bro i LOVE indigenous fusion music i love it when indigenous people take traditional practices and language and apply them in new cool ways i love the slow decay and decolonisation of the modern music industry
Another one for Inuit artists is Piqsiq! Two sisters who’ve been doing traditional throat singing since they were kids. They make some really gorgeous, eerie, atmospheric stuff. Highly recommend watching this video of them performing live a cappella using a looping machine, because they might be the coolest people on the planet actually
For anyone into North Asian and Central Asian folk music, there's this incredible Siberian folk-pop band called Otyken! The group is mostly women and they're from multiple indigenous groups in Siberia, with songs being sung in their range of different languages. They're so much fun and their music videos are amazing!
i'll go ahead and recommend The Halluci Nation (formerly known as A Tribe Called Red), an EDM group from First Nations Ontario that do really cool fusions of First Nations music with dubstep, moombahton, and hip hop.
I really really really appreciate people who share videos on posts like these, because almost without a doubt every time I love the music but I’ve never got the spoons to click on links and look through a bunch of music or worse google the artist I always end up too overwhelmed to start and I hate that
for day 1 of @tododekuweek. Prompt: But seventeen is an inconvenient time to fall in love. -- Gayle Forman.
I definitey did not write anything ahead of time, but I had this idea as soon as I saw the prompt, so have this strange little ficlet I wrote in like an hour.
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The first day of third year comes and goes, almost disorientingly normal. Iida-kun is the first to arrive in class, as always. Kacchan is loud and rude and uncompromising, as always. Nedzu-sensei holds a school-wide orientation that Aizawa-sensei skips, as always.
In a strange way, it almost feels like stepping through a portal two years into the past. If they didn’t move like soldiers, ready to run or attack or defend at half a moment’s notice. If their eyes didn’t wander constantly, scanning for threats or exits or civilians in danger. If they weren’t all bearing scars or missing limbs or both.
Midoriya Izuku is seventeen. He’s a lowercase-h hero of the War before he’s ever an uppercase-H Pro Hero, license and all. He’s a household name in his own right. He’s officially unranked, because he’s not officially a Hero, but every magazine and website and hero forum polls puts him in the Top 25, minimum.
So seventeen is an inconvenient time to fall in love.
The problem is, Izuku’s heart never got the memo. It staggers and stutters and trips over itself, every time he sees Shouto-kun. Blood rushes to warm his cheeks with alarming regularity, whenever Shouto-kun is near. His traitorous eyes find Shouto-kun in every room, in every crowd, in every Xitter feed video.
Shouto-kun is always beautiful, always mesmerizing. Loose and comfortable in his body and himself, in a way he never was at fifteen and scared and bitter. Effortlessly charming when he smiles, or talks easily about his mother and siblings, or fails to understand jokes even now. Irresistible in the powerful competence of his body, and in the solid, steady weight of his presence, and even in the undignified way he snorts with uncontrolled laughter. It’s a lost cause for Izuku, long before he tries and fails to stop staring, stop wanting, stop daydreaming. He thinks he has loved Shouto-kun for a long time already. He thinks, perhaps, that he has loved Shouto-kun all along.
But seventeen is an inconvenient time to fall in love.
The War may be over, but the world doesn’t get to go back to normal so easily. There are dozens of reckonings big and small still to be faced, dozens of problems still to be solved, dozens of institutions still to be rebuilt.
And there are final exams still to be passed. Being war heroes doesn’t grant them any exemptions in Aizawa-sensei’s eyes, even if the man fought for and with and along them, nearly to the point of his death and theirs. If anything, he’s stricter on them than ever—because the world beyond is unstable. Because he knows the heights they can reach.
There isn’t time for things like love and heartache. Not when there’s an entire country out there that still needs their help.
------------
Graduation Day dawns bright and clear and chilly. A few early sakura blossoms flutter under the morning sun, pale-pink and joyful.
Midoriya Izuku is eighteen. He’s the Number 12 Hero in all of Japan. He’s surrounded by all the up-and-coming Heroes of his generation, all of them in the Top 50. The current Number 1 Hero mingles easily with them like the old friend he’s become. The former Number 1 Hero is all but crying as he stands next to his mother, snapping endless pictures.
