#Of course i didnt realize until like 10 or 15 minutes after the fact so i didnt even bother to go back for it

[love-fireflysong]

Well i for one feel like a moron right now. Picked up a box of 32 bags of chips for like $14 cause it was half off... And then proceeded to forget it on a bench when i was done at the farmers market 😒

[stagemanagerssaygo]

Heaven and Hell: or my experience being a person of color in Disney’s Hyperion Theater

by Cooper Howell

Heaven and Hell: or my experience being a person of color in Disney's Hyperion Theater. #holdingtheateraccountable Im just gonna go ahead and be straight up. This is pretty scary to share. HEAVEN: Once upon a time Liesl Tommy cast me as Prince Hans in Frozen: Live at the Hyperion. And I was gooped. GOOPED. There was nothing in my prior history that gave any indication this was possible. Up until then every role I played had to do with my race. Every. Single. One. And even ones where it didn’t (Shakespeare or classical pieces mostly) I was always made aware that the novelty of me being a poc in that role that gave me the part. So much did I not expect to get this part that when I got the callback I rolled my eyes and didn’t take the actual callback seriously. I mean, there was a zero percent chance that Disney would ever let me play a Prince, especially when the dude in the movie is a ginger. But then I got it. And immediately everything I thought was possible about my career changed. My whole life I’ve never inwardly felt black. I’ve never inwardly felt white. I’ve always felt like I was Cooper, you know, on the inside. But whether it was every single white human in Utah reminding me that I was “the whitest person they ever knew/saw” (which DIDNT mean how white my skin was. It was how white I ACTED) or Mr. Johnson, my 7th grade drama teacher, telling me that he “wanted to put Velcro on the ceiling to see if I’d stick” or Mr. Smith, my high school drama teacher, saying “finally we can do black shows” as soon as I entered high school and then not casting me in roles because of the "optics" of it, or even my best friend in high school Tanner Harmon who called me "blackie", I was always reminded that I was an other. So imagine getting paid good money to put on that $10,000 costume and waltzing out to 4000 people a day to play a really amazing part. A fantastic, evil, complicated, person who sings a killer duet and then grabs the show by the throat with a vicious about-face monologue... and not once was my race ever mentioned cuz it didnt matter. What was being prized was Cooper, my talent, not my skin color that I never asked for. Heaven. Liesl MADE SURE, almost overly sure, that the poc’s in the cast felt equal. The kingdom of Arendelle, after all, is a make believe place. It can be whatever. From having Disney executives come and tell us that they were happy to have us there, to side conversations with John Lasseter, we were made to feel overly welcome playing the parts we were playing. She encouraged us to dive deeper into the script of a cartoon that I didnt really think much of until I was in it. We were encouraged to ask why. We felt seen as talent and not commodities. There were, of course, detractors. Gosh, I remember people at a party of cast members from "Mickey and the Magical Map" another show at Disneyland which features a princess and the frog number and many of those casts mates angrily claiming that “if that black girl Tiana Okoye can play Elsa than I should be able to play Princess Tiana” and then looking at me to confirm that was okay to say, not realizing that a) she’s one of my best friends, b) that I’m in the show with her also playing a role that wasn't created to be a poc, c) how racist that sounded, and d) why there's a difference there and why that wouldn't make sense. On Liesls final night I came up to her and said “I don’t know why you did it but thank you so much for casting ME in this part” to which she replied “you mean why would I cast a handsome, talented person in this role?” And I stuttered something like “well, I mean, I’m black. You know...” to which she tilted her head to her side and said “no. I don’t know why. Tell me why that matters.” And I had no answer. Seeing that I had no answer she smiled. That was the answer. There was no reason. On the spot my outlook about myself changed. Windows into what I thought was possible for me opened. -------------------------------------- HELL: And then Liesl went back to NYC and she was replaced by a man named Roger Castellano as show director. Rogers task, he told us on the first day, was to "change the show". We were not told what needed to be changed or even why, but that changes were on the horizon. You've got to understand: to a full cast of actors who had just spent more than three months dissecting a 60 page Disney script with a Tony nominated director like it was Shakespeare, we were initially emotionally/mentally/spiritually resistant to changes. But then it became clear that the spirit of collaboration was over, and the show changes were to be given without the same care, consideration, and thematic explanation of why they were being made. Everyones initial reaction was to push back, but when people who questioned their notes or their changes started getting days removed their schedule or being replaced entirely by a new actor, the Hyperion theater became a place where no one was allowed to speak out. Injustices were happening left and right and no one felt they could do anything for fear of losing their livelihood. And that's when the Frozen: Live at the Hyperion became a living hell. In my first note session with Roger he pulled me into a room with Domonique Paton, my best friend and incredible costar who played princess Anna in the show I was in. She just so happens to also be black. Almost all of Prince Hans’s scenes in the show are with her character and so most of my notes would be primarily based on those interactions with her. Earlier in the day I performed with a different (white) actress but it was the show with Domonique that I had a note session about. Imagine my surprise and dismay when, with how Liesl set up the show experience, we were told this: “WHEN THE TWO OF YOU PERFORM THE SHOW TOGETHER ITS TOO… URBAN.” Urban. What else could that have meant, do you think? He could have said maybe “too contemporary” emphasizing that we were maybe too modern in our speech patterns or movements. We weren’t. He could have said “too lax” or “too loose” meaning that maybe we were being unprofessional and goofy up there because we’re really good friends. We were not. The best me and Ms. Paton could think of was a 8 count moment of improv dance that me and Domonique decided to use as a synchronized moment of unity. It happened to fall on the line “our mental synchronization can have but one explanation” and thought, with the freedom that Christopher (the original choreographer) had given us, was appropriate, especially considering everyone behind us was doing the robot. As in the 80s robot. But he didnt clarify. He just said “WHEN THE TWO OF YOU PERFORM THE SHOW TOGETHER IT’S TOO… URBAN” And when asked what he meant he smiled with a little shrug and said "you can figure that out. You're smart." And thats how I became Black Hans and Domonique became Black Anna. My every moment onstage afterwards became about the optics of being a poc in that show. It was if I was suddenly made aware that I was LUCKY enough to be there and under any normal circumstances, or this new directors circumstances, me getting this part would have never happened. But the message was clear. It was especially clear when me and Domonique Paton shows together durastically decreased and made even more clear when the vast majority of the new hires were not people of color. But no one said anything. And made even MORE clear when, over the next few weeks, both Domonique and I got COPIOUS notes, ten times that of our coworkers that played the same parts. It was almost a game. In fact we did turn it into a game, seeing who would get the least amount of notes from him in a day. Our costars would even joke about it onstage with us, during the ballroom scene, and jokingly whisper "The shows been up 15 minutes. How many do you think you got today?" But no one said anything. And the notes were about all kinds of things. How we held our hand. If our inflections went up or down on a word. Which side of a couch we leaned on… which was fine! When you're an actor, thats the gig... until we started comparing our notes with the actors that played our same parts and none of them, NONE, would get the same notes. Our notes would be outrageously longer, the note sessions sometimes lasting 10/15 minutes. Others would get the “Oh hey, try doing this or that next time, okay bye” walk-by notes. Sometimes I would sneak into the audience and watch as some of the other Han's, some of whom changed lines, changed entire intentions of scenes, some of whom adding in all types of vocalizations and cackles and dance moves and what have you, and would receive ZERO notes. But I was watching them to see what was wrong with me. What was my performance missing? What am I actually doing to feel this singled out. And then I realized that the thing that was wrong with me was that I was a different color than the 5 other white Hans's they cast. And then I started getting notes about my penis. Most of the time these “penis sessions”, as I called them, were given in private rooms without another stage manager present. It was incredibly unpleasant and unprofessional. In fairness, those Prince Hans pants are TIGHT! And yes, Mr. Howell is indeed a party in the front and a party in the back, but so were a lot of those fellas. And thats where I put my foot down. If Disney was going to provide me with a costume it is not my responsibility to fix their problem, especially when other of my (white) costars had been given a dance belt for the same thing. But they never got penis notes. Private session notes about what their penis looked like in that show. Over and over again I was told to fix it, to not make it (my dick) so apparent, and that “if my daughter were younger I wouldn’t want her to come to a show you were performing at" all the more insulting considering his daughter, a cast member in the show, was a friend of mine and the loveliest person. He started demanding that I buy a dance belt. It was “my fault”, “my responsibility” …and thats where I took my stand. And then it really became hell. Penis sessions were now done out in the open. Once, he screamed at me, in the green room in front of all of my costars during lunch, about how incredible unprofessional I was, about how he was tired of seeing my dick, and that if I didnt go buy myself one I didnt deserve to be there anymore. Followed by a huge litany of notes. That doesnt compare to some of what Domonique went through and I invite her to share them if she’s willing. During this time I went to every stage manager in the building and told them about being singling out and about my penis. They all told me to write a complaint report and it would go to some place called "HR". Which I did. Numerously. More months passed. Nothing from "HR". Multiple cast members who witnessed my note sessions encouraged me to go to the HR themselves. I didnt honestly know what an HR was. As soon as it was explained to me by my allies even what an HR was I went to the head of HR at Disneyland herself and waited outside of her door. I asked her if she got any of my HR reports and she told me that she had received no HR reports from the Hyperion. Ever. And then asked me to fill out a HR form. As we went over it, she asked me some questions, and then set up a second meeting. On the second meeting she said that in order for my report to be given credence I would need witnesses to give their testimony. The witnesses, in fact the very people that told me to go to HR in the first place, said no. They didnt want to lose their jobs. In retrospect that might be the thing that hurt the most but, whatever... anyway, I was told "“well… without testimonies we’ll do an investigation and we’ll call you when we’ve completed it.” I never received a phone call. With absolutely zero protection from the stage managers from both the sexual harassment or my obvious racial targeting I (and others) were experiencing, not to mention that HR reports were doing nothing, aka not being forwarded, I thought about quitting. And when a white stage manager made a show mistake and laughed it off to the cast by saying an entirely offensive lynching joke, I quit. I didnt matter to Disney. How I felt and what I was being put through didnt matter. I was a commodity. My departure was unceremonious. Bizarre. 100% un-magical. I hung up my costume one last time and it was given to a new Hans, one who looked very much like me oddly, and stepped out of the theater. The park was playing “every wish your heart desires will come to you” and I remember laughing at how dead that song felt. The director has since moved on but still works as a musical theater director in Southern California. This one time 4 years ago I got to feel something other than my color for the first and only time in my professional career. It lasted from about March 2016 to July 2016 and never again since. I will never forget in those early days looking at all the beautiful princesses I got to woo and thinking “wow. I’m a prince right now.” Im sure that sounds stupid. But it didn't feel stupid. And a Disney prince! Yeah, a shitty prince kinda... I mean, he's a sociopath... BUT still a Prince! Especially special was being able to look in Dominique’s eyes and I could see the same glimmer of “can you believe we get to do this right now” reflected back. We never knew it was in the cards for us. My race always has and will always be part of my career equation and a determining factor of its projection. It will always be a determining factor in how im treated, by creatives, by people, by the those in authority over me, including the government and the police. #wasitmyskin

Copied in its entirety here from Cooper Howell’s public Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10163696376095054&set=a.10151302685610054&type=3&theater

[nctzanne]

Your Last Name

♡ doctor!mark x fem!Reader.♡ smut, fluff if you use glasses

WARNINGS!: use of alcohol and drugs, explicit content, not sex but mentions of it.

𝑆𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦: I just want you to give it a try and read it AAAH

𝑅𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡?: no, an idea i've had since i started stanning NCT

𝐴𝑛𝑛𝑒'𝑠 𝑡𝘩𝑜𝑢𝑔𝘩𝑡𝑠 & 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠: As i said above, this is an idea I've had for sOOOOOO many months, so I really wanted it to make it happen. It was on my drafts for a long time. Thank you so so much if you take the time to read this.

You noticed when your mind woke up suddenly, but without opening your eyes, slowly bringing you back to reality. You tasted your own mouth dry as a bone, with a metalic flavor on it, typical scenario when we talk about hangovers. The headache that invaded you so suddenly made you grab your forehead, almost if you brain was going to explode right there. The smell of fermentation on the room -or wherever you were- made you nauseous, so you stayed still to avoid vomiting everything you consumed the night before. A light breathing woke you up from your trance and inner speech, you could even feel the warmth of it on your shoulder. That's when you realize you were not alone, totally opposite of that, you were cornered by arms twice your size, avoiding you to move on the super duper comfortable position you were in. You still didn't want to open your eyes to notice who the lucky guy was, but you could smell the hints of tequila on his breath. When that hit your nose, you turned around abruptly by instinct, trying to avoid the smell. You opened my eyes a little, just to be able to locate yourself in space-time.

A room hotel, there's where you were. White walls reflected the light that came from outside of the giant windows, making you cover your eyes with the hand that wasn't under the grip of this unknown guy. Once your eyes get used to the light, you remembered that you were at Bora-Bora for vacations with your best friend. You can hear the eagles screaming way too loud for your irritable state, but just noticing where you were made you feel more calmed. "At least I'm here and they didn't kidnap me" You thought, finally grabbing the courage to turn around and see who exactly was the guy that had a night of passion with you.

"Sure, shit"

╚═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══��═══╝

-Wait, repeat it to me, who did you meet? -You asked incredulously, looking at how your friend Rosé was overflowing with emotion and nervousness.

-Do you know this famous band?- She told you a name that you couldn't identify, you automatically shake your head-Anyways, while I was waiting for you on the beach I met with Jaehyun, the bass player, we talked a little and he invited us for a few drinks with his friends!- She talked so fast that you had a hard time processing all the information that was given to you.

-And that's it, a random guy talks to you and you say yes?. He could be a serial killer-

-Ah c'moooon, he's a superstar, it will be funn!!!-

So, a not so official date with guys from a band. Sure, excellent idea.

-Okay, are they handsome at least?- You asked with disinterest

-You can't imagine, y/n, so prepare yourself as well as possible, they will fall for you- she approached the small bridge that united your cabins in the middle of the sea, while she blowed you a flirtatious kiss.

You just laughed and walked towards the windows, admiring the sea. You were literally in paradise, your bedrooms floated above the ocean, the white sand was not so far from where you were staying in, and the horizon was clearer than ever. How lucky you were to have a friend who helped you get over your breakups with a very casual trip to Bora Bora at the Four Seasons hotel. Loneliness invaded you for a second and you decided to get ready for the long-awaited meeting that you would have with her friends.

╚═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╝

A white beach dress with pink heels and your tan is enough, with the right makeup obviously. It was already 7 pm and your nervous friend looked at her cell phone while texting with someone

-Is it him?- You ask, trying to peek behind her shoulder to see if you could figure out what they're talking about.

-Yes, he is telling me he's here at the bar but he doesn't see us-

-Of course, we are sitting, let me raise my hand- and so you did it.

-Here!!!!- Your friend screams in excitement when she sees 3 tall figures approaching to you. They seemed to walk on a slow pace, almost like the came out of a movie. And yes, your heart almost stopped for a good 10 seconds. Three guys, my gosh, models? What were they again?. God definitely had preferences for some human beings.

The fact that they aere so handsome and well… structured made you blush. Jaehyun, Johnny and ...

-Mark, nice to meet you- the youngest of the 3 of them greeted me, with a dazzling smile that makes his dimples appear. You bit your lip and studied his entire face so that you would never forget him again. -y/n, nice to meet you too-

╚═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╝

Nothing more and nothing less than Mark Lee himself. His makeup was completely smeared, traces of mascara under his closed eyes. His forehead and nose were reflecting the daylight a bit. It was a hot morning (or evening), and having you next to his body was obviously going to make him sweat. His open, broken lips gave off that smell of alcohol that made you sick. But despite of everything, your sight softened after a couple of seconds. He was sleeping so peacefully, and he was clinging to you like his life depended on it, so you couldn't help but smile.

-Mark... wake up- you whispered softly while you tried to get up.

-Hmmmh, what time is it?- his morning voice made my stomach tingle a bit, your sight never leaving his figure while he starts waking up.

He squinted while he sit up in bed slowly, ruffling his own hair. It was obvious that he was in the same blank state you were a few minutes ago, and you could tell by how he confusingly looked around at the room, until his eyes reached at you. His face expression softened, giving you a shy smile.

-Do you need some clothes?- he asked, blushing when he studied your naked torso with lazy eyes. You realized that you both were entirely naked, and you rushed to cover your breasts with your arms, just to earn a pure laugh from him, that made your head resonate in pain.

-We fucked, y/n, no need to hide- Mark put all his weight on his left elbow, getting closer to you while tilting his face flirtatiously. That made you cheeks go red as ever.

-Yes, but I don't remember anything so your point is automatically invalid- His body hovered yours so fast that you couldn't even process what was happening, until he pecked your lips.

-I remember everything, so I will refresh your memory-

You burst out laughing while he deposited soft pecks all over your face. The situation was so sweet, but it didn't make you feel uncomfortable at all. He interrumpted his love actions and looked at you hungrily.

-Mark, I barely can keep myself awake, i feel like I'm going to puke...-You warned him, reading his intentions.

-Okay okay- he looked down defeated- At least, can we cuddle a bit more? I promise I can make the hangover feel better- He tangled his legs and arms to your body, resting his face on your collarbones.

╚═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╝

Everything on that evening was talking about the mortality of a crab. Basics like where you were from, what do you do for a living and relationship status open the conversation.

Your attention was drawn to Mark when he started to introduce himself. As a Medicine student, he decided with his 2 best friends that were part of a band to go on a trip to relax due to the busy schedules that consumes their time. The three live together on a small apartment in Korea, where the rent is expensive so they can make it more affordable.

Bora-bora was the destination of their choice. It seems that the band called NCT 127 draw lot of attention from crazy fans who followed them EVERYWHERE, so an expensive place like so would be easier to have a time for them on their own.

Mark spoke always adding "like" between his words, he liked to lay back when he was sipping on his piña colada, but got closer to the table when you talked about your experience as a journalist.

He tried so hard to show interest on a topic he had no idea about, that his questions were kinda clueless, but it was obvious that it was his way to not cut the attraction and chat between you and him. It was a sexual tension you could feel by kilometers, every gaze you had was followed by a shy smile, and you felt tingles on your body everytime you had a bit of interaction.

-Do you guys do shots?- Rosé interrumpted the conversation, scanning the boys reaction.

-I mean, that's why we are here- Johnny combed his hair backwards, already feeling heated by the 2 gin tonics he drank in 15 minutes. I couldn't deny, him on a tight black shirt looked hot as fuck, I could notice how Rosé was drooling for him- Excuse me, maa'am- he raised his hand, calling the waitress- 3 rounds of shots please!-

-Man, we had 2 yesterday and you almost puked on the sea, go easyyyy- you could notice the tipsy state from Jaehyun as well. His eyes were almost closed on a thin line and his dorky smile betrayed him. Mark laughed out loud, first time in the night you heard him like that, with his cheeks tinted red. He took a big sip of his piña colada, looking at you directly at the eyes. Actually, you didnt noticed till that moment, but your legs started to feel a bit numb. Quite usual for you when the alcohol gets up on your head.

-I'm in!- you answer to Johnny's idea. Once the blue shots arrive, you quickly grab one.

