#so maybe it sounds a certain way that isn't the most agreeable???

[paint-music-with-me]

teehee ha ha I revamped First Burn from the Hamilton Remix Track to have Mew's POV and lowkey I like it???

[jayburdxx]

Take Care.

Shigaraki x GN reader

CWs: pure fluff, a tiny bit of angst if you squint, swearing, blue hair shiggy, romanticizing a healthy skincare routine

Rating: E for everyone

▪︎▪︎▪︎

You joined the league later than the rest, but you held a very important role there - a medic. Despite your label as a healer, though, you were no less of an asset to the team as the rest of the members. You just had a certain.. fire in you. Brave, loyal, and fierce, but so gentle when you were tending to your team's wounds.

You tried to be the most gentle with your boss, Tomura Shigaraki.

He was.. tough to treat. He was avoidant of your touch. Scared of it, it seemed. Even the cold hearted Dabi let you wrap up gashes on his arms without much fight, but Tomura always flinched and tensed the rare times he accepted your assitance. The first few months of your presence, this was the case. But you didn't give up. That was something he liked about you. Your determination. He was still tense and twitchy, but slowly, he became much more agreeable with your care. Recently, he's even been putting aside Father to show you his face.

Today was rough for him. The stress of the last failed plan was tearing at him, and you could tell by the way he was scratching his skin raw. You were saddened everytime you watched his skin flake and trickles of blood fall from his scratch marks thoughout the day. But now that night was falling, you had managed to convince your stubborn boss to sit across from you in your makeshift medical bay in the base, the others not disturbing you.

"Your skin's been getting worse."

Father rested beside him on the metal table. You heard him grumble at your remark, followed by the sound of more itching.

You emerged from the bag you were rooting through, producing bandages and a small tube of cream. You stood and walked towards him with the tube and gauze in hand.

"I got my hands on something that'll help, though. the dryness and the itching."

"..Really?"

"Yes, really. It's just some carmine lotion, so it isn't too strong, but it should still help a lot."

Tomura eyed the tube curiously while you put it down beside him and reached for the alcohol wipes on your side table.

"This'll sting for a second."

You spoke softly once you brought the wipe to his neck and gently brushed his wounds. You felt him jolt and heard a small wince from him, but nothing more. It must have been a sensitive area. He avoided making eye contact. But that was quite usual for him, at least when it came to you. You applied the pads where they were needed and wrapped the gauze snugly around his neck to keep them in place.

"This should keep you from opening the scabs back up.."

You picked up the tube and unscrewed the cap, looking up at Shigaraki before you made your next move. It startled him when you looked into his eyes like that. Your eyes were so gentle, so different from how they looked in action. It always makes his heart skip a beat when they meet.

"Do you want to apply it yourself or should I?"

He took a moment locked onto your eyes, then he looked away and shrugged.

"You're the doctor here."

He tried to relieve some of his nervous tension by scratching, but he quickly put his hand back down when he remembered you had just covered those spots.

You smiled in acknowledgement. A very small smile, but a smile. He liked your smile. He couldn't place why. You squeezed some of the substance into your hands and reached for Shigaraki's face, but stopped.

".. It's okay if I touch you?"

He froze for moment. You had let him know beforehand so he wasn't startled, sure, but you had never explicity asked permission to touch him before. No one had. Maybe you could see how tense he was. Maybe you knew he didn't like to show his face, let alone have it touched. But whatever the reason, it made his breath hitch in his throat and a very brief, sharp wave of something foreign washing through his chest. The fact you cared enough to take his comfort into consideration. Of course, you were a doctor, that was your job.. but the way you had done it.. it was like you *valued* his comfort. His feelings.

He slowly nodded, closing his eyes and tensing in nervous antitipation. And your hands went to work on his cheeks first. Shigaraki could feel his heart fluttering. Your hands were warm, soft, and so, so gentle.. and gradually, he relaxed with a small exhale through his nose as he realized it was okay. As your warm fingers glided over his dry skin, he felt like he was in heaven. It had been so long since he felt such a careful touch. He hated that he liked this so much. The healing ointment your hands left behind made his skin tingle in a strangely nostalgic way. He could very vaguely remember this feeling, when his mother would apply his medications every morning as a child.. but before he could fully recall the memory, you stopped. He opened his eyes to find you with a worried expression. He realised he had been breathing quite heavily and shakily and was leaning into your touch.

