#and then the new ones are like it rarely takes me more than 15 mins to do a saturday 😒

[comfortcomes]

i know how this sounds but i swear to god they make the friday &saturday crosswords so much easier than they used to it’s like insulting…..

[mmkin]

The Siren's Shark (Fury of the fishman race)

New chapter of the Siren's Shark now up on AO3, the chapter title is pretty self-explanatory. Content warning - violence, a lot of it.

It's also under the cut and picture I did of Arlong having a party and chilling with Yolande and his bros. 15-20 min doodle that was a hecking lot of fun to do. Initially it just started out with the couple but they looked so happy I wanted to draw more fishmen.

XIII

o0o0o0o

Yolande watched the fires on the island, explosions going off one after the other, some near the shore, others a bit further inland. With the distraction from the first wave of explosives, the fishmen could move forward and plant the second round that would breach the wall that guarded the nicest estates on the island… and its most prized and powerful slaves.

“Maybe you need a drink, eh?” she heard Caten say from behind her. She felt an arm wrap around her own and was tugged away from the railing. For a couple of moments, she tried to resist, but Caten had more fishman strength than her. “It’ll do you no good to just stand there and watch. Come have a drink with us, misery loves company.”

The others were in the mess hall, including Rekiin. He’d wanted to go with the pirates, insisting that he was strong from Kuroobi’s classes. It was hard to not admire the boy’s pluck, and he’d pouted as the others left him behind. But such a pout did not work on the mighty Captain Arlong or even the more pliable Hatchan. The boy was now at one of the tables, playing a game of Go with Rosa while a couple of the others watched, relaxing and enjoying themselves.

A cup of rum was pressed into her hand, and Yolande looked down. Despite her anxiety, she was hesitant to drink because what if something happened on the island and she had to respond to it? Wouldn���t it absolutely suck if the invasion failed and she and the remaining fishmen had to fight or run for it? She couldn’t bear the thought of Arlong and the others enslaved.

No, no, no. You all came up with a good plan, she told herself. She had provided the firepower. The fishmen would provide strength and rage. The few humans not on Arlong's shit list helped to provide intelligence that could be used for stealth and surprise. And there were a few high-value hostages in the brig if needed.

Fisher Tiger had pulled it off in a larger city with fewer men. So Arlong could, damnit. Her fingers squeezed around the glass. Whatever had happened in Arlong Park, it seemed like Arlong and his men had learned from it. They can do it, they will do it, she kept trying to tell herself.

“Hey, take a deep breath. Sit down.” Caten squeezed her arm. The explosions had died for some time, and she could almost imagine it in her mind’s eye with the help of the map that Koji and Hazel had drawn for them. They were no cartographers but as lifetime residents of the island they had been able to give out a good lay of the land, pointing out the walls and divisions of the city.

“How about I tell a story?” Caten asked. “I think you’d like this one.”

“I’d welcome the distraction,” Yolande replied with all sincerity.

“So you remember before I was saying how misery loves company? There’s this story my grandmother would tell me when I was a kid. I always thought it was pretty clever. So here we go…” She took a long swig of her rum before several of the other fishmen settled nearby.

“There was this woman called Misery. She was old and poor and hardworking. Her one joy in life was a tree she had that bore succulent fruit, the likes of which were rare under the water or on land. She did not have much else in her life so every year, she looked forward to enjoying that fruit, but unfortunately, as you will expect, there are those determined to take joy from others. The local boys enjoyed climbing the tree and taking the fruit, and the poor woman was too old and feeble to climb the tree herself. This left her quite miserable and helpless as the boys would break through her fence and steal the fruit. She cried, she pleaded, she begged, but they thumbed their noses at her and their parents would simply tell her that boys will be boys…”

“These little shits,” Yolande muttered before she sipped her rum. Caten grinned.

“You’ll love what happens to them! ...This year, the same thing happened. She tried to be vigilant, but she was old and tired, and the boys plucked the fruit from her tree and left just one behind. It was better than nothing, she told herself, and took it into the house with her. Not long after, a stranger came to her house and asked if he might have shelter for the night. Misery was not without a heart, so she allowed the weary traveler a spot next to her hearth and shared the fruit with him. He was a cheerful fellow, and though she did not have much to offer, she was a gracious host and laughed at his stories. In the morning, he said that he appreciated her kindness and that she could have one wish granted.

Misery thought that he was jesting with her, and remembering the fruit, she asked that anyone who climbed up the tree would not be able to come back down without her leave. The traveler tipped his hat at her and left.

A year passed, and she had all but forgotten that curious offer. And the boys were back, bigger and more brash, and when she came out to yell at them, they laughed at her as they scooped the fruit into their pockets. Brokenhearted, she went into the house, hearing them laughing at her.

However, soon enough the laughter turned to exclamations of surprise, confusion, and cursing. She went back outside to see the boys perched on the branches, unable to hoist themselves down. If they tried to jump, they were stuck fast to the tree. They cried, begged, and swore, and Misery realized that her wish had indeed been granted.

Oh boys, will you return my fruit to me then, and leave me be? She asked. They swore at her, throwing fruit at her. She gathered the fruit in a basket and went back inside, ignoring their cries, which eventually died down and she finally had her sleep, after having a good meal.

The next morning, she came back outside. As one might expect, the lads had quite a fitful night. Not one wink of sleep, and quite a few bruises and scratches they had in trying to get out of the tree.

Now, are you boys going to behave? She asked, and they offered no argument this time. Then you will mend my fence, bring me roast meat and a pot of rice every week, and promise to never touch this tree or its fruit again unless I give you leave.

To this, the boys could only agree, and for years after that, Misery was well-fed and left alone. She would share her fruit with travelers and listen to their stories, enjoying their company. Eventually, Death came from her. And as with anyone else, she received Death with cordiality.

I have no fruit in the pantry to serve you right now, so would you mind going up the tree and getting some for me? I'll make us a nice meal and then we'll be on our merry way, Misery said. Glad to have someone receiving him so kindly, Death agreed.”

Yolande chuckled softly. Nothing like a story about someone outsmarting their adversary.

“Death got stuck in the tree, and Misery decided to leave him there, so no one could die. The pharmacist, priest, doctor, and undertaker all came to her to complain, telling her that business was bad because no one was afraid of dying anymore. Misery simply laughed and said they were welcome to join Death in the tree.

However, one day, she was visited by a friend of hers, even older than she was. The friend told her that she was ready to move on. She'd lost her husband, all of her children, and even some of her grandchildren. Her arthritis and other aches only got worse and worse. She would welcome Death, and so would many others. These fatally wounded on the battlefield, or gravely ill with no hopes of reversing their health. Those who were tired of life and felt they'd lived their natural course, and those who sought an escape from pain. Death was needed in this world, he was not evil but was a means to an end of pain and suffering.

The pleas of men in power did not move her, but this supplication from a frail old woman appealed to her, and she consented to let Death out of the tree… but only if Death would not claim her.

Very well then, Death said. All became right in the world… but Misery still loves company and is still out there, ready to welcome it.”

Well, that certainly provided a useful distraction. “Thanks, I really needed that,” Yolande said with a chuckle as she took another swig of her drink and enjoying the buzz before another explosion sounded through the air.

“And you made these?” Caten asked with a smirk, gesturing in the direction of the island.

“But someone else had to drag them to the island, find the proper locations, and light them,” she replied modestly. “Ishidai and Mido among others are doing the real work out there, liberating our brothers and sisters.”

“And we’re all proud of them,” Kaneshiro said. The injury he’d gotten from Spike made it difficult for him to breathe at times, particularly after a run or a long swim, so he was left behind as the senior pirate of the ship until the others came back.

“To our brothers and sisters. To our nakama and the proud and noble fishman race,” Erhu said as he raised his cup. The others echoed similar sentiments, and Yolande was right there with them, raising her cup as the Arlong Pirates raided Marzu Island.

o0o0o0o

This Devil Fruit user had the ability to shoot out what looked like very thick webbing, almost like a spider, from their hands, and as fishmen and slaves alike ran around in the chaos, the dark-haired woman encased several of them.

Chew was careful to remain out of her sight as he unscrewed his canteen, several balls in his other hand as he took a mouthful of water.

He slid one of the balls past his lips, positioning it on his tongue as he’d practiced before aiming it at the woman’s neck, the nape bare above the collar of her uniform, which looked a lot like a business suit. The thin clay casing of the ball splintered on impact, smearing a greaselike substance onto her neck. As she instinctively reached up to brush it off, the substance spread on her neck and onto her fingers. It took another couple of moments, but the webbing she’d been making with her free hand disintegrated. Seastone worked against a Devil Fruit user with skin contact, and it looked like seastone filings in the gel Yolande had made worked about as well.

Chew grinned in triumph as two of his nakama quickly closed in on the woman, restraining her effectively. The human slaves stared at him before a younger woman stepped forward, wearing a collar and dressed in what appeared to be the uniform of a domestic worker.

“Are you here to free us like Fisher Tiger did in Marijoa?”

Chew was startled to hear that from a stranger’s mouth, way out here in Marzu, which was more than halfway across the South Blue from Marijoa.

“Yes,” he replied automatically, thinking of his enslaved brethren, and then realized that the human would hear his answer as being inclusive of the humans here, too.

Well, Fisher Tiger had not been picky about the slaves of Marijoa, had he? “Yes,” he repeated more firmly. The woman regarded him with a brilliant smile. She turned to the slaves near her.

“The day has come! Fuck yeah!”

o0o0o0o

Yurie stared down at the children that surrounded her, expecting her to do something to comfort them. The explosions had started less than an hour ago, rousing them out of their sleep. Her heart thudded in her chest as she heard more explosions and shouting. Was it really happening? She’d heard whispers of Fisher Tiger from a fishman who’d been brought here after Fisher Tiger freed the slaves of Marijoa. Ever since she heard his story, she’d prayed for Fisher Tiger to find this place and free its slaves.

She’d been kidnapped half a lifetime ago, her father and his small crew set upon by Captain Aiucbi and his crew. They’d been a merchant ship, her father an ex-pirate but retired from the lifestyle and plying his trade around several islands near the Grand Line, making a modestly prosperous life for himself, his daughter, and his crew. Her fishman mother had died when she was young, but her human father had more than made up for it, taking her across the seas, showing her various things, and encouraging her to embrace her fishman heritage.

She missed him so much that sometimes she wanted to cry. Her father had been murdered by Captain Aiuchi, and she was kidnapped and enslaved. Fourteen long years she'd been on this island. Not that she didn't attempt escape, but the humans were used to slaves trying that, so they had various measures for it, including keeping their more exotic slaves behind the wall that separated the upper echelons of Marzu Island from the commoners, and applying harsher practices when they deemed necessary.

So she’d gotten with the program – or acted like it, and now she enjoyed a relatively comfortable position as the personal maid and nanny to the Mukachin household. The Mukachins would be surprised to know the depths of the hatred that boiled under her placid exterior as she went about her chores, listening to the orders of the adults and the screeches of the children.

There was an explosion that sounded a lot nearer than the previous one, and she jumped, spinning around and looking through the window. The wall had been breached. Oh fuck, yes. Was it really happening? Her hands were shaking, and she brushed them against the smock she was wearing. The collar around her neck felt heavy all of a sudden as if reminding her of what had been done to her.

Her father had often said that sometimes when an opportunity arose, one needed to wait a bit to assess it. But on the other hand, he said, sometimes you just have to grab it and run with it.

So she did, shoving the Mukachin children aside, ignoring the cries of indignation and protest as she pried the youngest child’s fingers from her skirt and tore out of the room.

The doors were locked, but she climbed out of a window and bolted across the grass, seeing the crumbled gap in the wall several estates down, laughing wildly when she saw several men advance down the street, all of them fishmen. A couple of guards tried to stop them, but the fishmen flung them aside like toys.

She skidded to a halt several meters away, panting. The fishmen regarded her with caution at first before they noticed the collar on her neck and the gold-green coloring of her skin.

“Take, you have the key,” a tall and fat pink fishman with bright green fins said. The pale-skinned fishman beckoned her forward. She needed no further invitation and took a shuddering breath as she felt the collar side from her neck.

“Oh yes, fuck yes. Thank you so much!”

“Glad to be of service, honey,” Take said with a grin. “You’re free to go down to the water, but we could use your help.”

“I’ve been here for years. I know where many of the other slaves are. I’m ready to kick ass!”

This time, another fishman answered her. He was ruddy-skinned, with a dark green shirt that had roses on it. He’s cute, Yurie thought to herself, and her heart fluttered as the salmon fishman smiled at her. “I bet you are, you certainly look like you’re roaring for it. Well, come on and let’s do just that. I’m Shioyaki, by the way.”

There were nearly two dozen estates within the wall, resided by the upper caste of the island. She'd never seen Marijoa, but Toma and the other fishmen who'd spent time as slaves there would recognize the architecture of the Holy City, albeit on a smaller scale. With the observation skills her father had helped her hone, she had learned much about her new home. She listened, she observed, and she held onto every bit of information she could glean about this island, the residents, and the fucked-up system that was enforced upon the people unfortunate enough to be poor and indebted or captured by the Mukachins and their ilk.

Fishmen were notably stronger compared to humans, so the masters had experience in compensating for that with various measures, but Arlong’s fishmen came well-prepared, as Yurie was quick to notice.

And there were plenty enough human slaves who were willing to throw their lot in with these invading fishmen. Their welcome was lauded, unlike on the Conomi Islands. Yurie had befriended some of them, so when they saw what she was doing, they were quick to offer whatever aid they could render. Many of the free but poor humans stepped aside when fishmen came for the masters. The island had worked under its system for generations, and that could only be maintained by strict control, but it collapsed… or rather blew up, causing an effect that went beyond fire and smoke.

o0o0o0o

The fishmen left behind on the White Mermaid had taken turns telling stories or jokes, making sure to keep the conversation upbeat so there was a good amount of laughter shared among the fishmen. Needing some fresh air, Yolande stepped outside with her cup, staring at the distance, seeing the glow of fires, flame, and moonlight reflected in the plumes of smoke that rose upward. It'd been several hours since Arlong and his team set out.

