#the other pizzas all had some kind of pork on them as well so had to get margarita :-( literally feel so sick fml

[kermitheefrog]

the supermacs in heuston station even has the same gaa sports crowd mural we have in ours??? like what does it have to do with tasty and tempting food at.superMACS

[autistichalsin]

PSA for omnivores

Hi! Vegetarian here.

I just wanted to let you guys know a few things for reference!

Vegetarian and vegan is not the same thing. All vegans are vegetarian, but not all vegetarians are vegan. Vegans are generally much stricter in their diets; while most vegetarians generally will eat eggs, dairy, and honey, vegans do not. However, some vegetarians don't eat eggs, either.

Most vegetarians do not eat seafood, though some do. No vegans eat seafood.

Not every vegetarian is also gluten-free, though some are.

There are many different reasons one might be vegetarian or vegan. Sometimes it's an animal rights or environmentalist issue, sometimes it's religious, sometimes it's health-related, and some people just don't like the taste and/or texture.

Please don't try to argue with us about our reasons for not eating meat, or try to convince us our diets are unhealthy. Yes, this includes concerns about protein and/or iron. With beans, legumes, and other such things, some vegetarians can eat even more protein than omnivores!

For the love of god and everything holy, please don't try to sneak meat or meat products into food, even if you're sure we "won't notice."

In general, if you wouldn't like a vegetarian doing it to you, don't do it to a vegetarian, whether that's tricking you into eating something, debating their religion, or expressing invasive health concerns.

That said, if you know a person well and have genuine, good-faith questions to ask, it is okay to ask them if they'd be willing to talk about it. Just don't be upset if they say no!

When in doubt about if something is suitable for a vegetarian, please ask! Most of us would rather read an entire ingredients list front-to-back, back-to-front, up-to-down, and down-to-up than eat something we try to exclude from our diets.

If you are at a setting (potluck, holiday dinner, etc) with a vegetarian, and there are both meat main dishes and vegetarian ones available, please wait for the vegetarian(s) to have gotten food before trying the vegetarian ones. You have no idea how upsetting it can be to be one of maybe five vegetarians at a gathering of fifty, and watch as all of the meat-eaters devour the cheese and veggie supreme pizza slices first, so that by the time we reach the line, there's only ten meat lovers pies left. If there is only a single vegetarian option, please don't eat it unless you absolutely have to.

Some items are often considered vegetarian-friendly, but in truth, aren't. Some of these include:

Worcestershire sauce. Aside from a few specifically vegan brands, these contain anchovies.

Meat broths, bouillons, etc. Yes, we do consider chicken broth not to be vegetarian, even if the soup itself has no actual meat in it.

Many kinds of miso are made with bonito flakes, and are therefore not vegetarian.

Many foods contain seafood derivatives for flavor; this also happens fairly often with chicken being added as well.

Caesar dressing contains anchovies, and is not vegetarian.

Foods cooked on the same surfaces as meat. Some vegetarians do not want to eat these (though others are more lax about this). In general, fast-food places and chain restaurants do not have designated vegetarian-friendly surfaces, and would therefore not fit the dietary preferences of a vegetarian who doesn't want to eat food cooked with meat.

"Jojo" potatoes (also known as fried potato wedges) are traditionally cooked in the same fryer as meat items such as fried seafood, chicken, etc.

Aside from some specific kinds, such as mushroom or onion, gravies are not vegetarian.

Many canned beans, refried beans, etc are not vegetarian as they are often cooked in lard.

Many brands and flavors of stovetop stuffing are not vegetarian. Ironically, the only flavor of Kraft's stovetop stuffing that is vegetarian is the pork-flavor one, while the savory herb one is not suitable for vegetarians.

Food that once had meat on it. Many, though not all, vegetarians do not consider "picking the meat off" of an item that had it (I.E. pepperoni pizza) to be acceptable. Part of the issue is the contact with meat, and another is that the flavors and oils will have seeped all over it. Have you ever noticed how much greasier the boxes are for pepperoni pizzas than for cheese ones? You are definitely free to ask, but please don't get offended if a vegetarian doesn't consider picking meat off of a dish to make it vegetarian-friendly.

Many storebought brands of puff pastry, pie crust, and etc are made with lard.

Many cheeses are made with rennet (an enzyme crucial for the making of many kinds of cheese) that is derived from animal stomachs and therefore not vegetarian. While some brands use microbial or plant-blased rennet, which are vegetarian, it is safe to assume that cheeses like parmesan or gruyere are not vegetarian, especially if they are traditional/DOP cheeses.

Anything with gelatin, as this is a byproduct of meat production. However, please note that some vegetarians are less fussy with byproducts than others, and this definitely falls into the "ask first" category.

Some, though not all, wines and beers use animal products in the process of purifying them.

Protein powder is usually produced using animal proteins.

Sugar, believe it or not, as often bone char is added to improve the whiteness. Try looking for vegan brands.

A lot of manufacturers love sneaking animal products into things it doesn't belong in, and it is really a miserable experience to get "meated". If you're cooking for or eating with a vegetarian, no one expects you to know everything, but again, when in doubt, ask! There's a lot of little things you can do to make it easier, especially during the holiday season. <3

[ciaossu-imagines]

(day 16) hewooo! can i request prompt fourteen for fran? (i’ll be giving you the freedom to choose the question/s instead.) ♡

Of course I can, my dear! I had a hard time settling on questions though, so I just did all of them and I hope you enjoy 😊 Thank you so much for sending in the request!

Ask Meme - Food Edition!

Send me a character and a number and I'll tell you about their food preferences!

1: Milk, dark, or white chocolate?

I honestly don’t see Fran as having a huge sweet tooth and even when he is craving something sweet, chocolate is not normally his go-to. When he does eat chocolate, it’s usually dark chocolate and his one chocolate weakness is Cote d’Or’s 86% dark chocolate bars.

2: What do they get on their pizza?

Fran actually ends up really love pissaladière, a type of French street food very much like pizza, with a really crispy crust, caramelized onions, anchovies, black olives, and some grated Gruyere and Parmesan cheeses on it.

3: How well do they handle alcohol?

Honestly, when he first started drinking, not at all. Fran’s a quick drunk early on and because of that, it’s not something he does a lot of. Even when he does learn to better tolerate his alcohol, he’s still pretty featherweight about it all and after a couple drinks, he’s definitely tipsy. Knowing this, and because he doesn’t really trust a lot of people, Fran normally chooses not to drink or nurses a single drink if he’s pushed to do so at social functions.

4: What would be their ideal birthday cake?

I feel like Fran isn’t a huge fan of cake overall. He’d rather, if a cake was needed, that it be something single sized and individual, like cupcakes instead. As mentioned, he’s not a huge sweets fan and while it’s nice to have a birthday ‘cake’, a cupcake is really all he needs. After that, it’s just a chore to eat.

5: Coffee or tea?

I think it really does depend on where in the world he is at the moment. There are countries, like Japan, where he really prefers tea. There’s more of a culture around tea there that interests him and a wider variety of types of tea. However, in places like Italy, the coffee is simply heavenly, and Fran can’t get enough of it. On trips to North America, he gets his caffeine fix with soda though, especially since there’s so many varieties and types.

6: Burgers or hot dogs?

It’s burgers all the way. With a burger, at least Fran knows exactly what it’s made out of, while hot dogs he really has no idea what they’re made out of, how they’re made, and really doesn’t want to know because he feels he would probably puke if all that information came to light.

7: How do they feel about vegetables?

Much like most other varieties of food, there are vegetables that Fran really enjoys and vegetables he hates. He likes lettuce, carrots, raw beans, mushrooms, radishes, and cooked turnip. He really hates peas, both raw and cooked and cooked tomatoes. Raw onions gross him out, but he loves cooked onions.

8: What's their favorite kind of cookie?

Again, as someone who doesn’t eat a lot of sweets, Fran doesn’t really have a strong favourite cookie. He absolutely won’t refuse most if they’re offered, except for oatmeal raisin cookies. Raisins deserve to be eaten on their own, not put in cookies.

9: What's their favorite of the five tastes?

Fran is the kind of guy who really likes both creamy and savory tastes. He’s not a huge fan of sweets, can handle a decent amount of spice, likes some saltiness, but will almost always go for something creamy, like cheese and yogurt, or something savory, like steamed pork buns, which are a weakness of his. He prefers stronger flavours to delicate ones.

10: What's their favorite fruit?

In a silly twist, I really do think it’s apples. He loves the taste of apples and since there were apple trees near where he grew up, I think he enjoyed the luxury of going and picking them straight from the branch. Apples taste better that way, after all, at least according to Fran.

11: Do they prefer hot or cold food?

The contrarian that he is, the answer for Fran is neither. He prefers room temperature or slightly warm/cold foods. He’s big on a lot of finger foods, things that are easy to pick away at, and most of those aren’t served burning hot and definitely not frozen.

12: Are they a big eater, or do they tend not to eat much?

I do think Fran eats a fair amount for someone his size, but it’s eaten in little bits and pieces. He’s someone who eats several dozen small meals (that are more snack sized) than someone who wants to sit down to a huge and extravagant six-course meal.

13: What's their favorite drink?

We’ve already answered this for hot drinks but in terms of cold drinks, I think Fran really enjoys juice. He likes the ‘no sugar added’ fruit juices, the ones that aren’t artificially flavoured and overly sweet, so they’re normally more expensive but he figures it’s worth it for the better taste.

14: Ice cream or popsicles?

Fran, when he eats sweet treats, prefers popsicles. However, what he really likes on hot days is shaved ice. Sacre is his normal go-to since he really enjoys citrusy flavors.

15: Do they spell it "doughnut" or "donut"?

Normally doughnuts aren’t actually something Fran talks a lot about or writes about, so the English spelling of them hasn’t really ever came up. He uses the spelling of whatever country he’s currently living in, along with the word for doughnuts in that language though.

16: How are they at cooking?

Fran can make finger food, things that don’t really rely on cooking too much. He makes an absolutely gorgeous charcuterie board, to be honest. He can make basic cooked meals, like ramen and pasta but past that, his cooking skills decline. It’s not that he’s a bad cook when it comes to the technicalities, because he’s not. If he could just stick to a recipe, he’d be fine, but the problem is that Fran likes to experiment while cooking to some very…insane degrees (Ken swears he once saw an Eldritch beast arise out of a pot that Fran swears was just a soup).

17: From best to worst, how would they rank the Starburst flavors (cherry, lemon, orange, and strawberry)?

Fran goes against popular opinion that the pink Starbursts are the best and tells everyone that Starbursts suck and are hugely overrated on the candy front. They get stuck in his teeth, are a pain to eat, and they don’t even taste that good, in his opinion.

18: How do they feel about spicy food?

As mentioned above, I do think that Fran can handle a fair amount of spice and even enjoys it. However, he wants his food to have flavor, to have a kick to it. He doesn’t want his whole mouth to burn or feel like it’s melting off. Spice shouldn’t get to the pain level in his opinion, not unless he’s the one offering that kind of food to unsuspecting victims friends.

19: Do they have any strange eating habits?

There’s so many strange things about Fran that you would expect him to have so many strange little eating habits too, right? Except he really doesn’t. The strangest he gets is his habit of talking while he eats and holding full conversations while he eats, but that’s more just bad manners and less a strange eating habit.

20: How do they take their steaks?

Fran really enjoys a perfect medium rare steak. However, because most places are absolutely horrible at getting that perfect ‘it’s cooked but just slightly still pink, soft and almost melting in your mouth’ steak, it’s not something he’ll order often. The reviews for the restaurant have to be amazing for him to be willing to give it a try, as a badly cooked steak is honestly one of Fran’s big pet peeves food wise.

21: What do they get on a burger?

He’ll ask for the works, but then he’ll ask for the kitchen to hold the onions, hold the pickles, go light on the mustard, and make sure the bun doesn’t have sesame seeds on it, please. So not the works at all.

22: Do they watch cooking shows at all?

I don’t think that Fran is someone who really watches television. He was raised by a grandmother who was strict about the amount of television he was allowed to watch, and which shows were appropriate for him to watch. He watches a lot more television when he gets with the Kokuyo Gang, but still not a lot. He can only sit still in front of the television for about an hour to an hour and a half at a time before he gets antsy and bored and needs to get up and do something more mentally and physically stimulating. Food shows aren’t something he’d normally ever think of watching, but he might watch an episode of one of Gordan Ramsay’s shows if someone else had them on.

23: What's their favorite snack?

Fran is a simple guy when it comes to snacks. He enjoys chips and fruit as a kid but his favourite as he gets older is really just a good cheese plate. Cheese, some grapes, maybe some meat on there if he’s feeling super fancy. It’s filling, delicious, and easy to do up so why not, right?

24: What's their favorite ice cream flavor?

When he does want ice cream, he likes fruity flavoured ice cream. Strawberry is always a solid choice, but his favourite when he’s in Japan are Lemon Gyunyu Soft’s.

25: What's their favorite meal of the day?

Fran doesn’t have a favourite meal of the day. He’s never stopped to actually think about it at all, honestly, and even if he had I don’t think he could have found an answer. As mentioned, he likes a lot of small little meals throughout the day instead of the standard three meals a day, so it’s a little harder for him to choose.

26: Pancakes or waffles?

Crepes! So, really, the technical answer is neither. I mean, if he was absolutely forced to choose, he’ll take a pancake, roll it into a tube and eat it that way, but he prefers crepes.

27: What's a food they find particularly comforting?

Fran’s grandmother made the most amazing tartiflette you could ever imagine. She’d make it any time Fran was having a rough day, because it was his favourite of her dishes. Because of that habit of hers, he came to associate the dish with comfort and love so that is his favourite comfort food.

28: Do they put marshmallows in their hot chocolate?

No. Fran finds marshmallows to be almost painfully sweet, so he wouldn’t add them to his hot chocolate. He’d rather flavoured hot chocolate, something with peppermint in it or hazelnut, rather than adding extras on top of traditional hot chocolate.

29: If they were a food, what food would they be?

Despite not being a huge fan of sour tastes, I do think Fran would be a sour candy, something like Toxic Waste candies. They’re super sour to the point where your face puckers, enough to make some people spit them right back out. However, keep going and you’ll find some sweetness hidden under all that sour and that sounds just about right for Fran in my opinion.

30: What kind of foods do they hate?

It’s been touched upon here and there throughout these headcanons, and will continue to be, but I’ve mentioned what types of certain things he doesn’t enjoy. As hinted, Fran also does not like super sour things, super sweet things, or super spicy things. Pretty much, the stronger and more intense and overpowering a flavour is, the less likely he is to really enjoy it.

31: Soup or salad?

I do see Fran preferring soup, just because there are a wide variety of soup in his opinion and it’s easier to eat on the go. You can simply drink soups out of a travel mug, for certain types at least. But salads to Fran are always the same – just a bed of greens with some different toppings for the most part and while he enjoys them when he does have them, he’d eat soup more than he’d eat salad.

32: Cupcakes or muffins?

While Fran ordinarily buys neither for himself, if given the choice he would take a muffin over a cupcake any day. He really likes carrot muffins and any muffin type that features berries in them.

33: Do they spend all year waiting for pumpkin spice lattes to come back?

No. Complete no. Fran might be basic in some other ways, but he really doesn’t get the pumpkin spice trend as a whole. He can eat a good pumpkin pie, if it’s offered, but even that isn’t something he actively seeks out. He likes pumpkin soup, but only if it’s offered or on the menu somewhere. He just thinks the trend is weird, not his thing, and would definitely make fun of those who get so excited for pumpkin spice lattes to return.

34: Do they eat food even after it's been dropped on the floor?

Yes. Not even going to lie, Fran definitely would eat food that’s been dropped on the floor, as long as it hadn’t been sitting there for hours or anything. Why not? A couple seconds on the ground is no big deal to him.

35: How do they feel about food touching other food on the plate?

It really doesn’t bother Fran too much. He might sometimes pretend it does, simply to be annoying and get reactions out of other people but it’s really just fake outrage or faking being bothered. He figures his food all ends up in his stomach all touching and being digested, what’s the big deal about it touching on a plate?

36: What would they do if someone took a bite out of their food?