-Cheers for this night to be special- he screams with a deep voice, and the other 2 guys howl as response while you burst out laughing.

When you decided that the amount of alcohol on your body was enough, you took a chance to go to the beach to sing and dance to the DJ placed randomly in there.

You felt bliss, the EDM music was filling your senses, but you tried to keep your eyes full opened so you could remember the beautiful but blurry view of the sunset.

Together with your new group of friends were a mess. Jumping, screaming, raising your hands like you could touch the sky, everything seemed possible at that moment. Even dancing and getting laid with Mark.

The music had nothing to do with your plan, but you got dangerously close to him, resting your arms on his shoulders. You could see that he chuckled, tilting his head back so he could see you fully. Both of you were drunk as hell, you thought you were killing it with the flirting skills, but probably you just looked like two fools trying not to fall for the obvious drunken state you were.

-Do you wanna kiss me?- you screamed while "Jenny" sounded on the speakers. What kind of question is that?

-Sure I do- his canadian accent made you bite your lip while smiling- Can I?- his voice tried to mimic yours, but you didnt answered, it wasnt necessary.

Your lips collided as you got close at the same time, and Mark wasted no time to open his mouth and let his tongue in your wet cavity. You moaned so loud, because you knew no one could hear it but him. A fierce fight between both of your tongues started, every graze of them would make yourself wetter and wetter. He squeezed your waist and tried to keep you closer to him if it was possible, in his drunk mind he was scared you could run away from him.

Nothing about the context was romantic at all. You both physically liked eachother and just wanted to make out. No love at first sight, no kiss with fireworks behind, just pure desire.

Adrenaline rushed your body when his hands cupped your ass, that was only covered by the thin dress you decided to wear. Nobody near you could care less about what you two were doing it, but for you, everyone was looking at the show you and Mark were offering, and that obviously turned you on.

You bit Mark's lower lip, sucked on it, while opening your eyes to look directly at him. Eyes closed, he was enjoying how you toyed his lips. The hard grip on your skin, and a bulge poking your stomach made you feel powerful, you were loving the effect you caused on him.

Suddenly, an arm made you break your kiss with Mark. You lose your balance so you hug the guy that was pulling you backwards. Johnny.

-Hey, pornstars, we have some nice shit here- he pointed his hand with his eyes. You could see a tiny bag with a white dust inside. You come to your senses and look around at the crowd to try find Rosé, but it was obvious she already was under the influence. She was on Jaehyun's shoulders, enjoying the music. You sigh, chuckling at the sight of her losing her mind.

-Its my first time though- you commented while you look at Johnny spreading the dust on top of his phone screen with one hand using a credit card. You could notice he was an expert at it, you peek to see Mark right by your side looking at the manouvers as hypnotized as you. Probably it was his first time too.

You both snorted the little substance, and it sucked at first. It was so uncomfortable, but it took minutes for you to get used to that weird sensation on your nose.

You didnt even noticed when everything started to amplify. You could feel the summer breeze making its way around you, the taste of Mark's saliva still on your tongue was strong, the colorful tins of the sky while it was dusking looked so enhanced.

A hand grabbed yours, taking you out of your trance, and almost felt like an orgasm. So warm and so soft, made you wanna scream. You turned to see a fucked out Mark, studying your face with dilated pupils, he was almost as horny as you by only grabbing hands.

He caressed yours with his thumb, and it felt like he was fucking you, your body shivered at it. Mark was enjoying it too, so he brought your fingers closer to his mouth and inserted the index one inside, and started to suck on it. You moaned and felt how your pussy clenched at nothing, the saliva coating your finger felt like caramel, if you could explain the feeling.

-Mark if you keep doing that i'm gonna cum- you told him with a warning tone, he was so inmersed on sucking your finger that he jumped when you talked. He was aroused by the situation too.

He smiled with your finger still inside of his mouth, took it out, holded you by your wrist and started to run towards...

╚═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╝

-And we ended up here- Mark sumed up the night while you were laying on his chest, caressing it with the tip on your fingers. His, on the other hand, were playing with the locks of your hair.

-Yeah, i remember now, such a night- and then you snapped- Wait... where the fuck is...-

-Yeah, she was having a threesome with the boys. Dont worry, she was having a good time-Mark answered with a playful tone. Of course, that sounds like a very Rosé thing to do. You let out a breathy laugh.

-We could have joined...- you suggested, looking up at him. He took a few seconds to answer, while his eyes moved from one corner to the other of the ceiling, like he was evaluating that scenario.

-Yeah, and sharing? No thanks- he bit his lip and he looked at you with a greedy smile- I felt so lucky to have you screaming my name over and over-

You hit his shoulder with your fist playfully, and he took that as an answer to keep silent and just enjoy the company of the other.

╚═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╝

2 days went by, you get used to hang out with the boys. All kinds of crazy stuff you could imagine, you were doing it with them, and it felt like heaven. Mark couldnt keep his hands to himself and everytime he had the opportunity, he would make you cum on his fingers or mouth. And the same goes for you, too. Thanks to him, you noticed how good you are at giving blowjobs inside public restrooms.

But nothing lasts forever, sadly, and the last day of your summer vacation arrived. Rosé and you were ready to go back to Seoul, while they would be staying a little bit longer. It hurted, you got used to Mark's attention, and either him or you wanted to ask for eachothers contact. Not because of lack of interest, but because both of you thought that the other saw it as an adventure. You didn't even knew his last name.

His lips devours yours before you could get in the car that was waiting for you on the street -I wont forget you, thanks for this amazing 3 days- he smiled, a tint of sadness on his eyes. You caressed his cheek, pecking his nose, trying to hurry as much as you coulf so you wouldnt start to feel emotional.

-Y/l/n-

He looked at you clueless -What?-

-My last name is y/l/n- you smiled and without waiting for an answer, you close the door of the car.

╚═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╝

-Hey, hey, it's okay- typical of Rosé being so overdramatic. Sure, your finger almost got cut in half while you were trying to cook some carbonara, but it wasnt a big deal, something a few stitches couldn't fix. The only thing that kept your finger from gushing blood out was a piece of toilet paper.

-Please! My friend needs a doctor!!!!- She screamed at the top of her lungs inside the hospital.

-What happened?- a nurse hurried, worried eyes scanning you both.

-She is losing her finger!!!!- Rosé felt she was going to faint.

-Jesus, Rosé, calm down-

The nurse takes a quick look at your finger- Yeah it doesn't look that good, please follow me. You are lucky we don't have that many patients on New Years Eve-

You are guided to a tiny room full of medical stuff, probably where you are going to get your finger sticked together. It hurted as fuck, but you were trying to keep focused on something other than the pain. You looked at the desk with the computer on, and on a hidden corner you noticed a picture of 3 friends, on a place that seemed too familiar to you. Actually, the friends also seemed like an old ones you had... maybe in university? You can't quite remember.

The door opened up while you were trying to dig into your memories , and you looked at the door startled.

-So, Mrs y/n...- that voice, that motherfucking voice. A year has passed. But how the fuck you were supposed to forget it?. You felt your ears buzzing, face heating and heartbeat racing. You were losing your breath and suddenly the pain of your finger got worst and worst.

He didn't turn to look at you, just got inside by looking at his phone, and once he was sit in front of you, his facial expression dropped.

There were the both of you, looking at eachother like dumb teenagers, like your finger wasnt bleeding out, almost like you were backat that bar in Bora-bora again.

-I... uh... yeah, my finger- you stutter, pointing at it. Mark shakes his head, coming back at his professional senses.

Before the medical procedure he performed, he bandaged your finger, and wrote some medicine you had to take for the pain to go away.

-It should be okay on a few weeks, nothing to worry about- he smiled at you, trying to comfort you. You felt your heart drop when he grabbed the healthy of both of your hands and caressed your palm with his thumb, everything felt like a flashback. You looked at him with clueless eyes.

-I... uh... I should come back in a few weeks then- you stuttered, pressing your lips into a thin line while looking at him directly on his eyes. He nods.

-Lee-

You frowned -Huh?-

-My last name is Lee-

[svft-cas]

we need to talk || jj maybank x reader

summary: you and jj have a pregnancy scare and it puts everything in perspective

warnings: cursing, underage usage, implied sex?

words: 1.1k

masterlist

a/n: this is my first so idk how to feel about it lmao, but if you read this feel free to request :) also the gif is not mine, all creds to the creator

it had been already two weeks. two weeks since you were suppose to get your period, but it hasn’t happened and all you could think of was: baby. not that it was wrong to think of a baby growing inside of you at this moment in your life, but you were 17 and your boyfriend had barely turned 18 last month.

you rushed to the pharmacy to grab a quick pregnancy test. you couldn’t take any chances. after you paid for the test, you quickly drove to Sarah’s house. she was the only one you could think of at the moment so you drove to her home, running to her door and knocking like crazy. to your luck, rafe was the one who answer and of course it wasn't very pleasant that brief moment you had to share with him. after your little encounter with your friend’s brother, you ran to her room storming into it and just with a heavy breath managed to blurt out “im pregnant”. sarah’s face dropped, it changed like 15 shades before actually managing to say something. “what? you? what?”. you entered the room straight into the bathroom, “i don't know yet, but its been 2 weeks since my period was supposed to start, and im here NO PERIOD!”

you took the test and left it inside the bathroom, as you walked out you could basically listen to sarah’s brain working out a speech “does jj know about this?” “of course he doesn't! i don't even thought of the idea until this morning. god.”

you saw her typing something into her phone “what are you doing?” asked her with fear. “texting jj, he need to know about this, unless he is not...?” you cut her off before she could even finish her question “oh my go sarah! no of course he is”

a couple minutes after your little chat with the blondie, jj was at the door of the Cameron’s residence. what was going through jj’s mind wasn't exactly positive. to be honest, receiving a text message from your girlfriend’s best friend saying that she needs to talk to you and “it’s important” isn’t exactly something good. the maybank boy walked straight to sarah’s room, where he supposed you two were, and he knocked. he felt so stupid for doing that, but he genuinely thought you were about to breakup with him, and with right. the past few days you had been avoiding him and the rest of the pogues, you weren't showing up to any parties or even texting them back. he was preoccupied about your relationship and had thought of every single thing that he had done ever since you started to act distant and weird. but he couldn't come up with anything, which just made everything 10 times worst.

“come in, jj” he heard you say, the sound of your voice calming his nerves a little bit. “hey” he said with a quiet voice. “i’ll leave you two guys so you can talk” sarah stood up from her bed and walked out her room, not without before giving jj a gentle squeeze “what the hell was that about?” jj tried to lift the mood and chuckled. “jj, we need to talk” you said with a serious tone, jj’s heart sank, everybody with a third of a brain cell knew what that phrase meant.

you invited him to sit down next to you, “what i'm about to say it's not easy, and i completely understand if you don't want to talk to me afterwards of i don't know, get mad at me?”

“cut the crap y/n, what’s been going on?, you’ve been acting weird for a couple days know and ugh this feeling of suspense is killing me: are you gonna break up with me?” jj blurted out, he genuinely couldn’t handled the tension and mysterious situation that you were setting. “oh god, no im not, but i understand if after this, well, maybe you wanna leave-” “tell you didnt cheat, im begging you” his voice sounded like it was about to crack, he was so scared, the thought of losing you was the worst thing, and it was becoming true. you were the most important thing in his life (you and the pogues) and he did not wanted to lose you.

“no. jj, i've been acting weird because,” you stood up from the bed and went inside the bathroom to grab the test. you hadn’t look at the results since you took it, you wanted to do it with jj. you picked up the test and saw two lines in it. your eyes started to fill up with tears and as you turned to face jj managed to say “im pregnant”

jj’s world just took an 180. “what?” his emotions were too much to let him speak, he felt happy and relieved about the fact that he didn’t actually had to lose you. “omg this is amazing, i genuinely thought you were breaking up with, i was ready to cry and beg on my knees for you to stay, but thank god it wasn't”

you couldn’t believe your boyfriend in front of you, was he really more affected by the fact of a possible breakup than a baby? “well, jj what so you think?” you asked lowkey mad but also curious, it was your future on the line what you were talking about.

“about the baby?” you nodded “oh honey, it's really not up to me, if you want to keep it, i swear i'm gonna be here for you and support both of you. im not saying its gonna be easy but ill try. and don't even worry about my dad, ill take some cash i have stash and we’ll start somewhere else.” the thought of having a family, to jj was always on his mind. he loved to think about you two leaving the outer banks and starting a new life, and well now a family. “but also if you dont wanna keep it, i’m okay with that decision, it's up to you. i don't want you thinking that i’m not gonna be here okay? i love you and i’ll be here by your side no matter what, you know why? because i love you, y/n”

what just happened was something else, and it made you realize that you really found the love of your life and that he was an amazing guy, all you could ask for. you were in love with him and the thought of starting a life and family with him, didn't sound so crazy after this talk. you were really settling and not regretting it.

[uwu-boll]

Yesterday I consumed nearly 4 grams of mushrooms. Here is what that was like for me:

First, this isnt my first rodeo. I've consumed psychedelics a few times before; I wouldnt call myself necessarily experienced but I have an education background in psychopharmacology and I have a couple of trips under my belt already so I knew what to expect and how it was going to feel going into it. 2 months ago. my girlfriend and I purchased 7 grams of mushrooms to split for our anniversary weekend this past week. We purchased a hotel room - I wanted to avoid doing this at home due to a very stressful living situation - and situated our setting so as to be best prepared to go about our experience. This included water, music, videogames, some snacks, etc. The necessities.

Our day started following a night of several shared margaritas and burgers between us. We went swimming, had coffee and a light breakfast, went to therapy together, and then a healthy midday lunch. Following that, we gathered the supplies for the night and settled in at around 3pm. Starting then, I measured out the dosages for the both of us; 2.75g for her, 3.87g for me (the dosages were more or less arbitrary, but we had a ballpark of what kind of experience we were looking for). She ate hers straight up, while I prepared a 'lemon tek'; powdered shrooms soaked in lemon juice for some time. There is some science behind it, but the idea is to shorten the duration or the experience while making it more intense. This also helps with digestion to prevent nausea, although there will still be some present as your body tries to 'reject' the chemical.

My shrooms sat in lemon juice for 20 mins before I tossed them all in orange juice for me to take big gulps of. Disclaimer - I HATE the taste, smell, texture, EVERYTHING about mushrooms. This... isnt necessarily better, but it's the best way to consume them short of capsules, I've found.

3:25 PM: I start drinking my pulpy orange juice - mushroom cocktail. It tastes like sour orange juice, because of the lemon juice I added, but the thought of the mushrooms in there makes me gag before I even get the concoction in my mouth. I can already tell this is going to be an endeavour. I take one big swig, maybe a fifth of the bottle, and approximately a quarter of the dose. I wait about 5 mins before taking another swig

3:35: one more swig, followed by a dab, hoping that the weed will calm my tummy. It does, but not before I nearly puke coughing up a lung

3:45: I finish the cocktail. This whole time I'm watching my girlfriend - who is approximately 15 minutes ahead of me having already dosed - set up the Nintendo switch and design a character on Tony Hawks Pro Skater, the remastered edition. She finishes, we take a dab, and we start playing. We, for some reason, start with a VS game, first to 500,000 points. I dont know why we thought that was a good idea, but we did. From here on, times are approximate.

Approximately 3:50: We are mindlessly skating in complete silence, absolute fixated in this game. I'm pretty high from the dabs as it is, so I'm spacing out and having trouble coordinating.

Approximately 4:00: I'm focused entirely on how gross my stomach feels having drank the cocktail. My body feels heavy, and it's very difficult to coordinate in the game properly.

Approximately 4:15: We are probably 100,000 points into this game before we both realize how long it's going to take before anyone wins. Were both kinda over it, and clearly struggling with performing and we only know it's going to get worse. As the come up begins, I feel a profound sense of anxiety. Recognizing it as the comeup anxiety, I dismiss it, but it's quickly becoming pretty overwhelming. The lemon tek, in shortening and intensifying the experience, creates very powerful come ups. We stop playing THPS and switch to Super Mario 3D World, which makes me feel better

Approximately 4:30: We get through 2 levels before we stop playing for the night. We decide to cuddle and try to calm each other down. We put on Bo Burnham's 'Inside' to listen to while we come up, which was a great idea because we love him. Really got us talking about our pasts and the meanings behind each of his songs. My body is very heavy, but I feel at absolute peace within it - I'm not biting my nails compulsively or shaking my legs - despite the come up anxiety and the slight nausea. I feel attached to the bed, I didnt want to get up even if I had to. I am absolutely CHEESIN, smiling so hard my cheeks still hurt a day later.

Approximately 4:45: I am staring at the wall, looking at what appears to be a pattern overlaying the texture of the wall. I see the same pattern on the bathroom floor. I'm questioning as to whether or not it's really there. I quickly move to the ceiling - a popcorn ceiling - where I am blown away; the lighting in the room makes the ceiling look both purple and green. My pareidolia is going crazy and I see constantly shifting patterns in the white noise that is the popcorn ceiling. The crazy thing is knowing that there is no pattern to the nonsense I am seeing, but making out patterns regardless. I stare at this for awhile. The ceiling is flowing like water.

The exact order of events henceforth are kind of a blur. We lay in bed for the rest of the night, but the topics of discussion vary from point to point, mostly us complimenting each other and praising each other. At some point, Inside ended, and we listened to Hamilton. However, I hardly remember both the end of Inside nor the entirety of Hamilton, and so it's likely that around d approximately 5 oclock, began the Great Existential Breakdown (TM)

At approximately 5 oclock, I was peaking. Emotions were running high, and, in response to being hungry, I had a breakdown because I hated the fact that I was born into a world dominated by cruelty, inhumanity, and the insatiable drive for profit. I hated that I lived in a world where something as simple as hunger was a problem, and that food - a human right - is commodified. I hated that consumption was obligatory, and that to feed the endless gluttony that is the human need to consume, we exploit both our fellow humans, and the planet. I hated that in that obligatory need to consume, weve facilitated this social climate in which it's okay to pollute our world and exploit the human labor condition so as long as its convenient to the consumer and profitable to the corporation. (Now that I think about it, this may have been spurned by Bo Burnhams 'That Funny Feeling', which I feel like is his most powerful song on the album. ) This quickly evolved into how being born, and forced into a world without your consent where conditions like this exist in the first place is inherently a violent act, and that having children is immoral until we create an environment where those conditions are obsolete. Then to how bullshit it is that I am forced to take care of a meatsuit for the whole of my life, but I have to pay to upkeep all of it as if i had some choice in the matter. This lead to me talking about how I wanted to be a transient observer of the universe, untethered to any physical point in space. Not quite dead, not quite alive - still able to see things happen, but not be able to participate. I then went on to say how I didnt think suicide was the answer to my problems because that doesnt necessarily get rid of the conditions that lead to my despair, but rather creates new problems for my loved ones. I knew that the key was to live in despite of the despair and to continue on in search of my own personal meaning.

This breakdown lasted approximately 3 hours and was very emotional for both of us. We spent a lot of time crying and talking about stuff weve never spoken about before. The comedown was very gentle and helped me feel very cathartic and relaxed. Over the course of the comedown I took several dabs, a few of which brought me back to 'The Wonky Space' (TM). However, this was short lived. My girlfriend sat in the tub naked from the waist down, which quickly turned into a bath, and from there, after my breakdown, we started to relax, watch some Shameless, went downstairs, got some snacks, some drinks, and went to bed.