No fishmen had returned to the ship, and no distress signal had been sent up. So far, so good, Yolande sighed. Fingers crossed that it’d remain that way – she didn’t want to think about what a failure would mean for Arlong’s crew as well as the slaves on the island.

Who would have thought she’d be rooting for pirates to be successful in a takeover of an island? With a sigh, she sat on the deck, leaning against the railing as she pressed her forehead against the white-painted wood.

“I kinda wish I could see them in action,” she heard Caten say. She smirked dryly to herself at that. Sure, she’d watched some of Kuroobi’s drills, or when the fishmen would spar with one another, but the heat of actual combat was another matter. How well she remembered the capture of the White Mermaid, Arlong’s crew pitted against Aiuchi’s crew in a battle that would help to determine the ultimate fate of Marzu Island.

“There’s something about seeing men in action, huh?” Yolande asked dryly.

“And why not?” Caten asked with a smirk. “I mean, it’s not just seeing them in action, it’s also knowing how strong they are, or how capable they are of fighting because it means they can protect you…”

“Especially when there’s three of them?” Yolande asked, but there was no sarcasm or bite in her tone. Caten regarded her with a knowing smile and winked. “I’m curious and I’ve been dying to ask, but I’m afraid of sounding rude or nosey…” she admitted as she looked at the fishwoman.

“How do I juggle the attentions of three fishmen?” Caten asked. “Easy. They know that if there’s any fighting, it’d be over,” Caten said.

“… And they were okay with it?” Yolande asked. She couldn’t imagine any of the men she’d known personally to be willing to enter such an arrangement.

Caten shrugged. “If they were not okay with it, it means they don’t get any of this…” She gestured to herself, “and they also don’t get to enjoy the things I do. It’s their choice.”

Yolande stared off thoughtfully for several moments. She knew what the priests and nuns of Nitirb Island would have thought. Depraved, sinful fornicators. No better than animals if you do not honor the sacred bonds of marriage… or celibacy. After all, as they were eager to point out, many of the children at the orphanage were bastards, and even if a girl was lucky enough to avoid such a consequence, what man wanted to marry an unclean woman?

She remembered wondering why she should care about virtue so much because on the other hand, who wanted to marry an orphan? Well, Yolande did end up getting married… more than once. Many illusions had been shattered. Yolande snapped herself out of her musings. That was in the past, she’d learned from experience how beliefs could undergo fundamental shifts.

Caten looked happy, and so did her partners. They operated on mutual respect for her and one another. The young fishwoman had a difficult life from what she'd shared with Yolande, and she was taking whatever joy was offered to her. How could anyone begrudge her that? If anyone did, that said more of the would-be judges than Caten or her lovers.

Yolande finally smiled before she finished her drink. “Good times, good times.”

“If you ever need tips, just let me know,” the catfishwoman said with a merry grin. This sent Yolande into a fit of giggles.

“I’m a widow taking advice from a woman the same age as my stepdaughter…” Oh gods, how good it felt to laugh.

“I’m sure you have some wisdom to offer, too,” Caten chuckled. “Having someone like Arlong to share your bed with… you’re the envy of the girls and a few of the guys.”

Yolande felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “That bastard,” she huffed, recalling the sounds they’d made the last time they’d fucked. Arlong had gotten quite vocal, though she suspected that was in part because he was so keyed up about the imminent takeover of Marzu Island.

But honestly, he could come up with any excuse he wanted for it, and see what sorts of noises he could draw from her.

"He is an inspiration to the crew!" Caten replied cheerfully. There were a few titters and cheers over that, and Yolande buried her face in her hands as another drink was poured for her. "To our mighty Captain Arlong and his pirates!" Caten raised her cup in the air and the others joined her before they looked over to the island. "To the glory and the safety of the fishman race! May those who oppress us be crushed under our heel!"

It seemed like Caten was leaning closer and closer to officially joining the crew, Yolande thought with a small smile. Good on her, she thought to herself.

o0o0o0o

Arlong had engaged in plenty enough battles at sea while being part of the Sun Pirates, and even after taking over the Conomi Islands against an occasional pirate or Marine ship. He’d gone up against swords, guns, cannonballs, and Devil Fruit users.

Even as he swung his sword, or used water as a projectile, he remained vigilant of his surroundings – it would do him no good to be picked off by a sniper or otherwise. Marzu had a decent security force, but Arlong and his men had the advantage due to the combination of factors they'd carefully planned.

Arlong looked up with a grin as he heard an explosion and looked up to see fire shooting up as part of the wall that surrounded the upper part of the island collapsed. He wondered if this was how Fisher Tiger had felt when he breached the walls of Marijoa. As he looked at the way the wall crumbled down to create a gap amidst the flames, he saw a flash of steel and reacted just in time to grab the blade of the guard's sword between his teeth. He glared down at the armed man, clenching his jaw and shattering the man's sword before grabbing him by the neck and hurling him at the man who was trying to attack him from behind.

He let out a roar of challenge, encouragement, and triumph. There were guards to challenge him, yes, but none of those who challenged his advance wore a collar. He saw slaves fleeing both fire and guards and grinned as he quickly poured himself a handful of water from his canteen.

He might as well have hit the guards with bullets of steel, as he pelted them by flicking his hand. He moved on, saying nothing to the slaves as he made his way to the wall.

The next couple of hours passed in a flurry of adrenaline, blood, rage, and fire. He maintained enough presence of mind to not lash out at the human slaves, but he did not hesitate to mow down anyone who tried to attack him.

The son of Omald and Elania Mukachin was the Mayor of this island, although he might as well have been called prince, such was the life he enjoyed and the power his family held in Marzu. He was well-defended, but between several seasoned fishmen with Arlong and Kuroobi taking the lead, they were able to overcome the guards.

However, when Arlong towered over Nald – who bore a more than passing resemblance to his mother – some sixth sense told him to remain on alert even though all the guards had been subdued. He braced himself, senses tingling as he stared up at the heavyset man in his lavish robes.

He felt it before it could hit him with full force, and he gritted his teeth as he resisted Nald’s Conqueror Haki. It pressed against his consciousness, demanding him to submit.

Never. He carried the rage of the fishman race and felt it suffuse him as he thought of the brothers and sisters born before him, condemned to misery under human rule and ownership. He thought of his pain and the pain he'd witnessed of his brothers and sisters. And if he did not succeed here, future generations would suffer. He poured his hate and rage into his will.

He squared his shoulders and puffed out his chest as he leaned his head, pushing against Nald's will with his own before he swung his arm, the sword slicing through Nald's upper arm and causing the man to lose his focus. Arlong almost stumbled at the sudden lack of resistance and managed to right himself, squeezing the handle of his sword as he noticed the blood dripping from it.

Arlong panted slowly as he stared at the Mayor who was now screaming and clutching what remained of his arm.

o0o0o0o

The story Caten recounts for her friends is an adaptation of Tia Miseria, a Latin American tale. It’s one of my personal favorites :)

As always, feedback is very much welcome, appreciated, and nourishing for this author.

[bambi-kinos]

So r/beatlescirclejerk posted a butthole chart which I immediately dragged back to the Discord server for discussion. A consensus has been reached and I present to you the new and improved Beatles butthole chart. I will post some of the discussion and reasoning behind these choices as well as my personal take on John and Paul combined with the knowledge learned from my high school Anatomy class 15 years ago.

mynamesbetty — Today at 1:43 PM how dare you make me look at this with my eyes

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 1:44 PM This is extremely important Beatles historiography

mynamesbetty — Today at 1:54 PM We saw John's butt on the back of Two Virgins, I don't recall it being hairy

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 1:55 PM That's a good point as well

We have a full shot of John's butt, a side view of Paul's butt, and a suspected shot of Ringo's butt....do we have a shot of George's butt

What i find interesting is the skintone chart, i always figured Paul's butthole would be pink.

mynamesbetty — Today at 1:59 PM butthole color is the same as lip color

VeggieRavioli — Today at 2:06 PM I am ignoring this notification in protest

namaste — Today at 7:22 PM What’s the saying? God has a plan? I hate how quickly I could form an opinion on this.

I think it’s mostly wrong.

John: hairless wonder, smooth as a peach, that apricot skin… Quote by Yoko (won’t fetch sorry on deadline she says yet shitposting) over how keen they were on hygiene and baths. Known to wear Witch Hazel by Quinn's throughout his life. The real flower princess.

Also, uncut. Had to be on top of that. Double-jointed, agile, loose like a cat. Happy to confirm all of the above via Self-Portrait. Do DM it anytime. I’ll find 42 mins to analyse and report.

Paul: VERY furry and soft unless he waxes (I mean he did tweeze his eyebrows at one point, who knows? Actually John does…).

Smelly if I go by a description of dog faeces and poor housekeeping by him at Cavendish. Oh, and crabs. I’ll never forget in GB George looking 🤢 while cleaning his guitar strings with an alcohol wipe.

Tight. Everything about him is tight. Very tight in fact. Tightwad, uptight and a song by John, the great Tight A$ which is most definitely not a Yoko song.

George: meticulous, good work ethic, a gentleman according to all, professional, always well presented, and the rare individual in GB who looks clean at all times. Hairy dude, but less than Paul.

One way or another, he probably had the best upkeep of all. Chakra oil all over I imagine. Known to smell good. He likely could be anything he wanted to be between loose and tight. Flexible mind in a nimble body.

Ringo: smoothest skin of all. I’m assuming the entire toolbox is fabulous. He may well have the nicest pinkest best defined hole of them all. Like George, a precise and meticulous fella. Known to smell good.

Also, likes jewellery. The key question here is does he have a third tattoo, a ring or both?

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 8:02 PM This is the best response i could receive

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 8:09 PM I will repost my anal-ysis from [redacted]

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 9:19 PM Its mostly about color as we got on to talking about skintones

namaste — Today at 9:22 PM I’ll let you guys try to find Paul’s skin tone there underneath all that soft fur of his.

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 9:23 PM just one more reason why we need a fucking paul mccart only fans. vintage nudes

namaste — Today at 9:24 PM Exactly. I wish EMI had put their foot down a lot harder about the Two Virgins cover. Now we would know.

“Sean, open them vaults…”

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 9:26 PM okay okay okay so. this was in response to another person who was pondering the connection between lips and assholes, as per betty's note about lips and butt holes sharing a color. I have combined this knowledge with what I know about sex having so here we go. everything from here is me quoting myself:

Honestly to get a detailed hypothesis regarding their butthole colors we'll need to study color photos of the boys and examine their lips, compare them across decades etc

Obvs this will get easier as we get into later decades. Lighting must be accounted for and so on

Initial survey here suggests a pale pink for all of them....George and Ringo probably paler and more skin toned. John did have a phenomenon where his lips would get very raw and red when he worked up a sweat which makes sense, he's flushing because he's physically active. This is also a side effect of him being a redhead, they blush easily. From this we can also assume John's hole and genitalia would become heavily colored during sexual activity as well.

(The photos I was thinking of. Note how even in the original b&w John’s lips are noticeably more colored than normal. Compare this to other color photos where he’s sedate where his lips are paler. This is consistent with how he gets flushed when physically worked up. - Ed.) 

Paul its not as obvious (so him) but just from this photo I can assume baseline that he's naturally a soft pink yknow.... Maybe doesn't flush as dark as John.

1970s we're getting more color but less hi-def photos. Keeping it to John and Paul now. Still looking like a pale pink but Paul's lips/genitalia color is more vibrant now than John's.

1980s, Paul much the same, John is notably a bit more vibrant. I bet his dick still turns purple if you don't let him cum for an hour.

I'm doing all this from my phone so finding images is a little difficult, I'll call these findings preliminary. But from these I'm guess that Paul's hole and genitals trend towards a pale pink and flush a deeper pink during sexual activity. John's would be pale, probably only a shade or two darker than his original skintone and then he flushes a very deep and dark red during intercourse.

[someone in a second Discord server asked me if I was going to survey the Beatles' relatives and try to build visual profiles based off their appearances in order to build a bigger skintone chart that can tell us more about the Beatles’ blush patterns.]

What it would actually require is examining photos of male genitalia from the same ethno groups that the Beatles belong to, keeping in mind that even for their time their families were heavily mixed thru intermarriage between Irish and Anglos. I don't mind doing it but it would take a while so examining their lip colors is suitable for now.

We live in a world where there's no Paul McCartney Only Fans and I can't pay money to see his asshole get railed with a knotted Bad Dragon dildo. truly we live in the darkest timeline.

namaste — Today at 9:32 PM John slept with Bowie who you know... I’d think your description explains why that was not repeated. He probably couldn’t sit down for a week. Sang fairly high in Fame.

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 9:32 PM bingo

namaste — Today at 9:32 PM We’re breaking ground here as always.

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 9:33 PM I'm sure john and paul are both very tight tbh though paul probably remained so and struggled to relax -- made it good for john though, I don't think he's the type who would complain about it.

Leggy Maddingway — Today at 9:37 PM otherwise I believe your guesses about their hygiene and the scents they used are spot on. wouldn't surprise me at all if Paul was hairy down there, someone on reddit reminded me that it's about what's between the cheeks not necessarily on... its not unusual to have hair there either. It's one of those things that gives Paul a masculine edge to salt his femininity, I doubt John had any complaints considering the caliber of men he was used to hooking up with.

</end quote

From these discussions and my own thoughts, I built the new and improved Beatles butthole chart. Please let me know what you guys think. I will be updating this post if any new information comes to light or if I find my notes from my Anatomy class. Cheers!