Now this one? This one pisses Fran off. He might not show it at the time…in fact, he probably wouldn’t show just how upset he was at all. What he would do is be petty as anything, making sure to really torture the offender in any way he could for the following days until the person was just absolutely going insane.

38: Do they prefer their noodles al dente, or do they like them softer?

Fran prefers them slightly softer than perfect al dente, but not soft enough to have turned slimy and mushy. Somewhere in the middle is the perfect sweet zone for his palette that he has perfected by the time he’s an adult. He refuses to make pasta any other way, even if the people he’s with prefer it al dente or super soft.

39: How do they feel about bacon's explosive popularity?

Fran honestly doesn’t care. He personally thinks bacon is overrated but he still eats it and enjoys it so he can’t blame other people if it’s their favourite food.

40: What's their favorite kind of candy?

Again, Fran doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth. When he does want candy though, he really likes those fruit snacks made for kids in a variety of fun shapes and colours. He’ll have to buy some if there’s a character or something on the front of the package that he really likes.

41: Do they eat everything they make, or do they tend to save leftovers?

When he’s making food just for himself, Fran tends to only make portions big enough for him. He doesn’t like the thought of wasting food. While it might take him a while to eat everything, since he tends to pick at things here and there, he does eat everything he made and there’s never any leftovers unless it’s someone else who made the food for him, and they portioned things too largely.

42: Do they chew gum at all?

I feel like Fran used to chew gum semi-regularly until he really started living with the Kokuyo Gang for an extended period of time. He likes gum but he stopped chewing it, just because Ken chewed gum so often, so much, and so loudly that it really got under Fran’s skin. Now any fruity gum is something he strongly associates with Ken, the sound, the smell, the packaging and he’s not someone like that dog, so he won’t do the same things.

43: Have they ever eaten something that wasn't edible?

Most definitely. Fran was a curious and weird child, and he wasn’t afraid to try eating things, just to see what they tasted like. Coins, dirt, bugs, his grandmother’s earring once, and paper, he’d try them all.

44: How much cheese-in-a-can would they put on a cracker?

None. Cheese in a can is meant to be squirted straight into your mouth, right? At least, that’s the way it’s meant to be consumed by Fran…well, that or just spraying it at people passing by or spraying it into Ken’s shoes…either or works perfectly.

45: When it comes to Oreos, do they prefer the cookie or the cream?

When Fran eats Oreos, on the rare occasion he does, it’s in this order – separate the cookie and the cream, roll the cream into a smooth little ball, pop the cream into his mouth where he sucks it until it dissolves while he throws the gross (to him) cookie parts into the garbage.

[yellowhollyhock]

as somebody who hasn’t watched next mutation; how accurate/similar are the turtle’s personalities to previous iterations at that point, if you know?

(anon clarified similar not accurate in another ask, so I'll answer like it said similar)

I would say they're closest to the 90s movies, but to me they are different turtles.

Raphael could most believably be Raph from the movies. Some differences though: he does go out on his own a lot, but unlike in the movies it seems more like something he does for fun than when he is emotionally overwhelmed and needs space. This Raph, when he gets angry, will use mean words more than movie Raph I think. The trouble for him is that he and his siblings also tease each other a lot, often good-natured but you know, mean words. Which means that sometimes his fam won't pick up that he's really mad this time, and other times (more often I think), they assume he's really mad when he's not.

Similarities: loves bikes, pretty chill, pretty gruff, likes to be outside. annoyed with Leo's need to always know where he is

Leo is the most different. From any other Leo really. He's quicker to anger and... well... just a lot more airheaded,, I don't know how else to say it. He tried to use his head to break a stack of bricks. Mikey tried to talk common sense into him. He tried to use the computer that he had watched Donnie use a million times and immediately set it on fire. Donnie apparently beats him every time at tic tac toe and staring contests. He just doesn't have the subtlety that I generally expect from Leonardos. Certainly not the ability to stay calm.

Some similarities: he does take his training very seriously. If he sees something he thinks is cool he wants to learn it. And when he (or his brothers) can't learn something right away he tends to get very frustrated. Another similarity: this boy is so nervous. But it presents so differently, you know? idk 87 and 90s and mirage Leo are all pretty different from each other too. But this Leonardo is just such a different flavor. Meathead Leo is the best I've heard it put. It's still Leonardo but it's in a weird font. I mean a differenter font.

I would say Donnie is between 1987 and 90s movies. He goofs off with Mikey a lot, but his humor is much more deadpan, or else he and Mikey do something together, as opposed to the improv song-and-dance pizza-funeral pork rind comedy routine that the 90s B Team has going. He gets excited about whacky inventions that he made just to prove he could, his energy is just a bit more subdued than 87 lol. This Donnie to me is the most Middle Child Donnie. All Donatellos have this energy, but while some lean more Mad Scientist or Pacifist or Theatre Kid, this one leans Middle Child. He cannot get the front seat (he tries very hard). He can be pretty sneaky, or at least tries to be. He can be a mediator, occasionally we see that, but mich more of a "listen to my genius brain understanding the logic of both arguments" than 90s movies' (more effective) "they're both right, hey look I brought marshmallows." He's very competitive with Venus (new kid) (she has magic) (who's the family doctor now) (who's Raph's soft spot now) (who's Mikey's goofball buddy now) (who's the quiet thoughtful one now) (yeah I'm kind of obsessed with them).

He and Venus do have positive moments too, though, they can be very gentle with each other when they aren't caught up in their ongoing Magic vs Science debate.

Mikey--definitely more similar to 90s than 87 or Mirage. He's the goofball. He loves media (this is the word he uses ajdhsj I think he's mostly talking about radio and tv). He likes weird foods, which I think is a nod to 87, but instead of being pizza-themed this Mikey's foods are fish-themed. Although, sometimes there are some pizzas as well. The way I most see Mirage Mikey is in his friendship with Raph: NM Mikey will always defend Raph and is pretty much always down to go with him when invited. His only possible beef with Raph is when he's not invited (but even then Mikey kinda seems to need to do his own thing too sometimes? Like his shows or his talk show or his recipes. Sometimes he's just in the background of an ep doing his own thing and not really seeming interested in his bros' attention). The way I most see 87 Michelangelo is in his love for animals. NM Mikey is passionate about protecting endangered species specifically, but also just generally has a soft spot for the vulnerable, whether a little critter or an elderly gentleman or a bruised mutant turtle. Actually that probably has a lot to do with why he looks up to Raph ❤️🧡

As a group, compared to earlier iterations, these guys are emotionally immature. They get frustrated with each other easily, argue over petty things, call each other names, and do the opposite of what Splinter asks, usually with Venus protesting. On the flip side though, they forgive and move on pretty quick for the most part. Except some long-term feuds (Leo vs Raph, Donnie vs Venus).

They're also canonically established to be almost eighteen in the first episode, which I think made me see them as even more immature. It's kind of a fun focus, like yeah they grew up completely isolated and their formative years were spent fighting Shredder, it makes sense they are socially and emotionally stunted. 1987 made them do fun teenager things and 90s made them socially awkward, but NM really makes them often painfully immature. Donnie even gives little expository speeches from his psychology textbooks about it. (by no means educational just enough words in there for us as the audience to understand he knows they're messed up and has researched it XD)

[hollowsart]

Okay! Okay I have some quick question for Aceida! (Lie, this is not a quick thing)

What is your morning routine? Do you work out, or do you stay in bed until 10 am? Do you make breakfast? Or do you just wait until lunch? What is your favorite breakfast? Biscuits and Gravy? Something completely random, or a granola bar?

Do you enjoy the labor of cooking or do you think that instant noodles are better? Has Aceida ever had breakfast with Quentin? Does acedia wear contacts under her costume since she wears glasses? Because I know from personal experience that wearing a mask with glasses is just very foggy!

What type of Jam does Acedia enjoy or does she like peanut butter? Peanut butter with Honey sandwich or PB&J?

(alright I'm done, it's currently 2:00am for me and I remembered that Acedia is a person with ideologies. And wants. So answer this if you want to untangle my rambling, love Aceida! So cool, okay actually one more question.)

What is your full on opinion on Olivia Octavius? Comic, and movie one.

Hello, hello! This will be a long response to answer ALL of your questions!:

Thoughts on Olivia Octavius: ?? She was in the comics? I don't read comics, so I have no idea if she actually IS or not, but from my searches for Doc Ock related stuff in the past year and a half.. She's not? But there's only female versions of Doc Ock that DO exist in the comics, each one being kinda interesting in appearance! Octavia Otto is a notable one since she's a good woman doing good heroic work and is an original multiverse traveler from what little I know of her!

As for Olivia Octavius from the Spiderverse movies, I think she's neat! She's cool and interesting! I'm not gay or anything for her, but I can definitely see the appeal in her design and character that would make others feel that way! It's like the gender swapped version of Movie!Doc Ock in that regard Lol just.. minus the larger body. (thicker bodied olivia lives rent free in my mind)

Morning/Daily Routines:

Work day - Wakes up and lays in bed for a couple minutes, mentally preparing to get up and go to work. Brush teeth, make breakfast which usually consists of something very quick and easy to make, sometimes may be made before brushing teeth so that it can be eaten once that task is over, but that usually depends on what it is (breakfast being eggs, toast, bagels, cereal if possible, leftover pizza, or any kind of leftover food that is available). Once finished eating and dressed, head out to hob.

Day off - Similar, but will just lay in bed for longer, use phone or swap over to laptop for a couple hours to check stuff while eating breakfast. Alternatively, will absolutely head out on rare occasions to get breakfast from somewhere else, treating self to something new and nice. Likes to lounge around the apartment some days, just doing nothing in particular. Only occasionally going out to hang out with her best friend, Sai, when they both have the free time. (After befriending Otto, though, she'll go hang out at his place occasionally, too. Sai comes to visit sometimes as well!)

(Answering ^those^ like it's Acedia's routine, which wouldn't really differ TOO much from my own. I also lay in bed for awhile after waking up, using my phone to check stuff or to draw something before getting up to do the bathroom stuff then getting food and "starting" my day lol I haven't had biscuits and gravy in like.. so long, man. it's good, but not something I would have regularly or as breakfast haha)

Cooking: Not too great in the kitchen, knows how to cook, like.. less than 10 things total. Usually doesn't have the time and/or energy to cook anything that requires a lot of focus. Is also not the biggest fan of instant noodles, only when extremely desperate and hasn't eaten them in months will she seek out a package or two of the stuff (beef, original/soy, or pork flavor tho)

Quentin: She'll have lunch at his workplace often, it's her favorite hangout spot. After their relationship steadily builds for awhile, he'll come and sit with her while on his lunch break and chat. It's a pleasant experience for both of them, having a little extra time to get to know each other out of costume (unknowing on Beck's end who Acedia is, but very knowingly on Acedia's, knowing who Beck really is).

Glasses: It's a very mild prescription so it's not entirely necessary to wear them! She can get around just fine without having to always wear the glasses. She has a little carrier case she puts them in when wearing her hero costume, putting the case in one of her pockets for safety! (Peter Parker in the canon of the original comics also can remove his glasses without issue (see him putting them down to put a bandana over his face when he is going to the wrestling place to test out his brand new spider powers he got, not to mention all the times he is seen out of costume wearing glasses, yet he isn't when he removes the mask while in costume! (there are some exceptions depending on the writer and iteration/interpretation of the story)))

Jam or Jelly: Grape jelly for sure, best kind of jelly. PB&J is also the superior sandwich between the two suggested. Honey is a nice snack treat, but preferred by itself and not on anything else. Strawberry jelly, however, isn't bad either, but it's too seedy and crunchy for a PB&J, has to be really smooth, much like the smoothy creamy peanut butter.

[projecthipster]

Bacon

Good old bacon. Salt-cured pork belly. It’s the food of suburban Sunday mornings with instant coffee, and markedly unhip diners, so why is it a hipster food?  Well, most of my “research” “sources” (links I found from Ecosia results or Wikipedia sources) date from between 2008 and 2013, and if you lived through those years, you’ll recall the Bacon Mania of the time. If you didn’t, you're probably too young to care about this blog. If you did, you probably still don’t care but it’s not for reasons so chronological. Did you know that the Baconator only dates to 2007? I didn’t, I more or less assumed it had always been a Wendy’s menu stable. But no, prior to the late-aughts rennaisstrip, bacon burgers were actually somewhat rare in mainstream fast food. Some date the beginning of blogosphere Baconmania to John Scalzi (yeah, the sci-fi author) taping bacon to his cat on September 13 2006. In other words, baconmania coincided with the crest of the hipster wave, becoming an irreverent cultural icon at the same time that “The Hipster” was becoming such a codified costume, defined in large part by that very same irreverence. Of course they would merge. But why did they become associated, even tangentially, in the first place?

Well, part of it is irony - it was a retro, all-American, so-uncool-it’s-cool sort of food that falls into the same box (often literally) as donuts and Pabst Blue Ribbon. The Late Hipster strove to take these Homeric icons (that is, of Homer Simpson, not the blind bard) and render them anew, as trendy, young, and redefined - the same but slightly different. Now the bacon would be in a milkshake. The donuts would have bacon. The PBR is in a frosty mug. Plus it’s us drinking it, not the other kind of white people. But I think the greater part is rebellion. Hipsterism, after all, is nonconformity, and by the 2000s, conformity meant diet culture. Homer was a satire of the 20th century Square, the dad of old sitcoms that were the target of Matt Groening’s once-laser-precise irony gun. Going into the new century, the new establishment being satirized by hipsters were the likes of Patrick Bateman with his fastidious health routines, and, only mildly less psychotically, the Gayle Waters-Waters type of health-conscious suburbanites who wouldn’t be caught dead eating processed meat, let alone fatty, salty bacon. The consumption of bacon, then, became an act of rebellion against that norm— a tame sort of gastronomical anarchy, and the truest hipsters are rooted in anarchy.

Anyway, unless you, dear reader, have been raised Jewish, Muslim, or vegetarian, you know what bacon is. You’ve had Sunday mornings in your life. You know the sizzle of dropping fatty strips into a hot pan and letting them cook to a consistency varying from shoe leather to wooden shingles, as Americans are apt to do. This is wrong, of course. Frying bacon to crispy in a kitchen that also has an oven, or even a barbecue, is more or less like assembling handmade pizza dough and fine Italian cheese in a kitchen with a wood-burning clay pizza oven, and serving it by rolling the cheese in the dirt behind the kitchen for a bit.  The quality gulf between sad pan-fried crunch matter and soft, meaty, delicious oven-roasted bacon is really such that they ought not to be considered the same food, but they are, so that’s neither here nor there. Without further ado, since we’ve had plenty of ado already, let’s consider the pros and cons of bacon, to achieve our final score:

Pros:

Delicious, especially when oven-roasted

Great on a burger

Can wrap a roast to make it better and less dad-dinner-dry

Can wrap around scallops for a fancy appetizer

Nostalgic charm

Smells great

Goes good on fancy donuts

Can be flavoured with good flavours like hickory or maple

BLTs are wonderful

Cons:

Not very healthy

Many people will try to pan-fry it or even insist, objectively wrongly, that bacon should be crunchy. These people should be exiled to some small island without any pork products, and I’m sure they will be soon, but they’ve already hurt us.

Not vegetarian, and in fact is usually a product of unethical and emissions-producing factory farms (this counts as two cons)

A little cheesy as an aesthetic item non-gastronomically speaking

That’s nine pros vs five cons. You know how that averages, then.

I give this hipster food four chocolate coatings out of five.

Project Hipster is a futile and disorganized attempt to dive into the world of things that the internet has at some point claimed "are hipster," mostly through ListChallenges search results.

This review comes from the seventh list, 50 Hipster Foods.

Stay deck.