Before I fell asleep, and once I knew the experience was 100% over, I took some time to reflect and felt very satisfied with what happened. It wasnt at all what I expected the night to be, but I felt like I needed to do that, and experience that kind of existential pain. I felt very relaxed once I got control of my body again, and that peace - the general sense of wellbeing, happiness, lack of anxiety, connectivity to my partner and my fellow man - has persisted well into the next day, and will likely continue for at least the next week. 10/10 would do again.

Would I say I had a bad trip? No. Was it a good one? N...no. but I had a great time, it was fun, and enlightening, and helped me realize where I feel like I am struggling mentally.

[horansqueen]

You & Me : chapter 36

A Niall Horan fanfiction ; rated MA

Sequel to AM CONVERSATIONS

CHAPTER 1 || CHAPTER 2 || CHAPTER 3 || CHAPTER 4 || CHAPTER 5 || CHAPTER 6 || CHAPTER 7 || CHAPTER 8 || CHAPTER 9 || CHAPTER 10 || CHAPTER 11 || CHAPTER 12 || CHAPTER 13 || CHAPTER 14 || CHAPTER 15 || CHAPTER 16 || CHAPTER 17 || CHAPTER 18 || CHAPTER 19 || CHAPTER 20 || CHAPTER 21 || CHAPTER 22 || CHAPTER 23 || CHAPTER 24 || CHAPTER 25 || CHAPTER 26 || CHAPTER 27 || CHAPTER 28 || CHAPTER 29 || CHAPTER 30 || CHAPTER 31 || CHAPTER 32 || CHAPTER 33 || CHAPTER 34|| CHAPTER 35

NOTES:

-one chapter is her pov, the next is his -4.2k -im sorry, i never proofread, i hate it. -there WILL be smut. but not only smut. -this is a romance, comedy, smut story. -for the summary, check my MASTERLIST.

- notes: idk what to write here anyway no one reads it lol! but yea im posting this for Isa because she’s probably the only one who still cares about this story lmao ILYSM!

if you want to be on the list of blogs i notify when this is updated, just message me :)

requests! : some requests i didnt add because i didnt want to spoil this. theyll be added in the next chapter and probably at the END of the chapter lol

TAKE A LOOK AT THE CHARACTERS HERE

Chapter 36 : Her chapter

OLIVIA

April 7th, 2018

I fell asleep on the bed as soon as we got done with diner. I finally had a day off and an other one the next day but I had been working non-stop for 6 days until late at night (or early in the morning) and I was exhausted.  I shivered and woke up slowly, feelings my lips curl at Niall's touch. His fingertips were brushing up and down my arm, making goosebumps appeared on my skin, and I let out a low whimper.

"I missed you. How long have I been sleeping?" I asked in a mumble, forcing myself to open my eyes.

"You've been asleep for two hours." he pointed out before chuckling.

"I don't care." I let out with a childish voice. "I missed you anyway."

I squirmed a bit and ended up with my head on his lap. My lips curled into a smile when I felt his fingers slip in my hair and I breathed in, inhaling his scent and his expensive perfume.

I knew I was already fucked. I knew it was over for me and that if Niall and I broke up again at some point, it would kill me. At this point, being official or not didn't change anything anymore. I remembered back then, before I dated him, I always tried to suppress my feelings for him, I always managed to put a wall in front of them to hide them from everyone and especially myself. Right after One Direction's last tour, the walls collapsed and crashed, exposing my feelings to practically everyone, and at that time, it shocked me how much I loved him, how deep, real and intense my feelings were. They grew even more when we dated and remained stronger than ever for so long after he broke up with me. I was there with him now, my walls completely wrecked, and it made me realize that I had put my walls back in front of my feelings when I started dating Dylan but that wall was not that strong and Niall easily tore it apart without even knowing it. I was tired. I was exhausted to keep that wall there. Perhaps I had even helped him taking each brick off, one by one. Yeah, the more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was a team work.

"I was thinking we could go out tonight."

I groaned and wiggled a bit to press my face on his stomach, making him chuckle. "I'm tired."

"I know, but Louis says he misses you." he pointed out, making me groan again. "Come on, I'll buy you a few drinks."

I remained silent for a few seconds, wondering if I should go or not. I was pretty sure it would be fun but at the same time, spending time in bed, cuddling with the man I loved seemed even better. I moved a bit to lay on my back and look up at him. He was the only person in the world who looked good from this angle.

"Are you gonna stay with me the whole time?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"Yes."

"You'll hold my hand under the table?" I added, staring at him and making him smile.

"I will."

"You're gonna dance with me whenever I ask you to?"

"Baby, we're not going in a club." he pointed out. It made my eyebrows raise up more and my lips part. "Fine, yes, I'll dance with you whenever you ask me."

My facial expression turned into a happy and satisfied one and I quickly got up, reaching for his closet.

"We have a deal, then!" I just said, trying to find something decent to wear before deciding on a pair of jeans and a band shirt (not a One Direction one, this time). It took me about 20 minutes to put make up on and when I joined Niall in the living room, I tilted my head as he got up.

"You look so good." I pointed out, moving closing and putting both my hands on his chest, my palms pressed on his blue dress shirt. "You're so classy and here i am, wearing jeans and a shirt."

He laughed a bit, moving his chin up slightly. "You want me to get changed?"

"No, I want you to get naked."

He laughed. "That's not happening. Louis is waiting and you know damn well he can show up just to annoy us." he explained with a smirk as I chuckled. "Tube?"

"Cab?" I argued, raising my nose up.

I didn't want our pictures taken, I didn't want to meet people, or get caught by paps. All I wanted was a nice evening with my friends and mostly, with Niall. He moved his arms around my waist, intertwining his fingers on my back and nodded slowly before sighing.

"Anything you want."

I smiled at him and moved closer to kiss his lips. He tasted good and I felt his hands move up on my back before smiling against his lips. If he changed his mind and asked me to stay home, I definitely wouldn't be against it. Unfortunately, we ended up at the bar quite quickly and after a while, I just stared at my glass, lost in my thoughts, before Louis leaned closer to me.

"'Dans la lune'?" I smiled and looked up, meeting his blue eyes. His lips curled too and he raised his eyebrows. "I've been practicing. How's my accent?"

"Almost as bad as Niall's." I just said, laughing when I saw him frown as his lips parted in shock.

"Hey, wait!" I heard, turning to Niall who was frowning too, clearly insulted. "I'm very good at that!"

"Honestly, no you're not." I admitted, raising my nose up and shrugging. "I'm sorry but you both suck at it."

"Well, you know what I'm good at?" Louis asked, getting up. "Paying beer for everyone."

He left and I turned to Niall, frowning a bit when he was looking away. I followed his eyes and my heart skipped a beat when I realized he was looking at a girl, sitting afar at a table. I took the time to look at her and bit my bottom lip before sighing. I couldn't be jealous, not now, and I couldn't pretend the girl was not beautiful. Still, it did hurt me and at the same time, it was ridiculous to expect him to never find an other girl pretty in his whole life.

"What are you looking at?" I asked low, getting his attention back.

His eyes roamed on my face and he blinked a few times. "Oh, no one."

"I didn't ask 'who', I asked 'what'..." I pointed out, licking my lips. "You were looking at that girl? She's pretty."

It was a lie. She was more than that, but it was too hard to admit.

"Yea, not bad." he replied, making me roll my eyes.

"Look, I know you think she's sexy, don't lie to me."

He sighed and reached for my hand under the table, making the left corner of my lips raise up. It was hard to be mad, or feel sad, when Niall was looking at me like that and I just tilted my head, staring right back at him. It didn't matter if he found other girls pretty, all that mattered was that he loved me, and that he wouldn't go back to his old habits.

"Okay, she's hot. But you're sexier." he bent closer to kiss me and I held my breath before he moved back slowly, remembering we weren't supposed to tell anyone that we were sort of seeing each other. He looked away, but not in the direction of the girl, and I just licked my lips as I watched him grab his beer and take a sip of it.

"Have you ever thought about having a threesome?"

He choked slightly and swallowed hard before wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. The sight was endearing and I chuckled.

"What?"

"I don't know, I was just saying." I proposed, shrugging a shoulder and making his eyes open slightly more.

"Would you be willing?"

I let my eyes move on his face and started questioning myself. I had no idea if I was and somehow, I felt like our relationship, whatever it was, was still very fragile at that point. Not our love, of course, that was strong, but the trust I had for him was still shaky and it scared me.

"I had a threesome before and it ruined the relationship I had with one of the girls. I think it's the main reason why me and her broke up."

He nodded and pressed his lips together. "Yea me too. Although I was pretty hammered I can definitely say it didn't help our couple, or whatever it was that we had." he paused and looked down before looking up in my eyes. "But we could make rules."

"Rules? Like what?"

He shrugged. "You tell me."

I stared at him again and I suddenly wished I never proposed that. I glanced at the girl on the other side of the room and felt something stir inside me. Yes, I was more confident about my body, but at the same time, I knew the bodies Niall was normally attracted to had nothing in common with mine.

"You.. can't kiss her. Or get your dick inside her." I pointed out, licking my lips nervously. "I don't want her to touch you, or-"

"Okay!" he laughed, shaking his head. "It'll be faster if you tell me what I'm allowed to do instead."

I groaned low and grimaced but I felt a bit better when he squeezed my hand again. I felt ridiculous for that feeling and I was wondering if it was my self-confidence that was getting low again, or simply the fact that it would hurt me to see the man I love making out naked with an other girl. I had seen Niall with other girls often in my life, and it has hurt me enough in the past, didn't it?

"We don't have to do it if you don't want to." he shrugged with a fond smile. "It's just a discussion for now. I mean, you know it's you I love, right?"

"Put yourself in my shoes, Niall." I tried to explain. "I mean we could have a threesome with a man."

"I'm not.. so sure." he replied with a frown.

"See?" I pointed out a bit louder, leaning against my chair and making him roll his eyes, amused.

"It's different, I'm not into men, but you're into women."

"But that's not what it's about." I explained a bit lower, tilting my head. "It's about us, and the feelings we have for each other. I've shared you so often before. I even lost you a few times. What if it happens again this time?" I sighed and shook my head. "I'll think about it."

"Hey, hey." he whispered, moving closer to me and leaning his elbows on his knees. "Don't stress over something so futile okay? I'd be totally fine watching you have sex with an other girl while I just sit close on a chair and jerk off f like a fuckin’ loser."

This time, I laughed and I just had time to see his lips curl into a smile before I tapped on the front of his cap, making it move down over his eyes. He placed it back and I noticed his eyes were shining. I tilted my head and my lips parted but just as I was about to say something, he kept talking.

"And yes, it would piss me off to see you get fucked by an other man." His gaze dropped to my shirt and moved up to my eyes again. "I'd probably throw him out."

I laughed again, feeling the sudden urge to kiss him. He smelled so good, he look beautiful and he was so close... All I could think about was grab his shirt with both hands and pull him close to feel his lips crash against mine. With all the strength in me, I got up and nibbled on my bottom lip for a few seconds.

"I'll be right back."

Quickly, I walked to the lady's room and leaned both hands against the counter, letting my head fall down slightly and closing my eyes. It was so tough to stay away from him all the time and it was starting to drive me insane. Of course, I didn't want our relationship out in the open but if our friends knew, it would make things a lot easier. I was so sure it was the right thing to do a few weeks ago but now, my certainty was faltering. It was harder and harder as the days went by and even if it was just to protect me at first, I knew it was useless now. I loved Niall. I always would. And being official or not wouldn't stop me from hurting if he decided to leave again.

Without thinking, I grabbed my phone in my pocket, moved my shirt up and bougfht my phone up too, to snap a picture. I quickly sent it to him before unclasping my bra and moving it up, taking an other picture. I sent it too just as I was getting a message from him.

'Fuck petal show me more'

My lips curled at his words and It only took a few seconds to get a second one.

'I want to suck on your tits so bad pet'

I swallowed hard and felt my whole body throb as I typed an answer. 'Do it now, then.'

I leaned against the counter and waited but when the door opened, I felt my heart jump in my chest, hoping it was not someone else. I sighed when I saw it was him and his eyes roamed on me for a few seconds. He turned around and locked the door, making me chuckle and I held myself back on the counter with my two hands.

"I hope we don't get caught."

"I don't care." he replied, making me smile more.

He took a few steps closer and even If I should have expected it, I held my breath when he bent down quickly. His lips wrapped around one of my nipples and I felt my legs tense as a short whimper got out of my throat. I felt his tongue flick on it before he sucked on it gently and when he moved to my other one, I glanced down only to see how hard the first one was. I remained motionless, my eyes half-closed, as his mouth, lips and tongue focused on my tits and after a while, my lips parted, my eyes closed completely and I let my head fall back on my shoulders slightly.

He stopped and I felt his hands on my hips, helping me up on the counter and when he moved between my legs, I felt my heart jump in my chest. His lips found mine and his hands reached my breasts as he kissed me deeply. He had moved his cap around and I just reached it to take it off, leaving it on the wet counter and slipping my fingers in his hair.

"Why didn't you wear a skirt, lover, it would have been easier to fuck you."

The sweet nickname made me smile against his mouth. I loved how impatient he was and I could feel his hard cock press on one of my thighs. He rubbed himself gently against me and I moaned again in his mouth before pulling away and licking my lips. I pushed on his chest gently and got off the counter before taking a step back as I unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans quickly. He stared at me, his gaze moving from my hands to my face and back to my hands as I pushed my pants and panties down to my knees and raised my eyebrows.

"I can bend down for you."

He walked up to me, turned me around and pushed me against the wall. I held my breath as his hand moved between my thighs to reach my pussy and he groaned, grabbing my waist and pulling it closer to him before spanking me one time but hard. I pressed my palms on the wall and closed my eyes when I felt the tip of his cock press on my walls and let out a curse word when it slipped inside me. My fingers curled and my short nails scratched against the wall as he started fucking me hard and fast. His hands found my breasts again and he grabbed them hard as a balance to fuck me deeper.

I was happy both of us hadn't drank too much and when he leaned against my back, I felt his lips brushing near my shoulder as he grunted.

"No one turns me on like you." he let out, making me hold my breath again. "No one makes me cum like you."

He pulled me away from the wall and pushed down on my back, holding me there with a hand on one of my shoulders as he spanked me again a few times. I could feel myself throb around his cock as he remained still and when his other hand reached for my other shoulder. I bent down more, making sure I was far enough from the wall, knowing he was about to go harder.

"Fuck, you're gonna make me cum."

He started fucking me so hard I had to put my own hand over my mouth to make sure I wouldn't moan too loud and I felt myself reach an orgasm as he fucked me deep. I shook against him for a few seconds and he groaned, waiting until I relaxed a bit to pull out and jerk off quickly. It took only a few seconds before I heard him groan louder, the tip of his cock rubbing against my ass, and my eyes fluttered close when I felt him push himself back inside me, fucking me for half a minute before his thrusts faltered.

"Fuck. I'm so sorry." he apologized as I moved up. He wrapped his arms around me and I could feel his cock brush against my ass. "I came all over you. And then inside you."

The thought made me shiver and he ran his hands on my breasts before pulling on my shirt to cover them. He took a step back and I saw him tuck his dick back in his pants as I turned around. I moved my panties and pants up and then worked on my bra when we heard someone push on the door. I held my breath and my eyes got bigger but Niall just chuckled.

"Liv? It's El!"

Without hesitation, Niall unlocked the door and opened it, leaving Eleanor speechless. I had to admit it was worth it and I laughed a bit.

"Uhm when you two are... well, done, I guess? There's shots waiting for you..." she grimaced and shook her head. "Okay. Bye. Gross."

I laughed and walked up to Niall, getting on my tiptoe to kiss him. "Now she knows." I whispered.

"It's okay, I'm sure she won't tell." Niall tried to reassure me as I chuckled.

"Yea, like she'll keep that from Louis!"

We both laughed and shook our heads and I finally went back to grab his cap on the counter before we walked back to the table. It was useless to pretend we weren't together or anything. At that point, I knew we were fucked and that everyone probably knew about us.

"Finally!" Louis said when he saw us before pushing shots closer to us. He waited until everyone had one and he moved it up over his head to make a toast. "To Neil and Olivia, who literally can't keep their pants on when they're around each other!"

Everyone laughed and I kicked him under the table. It only resulted in him laughing and smirking at me but we all drank and I turned to Niall who was smiling fondly at me. Fuck it, why should I care if my friends knew?

                                                     ---

"I want to write a song about that." Niall said as we walked in his house.

I let my purse fall on the floor and walked slowly to the bathroom to take off my make up. "Write a song about what?"

He walked up to me and leaned against the door frame, just looking at me as I washed my face and it reminded me of that time I was too sick to do it myself and he had done it for me. It made something stir in my stomach and I sent him a fond smile in the mirror.

"A song about sex with you." he explained, pushing his hands in his pockets as I chuckled.

"Make it more general, maybe? And don't use my name!"

He chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Do you know me at all?"

I grabbed my phone to check the time and it's only when I saw the date that I frowned. Today was april 7th (now 8th), and I was sure I had something planned on the 6th. When I remembered, I felt my heart jump in my throat and held myself against the counter.

"Liv, hey, are you okay?"

Niall was close to me, I could feel the heath of his body against mine and his hand on my back and I swallowed hard before moving my body back up and turning to him, blinking a few times as he frowned. Could I really tell him that? Would I have the guts to say it out loud?

"Niall, I'm late."

He frowned for a second and then he understood. His lips parted and an expression appeared on his face. It looked like fear.

"It's... it's stress, right? You're on birth control?" he seemed panicked and I swallowed hard, feeling suddenly extremely guilty.

"Yea but those pills aren't a hundred percent safe." I pointed out, shaking my head before my traits softened. "No it's probably just stress, I've been working a lot and not sleeping much..."

He nodded and searched for his phone in his pocket before dialing a number quickly. I frowned and walked closer to him, wanting to ask him who he was calling but I didn't dare. He turned to me and showed me his forefinger, telling me to give him a minute and he left. I leaned against the counter again, head down between my shoulders, and felt myself tear up. I had been through so many things recently and I was exhausted. Adding a pregnancy to my life was not a good thing at the moment and I was also scared it would break something between Niall and I, and I was not ready to lose him.

He came back and wrapped his arms around me, leaning his chin on my shoulder. I looked at his reflection in the mirror and he sent me a loving smile that I sent back.

"I called the drug store. They're sending us a few tests. We'll be fixed tonight."

I felt relieved but also nervous and when the doorbell rang, we argued on who was going to answer. He won and I waited for him to come back, sitting on the couch and shaking my leg. He sat next to me and took a box out, handling it to me. I just stared at it for a few seconds until he pushed the side of his upper body gently against mine.

"Petal, it's okay. If you're pregnant, we'll adjust."

"It's gonna ruin what we have." I let out in a whisper.

In half a second, he was kneeling in front of me, searching for my eyes and when our gazes met, he raised his eyebrows.