[drama-pop]

Dramas I Watched in 2022

I moved an hour away from my drama-watching buddy this year.  I wonder how that will affect my show count in 2023.  Of the 9 dramas listed here, 3 of them are re-watches.  I guess I was feeling a little nostalgic this year!  See Dramas I Watched in 2020 for more on those re-watches.  Here’s the dramas I watched this year and I what I thought of them!

My Fellow Citizens (6/10)

1st Watch – Again, I picked a drama purely out of my attraction to Choi Siwon. He can be a little over the top, but boy does he commit to the part.  This drama was silly, exciting, and went in directions I wasn’t expecting.  I really enjoyed the relationships between the characters and thought Park Hu Ja was a particularly interesting role.  She was scary, silly, and at times, pitiful.  It wasn’t my favorite drama and I got a little lost in the politics, but it was a fun way to start the year!

Our Beloved Summer (7/10)

1st Watch – I had only seen Choi Wooshik in Parasite, so I was excited to see him as a soft romantic lead.  I was not disappointed!  This show was beautifully shot and Christmas Tree was the perfect song.  For whatever reason, I can’t remember much of the plot now, but I know I enjoyed it.  Admittedly, I didn’t like the female lead all that much, but probably because her defenses were so high all the time.  I wish I had written about the show earlier when I remembered more about it!

Twenty Five, Twenty One (8.5/10)

1st Watch – I was excited to watch this after seeing Kim Tae-ri in Mr. Sunshine and Nam Joo-hyuk in Start Up.  They are stellar actors, even if I did have to suspend reality quite a bit to watch them as teenagers.  Again, I can’t remember everything about this drama, but I know that it really affected me. I teared up, I grinned ear to ear, I got mad.  It was a beautiful coming of age story and a highlight of the year.  If you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil anything, but this show has some fun characters and touching relationships.  Yes, I did watch this because of Jungkook.  

Her Private Life (6.5/10)

1st Watch – My second Park Min-young drama, and I love it for her.  I’m here for her gorgeous fashion and hilarious facial expressions. And who doesn’t love a good fake-dating trope?  A huge portion of the show takes us through Deok-mi’s “private life” as a fangirl.  More than that, she’s a fan site manager.  As an ARMY myself, I was grateful for the male lead’s acceptance of Deok-mi’s love for Sian and the representation of adult, professional women being fangirls.  There are definitely 15-year-old girl fans, but it’s so reductive to act like that’s all there is to it.  And we can be passionate about our interests while still being engaged, sociable adults. Ok, off my soap box now.  It was a cute show overall!

Extraordinary Attorney Woo (9.5/10)

1st watch – Highlight of the year!  I legitimately cried 3 times in the first episode, and I rarely cry while watching things.  The show was so touching and I think Park Eun-bin did a great job delicately bringing ASD representation to the screen.  I loved the law firm ensemble.  This show even gave me a vacation episode, though…it was not as happy and cute as I expected.  Iykyk.  I love to see Kang Ki-young finally getting the love he deserves as an actor.  Young-woo has so many lovely, tenderhearted people in her life and seeing such care between the characters warmed my heart.  I highly recommend this drama!

Start Up (8/10)

2nd watch – My sister and I got COVID this year and watched this in our quarantine.  It’s still a lovely show.  I was glad to show it to my sister!

Boys Over Flowers (10/10 lol)

4th watch – Every single song that played in this show – and there is always something playing - became a sing-along.  This show is so addicting, so ridiculous, and so good.  I can’t believe I got through all 24 episodes in the course of 2 weeks, but that’s winter for you!

Little Women (In progress)

1st watch

Dream High (In progress)

2nd watch

And that’s it!  I hope that you have a happy new year and that 2023 brings good things for you!  Feel free to send me any drama recs!

[gamesbyalbie]

So, I started writing something this past week (inspired by DPR Ian's incredible music video for Don't Go Insane, and my feelings about [redacted]). This is all a work in progress and I'll be releasing it in sections. Anyways, here's the first part of...

The Cursed Journey

PART 1: PROXY

I don't sleep anymore. Anxiety and caffeine provide me with the energy I need to live and free up hours of otherwise wasted time. 

However—quite unfortunately—they've also stolen my ability to rest.

Most nights I lie in bed for 30-45 minutes but that's merely a formality, a tribute to a past life, a wish I'm certain will never come true. I get nothing from it—except for rare occasions where I stray close enough to dreaming to scrape up a bit of creative fodder—but it's one of the only things I do for myself.

Actually, it might be the only thing I do for myself.

It's not like I do it for long—I couldn't even if I wanted to (which I don't). It's just one half hour out of a full ass 24. Statistically, that shouldn't be the time when I get the most surprise calls. Yet, somehow...

"Fuck me. What now?" I growl, slapping my hand over my phone. It tumbles off the nightstand, because of course it does. A deeply dissatisfied groan rumbles out of my chest like distant thunder. Taking the sheets with me, I crawl halfway out of bed.

This is the third time this week. Who the fuck is it? I wonder, arms supporting my torso while my legs are still on the mattress, looking like I'm waiting for a wheelbarrow race to start. There's something degrading and weirdly primal about this position—stretching to reach my phone, grunting like an ape. I swear, if it's Michael, I'm going to—

The Ward

My blood runs cold. Shit. My arms start to shake. I slip down onto the floor and stare at my phone. It rings several more times before I finally gain the courage to answer. I press the button and a hologram of a woman's face appears. I recognize her and her bob vaguely—she has very distinctive bangs—but I can't remember her name. "Hello?"

"Hi, I'm calling for Ody Specter."

I can't tell if she genuinely doesn't recognize me, if she's being polite and pretending, or if she's following some kind of script. Then again, maybe I just look like shit. "You've reached them." I lean against the sharp edge of my bed frame. The discomfort clears some of the fog from my mind.

"Hi. This is Kelly calling on behalf of the Writer's Ward. Are you sitting down? I'm sorry to say that I have bad news."

That's all you call with, I want to reply. Instead I say, "What is it?"

"It's—"

"Is it Min-joon?"

"Oh, uh, no." She stammers. With how surprised she looks, you'd think I'd just jumped out of a wardrobe wearing nothing but a jester's hat. Probably the script then. "No, um, Mr. Park is stable as far as I'm aware."

The weight crushing my ribcage shifts. Nothing's alleviated, but it changes in nature.

"It's actually Kim Ji-yeon." There's a pause. "Mx. Specter?" Silence. "Did... did the call freeze?"

My mouth hangs agape. Less than two hours ago I was venting my frustrations and fears to Ji-yeon. She was comforting me. My brain cannot process this information. How? How could she— 

"Ji-yeon, she... is she there?"

"She's in transit to the facility."

"What? Uh, when? When did this happen?"

"Around 15 minutes ago." Damn, they move fast. Not that I should be surprised. This is their sole purpose and there's been no shortage of practice. "She made an alarming call to her editor. By the time emergency services reached her apartment, she was unresponsive."

How did the curse get her? Ji-yeon was the best of us. Of the few remaining writers, I would've picked her as the most steady, the most consistent and confident. Hell, she has two new books slated to come out next week.

Maybe... did I not see it? Could I have done something? Was it obvious? Min-joon would have noticed. No, shut up.

"I see. Um..." I rub the back of my neck while trying to force my eyes to stay open. I need coffee asap. "Okay. You need me to come down?"

"Yes, she'd selected you as her proxy. We need you to sign the onboarding documents for her. I believe you're familiar with—"

"Yeah, I'm well-acquainted with the process." Kelly's still relatively new. I'm certain I've done this more times than her. "When do you need me there?" I glance at my watch. 03:17.

"The flight carrying her is set to arrive within the hour. Can you make it here by then?"

"Sure." My fingers pinch the bridge of my nose. I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting off an inevitable headache. "I'll be there in ten."

"Great. Thank you. So sorry to bother you, I know you're probably hard at work. I apologize if this is distracting or..." She probably means to say "puts you at risk" but she's smart enough to leave that unspoken.

"It's no problem. I'm," not happy. "I'm more than willing to do this for Ji-yeon. She would've done the same for me."

She literally would have. It occurs to me that I'll have to select a new proxy. Maybe I should just sign my own papers now. No, shut the fuck up. "Anyways," I tear my mind away from that disturbing thought. "I'll see you soon."

"Alright, see you. Thanks again."

End

My hand falls limply to the floor. The phone clatters onto the concrete. I allow myself a few seconds to stare into space, but I have no time to spare. That's more clear now than ever.

My knees crack as I rise to my feet. I'd been sitting weirdly at my desk all day. In general, yesterday was a bad day. I barely passed 15,000 words and Michael's already breathing down my neck. Almost a month has passed since my last big release. I've been worried, fearful that my well was drying up.

"You're too hard on yourself. Go to bed. Reset your brain."

Ji-yeon told me that. She's the reason I was in bed. Shit. She knew I was "asleep." Is that why she called her editor? Would she have called me if she—

I get dressed quickly. Forcing myself to stop thinking. Well, thinking about that. My mind turns to stories, to the words I'll have to write on the ride over, because I can't stop now. 

This... this can't happen to me.

I won't let it.

End of Part 1 of ? • NEXT PART

More Cursed Journey • More by Albie • Image Source

The amazing music video that inspired this:

[megismorallysunny]

26/09/23

ok so an okay day, i think writing a blog has unexpectedly made me feel worse about myself. i remember more, but i feel like shit more than usual, but i like writing so im not sure what to do. it sucks. i had history first "the sub" was in today he wanted us to acc learn shit, sooooo boring. Carmite, Emerald and "sapphire" all sat together. i cant remember if i mentioned sapphire but hes one of the boys.

they played a roblox obby in class and they kept getting caught so they decided to take out their calculators and PRETEND, it was so embarassing the sub told them not to go on their phones after 10 minutes of them fake playing on their calculators just for carmite to say "hehe not a phone its a calculator, gottem" it was SO EMBARRASSING. HE SPENT 10 MINS. anyways, granite is gone to tenerife so its just me and diorite for a while.

french was good. yknow that girl bluebird that i talked about yesterday, well she got in trouble for not doing her hw again and like she was talking to the teacher and the teacher had to ask her what three times because she was so quite. some other things but i cant remember. for pe we did badminton because the pitch flooded, me and diorite were partners and we bet 1 other team. i was pretty shit tbh. for lunch diorite bought me a chocolate bar and stole some kinder bars. she talked about how she started feeling guilty last night cuz she stole some stuff from a shop and then she found out that there was only one of them (not family owned but not a corporation). i said i also felt guilty when i did that because i have the resources to pay i just dont like spending money. i dont steal, it was a once off chance and just felt like shitty of me.

for business a bunch of 2nd years were in our seats eating lunch and chatting, they musnt have gotten the message to leave when i thre my bag over them to reach my fucking seat. i had to get the guy in crutches to help me out because i just dont like talking to 2nd years because idk they have a weird vibe. also at lunch coming from the shop me and diorite got swarmed by 1st years we didnt know, and asked us for stuff, they asked me for popcorn and i kinda just ignored them and walked through them, maybe i should have been nicer and given them the rest but also im a hungry hungry hippo. they also knew my friends name?? my friend stopped and gave them kinder bars, on the way to business another first year asked for a kinder bar and she gave it to him, "they really took the worst you can get is a no to heart". it was really funny and sweet though the way they flew to food like bees to pollen. anyways the teacher didnt show up for the first 15 mins in class and it got REAL silent, so a girl in my class decides we need to d icebreakers (the only new person in the class is bluebird, and weve all known each other for a little over 2 years). we have to say our full name then our hobby, im 2nd and i CRUSHED it. i did amazing, we got to every1 and out of like 28 only 4 people didnt do it. in geography i felt rly lonely, sure i got a back seat but at what cost, i didnt have anything to do, i felt like shit, and a group of people played among us and i kinda wanted to aswell but i dindt have it downloaded and i just felt awkward, the worst they can say is no but, they remember that no, it was kinda nice seeing them play but i didnt want them to see me smiling so i did it every rarely. diorite wasnt there becasue they had a music thing, i dont do music cuz i sound like a drowned rat. i then walked to my dads work, stayed in his van for an hour so he could finish work and then went home.

i forgot to mention but 1st class ended 10 minutes early for some reason, and no teachers were told so it was rly confusing, my mom got home 4 hours late from work, her top boss is visiting her work and shes one of the managers so she has to do lots of things, we didnt get dinner till 9 cuz dad had to drive my brother to basketball which he just started. i could have just made dinner myself but also yknow, your supposed to eat the food people cook for you and they were going to cook it was really a matter of when. ive decided to learn portuguese which is really stupid but of well, i can try. i hope i shift tonight, wish me luck xoxo

[rebelwhodoesntknow]

I think Sena's voice has really improved over the years but yeah she was really young and inexperienced in Stars, I like her singing but it was definitely a little rough

I always wondered why they didn't release dolls!!! It's not like they releaased figures (except ones that were way too delicate for their target audience + too expensive), they really missed the mark there. Literally I would pay so much to hold a tiny version of the sweet dreams star pr are you kidding me?? 😭💗

Ahhh I actually really like Raki... I understand people dislking her 100000% because she DID like. Personally design her own Jeweling rare which is supposed to be purely made from magic, not designed by anyone, she designed her own star wings which can only be gifted by the system, same with the wings for her zodiac coord like Ichigo gen. So it's not just that she took most of her inspo from existing coords, she just kind of broke all the rules somehow and nobody in-show was like THATS IMPOSSIBLE????

