call me tessie

I'm super excited about this SI cover I made for my fic Captain vs Captain, where Shane and Ilya bring their rivalry to reality tv and things get steamy.

Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers Additional Tags: Advent Calendar Series: Part 21 of 4 Minute Window

This is the 4 Minute Window Advent calendar for 2081 AD–no, wait, sorry, it’s only 2022. But yes, here we are! As always, my goal is to write a bit of story every day between the Immaculate Conception and Christmas, but nobody freak out if it’s late or the next day or whatever: life has caught up to me, but I’ll get this done, I promise. Explicit eventually, the rest as it comes.

Sleepy morning cuddles with Steve and Bucky, a re-drawing of one of my early digital drawings (here, it’s so old, it’s on my old blog) for the square I5 of the @stuckybingo

Featured fics:

🖤 Not Easily Conquered (The Thirteen Letters) by dropdeaddream, WhatAreFears @whatarefears

❤️ couldn’t get the boy to kill me by voxofthevoid @voxofthevoid​

Trending (AUs):

🖤 Political Animals by crinklefries, Deisderium @spacerenegades @deisderium

❤️ Lucky Seven by BetteNoire @alexdecampi

🖤 Baghdad Waltz by Dreadnought @dreadnought-dear-captain

❤️ Into That Good Night by Nonymos @naomisalman

🖤 Blood by leveragehunters @leveragehunters

❤️ This Side of the Blue by notlucy @notlucy

🖤 Stop Trolling Me! By GoodbyeBlues @goodbyeblues-ao3

Originals (canon-compliant):

🖤 This, You Protect (Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail) by owlet @vmohlere

❤️ If They Haven’t Learned Your Name by silentwalrus @silentwalrus1

🖤 The Life of Bucky Barnes by PetiteMadame @petite-madame @the-life-of-bucky-barnes​ (art used with permission 💖)

❤️ Workplace Hazards by AggressiveWhenStartled @aggressivewhenstartled 

🖤 The Man on the Bridge by boopboop @boopifer

❤️ 4 Minute Window by Speranza @cesperanza 

🖤 Ain’t No Grave (Can Keep My Body Down) by spitandvinegar @spitandvinegar 

Requested, aided and abetted by the one and only @incorrectstevebucky 😘  templates by @radwrites 

Full sizes on ao3 HERE!

turns out i’m just the youngest person in the class by about 30 years so the deduction wasn’t that hard

anyways, apparently people keep taking the welding class over and over again and the wait list is like 100 people long and so it was by some act of providence of pure dumb luck that I managed to get a spot. This also means I was the only person there who hadn’t welded before.

I’m stationed at a big center table where the teacher can keep an eye on me, and everyone else is in booths on the surrounding walls each making their own projects. And these are impressive looking projects. One guy is making a side table, a woman is making a giant metal rocking chair, and another guy was making a wind chime out of old compressed air canisters. 

The elderly gentlemen in the booth right behind me introduces himself to me as Jim and asks me if this is my first time and I say yeah and he smiles at me and tells me I’m gonna love it and how this class is so fun.

Immediately Jim becomes my new best friend. He comes over whenever I stop to take a break and asks how I’m doing and even helps me take the welding mask off when I couldn’t figure out how to do it myself. 

at one point i see Jim and another old guy talking to the teacher and i catch the old guy pointing at me. now being pointed at is usually never a good thing. the teacher has had me welding edges of scrap metal together so I can get a feel for the equipment. The teacher comes to check on me and I jokingly as him if those seasoned guys were making fun of me. 

Turns out I’m super good at welding and the old guy didn’t believe it was my first time welding ever and Jim was trying to convince him I was a newbie. :D

So for the entire 3 hour long class, like 15 middle aged and elderly people would periodically come by my table and check in with me, making sure I’m having fun and asking me questions about my life, and things like, do you know where the drinking fountain is, making sure I’m taking breaks, looking out for me and that kind of thing, all while being completely kind and supporting and complimenting me on my welding skills. 

the other elderly gentleman’s name is Gino and spoke with a thick Italian accent and took to calling me Bella for the rest of the semester. Jim made sure to always take the booth closest to me. 

Another guy in the class named Mike did salvage diving as a hobby and always showed me pictures of the cool stuff he’d found. He also made very cool sculptures out of spoons, forks and knives. I at one point made an offhand joke that I was moving soon, and was jealous that Mike had all this cutlery to spare to make sculptures out of. (I was going to be moving in with my boyfriend and neither of us really had a lot of kitchenware) The next class he brought in an entire cutlery set insisting that he was trying to clean out his house because he had so many and wouldn’t take no for an answer. We still have them to this day :)

They had cupcakes waiting for me on my birthday and on the last day they had framed picture of me with my final project because “it’s important to celebrate your successes” and encouraged me to give it to my mom (which of course I did, along with my cattail sculpture)

My latest comic for The Nib was written by my friend Mike Thompson- it’s his first published comics work! 