"You ok? How does it feel?"

".. Better."

You smiled again, bigger this time. A smile of accomplishment.

"Good."

Then you took your hands away, and his skin was cold again. It disappointed him. He felt the urge to grab your wrists and place your soft palms back onto his cheeks. He could've stayed like that forever..

You glanced down at his hands, partially covered by the artist gloves you had given him to wear so he wasn't accidentally destroying things left and right. Then you looked back up at him.

"It's bad on your hands too, isn't it..?"

The mention of his hands made him twitch. He didn't want you touching his hands. He'd hurt you. He didn't want to hurt you

His face twisted.

"Why do you care so much anyway? I can do my job perfectly fine without all this fucking pampering."

He tried to scratch again, but grunted in frustration when he realised yet again he couldn't access his neck. His sudden biting words caught you a bit off guard, but you weren't phased. Shigaraki was unpredictable by nature, prone to tantrums and lashing out. You took a moment thinking about how to phrase your answer.

"Because you're my boss.. and my freind. And I care about you. And I don't like to watch you hurt yourself."

Your tone was both sincere and matter-of-fact. You weren't bothered by his sudden outburst at all. You never were. It frustrated him. No matter how much he tries to drive you away, you never fucking budge. But, deep inside, it made him love you all the more. he thought, and then he sighed.

"Why?"

"Mm.. I don't know. It's not like I can help it."

There was a tense silence for a moment as he bored his ruby eyes into you. Then he looked away. He always relented under your stare.

"... Fine..."

He grumbled his words, but he took his gloves off. You perked up. He refused to look at you, but he was still complying, and that's all you cared about. Really, he just wanted more of your touch, no matter what he had to do to get it.

"It's like you have a death wish."

"I'll be careful."

You reached for one of his hands, and carefully began massaging in the ointment. You took the opprtunity to explore. Running your fingers along all his callouses, finding spots his muscles knotted and gently pressing them. His nails were overgrown and jagged, and you thought about offering to cut them later. You noticed his fingers jerked away from you when your own got too close, even though he kept his pinkie curled up so all 5 couldn't touch you anyway.

You did the same to his other hand. By the time you were done... you noticed he was completely relaxed. Slouched on the table, head on his free hand, eyes half closed. Still alert.. but calm. The calmest you've ever seen him, actually. He hadn't gone to scratch once. You felt a little bad having to tell him it was now 2 in the morning and you both needed to get some rest.

"It's getting late. I should be heading to bed soon, tomorrow's another big day, remember?"

He jolted up from your sudden voice. He grunted softly in response, already missing your hands on his skin.

"It takes a few hours to fully soak in, so I reccomend you put it on after you shower."

He hid the extent of his dissapointment that you were implying this was only a one time thing, but you still noticed. You weren't stupid. Tomura Shigaraki, the symbol of fear, had practically been putty in your hands for the past hour.

".. You can always come to me if you need help applying it, though.. and make sure you're in here tomorrow so i can redress your bandages."

The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile after you turned away.

He could get used to this..

[nohoperadio]

I was kind of irritable and low-mood at work today, to the point where--well I don't think I was a dick to anyone, but I was putting noticeably less effort into being positive and agreeable with people than I normally would. I was also putting less effort into being positive in my own, like, internal monologue I guess?

I feel like maybe that sounds tautologous, being less positive inside your head is just what low-mood means right, but I don't think it is actually. In normal circumstances, if there's an unpleasant task to do or some piece of annoying bad luck has occurred or something of that general nature is happening, I'm devoting some portion of my mental energies towards making myself see the situation in a constructive light: try to focus on what can be done instead of dwelling on bad shit that can't be undone, and if I catch myself going over in my mind how this is totally so-and-so's fault and why are they such a dick etc. then I'll tell myself to knock it off and try to move on to a more pleasant train of thought; also tons of smaller mental motions than that, too small to describe. All these pat clichés everyone knows, serenity prayer stuff. It works a good amount of the time, I think I may be uncommonly good at it actually (possibly too good at it in some situations, maybe that's a different selfpost), being calm is usually a thing I can pull off without much trouble, outside of certain (admittedly pretty significant) specific anxiety triggers.