"Nothing will ruin what we have anymore. Nothing. I won't let anything bring us apart. I want to be with you, Olivia. Okay, kids weren't planned before a few years but if you're pregnant, like I said, we'll make the best of it." he paused and sighed, noticing I was still nervous and he licked his lips. "Do you love me?"

"More than anything in the world. More than anyone I ever loved, or will ever love. You know it." I admitted, feeling my voice break slightly.

"I love you too. I'm in love with you." he stopped talking and handed me the box. "You can do this."

I was shaking when I got out of the bathroom and quickly put the stick in his hands. I was near tears, and I had been for about an hour, but I was not really sure why. His words should have made me feel better and they did, but somehow, I still felt extremely vulnerable and fragile and I was not sure why.

"Please, look at it for me, I can't do this."

I turned around, my back now facing him, and let a few tears fall before wiping them quickly. It felt like an other hour had passed and I finally turned around and sighed.

"So? Niall? Is it positive?"

[nonasidesstuff]

the dimension travel au

aka Virgil’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week

so this is like half bullet fic half outline half word vomit but here it is!

this is based on a set of art drawn by @greenninjagal-blog that you can find here with the original version of this au

i dont mind if anyone wants to use any of these ideas just tag me/send me a link if you do!

this got SUPER LONG so its going under a cut

ok lets start with

virgil

his world is medieval-with-magic

the magic here tends to take on different elemental forms depending on the user

people who use magic are called witches

his is storm based (lightning, rain, wind, etc) and is good for both offense (shooting fucking LIGHTNING at someone is great in a fight) and gardening (the ability to call rain at will is pretty nice)

he can also make potions but in his world ANYONE with magic can make potions

the thing is,,,,, magic is illegal in the kingdom he lives in

so when he found out he had magic at like age 11 he fucked off in the middle of the night

he found another witch (a water witch) fairly soon after he left and they taught him how to control his powers and how to make potions

also how to hunt bc hed planned on living out of cities

5 years later hes 16 and has learned all he could and leaves to go to the woods in the middle of nowhere

his teacher had told him about a cottage they had built in a clearing in the woods and said he could go there bc they were leaving the kingdom

they left behind a lot of books on magic and he learned more reading those

the cottage was actually in pretty good shape? the roof was a little leaky but the furniture inside was fine

the outside was a nightmare though. overgrown plants all over

as the years went on he restored the area around the cottage and found a bunch of neat stuff

like a vegetable garden that had been overgrown and wild but still had healthy plants he could cultivate for food. there were also some spice plants that had gone out of control that he harvested and dried for later use

he found out the woods around his home were full of berries (wild strawberries and blackberries. shhhhhh idc if they dont grow in the same places this is a Magic World) and discovered that one of the trees in the clearing was actually an apple tree so yay fruit!!!!

so he was living the good life

cut to 3 years later

hes 19 now and a full-blown weather witch and potion maker

he has sectioned off his garden into 3 parts: spices, vegetables, and potions ingredients

unfortunately some ingredients just wont grow well in a garden and have to be harvested from the wild

virgil realizes hes running low on a couple of said ingredients and decides to make a run to the patches of potion herbs he knows of

he only gets halfway there

a swirling blue-and-yellow vortex opens up 20 feet in the air to the right of him and something falls out

something human shaped

holy shit its a PERSON

he rushes over to make sure this person is okay and.

they have reddish brown fox ears?????

and a reddish brown and grey tail????????

he pokes one of the ears and it twitches

holy shit theyre REAL????!!!!!!!!!

he gathers up this person and takes them home

he puts the strange person in his bed and tends to the minor injuries they obtained from falling 20 feet

this is when he realizes that this person is dressed,,,,,, very strangely

now, people in virgil’s world have some freedom in what they can wear. they can wear whatever the FUCK they want. virgil is partial to dresses and skirts himself

but what this person is wearing is different. the material was like nothing hed ever seen before and in a strange style

(it suits him. its really cute)

he slept for a little over 9 hours

(virgil slept on the floor)

and when he woke he was disoriented and woozy

so he ate a small meal and drank some water and fell back to sleep for another couple hours

when he wakes again, he feels much better and is able to introduce himself

“I’m Patton Baker! Where am I?”

patton

his world is like if you took every single magical girl/boy anime out there and mashed it into one world.

so its chaotic

theres aliens/demons/monsters attacking every other week

this attracts magical creatures like a magnet and they start giving magical girls/boys powers. these are called magical guardians

these people are public figures and are treated the same way idols are in our world (not allowed boyfriends/girlfriends etc)

its a tough job

patton became a magical boy when he was 14 and has been for the past 3 years

the powers his magical guardian are able to give are based off of endangered or threatened animals (yes im sort of copying tokyo mew mew shhhhhhhhhh)

patton became infused with the dna of the island fox

his transformation is triggered by a small tattoo-like marking given to him by his guardian. it’s on the base of his neck

he Absolutely has a magical girl transformation

when he’s transformed, he has the ears and tail of an island fox as well as claw-like nails. his hair is the reddish-brown of the fox and his eyes are silver

his outfit is light blue with silver and white accents and dark blue sleeves

when detransformed he has blond hair and blue eyes

his magical boy weapon is a bow that he can shoot arrows of light from

his group was based out of florida and has been going strong for about 15 years. magical teens come and go as they gain their powers and retire or, tragically, lose their lives fighting

at the moment there are six people including patton

their most recent foe is a monster that has the ability to make people and things disappear, and they’re not sure what happens to them

theyre fighting this thing at night when it happens. the creature has already taken the streetlights out and the teens are fighting in heavy darkness. patton, who has better night vision due to his fox genes, sees the monster about to grab the leader, and strongest, of their group

and he makes a choice

he pushes her out of the way and gets grabbed by the monster instead.

there’s a single moment of searing pain and then the world dissolves into swirling lights and dizziness

when he wakes he’s in a strange house. he introduces himself and the person who’s taking care of him introduces himself

he’s told he fell out of some sort of portal and virgil tries to help him figure out where he is in relation to his home but. virgil doesnt recognize any of the places patton is talking about. and patton doesnt recognize any of the ones virgil says

virgil asks patton about the fact that He Is Part Fox and patton talks about the magical system back home and thats when they realize theyre dealing with dimension travel

patton stays in bed for the rest of the day and by the next hes feeling much better! so he helps virgil around the house and they get to know each other

the day after that, virgil remembers that he really needs those herbs, so he tells pat hes going out for a bit to gather them

he gets about a quarter of the way there when Another Portal Opens and dumps out a person. this time right in front of him

this person is also wearing odd

clothing, but in a different style than pattons

he checks to make sure theyre not injured (they knocked their head a bit but other than that seem fine) and carries them back home

the person is unconscious in virgil’s bed for a couple of hours longer than patton was, but he wakes up entirely coherent

he introduces himself as “logan croft”

logan

his world is one full of magic

magical creatures of all sorts live there and magic is a welcome part of society

there’s elves, fairies, merfolk, unicorns, any you can think of

magical schools are also big parts of it

people who have mastered their magic to the highest degree are called mages

everyone else are called wizards

the way magic works in this world is with spells (think harry potter but without wands)

some people are born with more magic than others and as such have a harder time controlling it when it manifests at around 10

so theyre sent to magic schools where they learn how to safely do so

if they want to stay at these schools after they learn control then they move on to higher forms of magical education to continue learning

logan is one of these students

he was born with a MASSIVE amount of magic and when it manifested he. accidentally leveled his house

everyone was fine!!!!!!! but the poor boy had absolutely no control

so he stayed at a school for people with high amounts of magic and by the time he was 13 he had enough control to leave if he wanted to

of course this being logan he Absolutely wanted to keep learning so he moved on

he was so good actually that he ended up in the best magic academy in the world

he consistently learned magic at a faster rate than his peers and so by the time he was 18 (people normally didnt until they were like 21/22) he was a mage in all but name

so he was ready to take his mage exam

the mage exam is considered both easy and the hardest and most dangerous thing you could do

its easy in the fact that you only have to cast a spell correctly

its hard and dangerous bc its a spell that NO ONE outside of historians have ever seen before and you only have 10 minutes to memorize it. things go wrong Frequently

needless to say there arent many mages and people tend to either quit before reaching that stage or fail

and failure can be painful

so logan decides to take the mage exam

the spell they are given is a long string of words dug out of an ancient book of spells and historians arent entirely sure what it does

so ofc its given to the best in the academy

logan takes his ten minutes to memorize the spell and begins chanting

now in this world, when spells are used a runic circle made of light appears under the person casting

small spells have small circles and bigger spells have larger and brighter ones

the one this spell called forwards was massive and so bright that it blinded the exam practitioners (i think thats the word?)

when the light died down logan was gone

theyre unsure whether it went right or wrong but unfortunately theres no trace of where logan had gone so theres no way to see

when he wakes hes somewhere he doesnt recognize and is being taken care of by two people

they all introduce themselves and logan gets the story about what happened to him

and he realizes hes in a different dimension with different magical rules

naturally he wants to learn everything

so he and virgil have long discussions about the differences in their magic systems

(with patton chiming in every once in a while with how bonkers magical girl powers are)

after logan gets back on his feet virgil really REALLY needs those herbs and so he decides to go back out

logan tags along this time bc he wants to see the differences between the flora and fauna of this new world

they get about half way there and once again.

a portal opens

its light blue and yellow

virgil goes “jesus christ AGAIN??????? am i a MAGNET for these things??????????”

and a person falls out

theyre another animal person. this time with scales covering the side of their face and down their arms

virgil and logan carry this whole other person back home and as soon as they walk in

patton is like “janus????!!!!!”

janus

turns out

janus is from pat’s world!!!! and the same mg group!!!!!

he became a magical boy about a year before pat did and was merged with the dna of a golden lancehead viper

so hes been a mg for like 4 years

his outfit is white with yellow bows and a black cape thing with a yellow inside. his scales are bright yellow and his eyes are heterochromatic. one is a normal eye (brown) and the other is a bright gold color with a snake-like pupil

his marking is on the inside of his left wrist

his weapon is a set of knives made of light that he can call at will and either slash with or throw

he and patton got along rather well in the current time

in the past, they,,,, didnt

it wasnt violent but they were kinda snippy at each other and janus was aggressively sarcastic which pat Did Not Appreciate

but after working together for a few years they got to know each other better and saw each other through low points in their lives and became close

janus was still a sarcastic little shit but now its more playful

he likes to suggest “pushing it down a flight of stairs” for any problem

“man i have a big math test tomorrow with a mean teacher that i didnt study for im screwed”

“push it down the stairs”

“the teacher or the test?”

“yes”

he will also aggressively remind you that Self Care Is Good And Needed

(“patton youve been patrolling for hours every night this week. go sleep”

“but i-“

“go 👏 to 👏 sleep 👏”

“bu-“

“go sleep or im going to knock you unconscious and THEN youll sleep”

“ok fine”)

anyways the dimension monster came back and despite the whole group being more careful, it got janus

luckily (to every one else) this time they managed to defeat it

once again, the pain of dimensional travel fucking SUCKED and janus was unconscious for about as long as patton was

he woke and ate a small meal and fell back asleep for like an hour

when he woke up that time he was shocked and happy to see patton

they reunite and everyone gets to know each other over the next couple days

and then virgil remembers that he STILL HASNT GOTTEN HIS HERBS and they all decide to tag along when he leaves to get them

virgil just like sighs and said “nothing better happen this time i swear to god-“

and they make it most of the way there!!!!! virgil feels a little hope!!!!

then another portal opens

its red and green

(virgil: “GODDAMMIT”)

this time TWO people fall out

the group gather up the two portal people and take them home to heal bc

holy shit they are in bad condition

theyre unconscious for a solid 2 days

Roman and remus

their world is BAD yall

the world is very scientifically advanced, and a group if scientists decided that they wanted to prove the existence of alternate universes

and they did!

but they accidentally opened a portal to a hell dimension and they couldnt close it

so the whole world became an apocalyptic nightmare

this happened when the twins were 15

theyve been surviving on their own in an apocalyptic hellscape for just over 4 years now

remus is the close range fighter with a variety of Large Sharp Knives and roman hangs back and snipes the ones going in for remus’ blind spots with a modified rifle. or if he has to fight closer range he has a modified pistol

roman also is the one to carry their medical supplies bc remus did Once and never will again

they travel together bc even though they cant stand each other some days (remus makes gross comments a Lot and roman likes to complain about the lack of conditioner)

(roman once found an old bottle of perfume and dumped it on remus’ head. in retaliation, when they were relatively safe remus found a dead squirrel and chased roman around with it for a solid 15 minutes)

theyre still twins and theyre all each other have left

currently, roman and remus are running from a creature that caught them off guard while they were sleeping

it had managed to get a few good hits on them before they managed to fight back so they both have a couple injuries

roman has a long slice down his arm and remus has some real bad claw marks down his back

the two of them find a building they can hide in while they wait for the creature to move on and discover that its some sort of science lab

they decide to explore for a bit bc they have 0 braincells between the two of them

what they dont realize is that this is one of the labs that the scientists were using to build their dimensional machines

what they do realize is that the monster found them and it starts chasing them through the facility

the two of them are in really bad shape

malnourished after living on just what they can find for 4 years, both bleeding profusely from open wounds and various injuries from other run-ins with the creatures

they arent able to run as fast as they usually are able and so they get cornered in a room with a large machine

they back up to it to stay away as long as they can and

one of them presses a button

the machine behind them whirrs to life and the two are sucked into a portal oh so similar to the one that ruined the lives of everyone on their world

roman wakes first

he wasnt hurt as badly as remus so the portal didnt take as much out of him as remus

everyone introduces themselves and roman has the his first full meal in. a long time

(he might cry a lil bit but shhhhhhh)

and now that hes awake, virgil can give him a potion to help speed up his healing

thats when romans like “holy shit MAGIC?????”

bc there was none on his world

and they all talk and get to know each other

(the other four are Horrified at how awful his world was

bc like, patton and janus’ wasnt very good either but it wasnt an apocalypse

the next day virgil leaves logan in charge and FINALLY goes and gets his GODDAMN HERBS

nothing happens this time :)

and when he gets back remus is awake

hes fed and virgil gets him a potion too

the two heal and just kind of marvel at the fact theyre safe for the first time in years

also that theres GODDAMN MAGIC!!!!!!!!!!

they still can’t believe theres actual magic

the five dimension hoppers eventually meet thomas, virgil’s talking magic cat

(virgil: “he can think and talk like a human hes not my cat”

thomas: “im totally your cat stop denying it”)

he decided to wander around the forest for a while (he does this often) and only got back after all of the portal shit ended

he is the only cat with magic and says he ALSO fell out of a portal but it was a few years before he met virgil

i dont really know what happens after this

maybe they go try to figure out how to get home?

maybe they decide to stay and live in the woods for the rest of their lives

 maybe they decide “you know what? FUCK the government” and stage a coup to make magic legal

 whichever it is definitely has a lot of found family goodness

can you tell i started running out of steam like 3/4 of the way through

[alien-at-the-dinner-table]

The Eyebrow

I recently quit my job. For most of you, this sounds like a fairly normal thing. I mean, if you’ve ever had more than one job, there are only two ways to not be doing the first one: quitting or being fired. Of course there is the secret third option of faking your death and traveling to the cayman islands, but a prerequisite in “evil mastermind” is required there. For me, this was one of the hardest things I have ever done. When I gave my two weeks notice I thought I was going to die. I was sweating like a cornered nun, and at one point I forgot to breath and quickly ran out of air. The  truth  behind the unreasonable terror, the reason I nearly blacked out when telling an airpod adorned millennial I was done? I have an anxiety disorder. Shocking I know! Who would have guessed right? Until a few years ago, I certainly didn’t. I always thought that everyone hated their birthdays, dreading every single sleepover or dinner. I thought everyone would cry for months as they went to bed at the prospect of getting a shot. To be specific, I have a generalized anxiety disorder, with a very high probability that I also have obsessive compulsive disorder as well. I only got diagnosed with anxiety this last January, but only out of necessity. For those unaware of what it is like, you probably have some ridiculous caricature of what mental illness looks like. To be fair, I do things that are quite silly or odd, but that is more of a me thing than anything else. When approaching a teacher for a question, you will probably see me leaning back as I walk, looking extremely uncomfortable like a cartoon thief about to be caught.  But mostly the things my anxiety and OCD make me do are quiet. I used to get up in the middle of the night to re-count my pages for my running start classes. I sometimes get an eyebrow twitch. That happened mostly when I developed a crush on a classmate last year. Because God forbid I act cool one time. Upon seeing him enter class I would have to hold it down lest it fly right off my face. It was real bad when he wore a suit to school. My poor, emotionally unstable brain couldn’t handle all that class. I stared at the table and was unable to think of any coherent thought other than “i like bird” for a good 15 minutes. I plan everything out by time, including my job. I have that down to a tee. If you asked me what I would be doing at 8:24 I would be able to tell you. I do garbage at 8:30, so I would be restocking the coolers out front or the back coolers. I save the restocking of  the condiments for after  9:30 because that is after when I clean the bathrooms. I have so much free time because I have every single task assigned a time. I did that on my own, I was given only vague guidelines when training for the job. So I figured everything out on my own. And my old boss loved it, in fact he hired me because of it. In my interview he asked if I was the little girl who would always come in and color code the mentos by the  register. I had been doing that since I was 10.

 My anxiety has gotten worse as I have gotten older, and I eventually had to go on medication. That was in January as I said earlier. In the beginning of December I was quite happy. Then one night after work, I felt a bit nervous. If I didnt fall asleep right then and there I would get only 7 hours and 34 minutes of sleep. If I slept in I would not like how little of the day  I would have left, but if I got up right at the 7 hours 33 minutes (every second I am awake is ticking down!!) I would be very tired, and how productive will I be if i'm so tired??  At 2 in the morning I was still awake. In a slow burn panic attack, I calmly got up, walked to the bathroom, and promptly threw up. Funnily enough, I was super calm, thinking to myself “that was the best darn puke I’ve ever had!”. The next few days were weird, because the nausea never quite left me. I get nauseous when I am having anxiety, but I thought I was sick. So I panicked. I felt worse. I stopped eating as much. I couldnt sleep. I ate what I could because that is what I would do as a kid. I felt worse. I threw up. Repeat. After 3 weeks of this, I had lost 10 pounds and was on the verge of a break down. Then the straw that broke the sleep deprived camel's back came in the terrifying form of a P.E. bag. The start of Christmas break was two days away, and I was running on no sleep, and little to no food. I got unto the bus after a huge physics test. As soon as I sat down I dropped the bag. Cut to 3 seconds later- I cant find my bag  and immediately assume I left it in the class. So in a panic I hop off the bus before it pulls out of the school and look for it. Realizing my mistake when I do not find it, I walk home. Walking in a daze I hoped that my little sister had grabbed it. I got home. I asked if she had grabbed the bag. Replying with an eloquent: “what?” my world dissolved. I then promptly broke down and began to sob big, sad tears while my poor confused father tried to comfort me. I then missed the next day, sick to my stomach, shaking, and once again in tears. That was the day that my 3rd period class won an ice cream party. It was then decided that I should see the doctor. We got in a few days later, and I needed a blood test to make sure that nothing else was at play. If anything else hadn’t proved beyond a doubt that I had anxiety, my reaction to getting my blood drawn did. Shaking like a chihuahua doing the ice bucket challenge, I fought off tears as my mom held my gray hands. Fun fact: that can happen when your body goes into such a state of panic that your blood vessels retract into your body! Fun right? Anyhoo, a few weeks later and I began my medication. 