The Nib has been a steady source of income and a huge support to me and many other indie cartoonists for years. They publish amazing work, but will be cut loose by their financial backer in July. You can read the official post about it from editor Matt Bors here.  They are still running their kickstarter-funded print magazine, but have to put digital publishing on hiatus until they figure out their next steps. If you’ve been thinking about supporting their membership program, now would be a good time. They have levels from $2 to $40 per month. I really don’t want this to be my last Nib piece! 

Mini-Comic: The Haircut!

Once again we spend some time with 25-year-old Charlie and 26-year-old Nick… plus Daisy! I really hope you enjoy this mini-comic!

read from the beginning / read on tapas / read on webtoon / my art blog / my personal blog / art instagram / heartstopper merch / read the next update early on Patreon!

Charlie, a highly-strung, openly gay over-thinker, and Nick, a cheerful, soft-hearted rugby player, meet at a British all-boys grammar school. Friendship blooms quickly, but could there be something more…?

Nick and Charlie are characters from my debut novel, Solitaire. Heartstopper updates three times a month, on the 1st, 11th, and 21st.

I really appreciate reblogs and shares - please help me spread word about this comic! I’m so excited for people to read it!

1930s Fever Relief

Found this while searching through my recipes folder for some good ones to post. It’s an interesting look at how fever was approaching in the 1930s, I like the idea of Sarah or Bucky making this lemonade for Steve one time while he was ill. I’d be very curious to know how medically accurate this advise is today (I know I have at least two followers who are currently or have studies in medical fields), and if Steve’s mother, being a nurse, would have followed them. Regardless, still an interesting find. I think I’ll look for more of these Nurse’s Notebook articles.

The article advises the patient should receive the following:

Contact doctor.

Bed-rest and moved a little as possible.

“His diet temporarily discontinued”

Made comfortable to help reduce their temperature.

Water, fruit juices, and other liquids in large quantities, “at least a full glass of fluid every hour”. This so to reduce the temperature, cool the blood, and dilute the toxins in their system.

“Plain, cold water, alcohol mixed with water and sometimes alcohol alone are the most common materials used”. 

Sponging at regular intervals, to reduce temperature.

Spirits of niter: Regarded as a harmful practice.

Helpful in many circumstances, but some people cannot take it.

Freshness a concern, left standing for 6 months or more could lead to it becoming impure and loosing potency.

Medicine should only be used if directed by their doctor.

For high temperatures, mouth, tongue, and lips should be kept moist.

Recommend “Equal parts of lemon and albolene”

Regular mouthwash or “equal parts hydrogen peroxide and water”

Effervescent Lemonade For the Fever Patient ¾ cup cold water. 1.4 teaspoon soda, free from lumps. 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar. Juice of 1 lemon. Prepare lemonade to taste, cool, add the soda and stir thoroughly. Drink the beverage while effervescing. Carbonated water may be used instead of soda and water if desired.

Reducing body temperature with sponging with alcohol isn’t the WORST idea but it isn’t really good, either. Fever serves a purpose–it makes your body less ideal as a host. Even small variations in temperature can slow organismal replication. You don’t want to bring down fever unless it’s symptomatic and causing the patient real distress, or if it gets high enough that you are risking actual tissue damage. (In which case, the first thing WE do is medications, but rapid cooling techniques are an option–I’ve never seen them used, though.)

And sponging with alcohol can disturb the skin barrier, which probably wouldn’t be a big deal for most patients but for me would trigger a massive eczema attack and leave me more vulnerable to infection. Asthma, eczema, and allergic rhinitis often go together–they’re called the atopic triad–so I wouldn’t be shocked if Steve had all three, plus/minus eosinophilic esophagitis, the newest condition recognized as associated with atopia.

Holding food is an old wives’ tale but very popular even today.

Pushing fluids won’t “dilute the toxins” but it’s probably a good idea. Trying to fight off illness while dehydrated is going to be unnecessarily difficult. I pretty much always recommend hot tea, but that’s personal rather than scientific. Ginger ale can settle an upset stomach but you’d want something made with a significant amount of actual ginger. Most commercial formulations aren’t. That lemonade sounds refreshing and wouldn’t do any harm.

-I know other people brought this up but “sweet spirit of nitrate” is ethyl nitrate and was banned by the FDA in 1980 for lack of evidence of benefit + evidence of harm

-pushing fluids is just Good when you’re ill. Maybe it DOES dilute the toxins, who knows. But it prevents kidney injury in my patients, so fluid-load away!

-I’m way more into the idea of sponging now. Water, alcohol, whatever. Honestly, if his fever is above 102 just sponge that boy. Fevers suck.

-do NOT swish your mouth with hydrogen peroxide and water!!!! just don’t

Apparently actually practicing medicine* has chilled me out a lot on “vaguely magic stuff we do”

“Until the end of the line”

To see how far the line goes, we have to start at the beginning.