people impacted by ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Yemen, while urging our government to end its role in those genocides. Maybe our systems and structures, which aren't even good at honoring our grief for members of the nuclear family we're taught is our primary world, are disinclined to give us that time. Maybe we ought to take it anyway.

#this is not about my favorite silly little pirate show #except insofar as ofmd touches on grief / and actions to preserve the show acknowledge the grief we feel losing something meaningful #grief is the shape our love takes when we lose someone or something we love #and we should be able to name that person or thing #i'm never going to stop being mad at managers / well-meaning acquaintances who tell my clients 'it's been a while; you should move on'#seriously fuck all the way off with that; whoever hurt you / don't pass that hurt on #a person who is grieving is a person who has the capacity for love and care / and that capacity ought to be nurtured #because it's the basis of mutual aid / support / positive action / and a whole host of other things we need more of #anyway: strive to be a person who is safe to grieve around #and strive to be a person who is not too cool to care about anyone or anything #and if you wind up in any kind of position of influence or authority someday? make your environment more supportive to people in grief #grief care #community trauma

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neixins · 3 months

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hm. i apparently have an unpopular opinion about yona’s decision during her conversation with hiryuu…… like. obviously she’s motivated by the desire to save her friends—she loves them and cares about them deeply and is scared of losing them—and there’s some selfishness in that (on a more facetious note though, god forbid teenage girls do anything i guess…). but the interpretation of her decision as selfish to the point of cruelty and/or naïveté just doesn’t sit right with me. like there is no solution to the conundrum she was presented with that doesn’t involve tragedy. and i’m never, ever letting anyone forget that jaeha, gija, and sinha were never given a choice regarding zeno’s whole murder-suicide plan, and they don’t regret being alive, so wouldn’t changing the past and effectively erasing them from existence (when they already have no agency atm!!!!) be so much more cruel? wouldn’t discarding two millennia worth of lives, regardless of how painful they’d been, be so much more cruel? does a life lived not matter because there was suffering?

and yona values life, even when it hurts, so she was never gonna make a different choice, and i just don't think that that's extremely selfish or naïve of her; the dragon warriors are not just vessels for the gods, they're people, and they don't deserve to be erased because the gods don't care about the pain they cause, and she can't confront the gods in the dream realm, she has to do it in her present which can't exist if she changes it! (also on a purely narrative level, any other choice would've basically rendered 40+ volumes of the story pointless.) and besides, it's more interesting to focus on trying to make things better rather than rewriting the past, and she'll have to sacrifice something to save everyone (the part of her that's a reincarnation of hiryuu, obviously, and possibly something more) which will even things out anyway.

#also As A Disabled Person i find the idea of erasing others' lives (without their permission!) because they were painful to be Terrifying #and if the disability angle seems totally unrelated the author's note in ch 116 states that the dragon warriors have generally been sickly #(historical fantasy code for disabled)#also it's disability pride month and i can do what i want <3 #anyway this makes sense To Me but i also sustained a Head Injury at work today so if it's actually incoherent ignore me #akayona #this isn't a response to any specific post btw i just keep seeing this point discussed and i felt compelled to share my two cents #now that i've swung my trusty bat at the hornets nest i can write my silly little fic in peace 😌

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