But today I felt like I lacked the emotional energy to do that, and I made an almost conscious decision that I just wasn't going to bother with any of it, so like if I'm doing an unpleasant task I'll just let the thought "ugh this sucks" have the floor for as long as it wants, if someone's being annoying I'll just let myself hate them and not bother reminding myself how they're actually a lovely person most of the time, and so on. And like--this didn't result in a dramatically different day from normal, to be clear. Largely because there wasn't actually that much bad stuff happening, it was a pretty chill day objectively, it's not like I'm constantly having to repress a flood of negative thoughts in my daily life (not lately anyhow!). But it's interesting to me how--when I made that decision, that I wasn't going to try to think positively for the day, I could feel the mental muscles that would normally be in charge of that relaxing. Like there was a certain vigilance that's usually being kept up in my head constantly that was given explicit permission to take a day off, and there was (ironically!) a different kind of calm feeling that came with that, which I don't think I feel very often. There was a peaceful feeling in there, co-existing with the overall bad mood, that was comparable to unclenching a muscle you hadn't noticed you'd been holding tight for a long time.

Why do I find this interesting? Well just on the most abstract level it's an example of how stuff like "mood" isn't one-dimensional: in this example I was experiencing a negative mood, and that meant I couldn't be bothered to maintain a particular way of thinking, and turning off that way of thinking had (among other effects!) an effect that felt positive. A positive feeling that's causally downstream of a negative feeling and wouldn't have emerged without the negativity: there's probably all kinds of counterintuitive little interactions like that going down in our psyches all the time, and probably a much broader variety of different non-overlapping axes along which we can feel good or bad, which we tend to smush all together into an "average" mood that's maybe more of an abstraction than we realize.

On a more concrete, personal level: I don't know, there might be some stuff about how I'm too scared of negativity and could stand to let the impatient disagreeable bitch inside me have a little more air. Maybe some shit like that is something that's true. Yeah idk this is the part of self-analysis where I usually start to get bored.

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 A Most Agreeable Murder Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

❝ "Let go of what everyone is supposed to be, and you shall see who they truly are. Let people be who they truly are, and they shall reach their greatest potential." ❞

❓ #QOTD What's your favorite murder mystery book, TV series, or movie? ❓ ❗ Shout out to all my fellow BBC Sherlock, Elementary, Sherlock Holmes (RDJ films), OG Sherlock Holmes (ACD books), Truly Devious books, or Jackaby books fans. OR

❓ What's your favorite period piece?

🦇 Beatrice Steele isn't like the other ladies of Swampshire (a small English township outside of London), but like much of the town, she harbors a secret: Beatrice is obsessed with murder. Not committing it, of course, but solving it to exact justice. Of course, it wouldn't be lady-like, especially in their etiquette-obsessed community, to act on her obsession. When an eligible bachelor is murdered at Swampshire's autumnal ball—a bachelor who was courting Beatrice's sister—she's partnered with a well-versed detective to unravel the thread. Is this her chance to put her sleuthing skills to the test?

💜 Though certain qualities of Beatrice's world—the decorum, the obsession with reputation and wealth, a marriage-scheming mother—all seem familiar, the prose is full of wit and charm unlike most period piece-inspired stories. Julia Seales brings a flare of comedy to her debut that allows it to stand on its own two feet, when many Austenian novels run the risk of dragging in pace or sounding dry. This cozy mystery is entertaining and action-packed, with a cast of characters that present as red herrings—each with their own means and motives. The little clippings (whether from letters or news stories) and asides slipped between chapters were a fun way to add layers to the story as well.

🦇 Maybe it's because I'm obsessed with mysteries in all forms, but I guessed the murderer the moment the character's name was mentioned, long before the murder was even committed. Though the large cast gives readers and Beatrice plenty of red herrings to chase, it's a little dizzying to remember so many names. It also takes a moment for the pacing to find its momentum; the start of the book drags to establish how strange Swamshire really is, and though the setting plays a part in the narrative, I would have preferred a "show, rather than tell" approach. Beatrice comes off as a little frustrating; more than once, she gets in her own way, which can make certain moments cringey more than funny. She's not the best judge of character, either; the truth about the investigator she swooned over and Drake, his disgraced partner, is right in front of her. If this series continues, I hope we get a glimpse into Mary's story within another mystery (which might be a great play on ACD's Hounds of Baskerville mystery).

🦇 Recommended to fans of Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, any Sherlockian variation, or Bridgerton. If you want to add a little decorum and intrigue to your life, this is the book for it!