But Idk I like her! I love her design, her voice actor (also voiced Wakaba) is great, I honestly wish she got more songs. I think it just made sense for her to be there. Even if Parade was just meant to get excitement + money back up for Planet's release, there was some love put into it for people who grew up with the series, and everyone kind of takes care of Raki. She's an excited kid obsessed with the idea of Aikatsu in general and tbh I see myself when I was like 13 diving into all of it, she's like a representation for new and old fans that just love it and want to be a part of it. She wasn't supposed to be a super fleshed out character, just kind of a tour guide along the show

OR IM PROJEVTING TOO MUCH AFBKSNDDJF But fr I don't mind her! The first anniversary album actually has her cover one of Mizuki's songs because it was her voice actor's favorite, she was a huge fan of Aikatsu when she was little and she won a singing contest to voice Wakaba in Friends!!🥺💗 Even if it wasn't the biggest role, I'm really happy for her, I feel like even that says something about what Raki meant

I love that kids still write letters about shows, I also follow Super Sentai and every so often the staff mentions kids keep writing to them asking them to redeem the villains because they like the actors too much LOL

Hinaki & Yume's voice actors actually had a unit irl too for a little bit, Min☆na, they've disbanded now and the song's werent my vibe but good for them!!

DONT BUY THE AIKATSU GAMES ITS SO EXPENSIVE + THEYRE REGION LOCKED. You can play them on a PC on Citra though, and if you turn up the graphics quality it looks sol so much better than on a console- basically like you're playing the akari gen DCD!

If you're interested, I can send you the roms, it will take a couple days though I'll have to find my hard drive 💗

I have all of them! Only 2 are worth playing imo, most don't have many songs or coords but these are powerhouses

Aikatsu! My No. 1 Stage features every single Ichigo/Akari gen song up till the last like 15, stages and dances included, it's crazy. It had a good amount of coords for most brands, only a couple for dolly devil and mecha panic but there's a lot of fun mix and match stuff you can do! The dressup system is the same as the arcade game so you can swap PRs and everything.

The gameplay is really simple, short visual novel-style stories to unlock songs, play songs to unlock coord cards. The outfits you use do effect special appeals too!! I play it sometimes, but mostly I mess around with outfits in MV mode and just watch

The other game is Aikatsu Stars! My Special Appeal. This is the only stars game sadly, and it doesn't have a lot of songs, but there's a few cute new animations in the mvs (i.e. in tsu•ba•sa, you can't have just one character, so before the song starts your two backup dancers help you out of the throne, idk its just cute)

It does have 1,000 outfit pieces though...! A lot of the brandless coords were included this time. No berry parfait, but all the other brands before it are included (one PR per brand) and nobody from venus ark (😭) but it looks nice and again, it's fun to play with outfits!

The gameplay is the same as the other game. And in this one you get to make your own character with a few customization options for hair & eyes!

Honestly, I don't think playing to get all the coords is worth it, it really takes a long time and you're just repeating the same thing over and over to get it (and usually get duplicate pieces which don't do anything)

I have a save file for each game, with all songs & coords unlocked though! If you're interested in trying either of them I can send those too with the roms (And if you haven't used citra I don't mind explaining how to add the saves!)

THIS IS A WHOLE ASS ESSAY

ITS OKAY IM HAVING A GREAT TIME TALKING ABOUT THIS and I hope you are too fhfjf

Yeah I’ve seen the figures before and they’re always ridiculously expensive and I’m like ‘oh come on I’m broke and want to be an idol here’ plus they didn’t even have the coords which is like the best part??? Come on???

I think I like ( while knowing very little about Parade) seeing Raki more as a superfan/vehicle for idol display rather than a full fleshed character, although I really wish she didn’t just straight up break the aikatsu system. I saw her star wings outfit and was definitely confused by why the wings were on her in her whole performance. If anything, she should have gotten them when she made her true PR and actually debuted her brand. I do think her va’s origin is super cute though!

Unfortunately I have never used Citra before and am very new to emulators (I’ve used melonDS like three times maybe) so I would definitely need help with whatever rom stuff you’re mentioning lol, I am not good with that stuff at all. I’m not too bad at rhythm games, though, so I think it would be really fun to try the games out! Maybe that’ll be better than trying to teach myself Idol Activity from the stage videos on YouTube lol!

[fizzingwizard]

so after thursdays work rant...

I went into work on Fri to discover that me and several coworkers had a choice of either no prep time or no break time. We are supposed to have one hour prep, which we rarely ever get, and one hour break. If a one hour break seems long, don't forget that we often use it to prep because we have far more work than can be done in an hour, AND that time is unpaid. It's just an unpaid hour of the day where we end up working anyway.

Prep and break time is divided into 15 or 30 min blocks as well which makes it especially difficult to get anything done. By the time you lay stuff out it's time to clean it back up. Also we have cleaning duties as well which can be as quick as 10 min or as long as 30.

So anyway. Friday. I'm at the end of my rope and I walk in to discover I'm with the kids constantly from 9:30-3:30, and again from 4-5. I have 30 min from 9-9:30 and 30 min from 3:30-4. It's the end of the year. I have a bunch of shit to do that I have been struggling to do because of consistently losing prep time elsewhere and our third teacher who is quitting using all her PTO in one go, leaving me and my other co-worker with her share of the work and less time to do our own. And our manager keeps adding new stuff and saying "I know you're busy but I need this done ASAP."

But that's not what bothers me. What bothers me is the reason it happened this way.

The manager knew my coteacher would be out on PTO. She also knew that two of our teachers would be unavailable in the afternoon due to recurring commitments they have with elective classes. Despite this, she still allowed another teacher to be sent away in the afternoon to do training for the job she'll take up in April. Which leaves us already at half power in the afternoon. On top of that, Friday was a full-school assembly day. On those days, we usually have more students than usual because parents of kids who don't come that day will pay for an extra day so they can join in the fun. There's also a lot of prep to do for the assemblies as well as cleaning up after, and as much fun as they are, they always leave the kids extra wired because they are two years old and any change in the normal routine is a Big Change for them.

Basically assembly days are exhausting for teachers. And THEN, what happened was a teacher called in sick. So now we had two teachers just out all day, the one on PTO and the one out sick, two teachers doing afternoon electives, and one going to afternoon training. (That one is actually the same as one of the elective teachers, but usually she would be around to help for part of the afternoon and now she was going to be gone for all of it.)

The teacher being out sick meant I had to teach her lesson as well as my own. Also my coworker was going to sit in on another coworker's elective class because she will have to do it in April. In her case, there's no other chance for her to do this, so that just had to happen even though it meant she wasn't free to help out for an hour, making us even busier. In the case of the teacher going for training in the afternoon, I don't understand why she can't have done that training in April. If she's been a new hire that would have been the case, and she was going to be away much longer than the other teacher doing the hour-long training. Maybe there really was no other way, but if so, why was it scheduled on an assembly day and a day when there were other electives, AND a day when one teacher had already been given PTO??

Please, managers, don't assign EXTRA stuff on days when we're extra busy and extra understaffed to begin with!!! That really is what's bugging me so badly. Now and then stuff happens, there are unavoidable circumstances... I do understand that. I try my best to be a team player. But this has happened consistently All. Year. Long. Even my coworker who never complains said, "The manager doesn't understand what it's like to be a teacher." Other coworkers were encouraging me to talk to her about it and said "We're here together for the morning meeting and we'll back you up."

But I said, then, that I didn't want to pile on the manager over this, and that I didn't want to make the teacher going for the long afternoon training feel bad because it's not her fault in any way. Later I regretted not saying something. I am feeling unsure about what is my place to say and what isn't. I'm not a leader. I have been offered the option to apply to become one, but I don't want to. It's a lot of extra responsibility with no clear benefit, and I just watched upper management treat the two leaders who were here before like crap, so. Anyway, I don't know how reasonable it is for me to talk to the manager about her decisions. I've been operating under "leaders need to handle it" and "the manager knows things that I don't when she makes her decisions." But that really no longer seems to be the case. The manager seems confused and like she really needs experienced teachers to help her prioritize things. She forgets to tell us things until the last minute, and sometimes doesn't tell us them at all, like multiple times when students were added to our classes and we weren't told they were younger than usual. (Which is a big diff when kids are so young to begin with.) Her response was that we would be able to know by checking the attendance. Well, we did, we have to, because we celebrate kids birthdays and put them on the walls. But that's not the point. The point is she's supposed to tell teachers as a safety measure as soon as she knows so they they can adjust their expectations and their class routine if needed BEFORE the kid shows up. Some kids that little are really independent, others are totally helpless. But either way, they need extra attention because they don't know danger exists. We need to know to mentally prep for them: not just discover it on the day they show up and we're given the attendance sheet for the first time.

Well, that was a rabbit trail. But that's the sort of thing this manager does all the time. So I spent several minutes walking back and forth in the hall, trying to decide whether I should talk to the manager after all about the scheduling nightmare. In the end, too many parents wee going through her office on their way to drop off their kids, so I decided I'd do it later, forgetting I didn't have much of a later, lol. We got through the day, it was exhausting as usual, and - the teacher doing the elective training actually had to leave to go start halfway through our assembly. This meant that the sub helping in my class then joined that teacher's class instead to meet ratio. The problem: The only reason my class could have just two teachers that day was because we had an absence. If that kid had showed up, we'd have been over ratio. And if this had happened last month, we still would have been, because we had another student who stopped coming on Fridays only this month. So, if this had happened THEN (which it totally could have because we don't have advanced notice of kids absences), who would have helped MY class? The sub would have had to go to other class because they had only one teacher. But then my class would have had two teachers but been over ratio.

So what would probably have happened is one or two of my kids would have been sent to join the other class. Reason that sucks: The biggest reason, imo, is safety! It's just not as easy for a classroom teacher to remember and think about random kids who are dumped in her class from other classes. We care about all of them and we have their medical information posted in every room, so it's something we do if necessary. But we are doing it too, too often. And what I hate the most is having the extra kids for only a short time versus the whole day. I think some people think that makes it easier if they are only there for a short period. In some cases it's okay, like during lesson time because the kids are just sitting. But when more supervision is necessary, it's harder to think about the kid who just showed up a few minutes ago, isn't usually here, and will leave again in twenty minutes. But that kid NEEDS to be thought about MORE, not less. They are in a less familiar environment. The other kids don't know them. They are really young and even if they are capable of telling teachers when they need something in their own class, they may be too confused by the change in setting and not do it! So that's why I prefer to have extra kids all day long. Then they are on our radar consistently and we can plan the whole day around making sure they're taking care of properly. Don't just show up with them at lunch and dump them on the floor to play with toys while my coteacher and I feed lunch to our kids, clean up after them, wash the floor, take them to the toilet and to brush their teeth, help them pack up, fill out their notebooks... the many many many things we have to do which make supervising our OWN kids hard enough. It's unsafe. We're rushing around and can't watch the extra kids properly.

But the other reason it would have sucked on Friday particularly is because it was our graduation party. Which isn't much of a party, but my coteacher made paper mortarboards for each of them, and we practiced some songs, and we took lots of photos. If two of my kids had to go to the other class so we could stay in ratio, they wouldn't have been part of that. And I really hate the mentality of "It's ECE, no one cares about their silly graduation." We know it's silly. It's about celebrating our year together. Letting the kids feel accomplished and helping them set their minds on the next year. They're old enough now to be able to do that a little. It's also, yeah, for the teachers. We were with them all year, we worked hard for them to grow and we got to know them really well, and we just will miss them. I always miss my class each year. Each year I think "This is the best class I ever had." I know I'm just a teacher and it's about the kids, not me. But everyone WANTS us to make bonds with the kids. They want the kids to trust us and learn well from us, which requires those bonds. And then they want us to be able to cut those bonds like nothing. At least let me say goodbye, geez. Kids aren't factory-made and teachers don't work on an assembly line, fuck you very much.

So all this culminates in I was extremely pissed off and tired even before Friday, and Friday was just too beyond ridiculous for me. Although my coworkers seemed to feel similarly, I felt that I was the most bothered. Maybe it's because although several of us had limited prep/break, only mine and one other coworker ended up on duty with the kids for such a long time in one go. Maybe it's because me and that same coworker are the only ones who will still be here in April. It's also that time of the month for me and it was heavier than usual, so I may tired because of being a little anemic, idk. I'm still feeling shitty right now after sleeping for 12 hours lol.

Anyway. I didn't complain to the manager. I got no balls. But the teacher who went for the long afternoon training was actually let out early, and thanks to that it freed up 30 min of break/prep. The question was, for who? For whatever reason, it was given to me. I don't know if it was the manager's decision or her own, I don't know if someone noticed I was pissed off and suggested I needed it, because I wasn't the only one with a lack of time that day. When she gave me the 30 min, I tried to split it with my coworker who also had just 1 hr, but she kindly refused, maybe because she goes home before the kids wake up from nap and doesn't have to do the aftercare duty which is very busy. So I found another coworker with an hour and she and I split the 30 min into 15 min for each of us. So in the end, it really wasn't helpful, because what can you do in 15 min? But I can't just take the 30 min all for myself when multiple teachers are low on off-duty time that day. I still have so much stuff to do next week and am just crossing my fingers that somehow I will get it done. Before all this happened I was ahead of the game because I worked instead of taking breaks. But then many things were added to be done before the end of the term, and, to be fair, there are things I added myself because I wanted to do them for my kids. It's those things the company would expect me to sacrifice first, but for that reason I want to sacrifice them the least.

When the new term starts, I want to talk to the manager more when these scheduling things happen. But again, I really don't know that it's my place. But I also don't trust the new leaders to say anything because they won't be on campus and so far they don't seem to be paying any attention to what goes on here unless we report it to them. So it seems like if I, or the sole other coworker who is staying here, don't speak up, we will just have a repeat of this year but worse because there will be more students and almost complete staff turn-over. (Not to mention more understaffing!) But I can just see the outcome not being good for me. Maybe the manager will listen and change things in the moment. I do think she tries to do things for us when we point them out. But if I have to do it too often, I bet she'll get annoyed and report me as bossy and confrontational. And then I'll get told it's not my job to tell the manager how to do hers or something. In the end it won't matter that no one's batting for us so we have to bat for ourselves. It will just be my fault. Been there, done that. No one wants to take responsibility, they all just want to say "this was inevitable, suck it up." I'm nervous even to document everything in case of being accused of being overly meticulous or intentionally trying to find fault. But if this year sucks I will be job-hunting for sure, ugh. I'm more concerned whether I can keep my cool the whole year. It would be nice to leave a place I worked at for five years with a good report rather than blow it all up at the last moment.