Obviously I still have issues. I double check all the locks before bed, and I eat the same foods for lunch every week at school. I turn on all the radios in the house when I’m alone because serial killers only attack when it is quiet. The time thing hasnt gone away, and honestly I’m getting a little tired of having a paranoid conspiracy theorist living in my brain. The meds helps a lot, by giving him a fidget spinner to play with so he  talks less. But he loves to make me question things. Like, did I really did put my phone in my pocket 10 seconds ago? I mean, do I specifically remember it? No? Better panic an absurd amount before checking it! My mom even mentions the word ‘dentist’ and he runs around screaming clanging cymbals like a bat out of hell. The really crazy thing is that no one realises when he is doing this. Growing up no knowing what a panic attack was, I know how to ‘hide’ them really well. They still happen, and honestly hiding them feels worse because doing that makes me physically ill. Telling people is weird too. I told a friend that I was going to therapy, and the end result was me fighting off the urge to cover my face with my hands. Not because it was horribly ignorant or shocking, I could feel my eyebrow starting up. She basically asked if I really needed therapy, and suggested investing in a fuzzy blanket. The stereotypes for mental illness make it really hard to know when you have a problem. Because people can’t see it, it makes it harder to explain that no, it really is that difficult. Do I like holding an apple core in my lap for an hour? No. But getting up feels so much scarier than looking weird. Going to therapy or being on medication is not something that ‘crazy’ people do. It’s what people do. Full stop.

[totesmygoats74]

Freshman 15

Julian was just starting his first day of college, alone for the first time, but he didn't mind it. His parents gave him enough money to start off in his own apartment next to his university, where everyone was booming about the new year that just started. Julian was awfully shy, until he met his best friend, Ky. Julian had a crush on Ky, Ky shared the same feelings, but they were too nervous to tell one another, untill one day.

Julian was never the healthiest person, his first few weeks of college were just pizza and soda, it only showed a little, but people noticed. Ky, on the other hand was on the football team, he's always had a dream to one day quit and just let himself go like he watched Julian do, but Ky was the best on the team, so it was nothing but a wish. Ky saw this opportunity to let someone else get fat for him, and Julian was the perfect person.

"H-hey Julian, I wanted to ask you something."

"Yea? What is it?"

"Would you like t-to go to the buffet downtown tonight?"

"Which one?" Julian questioned with a lit up face.

"You know, the pizza one" Ky hesitated, "The one you love to go to."

"As a date?" Julian blushed

"As a date." Ky answered blushing back at Julian

"Of course! You know I've always had a crush on you, I know it seem stup-" ky cut him off

"Oh my lord, really!? I have always had a crush on you, I just didn't want to tell you..."

-later that night-

Ky and Julian bothed showed up to the Pizza buffet, they were surprised at the fact that no one was there except them. They both took that to their advantage, Ky noticed Julian only grab about 2 slices of pizza, he was wondering why he wasn't grabbing anymore, and asked him.

"Oh come on, you don't want anymore pizza? Im paying for the buffet, you might as well eat."

"Oh please, I don't want to act like a pig in a public resturant, besides im not even that hungry." Julian said in the middle of his bites.

"Oh please, I would love it if you acted like a pig in this sort of establishment, helps the cooks know they are doing a good job at cooking." He said with hesitation trying to hide his fetish.

"You sure? I don't want to embarrass you on how I eat, you asked me here anyways, but... alroght I am still hungry, and its all you can eat."

Julian took note on how Ky was watching him eat, and asked him why he wasn't eating, but Ky didn't answer to Julian just shrugged and ate. Julian's button up shirt he wore to seem fancy on the date was starting to get tighter and tighter as the buffer date went on, and Ky's shirt was sliding up his muscle belly as well, Ky wanted to seem like he was enjoying the time and not let the stomach ache he had from all the pizza effect him. He mostly just watched Julian's buttons get tighter when he got on his 14th plate of pizza, Ky though to himself "Man this guy can eat, and it doesn't seem to effect him at all" and then he saw that one of his buttons was about to pop. Ky didn't want to warn him, he wanted to see it fly off and his belly come undone from the shirt, his dick was already rock hard from the second Julian started eating. The button finally flew off after rhe 16th plate.

"Oops, looks like I ate too much, I have to buy a new button up now dammit."

"Oh no that's fine, you just keep eating, ill go get you a new size"

Ky managed to get himself out of the place before he came into his pants on accident after watching Julian. He went to the store to find a new button up for Julian, he bought him an XL button up shirt, after realizing that Julian popped a medium, He was only wearing a medium? Ky thought to himself. He later returned back to the pizza buffet to find out Julian had eating ar least 4 more plates from when Ky left, Julian was chowing down on his 20th plate, and then Ky was prompt to ask.

"Hey you wanna ditch this place qnd head back to my apartment? My roommate is on vacation for Spring Break. So it's fine"

"Yea totally! Let me just get one more plate in, I really am hungry tonight."

"Alright, I'll meet you there" Ky said while handing him a note with his address on.

Julian was so full, that it took him about 10 minutes to get to the car, he had to push his seat back in order to drive properly and not have his stomach touch the steering wheel. He finally made it to Ky's apartment when he realized Ky had fallen into a food coma, Julian himself was feeling a little tired too after have eaten not stop for about 2 hours. So he fell asleep on the couch, but when Ky was sleeping, he heard the door open and woke up, he noticed Julian sleeping up right on the sofa in his living room and took the advantage. Ly slept qoth Julian on his stomach using it as a pillow, and they didnt wake up until morning.

"Rise and Shine sleepyhead, last night was amazing, I wished it could have carried on, but right now we need to get you fed and home before anyone notices you're gone."

"Fed? Oh no Ky you're too sweet I could never ask you to fe-" Julian was cut off when Ky started shoving food into his mouth.

"Oh don't worry, I'm feeding you, I loved it when you pigged out last night, I offered to buy you a shirt because, well I almost came."

"Oh my lord...."

"Please don't leave, I need you, I want you, I want you to get fatter, please come on"

"A-alright" Julian said because he was nervous what Ky would do to him. Though, he always wanted to be a chub.

The next day Julian realized something about ky, his six pack was now a little tum, and Ky was furious, he would definitely be kicked off the team if this tum affected how he played, but he didn't mind it, he never wanted to be on the football team anyway he told himself, he just wanted to have something to do after classes, and then he looked at Julian, Julian was something to do after classes, and he gave Julian a smirk.

"Oof, I gotta go to classes, later we should totally do the pizza buffet again."

"You sure? Last time we went there you almost came in public... and grew a tum from it, what about your football career?"

"My football career is fine, I can always bulk up a little, all I need is you to bulk up A LOT more. They always say bigger is better."

-later at the buffet-

"You know this was a good idea, I love pizza, and I love all you can eat buffets, its like the perfect mix."

"I know right? Its like us being together, we would be a perfect mi-" Ky cut himself off.

"Um are you trying to say something Ky? It sounds lik- nevermind, im just gonna go get more pizza, this belly doesn't fill itself" he said slapping his belly like a drum, Ky blushed.

It was like last time, Ky stuffed himself along with Julian, though Julian's pizza gut was much bigger, Julian had to unbutton his pants to fit more, he didn't want this date to go to waste, he wanted to savor it. Ky, on the other hand noticed what use to be a muscle belly is not just a full ball of flab, he loved it, Julian's influence to him was like heaven, sure he was about to puke but rubbing his belly felt so good and arousing. He couldn't stop himself, nor could Julian, theh both stuffed themselves, people looked, but no one seemed to care to them. Ky was stuffed to the point he felt sick, Julian wasn't even half finished, sure his new large button up had popped, but he made sure to wear an undershirt, but not even that was helping, his belly was sticking out of his shirt to the point Ky noticed, that was enough to push him off the edge, he came into his pants, he moaned and groaned, Julian didn't seem to notice, he was ready to leave about that time anyways.

-later at Ky's house-

"So what happened? I heard you moaning and groaning." Julian said looked at the stuffed ky sittig on the sofa.

"Oh -huff- don't worry -puff- it was nothing" Ky was sppeaking through burps and was huffing and puffing.

"Alright I'm gonna grab a soda and leave then." He said reaching for the fridge.

"No come on, stay over for the night, I have a bed with you and my names on it." He said smirking, and noticed a bulge start to grow in Julian's pants.

"Oh yea? Does the bed also have S-E-X written on it?" He said also smirking

Julian followed Ky into his bed room and they started getting ready, Ky got down on his hands and knees and Julian syatted thrusting, Ky loved Julian's huge belly lay on top of him, his dick was getting harder and harder, cum was everywhere. Ky knew he was gonna have to clean this up, but he didn't mind at all, he loved it. Julian was having the best time of his life, he always knew he was gay, but he never knew how good it would feel to do this sprt of thing, they went on for 2 hours until both of them ran out of breath. Julian had to go home it was 1 in the morning, and it was the last day of Ky's roommate being on vacation, so instead Julian invited Ky over to his apartment to continue, but they didnt have sex, they ordered food, played video games, and stuffed themselves once more for the night.

Juliian asked Ky to move into his apartment, there wasnt as much room as Ky's but Ky accepted since he disnt mind sleeping in the same bed as Julian now, if he could even fit.

"Make yourself at home, literally." He said chuckling with his belly jiggling

Ky got hard again, the jiggling belly was the best scene he had ever seen, he didn't want any of that night to stop, but then they fell into another food coma. Ky woke up with a bigger belly, turns out all that eating doesnt just go away. His shirt was tighter his jeans wouldn't button, and his chizzled jaw turned into a double chin. He wasn't mad, he was happy, he thought he had too much of a fast metabolism to gain weight like this, but the couch was going to be furious, so he decided to quit the football team over the phone, his jersey didn't even fit anymore, but he didnt mind, he was happt to leave the football team, now he could focus more on fattening himself amd Julian up, Julian had a pretty big belly, and apetite for only being 19, but Ky never seemed to mind, he likes that part about Julian. Julian, though was loving how small Ky was, but he didnt mind he was getting more of a tum, he liked when Ky would use his belly as a pillow, and he would get constantly fed with Ky around, mostly cause his belly wasnt a good pillow empty and Ky loved that his stomach made gurgling noises in his ear, Julian always noticed a huge bulge in Ky's pants when he walked by, and Julian finally got up enough courage to finally ask if Ky could be his boyfriend.

"Hey uh, Ky, we've been going out on dates, and we even live together, so I am just gonna ask, would you be my boyfriend?"

"Duh, I fucking love you, your belly always gets me hard, and I would love to own your tum, and feed it, and rub it, I would just love to."

[sadrien]

goodbyes & hellos

on ao3

im so so so late but hey this is for first day of prompt week for @thinkoutsidethelovesquare​!!!! day one: wrong number

this was a lot of fun tbh and ive been dying to write this ship. alyas texts are italicized, adriens are underlined on ao3, just bold here bc tumblrs a butt. shoutout to @reyxa​ for the title <3

enjoy!

Alya narrows her eyes at the new message that lights up her phone. It’s an unknown number that she doesn’t recognize — not that she’s given her number to anyone recently — and it’s also seven in the morning . Anyone how knows her at all should know that she doesn’t wake up before at least nine on the weekends. (And that has nothing to do with the fact that she doesn’t sleep during the week and tends to go to bed after two in the morning.)

She groans as another message shows up on the screen. She squints and lets the messages flow in, figuring she can tell the person they’ve got the wrong number after they’ve finished whatever they have to say. Or she can decide that it’s unimportant and ignore it and go back to sleep.

She likes her second plan the best.

unknown number: Hi!

unknown number: Just wanted to let you know the start time for today has been moved from 10 to 9:15

unknown number: My father has a meeting at 1300 so he wants to get it all done as soon as possible

unknown number: And I know you mentioned wanting to have him on set yesterday

unknown number: I hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience! Your agent should be calling you soon, but I thought I’d give you a heads up

Alya squints at the screen. She doesn’t want to care but she’s curious. And curiousity killed the cat and all that but she’s used to letting her nosiness get the best of her.

unknown number: agents???

unknown number: 1st of all srry u have the wrong number

unknown number: 2nd of all were u talking to a movie star or smth???????

unknown number: book writer??

unknown number: what kinda person needs an agent

unknown number: Oh I’m sorry! I must’ve gotten the wrong number from someone

unknown number: I’m really sorry if I was bothering you

Alya rolls her eyes.

unknown number: u woke me up but its chill cause now im curious

unknown number: Curious? About what?

unknown number: way 2 keep avoiding the question

unknown number: ???

unknown number: u said the person u meant to text has an agent

unknown number: how fancy r they

unknown number: Oh! She’s a model!

Alya’s eyes widen. The most famous person she knows is that thirteen year old that was in her school who has ten thousand subscribers on YouTube because she makes lyric videos. The second is a boy who has a few thousand instagram followers because he has nice abs and lots of white boy clothing and muscle shirts.

unknown number: u kno a model????????

unknown number: Uhh

unknown number: I’m not sure how much personal information I should be giving to a stranger

Alya sighs. So close.

unknown number: its fine dude (dude? u good w that? lmk if u arent) i getchu

unknown number: u can just stop responding if u dont wanna talk

She locks her phone and slides it back under her pillow. She stares at the ceiling for a few more minutes, wondering if she’ll be able to fall back asleep. As much as she’d like to take the train back to dreamville, she can’t. Because now she’s awake and now she’s wondering. And once she stops wondering, she doesn’t stop.

She’ll probably stop thinking about this random wrong number in a few days and in a few months, she’ll forget about them entirely but…

Ugh.

Sleep definitely isn’t an option anymore.

Leaving her phone in her bed, she pads to the kitchen, twisting her hair up into a messy bun as she does so. No one is up yet — of course they aren’t, it’s seven on a Saturday and everyone is taking advantage of every precious minute of sleep they can get — so she has the run of the house to herself.

So she makes herself some coffee and a bowl of cereal and turns to television on. Her initial plan is to just leave it on whatever channel that’s playing when she first turns it on, and luckily the twins were the last ones to use it. Saturday morning cartoons. Score.

Alya stirs sugar in her coffee as Cyber Chase plays in the background. It’s not much more than background noise, it’s the middle of an episode and she doesn’t really know what’s happening, but she does snort at a few of the bad jokes.

“You’re up early,” her mom says before dropping a kiss on the top of Alya’s head.

Alya hums. “Got a few text messages and they woke me up.” She notes how her mom purposefully avoids eye contact as she opens a cabinet. Alya rolls her eyes and eats a spoonful of cereal.

“School friends?” her mom asks carefully.

“Yes,” Alya lies. Better than her mom asking more questions. The biggest one being why were you talking to a complete stranger?

“Are you going to see them before we leave?”

Alya glues her eyes to the TV. “If they’re around.”

Her mom makes an unimpressed sound and Alya resists the urge to roll her eyes. She texted a few of her friends the other week, but the conversation was awkward and stilted. They all had the same sort of idea about cutting ties.  

Alya sighs and puts down her spoon, twisting around in her seat to face her mom. “I promise I’m talking to them.”

Her mom gives her that look— the one where her lips purse and a crease between her eyebrows that’s becoming more and more permanent; the one that says she wants to push for more details, but won’t unless they’re volunteered first. Which Alya is not doing, thank you very much. “If you say so, honey,” her mom says, turning her attention to the breakfast she’s making.

Alya stares down into her cereal bowl.

Time to evacuate to her bedroom.

She finishes her cereal as quickly as she can without choking and dumps her bowl and spoon in the sink as she passes it, taking her coffee with her to her room. New plan: curl up in bed with her laptop and hope her mom just leaves her alone until they move.

Alya’s almost forgotten about her phone by the time she flops onto her bed. It vibrates almost as soon as she opens her laptop. She frowns as she pulls it out from under her pillow.

unknown number: Dude is fine for me

unknown number: He/him pronouns please

unknown number: Thanks for asking I really appreciate it, actually

unknown number: People don’t always ask

Plan trashed. This is a better plan.

unknown number: she/her for me

unknown number: and no prob man

unknown number: i wasnt gonna assume ur gender

unknown number: ok that mightve sounded bad but i didnt mean it in a bad way like the ‘lol dont assume my gender’ way jerks do sometime i meant it in like a genuine

unknown number: if u have smth u wanna say u should say it because i am very tired and i can go on for a while

Whoops.

Alya can’t say she’s known for her stellar first impressions but she usually doesn’t ramble her way into an awkward corner. She mindlessly flips through apps as she waits for a response.

unknown number: Don’t worry about it! I didn’t take it the wrong way or anything

Alya smiles to herself as she responds. He keeps leaving her openings which is nice. Based off his initial reaction, she thought he’d shut this down as fast as possible.

She realizes this is probably a little weird. But it’s the most exciting thing to happen to her since school let out so…

unknown number: so whats up stranger??

unknown number: b4 u ask im just sitting in my room doing nothing but text u so thats my morning

unknown number: I actually have work soon, so that’s fun

Alya raises her eyebrows. She forgot age was something else she didn’t know yet.

unknown number: oo work that sounds fun

unknown number: what do u do???

unknown number: I work for my dad, it isn’t anything special

unknown number: But it gives me something to do with my time so I don’t mind that much

unknown number: If I randomly stop responding without warning, that’s why

unknown number: good 2 kno

unknown number: can i ask what u do 4 ur dad or is that 2 personal

unknown number: I uh… I just do whatever he needs me to do

unknown number: I don’t get paid or anything but

unknown number: ay it still works as a resume builder

unknown number: Yeah exactly!

unknown number: thats cool that ur dad can get u a job!! my mom and dad could never w their jobs so i just suffer

unknown number: not that thats any different from what i would do anyway as a teenager

Alright, perfect. She’s brought up the age question in a really clunky and awkward way. Better than nothing.

unknown number: Oh how old are you?

unknown number: I’m 15

Alya lets out a sigh of relief.

unknown number: ayy same!

unknown number: just ur fav teenage superhero blogger

unknown number: doing nothing with her life

unknown number: You like superheroes?

unknown number: yeah!! i love comic books. you??

unknown number: I don’t have time to read many but yeah! I’ve always loved Spiderman

unknown number: wonder woman is my g i r l

unknown number: superheroes are just so cool

She waits a few minutes before she decides that he must have gone off to work. Bonding over superheroes, that’s good. A shared interest. She scrolls through their conversation, rereading some of the earlier messages before she creates a contact for him. She makes the name ‘stranger’ and leaves it at that.

It’s not like they’re meeting up or anything. Even if he is an ax murderer, can’t kill her if she never sends him her location.

Alya spends the next couple of hours avoiding her mom as much as possible. She takes her sisters to the park and then goes to the library after she brings them home.

She doesn’t want to talk about it.