[wool-and-wanderlust]

July 3: I was so nervous when I woke up today. It felt like the first day of school, which I guess for me it kind of was. They asked me to arrive at 9:30, and when I did, they had already been working for a while. They had to get up extra early to bring in some sheep because it was raining and you can't sheer when the wool is damp. The farmer, Brian, had me come inside and help them bring out the tea and coffee for the shearers, and we stood and had drinks in the barn while everyone had a break. They suggested I change into a jacket that I wouldn't mind ruining because when you get up close and personal with sheep, your skin and clothes get covered in lanolin. It's the strangest feeling on your skin — almost like a mixture between grease and wax. They taught me how to wrap the wool and pack it into the large transport bags, and that's what I did for most of the day. There were three shearers (the farmer's son Tom, and Ben and James), one farmer (Dick) helping to keep moving the sheep into the right pens, and a few of us (Brian and his wife, Alison, and me) wrapping wool. The shearing is a seriously physical job...they work hard. They played loud classic rock to keep the spirits up. They stopped for a tea break mid-morning, did a few more hours of work, had a rest and food at lunchtime (one man, Dave, took a nap in the barn on some wool), worked a few more hours, and had another tea break in the afternoon before finishing up for the day. We had a feast of sandwiches, pizza, pork pies, and cakes for lunch. It was amazing! The local farmers help each other out with shearing, trading labor, and it seems to be a nice social event as well since farming can be a pretty isolating job at times.

I'd heard that sheep farmers can't make much money off of wool anymore, but it's really incredibly bad. For example, with this breed of sheep the farmers only get about $0.45 per bundle, and professional sheep shearers can charge at least $1.00 to shear one sheep. Synthetics have taken over the world in such a short amount of time. We don't know how to appreciate what nature hands right to us and it's heartbreaking. They only really bother shearing now because they have to do it to keep the flock healthy. Some farmers don't even bother packing/selling the wool; they might just put it in a pile and use it for cattle bedding.

Towards the end of the day, Brian took me around his property in the ATV to see his cow pastures. The countryside is just so unbelievably beautiful. I'm sure if you live here you get used to it, but it's hard to imagine not waking up and being in awe of it all every day. I wish all farm animals could live as good of lives as these. Tomorrow there will be a gather to bring in more sheep off of the common land, and I've been invited to help with that. I'm told it will be cold! Drove home down the tiny country lanes, and felt a huge amount of relief that I've landed at a farm with some of the kindest people I've met who are open to teaching me things.

[twobillionseconds]

April 8th - April 15th 2023

I know it’s going to be a well over a week’s worth of multi-day post, but my wife’s father passed away. I’ll try to chronicle the week and maybe reflect on it on the end.

April 8th:

My wife comes back home from work. As she is about to head to bed she gets a call from her sister that her dad is on his last breaths. We quickly find her a flight to get on and she packs last minute. We spend some time together and plan out when I should head out. I take her to the airport and she leaves. I forgot that there was a birthday lunch. I go to that and hangout. I come back and take the dog to the beach. I call a friend and chat with him a bit. I text another to see how he is. Also my crown popped off. I had to go to a buddy’s house to see if someone could help me put it back in. I spend some time with them and watch UFC. After I head home and head to bed.

April 9th:

Forgot that it was Easter Sunday. I wake up to the text that my wife's father passed away. I am running around doing bunch of errands and cleaning the house as best I can. I was thinking about going to a social event, but I head to my friend’s place to drop off a blue apron mean and to hang out. It was good to talk to someone about some of the events that transpired over the past couple months. 

April 10th:

I finish packing. Fortunately the dentist was able to squeeze me in the morning to get my temporary crown put back in. I walk the dog, finish some more errands, and take the dog to the boarding place. I head to the airport and head to Springfield. I got into town around 9 PM and my brother in law picked me up. I met some of the family at my wife’s mom’s house and we hung out. We went to bed a bit early.

April 11th:

I decided to go for a long run. I ran for about 7 miles. I took a shower and I’m trying to remember what I did. Well for lunch all the family came over to my mother in law’s place for lunch to hang out and eat. I saw all my nieces and nephews and we hung out there. For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant and ordered 3 towers of margaritas. I guess it’s only fitting that we celebrate the life of their father. When the family members that were staying over at my mother in law’s place came back we all drank whiskey and played cards until pretty late. It was a good evening. 

April 12th:

Today was the funeral. In the morning we all got ready and had breakfast. We took pictures. The funeral was around 1 PM. There was a short service and then some light snacks at my mother in law’s place after. People hung out for a while. For dinner one of my brother in laws and I went into town and bought bunch of liquor for drinks and groceries for dinner. We grilled venison and pork and made daiquiris and bunch of other stuff. There were some people who stayed over longer and we kept making drinks and chatting. I’m not going to lie I got really really drunk. 

April 13th:

Woke up hung over but not the usual kind. Said good bye to family that were leaving. A few of the brother in laws took me out to the lake to go fishing. We were out there for about 5 hours. I caught 3 fish. After we got ready for dinner. What we caught was what we ate. We gutted the fish and cleaned them. One of my brother in law deep fried them. We had a pretty big dinner. We came back to my mother in law’s place and had a quiet conversation and went to bed.

April 14th:

The ladies wanted to go get brunch so one of my brother in law took time off to show me around town. We just hung out most of the day. We saw some trailers he needed to see and we went to go shoot some guns and got pizza afterwards. For dinner we went to another brother in law’s house and had Chinese food and hung out. We all decided to go to a quarter arcade nearby and took 10 kids and 8 adults. We all had fun playing really cheesy arcade games and what not. The wife and I said our goodbyes to the remaining family and headed to my mother in law’s place.

April 15th:

Woke up and slowly packed. The wife and I helped my mother in law clean up some of the furniture after all the visitors. We had an early lunch and she took us to the airport. Came back to San Diego around 5:30 pm. Came home and picked up our dog. We picked up some groceries and made dinner at home. The wife went to bed early because she was tired and I stayed up a little bit late to catch up on this.

Reflections:

When I got the news that my father in law passed away, I texted a few close friends, “This thing called life is short. Hug your kids and call your parents.” Don’t know if they actually did that or not, but it was more of a coping mechanism for me. The other thing to as I saw my 4 brother in laws carrying the casket of their father, it just reminded me the mistake I made in waiting a bit longer to have kids. We should’ve tried earlier. My ignorance, hubris, and whatever else failed me. I don’t know if I’ll ever have kids of my own. This recent episode really showed me the importance of children. Children are suffering, long lasting, joyous, sorrowful. It brings out the best and worst of us, but I think it is what we are evolved to do. Somehow in today’s culture children are seen as just burdens. They are burdens and they are much more than that. Jordan Peterson says that early on you get to choose your suffering, but if you wait too long time will eventually choose it for you. I don’t know what lies ahead for me and my wife. It’s not like we haven’t tried. We tried to choose the suffering, but maybe we haven't tried enough. I don’t think the window has closed quite yet, but I know it’s closing pretty rapidly. There are some hard decisions we have to make either way. May God be with us if he is out there. God if you are real, I’ll make the sacrifice like you required Abraham. Maybe there are more things I need to sacrifice. 

[fasterthanmydemons]

🌹- does my muse spoil a lover? Do they like to be spoiled themselves?

☕️- what’s my muse’s morning ritual, if any? If they don’t have anything specific then how do they prep for the day?

🧟‍♀️- would my muse have a deceased loved one resurrected for any reason?

🌱- what is my muse’s diet?

⛪️- would my muse want a big church wedding or something smaller outdoors? How does my muse feel about marriage?

💵- what are my muse’s feelings on money and/or wealth?

📵- how does my muse feel about social media? Is it a powerful tool of connection or an unnecessary distraction? Is it the very personification of vanity?

((a few of these might be weird from this blog but I'm too tired/lazy to sign into my other one dfsgjhdfs))

🌹- does my muse spoil a lover? Do they like to be spoiled themselves?

Pietro prefers to be the one doing the spoiling tbh. It makes him feel good to make them feel good. Seeing his lover happy and contented is the best thing in the world for him, so he'll take every opportunity to dote on them. Gifts, compliments, foot and back massages, lots of little affectionate touches, even doing work/chores/errands for them to lighten their workload. Anything that makes them happy or lowers their stress is a possibility.

☕️- what’s my muse’s morning ritual, if any? If they don’t have anything specific then how do they prep for the day?

FOOD. And possibly coffee if it's available. Decaf, though. If not, then tea or juice. Then showering happens, most likely with singing. He doesn't shave every day, but every couple days is good enough. Hair fluffing also occurs. Clothes are haphazardly chosen because he doesn't overly care as long as it fits. And then he's good to go!

🧟‍♀️- would my muse have a deceased loved one resurrected for any reason?

Probably... not? Well, I mean, it depends. If it was like a magic wish thing that had no consequences, then sure. But if it's like a Pet Sematary or Monkey's Paw type thing where there are weird catches that twist the person or the circumstances surrounding their resurrection, then definitely not. Also it would help to know in advance if the person would even want to come back. Some people wouldn't, so if he knew his loved one didn't want to come back, he would respect that.

🌱- what is my muse’s diet?

If it's edible, he'll eat it. Seriously. But okay, his favorite foods are pizza, burgers, pie, and various Romani or Sokovian dishes his mother used to make that Wanda probably also knows how to make. He doesn't eat a lot of beef unless it's a burger, so he's more likely to eat chicken. He doesn't eat pork because he grew up not eating it due to religious observances. He doesn't stick to a Kosher diet, though. Bread, pasta, cheese, rice, nuts, eggs, all of those are good. And then fruits and veggies too. Because of his high metabolism and his body's need for a lot of calories and nutrients, Pietro eats a lot of carbs and proteins. He unfortunately also eats a lot of fats and sugars, not all of which are the good kind, heh.

⛪️- would my muse want a big church wedding or something smaller outdoors? How does my muse feel about marriage?

Something small and outdoors would be great. The size honestly doesn't matter as much as what the bride wants and making sure that it's about them and not like... all the people they invited or the venue or whatever. So if that intimate feel can still be captured inside a big wedding and that's what she wants, then that's fine with him too.

Pietro's down to get married, certainly. I think he has a very traditional view of that, so if he knows that this is his person for life and/or they get pregnant, I think he would feel like the next logical step is to marry her and commit officially. But in actuality, Pietro doesn't need a marriage license to be devoted to someone, and his behavior isn't going to change with or without marriage. He'll still be the same person and treat his girlfriend/wife the same, so although he feels it's symbolically important, he doesn't feel it's absolutely necessary if she doesn't want it.

💵- what are my muse’s feelings on money and/or wealth?

Money has always been this terrible thing that controlled Pietro's life in some way, like... he grew up watching his parents, grandparents, and sister very often not having the money to buy what they needed, most notably food and medicine. So for him it's this sort of evil thing that has made his life and the lives of others he cares about very difficult at times. Or rather, the lack of it has. Even in Sokovia, he saw how poor people were and how insurance companies were really gouging and scamming sick people to pay really high prices for their medications, and it just made him angry. It's why he went to bat for people and argued with pharmacists and doctors to get them meds when they needed it, as seen in one of the deleted scenes in AoU.

He also feels that, for rich people, money is often wasted on things that don't matter. Cars, clothes, jewelry... instead of helping people who really need it. That makes him really angry, especially when people have done nothing to earn that money, it's just passively inherited. He thinks it's unfair that some people should be set for life simply because they were born rich while others have to struggle every second for everything they have in life.

📵- how does my muse feel about social media? Is it a powerful tool of connection or an unnecessary distraction? Is it the very personification of vanity?

Pietro is new to social media and the internet in general. Growing up, he never had internet, a computer, a cell phone, any of that. His family couldn't afford it. He had television, that's it. So for him... joining the Avengers and seeing all this technology, he's a bit conflicted. On the one hand, lavish and excessive tech kindof embodies everything he hates about people like Tony Stark and countries like the U.S., but on the other hand... it's so freaking cool? Like, haha, he would be so excited about the internet and drop so much time doomscrolling, it's not even funny. So I think at first, social media would be this really cool tool to connect people, but after a while, once the novelty wore off, I think he might drift from it a bit. Because after a while he'd get bored with it, and/or realize how much time it's taking away from more important things.

[sereniv]

I encourage people to not think of alternatives as a chore, but an exploration.

A lot of people, myself included way back, have a mindset that stops them from finding alternatives they actually like

Either, for example, they just ate dairy Brie, and then go and try a 1 brand of plant based Brie- most likely they are not going to like it because the flavor/texture/smell they are used to is fresh in their mind, and it messes up their perception of what thr vegan brie tastes like

Also, a lot of people try alternatives assuming they wont like it, dont do that. Just be curious, or even assume you will like it.

And dont stop at one! If youre able, keep trying. I just recently found a mozzerella for pizza that i really like even more than one i had been using.

Go over your food and see what you can omit- for example, lets say you put egg in your ramen but its not that big of a deal if you dont- then dont.

Or see what you can alternate- for example using dairy milk in your oatmeal, try oat milk. Or all the many other plant milks

And also figure what animal products are most important to you. Lets say eggs (like it was for me) is the most imporant. You cant live without eggs. Any form of egg.

You keep an open mind, assume youll like one plant based egg- and maybe you find a recipe or a combination of products or some brand that satisfies your craving. You can ease that into your diet

but maybe after trying every recipe and brand nothing is good enough. Or maybe you cant affored either money wise or time wise to find an alternative, but cutting out eggs is not an option bc maybe its even one of your safe foods- then you move on to a different food. Eggs is obviously not something you feel you can give up without being detrimental to you, so move to bacon or deli meat or milks or like above, cheese

but try and have fun. And look up recipes.

Like some cheeses taste and smell disgusting when not cooked (like miyokos pourable mozz), but 1. never smell or taste something that should be cooked, cold. 2. Think of food chemistry, and how like a raw egg isnt as pleasing as a cooked egg.

I just recently tried Eat Meati, which is mushroom root. I had heard good things, and even though mushrooms make me gag even thinking about them, i tried it. And it was pretty damn good. Like a very tender roast, kind of like slow cooked pork, but beef for texture, and just cooked roast as flavor. it smelled amazing.

But i ultimately didnt eat it, my grandma did. because my brain is not ready to move to mushrooms. I cant help it, but i really tried

So of you want to start eating more plant based foods, please have fun with it. look up recipes- plate your food! and even, when you find alternatives you do like remind yourself that you are eating plants

Be amazed at what plants can be made of and that you are enjoying something that is replacing animal products.

And that idea doesnt even just go with plant based alternatives. I did this when i had a mushroom sauce that i liked. or well, it had mushroom extract. But it made me feel good to think "im eating a food i didnt think id enjoy, and it involves mushrooms" its just a happy feeling

Its not all about feeling good, ive had to sacrifice like eggs even though ive found some vegan version i like. And i crave it so bad. But not enough to ruine my life. If it was stressing me out and causing me anxiety then maybe thats something i shouldnt give up- but thats not the case. I more so direct my feelings towards hoping for more people to ask for plant based eggs so theres money in making one

Anyway yeah. Food is fun, it should be fun, but also food has an impact on the enviroment, humans, animals. So encourage yourself to explore omitting, or changing up your meals (within your bounds). And share with people, not as a way to 'turn' them, but be amazed!

there is soo much amazing vegan artisan cheese out there like....

yes, most of them are not very widely available and still quite expensive (though its getting better) but it absolutely exists. and if they were to receive a fraction of the funding that the dairy industry gets, i'm sure they could expand more quickly!!

the idea that you can only make good cheese with mothers milk is just wrong, humans have been making plant based cheese for centuries!

[dmsden]

A Simple Meal

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Part of being a great DM is learning to engage all of your players’ senses. That means not just describing what they see and hear, but what they feel, smell, and taste as well. As a result, one way I’ve found to immerse my players, besides music, is to feed them foods that evoke the period and region they’re in. For example, the lands of southern Velnar, where they’re currently traveling, are meant to evoke India and south-eastern Asia to a certain degree. One week, we all ordered food from a local eatery that does Indo-Chinese cuisine (which I highly recommend if you’ve never tried it), and that really helped get across the flavors of the country the players are in.

Many basic D&D realms are based on medieval western Europe to some degree, so I thought I’d share some ideas on what you could feed your players that will evoke this period. It also provides something a little different to serve your players in place of pizza or Doritos.