✨ Vibes 🗝️ Locked-Room Mystery 🗝️ Regency-Era Cozy Mystery 🗝️ Satire and Sass 🗝️ A Hint of Romance 🗝️ A Quirky Cast

🦇 Major thanks to the author Julia Seales and publisher Random House for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

[robininthelabyrinth]

I'm absolutely delighted your prompts are open! Your writing is amazing and always makes me smile, it's the best way to start the day along with a cup of coffee!

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are given another chance at raising a child after a family is killed leaving only a young child behind. Lan Sizhui is delighted to have a baby sibling. Though everyone is more or less nervous about it (mostly be Wei Ying is a gremlin) but also there isn't any other options.

ao3

“It’ll be fine,” Jiang Cheng said, rolling his eyes. “Hanguang-jun raised Lan Sizhui, didn’t he? And he turned out fine.”

“I did,” Lan Sizhui said agreeably, then frowned. “I think I did, anyway.”

“Not to be a spoilsport, but, realistically speaking, how much raising did Hanguang-jun actually do with you?” Jin Ling asked, and held up his hands when Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi both glared at him. “I don’t mean any offense or anything! I’m serious. We know he was in seclusion those first few years, right? Who raised you then?”

Lan Sizhui thought about it. “Back in the beginning? Well…that was mostly Teacher Lan, I guess.”

“Teacher Lan’s the best,” Lan Jingyi said loyally, then added, “Well, other than that fondness he has for surprise quizzes. But that’s not applicable to parenting, is it?”

Lan Sizhui made a face that suggested that maybe it was, in some weird way, shape, or form.

“Teacher Lan, really?” Jiang Cheng asked, clearly getting drawn in despite his best intentions – as was often the case. There was a reason their little group swung by the Lotus Pier nearly as often as they did the Cloud Recesses and Jinlin Tower, despite Jin Ling not living there part of the year any longer. “Wasn’t he mostly in recovery for those injuries he got during the war? I would’ve figured Zewu-jun would’ve been more involved, wouldn’t he?”

“He was around sometimes, but no, it was mostly Teacher Lan,” Lan Sizhui said. “Zewu-jun was often busy – he was rebuilding the Lan sect –”

“I was rebuilding the Jiang sect! So what? I still raised Jin Ling, and he wasn’t even supposed to be here – I had to fight the Jin sect for months just to get the opportunity – ”

“Yes, jiujiu, we know!” Jin Ling said hastily. “You don’t have to tell that story again! You didn’t have to tell everyone that story in the first place!”

Jiang Cheng huffed. He was probably going to tell the story again whether they liked it or not.

“I think I see what you’re saying, Jin Ling,” Ouyang Zizhen put in, always a good fellow for throwing himself on a conversational sacrificial sword. “If Lan Sizhui was already a few years old when he was adopted, and then Teacher Lan raised him for the next three years, then he would’ve been old enough to be entered into the Cloud Recesses’ official junior classes by the time Hanguang-jun took charge of his education, right?”

“Yes, that’s what I meant, that’s it exactly!”

“What does it matter?” Lan Sizhui asked.

“Yeah! Hanguang-jun still raised him the rest of the way,” Lan Jingyi put in, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring. “Gave him lessons and tips and all that!”

“Isn’t that something he does as a sect senior anyway?”

“Well, yes, but it’s different for Sizhui, okay?”

“I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that. After all, the person who teaches the most is the same as the parent, and being the person raising them is what matters no matter when they’re adopted,” Jin Ling said, with an eye on Jiang Cheng, who looked begrudgingly pleased. He looked begrudging all the time, though, so it was probably just pleased. “But my point is – once you were part of the lessons, even if he was raising you the rest of the time, you still already mostly had your personality down by then, right? We’ve never seen what someone raised entirely by Hanguang-jun from birth would be like.”

They all stopped to consider that.

“More than that,” Jin Ling continued. “This kid’ll be raised not just by Hanguang-jun, but by Hanguang-jun as he is now – after he and Senior Wei got together. You know?”

They did know.

“And of course, that’s all putting aside that the kid will be raised by Senior Wei himself, too…”

“Maybe we should start investing in defense talismans,” Jiang Cheng mused. “Because everything is going to explode. Everything.”

-

“Everything will not explode,” Lan Wangji said calmly.

“Are you sure?” Wei Wuxian asked. “Because I’m not sure, and I’m more likely to be involved in these hypothetical explosions than you are.”