She’s clicking through a webcomic that she missed a few weeks worth of updates when her phone buzzes. She glances down, expecting it to be a text from her mom asking if she has any plans or to do chores or something, but is pleasantly surprised to see a message from her stranger.

stranger: Sorry about that, work ran long

stranger: Admittedly, I don’t know very much about Wonder Woman, but she looks very awesome

unknown number: !!!!

unknown number: when ive got more time remind me to tell u all abou t her

unknown number: and to rec some comic books even if u dont have time

stranger: Is she your favorite?

Alya sits back in her chair. This conversation is going to be a long one.

Alya finds herself randomly texting her stranger for the next few days. He doesn’t always respond quickly, but he responds eventually, no matter how weird her original message.

That’s more than she can say for most of her friends.

She texts him as she’s sitting on the counter in her kitchen, stirring a pot.

unknown number: hey stranger whats up

stranger: Just reading, you?

unknown number: making box mac n cheese

stranger: Sounds fun

unknown number: yeah im gonna eat it straight from the pot

The three dots bounce on the screen as the stranger takes his time with the next message. Alya snorts and turns off the stove, straining the pasta and moving to the fridge to find butter and cheese. He’s found his words by the time she’s letting the butter melt in the pot.

stranger: Straight from the pot? Why?

unknown number: because i live life on the edge

unknown number: and also because im too lazy to clean the dish later

stranger: You know what? That’s fair

Sometimes, Alya thinks that she probably shouldn’t think about someone who she doesn’t even know the name of as often as she does, let alone text him as much as she does. But sometimes she’ll see something, and she’ll immediately think of him. Or she’ll just be randomly upset and feel the strong urge to pick up the phone and see if he’s available to vent to.

She knows it’s kind of weird, but she can’t help herself.

One night, at around two in the morning, she finds herself messaging him.

unknown number: hey did i ever mention i was moving

She’s almost asleep, slightly more okay than she was before she sent the text, when he responds.

stranger: You haven’t but we also don’t talk about where we live

Alya stares at the screen for a long moment, the bright light in the darkness making everything on the screen blur into nothing. She just feels kind of numb.

unknown number: yeah

unknown number: like 8 hours away from where i live now

stranger: Wow that’s a big move

unknown number: yeah

stranger: I’m guessing you don’t want to go?

unknown number: not really

unknown number: did u know ur my only friend right now

stranger: I am?

unknown number: me and my other friends sort of cut ties

stranger: The internet exists

stranger: Phones exist

stranger: FaceTime and Skype both kind of suck, but they exist

unknown number: yeah i guess

unknown number: i guess its just too hard for any of us to try

stranger: I have no idea how far apart we live

stranger: We’re doing just fine

unknown number: yeah

unknown number: yeah ur right

One of Alya’s small comforts that comes to mind whenever she thinks about moving is the fact that she’ll have her phone on her and a portable charger. Her stranger will be with her every step of the way.

He’d managed to get her to talk to some of her friends. She doesn’t really think it’ll last once she’s in Paris, but the attempt is nice. And it gives her other people to talk to for the rest of the summer.

It’s too early in the morning when they leave for the last time for her to get really emotional about moving. All she has the energy to do is to take a picture of her old apartment, caption it ‘one last goodbye to marseille’, and save it before sending it to her friends over Snapchat. Before she falls asleep against the car window, she texts it to her stranger.

She wakes up to a new text among the goodbyes from her friends.

stranger: Have a nice car ride! I’ll let you know when I get back from work <3

Alya hides her smile from her sisters and screenshots the text for later.

She texts him from the floor of her new bedroom while her dad starts moving boxes. They’ve been in the process of moving for a while now, shipping most of their things to Paris beforehand. Now all that remains is the actual unpacking.

Alya doesn’t have the energy for that. She just lays on the floor and stares at the ceiling for a while. Then she picks up her phone and sends him a text.

It’s been about an hour since they last talked. She’d talked to him for a good majority of the car ride, only stopping when he was busy and ending the conversation when they arrived so she could get her things out of the car and help her sisters with theirs. She’d sent him a picture of her empty bedroom and said ‘let the unpacking begin :P’. He’d responded with a ‘Good luck!!’ and ‘I’ll let you get to work!’

Alya’s thumb hovers over the send button for a few seconds. She’s never really pushed him for any sort of personal information before.

New city, new Alya. Or something.

unknown number: hey just wondering

unknown number: what do u have me in ur phone as??

unknown number: i have u in here as stranger

stranger: Your contact name?

stranger: Uh awkward but you don’t?

stranger: You’re the only one I just have the number for, so I know who you are that way

Alya reads his texts a few times before she responds. She doesn’t know what she expects in return, but she figures she has nothing to lose.

unknown number: im alya

unknown number: in case u were wondering

stranger: Hi Alya

stranger: I’m Adrien

[we-do-recover-together-blog]

so its been a slow start on here but i havent had this tumblr for more then 24 hours still trying to figure out how to use this thing but i figured id tell a little bit about my story, when i was young i used to live with my mom my grandma aunt and uncle, mom was 17 when she had me and well at the least to say she wasnt quiet ready to be a mother then. she was always out with friends and partying and would leave me wit my aunt or uncle. i was very close with my aunt if anything she was the closest thing to a mother figure i had in my life i felt safe with her, the only person i ever felt safe with was her and that still stands to this day shes the only person in the world that never turned her back on me and never gave up on me she always took me out before valentines day to get gifts for my little crushes threw out school i could tell her things i couldnt even tell a best friend or counselor she was my safe haven. But sometimes my uncle would baby sit me and he would do inappropriate things to me and touch me and i was so young and i didnt know it wasnt okay i didnt know wwhat it was at all really until i got older and i was ashamed of it and felt like less of a man and really it took till i was about 21 years old to finally come out and say it of course i was only strong enough to say it to the only person i trusted to keep it a secret i was and still am a little bit ashamed of it and its something i need to work on but back to my story eventually with my mom struggling with addiction herself she would get kicked out of my grandmas sometimes so she would grab me put me in the car and we would just drive around all night i cant tell you how many countless nights i spent in the back of her car sleeping or at some strangers house., well eventually i cant remember how old i was exactly but i guess she just got tired of being the part time mom she was and i remember her bringing me to visit my dad who lived with my other grandma grandpa my uncle and my 2 aunts well we walked in the door and everyone was there in the living room just talking but as soon as they saw us it was like the world stopped and they just stared at us well turns out my mother was going on a vacation for a week with her new boyfriend well it turned out that week turned into weeks and longer with out calls or anything she just took off eventually one day we got a call and its the first time i can remember talking to her since she left and she was in jail she came back into my life sorta kinda just in and out until i was in 7th grade thats when i started t get out of control and full of anger and hate and was very rebellious the typical im gonna do what i want when i want how i was and no one can tell me shit about it getting suspended from school getting into fights you name it that was me i was a jerk of a brother a mean son and a worst nightmare for people i didnt like i wasnt scared of anything weather it was fighting jail or cops for years my mother was asking me to give her another chance and move in with her she was never around or home and she didnt really care what i did so i moved in with my mom and from there i fell into a group of older kids that liked to do drugs and fight and pretty much do any and everything that you shouldnt do and to me it was fun i felt cool and ilike doing whatever i wanted if i got arrested my mom wasnt home to ground me or atleast enforce it so i just continued to do whatever i wanted countless arrests and suspensions from school and the drinking and drugging i didnt realize till my most recent years the older kids were just using me because i wasnt really scared to do or say anything perfect little side kick well eventually my mother found a bowl i hadfor getting high and she kicked me out so i moved back to my home town but with my grandparents they are the sweetest souls i have ever met but they were old school and were not very strict so smoking pot and drinking where completely normal especially in my family i first overdosed when i was 15 years old i took about 70 something sleeping pills that the kids in my town started taking because they were untraceable on a drug and blood test like i said that was just my first overdose and yes it terrified my family but didnt faze me one bit not even a year later when i was 16 i overdosed on pcp started hanging out in a bad neighborhood and doing just about any and every drug available even after watching one of my bestfriends drop to the ground from the pcp just minutes before i did i woke up in a hospital bed still unfazed by it honestly i think a part of my thought it was “cool” and at that point i thought well i over dosed twice and still woke up so nothing can touch me at that point i was so wrapped up in drugs that my emotions were non existing and my thought process was just fuck it.the drinking and drugging just got worse the partying continued the arrests never ended cant think of a night that didnt end in running from the cops when i was 17 i first tried heroin i had a friend that sold it and we would go drink at his house and i found some in the bathroom so i tried it and well at the least to say that was the day my life completely i slowly continued to use it but not to the point where i needed it atleast i thought that shortly after i found out that 2 of my cousins were using heroin to of course i didnt tell them i was until we ended up running into eachother in the ghetto so we all started getting high together hiding in abandon buildings and shooting up heroin at this point smoking crack and shooting up cocaine too, two days in a row i overdoses on heroin and xanax the people i was with ran my pockets when my breathing stopped and threw me on the side of the roadluckly i was found by someone and brought to a hospital still wasnt fazed when i woke up and went home went to sleep woke up the next day and got high again in all of these events i was also in and out of the county jail like it was my second home eventually my family got on my ass so i went to a rehab for 28 days just to get them off my back, first day home i told my grandpa i was going to see a few friends and went right back to getting high the same day i got out of rehab. i started hanging out with this girl i met in rehab second time we hangout i end up overdosing again on heroin and alcohol thats when i found out i had hep C but im sure if my track record doesnt prov to be the same that didnt faze me either right back to using eventually i get arrested and charged with 3rd degree burglary get locked up in the county for two months and it violates my juvenile probation and i get sent to a juvenile prison, i stay there for about 18 months while im there my cousins are hanging out and one of them over doses and my cousin and our “friend” freak out instead of calling an ambulance they clean her up and tuck her under a blanket in the hotel room they were in and they leave her a few days later room service finds the body i find out about a week later and well i think the fact of being in jail and not seeing it with my own eyes just made it hard to believe that the cousin that used to babysit me that grew up with me was gone forever and i never got to say goodbye..and it doesnt stop there maybe two weeks later i get a letter and find out my other cousin killed herself. she just couldnt handle the shame she felt for leaving my one cousin in that hotel room .not gonna really get into details about how i felt after losing both of them because its almost impossible to describe.about a year later i finally get out and i move in with my aunt her fiance and my baby cousin i was on parole so i had expectations to meet like outpatient counseling so about 2 months after being out im doing good staying clean doing good with outpatient and my curfew well i wake up the day after my 21 birthday i wake up to a text that my bestfriend of 18 years is dead and that  pretty much destroyed me and broke me down i started drinking and skipping outpatient or showing up drunk i shut down and pushed myself into the dark again i was trying to get parole to violate me and send me back i just gave up but it never happened and the day i got off i moved out of my aunts and with my friend in philly well that was all just party party party. at the time i was talking to a girl who i thought at the time was my life partner and all that bullshit but i was just blinded by after 2 years of nothing but jail and parole rules she was just the first female who gave me her attention well while i was in philly we were all drinking and me and her broke up i was drunk and emotional and i well i went into the bathroom and i took 3 90 count scripts of depression medicine and i took them all i took 270 pills give or take a few and tried to kill myself 10 minutes after i took them i blacked out well all i can say is i must have a a seriously bad ass guardian angel or i have a very big and meaningful purpose in life because i woke up the next day weak unable to move and throwing up non stop all the pills i took. it took me about three days to get back to me then i went back to jersey with my uncle not long after that i get hooked back on heroin and cocaine again and my life just well i can say i never been so low the insanity of it all is just well insane everyday i woke up and NEEDED drugs in one day i would think a million times how much happier i would be if i just ended the suffering if i just drove the car into the wall as fast as i could and just end the suffering, my mind was such a dark scary place i wouldnt wish it on anyone and if i didnt always want to get high just one more time if i didnt want to feel that rush one more time im sure i probably would have killed myself, one day i was getting high with my gf at the time and i was just i dont really know what happened but its like time froze and i saw who i was when i got out of jail and how bad things got and how far out there i was so i reached out to the only person i knew i could trust and that would help me my aunt and the next day she checked me into a hospital and i detoxed there while i was there my aunt and my mom found me a halfway house to move into..out of state, they didnt want me to end up like my cousins did the found me a sobor living home and a plane ticket and they went above and beyond to save me. so i moved and i was terrified that id fail i was in the halfway house for about 3 1/2 months to 4 and i turned into a completely different person that i never thought i could be i was happy and going to meetings and sharing and i met a girl and i fell head over heals for her the second i laid eyes on her shes been strong for me stood by my side and made me believe i could be more then a guy working as a cook and just barly making it that i can have that nice house and i can g=have a nice car or go back to school that i can build a family of my own it took me a while to realize or should i say believe in myself to be honest i didnt start fully believe in myself until 2 months ago since me and her have been together i have stolen money from her to get high on multiple occasions i have lied to her and flipped her brand new mustang going to get high i have snuck out and left her alone in bed to go get high she bought me a plane ticket to go home on my birthday for a week to see my family and my first day home i overdosed on heroin i have left her on three occasions because i broke the law and went to jail the first time was for 2 months for aggravated assault and she answered every call wrote me letters came to every court date she visited me and she stayed by my side the whole time.not even 5 days after i got out i stole her car and money to get high even after everything she did for me a month later i got arrested again and charged wit domestic assault for splashing her with water yea i know it sounds stupid but i was piss drunk and got out of control well she bailed me out of jail my drinking continued to get worse and i came home one night from work very very drunk and i snapped and i actually put my hands on her i hit the woman that did nothing but stand by my side and believe in me and give me chance after chance she carried my child the first time i went to jail and we lost it from all the stress she was under from supporting her child and paying rent all on her own a few months after she bailed me out we got pregnant again our own little baby boy Carter well our little baby boy wasnt so healthy and was in pain so we had to make the decision to abort it was what we thought best for him while she was pregnant i went behind her back and was talking to a female that i shouldnt have been talking to and said things i shouldnt have said while being in a relationship with this wonderful woman who has done nothing but fight for me and stand by my side well on july 27th i went back to jail again and stayed for about 2 months for violating my probation still this woman stood by my side answered every call and again came to court this was when i finally realized i was still being defeated by my addiction and while in jail i decided im not gonna be that person i was because i have a choice it is my life and i wont be weak anymore i started going the the steps again for real this time and taking every step to better myself and well guess who bailed me out of jail again? you guessed it she did and now i have been home for 6 days and i have trouble sleeping so i decided to make this blog to share my story help others like me most importantly help myself and not i am sitting in bed next to my girlfriend and my only thoughts are why didnt i take advantage of this time with her and also how easy recovery can be if you really try i mean we tried pretty hard to get high or stay high just half of that effort will save your life its saving mine usually nights like this id be searching the house for a car key that my gf has to hide from me so i dont steel her car but today all i care about is spending and enjoying every moment with this woman and what would be my next step that would be best for my family and me its gonna be a long road and a hard fight but i know i can do it just like i know you can do it stay strong everyone never give up and remember you are worth it and you are worth saving 

[docmurph12]

Alright so the last review was a lot of fun, so I kind of want to do another one. I dont know who is even reading these but it's a blast watching these with a critical mind rather than a fanboy one and writing a semi professional review. I think I'm going to make a hobby of this. Anyways.

So this one I was actually a lot more hopeful for than I was for Aladdin. Maybe as a result I was....let down more than I was watching Aladdin. I am actually writing this after about the first 20 minutes of the film. I'm not going to post until I'm finished with it, but I dont see a lot changing here, and you will know why in a moment, so don't hold your breath for a rollercoaster review, because it's going to be about as flat as the film was.

So going in, I knew what I signed up for at least. Sarah was a little bitter, having to rewatch the first 15 minutes again. I'm going to say this is almost a SHOT for SHOT remake. I mean FRAME FOR FRIGGING FRAME, LINE FOR LINE. Even the timing is ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME. Honestly I might be just as much to blame for this as the next guy. I wear nostalgia glasses loudly and proudly. Just take a look at my living room. But the further I got into this thing the more I found myself asking "Is this truly what I wanted?" A few points before I finish this thought, because I am definitely going to lose my train of thought between the baby and the continuing movie.

-This feels like Disney wanted to go shot for shot, and only partially committed. Shots were almost copied verbatim, could have been traced in some cases, but because they were going live action.....I dont know how else to explain it but if there were an uncanny valley for animated animals it undoubtedly lives here, in the "Pridelands".

-Unfortunately the voice casting suffers a bit here too. It certainly isnt helped by the...lifeless animation (yes I know live action animals dont generally emote, but for christ's sake all things considered it's the goddamned Lion King. Come on now), but the performances are largely flat and dull. Standouts in disappointment especially pointed at the death of Mufasa, large parts of James Earl Jones' performance (mostly just because you can hear the age in his voice, where in 1994 he sounds about where he should have been age wise. There is a youthfulness in his wisdom that literally is bringing tears to my eyes thinking of the strength of that performance, compared to this one), NOT Jeremy Irons, oh sorry, Chiwetel Ejifor, and the shameless insertion of Beyonce (sorry folks, she is the Kristen Stewart of voice acting, and clearly in it just for the money as opposed to actually adding anything to the craft).

-There should not have been so much freedom allowed with the musical performances. With a couple small exceptions, The vocal performances were stale. It kind of felt like the performances were a meal and SO much was eaten up by the original performers that there just wasn't much left for the usurpers, or that they just didnt know what the hell to do with it.

-All hate aside, this film is visually stunning. I sort of hated the animal performances, or lack thereof anyways, but it is still a beautifully realized film. My favorite scene visually is 1000% where Simba is speaking with the spirit of his father, and the lightning is rolling through the clouds, outlining parts that look like a lion's head, instead of outright just being fully visible. Fucking beautiful. (By the way, we just got through the final fight between Scar and Simba. I didnt know it was possible to trace a cartoon with a computer but they did it. W......T......F......of course it has to happen as I'm complimenting it.....)

-Seth Rogan and Billy Eichner were pretty charming. The only outstanding performances in the movie from top to bottom. That said, Donald Glover was pretty good too. Speaking of exceptional performances in the face of an overall poorly performed film, my OTHER favorite part of the film was the three of them singing The Lion Sleeps and running through the oasis. Holy shit that was charming.

-Sad and kind of disappointing was the fact that the VERY little original writing, or improv, or whatever the hell it was was really good. I loved the quipping between Timon and Pumbaa, and it was REALLY good when it went a little meta. The fart joke and the piece about "Be our guest" was immediately recognized as both reverent reference and irreverent ribbing and was appreciated by both me and Sarah. Sort of shines a disappointing eye on Jon Favreau. I loved what he was able to accomplish with The Jungle Book. I realize he probably didnt do a lot of the screenwriting on either film, but with producer credits comes criticism for laziness where high quality is expected. Cmon man, I love what you do. SO DO IT ALREADY.

-I largely think this film could have been helped on a few fronts with one improvement. OR possibly changing a way the movie was put together, that is, if what I THINK happened was what actually happened. Animated films originally gave you a at minimum believable performance by capturing the physical performance of the voice actor performing ADR, and giving a rough animation estimate of that performance, since movement and expression largely impact what comes out vocally. I am not 100% sure that isn't what happened, but it FEELS like it didnt happen. If animating aspects of physical performances isnt the route, I genuinely think that having a sort of facial motion capture coupled with ACTUAL emoting could have drastically improved performances. It's interesting to see what happens when you put primarily voice actors in front of a camera, or primarily screen/stage actors in front of an ADR microphone. You can truly see the depth (or sometimes lack of) of their abilities as actors. One of my absolute favorite voice actors is Bryan Cranston, for that very reason. Unbelievable performer, in every arena. One of my least favorites is FUCKING BEYONCE. Goddamn is she a one trick pony, if that trick was simply existing. Truly a MASTER OF THAT CRAFT. That said, its 2019 (at that point), if we can give Andy Serkis EVERY tool to be successful, Disney should be able to put out a LITTLE Disney money to allow their actors to, you know, act.