Bread: Arguably the most basic staple of all meals. In medieval dining, bread was not only used as something to eat, but stale bread was cut into slices referred to as trenchers. These were used in place of plates at many tables, and, especially at feasts, after the meal, when the trenchers had soaked up all the juices of the meats and such, they were given as alms to the poor. Brown and wheat breads would be fairly common, with white breads being a little more luxurious and expensive. You could either buy your own, or, if you have time, make some rustic loaves. Here is a simple and delicious recipe to use: https://shelfcooking.com/rustic-bread/

Cheese: I am, admittedly, a total sucker for cheese. It might be my favorite food in the world, and bread and cheese together make an excellent meal all on their own. If you’re looking for a tiny bit of authenticity in terms of what cheeses would’ve been available to someone living in a medieval European society, I found a list at https://housecapuchin.com/portfolio/a-list-of-medieval-cheeses/. If you’re not looking to be super authentic (and it is a fantasy world after all), I strongly recommend y fenni, a Welsh cheese best known in the U.S. as Red Dragon. It’s like a cheddar flavored with mustard seed and ale - fantastic!

Fruit: Fruit was often served as a dessert, especially baked or stewed. Dried fruit can be a part of the rations an adventurer might eat on the road. Apples were one of the only commonly cultivated fruit, but far more were available wild. Pears, peaches, raspberries, strawberries, and many more could be had, but they were rarely served fresh. It would be much more common to find them cooked and packed in honey, or to be served in pies, fooles, and other desserts. They were also often paired with vegetables or meats in different ways. The cookbook “Forme of Cury” from the 14th century includes a recipe for carrots and pears combined, for example. Here’s a recipe for stewed pears in wine that makes a lovely dessert for your medieval meal: http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec26.htm

Meat: Yes, there were all kinds of vegetable dishes, but we’re starting to realize that there was probably more meat on the medieval dinner table than was originally thought. All kinds of poultry were served (including things we don’t generally eat now, like swan), all manner of seafood, beef, pork, goat, sheep, venison, and plenty more. One very common item would be cold, sliced meats served with a dipping sauce. You could serve chicken or sliced pork roast with a flavorful sauce, and this would be very authentic. I’m including here a recipe for Lumbard Mustard, one of my favorites. This is super simple, but it’s delicious, and it keeps for ages if you store it in a covered jar. Serve it in a bowl alongside pieces of cold chicken or slices of pork.

Stew: I mean, it’s hard to go wrong with stew. A tavern would likely take the roasted meat they hadn’t sold the night before and toss it into a stewpot to serve the next day. The folks behind the (very excellent) Cookbook of Ice and Fire have a recipe for a beef and barley stew on their website at https://www.innatthecrossroads.com/beef-barley-stew-2-2/

Pies: Yes, they can be dessert, but savory pies were very common as well. One of my absolutely favorite recipes of any kind of an ancient recipe for mushroom and cheese pie that you can find at http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec21.htm If you’re as lucky as me, you might have a local bakery that makes and sells savory pies, such as Thwaites Market in Methuen, MA.

Drink: If this is meant to be a tavern, you could stock beer, ale, wine, mead, and whatever else tickles your fancy. Just make sure you all stay sober enough to play the game after!

If you want to expand beyond this, there are several websites and cookbooks I strong recommend. Godecookery.com is an incredible resource of translations of legitimate medieval cooking and modern recipes that feel like they fit the genre without having a specific historical source. I’ve cooked plenty of meals using recipes from this site. For fantasy based recipes, I recommend Heroes Feast: The Official D&D Cookbook, a Cookbook of Ice and Fire: the Official Game of Thrones Cookbook, and The Unexpected Cookbook: the Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery. All three are full of excellent recipes, and all of them have great cooking advice, ideas on how to pair items together, and so on.

I hope this got you salivating to do some food prep for your game. Until next time, may your game be a feast for the senses.

[asweetprologue]

Food of the Continent

Alright kids this is a little different from my normal stuff and entirely self indulgent! I recently worked on a fic that involved mention of quite a bit of food, and me being myself, I put a decent amount of research into it. I decided to compile that for those who, like me, get to a scene where the boys are eating and find themselves at a loss. What would a medieval witcher and bard eat on an average day? I’ve based my findings on medieval Poland, which isn’t, obviously, the Continent. If you want to add potatoes to your fantasy world, go ahead! The Witcher 3 certainly did. But if you’re looking for accuracy, please see an extensive list of medieval appropriate foods below the cut! 

Medieval Polish Cuisine

Meat

Pork

Beef

Poultry

Fish

Royalty/Nobility only: Venison

Most common: Pork, Beef

Breads

Rye bread - Used mostly commonly for trenchers

Common white bread - Often used for harvest feasts

Rusks or binavice - A hard tack-like bread used for soldiers' rations

Manchet breads - Essentially wheat rolls

Boiled breads (bagels, ring pretzels) -  Also called circuli or bracellus if you don’t want to say that Geralt is eating a bagel, but he could have! They were a very common street food.

Rogale or crescent rolls

Most common: Trenchers, white wheat rolls

Vegetables  

Field peas

Cabbage

Onions

Fava beans (used for animal fodder, peasant food, and flour)

Mushrooms

Leeks

Beats

Kale

Lentil (lower class food, often stewed)

Parsnips

Cucumbers (treated as a fruit, a type of melon)

Skirrets

Rutabagas

Turnips

Radishes

Lettuce

Alexanders

Carrots (VERY rarely)

Most common: Peas, cabbage, onion; parsnips and skirrets in the winter

Notes: Pickling and dry storage were extraordinarily important for surviving the winter months. Peas could be saved dry and reconstituted by soaking them in water, and cabbage was turned into sauerkraut. Also note the lack of potatoes! Anytime you think of potatoes in a meal, substitute them for turnips.

Fruits and Nuts

Apples

Pears

Plums

Cherries

Hazelnuts

Strawberries

Blueberries

Raspberries, sloes, cranberries, and rowans (all used to make juice or in fermented beverages)

Raisins

Almonds (expensive)

Figs (expensive)

Most common: Apples, pears

Notes: Serves always after the main meal, fresh or cooked. Apples were often dried and eaten year round, or made into a butter and jarred. While not part of the Polish diet, I posit that more exotic fruits like oranges (used for cooking, not eating), peaches, lemons, and dates could probably be brought north from Nilfgaard, but they would be more rare and expensive the further north you went!

Herbs

Parsley (helps kill the onion smell)

Dill

Garlic

Mustard

Fennel

Most common: Parsley and dill

Oil

Lard

Butter

Poppy and hemp oil

Notes: Butter and lard were extremely important. Medieval people burned a lot of calories, so fats were a critical part of their diet. Almost every meal would have been smothered in some kind of animal fat, unless it was a Friday.

Drinks

Honey water/milk

Hydromel (similar to mead, less alcohol)

Mead

Ale

Wine

Desserts

Placki, flat cakes

Tortae, high quality desserts made only with high grade bolted flour. Could have been a type of strudel with rich cheese based filling. Also could refer to small, flat cakes. Also could have been similar to cheesecake.

Marzipan (expensive)

Notes: In a contradictory fashion, when you read sweetmeats, that means desserts. It usually refers to a highly sugary confection, such as candied fruits or nuts. Sweetbread on the other had, does refer to meat, and is made from offal. I know. 

Common Dishes Gruel of mixed grains - Side dish, served with meat and a wheat bread Courtier's Pottage - One pot dinner made with millet, peas, bacon, onion, vinegar and parsley. Would have been quite thick due to the millet. Extremely common. Parsnip, Leek, and Alexander Stew - Common in early spring, typical one pot meal for a noble family. Served with cheese dumplings. Pears stewed with Cucumbers and Figs Chicken baked with Prunes - Common in noble establishments. Either cooked in a covered pot, or wrapped in dough to form a kind of giant turnover on festive occasions. Ham stewed with Cucumbers - A rich dish made with butter, onion, beer, and cucumber, raisins, and cranberries. Sour cream was added to the stew to thicken it. Lentils and Skirrets with Bacon - Stew Beer Soup - A classic stew made with leeks, cabbage, flour, beer, eggs, and cheese Fish Aspic - A kind of savory gelatin, usually used as an ornamental component of a larger banquet display Game stewed with Sauerkraut - Bigos, served at royal banquets. Peasants probably had their own versions using pork or beef instead of venison. Crepes - Probably served not as a dessert but during dinner, with beer soup and cheese or fish aspic. Krepel - Flat cake of layered cheese and bread, fried and served with strawberries or fruit Praskury - Wafers Apple flat cake - Essentially like an apple pizza Honey cakes - Kind of flat cake saturated with honey.

If your characters are eating Breakfast, they're probably eating millet porridge, eggs, or bacon. If they are eating Lunch, they are probably eating trencher bread with lard or cheese or soaked in beer, or stew. If they are eating Dinner, they are probably eating some kind of meat, usually pork or beef, with vegetables like cabbage, peas, onions or parsnips, either in some kind of one pot stew or plain. Desserts are almost always sweetened with honey, and include fried breads and wafers.

Roadside meals would probably consist of fresh meat from hunts (mostly poultry and rabbit), either roasted or put in a stew; rusks, eaten plain or soaked in water or ale; wild berries or apples; reconstituted peas; sauerkraut; and root vegetables like parsnips, turnips, radishes and onions that would save well over several days. Wild parsnips could probably be found easily in the Northern Realms.

I hope this was helpful to someone! This is meant to help you generate ideas, not to be used as a strict guide for what to include in your fics. This is fantasy, so you can absolutely do whatever you want, and besides that it will always be hard for us to be accurate about what exactly went on in the medieval kitchen. However I hope this helps give you an idea about what the average tavern might be serving, and you can worry a little less about what to include in those pesky meal scenes. 

Source: Food and Drink of Medieval Poland by Maria Dembinska, English translation by William Woys Weaver

[cutesilyo]

i know your eyes in the morning sun — an indophil fanfic

When a homesick Indonesia is unexpectedly taken out of his meeting for a day trip in Rome with Philippines, he isn't expecting much more than exhaustion ahead of him. Instead, what happens is a whirlwind of food, fun, and a surprising amount of reflection on their histories and differences as nations. And as he looks deeper and deeper in the other nation's bright eyes, he learns to come to terms with the feelings he's been ignoring for far, far too long.

Alternatively: a nation who's too attached to the past goes on a date with a nation whose entire philosophy is built on trying to live in the moment. Yes, there is kissing involved.

Also available on AO3, FF.net

—

“Tell me why we’re here again,” Indonesia groused.

“Unofficially, it’s because I’m busting you out of that damn meeting.” Philippines grinned, his purple eyes glinting mischievously under Rome’s bright sun. “Officially, it’s because we’re on a date.”

All Indonesia could do was sigh. He had arrived in Italy two days ago for a G20 summit, and all the meetings he’s had to attend since then had left him tired and restless. It would have been easier if it was like a normal ASEAN meeting, where he was at least familiar and friendly with all the members. But in the G20, he was the sole Southeast Asian nation there, and he found it difficult to get a word in everyone else’s chaos. Most of the time, he simply preferred to keep his head down and daydream about going back home.

It was during his third-favorite daydream (a peaceful afternoon at Borobudur, dressed in gold just like the old days) that Philippines had burst through the doors with his perpetually bright eyes and cheeky smile. Before he could even process what was happening, Philippines was happily dragging him out of the room while everybody else waved them goodbye.

And that’s how Indonesia found himself in his current predicament. Outside some random pizzeria in a foreign country, dazed out of his wits, and with the one nation who got under his nerves the easiest.

He really wanted to go home.

“Oh, don’t give me that look!” Philippines patted him on the shoulder with a laugh, and Indonesia couldn’t help but tense uncomfortably. “It's not like this is a real date, I just made up some lame excuse to get them off my back. Besides, you were bored out of your mind there, weren’t you? I bet you weren’t even listening. You were probably thinking about your temples.”

“No,” he denied, but the other nation simply smirked knowingly. He felt his face go red in embarrassment. “Well, can you blame me? I don’t feel right around all those Westerners . . .”

Philippines just laughed at him as they walked in.

There wasn’t much to walk into. It wasn’t a fancy restaurant, but just a small family-owned business that only had two round tables to the side. Other than them, there didn’t seem to be any other customers. Different flavors of pizza were behind glass, oddly rectangular in shape rather than the circular pizzas he was used to seeing in advertisements, but their names and prices went unlabeled. Even if they were, he doubted that it would help him much; while he was steadily getting used to English, the Romance languages were an entirely different matter.

“Buonasera,” the middle-aged woman behind the counter greeted them.

Indonesia could only nod awkwardly in response, but Philippines grinned cheerily. “Buonasera! Ciao bella, come stai?”

The two struck up a light conversation while he tried to decide what kind of pizza to get. He was used to thick-crusted, American-style pizzas, and he really didn’t see the point of eating something so expensive when a good terang bulan was always available. Besides, even if he didn’t particularly like pizza, he could see that the ones available here were an entirely different beast from the ones Pizza Hut sold at home. Much more greens and vegetables, for one.

Indonesia hoped he didn’t look too clueless when Philippines finally turned to ask him what kind of pizza he wanted. He just pointed at a random one and prayed for the best.

The other nation looked amused, but he didn’t comment any further. He just turned back to the woman and presumably rattled off their order in rapid-fire Italian that he could barely catch. They continued their conversation from where they left off, and whatever it was that Philippines was saying, it made the woman blush like a maiden. Suddenly, for a reason that he refused to name, he felt consumed by irritation.

His stony silence continued until the woman had given them their pizza, warm and each slice served in a small tray, and bid them goodbye. He’d barely given them a glance until they sat down on a bench just outside the pizzeria.

“So, what do you think?” Philippines asked him. He seemed more excited than he was. “This is your first, right?”

“I’ve eaten pizza before,” he grumbled.

“But this is different,” the other nation insisted. “This is pizza al taglio, Rome’s specialty! Come on, just start eating it already. I could hear your stomach grumbling since we left the meeting room.”

Indonesia stared at the pizza dubiously, ignoring how quickly Philippines was eating his own slice just beside him, before giving it a bite.

It was . . . good.

Not that he was going to tell the other nation that. He couldn’t bear the smug smirk that would be thrown his way.

Instead, he said, “It’s folded. It’s like a sandwich.”

“Boo,” Philippines stuck his tongue out at him. “If you must know, it’s called panino and it’s a lot better than eating it unfolded.”

“Unfolded,” Indonesia repeated. “You mean, like normal?”

Philippines gasped overdramatically. “I can’t believe you just said that! No, pizza al taglio is supposed to be eaten panino! Just ask Romano, he’ll say it's the best.”

“And I imagine if you ask Italy Veneziano, he’d say the opposite.” He took another bite, careful not to let any of the grease on his hands, and hummed appreciatively. “I think I ordered something different though.”

Philippines just laughed, a bit sheepishly. "I . . . may have taken the liberty of changing your order. The one you pointed at back there had pork sausage slices on it, so I got you something more halal. That one has arugula and mozzarella, and I know you like things a bit spicy, so I asked the lady to give you something more piccante. This slice has pepper flakes baked in the dough."

"Oh," he blinked, a bit stunned. Indonesia felt warmer than the pizza in his hands. "Terima kasih."

"Hey, as long as you're here with me, ako bahala sa'yo." Philippines stood up and grinned at him, eyes bright and his half-eaten pizza in his hand. "You know, the best thing about pizza panino is that you can eat them while we're on the go! How about we walk around the city, and I'll take you out on a real date?"

------

This was a mistake.

He and Philippines have never really hung out together much; either they only met for formal occasions or they were always joined by at least one other ASEAN member, so the chances they had to be alone were usually few and far in between. If he was being honest, it was probably better for his heart that way.

Still, he probably should've known better than to let Philippines take charge, because his definition of walking around and the other nation's idea of walking around were vastly different things. For one, he'd definitely rather be driving rather than walking anyway. It didn't help that he was still stuck in his stuffy formal suit and dress shoes, while Philippines was both comfy and stylish in his boots, jeans, and a fashionable overcoat. And though he preferred to get to his destinations as quickly and efficiently as possible, Philippines loved making stops at every little statue or shop that interested him. What's worse is that he couldn't just leave the other nation behind — between the two of them, Philippines was the only one who actually knew how to speak Italian and knew how to get around the city. His only choices were to suffer alone in a foreign land or to slowly murder his feet following Philippines around, and just this once, he'd rather swallow his pride.