And in his arms, bright and proud and beautiful, he holds the Number 17 Hero. Shouto is grinning the widest Izuku’s ever seen, and Izuku’s grinning back just as wide through the endless tears. It feels like a happy ending and a new beginning all in one, when he pulls Shouto in for a shameless kiss. Their classmates hoot and cheer, and his mother’s camera clicks a symphony with the reporters, and Kacchan complains loudly, and nothing could be better.
The country is still rebuilding, even now. They still wake up with screaming nightmares and ache with scars that will never fade and tense at sudden movements. The weight of a whole society’s expectations still rests upon their shoulders, settling in and making a home. But still, for this one moment, Izuku is fiercely, fearlessly happy.
Because seventeen may be an inconvenient time to fall in love, but as it turns out, eighteen is a glorious time to be in love.
i did not end up finishing any of my @tododekuweek fics in time but!! here is a snippet for day 1 and the full thing will be up on ao3 uh. sometime. probably
~
theme: summer vacation
~
Shoto spends his second year at U.A. in various states of drowning.
It goes something like this: most days, he floats. He keeps his head up, talks with his friends over lunch, smiles when Midoriya catches his gaze from across the room, laughs at Kaminari’s antics and Shinsou’s sarcasm. Calls his family at least once a week. A good friend, a good brother, a good son. A lake, frozen over, glassy and bright.
Every night, his footsteps shatter the ice and he plunges in. Thrashes around in the inky dark and wakes up with bile in his throat and water in his lungs.
He makes tea. The simple, familiar process is a balm to his frayed nerves, and it washes away the bitter taste in his mouth. Wake up, panic, drink tea, go back to sleep. Rinse and repeat. It keeps his head above the water, and it’s not enough but it has to be.
Two weeks before summer break, he runs into Midoriya. It’s just after two in the morning, and he pads into the kitchen to see Midoriya bent over the sink, scrubbing at his face. Shoto is about to turn around, but Midoriya beats him to it.
“Todoroki?,” he mumbles, voice thick with sleep and something else. “What’re you doing up?”
“I had a bad dream,” Shoto responds, because he can’t think of a lie and he’s never been able to hide anything from Midoriya anyway.
“Me too,” Midoriya says before Shoto can ask what he’s doing up, and once his eyes adjust to the dark he can just barely make out the puffiness under the other boy’s eyes. Midoriya sniffles, turns away to open a cabinet, scrabbles blindly for a mug then looks blankly at it in his hand like he’s already forgotten why he picked it up.
“Need some water,” he says after a long moment, and Shoto tilts his head.
“I like to make tea after a bad dream,” he says. “Would you like some?”
“Oh.” Midoriya blinks owlishly at him. “Um, I mean, yes. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
He makes twice his usual batch, then sits with Midoriya because going straight back to his room feels rude, somehow. And he likes being around Midoriya, who usually fills any dead air with idle chatter but is now quiet and pensive, staring into his mug as if he might find within it the secrets of the universe. The silence stretches out comfortably, peaceably, until the tea is gone and Shoto is once again keenly aware of just how tired he is.
“Thanks for the tea,” Midoriya says, and he sounds a little bit lighter. “It was really good.”
“I’m glad,” Shoto responds. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Had a lot of bad dreams?,” Midoriya asks, and it’s kind of a joke but Shoto nods and Midoriya’s shoulders sag ever so slightly.
“Me too,” he says again, and Shoto has no idea how to respond to that.
“...Good night, Todoroki.”
“Good night, Midoriya.”
~
He writes it off as a coincidence, but all of two nights later Midoriya is sitting at the kitchen table, looking forlornly at a mostly-full mug. When Shoto gets closer, he sees a handful of dark specks floating sadly in the water.
“I tried to make tea,” Midoriya says by way of greeting. “But it just tastes like leafy water.”
Shoto smiles a little, despite himself. He would bemoan the waste if Yaoyorozu didn’t keep the kitchen so well-stocked. “I can show you how,” he suggests, and Midoriya perks up.
“Yes please,” he says, and so Shoto goes through the motions a little more deliberately than usual, even deigns to use the electric kettle instead of heating the water himself. Midoriya watches intently, and Shoto is disorientingly aware of his presence. Not unpleasant, just unfamiliar.