Long (looooooooooooooooong) story made super short is The Lion King (2019) is more of the same, and symptomatic of a problem we created for ourselves: Shameless money grabs at nostalgia. Disney miscued like crazy at remaking a thing I didn't realize until only now how precious it was to me as a kid. Couple that with the fact that they have done SIGNIFICANTLY better doing the same thing but doing a different take, with a different, more modern and possibly more poignant message (I'm looking DIRECTLY at you, Maleficent). Honestly, as much as it KILLS the kid in me to say it, leave the sacred cows alone. Sometimes a good thing just needs to be left to be admired. Nobody ever thought they needed to improve on, say, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, or Ridley Scott's Blade Runner with a sequel or a remake. Wait. Shit. I mean Lewis Carroll's Alice in WonderlandGODDAMNIT. I QUIT.

Verdict--4/10. Seriously please make it stop at Mulan. I really want to see that one, see it not suck, and see it STOP. And for the love of god PLEASE DONT CAST BEYONCE IN IT.

[ericsburden-blog]

How to Drive Traffic to a Brand-New Site with Little to No Money

I know what you are going through.

You were excited to launch your brand-new site until you realized no one is coming to it.

So, you head to all of the marketing blogs to learn how to fix this, but for the life of you, your traffic won’t go up no matter which tactic you leverage.

What you’re feeling right now is very common. Not only have I experienced it, but when I was starting out, I even took the small life savings that I made from cleaning restrooms and sweeping up trash to pay a marketing firm to help me out.

And can you guess what happened?

They took my money and provided no results.

See, what most marketers aren’t telling you is that there are two main reasons why you aren’t getting traffic to your brand-new site (other than the fact that you don’t have much money to spend on ads):

Marketing is a long-term game – almost all of the tactics marketers, including me, talk about are long-term tactics. They take 6 months or even longer to see any results.

Your execution needs to be flawless – if you don’t implement the tactics correctly, you won’t see results.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t see short-term results or sales. More so you have to change up your strategy.

So, I thought I would do something a bit different today. I am going to break down what you should be doing during the first 12 weeks after launching your site.

I’ll be sharing a tactic for you to follow each week and, if you follow it, you’ll notice that your traffic will start going up right away. From there, you’ll start to see sales coming in.

Before I dive into the 12 tactics, note that you won’t have to spend much money, if any at all. I am also not going to give you advice that is extremely time-consuming, like writing blog posts, as you’ll also be running your business at the same time.

And of course, the tactics work for both B2B and B2C sites. It doesn’t matter if you are an ecommerce site or a SaaS company. Follow the steps below exactly.

Week #1: Respond to comments on other people’s blog without spamming

Have you heard of a popular site called Mashable? It was founded by Pete Cashmore.

When he launched his competing site to TechCrunch, no one knew about him and no one cared to listen to him as he was based in Scotland instead of Silicon Valley.

But do you think that stopped him? Of course not!

So, what did he do? He went out there and commented on every competing tech blog. And not only did he comment, but he always tried to be the first commenter.

See, when you leave a comment on a blog, most ask you to put in your name, URL, and comment.

Assuming you are leaving valuable comments and nothing spammy, you’ll notice that you’ll get referral traffic in your Google Analytics.

This will be because a very small percentage of people are clicking on your name when you leave a comment.

And considering some of the most popular blogs on the web receive millions of visitors each week, it’s not that hard to drive a fraction of a percent of their traffic back to your site.

The key with this strategy is to be one of the first commenters as that ensures your comment is at the top. The other key, of course, is that your comment must add value.

For example, if you own a marketing related product or service, marketing blogs would be a great place to comment. But what do you think will happen if you leave this kind of standard comment:

Nice post! Keep up the good work!

Nothing. On the flip side, if you put in some effort to write something that benefited the reader, you’ll have a chance at getting some traffic.

An example could be something like this…

Neil, I love the actionable tips on generating traffic for a brand-new site within the first 3 months of launching it. But I know you didn’t discuss much if any about SEO.

I know SEO is a long-term strategy, but people should get a head start right away or else it will take that much longer to get loved by Google.

One thing that I recommend every site to start off with is simple keyword research. You can use any free keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner and type in your competitor URL. Google Keyword Planner will then suggest keywords and even show you the cost per click.

By going after keywords that aren’t competitive and have a higher cost per click, you’ll find that you can generate search traffic at a much faster pace and these keywords will drive sales. As keywords with a high cost per click tend to mean that they convert.

Do you see what I mean by writing thoughtful comments that help people?

This tactic works!

Jared, who runs Skincare by Alana, still leverages this tactic today. When he and his wife launched their ecommerce store they commented on other popular blogs and social sites when it came to all things skin related.

This helped them generate 931 visitors during their first week and 12 sales.

I know it’s not a lot, but you have to start somewhere and grow from there.

I also have leveraged this tactic for years. Instead of focusing just on blogs, I commented on relevant social sites too.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve generated over 1.9 million views on my Quora responses.

Here’s an example of one of my responses:

You’ll notice that in my response I also link out to my own site which drives traffic back to me.

Yes, the response looks very long, and you may think I put in tons of work, but I literally copied and pasted a blog post I had already written and added it to Quora.

Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content. 😉

If you are going to use this strategy during week one, try to leave at least 10 solid comments per day. I would try to leave 20 as it shouldn’t take you more than two hours per day… assuming you haven’t done this before.

I can typically leave 15 comments in less than 50 minutes. So, throughout the first week try to speed things up and spend no more than an hour on this tactic per day.

Week #2: Be helpful on Twitter and you’ll get tweets

Before I go into week 2, keep in mind you’ll still want to maintain the tactics I share in the previous week.

By week 12, you’ll want to be following all 12 tactics each week.

Of course, you won’t be able to put in the same number of hours into each tactic and that’s fine, but you can still do them a bit. For example, you can still leave 5 comments a day instead of leaving 20.

So, let’s dive into week 2, which is all about Twitter.

This tactic I learned from my brother-in-law Hiten Shah. He used to leverage this tactic for every one of our startups… Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and he now leverages it for his newest company FYI.

If you look at Hiten, he built up his personal brand and influence in the tech space because of Twitter. Sure, people like me may have a bigger brand or more Twitter followers, but he has much, much, much more authority on Twitter than I do.

As you can see influential people on Twitter are tweeting about Hiten’s latest company.

He even tweets and connects with well-known entrepreneurs like the founder of HubSpot and Drift because of Twitter.

So how is Hiten getting all of these people to show him some Twitter love? Well, he has a 3-step formula…

Help people

Help people

Help people

And no, I am not joking, that is his formula. He doesn’t care to promote his business, he just helps people.

Let’s look at his Twitter profile to dive deeper into his strategy.

If you look at the tweets above, you’ll notice that Hiten continually pushes out advice on his Twitter profile. He rarely mentions his own company, but instead just tries to help people.

And when people ask questions or need help, he constantly responds to people’s tweets.

Not everyone takes his advice, but his mentality is to just be helpful no matter what. Just look at how he responds to people’s tweets.

Lastly, he retweets stuff that he likes. Whether you are an influencer or an average joe, he doesn’t care. He just wants to share the best information out there.

This is why so many people tweet about his product FYI. It’s because he is super helpful, so people naturally want to help him out without him even asking them to.

Now I know this strategy that Hiten uses seems like it is going to take forever to get results, and it does. But there is a hack that he uses to get immediate results.

Every day you should search Twitter for people talking about your competitor. When people have questions about your competitors’ products or services (or they have complaints), try and help them.

Don’t pitch them on your company, just try and help them.

What you’ll find is people will be shocked that you are helping a competitor. And if you are this kind and helpful, then what kind of service would they get if they took their business to you…

In other words, being helpful wins you goodwill and it will cause people to switch from your competitor over to you.

And if you go above and beyond like Hiten, people who haven’t even used your product or service will help promote you. Just like how one of his followers tweeted about FYI and he hasn’t even used it yet.

His strategy to help, help, and help some more has made Twitter one of FYI’s biggest traffic source. It accounts for roughly 25% of their weekly traffic.

Week #3: Go after small affiliates

No matter what industry you are in, there are affiliates. If you aren’t familiar with affiliate marketing, check out this post.

When you are starting out you probably haven’t created an affiliate program yet in which pay other marketers every time they drive you a sale or a lead.

You can always use software like Hasoffers to set one up or go through a network. There are literally hundreds of options and with a few quick Google searches, you can find one which is the right fit for you.

Now, what most people will tell you is that no one is going to promote your affiliate offer because it is unproven and new.

Although it’s true that your offer is unproven, it doesn’t mean all hope is lost.

During your third week, I want you to copy the strategy ConvertKit used when they first launched.

The strategy I am about to break down helped them grow from a few thousand dollars a month in revenue to over a million a month.

What ConvertKit did was they went to all of their competitors’ sites and looked to see which ones had an affiliate program. One of those competitors happens to be Aweber.

Then once they had a list of competitors with affiliate programs, they performed a Google search for “competitor name vs.” An example would be “Aweber vs”…

From there they would email each of those site owners asking them to include ConvertKit in the article or even write a unique article about ConvertKit. Just like this one.

Just think of it this way, if someone is willing to be an affiliate for one company, they won’t mind throwing in a few extra competitors. All it does is give them the potential to make more money.

When leveraging this tactic, consider sending out 10 emails a day. It shouldn’t take long and people typically don’t mind adjusting their web pages to add in another link that could potentially earn them extra money.

Now compared to most tactics, this one will drive the least amount of visitors.

But the traffic will be very qualified and more likely to convert as you are going after “versus” articles. When someone types in “Company X VS Company Y” into Google, they are researching which solution is ideal for them. These posts rank well and they tend to drive sales.

Week #4: Hire guest writers

Now the strategy I am about to break down for you in week 4 is my favorite strategy.

This is what I used in my last startup KISSmetrics to grow our blog traffic to over a million visitors a month.

If you head to the KISSmetrics site you’ll notice that it now redirects to NeilPatel.com as I bought the site.

So how much traffic did the KISSmetrics blog get from this strategy?

As you can see from the image above, we peaked at 1,260,681 unique visitors a month.

Our strategy was simple… hire writers who had a social following.

We went to the Problogger Job Board and posted a job looking for writers.

The job description looked something like this…

Are you a marketing expert? Do you know marketing like the back of your hand?

That’s great because I have an opportunity for you.

KISSmetrics is a leader in the web analytics space and we are looking to work with expert writers who know marketing and analytics.

We’re currently looking to expand our team of writers with passionate enthusiasts for digital marketing and with expertise and passion for writing.  We are hiring individuals for each of the following categories:

SEO

Content marketing

Social media

Web analytics

Conversion optimization

Paid advertising

Web design

Branding

Email marketing

Please go to our blog for examples of content we’re looking to create. [insert URL of your blog]

We would like to build a long-term relationship with you that is on a project basis. Initially, we will have you submit a list of topic ideas you would love to blog on, then we will pick one, have you outline it… and of course, you’ll then be off to the races.

The articles will be anywhere from 1,000 words to 3,000. Our goal isn’t to enforce a word count, we are more interested in high-quality content.

We’re looking for someone who is:

Looking for a long-term working relationship

Has 1 year of working experience as a writer

Has a good level of knowledge of digital marketing

Is willing to research and learn more about marketing

Has great grammar and spelling skills as well as proficiency in English

Likes working with deadlines and structure

Has a social following and doesn’t mind promoting the content you are writing as it will be published under your name

How to apply

Send an email to [insert your email] with – Applying For Writer Position in the subject line. Your email should include:

A bit about you as well as links to your social profiles

Why you’re a good fit for this position

Links to 2 -3 articles you have written

Your rate per 500 words.

The way we scaled up to over a million visitors a month was by publishing 5 blog posts a week. And every time a writer wrote a blog post for us, they didn’t mind promoting it to their social following as their name was on the article.

Once we got over 50,000 visitors a month, we noticed that we started to get inbound inquires of people willing to write for us for free. So eventually we slowly transitioned to a model where people wrote for us for free and we didn’t need to hire or pay writers.

You’ll notice that this will happen with your blog as it gets more popular.

What’s great about this strategy is the more writers you get, the more people that will find out about your company as each writer has different people following them on the social web.

Week #5: Create a podcast and interview guests

Have you listened to my podcast Marketing School? If you haven’t listened to it yet, check it out.

My co-host Eric Siu and I give marketing advice each day in under 5 minutes.

But don’t worry, the strategy I want you to implement isn’t to copy Marketing School or even listen to it (although I would be honored if you did listen to it).

Instead, it’s to copy my co-host, Eric Siu. He has another popular podcast called Growth Everywhere where he interviews someone new each and every single week.

You don’t have to do a weekly podcast, but I want you to interview someone in your space at least once a month.

And instead of making a separate site for your podcast, just pop it onto your main site.

Now when you publish each of these interviews, ask the guest to share it with their audience. From their social profiles to posting it on their own blog to even emailing their own list.

Although Eric has built a brand in the marketing space, he wasn’t well known when he started Growth Everywhere.

Just look at his stats from leveraging this tactic:

Eric’s generating over 15,300 unique visitors a month. That’s a lot of traffic considering Eric hasn’t even tried to grow the traffic to Growth Everywhere.

Best of all, you can generate similar results to Eric. But the key to doing this is interviewing people within your space so that way the traffic that comes to your site is relevant and over time those visitors will convert into customers.

If you don’t know how to start a podcast, watch this:

You could buy fancy equipment, but I would just use whatever’s built into your computer until you start seeing results from this tactic.

And if you really want to make your podcast popular, check this out.

Week #6: Become a rising star

Do you want to be a rising star? Well of course you do… who doesn’t?

Now you probably wondering, what the heck is a “rising star?”

Well, let me first start off with, Facebook groups.

Whatever industry you are in, whoever your ideal customers are… you can find them in a Facebook group.

Look for niche groups on Facebook related to the product or service you are selling. You want to join these groups as long as they have over 1,000 members.

You may also find groups that have over a million members. You’ll want to avoid these groups.

Focus on groups that are between 1,000 members and 17,000 members. Those groups are big enough to where you can generate traffic and small enough where you’ll be noticed.

What you’ll want to do is join a handful of groups and post 4 to 5 times in the group during your first month.

Assuming you are creating posts that are engaging in which people are responding and interacting with you, then you’ll get a rising star badge.

That means people are interacting with your posts. So then when you mention your product or service, you’ll find that not only will people see it, but they are going to head on over to your site.

The key with posting to Facebook groups is to create a high amount of comments and replies. If you just link out to your site you’ll get very few clicks and you will look like a spammer. Posting links and nothing more will get you banned from the group.

But if you link out within context or answer someone’s question with a link to your site or share something from your site that will help group members, you are much more likely to get clicks.

But if the content isn’t engaging and people don’t care to leave comments, you won’t see much traffic from your Facebook group.

I have a private Facebook group with 2,616 members.

When you post something that is engaging, you’ll get featured as a “top recent post” and I’ve found with my 2,616 members I can generate 119 to 184 visitors when I post something that is super engaging that links to my site.

But instead of creating a group as I did, just join other popular groups. You’ll save a ton of time.

Week #7: Co-publish content

Have you ever thought about co-publishing content with other site owners? Even if you don’t have a huge audience, people will still love co-publishing content with you.

Why you may ask?

Well, they may have the audience, but they may be too busy to continually create new content.

Just look at me… I co-published so many guides with other writers.

And…

And…

These writers got tons of exposure and did the majority of the work.

Over time, these guides have generated well over a million visitors. But I know they are time-consuming to create, and I’m not asking you to create guides.

Instead, you can co-publish blog posts together, record a webinar together, create a white paper, or anything else that you feel could be a good fit.

A good example of this is how my team co-published content together with a company called Hotmart in Brazil.

They wrote about Ubersuggest. They even co-published a video about SEO and, of course, my team mentioned Ubersuggest.

That helped make Brazil the most popular country when it comes to usage for Ubersuggest.

If you are going to try and co-publish content with others, make sure you are willing to do the majority of the work.

Hit up other sites within your space and make your offer. Let them know how they won’t have to do much work and, of course, mention what they’ll get out of it.

When you co-publish content, you can’t just talk about your company, you also have to talk about theirs.

Week #8: Product launches

Have you heard of Drift?

It’s a chatbot tool that a lot of people in sales and marketing use.

What I love about Drift is their Product Hunt strategy. Every time they release a new feature, they push it hard on Product Hunt.

You probably don’t have a ton of new feature releases as you have a brand new site but every time you have one you should consider pushing it out on Product Hunt or even a Sub-Reddit.

But for now, why can’t you launch your site on Product Hunt or on a Sub-Reddit?

Sure you site maybe live for a few weeks, but you haven’t announced it to the world yet. 🙂

Product Hunt is super effective when it comes to traffic generation. When FYI launched via Product Hunt they got over 1,000 votes. It was so successful, the HubSpot co-founder even offered them funding.

I did something similar with Ubersuggest. Every time I release a new feature, I announce it on Product Hunt. So far it has driven me 12,319 visitors.

The key with doing well on Product Hunt is:

Get as many votes right when you release it… ideally within the first hour (so ask your friends and co-workers to vote)

Participate in the community before you submit your own site. Ideally, you want someone else to submit, but if you don’t know any active Product Hunt users, participate for a bit before you submit your own site.

Make sure you respond to every single comment as this helps with engagement.

Submit your site very early in the morning Pacific Standard Time. Product Hunt resets every night, so consider submitting it around 4 am Pacific Standard Time.

I know self-promotion might be a bit difficult for you when you are starting off but you need to embrace it. There is nothing wrong with pushing your own company… if you don’t, no one else will.

Week #9: The gram

Honestly, what do you think of Instagram?

Well, whether you like it or hate it, it is one of the most popular social networks out there. And influencer marketing is becoming one of the most effective promotion channels.

Anytime a Kardashian talks about a product, it flies right off the shelves.

That’s how companies like FitTea came out of nowhere and grew to 7 figures in revenue overnight.

I know what you are thinking: It’s going to be too expensive to pay Kim Kardashian to talk about your business. And you are right, it will be too expensive.

Heck, anyone who has over a million followers will try and charge you too much. Anyone with over 100,000 will also probably charge you too much.

Instead, I want you to look for micro-influencers who have at least 10,000 followers. Find people within your vertical who aren’t too popular but whose followers would be your ideal customer.

Now I want you to reach out to these influencers and offer them a bit of money to promote your product or service.

When it comes to making your offer, don’t pay them money for a post because it will be too expensive, pay them to create an Instagram story.

See, the moment someone hits 10,000 followers, Instagram enables the “swipe up” feature. This means they can tell their followers to swipe up to head over to any website. And in this case, they will be telling their followers to swipe up and head over to your website.