[moralitas]

Hi Moralitas! I've got another Chaos Barren question: So if Scarfz and the Xaoc being aliens has been retconned, how exactly do the Xaoc and the Echidna differ from other Mobians? Like how is it that they have such a deep connection with Chaos Energy, along with the Master and Chaos Emeralds, but other Mobians don't? Outside of contracts with Fleetway that is. (Hope this isn't too spoilery a question 😅)

I'm sorry this has taken me absolutely forever to answer but boy do I have an answer.

I'll answer all I can and leave the parts I think will be interesting to the story itself. Here's a very rough map of the Xaoc city (Part of the reason answering this ask has taken me forever is because I'm drawing a proper map digitally and this was scratched out in 15 min before my shift end lolol)

They are extraterrestial way in a similar way the Babylon Rogues are, settled on Mobius/Scarfz planet and established a close connection with the echidna, considering them a sister race.

The Xaoc were less idenitifed by their species rather than their history. Their first connection with Chaos/Fleetway was purely accidental. Being the god of Chaos, Fleetway truly embodied that, offering his power to whoever wished for it and when their bodies could not bear it, watching them burn away from the strength of the chaos.

The Xaoc worshipped him and named their sacrifice after him (Yes they named the sacrifice Xaoc and then named themselves after them. Imagine a whole people named Karen LMAO). Their origin stories remain the same, where they offer a rare blue hedgehog as a sacrifice. In this universe, all the blue coloring means is that they have a higher affinity for chaos than others. Fleetway, though he was a god of chaos, did not see much sense in burning through an infant child and rejected their offering. Thinking he wanted something different, the Xaoc offered the child again when they came of age.

Fleetway was intrigued by them, and offered the sacrifice a choice. Accept their role in life and burn, or reject the power and walk away unscathed. Having lived their entire life as a sacrificial lamb, pampered but never loved deeply, Xaoc refused both of these. They made a deal with Fleetway, that if they could take the power and survive, Fleetway would grant them the power they needed to live freely.

Never one to turn down a bet, Fleetway agreed. Xaoc burned super, and though the energy was a great burden, they survived and became The First to host Fleetway.

This was the start of their connection with Fleetway/Chaos, who didn't mind renewing the contract when a new blue Xaoc was born.

So in regards to you question: why do they have a deeper connection compared to other Mobians? It began with discipline and practice. The more they sought it out and developed it, the stronger and easier it became. They are a warrior race and settled on Mobius when their home planet was destroyed by the Black Arms.

Centuries before the modern time of Boom Sonic's world, the Xaoc and echidna entered a war with the Ancients, a people of Mobius, who were found syphoning energy from the world's very chaos to power weapons of war. There are some elements that resulted of that that will remain hidden for now, but the Xaoc were faced with a choice, surrender the Master Emerald and all their ancient secrets to be used and weaponized, or hide it all. The echidna's had been bested, they had no allies left.

All of their powerful chaos wielders came together to hide the city, forcing it beneath the ground and protecting it with a powerful shield. The cost of a spell this powerful was enormous and cost many their lives, meaning they lost their most knowledgable wielders.

Now, they survive as best they can in this shield they created, hoping their ethereal will return to free them. Once a magnificent people full of culture and history, they struggle to survive with what they have.

Other mobians could technically achieve a similar level of prowess that the Xaoc and echidna have, but are less likely too and may be more at a disadvantage.

Chaos is radioactive, in its own way. By calling it closer and living with such proximity to it (tending to the fae gardens, also known as the chao gardens) they have become stronger in many inherent ways.

Thank you so much @its-just-a-glitch for asking this question and being so patient with the answer! This is one of my most ambitious projects yet and I'm extremely excited to share it when the time comes.

[casuallyimagining]

You and Me

Min Yoongi x Reader

Summary: Yoongi has something he needs to ask you before the Grammys. Genre: slight angst, kind of fluffy at the end? Word Count: 1,865 Rating: T (there’s some swearing) Notes: Part of the Long Term Couples series. Read more here.

As he was leaving to go out to lunch with Namjoon and Jin, Yoongi told you that he had news he wanted to tell you when he got home. Which, of course, is possibly the worst thing to leave a person with.

What could he want to talk to you about?

You had a feeling you knew. Physical therapy had been progressing well for Yoongi, and while he still had a lot of healing to do, he was to the point where he could do almost all normal, daily tasks without help. He still had to wear his sling when he went out, and he was still in quite a bit of pain, but it was to the point where he would probably start back to work soon. And, of course, he would probably be moving back to the dorms again, and you would return to your lives pre-November.

Which meant you would go from seeing him literally all the time to only seeing him a few times a week--a return to taking him meals in your spare time, to sitting in the studio watching him work, to short dates to go grab coffee or a milkshake on his rare breaks. Thankfully, you had written the code for the Genius Lab down in your notes app, because after almost two and a half months of not using it, you weren’t confident that you remembered it.

Honestly, you weren’t sure if you could go back to sustaining yourself on text messages, and video calls, and brief, 15-minute meetings. Adjusting to him being there constantly--underfoot when you least expected him to be, but always there to lend an ear or a hand or just generally be there for you--had taken some time. Your routines had melded together so quickly, that having him wandering around your apartment at two in the afternoon was no more uncommon than you not being able to find a series to watch on Netflix. You knew it was coming eventually, but you weren’t sure you could stand the separation.

You would, though, for his sake. You would walk through fire for him.

And it would only be for a short time, right? He had promised you on Christmas. As soon as he was able, he was going to start moving out of the dorms and into his own apartment. He wanted you to join him, wanted you to move in with him. But you weren’t sure when that would be. He had never given you a timetable for when he expected to start moving. Which was fine, you supposed. He could take his time.

But the whole thing made you anxious, even though you knew it shouldn’t. What if he got too busy once he got back to normal life and forgot? What if he decided he wanted to stay at the dorms indefinitely? Worse, what if he changed his mind and he decided he did want to move, just not with you?

Your mind raced as you sat in your office at your piano, trying to lose yourself in the music. You wanted to believe that you had nothing to worry about, that even though things would change, you would continue to be a priority in Yoongi’s life, that you wouldn’t be taking a huge step backwards in your relationship. Somehow, you managed to distract yourself enough that you barely noticed you were playing “Spring Day” until you were almost done with the song.

You continued to play through some of the other songs you had memorized. Most of them, you noticed, were BTS--a strange side-effect of who you spent your time with and your students, the most prominent of which was, of course, Jimin.

As you played the final chord of “Black Swan,” the sound of gentle clapping made you jump, causing you to hit your knee on the bottom of your piano.

“Fuck,” you hissed, rubbing where the corner of the wood caught your leg. Now that you weren’t so surprised, you could see Yoongi standing in the doorway of your shared office, a look of concern barely masking his earlier amusement.

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me come in,” he said softly. “I put some leftovers in the fridge, and Namjoon made us stop for hotteok on the way back, so that’s in there, too. Are you okay?” He crouched down beside you, his hand falling to your knee.

“Unsurprisingly, that is not the first time I’ve done that,” you said with a laugh. “I’m honestly kind of shocked there’s not some sort of dent in the wood.”

Yoongi offered you an amused smile. “Well I’m glad there’s no damage. To you or the piano.” He leaned in to kiss you as he stood, the action quick and easy--like he had done it a thousand times before--but contained no less love. “You’ve been holding out on me.” You could hear the mirth in his voice as he moved one of his paintings to pull the office chair closer to the piano.

You waved off his comment, shutting the lid on the keys of the piano. “I don’t take credit for the things Park Jimin forces me to memorize.”

“Maybe you should start.” He shrugged, and the two of you fell silent. After a moment, he wiped his hands on his thighs and looked at you, though dropped his gaze to his lap the second you made eye contact. “So, I was talking with Si-Hyuk-hyung, and he had some… news he wanted me to pass on.” You raised an eyebrow in curiosity. Was this what he was talking about before he left?

“News?” you question, trying to play it off like you hadn’t spent the past few hours in a downward spiral of anxiety. “About…?”

“He and I were talking about us.” Yoongi gestured to himself and then to you. “He asked me if we wanted to go public any time soon.”

Your eyes went wide. “I… what? Why?”

“He apparently talked to Jin, Namjoon, and Jungkook about it, too.” He shrugged. “Si-Hyuk-hyung didn’t say why, but we think it’s because of the Grammys.” When you continued to look confused, he elaborated. “I mean, that’s kind of the thing, right? If you win an award, you turn and hug the person you love and then you go to receive it?”

“Oh, so you’re expecting to win?” you teased, trying to pretend like your cheeks weren’t a little flushed.

“Well, I think…” he stammered. “I think we should be prepared. Just in case.”

“So what did you tell PD-nim?”

“I told him I would talk to you about it.” You hummed. “He said he’d leave it up to us, but he’d like at least three days’ notice so they can prepare a statement.”

You stayed silent, unsure of what to say. Of course you had thought about it, about what going public would do to your relationship. You had considered the potential hate from the fans you would receive, and the fact that your private life, no matter how hard you tried, would never be fully private after. You knew about the strain it could put on your relationship with Yoongi, about how the saesangs and the paparazzi drove a wedge between many idols--particularly male idols--and their significant others.

But at the same time, you wanted to be able to go out with Yoongi without having to constantly look over your shoulder, without having to worry about someone from Dispatch seeing, or a well-meaning fan posting on social media. You wanted to be able to go with Yoongi to events, to publicly support him at concerts.

You sighed and reached for his hand. “What do you think?”

“It’s what you want, jagi. My life won’t really change much,” he said, squeezing your hand.

“Yoongi, please.” You didn’t like how exasperated your voice sounded, but you could feel your anxiety starting to spike again. “I need to know what you’re thinking.”

“Honestly?” You nodded. “I don’t know. It actually kind of terrifies me.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I’ve seen idols’ careers die when dating scandals come out. But at the same time, I want us to have a normal life.” You snorted. “You know what I mean.”

“It’s very sudden,” you said softly, gripping his hand with both of yours. “The Grammys are in a few weeks. We’d have to do something in the next few days.”

“I’ll tell him we’d like to wait, then.”

You hummed, tracing his hand with your index finger. “We’d be able to do it how we want?”

“That’s what Si-Hyuk-hyung said. I imagine there’s a limit, but I don’t think he’d lie about that.”

“How much of an advanced warning did he say he wanted?”

“Three days.”

Would it really be that bad? You weren’t a stranger to hate comments and wildly unfounded criticism, although not quite to the scale it might get to. Yoongi rarely looked at social media, unless he was posting a selca to Twitter. And what? You might have to private your Instagram? Delete your Twitter? Honestly, it might do you some good to get away from social media. You trusted Yoongi to not drop you the second things got tough, and there were six other members of BTS there to help lessen any damage his career might take. As long as the two of you could weather it together, you were confident that you could come out on the other side relatively unscathed.

“Fuck it.”

“What?” Yoongi’s eyes were wide.

“Fuck it. Let’s do it.” You squeezed his hand, a small smile starting to form.

Yoongi’s eyes locked on yours. He was smiling, but you could see him hesitate. “Are you sure?”

You nodded. “Ask PD-nim if we can do something right before they send out their release. I think it’ll go over better coming from you.”

“You’re already planning this?” It wasn’t a question. He laughed, a sweet, gummy smile spreading across his face. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s do this. I’ll text Si-Hyuk-hyung and let him know.”

You watched him slide his phone out of his pocket and unlock it. “Hey Yoon?” He hummed, continuing to type for a moment before looking up at you. “We’re gonna be okay no matter what, right? Still us?”

Yoongi pulled you to him as he stood up, his arms immediately wrapping around your back to hold you close. “Don’t be silly. Of course we will be.” You felt him sigh as he tucked his chin onto your shoulder. “I can’t promise that things won’t change, but we’ll be okay.”

You hugged him, your arms around his shoulders, careful not to press too tightly on his bad one. This certainly hadn’t been where you were expecting the conversation to go when he walked out the door that morning, but you hoped he was right. Telling the fans was an important step to take--and an inevitable one, if you wanted your relationship to last. “You and me?” You pulled away slightly to look him in the eyes.

He smiled and pressed a soft kiss to your lips before resting his forehead against yours. “‘Till the end.”

Read more of the series here

[aliendes]

Natural Borns - Chapter One

dystopian!au / futuristic!au

AUTHOR NOTE: here it is! Chapter one of Natural Borns. If you haven’t already, please read the prologue, or else this wont make the most sense. The prologue gives some backstory about the universe that you need to fully enjoy the story. Thank you for all the love on the prologue, it pushed me to want to put this out early. If you enjoy this series, please follow and reblog so it can reach more eyes. Feel free to send me an ask! I would love to answer any questions, because I’m sure I’m inevitably going to leave some things unanswered (this is my first time writing a series, after all). Enjoy! xx Des

Series info/genre: Angst, fluff, (possible) smut NSFW due to darker themes Pairings: ot7 x fem reader (eventual) Warnings: this series will have different trigger warnings listed for each chapter (if there are any), but as a whole, this series will include violence, mentions of depression & other mental illnesses, cursing, abuse, drugs/alcohol, some shitty medical descriptions because i am NOT a doctor, self-esteem issues, fluff, and possible smut in future chapters (but that’s undecided). i will add more warnings/tags in the future if there are any. Description: In the year 2613, over half of the world’s population are what scientists consider ‘designer babies’. YN is a small town girl who is a true natural born, someone born naturally without he help of a lab or gene splicing. Her DNA is greatly sought after, but what is she willing to do to protect it? Word count: 3.6k 

It was early. Too early for you to be awake. As you rolled over in your bed, taking your poofy duvet cover with you, you noticed that it was barely dawn. Your curtains were drawn, how you always left them - liking to wake up with the sun, and you couldn’t even see said sun on the horizon yet. You could make out a pink line that melted perfectly with the purple and blues of the night sky. After admiring the beauty of it for a moment, you rolled back over with a huff.