"If only my motorcycle was here . . ." Indonesia sighed. "How long are you going to take?"

"Just a bit longer!" He heard Philippines shout from the back of the souvenir shop. "My neighbors would never forgive me if I didn't get them anything, you know!"

He was idly inspecting a small plastic replica of the Coliseum when the other nation emerged a few minutes later, proudly carrying about a dozen silver keychains in his hands. Indonesia couldn't stop himself from grimacing at them; in rupiahs, that was probably the cost of a plane ticket.

"You aren't going to buy anything?" Philippines said. He was fiddling around his pockets for spare coins. He seemed to have forgotten that his wallet was probably in the small leather bag he was carrying, and Indonesia didn't feel like telling him.

"Pass," he said. "I'll wait outside, if you don't mind."

Philippines shrugged, turning back to the cashier. "Suit yourself."

As soon as he stepped out into the cobblestone streets, he immediately felt restless for a smoke. The architecture, the weather, the people . . . it all just reminded him how far away from home he was. It was autumn in Italy, colder than it would ever get at his house, and with a sharp pang of his heart he realized how much he missed everyone.

He started worrying about whether Singapore had gotten enough sleep last night, because often the young nation would look at data until the sun rose, looking for where he could make himself stronger. And Malaysia got dehydrated too easily for someone with his water resources, so he always had to remind him about refilling his water dispensers every once and a while. Brunei had always been quiet, but he'd been too reclusive than was healthy these days; and even though Timor-Leste couldn't face him sometimes, he still hoped she was doing alright. He trusted Thailand and Vietnam could handle everything over at the mainland, but he couldn't help but be concerned about them anyway.

Then there was the nation he was with right now.

All of a sudden, he felt a warm breath on his neck and a whispered: "You're scaring the other tourists, mahal."

Indonesia barely held back a scream, furiously turning to face a mirthful Philippines that was clearly having the time of his life teasing him. "Would you stop scaring me like that? And don't call me mahal!"

Philippines just waved him off with a laugh. "Please, that was barely a scare. And you deserve it! I thought the way you kept staring at my bag was weird, but you meant to tell me my money was in it, right? Silly Indonesia, I can't know things if you don't actually say it."

"Don't blame me for your denseness," he shot back. "Besides, your idea of a date must be really sloppy if all you do is take me to tourist shops. Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"Are you saying you wanted something more romantic? Oh Indonesia, how bold of you!" Philippines looked at him slyly.

He was suddenly reminded of how difficult it could be to talk to Philippines sometimes. "I just thought you'd take me to actual places, like the Coliseum. Or maybe a castle, I don't know."

They walked together in amiable silence towards a nearby bus stop. He almost cried in relief when they finally sat down after what felt like hours of walking. Maybe Indonesia was just feeling his age, but he was not nearly as full of energy as the nation beside him.

"I know you've been to the Coliseum before, so taking you there isn't nearly as exciting," said Philippines, absentmindedly scrolling on his phone. "Just so you know."

"Everything always has to be exciting for you," said Indonesia, with a huff.

The other nation winked at him. "What can I say? I love a little thrill."

He couldn't help but be amused at that. Whether it was thrill rides or thriller horror movies, Philippines was always raring to go. Still, though he was grateful, he was starting to feel a bit guilty about all the trouble he put the other nation through. He knew Philippines could be impulsive, but he didn't think he was the kind of person to drop everything and fly to Europe just to rescue him from another boring meeting. "I've been meaning to ask, but how did you end up in Italy anyway? I'd hate to think that you spent so much money just to go here."

"Don't worry! I didn't come to Europe for you," Philippines grinned brightly. "You're just a stop on the destination. I'm actually headed to Munich."

Ah. For some reason, that only made Indonesia feel worse.

"See, when I'm in Europe, I like to start by visiting the Vatican," the other nation continued. "Then Germany said that he had a meeting in Rome too, so we were planning to catch the train together. Didn't you notice that he was rushing to end your meetings as quickly as possible? It's Oktoberfest, you know."

Indonesia nodded slowly. "I guess September does end next week . . . ?"

"Dios mio," Philippines laughed. "I mean the beer festival, not the month. I'd invite you to join us but I know you don't drink."

"Even if I did, I don't think I could keep up with you and Germany," he admitted, which made the other nation's eyes twinkle with pride. "That still doesn't explain why you decided to crash the meeting."

"That's just because you weren't checking WhatsApp, which I'm grateful for." Philippines handed him his phone, which was opened to the group conversation they had with the rest of the ASEAN nations. "Here, I bet you left your phone at the hotel or something."

He did, but that was beside the point. Indonesia took the phone.

The first thing he saw was a selfie of Philippines at the airplane, snuggled up under the airline's provided blanket. Just boarded from Dubai! Be arriving at Fiumicino by morning, anything you guys want?

Abang is in Rome too, isn't he? Malaysia had asked. In that case, the both of you should bring back gifts! I need the best cheese for my sea cucumbers. Also, remember the keychains.

Singapore had sent one of his custom stickers. The merlion was sticking its tongue out.

Stop being so mean to him, or else he'll end up crying to me again, Thailand replied.

Not my problem he's a crybaby, Singapore said. Then he sent another merlion sticker.

Vietnam sent a laughing emoji, and then: You should visit Indo while you're there. You know how sad he gets when he has to go abroad alone.

Malaysia sent a GIF of a crying scene from some old movie.

Eh? But if I'm going to visit him, I want it to be a surprise! Philippines had whined. If he goes online soon, he'll already know. No fun in that.

It should be okay. He's probably asleep now anyway. And he doesn't check his phone during meetings, unlike you, Thailand pointed out.

It will be good for him to see a friendly face, Vietnam added.

Take care of him lah, Singapore had said. Make sure he enjoys himself this time.

PIRI WAIT I HAVE A GREAT IDEA, chatted Malaysia. I'll DM you just in case, so abang can't find out. He'll love it, trust me!

Oh no, said Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore in separate, individual messages, to which Malaysia simply replied with another GIF. Brunei even mustered the energy to send a worried-looking emoji.

The last message, sent earlier this afternoon, was a selfie of Philippines with a cheeky grin. He was standing just outside the meeting room, and he had sent it with the caption: He won't know what hit him! <3

Indonesia sat there in stunned silence for a few minutes, until he was nudged gently.

"Come on, the bus is here," Philippines stood, putting his hands on his hips. Then he frowned at him. "Hey, Indonesia, is there anything wrong? You look a bit shaken."

"No, everything's fine, I just," he stammered. There was such a powerful feeling in his heart that he didn't have the capacity to explain. "Um, I don't have my phone with me, so. Please thank everyone for keeping me in their thoughts. Tell them I'm doing my best to make all of you proud."

The other nation stared at him for a moment, then smiled.

If Indonesia let a few tears drop while they were on the bus, Philippines was kind enough not to say a word.

-----

Their stop was on top of a hill. There was an impressively large monument of a man on a horse, but Philippines dragged him to the nearby café as soon as they got off the bus, and Indonesia realized that he was probably better off with a nice snack than looking at some old statue anyway. To be fair, he had been waiting for dessert all day long, and the crepes were warm and delicious and more than enough to satisfy his sweet tooth. He finished his in record time, and bought another one right after.

"Ah, there's that smile," Philippines teased, once Indonesia had returned to their spot. "I was wondering where it went."

He was too engrossed with his enjoying his food to respond, but he motioned go on.

"It's just—I've seen you with tourists, you know." Philippines delicately sipped on his drink, slow and careful like an old cat. "Remember when we had that ASEAN hang-out at Bali? The restaurant near our hotel was full of foreign customers, and the staff was overwhelmed, so you decided to help the staff serve tables and entertain the guests. You seemed really friendly there."

"You knew about that?" Indonesia flushed with embarrassment. He thought he managed to sneak out successfully; it was at the point that Vietnam and Laos got crazy drunk, after all. "Well, it's very different dealing with foreigners at my home and actually being in a foreign place."

Philippines hummed contemplatively. "I think I get it. You feel more in control when it's them coming to you, rather than the other way around."

"Yeah, I suppose so." He crumpled the wrapping paper in his hands. "It's different for you though, right? I think you're more used to foreigners than I am."

The other nation laughed nervously. "I'm not sure Boracay and El Nido can even compare—"

"I'm not talking about tourists."

He knew, of course, that Philippines met with many nations as part of his duties, but he had always taken to this role so naturally that Indonesia could only assume that his history had given him a leg up. Spain was stricter on imposing his culture on the other nation than Netherlands ever was with him, or England with Malaysia and Singapore. America was just as obnoxiously stubborn when he colonized him right after. And although he never forgot his roots as part of Southeast Asia, Philippines also kept much less of his pre-colonial culture and history than the rest of them. Anything before Spain took him away was hazy and, as far as his memory was concerned, he had spent his youth growing up with the Americas and Europe — and with his mannerisms and how close he was with the Western nations, he certainly acted like it.

When Philippines arrived at the meeting earlier, everyone was accepting him with open arms. Spain had fondly ruffled his hair and America invited him to a party at his place next week. France had cooed adoringly at how much he had grown since his youth and England reminded him that he was due to visit London's hospitals in the next month. Germany's cheeks were pink as he asked how he was doing and Italy immediately began talking his ear off about food recipes and restaurants. Mexico began crying with joy at the sight of him, while Argentina and Brazil embraced him like family. It was a miracle that the both of them were able to leave as quickly as they did; he was sure that they'd make Philippines stay for at least another hour, if they could.

Meanwhile, Indonesia's own presence was always forgotten. The only time he was talked to the entire meeting was when Australia made an awkward half-joke, half-apology about the spying issue again.

"I guess it's easier for me to relate to them," Philippines admitted, a melancholy look in his eyes. He was looking down at his still half-eaten crepe with an oddly bittersweet smile on his lips; the sun, only just beginning to set, cast a dark shadow on his face. "And for them to relate to me. But I would be lying if I said I don't feel out of place with them too, sometimes. Despite everything, we're still very different. Besides, all the cultural similarities in the world can't make up for the fact that I'm so far away from them all. There just isn't enough opportunity for me to talk to them as much as they can talk to each other."

Indonesia didn't know what to say to that. He settled for a neutral, "I'm sorry I brought it up."

The other nation waved it off. "I'll forgive you if you take a selfie with me later."

He didn't have any choice but to accept.

As he waited for Philippines to finish his food, Indonesia took the time to observe the other people around. Many of them were trying to take a picture with the huge statue, but there were also families walking around with their happily enthusiastic children. If he looked farther, he could see busts of what he assumed were various historical figures lining the pathways. Going by the number of cars that had been parked just across them, it seemed like the park was of good interest for both tourists and locals alike. There were enough people to suggest that the place was well-loved, but there were nowhere near the crowds he'd see when he passed by the other popular tourist destinations. The statue of the man with a horse was large and grand, but he didn't recognize it; he was sure that, whatever this place was, it wasn't featured on the usual travel brochures.

"I'm curious," he said slowly, "as to why you're so familiar with Rome."

Philippines gave him a wry twitch of the lips, sitting his chin on the palm of his hands. "I thought we were done talking about me and the West?"

"This is different," he defended. "I'm just asking why you know about this place. Italy never took us anywhere like this for the G20 formalities."

"Well, of course he wouldn't," he said, idly swirling his drink around. "Just think: if you have a nice and peaceful park that's meant more for relaxation and you also have more famous and historically significant places available, then you would rather take your visiting diplomats to the latter, right? So Italy takes you to Palatino and Campidoglio instead of here. If it were you hosting the meeting, you'd take them to Monas instead of Taman Surapati."

Indonesia thought about that for a moment, but no matter how much he wanted to argue, he was forced to accept that Philippines was right. Then he frowned. "But you just take everyone to Luneta."

The other nation winked. "It's to my benefit that Luneta just happens to be both historical, relaxing, and beautiful. Makes my life a lot easier."

"You're not actually answering my question," he pointed out.

Philippines simply hummed, leaning back on his chair. His hair was blowing in the cold autumn breeze. "There's not much to say. I've had to visit a lot recently, since Italy is full of my migrant workers, more so than anywhere else in Europe. But when we were younger, Romano used to take me here often. The things he'd say — well, now that I think about it, I think you could relate."

He almost choked on his spit. Indonesia had never been in much contact with Romano, especially as his younger brother was always the one who represented Italy in their meetings, but he couldn't see any similarity between him and that foul-mouthed, angry brat. At the very least, he liked to think he was much more friendly and polite.

Uncharacteristically, the other nation didn't take the opportunity to laugh at him this time. Instead there was only a faraway look on his face, pensive as he stared out into somewhere unknown.

After a moment, Philippines finally said: "Do you still remember being with your old empires?"

Indonesia stilled.

"I know I don't, but you were old enough to remember living with the other maritime nations together as Nusantara," the other nation continued. "There was a glory that you could remember living before Portugal and Netherlands came to your shores. You weren't Majapahit, but you carried his legacy and his blood; just like you carried Srivijaya's.

"Romano lived at Spain's like I did, you know. He liked me for some reason, probably because I used to get sick all the time and couldn't really annoy him as much as the others. One day, he took me to Rome for the first time. I was so amazed at finally seeing all the old ruins I used to read about in books, and then when I looked back at him, he was crying. He told me it was like he could never escape the shadow of his grandfather."

Philippines' smile was terribly bittersweet. "I remember thinking that, for the first time, I was grateful I couldn't remember who I was before Spain came. And ever since I met you again, I kept wondering if you ever felt like Romano did. Maybe you had all that burden on you and you never told us. Maybe you felt lonely too."

He remembered.

Back when all of them were just children, back when he had never seen fair skin except for when he traded with the Eastern Asian nations up north. China and India, of course, were always present. Vietnam was older, and despite all the fighting she did, it never looked like she was ever frazzled by it. Myanmar was the same, but because he was so distant and preoccupied with his own kingdoms, Indonesia saw him the least. He would see Khmer more often when she had to pick up her sons, cheerful Thailand, friendly Laos, and belligerent Cambodia, from whenever they decided to come by. In their household, Malaysia was already energetic, but he was always doubly so whenever Singapore was around; those were the days that the smaller nation still admired his brother. Timor Leste was still sweet and shy, hiding behind him at every hint of danger. Brunei, quiet as ever, spent his time diligently picking flowers for a young Philippines across the sea. Steady, dependable Majapahit had welcomed them all with a smile, and taught him to do the same.

Indonesia grew up without ever really knowing what loneliness was. Even after Majapahit had already faded away, Netherlands had visited him much more often than was necessary or appropriate for a normal colonial relationship. And though he was separated from the rest of them, his siblings were never too far from him either.

So he had to take care of them too, when he could. He had to, because he was the one who remembered the most about what life was like, before. He had to, because he was the oldest. He had to, because that was what Majapahit taught him. Whether he began to feel more and more weary as the centuries passed by and his own territory expanded didn't matter, because being able to take care of as many people as he could — that was the greatest power any nation could ever have.

Of course he remembered. He never let himself forget.

A gentle nudge from Philippines shook him out of his silence. Softly, he said, "You don't have to answer that if it makes you uncomfortable. Believe it or not, even I know when to back off."

"Sorry, you just caught me off-guard," he said, taking a moment to compose himself. Then Indonesia sighed. "You're not normally so serious. I was completely unprepared."

Philippines pouted. "Is it really all that surprising? I just thought, since you asked me a pretty personal question just now, it's only fair that I do the same to you. Answering that made me feel sad, so you needed to think of something that made you sad too! At least the both of us can feel sad together, instead of just me being sad all on my own."

Indonesia felt his eye twitch. "Your logic is really something."

The other nation just laughed, as if nothing happened at all. Then he stood, his grin wide and his hand reaching out to him, and said, "Come on, it's a complete waste for us to come here if all we're going to do is sit around! You can see all of Rome from Gianicolo, you know."

They watched the sunset from the hill's peak, and seeing the yellows and oranges being reflected in Philippines' purple eyes made for a pretty sight. As the sun shone its last light on the ancient ruins of the Roman Empire, Indonesia felt strangely at peace for the first time since he arrived. Maybe he'd even ask Philippines to properly introduce him to Romano one day.