You’ll find that influencers will create a story for pennies on the dollar as it expires within 24 hours.

Typically, if someone has 10,000 to 20,000 followers, I am able to pay them a few hundred bucks for 3 stories over a 2 week period.

I prefer this over a post because this drives traffic to your site and you can track the number of sales you are generating from each campaign.

You can also leverage sites like Influence to find influencers.

A friend of mine, Timothy Sykes, does this often. He goes crazy and pays influencers with over a million followers to do this because he has been able to make each campaign profitable.

Typically, you find that 1% to 2% of the person’s followers will swipe up and head to your site, assuming the story is good. With this strategy, you won’t get a ton of visitors, but the visitors you do get are more likely to convert into customers as they’ve already been pitched during the story.

Week #10: Wikipedia

Have you ever thought about Wikipedia as a traffic source? I know I didn’t until I attended a marketing conference years ago and heard someone from Comedy Central speak.

This marketer was breaking down how Comedy Central gets millions of visitors a month, which isn’t shocking because it’s a popular television channel.

But what was shocking is how they broke down how they generate over 100,000 visitors a month from Wikipedia.

You heard me right, they get well over 100,000 visitors a month just from Wikipedia.

How’s that possible?

Well, they go in and modify Wikipedia articles and mention Comedy Central whenever it is relevant.

But before you go off and modify hundreds of Wikipedia articles, know that you won’t get the same result as Comedy Central.

It’s more realistic for you to generate a few hundred visitors a month… and maybe even work your way up to a few thousand visitors a month over time.

The key with editing Wikipedia articles is to first adjust tons of pages that aren’t about your website. It’s not just about linking to your site, it’s more so about providing value to the community.

So, during this week, I want you to adjust 12 to 15 articles. Once you do that you can then adjust any relevant ones to your business and include your own company when it makes sense.

Again you won’t get a ton of traffic from this, but you can easily get a few hundred visitors.

Here are the steps you need to follow if you want to edit articles on Wikipedia.

Week #11: Speak at a virtual summit

By now you should have some traffic coming to your site. It may not be a lot, but if you followed all of the steps above, your visitors should be highly qualified.

And now I want you to leverage those visitors to get you a speaking spot at a virtual summit.

Search Google for a virtual summit in your industry. You should be able to easily find one.

It doesn’t matter if they are charging people to attend the virtual summit or if they are giving tickets away for free. Offer yourself to speak and promote the event.

You’ll be shocked at how many people will say yes if you are willing to promote their event.

Remember, unlike a physical conference it doesn’t cost them much to add hundreds of speakers and keep the summit going for an extra day or two.

When speaking, be sure you can promote your company during your speech and you’ll notice that you’ll be able to generate some visitors and sales. But that’s not why I want you to speak at the virtual summit.

Instead, I want you to ask the host of the summit to share the attendee list with you. Assuming they have the right terms of service and privacy policies this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

You’ll also have to make sure they aren’t breaking any GDPR rules.

What you’ll find is this is a common practice with most virtual events in which the speakers will promote the event and the virtual summit will share the attendee list with the speakers.

This will give you a list of super qualified people that you can promote your blog posts to or even your product and services.

Week #12: Scripts and tools

You know I love SEO and it’s an amazing long-term strategy. But to do well with SEO you need backlinks.

The more relevant sites linking to you, the better off you are going to be.

And as you get more backlinks, in the short run it will provide referral traffic. In the long run, it will cause your search traffic to skyrocket.

Just to show you how powerful referral traffic is, just look at my referral traffic:

Over time, all of those sites linking to you will start driving thousands of visitors.

So, what’s the best way to get more backlinks?

Well, you don’t want to buy them. And manual link building takes a long time and isn’t as effective as it used to be.

Instead, what you should do is release free tools, like how I released the SEO Analyzer years ago. And over time, it’s naturally produced 2,369 backlinks from 450 referring domains.

Now, I know what you are thinking: building a free tool is expensive and time-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. You can buy existing tools and put them on your website for pennies on the dollar. And over time, they will naturally get backlinks without you needing to do anything more.

For example, if you have a real estate website, you can always add a mortgage calculator to your website. And can you guess how much it would cost for you to add one to your site?

$13. That’s right, it only costs 13 bucks! How crazy is that!?

There’s a site called Code Canyon where you can buy tools for almost any industry.

You can use these tools as your own and put them on your site with a few clicks of a button.

Just head over to Code Canyon and perform some searches. You’ll quickly find some tools that can work for you.

Keep in mind that these tools won’t be 100% perfect compared to building your own tool. But that’s ok, you have to start somewhere. Plus, people will still link to your tool even if it isn’t perfect.

Conclusion

I know some of the tactics I mentioned above won’t drive you thousands of visitors right away but they can drive you hundreds. And hundreds of visitors is a great place to start!

And when you combine them over time, it will help you get thousands of visitors. You just have to be willing to perform all of the steps in each week… no matter how silly the tactic may appear.

More importantly, the tactics I broke down above will drive you visitors that convert into customers and leads. All you have to do is take the next 12 weeks and follow them.

It may seem like a lot of work at first, but you’ll get faster at them as time goes on.

So, what do you think about the tactics above? Are you already using them?

The post How to Drive Traffic to a Brand-New Site with Little to No Money appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Drive Traffic to a Brand-New Site with Little to No Money

[ryscheff]

How a Greyhound Bus Trip Gave Me Insight Into Human Nature

So until recently (today, in fact) I had never actually ridden an inter-city bus. I’ve been lucky enough to always have a personal vehicle at my disposal or just have chosen to fly between Houston, Austin, and Dallas for the sake of convenience. I’m not sure if the following is typical of public long distance buses, but heed it as a rough warning for any future risqué travel you may be contemplating.

I approached the greyhound bus station in downtown Houston with some trepidation, but mainly because I had to drag my two bags across the most populous homeless destination in the city to get there. As all of my friends know, I’m painfully white in both literal skin color and my nature, and I’ve never felt as white as I did at that moment. Head held high and with Ray Bans hiding the fear in my eyes, I passed all sorts of interesting characters. A man high out of his mind in public passed out and leaning against a light pole, a mother smoking a rather pungent joint right in front of her two young children, and a shirtless, pantless man having an animated conversation with an imaginary friend. I felt a bit better after passing the gaggle of homeless folk, and figured the hard part was likely done. I could not have been more wrong.

I was about 30 mins early for my bus, and the first person of interest quickly made himself known as I sat down to wait for my bus to arrive. A balding man in his early 30s, dressed in a stained long sleeve shirt and dirty jeans was walking around from person to person inquiring about something. I knew my turn would soon arrive, so I put on my sternest face and awaited the encounter. He made his way over to me, and I braced myself for the inevitable request for money or sob story which would undoubtedly end with a plea for funding. I was somewhat surprised when, instead, he asked if I had an extra shirt for him. I quickly overcame the initial surprise at being asked for a shirt once I caught a whiff of the odor emanating from the man, but politely issued a “no, sorry” and he continued his inquests elsewhere. You see, I’m all packed for a long trip and only have about 5 shirts to my name, none of which I can really afford to spare for a stranger. I felt bad, but such is life and I truly wasn’t in a position to help. I told myself that would likely be the weirdest experience of my day, pulled out my headphones, and began listening to some tunes. Next thing I know, I see the man pull off his shirt in the middle of the bus station, throw it in the trash, and proceed to comprehensively wash himself at the water fountain. While I commend him for his admirable commitment to personal hygiene, it was far too late and far too little to quell the impressive stench he had managed to acquire after what I can only imagine was weeks without showering. He was subsequently told to leave the bus station as it became evident he didnt even have a ticket, and that was that.

It quickly became apparent that my bus traveling troupe would consist of an odd assortment of characters, but I would come to form a bond with all of them nonetheless. Sharing a common goal/ destination and a cramped means of getting there, along with the trials and tribulations yet to unfold, all seem to awaken the innate tribal nature of man and this was no exception. I made friendly conversation with an interesting gothic looking couple decked out in leather jackets and combat boots, and even led a wailing, frantic child back to his thankful mother at a distant gate. I was feeling like a greyhound station veteran in no time. At one point I saw a guy about my age, also white and somewhat painfully so, enter the station and look around with a nervous, slightly confused demeanor. He reminded me of myself 30 minutes prior, and I was determined to help the fresh faced green recruit become acclimatized to our new environment. Somewhat unsurprisingly he made a beeline straight to me to ask a question about his bus and which gate it would be at, and we found we were both on the 12:10 to Dallas. Just like that, I had made my first greyhound friend. We chatted about our destinations and what we had been doing in Houston. It was only until later, in a break in conversation, did we realize that 12:10 had come and gone and there was no sign of our bus. Over the course of the next 2 hours we were shuffled from gate to gate and line to line, and were promised every 15 mins that the bus would be there “soon”. We were entertained the entire time by a plethora of incidents which I can only assume are commonplace at the bus station, including a public domestic dispute and the aforementioned child throwing the tantrum of the century as his mother and sister tried in vain to appease him with food and trinkets alike. With eardrums ringing and an immediate vasectomy at the forefront of my mind, we finally boarded our bus a full 2 and a half hours late. As it turned out, our mutual frustration with greyhound gave us all a common enemy and with some collective action we were able to guilt greyhound into bring a special bus for us, as ours had evidently gone completely rogue. I’m writing this on my phone with the buses wifi, which is about the only thing that has worked or gone as expected today.

I suppose there is still time for another memorable experience before I depart, but I think I’m in the clear. If I could do it over again I would probably have booked a spirit airlines flight from Houston to Dallas and been done with it, but then I wouldn’t have made a new friend, and as they say: Turmoil and tribulation are best for bringing people together. And for all the bad things that can be said of the trip, I’m going to look for the silver lining as my mother taught me: At least it was only twenty five bucks?

[ionqins]

170525 EXO’rDIUM in NY/NJ fan account

tl;dr: don’t camp out if you want to enjoy the concert.

before i jump into the actual concert day, here’s a summary of the announcement and ticketing extravaganza.

so mymusictaste (mmt) officially announced exo’s “north american” tour in ny and la on feb 9. they also announced that “makers” got to buy their tickets during the presale before the general public and also get 10% off their ticket (1 ticket per maker). “makers” are people who had gone onto mmt’s official site before ~9pm feb 9 (up until about one hour after mmt posted their announcement), made a (free) account, and clicked on the “make” button for exo in ny 2017. 

immediately, there was an uproar from fans- on how the whole makers getting a presale is unfair, on how soon the tickets are going on sale, and on how exo isnt going to nearly as many stops as last year. atlanta fans were especially upset because their city had one of the highest “makers” from last year - which was supposedly what mmt uses to decide which cities to hold concerts in - and mmt skipped atlanta both last year and this year. mmt, of course, stayed mute to all the complaints thrown at them, as they always do.

fast-forward to ticket presale day. my sister and i were ready with our 7 devices on ticketmaster, waiting for a bloodbath and not taking any chances, seeing our exo ticketing experience last year- standing ga ended up being ordered by ticketing number rather than fcfs, something mmt didnt clarify until after the sales. this year, the entire presale ended up being anti-climatic. fans found (supposedly from mmt’s site) that about ~3k fans were “makers” but it seemed like barely a few hundred made any dent on the presales. ga was wide open and the only really popular sections were the closest seated rows.

a few days later, the general sales opened up and the ~10k venue ended up selling about half the seats, a number that didnt really increase drastically after the first day of sales.

and fans blamed the poor ticket sales on mmt’s lack of promotion (but they promoted the same way as they did for last year’s sold-out show) or the concert being on a weekday (but so was bts’s sold out show a month prior) or expensive tix for no fan interaction (again, last year’s show had the same situation) or the presales discouraging non-makers to buy tix (but they literally had to take 30sec and navigate to the ticketing page to realize that presales barely did anything) or exo not going to as many stops as last year (i truly don’t understand how this is an excuse for lack of sales- shouldnt fewer stops mean more packed venues for the existing stops? specifically, northeast coast fans wouldve still had prudential center to fill up).

the real reasons for low sales were: 1- exo’s decreasing popularity in the US- it’s embarassing to see how exo fans refuse to see this fact. fandoms rise and fall, it’s the circle of life and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. exo may have been one of the more popular - if not the most popular - kpop concert act (i say this instead of simply “kpop act” because big bang is still the most popular household name) in the states, but there’s a new lion in town.

2- speaking of lions, bts’s tickets went on sale long before exo’s was, and most fans are younger and wouldnt be able to afford two concerts within a month of each other. but going back to point 1, im gonna go out on a limb here and say that even if these announcements/concerts were chronologically flipped, bts still would have sold out, just as they sold out every single other venue in their entire wings tour. and exo would still have a visible number of emptiness in their concert. the amount of negativity (“exo will never come to the states again”, “american exo fans are terrible”, telling fans to give their tickets away for free if they can’t make it - this was the biggest wtf moment i had during the ticketing experience. how about /you/ buy a $200 ticket and donate it to a fan?) leading up to the concert was appalling. i wish american exo fans start taking these experiences on a positive note and enjoy everything to the fullest while it lasts, instead of acting whiny and immature and blaming the organizers for the fandom’s own lackings. onto the actual concert experience. both my sister and i worked until regular hours the day before the concert, so we left home at around 7pm and drove up to the venue close to 11pm. the line was already at least 15+ tents and about 100 people from what we could see. i dropped my sister off with her sleeping bag and parked/checked in at the hotel we were staying at about a 10 minutes-walk away. i walked back to the venue (definitely sketchy neighborhood, would not rec to walk alone at night if you dont want to be cat-called). i brought a duffle bag and smuggled out a hotel pillow and towel, along with some food, water, a portable charger, and two umbrellas. it was only somewhat chilly (lows of 50s) but the rainy weather forecast was what worried us the most. i camped out for a few hours and then walked back to the hotel around 2am (again, would not rec) since i hadnt bought a sleeping bag and the cold was getting to me. i slept until 4am and then checked on the sis, and then slept again until 7:30am. /aside/ i was supposed to wake up at 6am and switch places with my sister but my phone alarm apparently doesnt go off when it’s in the ultimate power save mode, aka i was a terrible person and had my sister waiting for over an hour out in the cold and rain /end aside/ it had been constantly drizzling all night, with some wind to add to the chill. i took some hotel breakfast to-go and walked back to the venue to see everyone’s pale and lifeless faces. the number of people in front of us had doubled to about 200 overnight so that was just excellent. my sister looked like a wreck so i sent her back to the hotel to get some actual shut-eye while i held the fort. mmt had said they’ll start wristbanding the ga line at 10am, to create a numerical order for when we go in. so my sister comes back at 9:30am and we wait. and wait. and enjoy the torrential downpour of rain that nj so graciously gave us. around 11am some staff comes out and tells us they wont be wristbanding until 1:30pm. so then my sister goes back to the hotel, hoping she could sleep this time. shortly after 12, another staff member comes out and tells us they’ll start wristbanding soon so get your tickets ready. panicking, i call my sister half a dozen times and finally get a sleepy response. she runs back just in time to witness the mess mmt will create with this wristbanding process. now logically, mmt staff should have gone down the line of campers and given out these numerical wristbands in the order that we had already put ourselves in. but did they? of course not, why would mmt ever be logical? so some staff up at the very front of the line yelled for us to stand up and make /another line/ in front of them, about 5 feet away from our original line. as expected, an absolute stampede of fans followed. fans who were behind us ran up in front of us, and fans who were originally in front of us were no longer there if they had temporarily left the line right before for a bathroom or coffee break. the “line” we had made wasn’t exactly a line, either, but more of a hoarde. in my haste i had forgotten my phone at our camping site, but my sister was nice enough to go back and get it while i held our place in this new standing line (my phone was undamaged but our sleeping bag and most of our food was crushed). so mmt made us wait standing in this new line for another hour before they actually began coming down and putting our wristbands on. they then told us that we can leave this line if we want but that putting ourselves in order again will ultimately be up to us and that they “won’t be held accountable” if people cut us or if we can’t get back in the same order. so literally :) what is the point :) of this new line and the wristbands then :) the merch line was supposed to open up at 1pm but since nothing ever happens on time with mmt, we should’ve known. i stood in the wristband line while my sister went to the other side where the merch line was. she comes back around 3:30pm with the lightstick. then i decide to go back to the hotel to drop off our remaining stuff so we could go into the pit with no bags. i also leave our umbrellas, which later turned out to be a mistake. at 4pm i get a text saying that mmt decided us standing in line wasnt enough, they wanted to barricade us so we’d feel like canned fish. the wind is howling by this time, and the temperatures had dropped to what it was the night before. it also started raining again. i walk back and was allowed to jump the barricade once one of the fans we were standing with yelled “sister!” these were the fans who were in line since the night before (with a sprinkling of fans who cut in line earlier that morning), so they meant business when someone requested to get back in line. so here we stand, squished like sardines as the weather gets more chilly and windy. and then it begins to rain, of course. i had left our umbrellas at the hotel so we wouldnt have to carry anything into the pit but that was a grave mistake. we all tried to huddle under the nearest umbrella that we could, but the winds blew the rain every which way so nearly everyone was soaked in the end. someone behind us was nice enough to give us plastic trash bags, which we made holes into to wear like ponchos. it was 5pm, then 6pm, when we could see staff inside spreading out carpets and then standing around. then 6:30 came, one hour before the concert and supposedly the time when doors open. but open they did not. after a few people called the venue, we were notified that there was “production issues” so we won’t be let in until 7pm. some assumed there was a previous event for which they had to clean up, others thought there was something wrong with exo’s stage, itself. many of us, including me, were shivering non-stop by this point. but we didnt have any other choice but to wait. 7pm comes by, and the doors were still shut and the staff inside still in their place. more phone calls later and again we learn that opening the doors is delayed by another half hour to 7:30. aka when the concert should have begun. between 7 and when they finally let us in at around 7:45, there were at least four people who either fainted or had panic attacks and had to be ushered inside (after fans had to continuously bang the windows to get the staff’s attention- and no, we weren’t just impatient to get let in so please come outside smh). 7:45 and we’re inside. i’m still wet and shivering and too cold to take off my jacket and put it over the railing as i had planned. my friend was near the back of the ga line and she barely made it in when the concert began at 8:25, one hour after the advertised time. the concert was a blur, to be honest. this has to be the first time i yawned during a concert, and that, too, several times. most of the fans around me were equally tired. i had gone to the exoluxion concert at the same venue a year prior, and the difference in energy was striking. (with exoluxion, mmt had us lined up by ticket number so there was no camping out needed, no bad weather, and no one-hour delay). exo was fantastic, and despite their jetlag they were giving it their all. they made a few funny mistakes here and there but they just laughed it off and continued. the remixed versions of their older songs were very neat and i loved the upgraded pyrotechnics this year. i stood near the side of the stage where kai (ofc), chen, kyungsoo, and suho showed up the most. not to be biased but kai actually stole the show. being his usual self he gave each dance move his 110% and his smiles were absolute killer. his hair was also glorious, good goly what a mane. overall i did enjoy the concert. exo themselves put out a wonderful show, and sme provided a beautiful stage to watch the glory in. i just wish i had been awake to appreciate the boys more after waiting to see them for so long.