You’re already awake, might as well get out of bed.

You lived on a peach farm, or orchard, that your family owned and had chores and duties to fulfill around the house and land. The orchard was on about ten acres, small for a farm, but big enough to get the job done. Your father sells the peaches you harvest to local grocers and restaurants and sells the rest at your mother’s stall at the farmer’s market in town. Your mom grows flowers in her garden on the property and makes beautiful arrangements for locals. She just recently made the arrangements for the wedding of one of your old classmates. You helped out where you could with harvests, taking care of the animals your family cared for, and working the market on weekends. It wasn’t a luxurious life by any means, but you were happy. You definitely couldn’t complain, not when most natural borns had way less than you. You were fortunate, really, and content living this small town life.

You swung your legs over the edge of your bed and stretched your arms up high, letting out a big yawn. Your pajamas were all bunched up and uncomfortable on your legs as you scooted closer to the edge of your bed, expecting your toes to meet the cool wood of the floor. Instead, you were met with something warm and fuzzy and a loud meow that sounded through your room, making you jump.

“Ai- sorry Mochi,” you grumbled, watching the cat scurry across the floor. You smiled and shook your head at the cat, who was now giving you a death glare from next to your bedroom door. You slowly stood up, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and opened the door to let the devil cat out. He quickly took advantage of the open door and ran down the stairs as fast as he could. You watched him for a moment before making your way to your bathroom down the hall. 

Closing and locking the door behind you, you started your morning routine of brushing your teeth and hair and washing your face. Once you turned the faucet off, you rubbed a clean white towel over your face, pulling it down slowly as you peeked over it at the mirror. You looked tired, small bags beginning to form under your eyes, skin darkening slightly from being out in the sun, maybe even a little sunburnt from working at the market yesterday. Still starting at your reflection, you hang your towel up on the rack with a sigh, turning to get dressed for the day.

Your normal work day attire consists of jeans and a t-shirt. It was June, just starting to get unbearably hot in Korea, so you opted for some looser linen pants and a light shirt. You didn’t have a whole lot to do today other than feed animals, clean the chicken coop, and help mom out with some arrangements. You wouldn’t be harvesting the peach trees until late July or early August at the rate they were growing currently, though you did still need to monitor them and make sure they remained healthy before harvest season. 

By the time you were ready for the day, the sun was just barely coming up and the smell of coffee beans entered your nose. Mom must be up, you thought to yourself. You smiled and made your way down the stairs, grabbing onto the bottom of the banister and swinging yourself around it, an old habit of yours from all the way back in elementary school. You were still a kid at heart, even at the age of 23. 

“Good morning Pearl!” your mother called from the kitchen. Pearl was the nickname your parents have called you since you could walk. Natural pearls are extremely rare, almost never occurring in nature. You were also a rare breed, a true natural born, hard to find like a pearl, hence the nickname.

“Morning mama,” you said, walking up to her and giving her a side hug, “watcha makin’?” You asked with a teasing lilt to your voice. Your mom was a tad shorter than you and you liked to take advantage of that, leaning your elbow on her shoulder as you watched her stir the pan in front of her.

“Steamed eggs and rice, now go get your father, would you? We have to start on these arrangements soon, Mrs. Lee needs 25 of them by tomorrow afternoon.”

You gave your mom a nod and made your way back up the stairs, hopping over Mochi who was now taking up residence on the second step. “You’re gonna get stepped on your curious cat,” you said under your breath. Mochi just watched on as you took two stairs at a time. 

Before you could reach the top of the stairs, you nearly stumbled straight into your father who had just come around the corner. “Who-whoa,” he laughed out as you grabbed onto the railing to stop yourself from smacking into him. 

“Mom needs you!” You yelped out, passing your dad on the stairs and running into your room to grab your phone from your nightstand. You could hear your dad chuckling as he walked down the stairs. As you picked up your phone, you noticed you had a new message in your group chat you had with your two best friends, well, your only friends, you supposed.

From Mina [11:13 pm]: pearl!!!

From Mina [11:13 pm]: pearl are u awake?

From Woo [11:15 pm]: why are you awake min?

From Mina [11:17 pm]: cant sleep, pearl, u up!?

From Woo [11:23 pm]: I’m gonna guess not

From Mina [11:25 pm]: ugh dfghjk 

You giggled at your screen for a moment before typing back a response.

You [6:37 am]: sorry guys, i went to bed early last night what’s up min?

You pocketed your phone, definitely not expecting a response at this ungodly hour, and headed back downstairs. On your short walk, you thought to your two friends, Mina and Wooyoung, who you befriended in middle school. Well, actually Mina befriended you and Wooyoung in seventh grade because you were both outcasts that didn’t talk to anyone. Ever the martyr, she brought your little group together and you’ve been thick as thieves ever since. You don’t see them as much as you’d like nowadays, as they both attended the small community college in your town. You never really liked school, never excelled at anything, and were always a homebody. College just didn’t sound fun to you, especially if people there were anything like at your highschool. Highschool hadn’t been kind to you. You were labeled ‘half-breed’ and ‘mutant’ by a group of girls who wanted nothing more than to see you suffer because of your looks. Boys would flirt with you, leave you love notes, and even try to harass you in the halls, but never because they actually took an interest in you. The one time you went to a party with Mina, you had been cornered in some guy's barn by one of the popular boys who was trying to get in your pants. This just made the popular girls even more angry with you and would jump through hoops to make your life hell while at school. All of those experiences taught you one thing: most people can’t be trusted. Some might say you have trust issues (Mina) while others will try to get you to come out of your shell a bit more (Woo and your mom), but in the end, you’re comfortable with your two best friends and your parents. You never asked for more because you simply didn’t need it.

Most, if not all, families these days only had one child, so you nor your friends ever knew what it was like to have siblings. Even your parents were only children, so no aunts, uncles, or cousins to call an extended family. This was normal, though, because a law was put in place in 2505 banning families from having more than one child to help with population control. If a family broke this law, they were fined excessive amounts of money. The law was easy to enforce with parents of lab born children, since their child had to be entered into a national database, meaning no company would work with them again to avoid hefty fines, or possibly being put out of business. It was a little harder to enforce with natural born families. The law was definitely one sided, aimed to force more and more natural borns into poverty. 

You were snapped out of your daydream as you entered your kitchen, taking in the sight of your dad sitting at the dining table reading something on his tablet and your mom making a grocery list. You smiled softly, rounding the table and taking your usual seat next to your mother. “Thanks for breakfast, mom,” you said kindly, leaning over to give her a kiss on the cheek. 

“Of course, Pearl. Now eat up, we need to get going soon if-” your mother was cut off by the sudden shriek of the doorbell, which caused you to jump what had to be 5 feet in the air. Who was ringing your doorbell at - you took your phone out - 6:44 in the morning?

Your father had the same perplexed look that you must’ve worn, getting up out of his chair and heading towards the front room of the house. You shared a puzzled look with your mom who just shrugged her shoulders and went back to her list, blowing on a piece of hot egg in her spoon. 

As you started to fiddle with your own spoon, you tried to strain to hear the conversation happening in the other room. You could hear hushed murmurs that sounded rushed, almost angry. You squint your eyes in confusion. It sounded like your dad was mad. He never gets mad. Who could be at the front door? Slowly, you rise from your seat to go investigate, your mother paying you no mind.

As you round the corner of the kitchen, your father comes into view holding the front door at a 90 degree angle from the wall, effectively blocking your vision of the man on the other side. Your dad’s profile told you what you needed to know, though. He was visibly angry, apples of his cheeks reddening. He was still speaking in a hushed tone, though you could tell it was tense.

Slowly, you walked over to your father, peeking around the front door. If your dad noticed your presence, he didn’t mention it. Standing on your front porch was a man, shorter than your father, with dark hair and round glasses perched on his nose. He was obviously a natural born, as he didn’t have any of the perfect or striking features you were used to seeing on business men such as himself. He didn’t look intimidating in the least, but you could almost see the steam rolling out of your dad’s ears. As soon as the man caught sight of you, a bright grin took over his face.

“Ah, you must be YN,” he starts, taking a step forward and reaching out his hand, “it’s so nice to finally meet you.”

You were confused by his words, taking a step back to match his. You didn’t know this man and you definitely didn’t want to shake his hand. Did he say finally meet you? What is that supposed to mean?

“You need to leave,” your father started, causing the shorter man’s attention to fall back on him, “now.” Your dad left no room for discussion, effectively ending the conversation. 

The mysterious man nodded once, looking back at you. “We’ll be in touch,” were his final words before turning on his heel and walking back towards a sleek, black car at the end of your drive. Before you could take in any more details of the car, your father was closing the front door. He breathed out a heavy sigh and placed a hand on your bicep, gently leading you back to the kitchen.

Your mom looked up from her, now nearly finished, breakfast. “Who was it, sweetie?”

Your dad sat back in his chair, leaving you standing, confused, in the middle of your kitchen. “Yeah, dad. Who was that?” You asked, genuinely concerned about the stranger.

Your dad let out another sigh before turning to look up at you, “Just another company. You know how they are, Pearl. Persistent, but they’ll back off eventually once they realize we aren’t interested.”

You slowly nodded in understanding. These designer baby companies have been coming to ‘scout’ you since you were in elementary school. They would come to your home, or even your school, and try to talk to you about selling your DNA and how it would be beneficial to your family, maybe even bring them out of poverty, make them rich. When you were a child, the offer was enticing, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t a little curious even now. But you knew where you stood on the subject. You didn’t want to sell your DNA. You didn’t want anything to do with these big companies that were making natural borns poor while getting rich in the process. But you remembered something, “Dad, what did he mean by finally meeting me?”

Your dad has his back turned to you again, starting to eat his breakfast. You could see him visibly stiffen at your question before quickly relaxing again. Your mother seemed to notice this too, sending a worried glance at him, to which you couldn’t see his response. Without turning to look at you, he mumbled, “That was Hyunwoo, a former classmate of mine.”

So you were right in your assumption about Hyunwoo being a natural born. You know your dad hadn’t gone to college, and his family lived in this very house while he was growing up. That means Hyunwoo must be from the same town as you. Most people living here were living in poverty, so why did he look like a million bucks? No one from this town could afford a car like that either. Before you could get too lost in your thoughts, your father was speaking again, “He works for a pretty well known company in Seoul. He’s been interested in you since you were a little kid.” The thought alone was enough to make you feel nauseous. You didn’t even know this man, yet he’s known about you practically all your life. Apparently he’s been seeking you out for a while too, if your assumptions are correct.  

“Why was he here?” You voiced your thoughts aloud.

Your father set his spoon down on his dish before turning his entire body in his chair to face you. “It’s nothing Pearl,” he started, firm but gentle, “You know these companies never leave us alone. His is no different. They’ll get the message sooner or later.” There was a finality in his tone, making it known there was no room for discussion on the matter. With a nod of his head he stood up from his seat, gathering his dishes, and deposited them into the sink. “I’ll be out in the orchards if you need me.” 

You nodded before sitting down at the table and picking at your food. 

“Don’t worry, dear,” your mother said as she, too, stood up with her dishes, “this type of thing happens all the time.” 

Even though you trusted your parents, and they were right - it did happen fairly often, something about Hyunwoo seemed different. The way he looked at you and spoke the words ‘finally meet you’, made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Even your mom and dad seemed nervous when his name was spoken at the kitchen table. But you trusted your parents. Right?

In the early afternoon, you had just finished your chores of feeding the chickens and cats, and you were wandering around the orchard. Your dad had retired to the shed on the far north corner of the property. He liked to spend a lot of time in there, tinkering with old appliances. You and your mother had finished the arrangements for Mrs. Lee earlier and now she was at the market fulfilling the list she made earlier. 

You didn’t really have anything that needed to get done right away. You know you should probably go check on the flowers in your mom’s garden, make sure they don’t need to be watered again, but it’s been a while since you’ve walked through the orchard without the responsibility of the trees looming over you. Your father cleaned up the trees earlier, made sure drip lines were intact and checked over the farm, so you decided to indulge in your favorite pass time. 

You walked away from the chicken coop towards the edge of the orchard. It was truly one of your favorite places in the whole world - not that you’ve seen much of it, but still - and you could spend hours getting lost among the beautifully colored canopy of peach blossoms. 

When you reached the edge of the orchard, you leaned your hand against the cool oak colored bark of one of the trees, and toed off your shoes, leaving them in the dirt. The trees were just starting to blossom with pretty pink and white flowers among the green and almost yellowish leaves. Only about another month before harvest, you thought idly to yourself. 

As you walked through the trees, you relished in the feeling of the cool dirt beneath your feet, squishing between your toes with each step. The air outside was hot and humid, but the earth was cool under the shade of the trees. With each trunk you passed, you let your hand ghost over the rough bark, memorizing the feeling of it. You looked up at the leaves, slowly moving in the slight breeze today. Your family's farm was small, only about 10 acres, so the trees weren’t so dense you couldn’t see the sky above or would be completely hidden from view while walking through them. If your dad were to come out of his shed, you probably would’ve been able to see him from here, though it was a good distance away. 

As you got closer to the center of the trees you found a nice trunk to sit down against and pulled your phone from your pocket, checking your group chat with your friends. 

From Mina [2:05 pm]: pearl pearl pearl

From Mina [2:06 pm]: where are u

You rolled your eyes at your best friend's antics before typing out your reply.

From you [2:36 pm]: walking through the trees, what’s up?

Almost immediately you were looking at a response.