-----

The Eternal City was beautiful even at night, but Indonesia just felt tired. He could sense that Philippines still wanted to go around with him — he mentioned something about taking him to a turtle fountain? — so they settled for slowly walking down the hill. They chatted about mundane things like food, gaming, and the merits of motorcycles over bikes, and it was unexpectedly nice. For some reason, Indonesia felt as light as air. He still wanted to go home as soon as he could, but he slowly realized that he wasn't all that opposed to just spending time with the other nation either.

"Say, Indonesia," Philippines suddenly said. "Do you know how to get back to your hotel?"

Indonesia took that back. He wanted to go home immediately.

The other nation giggled. "Don't tell me that you don't even remember which hotel you're staying at?"

He quickly turned his head away. He willed himself to look anywhere but the other nation, but he could still feel how Philippines was staring at him.

"Ah! I get it now," Philippines said, delightedly. Indonesia internally cursed himself. "Let me guess. You didn't have any plans of going anywhere but the meeting, the hotel, and the airport, so you thought it was fine if you left your phone behind and if you didn't care to remember your hotel's name. And, you kept falling asleep at the hotel shuttle that takes you to the meetings, so you can't even tell me about the nearby landmarks! My, how careless of you, Indonesia!"

"Why are you so smart," Indonesia grumbled, "for the most stupid of things?"

"I don't hear any denial," Philippines sang. "Well, whatever, that works out for me. Unless you're game for scouring through the dozens of hotels around the city, I guess I have no choice but to take you back to my place, huh?"

He faced Philippines, who was scrolling through his phone again, and said, "You don't have to do that. You can probably just ask Italy which hotel he arranged for me. I can take a taxi."

The other nation hummed. "Going from his Instagram stories, he looks like he's too busy partying with the others. Looks like France even brought out his special wine for the occasion. Hey, would you want to party with them? The bar they went to is just a few stations away by metro."

The last time he went to a G20 party, he and Germany were made to strip so that everyone could stare at their pecs. The expression he made must have been grim, as Philippines immediately backtracked. "I'm going to take that as a no."

Indonesia sighed. "Well, I don't want to disturb Italy and I don't want to waste any money trying to find another hotel. If you're really fine with me staying with you for the night, then I guess I have no problem with it either."

Philippines stopped in his tracks. "Eh? You're not going to make a fuss about it?"

Indonesia tilted his head, quizzically. "And you are?"

For some odd reason, the other nation seemed flustered. He was gripping the strap of his bag tightly and his cheeks were pink. "Well, you know, you're normally so averse to any of my ideas, and you always seem so annoyed with me. I thought, for sure, that you were just going to argue against me again . . ."

"Do you really think so lowly of me?" Indonesia frowned. "I wouldn't have been with you all day if I hated you."

That seemed to perk Philippines back up. He could practically see the sparkles in the other nation's eyes as he faced him and gleefully said, "Ha! You've admitted it! So if you don't hate me, does that mean that you actually like me, Indonesia?"

He couldn't hold back a smirk. "Don't get too ahead of yourself."

Philippines just laughed, cheery and bright.

When they stepped down from the bus, Indonesia was surprised to be faced with a block full of old apartment buildings rather than a fancy hotel. Evidently, the other nation was familiar to the residents; one old lady had grasped him firmly by the hand with a gummy smile as she engaged them in small talk. Philippines then took him to the second building on the right and led him through a few flights of stairs to a dark, wooden door.

The apartment was small but clean. Two bedrooms and a bathroom, then some communal space with a worn sofa and a dated television. There was a kitchen with a countertop, rice cooker unplugged, and more than a few succulents sitting by the window. The other nation's usual travel bag was still on the floor, a duffel bag easily recognizable by the numerous flag patches stitched by the sides as a memento for all the countries he had visited. A small corner was developed into a personal home altar, figures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary surrounded by flowers and golden crosses. Even though it was emptier than Philippines' own home back in Manila, it was still undeniably his in its coziness and warmth. All in all, it was modest and good; certainly more than what Indonesia expected for an apartment that the other nation probably only visited a few times a year.

"It's cute. It fits you," he said politely.

"Aw, you think I'm cute," Philippines teased. He was hanging his overcoat on the coat rack, which was a bit too tall for him — a sliver of skin showed only for a moment before being covered again by his turtleneck top. Indonesia pretended he didn't see. "Please go ahead and sit down, make yourself comfortable. Oh, won’t you take off your suit and place it somewhere? The good thing about Europe is that it’s a lot cooler here, so you can still wear it tomorrow without worrying about sweat and stuff."

“I knew that, at least.” He placed his suit on a nearby chair and sat down on the sofa. Philippines set a saucer full of biscuits at the table and gave him a glass of water, which he gratefully drank. As the other nation sat down beside him, Indonesia couldn’t help but ask, “Is this place really yours?”

“My government didn’t buy it for me like all our other properties, if that’s what you’re asking,” Philippines said, reaching out for the biscuits. There was an audible crunch as he bit into one of them. “One of the Filipinos living here bought it for her son, but he decided to move in with his girlfriend. She thought it would be a waste of money to abandon it, so she gave it to me. When I’m not here, it gets rented as an Airbnb. We share the profits. It’s actually pretty good passive income, you know.”

Indonesia gave him a wry smile. “You always find an opportunity to make money, somehow. I’d say it’s America’s influence, but I know for a fact you’ve been this way since we were kids.”

"My skill is all mine, thank you very much," the other nation boasted, leaning back into the sofa with a self-assured smirk. “I don't suppose there's anything else you remember about me from those days? I assure you, if you thought I inherited my charm from Spain, you'd be dead wrong.”

Your hair used to be so long, he immediately thought. He had taken care of it meticulously, washing it with several oils so it was always smooth and wonderfully scented. Gold adorned almost every inch of his body, painstakingly crafted with the tiniest details, contrasting beautifully with the vibrant textiles used for his clothes. Even as a child, Philippines was already used to traveling often — Tondo and Seludong would take him up north, Butuan and Sulu down south, Sugbu and Panay at the center, and a dozen more kingdoms in between. He loved his boats the most, and Majapahit would patiently humor him by letting the younger nation talk his ear off about the latest developments his different kingdoms had with their boatmaking.

Not that he had ever tried to listen in, or attempted to make prolonged conversation with the other nation. At the time, Indonesia was too busy trying to handle Malaysia and Singapore’s chaos to pay much attention to anyone else. He hadn’t gotten to know Philippines all that well until they met again centuries later; older and more jaded, irrevocably shaped by the circumstances their colonizers had placed them in.

Sometimes he wondered what life would have been like if things had turned out differently. But he didn’t have the energy to waste his time despairing over it all again, not when Philippines was still looking at him so expectantly.

“Your eyes haven’t changed,” Indonesia decided to say. “And as for everything else I remember, there’s nothing I haven’t already told you about before.”

Philippines smiled at him fondly, “You’re as terribly succinct as ever.”

Indonesia smiled back, “And as always, you’re just as annoyingly persistent.”

For a long moment, they just sat there on the sofa in silence — easy and comfortable and bathed in the apartment’s warm, golden light. The windows were open, and guitar music from the neighbors was softly permeating the room with its slow, relaxed melody. It was during these kinds of moments that Indonesia's heart felt full; that all he's been through in the past few centuries were worth it, if it meant he could enjoy more days like this. The mood was right and he felt good; perhaps if he was braver, he would have had the confidence to make the most out of it.

Eventually, the moment passed, and the other nation stood. "It's so late already! I should probably get to preparing our dinner. You can freshen up before we eat, if you want."

"Right," Indonesia said, hastily standing up as well. "Ah, may I borrow your phone? I just need to check on something."

Philippines didn't really answer, but he heartily belted out the lyrics to some old love song as he brought out a pot and a chopping board from the kitchen cabinets, so he took it as a yes. Ignoring how the photo for the lock screen looked suspiciously like the sunrise at Bali, he put in the PIN code — 8862, how sentimental of him — and was immediately bombarded by the number of notifications he got. There were messages from everywhere: SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram . . . it's really no wonder that Philippines was named both the texting and social media capital of the world. Indonesia had no interest in intruding on the other nation's privacy though. As he ducked into the bathroom to wash his face, hands, and feet, he did a quick Google search for sholat times rome.

If he was home, he wouldn't have needed to Google such a thing; the mosques would have already blared adzan through the loudspeakers, reminding everyone in close vicinity that it was time for prayer. His overseas workers would sometimes complain to him about how difficult it could be to pray once they were abroad, that strangers would sometimes gawk at them in public or their employers wouldn't give them the time or space to do it properly in the office. Indonesia often had nothing to offer them but his sympathies. Tonight, he decided, he would pray for them.

"Are you going to pray?" Philippines called out. He was placing a tray in the oven. "Head to the back, go in the room on the right. It should be peaceful there."

"Thank you," he said, and when he opened the door, he was greeted with a welcome surprise.

Though the room was otherwise plain, a vibrantly orange prayer mat stood out — Malaysia's picking, no doubt. Indonesia raised his hands facing kiblat, slow and reverent, and made the mental note to thank his brother later. Thanks to this, he felt significantly less alone.

-----

Philippines made a quick sign of the cross as he sat down on the table. He grinned, "Let's eat!"

It was a modest meal: baked fish with lemons, Filipino-style chop suey, white rice, and a bowl of what was unmistakably Indomie Mi Goreng. While Philippines had poured out a glass of white wine for himself, Indonesia had a glass of orange juice. The other nation was uncharacteristically quiet throughout the meal, though Indonesia chalked that up to hunger; Philippines ate quickly and ravenously, shoving spoonfuls of rice and noodles into his mouth without pausing for so much as a single breath. Indonesia felt tired just watching him.

Once they were finished, Philippines patted his stomach with a satisfied sigh. "Ah, that's the good stuff."

"My compliments to the chef," Indonesia said, which made the other nation giggle. "Though I have to say, I would have cooked it differently."

"I know, but then it'd take longer and I was already so hungry — I'd even go as far to say that I was absolutely famished." Philippines groaned, slumping in his seat. "I mean, I know we could've just eaten at some trattoria down the road, but I needed rice. And I wasn't going to settle for some dumb risotto, no matter how delicious it would be. You get me, don't you?"

"It isn't a full meal without rice," Indonesia agreed.

The other nation nodded seriously. "I always felt like something was missing while I was growing up. It wasn't until I was allowed to go back to Manila that I figured out that it was rice. I haven't looked back since."

Indonesia had always known that Philippines had lived in Europe during the centuries that he was a Spanish colony, but hadn't thought any deeper about the smaller implications that had on him. Some things were obvious — his devout Catholicism for one, and the conspicuously Hispanic human name he used in his daily life — but little things like this caught him off-guard. He said, "I'm sincerely very sorry to hear that."

Philippines did nothing but take a long sip of his wine. "No need to pity me so much, it's in the past now. I don't really think about it."

"I'm not pitying you," he muttered, though he wasn't able to look Philippines in the eyes as he said it. Then, louder: "I'm just realizing that there's still so much I don't know about you. I'm your neighbor, and I don't even know what your childhood was like."

Philippines smiled at him, but it was strained. His face was saying I don't want to talk about it even as he softly confessed, "I don't know all about your history either, Indonesia. Not enough. The sentiment goes both ways. And as for my time with Spain . . . well, what is there to say, really? He said he would take care of me, and he didn't. Not in the same way he took care of the others. Whether that's a blessing or a curse, I don't think I'll ever really know. I just know that it's over now, and I'm grateful.

"I bet your experience was different though." The gaze the other nation leveled on him was nothing less than dangerously curious. His purple eyes were filled with strong contempt, but contempt for what, Indonesia didn't know. "Like I said, I don't know the specifics. But I've been told your relationship with Netherlands was something else entirely."

"He and I weren't—" he stammered, more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything else.

But the way Philippines was looking at him made him stop. He took a deep breath and calmed himself; the other nation deserved something more honest than that.

He still remembered how tightly Netherlands had gripped at his arm, decades and decades ago, his scarf flapping helplessly in the wind. Despite all the things that had gone unsaid between them and the years that they spent together, the blond was still unbearably silent. He used to admire that stoic demeanor; tried to emulate it when he was feeling overwhelmed, always so determined not to embarrass himself or the empire. Back when Netherlands had declared him the emerald of the equator, the crown jewel of his power as a nation . . . it had taken all he had to choke back his pride. It had taken all he had to keep his secret, that budding idea that he was meant to be more than just somebody else's precious colony.

Indië, Netherlands had pleaded, and suddenly the great Dutch Empire had seemed so small.

"It was different," he finally said. "But I don't think it was any better, in the end."

With a bittersweet smile, Philippines simply raised a toast. "To tomorrow."

In answer, Indonesia downed the rest of his orange juice in one go. This time, Philippines' laugh was more genuine, and he couldn't help but stare.

He had noticed this before, of course, but now — with the other nation elegantly sitting across him, his purple eyes glittering bright, and the wine glass so tantalizingly close to his lips — Indonesia was stricken by how right at home the other nation looked. Even Singapore, who probably had the most business with the Western countries out of them all, was more guarded whenever he stepped foot on European soil. Yet Philippines wasn't out of place here in the same way that Indonesia felt, and had instead carried the same easygoing attitude he had during their own ASEAN meetings. As much as the other nation's energy and eccentricities irked him sometimes, he also found himself in awe of him as well.

The others were right. If Philippines hadn't come, he would've spent all his free time wallowing around in his hotel room just feeling sorry for himself. But instead, he was enjoying himself more than he thought he would. Hesitant as he was to admit it, he almost found himself wanting to stay in Rome a little bit longer, if it meant the both of them could spend more time together.

"You're not leaving for Munich anytime soon, are you?" Indonesia said, daring to be hopeful.

Philippines rested his cheek on his hand. "If I remember right, the tickets Prussia bought for us were for tomorrow morning? He gets way too excited about Oktoberfest, you know."

Why do I even try to be happy, Indonesia thought darkly.

"Ah, don't look so glum! You have me all to yourself for the rest of the night," Philippines winked. "But I have to warn you, Pien is having his precious beauty sleep in my bedroom, so if you have any special requests we're going to have to be very quiet about it."

"Nothing like that," Indonesia quickly said, his face hot. "I just thought, I might as well treat you to somewhere nice. As a thank you for, uh, taking care of me today. But my flight back home is tomorrow night, and you're catching the morning train with Germany, and now I'm starting to think that we don't exactly have the time . . ."

The other nation waved it off. "We're nations, mahal. We have all the time in the world. Besides, we'll be meeting again for the APEC conference coming up in November, right? I don't mind waiting until then."

"But I do," he grumbled. "And again, don't call me mahal."

Philippines finished his drink and set his glass delicately on the table. "You can promise me that you'll let me sing half the songs when we go karaoke with the others. Or that you'll pay for my food the next time we have a group dinner. Oh! When Thailand makes a mean comment to me in the next meeting, you have to defend me. Say something like Filipino BL series are better than Thai BL series, that'll really get him going."

He was suddenly reminded of how frivolous the other nation could be sometimes. Either that, or worryingly low-maintenance. Indonesia built up the courage and forced out, "I'd rather make it up to you when the two of us are alone."

This time, it was Philippines who was staring. Flustered, Indonesia rambled on. "I just mean—you know, you spent all this time with me even though you didn't have to. So it's only right that I spend more time with you too, just the both of us. It's not good enough if the others are there too."

Philippines offered, "We could watch a movie before we sleep?"

"I'll probably just pass out in the middle."

"Maybe you can make breakfast for us tomorrow?"

"You gave me snacks, dinner, and a place to sleep, there's no way just a breakfast is fair."

"Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to spend a night over at your place?"

"It's not about you, not really. It's just, I want to do something for you. Something you want."

"I've been telling you what I want, but you keep saying it's not good enough, I don't understand—"

"It needs to be special, okay? Is it so bad that I want to do something nice for you—"

"It's not bad, I just don't get why you're being so picky about it. Like, isn't doing me a favor enough for you? Isn't this just about paying me back? What is it that you want to do with me exactly?"