“Thank you,” Midoriya says quietly when he’s done. Shoto nods. He appreciates many things about Midoriya, and one of the things he appreciates most is that he never expects Shoto to talk. Usually, when Midoriya is his typical chatty self, all he needs to do is listen. And now, as they sit together, cradling their mugs and occasionally meeting each others’ eyes through the steam, the silence feels…
Private. Raw, almost. Like Midoriya is letting him in, trusting Shoto to see him quiet, sorrowful, vulnerable. He wonders if Midoriya thinks the same about him. If the other boy’s gaze really is as piercing as it looks, seeing right through Shoto’s frozen surface and into the heart of the roiling storm below.
A small, confused part of him hopes that it is. That Midoriya sees him, really sees him. Sees the things he wishes he knew how to talk about.
“Todoroki?,” Midoriya asks, and he looks up. “How often do you, um…”
He trails off, and Shoto tilts his head. Midoriya takes a deep breath, then forges ahead.
“How often do you make tea?”
It’s not the question he wants to ask, and they both know it, and Midoriya sounds terrified that he might be pushing too far but Shoto is so relieved.
“...Every night,” he says after a long moment. Something behind Midoriya’s eyes breaks, just a little.
“I, um.” His gaze drops, away from Shoto’s, and his hands curl tighter around the mug. “I…not every night. But…most nights.”
“I’m sorry,” Shoto says softly, and Midoriya gives him a small, wobbly smile.
“Me too,” he responds. “And thank you, again. For the tea, and…” He gestures vaguely at the air. “It’s, um, nice. Not being alone.”
Shoto nods. It is nice. Comforting, to share this fragile space. To have a shore to reach for while adrift.
“We should probably get some sleep,” Midoriya murmurs, and (i want to share this silence with you just a little bit longer) Shoto nods again.
“Good night, Midoriya,” he says thickly, and when Midoriya’s hand reaches out to rest on his shoulder his breath stills.
“Good night, Todoroki,” Midoriya responds, and the weight of his hand lingers long, long after it’s gone.
~
The next night, Midoriya isn’t there but something prickles in Shoto’s chest and so he makes two mugs of tea and waits.
The microwave shows the time, little neon green display just bright enough to stand out painfully in the dark. Shoto counts forty-three minutes before Midoriya shuffles into view, pale and haunted. Their eyes meet, and Midoriya hurriedly tries to blink away the shine of tears. Shoto simply warms a mug with his hand and slides it over.
It becomes something of a routine. Wake up, panic, drink tea with Midoriya, go back to sleep. Sometimes they talk, quiet and hesitant, tiptoeing around the conversations Shoto wants to have but doesn’t know how to start. More often, they sit and let the silence relax into something resembling peace, and it’s still not quite enough but it’s certainly better than drowning alone.
He learns that Midoriya is fond of physical contact; bumped shoulders, brushed knuckles, a hug that Shoto freezes under for half a second and then returns, hands unconsciously curling into the other boy’s shirt. He learns that his first instinct is to flee and his second is to cling, that he craves gentleness, craves touch that doesn’t mean pain. He learns that Midoriya’s right hand is gnarled and webbed with scars and that his left hand is soft and warm.
The first day of summer break, as they wait for the trains, Midoriya folds his arms around Shoto’s chest and tucks his head under Shoto’s chin and they stand that way for a long, long time.
fandom: my hero academia
relationships: midoriya izuku/shinsou hitoshi/todoroki shouto, midoriya izuku & eri, midoriya izuku & aizawa shouta
wordcount: 8k
warnings: past child abuse, past bullying, self-worth issues
summary:
Izuku sees children in pain all the time now. Sometimes they try to make themselves bigger, shout their voices out loud from their tiny lungs, the way Kacchan used to. Sometimes they lash out before anyone else can lash out first, like Hitoshi, or try to hold themselves still and solid and apart from it all, like Shouto. Sometimes they tuck their shaking hands into their pockets, wave away hands offered in help, and say they’re fine.
Izuku smiles at them and sometimes they smile back.
Reflections on saving your childhood self.
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