probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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omg i didn't see that you did a writer's ask game! hopefully it's not too late to send asks? if not, may i ask 1, 7, 12, 15, & 5 about "blow a kiss to concern"? thank youuu 💙
i reblog a writer's game and then don't answer this ask for several days SORRY! love you here i am now let's go
1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?) this is a tough question because i write in a lot of different fandoms. however, i am going to give two answers. one is the stydia fic blow a kiss to concern (which will be discussed later) because it has a lot of tropes i enjoy - driving, flirting, canon compliance, fluff with some angst, all the good stuff. the second is my kate bishop & peter parker series young & not too wise which has two fics - one of kate and peter meeting before the events of the hawkeye show, and one of them meeting right after. one thing i really enjoy doing is taking two characters who haven't really met or interacted but have the grounds for a fascinating interaction to meet and talk. so like, post-nwh peter has all this trauma from being a superhero, and pre-hawkeye kate is all starry-eyed wanting to be a superhero, and i loved the idea of those two perspectives meeting, two young new yorkers with such different life experiences. i do this kind of pseudo-crossover a lot and it's always so much fun.
7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of? i don't worldbuild that often. i am a big big fan of writing things that are canon compliant or very slightly canon divergent (one character lives instead of dies, a relationship is broken up instead of still together, that kind of thing) where the broader universe is still intact, because i feel like in fictional media, part of what's so fun and interesting about writing the characters is dealing with the shit they've gone through and experiences they've had as a result of the universe they exist in.
that being said, i did a smidge of worldbuilding (really more like world-expanding) for my bellarke fic taking the world off your shoulders, particularly the couple of grounder villages they wind up in, and that was fun. the 100 established this bit of canon where only the warrior grounders speak english but then we didn't get a lot of opportunities to see the communities of non-warrior grounders who didn't speak english at all, so i especially liked dipping my toes into sonia's village and exploring a community of people who aren't involved at all in the grounder violence/war and are just peaceful and self-sustaining
12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you? mmmm i'm thinking about it but can't come up with any. i think i've probably gotten to like more rarepairs, but that's not a trope (maybe just an influence of hanging out with you lol).
15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written? like i said before i don't write a lot of AUs outside of your garden-variety canon divergence, so my options for answers here are limited. i guess my favorite AU is the whole post-age of ultron series i wrote where everything is the same except that pietro lives (bc seriously wtf was that). the series is called pietro lives 'verse but it wound up becoming an entirely clint-barton-centric series and i apologize for nothing.
5. What do you wish someone would ask you about blow a kiss to concern? Answer it now! "hey raviv, what's so special about driving stick shift?" look. you'll never know. you'll never understand until you're driving a bunch of foreigners from literally any other country other than america and they suddenly go, "wait is this a manual?" and you get to very nonchalantly say "yeah it is." you just can't know the level of smug pride you get to experience when people are impressed with you for something as simple as that.
also, driving stick is an even more involved way to do the already-hella-romanticizeable act of driving, and in my experience, it is frustrating as SHIT to learn. and like, stiles loves his fucking car so fucking much. the only other person we ever see drive that car is scott (i think?), most likely because it's not something most people can do, but also because scott is like a brother to him, one of the people he loves the most in the entire world. it's a huge act of trust for stiles to let someone else drive his car. so the idea that there's a skill lydia doesn't have but wants, and only stiles can realistically teach her because he's the only one with both the know-how and the actual car to teach her with is just. very charming in its potential. plus, learning stick at ALL is really hard and it's a testament to the relationship between stiles and lydia that she isn't constantly in tears, because like. he completely believes she can do it, and she completely trusts him to teach her. I JUST THINK THEY'RE NEAT
ask me a question for fic writers!
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"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.
But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.
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So we all know by now that Dazai is comfortable enough around Chuuya to show nervousness/worry.
Enough times for Chuuya to pick up on that pattern. The pattern, may I remind you, that doesn't have evident correlation to either nervousness or worry to most people. One that can even be interpreted as misplaced given the situation.
Which means that Dazai has done this in front of Chuuya so often, that Chuuya at first was hella confused, before he finally made a connection between when and why it happens. And still remembered that connection after four years of separation. Which gets us to my point:
What if this isn't the only emotion Dazai displays weirdly?
What if he has multiple unconventional patterns he displays for sadness, frustration, content, or disgust? The times he really feels them, and they become too strong for him to just deal with normally? What if these are the only times he's actually being genuine with his emotions?
And Chuuya is the only one who is familiar with them all?
Dazai would be jumping rope and Chuuya would be like, "quit sulking, let's get icecream"
Dazai hanging upside down on the couch and Chuuya going, "It's okay, mackerel. You can cry."
Dazai actually crying, full on heart-wrenching sobs, and Chuuya unironically going, "What, good news?"
It's just... comforting, for one person in Dazai's life to read him like a book. Everyone else would look at him like he's crazy, displaying wrong emotions/behaviors at the wrong time, but Chuuya knows that it's just how he processes feeling properly, and thus he's the only one Dazai can count on to put things into context and understand, which makes him display them even more openly.
Because Chuuya never shamed him for his quirks, as much as Dazai never did his.
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