"No," Indonesia stressed, feeling like he was about to lose his mind. "I want—"

He paused.

What did he want, exactly?

Philippines just smiled at him, patient and knowing and just the slightest bit sad, and stood. He was carrying his plate, and as he passed by Indonesia he gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder. When Indonesia looked up to face him, the other nation's eyes were soft. "I know I've said this to you before, but I'll say it again. I can't know things if you don't actually say it. Alright?"

Then he walked away to the kitchen sink, absentmindedly humming to himself, leaving Indonesia all alone at the table. The words I think I want you died on his lips.

-----

Later, after reflecting during his night bath, Indonesia found himself in a panic.

He wasn't a complete idiot. He's known for a while that Philippines was the only one who could fluster him like no other, but he often chalked that up to the other nation's cheeky character rather than anything else. His attraction to Philippines wasn't surprising either; it was no secret that he liked looking pretty, and to be honest, Indonesia has had worse crushes. But he was also steadily coming to the conclusion that his feelings went deeper than mere infatuation, and he couldn't help but wonder: why fall for the other nation in particular?

Philippines was an ally, someone he had founded and managed ASEAN with in a show of regional strength. Philippines was a friend, someone he had spent countless days with over the years along with all the other people he treasured in his life. Philippines was a stranger, someone who still felt so foreign to him despite everything. He could trace out the curve of his smile in an instant, and at the same time, he didn't have the faintest idea what the other nation was doing in the 1920s. He knew that watching a cheesy romcom was the surest way of brightening up his day, but not the exact nature of what Spain had done to him as a colony. And, for the life of him, he still didn’t understand the slightest bit of how verb conjugation in Tagalog worked — which felt especially embarrassing the day he found out that Philippines had been putting in the effort to learn both Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu so he could communicate with the rest of the maritime nations better. He'd understand his own heart easier if he fell for Malaysia or even Netherlands — people who he had shared a deep and culturally signifcant history with in his extremely long life as a nation — but Philippines was, to put it sadly, not like that to him.

And yet, as Indonesia stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, all he could think about was how much happier he looked now compared to his bleak and boring morning.

He changed into the clothes that Philippines had laid out for him on the bed and had a brief thought of just going to sleep for the night. Pramoedya, if he were still alive, would chide him for such cowardice. Indonesia ended up at the other nation's door, nervously trying to build up the courage to knock. But Philippines must have heard his footsteps, as he called out: "I know you're out there! Just come in!"

Just like him, Philippines had already bathed and changed to more casual sleepwear; he was wearing a loose sweater and shorts that showed off his legs. He was sitting upright on his bed, looking amused at whatever he was staring at on his phone screen, and his face broke out into a warm smile when he saw Indonesia hesitantly trudge inside his bedroom. Pien was already sound asleep in a little makeshift bed on the desk.

"Sit here," said Philippines, while he scooted over to give him space. Indonesia gave him a look. "I'm being serious. Just move your arms a bit and—yeah, that's it. Aren't we cozy?"

Now they were both sitting on the bed, with Philippines between his legs and his arms around Philippines' waist. Cozy was certainly a word for it.

"Now you're just teasing me," Indonesia grumbled, but he didn't move away either.

"Me? Tease you?" Philippines fluttered his eyelashes at him. "Why, I'm just a poor tropical nation made to suffer through the unbearably cold Autumn months in the Northern Hemisphere! I'm severely in need of some aid and assistance, but I'm sure you and all your hundred active volcanoes can keep me warm for tonight."

"You're horrible, you know that?" he said, though he was unable to keep the laughter out of his voice. Philippines laughed with him, giddy and gleeful. "You don't know how anxious I was before this. It's not fair that you can just make all that go away so easily."

Philippines leaned back on his chest, smug as a cat. "Call it a gift. By the way, our neighbors want to know how you're doing. Anything you want to say?"

Now that he was right behind the other nation, he could see that his phone was opened to the ASEAN group chat. It seemed like everyone was spamming the chat with pictures of their pets again. Indonesia rested his chin on Philippines' shoulder and said, "I'm doing just fine. Tell them I mean it this time."

If the other nation was flustered, he betrayed no signs of it. He had now moved on to chatting with the other ex-Spanish colonies; they were all talking in Spanish and Indonesia couldn't understand a thing. "I'll tell them when I'm sure it won't get buried by everything else. But, you know, that's really good to hear. My influence, I hope."

Indonesia buried his face in Philippines' neck as an answer.

"So needy," Philippines murmured, who had put his phone down to pat his head. "Perhaps you really were lonely?"

"Not as lonely as you used to be, I think." At this, Philippines stilled. Indonesia tightened his hold on the other nation's slim waist even further, almost afraid that he would drift away. "About that question you asked, earlier at the cafe . . . I don't feel burdened by how great my old empires were. I've felt the pressure to make them proud, but I've never felt like it was a burden. Their legacy is my life and my connections to all of you, you know? I've certainly never felt like it made me lonely.

"And then there's you, and I know it's not the same for you, because you can't even remember — and that's fine, Singapore doesn't really remember much either. But Malaysia remembers enough for the both of them, and then there's me, and I remember the most, but then there's you, and you don't have that."

Here, Indonesia exhales a shaky breath. "Spain took you, and America took you, and Japan took you, and that's four centuries of you just being gone from me. We're neighbors yet we're so different, to the point where we don't share the same language, the same religion, the same food, the same history . . . and you have friends all over the world and you seem so happy all the time, but I don't think I've ever realized how lonely you must feel."

All Philippines did was sigh. "I told you not to pity me."

"I'm not pitying you," said Indonesia. "I'm just sorry."

All this time, he had been so in awe of how Philippines found it so easy to adjust to Westerners and Western culture when he himself found it so difficult. But now, with the realization that the same ability to connect with others may have also translated to an inability to connect with him and the rest of ASEAN, that same awe felt so bitter. How many times had Philippines stood awkwardly to the side when he spoke to Malaysia and Brunei in his native language? Kept worryingly quiet when they were wistfully reminiscing their pre-colonial pasts? Tried to tell a joke to lighten up the mood during a meeting, but because of differences in culture and history, it just fell flat?

Indonesia was startled out of his thoughts with a painful pinch of his cheek.

"Of course you're going to be sorry if you make me sound so depressing," Philippines pouted at him, annoyed.

He sputtered, "What? I mean, I just thought—"

"Do you take me for an idiot, Indonesia?" He pinched Indonesia harder, which made him yelp. "Don't you think I'd be well aware by now of where I stand with all of you? That after sixty years together, I would've realized that I wasn't as involved in your history as everyone else is in maritime, or everyone else with each other in the mainland?"

With a huff, Philippines let him go. Indonesia tried to soothe the sting of it by putting his hand on his cheek. He almost didn't hear the other nation murmur, "Do I seem that pitiful to you?"

"Not pitiful at all," Indonesia scrambled to reassure. Philippines leaned back on his chest, still looking a bit miffed. "I don't know. I just had this sudden thought that maybe we're just a bad reminder of how much Spain and America took away from you. Maybe you're actually uncomfortable with us."

Maybe you're actually uncomfortable with me, he thought, though he kept that to himself.

Philippines simply stared up at him, eyes bright, and said, "Well, if you only realized it today, then maybe you should've considered that it isn't actually a problem."

"You could just be very good at acting like nothing's wrong," Indonesia pointed out.

"Or you can think about this: maybe there really is nothing wrong in the first place," Philippines said, a wry smile growing on his face. "I founded the association with you, you know. Maybe the rest of you were there because of old ties or whatever, but I joined precisely because I wanted to build new ones. I don't really care if I feel awkward sometimes. I'd certainly find it boring if all of you were exactly like me anyway."

The other nation was so carefree about it, but Indonesia still felt conflicted. He admitted, "Maybe the problem is just that I feel awkward. I have no idea how to approach you as a nation."

"So don't approach me as a nation. Approach me as a friend," Philippines said, not unkindly. To get the point across, he put his hands over Indonesia's in a show of comfort. "You're allowed to act outside the interests of who you represent, you know. We're people too."

Indonesia kept quiet. There had been times when he privately felt like Philippines was his exact opposite — a lively, energetic person that focused more on his human side rather than the nation side, and someone whose duties were considerably more worldly than his own: having to regularly travel to dozens of countries to check on the millions of Filipino citizens that were working abroad. Meanwhile, as such a large and diverse country, Indonesia tried his best to ensure that every single one of the people that lived within his borders felt heard. It was difficult sometimes, but it always felt meaningful to him — his people were his essence, and he couldn't let politics force him to forsake them again. Acting for his personal interests felt as foreign to him as leaving his house sometimes. Not that he never took time for himself; he tried, but a lot of the time he had to be convinced to do so. Sometimes Singapore would invite him for another tour around his house, or Malaysia would drag him into some new restaurant where they would inevitably fight over the food. But more often than not, it would be Philippines pushing him and the other Southeast Asian nations out of their shells and setting up parties, taking them to his fiestas, and prodding and annoying all of them until they would finally agree to ASEAN hang-outs like the one at Bali. Indonesia could admit harboring a deep suspicion for the other nation before, thinking that he was more in line with American interests rather than his own, but over the decades that suspicion had faded. Despite all his efforts to the contrary, he had grown on him, and now Indonesia couldn't imagine his life without him anymore.

He didn't know much about the Philippines as a nation, not much more than he needed to be aware of for the sake of diplomacy and the association. Yet as the years went by and he got to know more and become friends with Philippines the person, he discovered someone who was equal parts obnoxious and endearing, foolhardy and clever, petty and proud and unbelievably kind. And as he looked at him now, there was something in the curve of his smile and the light in his eyes that told him that things would be alright if he took things a step further — something that told him that the other nation had been anticipating this for a long, long time. Heart over head and heart over country, it emboldened him to take the leap.

"I don't want to approach you as a friend either," Indonesia murmured, and because he couldn't help himself, he leaned down and kissed him.

Philippines sighed happily into his mouth as he kissed back, warm and blooming under his touch. Their kiss was relatively chaste — Indonesia had seen the other nation make out with others for a drunk dare with more passion than this — yet he couldn't complain. It was sweet and soft and lasted only for a moment, and more than anything, it was a promise: that they can take things slow, and that they had all the time in the world to get to know each other better.

Their foreheads touched, quiet and tender, and Philippines laughed softly. "It's so ridiculous," he said, his eyes filled with mirth, "that I've been waiting for so long for you to realize your feelings, and when the time finally comes that you do, you managed to confess without really confessing at all. Only you, Indonesia."

"I'm shy," he said dryly, and the other nation burst into laughter. "If you wanted a real confession, you probably could've done so yourself."

"Ah, but there's no fun in that! I like the thrill of being chased, you know," Philippines preened, wagging his finger in mock admonishment. Then, more shyly, he admitted, "Besides, if I made a move on you before you were ready, you might've just pushed me away or feel forced to return my feelings even if you didn't. If I waited, at least I could be sure you wanted me too."

"So all those jokes you made before were supposed to be you holding back? How subtle," Indonesia teased, his eyes crinkling. He held the other nation closer, smothering him with small kisses all over until what little sadness on his face disappeared and was replaced with giggles and brightness. He turned Philippines' head to face him properly and said, "I'm scared that I won't know how to balance my duties and my personal life as well as you do, and I'm scared that we'll be too dissimilar to really work out. But until the day that our differences force us apart, I'd be happy to spend my time with you."

Philippines pulled away from him slightly, an oddly vulnerable look in his eyes. "You're sure you really want something with me? That this isn't too far out of your comfort zone?"

"Oh, it's very out of my comfort zone," Indonesia said. "But recently, I've been learning that maybe it isn't so bad, you know. As long as I'm with you."

"As long as I'm with you," Philippines repeated, with a growing smile. "I like the sound of that."

They continued talking well past midnight, at some points laughing so hard and arguing so loud that poor Pien was startled awake by all the noise. And as the other nation reached out and pulled him under the covers so they could hold each other until the morning, he found himself reaching back. They kissed until their lips were red and they got so tangled up in each other until they couldn't distinguish between their own bodies anymore; despite how differently the day turned out from how his usual trips to Europe went, Indonesia swore that the unfamiliar city never felt so much like coming home until that night.

-----

"Where the hell is my sweater," Philippines groused.

"You threw it on the floor last night, it should be under your bedside drawer." Indonesia kissed his forehead and, keenly aware that he was not a morning person, gave him a cup of his precious coffee. He could tell his efforts were appreciated when Philippines greedily gulped down the scalding liquid. "Selamat pagi, sayang."

The other nation only pouted at him. "Don't call me sayang."

"After all the stupid things you've called me through the years? I'll call you however I like, thank you very much," he shrugged. "Besides, I'm not the one who has to leave in a few hours."

Philippines groaned as he pulled his clothes over himself. "This is so stupid. We finally get together and now we have to be separated like this? I mean, I'm really glad and I like you a lot and all, but I really wish you had a better sense of timing right now."

"I think you'll live." Indonesia hid his smile behind his cup. "I mean, you were the one that said you don't mind waiting until November to see me again."

"You just keep making fun of me," Philippines whined, cuddling up to him. Pien had even jumped up to nuzzle his neck, evidently just as clingy as his owner. "Where's the romance, Indonesia? The sweet nothings in my ear? The poems and songs you surely must've written while you pined for my presence? Am I to despair forever, having only been loved by a phantom version of yourself that will never return?"

"You've been watching too many telenovelas," Indonesia said, quickly setting both of their cups somewhere else before they had any accidents. At this, the other nation gasped dramatically and collapsed across his lap. Despite himself, he started chuckling at how ridiculous Philippines was being — really, how could he not find him so endearing?

Then Philippines suddenly turned serious. He stared up at him, his gaze piercing. "If you don't want me to go, I can just make up dumb some excuse again, you know. Just say the word."

Indonesia humored him. "And why wouldn't I want you to go?"

"Because I can't be there for you if you feel alone again," he muttered, expression tense and his mouth downturned in an angry frown. "I just feel bad that I'm leaving you so soon."

Yesterday, he would've been right to be worried. Indonesia probably would've found some roundabout way to say that he'd much rather for Philippines to stay just until he could see him off at the airport later that evening, if only to stave off that achingly empty feeling of waiting to go home and resenting time for moving so slowly. Philippines would have laughed and teased and inevitably posted about the day's events on his Instagram, to which Indonesia would look increasingly more exhausted with each new update, but he nevertheless would have allowed Indonesia to get away with delaying his plans to make him more comfortable.

But as it was, now Indonesia only remembered the way the other nation's eyes had twinkled in excitement when he mentioned Munich, so it was little trouble for him to simply smooth back Philippines' bangs and lightly say, "Actually, I was planning of sightseeing on my own today."

"Oh?" Philippines looked surprised — and pleased. "You are?"

Indonesia couldn't stop himself from flushing in embarrassment. Really, it had only been a passing thought he had after finishing his morning prayers, but . . . "All of you are always going on about how I can't enjoy myself abroad, so. I figured it was time I gave it a try."

Though Philippines probably knew he was still rather uncertain about it, he smiled anyway. "Well, as long as bring your phone this time, alright? I'm always just a text away if you need it."

"And here I thought you'd say some cheesy line about me never truly being alone since you'll always in my heart," Indonesia said, and Philippines was startled into laughter as he sat back up. "Don't worry. I've survived a long, long time without you by my side. I can take a little longer."

Philippines pecked him on the cheek, sweet and domestic. "Not too long, I hope. I can't wait to see the look on Thailand's face when we walk into November's meeting hand in hand. Maybe I should make a vlog about everyone else's surprised reactions."

"Whatever you like, sayang." Indonesia smiled as he stood, his hand reaching out. He pulled Philippines into a kiss — a deep one this time, slow and sensuous and full of all the things he felt too strongly to properly express in words — that left them both breathing heavily by the time they pulled away. Feeling uncharacteristically suave, he whispered, "Though I would prefer it if, in the short time that you're still here, you keep all your focus on me."

"Always, mahal." Philippines smiled back, eyes as bright as ever. "Always."

-----

Notes:

Title comes from the lyrics of How Deep Is Your Love, but specifically, it's a reference to the Christian Bautista cover. Bautista is a Filipino singer, and his cover was very popular in Indonesia a few years ago.