From Mina [2:37 pm]: there was some guy here on campus today

From Mina [2:38 pm]: a girl from my econ class said he was looking for you

From Mina [2:39 pm]: said he looked like he didn’t belong here, i’m assuming it’s some company but i wanted to let u know

Your heart dropped into your stomach at this new knowledge. It wasn’t incredibly strange for someone to be looking for you at the college. Most residents of the town attended the college at some point or another, what with it being free to attend because of a bill passed decades ago by natural born activists fighting for education for those living in poverty. But something about this felt wrong. 

Before you could respond to Mina to ease the worries you were sure she felt, you heard what sounded like a twig snapping somewhere behind you. Already on edge from the text messages, you quickly stood up, turning almost completely around in your spot. Your eyes focused on the spot where you thought you heard the noise come from, only to be met with nothing. Despite knowing you heard something, part of you wondered if it was all in your head, the events of the day messing with you. 

In the distance, you could see that your family’s truck was still missing from the drive, meaning your mom was still out shopping. Quickly, you glanced at your father’s shed - the doors were still shut tightly. Momentarily you wondered if he would be able to hear you if you screamed. Shaking the thought from your mind, you turned back around to face the tree. Out of the corner of your eye, you caught movement from behind a trunk a few yards in front of where you stood. 

“Who’s there?!” you half yelled, fear starting to creep up your spine. You definitely weren’t one to fight, much more comfortable running from your problems and confrontation. You wished Mina was here, she would be brave enough to move forward, to protect herself from danger. You slowly started walking backwards, not taking your eyes off the trunk where you believed someone to be hiding. You wanted to turn and run, but didn’t want to risk whoever it was behind that tree attacking you from the back. As you continued to take cautious steps, your back collided with something firm, yet not hard enough to be a tree trunk. This was softer, warmer. Human. 

To be continued....

AUTHOR NOTE: Sooooo, who do you think YN ran into?! Who do you think will make an appearance next chapter? ;)

copyright aliendes 2020

[sugakookielix]

BTS Scenario: Forgetting an Important Date.

Prompt: BTS forgets an important date (your birthday/anniversary) 

Requested?: No

Genre: Angst, some fluff

Word Count: 3898

Warnings: A few swear words

Requests are OPEN!

Female reader. Gifs are not mine

_________________________________________

Kim Namjoon:

He had a feeling that there was something important that he was missing but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. BTS had been working hard on their next comeback and as the leader he felt he had the most responsibility. He blamed the nagging feeling as stress and did his best to ignore it as he tried to focus on work. Unfortunately for Namjoon, the thing that he was forgetting just so happend to be your birthday. You understood the stress that your boyfriend was under and tried your best to support him so you weren’t too mad when you didn’t wake up to balloons and streamers decorating the house. The least he could have done was send you a text though, yet none of the happy birthday messages you received were from him. In fact, you hadn’t heard anything from Namjoon for the past week. You were disappointed, but didn’t want to let him ruin your day so you got dressed and went to spend the day with your friends, at least they remembered. The day was quite eventful and you ended up having a lot of fun, though you couldn’t stop the disappointment at the fact that your boyfriend wasn’t celebrating with you. There was a part of you that hoped he would be there to at least spend the evening with you but that hope disappeared when you walked into an empty apartment. Namjoon had actually forgotten your birthday. You physically deflated as you went to get ready for bed, taking a long shower and changing into your pajamas before realizing that he still hadn’t come home. Now you were upset, grabbing your phone to call him and demand an explanation. As expected, he didn’t answer, and after a few more tries you gave up and left him a voicemail ranting on how he forgot on top of ignoring you for a week. You were honestly starting to feel like he didn’t care anymore. After hanging up, you turned off your phone and got into bed, wanting to sleep off your frustrations. Namjoon had been so caught up in work that he fell asleep at the studio, meaning he didn’t see your message until the following morning. The second he heard your disappointed voice reminding him about your birthday he cursed and tossed his phone down. He knew he was forgetting something but how could he have been so careless. After failing to get ahold of you he grabbed his things and rushed out of the building, stopping to grab you flowers and your favorite candy before heading over to your apartment. As soon as you opened the door he was pulling you into a tight hug and apologizing for his ignorance. 

“I knew I was forgetting something jagi, I am so sorry! I promise I’ll make it up to you! I’ll take the next few days off and spoil you like the princess you are how does that sound?”

Kim Seokjin:

Jin knew that your guys’ anniversary was coming up. He already had your present and was planning to get home early and make dinner for you so the two of you could celebrate once you got home from work. He had everything planned out, from what he would make you to when he would give you your present. The one thing he didn’t remember? The day that he was actually supposed to do all of this. With BTS constantly working on new projects, there was rarely a free moment in their schedule and somehow Jin had managed to get the days mixed up. He thought your anniversary was the weekend and didn’t realize that it was actually today, so he thought nothing of it when the guys all decided to go out to eat once they got a free moment. You had already been having a rough day because of work, it seemed that nothing you did was right and your boss loved to remind you of that. Still, the thought of celebrating your anniversary kept you going and you were more than ready to spend the evening relaxing with your boyfriend. To your surprise however, the apartment was empty when you got home which you thought was odd since Jin had promised that he would be home in time to celebrate with you. At first you thought that maybe something came up and he had to stay late, checking your phone to see if he had texted you, but there was nothing. Now worried that something might have happened, you quickly hit the call button and began pacing around the room as you waited for him to pick up. 

“Hello?”

“Jin? Is everything alright? You were supposed to be home by now?” you asked frantically, there was silence from the other end as Jin tried to figure out what you were talking about. 

“Everything's fine, the members all wanted to go out to eat, sorry I thought I texted you.” You almost dropped the phone when you heard that, realization setting in that he had forgotten your anniversary. “Jagi? Are you there?” you said nothing in reply and hung up the phone. Tears silently ran down your cheeks as you walked to the bathroom to get ready for bed, wanting nothing more than for the day to be over. He promised you that he would be home? How could he have forgotten? 

Meanwhile Jin was blowing up your phone with messages asking you what was wrong and if you were okay. You had suddenly hung up and weren’t answering him and he was worried. It finally hit him when he looked back through his notifications and saw the alert he had made to remind him of the day, guilt crashing over him and tears clouding his vision as he begged the date to change. He had forgotten, he had everything planned so perfectly and he ruined it. He immediately rushed home, grabbing your present and walking to your guys’ shared bedroom, praying you would let him make it up to you. Jin sat beside you and placed a hand on your shoulder as he handed you the small box. 

“I am so sorry baby. I didn’t forget I swear, I had everything planned but got the dates mixed up. Look, I have your present right here and tomorrow I’ll treat you to dinner okay? Please forgive me!”

Min Yoongi:

It was your two year anniversary with Yoongi and you had everything planned out perfectly. Reservation for a nice restaurant, check. Brand new dress that you bought specifically for this occasion, check. The new headphones he had been eyeing since their release, check. More potential surprises for where the night may lead, check. Yoongi had been working hard on his new mixtape which made you even more excited for this date, you two hadn’t been able to spend time together in weeks and you knew he needed to take a break from his work. You had told Yoongi about the reservation every day leading up to your anniversary, and every time he promised he would be there and would recite the time back to you. Yet, when the time actually came, Yoongi was nowhere to be seen. You were all dressed up, sitting in the middle of the restaurant waiting for your boyfriend who was yet to show up. At first you tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he had just got stuck in traffic or something came up at the studio. After 15 minutes with no sign of him and questioning looks from your server, you decided to text him. 

‘I’m at the table, are you almost here?’

‘Hello?’

‘Our reservation was 30 minutes ago! Where are you?’

‘I’m starting to get weird looks.’

‘Yoongi!’

‘Answer me!’

‘I’m going home...’

Humiliated and furious, you quickly paid for your drink and left the restaurant, trying to ignore all the sympathetic stares from other diners. Yoongi had promised he would be there and yet he stood you up! He hadn’t even read your messages. Tears clouded your vision as you tried to focus on the road, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep until this became a bad dream. You hadn’t expected to find Yoongi home already, curled up in your shared bed and fast asleep. The sight only upset you further as you quickly changed, took off your makeup, and went to sleep on the couch, you didn’t want to be near him. 

Yoongi was confused when he woke up alone the next morning, you always slept in with him on your days off. He had come home exhausted the night before and passed out before realizing that you weren’t home, so he hadn’t realized anything was wrong. Still confused, he reached for his phone and that was when he saw the messages you sent him. “Shit,” your anniversary, it had completely slipped his mind. Yoongi ran a hand over his face in anger before jumping out of bed to go find you, hoping you were home so he could apologize. He was both relieved and heartbroken to see you asleep on the couch, dried tears staining your cheeks. Guilt continued to eat at him as he slowly approached you, finally breaking down once he noticed your present for him sitting on the table beside you. Letting out a quiet sob, he threw himself onto the couch and hugged you tightly, waking you up in the process. 

“I’m such an ass, I promised I would be there and I wasn’t. I’m sorry baby, we’ll go out now! I’ll do anything you want just please don’t hate me. I love you so much I swear!” 

Jung Hoseok:

Since Hoseok would be on tour during your actual birthday, the two of you had planned to celebrate it early instead. He was going to spend the weekend before he had to leave over at your place. You guys would cuddle, order takeout, watch movies and just enjoy each others presence. He would be gone for months and with the timezone differences you guys had decided that this would be the best plan. He would still call you on your actual birthday, but this way you guys could celebrate it in person. Fast forward to Friday night and you were excitedly getting everything ready for Hoseoks arrival. You had gone to the store earlier to pick up all your favorite snacks, put on your coziest pajamas, had Netflix up on the television, and brought out a ton of pillows and blankets so you guys could make a fort in the living room. The only thing missing now was Hoseok. You knew he had practice today but he had told you that he would come over the second he was done so you sat on the couch and waited patiently for him, your phone beside you in case he decided to call or text you. You weren’t too sure when he was supposed to get off but it was almost 10 pm now so you assumed he would be here in the next half hour. You were soon proven wrong when over an hour had passed and there was no sign of Hoseok. At first you played it off thinking that practice had run a little late, checking your phone to see if he texted you or tried to call...nothing. Taking a deep breath, you decided to call him and see how much longer, the phone ringing before going straight to voicemail. You sighed and gave up as you put on your favorite movie and got cozy on the couch, wanting to stay up and wait for him to arrive. You hadn’t realized how much time had passed until the movie was almost over and your eyelids were getting heavier by the second, falling asleep on the couch as the ending credits played. Hoseok had been so exhausted after practice that he could barely hold himself up. All that was running through his head was going home and falling asleep. It hadn’t even crossed his mind he had somewhere to be until Jungkook pointed it out once they were back at the dorms. 

“Hey hyung, correct me if I’m wrong but weren’t you supposed to spend the weekend at Y/n’s?” Hoseok was now much more awake as he shot up and checked the date on his phone. In his tired state he had completely forgotten about your guys plans. Hoseok said nothing to the members as he quickly grabbed his stuff and rushed over to your place while thinking of ways to make you forgive him. His heart dropped when he saw you had passed out on the couch, clearly waiting for him to arrive. Tears clouded his vision as he quickly changed out of his practice clothes and snuggled up with you on the couch, careful not to wake you up. Holding you close and pressing a soft kiss to your head.

“I’m sorry I’m late baby, I’ll make it up to you tomorrow I promise.” 

Park Jimin:

You and Jimin hadn’t been dating for too long, only a couple of months. You still loved him more than anything and he loved you but the two of you were still getting used to the other and being in a relationship. Due to the fact it was a new relationship, it wasn’t uncommon for the two of you to forget minor things such as what the others favorite food was or what time you were supposed to meet up for a date. Still, you guys had never actually forgotten a date and you had figured that Jimin would remember something significant like your birthday. When you texted him asking if he could come over for a bit and he responded with ‘Can’t have to practice.’ you shouldn’t have been surprised. You were disappointed though that you didn’t even get a “happy birthday” or “I love you” from him. It wasn’t like you were asking much, you weren’t even asking to see him in person. All you had wanted was for him to acknowledge that it was your birthday and you would have been fine. You guys could always celebrate it later when he was off from practice. You couldn’t dwell too long on your thoughts though since you got a call from your friend telling you to get ready and you guys were going out. You spent the whole day running around with your friends, going shopping, getting food, and just having a great time. The fact that Jimin still hadn’t said anything was forgotten as you all posed in front of the restaurant you had dinner at for a picture, immediately posting it to your social media. Jimin was just finishing up practice and was debating whether or not he should call and see if you still wanted him to come over, feeling bad that he had to tell you no earlier. Just as he was about to call you, he was stopped when he heard Taehyung gasp and turn to him, “Why didn’t you tell us it was Y/N’s birthday? We would have done something to celebrate.” 

“It’s what?!” Jimin asked as he pulled up your social media to see the picture you had posted. His face paled and he cursed under his breath, he hadn’t even known your birthday was coming up. 

“Wait,” Jungkook said, “did you actually forget her birthday?” 

“I did!” Jimin said as he ran his hand through his hair angrily, “I am such an idiot!” How could he have forgotten your birthday? The one date he should have engraved into his mind by now. 

“What are you still doing here then?” Hoseok asked, “go make it up to her before it's too late!” Jimin didn’t need to be told twice as he grabbed his things and ran out of the practice room. All of the shops were closing so he couldn’t get you a proper present but hopefully him being there would be enough until morning. On the way to your place, he pulled out his phone and called your number, letting out a sigh of relief when you picked up. 

“Hey princess, happy birthday! I’m so sorry I didn’t call you earlier but I am on my way now and we can spend the whole night together how does that sound?”