“Mm. I’m certain.”

“But…”

“Wei Ying will be an excellent father,” Lan Wangji said, and his voice left no room for doubt.

“It’s easy for you to say,” Wei Wuxian whined, though he was smiling now. “You already have the experience of it! They say that it’s easier the second time, when you know what to expect…”

“Do not tell lies,” Lan Qiren said mildly. He was looking over some of Wei Wuxian’s notes – he’d insisted on any new inventions passing through a sanctioned approval process before they were put into practice and had volunteered himself to review them, a matter that had caused Wei Wuxian no end of stress until he realized that Lan Qiren really did intend to approve anything that met his standards and, moreover, understood musical cultivation enough to understand what he was driving at with most of them, even the esoteric ones, at which point Wei Wuxian gotten extremely enthusiastic about the whole thing.

This didn’t mean that they were friends or anything, but they’d at least formed some sort of tentative truce.

Most of the time, anyway.

Wei Wuxian squinted at his old teacher suspiciously. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying that it’s not easier the second time?”

“I am only saying that I have experience in raising a child not my own,” Lan Qiren pointed out, and Wei Wuxian nodded, slightly abashed; he knew that the old man had basically raised Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen, of course, although sometimes he forgot. “The first child I raised was Xichen and his personality as a child was much as it was as an adult: gentle, amiable, friendly, obedient.”

That made sense. Wei Wuxian nodded.

“The second child I raised was Wangji,” Lan Qiren said. “He bit people.”

Wei Wuxian burst out laughing.

Lan Wangj virtuously ignored them both, continuing to write a letter without the slightest hint of embarrassment – even his ears hadn’t turned red. What a shame!

“I can testify to that myself,” Wei Wuxian giggled, leering at his husband in the hopes of getting a rise out of him. “He’s still a biter – for certain lucky people.”

“He was a lot less discriminating when he was younger,” Lan Qiren said, and Wei Wuxian winced, abruptly remembering that Lan Wangji’s uncle was, in fact, still in the room. Luckily it was pretty easy to flirt around Lan Qiren, who didn’t seem to notice most of the time, but it was still a bit awkward. “And I once succumbed to temptation and gave him mixed messages, which I believe made it worse.”

That sounded like a story.

“He gave me a candy after I bit Sect Leader Jin,” Lan Wangji clarified, which made Wei Wuxian start laughing again. “He did not expect me to remember. I remembered. Nor did I allow him to forget about it.”

“It is easy to make mistakes while raising a child,” Lan Qiren said, ignoring Wei Wuxian’s cackling. “But if one means well, and tries hard to do the right thing, children are very forgiving – usually.”

Despite his best efforts to remain neutral, Lan Wangji’s eyes curved slightly in a smile. Wei Wuxian felt his heart go all warm and melty all over again.

“This is true regardless of whether it is the first or second child,” Lan Qiren added. “I have confidence that you will both do fine.”

“We will,” Wei Wuxian proclaimed. “With parents like me and Lan Zhan, how could the kid go wrong? And we’ll even try to avoid too many explosions!”

“Please do. One Lan Jingyi is enough for the Cloud Recesses.”

“You know, I was wondering – how did you end up with him being quite so…hmm…”

“Oh?” Lan Qiren said, and Wei Wuxian noted to his amusement that Lan Wangji straightened in back in sudden alarm despite Lan Qiren’s extremely nonchalant tone. “Have you not met Lan Yueheng yet? I must introduce you when he returns –”

“Perhaps not,” Lan Wangji said, sounding a little worried.

Worried, in this case, meant fun.

“No, I think I definitely need to meet this person – Lan Zhan, stop batting at me! I know exactly what I’m doing…”

-

Wen Ning looked down at the baby with which he had been entrusted.

“I don’t have any idea what I’m doing,” he confessed.

The baby gurgled.

“I think Wei-gongzi may have been thinking more about ‘babysitter that doesn’t need to sleep and has inexhaustible energy’ and less about ‘is this person qualified to take care of a baby’.”

More gurgling.

“I just wanted to apologize in advance.”

The baby yawned.

“…right then.” Wen Ning straightened up. Someone was going to have to raise this child, and based on how distractable Wei Wuxian was when he was around Lan Wangji and visa versa, it looked like it was going to have to be him. “Let’s do this.”