There are a lot of things I've had to simplify and outright ignore for the sake of story, most egregious being the fact that Indonesia actually wouldn't be the sole Southeast Asian nation in a G20 meeting. The chair of ASEAN is a permanent guest invitee, and since the current chair is the Sultan of Brunei, Brunei would probably in the meeting as well. Alas, Brunei isn't canon yet as of this writing. Sorry, Brunei!

Mahal and sayang are both terms of endearment in Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia respectively, but with a catch! Mahal is a word that also exists in Bahasa Indonesia, but the meaning is "expensive" rather than "love" — in Tagalog you can use the word both ways. Sayang is a word that also exists in Tagalog, but the meaning is "What a waste" or "What a pity" rather than "love" — in Bahasa Indonesia, you can use the word both ways. So essentially, you have Philippines and Indonesia trying to be sweet to each other, but the other interprets it as a weird insult instead. It's really funny and really cute.

More detailed notes and references on my previous Tumblr post here!

[yespolkadotkitty]

I’ll Be by Edwin McCain came on the other day and instantly got me into my Zach feels. Something about it was so him - the mood, the 90s, the flannel. The line “rain falls angry on the tin roof as we lie awake in my bed” in particular sticks with me. If you have time, can I get a little nugget of Zach? Fluff or smut, or fluff with a wee kernel or smut? I love your writing.

Right so as discussed you didn’t ask for a multichapter fic but as I’ve got 4 chapters so far  LET’S DO THIS

So many shoutouts for this so here goes:

THANKYOU @kindablackenedsuperhero for this STUNNING BANNER.

THANKYOU @thestrawberry-thief for US library advice

THANKYOU @heatherbel for the beta and UK library advice

THANKYOU @knittingqueen13 for the encouragement

THANKYOU @pedropascallion  for the library clerk advice!

THANKYOU @disgruntledspacedad and @alienprincesspoop for screaming with me about this fic.

Chapter One

Warnings: Scenes of assault, attempted sexual assault  ~ Words: 1380

Pairing: Zach Wellison x OFC Martha Song

Walk with your keys in your hand and keep a key between each finger.

Watch your shadows and reflections - a split second’s notice is better than none.

If they take you and put you in the trunk, kick out the headlights.

These are all things girls are taught from a young age. Things I knew, almost unconsciously. Things that were smart.

But did knowing these things stop me from taking a shortcut through the park after the sun had set?

No, they did not.

I had my hand in my pocket, around the keys. I did not have headphones on - needed to hear if someone was approaching.

Usually, I did all the safe things at night. Walked in the road if it was appropriate, so someone would have to come out from the pavements and buildings to grab me. Stuck to well lit areas.

But, well, I was tired, and hungry for the Chinese takeout leftovers in my fridge, could already taste the sticky pork ribs in my mind, and I took the lazy, unsafe shortcut.

I’m sure the media would have blamed me for what happened next.

I heard them before I saw them. I turned slightly. Two guys, one wearing a beanie, another with his hood up.

It wasn’t even seven pm, but in January the sun set earlier, and darkness had descended, filling up all the corners that daylight usually illuminated.

I quickened my pace. I’m sure they’re just coming off shift.

“Hey, babe,” one of them called.

I glanced around. No one else in the vicinity, and the park spread flat enough for me to see. A single streetlight ahead beckoned and I headed for it, the bag of books from work on my back slowing me down.

I thought about ditching it, but: books. I value books more than anything. I couldn’t sacrifice them even for my own benefit.

“Not gonna stop and talk?” the other one called.

They’re just cat-callers, nothing to worry about.

It was just shy of seven in the evening - where the fuck was everyone? LA should have been busy, was always bustling, but I had somehow chosen the one time where this section of the popular park was empty.

“Come on baby, spare a little sugar?” the first one called. Their steps got closer. The second one was snickering and I felt the little mouse of fear skitter down my spine.

I clenched my keys tighter. Shouldn’t have taken the shortcut.

The streetlight got closer, and I watched it, saw the first guy’s shadow with a hair’s breadth of notice. I spun as he reached me, the keys poking out between my fingers, but I was scared and all my punch did was piss him off.

“Pretty girl,” he half wheezed as he grabbed for me. “Don’t pretend you don’t want it.”

I struggled. Under the streetlamp I caught a glimpse of the first guy’s face, straggly mousy brown beard, cold eyes. The pit of my stomach fell.

“Let me.” Guy two was at my back, hands on my waist. He smelled of alcohol and something like old food, and bile rose up in my throat. “Loosen up, baby, we only wanna make you feel good.”

I tried to shout, but the noise died on my tongue. Fear had clutched itself around my body and the muscles weren’t responding. My keys fell from my fist.

Help, I thought. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as the first guy slid his hand down my body.

No, no, no.

Then suddenly a rush of adrenaline hit my veins - come on, what would Katniss Everdeen do? - and I shoved my knee up into guy one’s groin. Not as hard as I wanted to, but he cried out, a litany of swear words falling from his lips. I kicked out, but guy two was stronger, and had an arm around my throat before I could move.

“Come on now. Don’t be like that,” he cajoled, his sour breath licking at my cheek.

By then guy one had recovered, his face caught in a snarl, white skin pasty under the streetlight. I felt like I was in a sort of backwards ballet, a dystopian dance where there was no way I could make the right moves.

“Hey, assholes.”

The new voice, deep, with a bit of Texas drawl, made me turn. 

A man, mostly in shadow, a large duffel bag by his feet, wielded what looked like a big section of industrial metal pipe.

Guy two huffed out a laugh. “Oh look, it’s the little soldier boy and he brought a new toy with him.”

“Let her go, man,” the stranger called out, taking a step closer.

Guy one had recovered from my knee to his dick. “Or you’ll do what?” He grabbed for me again, but he was distracted by my would-be rescuer, so I took the opportunity to knee him again, but this time, like I meant it, like my life depended on it.

He buckled, and the release meant I could drive my elbow back into guy two’s kidneys. He was stronger, through, and he tightened his arm around my throat. I grabbed for his wrist, scrabbling, barely noticing the stranger moving out of my sight.

“Duck!” He yelled, and I summoned all my strength to yank my head down.

In a moment, a loud thunk confirmed my suspicions, the sound of metal on flesh and bone, and guy two toppled like a tree.

Breathless, I turned to scoop up my keys, and stared at my knight in - dirty jeans. He was panting, his arms still holding the pipe up.

“You okay?” he asked, and I saw him clearly under the streetlamp, the glow picking out the gold in his brown-sugar hair. A patchy beard, more stubble than anything, hugged his well defined jaw. His eyes were soft, kind, the deep brown of hot cocoa.

“I am thanks to you.”

Below him, guy one writhed on the floor and, feeling too angry to think, I stomped on the part of him closest to me, his hand.

He cried out and I couldn’t have cared less.

“You wanna call the cops?” the stranger asked, but his tone was wary. As if I might have been just as likely to call the law about him as the attackers.

I thought it over. I’d likely be raked over the coals for having the audacity to walk alone at night (as if anytime after sundown could be counted as night) and my attackers would get a wrist slap. If that.

“Nah.” But I stomped on guy one’s wrist again for good measure.

He whined.

“C’mon,” Brown Eyes said. “I’ll walk you to the edge of the park.” He set the pipe on his shoulder and crossed over to the waiting duffle bag. It was the size of his torso. I took in his weathered, unshaven appearance, and wondered if the canvas fabric contained his every worldly possession.

I checked behind me, but the stranger was quick to reassure. “They won’t be back for a couple days.”

“You’ve… seen them before?”

He ducked his head, and in the glow from a nearby streetlamp I saw a faint flush of rose on his cheeks. “I’m... here a lot.”

He’s homeless. But of course I didn’t say it out loud.

We reached the edge of the park. People milled about, some queueing outside a deli popular for its pizza sold by the cheesy, greasy slice.

I didn’t miss the way the stranger’s head jerked up towards the scent of pizza.

How long since he’d eaten?

“Want some pizza?” I asked.

Something unreadable passed over his face. “I’m not a charity case.”

“Oh, but I am?”

His head whipped around. “What?”

“Did you come to my defence just now because you felt sorry for me? Oh look, there’s a woman of colour being attacked, gosh I feel sorry for her-”

“No, of course not, what the-” then he huffed out a laugh. “Touchė.”

“It’s just pizza. And a thank-you. I’m Martha.” I held out a hand.

He looked down at my outstretched palm for a second, as if surprised that I wanted to touch him. Then he shook my hand, his own large, warm, callused. “Zach.”

***********

Tagging: @thegreenkid @reluctantlyresponsibleadult @littlemissthistle @havenforafrazzledmind @myheart-pedro @john-in-the-sky-with-paul @idreamofboobear @rae-gar-targaryen @miulola @abuttoncalledsmalls @buttercup-bee @strangelittlenobody @qseomilk @jazzelsaur @songsformonkeys @mourningbirds1 @pajamasecrets @myoxisbroken @just-the-hiddles @skdubbs @nelba @badassbaker @nelba @f0rever15elf @synystersilenceinblacknwhite @mylittlelonelyappreciation @theravenreads @filthybookworm @aeryntheofficial @toomanystoriessolittletime @lannister-slings-and-arrows (Zach Pit) and @absurdthirst might like this <3

please ask to be added or released from the tags!!

[barnesbabee]

something that has been on my mind for a very long time

tw// mentions of ED/weight

I used to be at a very healthy weight when I was around 16/17. I was doing really well and I was very confident in my body, I was in a nutritionist and I was 165cm around 65kg (143 pounds), practicing volleyball almost daily. This all changed when I went on an erasmus trip (for non-europeans, erasmus is basically a school/uni related exchange project) to Cyprus. Since it was a highschool thing it was only for a week, and not a year like in uni, but that week was destructive and it was, ultimately, where the downhill started. I love Greece and all its wonders but my God do I hate your food (except for souvlaki that shit SLAPS), and for those of you who don't know in cyprus they speak greek and are very influenced by greece I can't remember why don't kill me please. So during that week I was staying in someone's home, and every day we ate out, so it was basically pizza and mcdonalds every day. We took the bus every day, so barely any walking and it was basically one week without exercising, and when that one week was reaching its end, some of the pants I had brought along on the trip didn't even fit me anymore. It didn't help that my host family always left these BANGING chocolates on my bedroom. I gained a lot of weight, and when I came back the nutritionist I used to go to moved to a different city and I stopped being able to go there, so my eating habits also changed for the worst, since I was no longer being accompanied. From there it only went downhill, eventually the pandemic came, and I love cooking, so to make me less bored I would bake a lot: from cookies, to pies, to brownies, and because my parents felt bad about us spending so much time without being with our friends and doing the things we love, they let us eat many treats (also to bring down the tension of the panini going on). Now, after almost 3 years, I'm on a journey to finally bring my weight to a healthy place. It's not easy, it's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do: not drinking in parties and festivals, eating rice and vegetables while my friends eat delicious food at dinner parties, being hungry all the time, not being able to eat pork or cow, and just the overall limited food I can eat, it's horrible, because if there's something that we know how to do in my family, it is to cook. We know how to cook and we love to eat, so it's been incredibly hard. It's not the working out that I dislike, I don't care for it but it's not hard. But the bottom of this is: if I had paid more attention to it, I wouldn't be where I am now. If I had taken care of my health even before the pandemic I wouldn't be in this situation.

And this brings me to the point that I wanted to get to in this conversation: how did that happen, and why did I continue as if there was no issue? The answer is simple, because of the body positivity movement. I saw so many women, that despite their weight were confident and beautiful, and I was smaller than a lot of them so I was like, okay, this isn't bad. But it was, and it is. Because what I realize is that these kinds of people, wether their accounts are dedicated to body positivity or not, are being used as inspiration to other people, and are being used to justify unhealthy lifestyles. And what I'm saying isn't that there shouldn't be body positivity, OF COURSE NOT! It is super important for everyone to understand each body is unique and that everyone should be comfortable, but I think body positivity should be centered around stretch marks, hip dips, small boobs, droopy boobs, etc... not when it comes to weight, because being extremely overweight (or underweight, the problem is the same I just don't have experience in it so I won't talk about it) is something to be concerned about. I once saw this article that Tess Holiday (morbidly obese model) where she said she actually ate healthy meals and exercised, which was bullshit, of course, cause when you do those things you lose weight/mantain a certain weight. Ultimately I think that body positivity is, a lot of the times, distorted in a way that helps people justify unhealthy weights, and I want to be very clear here, the problem is NOT the number on the scale, but what happened until it got there. Wether it was bulimia, starvation, overeating, stress eating, or overall gluttony, that is where the problem is. I justified my 30 inch subway sandwich followed by 2 dunkin donuts with 'Im not even that big, and if those women look so beautiful in their bodies so do I' and I was killing myself while I did it.

This was just a little rant, I've had this in me for the longest time and I just wanted to share it

[teenage-mutant-ninja-freak]

So today I got some news that my cat died, and I have been feeling incredibly miserable all day. Could we get some comforting headcanons with the boys? I completely understand if you don’t want to, it’s alright. Go ahead and delete this if you don’t want to.

I’m so sorry to hear this and I’m so sorry this has taken me so long to get to. I hope the grieving is getting easier for you. I just passed a year since we had to rehome a stray cat that we found living in our garden that I fell in love with so I can kind of understand where you’re coming from. My thoughts are with you xox

if it’s comforting headcannons you want, how about the boys making you dinner? I always think that’s kind of comforting and romantic 

Leo

Leo making you dinner is a whole event

the second you get to the lair he’s offering you wine and little appetisers 

he made them himself, not the wine tho, obvs

you sit on the counters and idly chat to him about your day and she stirs the food and sets timers for everything 

he’ll take breaks from cooking to come over and kiss you and shower you with attention because you deserve it

he even got you a little gift of a beautiful bracelet because he wants you to have something to remember him and this night by

he plays soft, gentle music while you guys eat

and half way through the meal he takes you hand to look into your eyes and tell you just how much he loves you

of course you blush and look away but he tells you to look at him because he means it

Raph

Raph is practically a chef and a baker

like the boy loves to cook and will cook for you at any chance he gets

so this is a full 3 course meal

second you get to the lair he picks you up into a giant bear hug

and puts to in a chair at the table 

always saying sorry if the food isn’t “to your taste” but of course you love it

he’s made your favourite for desert, it’s a huge chocolate fudge cake  

he gets you a little too drunk tbh because he does love to see you tipsy 

he takes little breaks in between courses to dance with you a little- there’s not even music playing he just wants to press you close to him

he shows his love through actions, so remembering the stuff you like to eat is his way of telling you he loves you

Mikey

Oh this boy isn’t a cook but he tries so hard

but there is one thing he knows how to make

and that’s pizza

so he wants you to cook with him, all your fave topping and cheeses and things laid out

maybe a slight food fight, but it’s more him just throwing the odd mushroom at your head and you laughing at him

you both sit on the floor in front of the oven as you wait for it to cook

he holds you hand the entire time and tells you that he adores you

you’re unsure if he’s talking to you or the pizza at first, but when he says he loves your eyes you realise he is talking to you

ice cream for desert all the way

you both can’t be bothered to get up so you sit and eat on the kitchen floor as well

he feeds you some of the pizza with an “Open wide, here comes the pizza plane!”

it’s just very relaxed and cute

Donnie

Oh Donnie likes to get creative in the kitchen 

you saw that “trying to make pulled pork from banana peel” video and he spent  a week tryna perfect it

(it still tasted gross tbh)

he makes burgers with a peanut butter sauce relish thing and it’s surprisingly good

will not let you help, he has to be in full control as this is his experiment 

he plays jazz in the background to set the mood

when you finally sit down to eat he doesn’t even tuck in, he watches you intently to see if you like it or not

“Donnie, hurry up at eat before it get’s cold!”

he likes to reminisce while you guys eat together so he tells you stories about how nervous he was the first time you guys kissed or how he would pep talk himself before asking you out

he says all of this with adorable little giggles and snorts throughout 

he’s so sweet you end up just sitting on his lap and eating the rest of your meal like that

because you both want to be as close to each other as possible