Kim Taehyung:

Taehyung prided himself on having never forgotten an important date. Even if he couldn’t be there to celebrate with you, he would always plan something special to show you how much you meant to him. Whether that be your birthday, an anniversary, whatever the event may be, he always went above and beyond to celebrate. Perhaps that was the reason you were so disappointed when your anniversary came and there was no sign of Taehyung. He had left for work before you had woken up and you hadn’t gotten so much as a text from him saying when he would be home or even acknowledging your existence. You really wanted to believe that he didn’t forget and was still planning to surprise you after practice, or maybe he had done something and you just hadn’t seen it. Were your expectations too high? He had done something special every year so maybe he was just too busy to plan something and you were overreacting. That hope continued to disappear as the night continued and you still hadn’t heard anything from Taehyung. It was now a quarter to midnight and you were starting to get as worried as you were upset. He wasn’t reading your texts and all of your calls went to voicemail. Defeated, you decided to call Jimin and make sure that everything was okay. Anxiety filled you as you waited for the call to go through, the male finally picking up before the last ring. 

“Hello?”

“Hey Jimin,” you said with a sigh of relief, “do you know where Tae is? It’s almost midnight and he won’t answer his phone.”

Silence filled the other end before Jimin nervously replied, “He’s here with us at the dorm. Practice got out early so we decided to go out and he crashed as soon as we got back. Did you need something though? I can wake him up if you want to talk-”

“No it’s fine!” you cut him off, trying to contain your tears, “I was just wondering, guess it was stupid of me to wait for him.” Especially since he had clearly forgotten your anniversary and went out with the guys instead.

“Y/N is everything okay? You sound like you’re crying?” Jimin asked. 

You decided to be honest with him, “It’s our anniversary, I was waiting for him to come home and celebrate but I guess he forgot.” Before Jimin could do anything you quickly added, “Don’t wake him up though, I’m going to bed so it’s probably best he stay there, goodnight Jimin.”

When Taehyung woke up the next morning, he barely had time to breathe before all six of his bandmates were scolding him for being so forgetful. Shoving him out of the dorm while telling him to go spoil you and fix what he caused. Tae didn’t need to be told twice as he ran and got chocolate, flowers, and a large teddy bear before making his way to you. Knocking on the door, he suddenly felt nervous and hid behind the stuffed toy when you finally answered. 

“Tae Tae is very sorry for making you sad and promises to give you all the kisses and cuddles if you forgive him!” he said behind the teddy, looking up at you with a shy smile and hoping you’d forgive him.

Jeon Jungkook:

He had actually asked you out on your birthday, meaning that you celebrated both days at once. It made the day twice as special for the both of you, but also meant that it hurt a lot more when he ended up forgetting. Jungkook had promised the week before that he would take the day off and the two of you could spend it doing anything you wanted. He had made reservations in case you wanted to go out for dinner, but had also stocked up on snacks in case you wanted to stay in and play video games all day. You were beyond excited and looking forward to spending the day with your loving boyfriend. However, when you woke up you saw him getting ready as if he was about to leave the house. “Kookie where are you going?” you asked, sleep still evident in your voice. 

“Work,” he replied without looking at you, “Namjoon called and said they needed me for something so I have to go in.” You felt your heart drop a little when he said this, but tried to be understanding since you knew how important his career was. 

“Oh okay, when are you coming back?”

“Not too sure, I’ll probably stay there for a bit to catch up on practice as well if I can.” You shot out of bed and looked at him in shock. 

“What about your day off though? I thought we had plans today? You can’t just give those up for work!” it was hard not to raise your voice, but you were getting upset the more he blew you off. 

A sigh left Jungkook as he finally looked at you, “My career is important Y/N! I can’t just give that up for something we can reschedule, what is your problem?” Tears threatened to fall at any moment so you quickly turned and pulled the blanket over you. 

“Nothing, have fun at work I guess.” Jungkook wanted to ask what was bothering you so much but a quick glance at the time had him grabbing his things and rushing out the door, leaving you to cry silently at the fact he had forgotten both your birthday and anniversary. What he was needed for only ended up taking an hour or two before the members split off again to do their own thing. Jungkook had thought about going home since you seemed upset but figured a few more hours wouldn’t hurt and you clearly needed time to calm down. Namjoon gave the younger a confused look as he walked to the practice room, causing Jungkook to freeze. 

“What?”

“Shouldn’t you be going home to be with Y/N? I thought you took the day off to celebrate with her?”

“I did but I figured I may as well practice while I am here,” he said, still not getting the hint. 

“Why? Don’t you want to spend your anniversary with your girlfriend?” That’s when it finally hit him, pulling out his phone to check the date. He had taken the day off to celebrate with you and completely forgotten. Now it made sense why you were so upset earlier. 

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, quickly pushing past his leader and running to his car while trying to call you. After a good ten tries with no answer, he finally decided to text you. 

“Hey baby, you’re probably really mad at me right now and you deserve to be. Let me make it up to you though. Get dressed and I’ll be there in 20 minutes, we’re going out to celebrate the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

[coralstudiies]

hello everyone! I got an ask from an anon asking for tips on time management so i decided to type this out before school starts heheh…

poor time management and procrastination, unfortunately, plague just about all of us lol. people with a short attention span (like me) and who are pretty much always on their phone (me again) and who hate scheduling are the most susceptible to these.

over the years i struggled with time management(studying the night before the exam 🤙🏼) but! these are some tips that have helped me in scheduling, avoiding procrastination and improving time management.

1. Write it down

as always, we’re starting with BEFORE the actual task. write all tasks, assignments, projects and homework, test dates down somewhere (notebook preferably so that you dont lose it. it doesn’t have to be your bujo and you do not have to start a bujo for this specific reason!!!) and write the deadlines. this is subconscious pressure to do work once you get home. also, since you can see everything, it’s easier to schedule it out later

2. Use travel time

i cannot stress this enough!!!! sorry that it appears in all my tips posts but it truly is very useful. for short commutes, review the content you’ve learnt so that when you start on your homework, you’ve already got the hang of it. ie you dont struggle to understand the chapter and be put off from finishing your work because you hate it. long commutes can be used to complete work itself. i like to place some books and a file under my worksheet while i write (if i have a seat lol) or you can take this time to plan your time in greater detail

3. Actually plan your time

you dont have to fancy it up with like, brush pens and highlighters. just do something on google sheets or excel. divide the day into appropriate blocks of time.

for me, since i use a focus timer (50+10 or 100+20, rare cases i do 120 with a long break after that) i keep my days in 1hr blocks. so i’d block in about 1hour after i reach home to chill, clean up and so on, 2hrs for homework and the remaining time can be divided by hour/2hours to complete my work. you can tweak the timings to work for you but so far this one suits me pretty well.

4. NEVER RUSH YOUR HOMEWORK AND REVISION WHEN PLANNING!!!!

i repeat, never rush. because when you give only, say, one hour to review 3 chapters and you fail to do so within that time limit, you feel demoralised and hence, will not want to work more. this is a very common issue i believe. sometimes i would rush revise and when i couldnt stick to the timelines, i’ll feel so defeated that i’ll probably binge watch youtube to cure my self-pity LOL

give yourself an ample amount of time. Assign one or two hours a day as ‘delay time’ (this was my free time) so that you can catch up on anything that unfortunately, you couldn’t finish. Assign one day of the week to be the ‘delay day’ -- anything that you cant finish the week before, do it now. this means that you can still ‘save’ your plan even if it screwed up somewhere along the way. it works wonders, believe me! i used to have ‘delay hours’ after training where i would (ahem sadly) study from 2330-0030 if i needed to. while i was tired, i always got my work done.

5. Prioritise

this one needs no explanation. i usually choose which task to start on based on a combination of deadline+importance+graded/non-graded. i start early for graded assignments because they count towards my semester’s final grade and i want to hand up the best quality work i can. find a system which works for you! note: start project work and large assignments early.

you can assign simple tasks first to start the ball rolling, and proceed with harder tasks.

alternatively, if you’re at your prime focus, start with the hardest and scale down to the simple.

6. Make good use of holidays + Wake up early

ok i used to game a LOT and go to training a LOT (still happens now lol) during holidays but i wouldnt get any of my holiday work done.

do your holiday homework first. schedule your time well, and maybe stay home and resist the urge to go out for the first 5 days. finish all your work (again, schedule well) with breaks in between.

thereafter, schedule maybe 3-5 hours a day to revise. if you’re going out with friends, i’d suggest you wake up early to study because once you come home you’re usually dead tired HAHA

so how early is early?? during my o levels study break i would wake up at 0330 (yes, for real) but i slept at 2130 every night. so thats 6 hours of sleep wew but AT LEAST i was very productive. think about it this way: waking up early to study at 0330 makes you more productive than studying till 0330. you don’t have to wake up THIS early, but preferably early enough when the sky’s still dark so that you can fit in those extra hours. DO NOT sacrifice sleep. that’s why you can see i’m still sleeping my usual amount, albeit sleeping and waking earlier.

more perks of waking up early: its quiet outside, the air is cool, your mind gets into the ‘get shit done’ mode, and if you absolutely have to use your phone to search something up, your social media probably won’t be pinging. in other words, early mornings are actually a great time to study! remember to eat something though :>

7. Remove all distractions to prevent possible procrastination

YES i know this is the dreaded one. lock your phone somewhere inconvenient and put the key outside your room. or if you don’t lock it make sure your phone is far away from you as possible. please i know how deadly your phone can get so just put it away.

if you find yourself drifting away and looking at something else, remove that.

alternatively, change up your study environment. you don’t have to go to the library or something (you can if you want to). this is as simple as studying in a different part of the house. a new environment helps to ‘prick’ my mind and help me ignore distractions. i dont know if this is scientifically proven but oh well, worth a try.

8. 2-minute rule

this is something i picked up from @studyquill! it’s pretty helpful (although i was skeptical at first). Tell yourself you’re only going to work for 2 minutes, which helps you get into the workflow. chances are you’ll get so into it (ok not in an excited but rather in a determined way) that you don’t feel like stopping.

if you’ve had a long day and after 2 mins you still don’t get any momentum, just stop and take a 15 min break. that means you’re really too tired and there’s no point in forcing yourself to complete your work.

9. Use reminders

set reminders on your phone for the tasks you need to do. for example, if you’ve planned to start work at 1500, set the reminder to ring 5 minutes before so you have time to gather all your stuff and ready yourself to do work. no excuses!!

set reminders for your breaks as well! those are equally important.

10. Reward yourself

if everything you need to do is done, give yourself a pat on the back. have you been extremely productive? great, treat yourself to your favourite drink/snack. honestly i feel like many of our brains function on the ‘reward’ system. if we reward ourselves for a job well done, we’ll be more willing to complete tasks and stay on time in the future (the brain thinks there’s a reward coming)

remember to take care of your mental health as well! this is one good way to ensure you don’t end up mentally exhausted.

Apps to help with time management

1. Tide - focus timer, meditation, beautiful and calming soundtracks (my fav!)

2. Pendo - everything in one tbh, schedule, to-do list, journal etc. (my fav too!)

3. Forest - focus timer $$$ (free alternative: flora)

4. Donut Dog - focus timer

5. Todoist - minimalist to-do list

6. Minimalist - minimalist to-do list

7. Google Calender - your entire schedule

8. Todait - smart study planner

a quick search will bring out many more! note these are all available on iOS but i’m not sure about google play. you don’t need everything to be productive. i rely only on Tide, Pendo and my iPhone calender and reminders. It’s less about having many ‘tools’ and more about how you properly and wisely utilise them to boost your productivity and manage your time.

also i don't think pendo is very well-known?? so this is how its interface looks like for 'Notes':

it's pretty, simple and clean and there are several themes to choose from! i rly like it omg HAHA (not a promo)

alright that's all! hope it helped :>

[draganasimpsforjeff]

Hunting Dogs (proxies x reader) Chapter Three

"Yes, mom. Yes, I know. I'm aware..." You repeated the same lines over and over in  a different way each time, hoping that would tell your mom "I fucking get it" but nope she went on until you nearly shouted, "Fuck! I'm gonna be late, call you later, love you bye!" you said in all one breath, pressing the end call button and tossed your phone onto your bed.

In reality, you had plenty of time; roughly 40ish mins until you had to clock in. The events that were held last night replayed in your mind as you brushed your teeth. You began to question if it was real or maybe it was the stress of life getting to you. But you didn't think you could crack that easily from pressure, especially with as dramatic has being a witness to a innocent old man getting killed or three masked men chasing you to your home.

"Damn cold weather." you groaned, noticing a small trail of blood leaving your nose and onto your pajama shirt. You leaned forward, grabbing some toilet paper and try to stop the bleeding while searching through your closet for appropriate clothing for work. The only uniform you would have to wear was a name tag and apron.

Plugging your phone in for another few minutes as you had forgotten to charge it the night before. The current battery level was at 34%. You didn't know how long you were going to be at work and if you were gonna be granted a break or not so, it was best to charge it so you didn't die of boredom.

After a few minutes your bleeding nose cleared up and you threw away the red stained tissue into the trash, fixing your appearance in the mirror before grabbing your phone and tossing the cord away. You walk through the small hallway and downstairs to where you were able to leave your apartment. Opening the door, you peaked your head out of the room trying to see if there was anyone in the hallway.

You weren't paranoid, you just didn't really like your neighbors as they were really loud or there was a few that liked to get in your business, but it wasn't necessarily a bad type of nosy, it was more so that you were new and young in a bustling city with no family members to support you if needed.

You locked your door with your keys before stuffing them into your pocket, debating whether or not to keep them out somewhat so if something happened again it would be easier access, but there was also a chance of them falling out. Sighing, you just tucked them safely deeper into your pocket, walking down the long hallway.

Rain was drizzling down onto the sidewalks as you opened the iron gate and your shoes hit the damp concrete. You didn't know whether to be relieved or slightly bugged as a rainy day meant very slow business and you could catch up on other work, but slow day also meant having nothing to absolutely fucking do and- and that meant you were gonna be somewhat wet and cold as you walk to work and possibly from.

"Ah, the only reason why I give you business Mr. Baldwin- Y/N!" Mr. Saka gave you a frantic wave and you chuckle, giving him a slight wave. "Morning, Mr. Saka. If I didn't know any better I would say you have a crush on me." Mr. Saka howled in laughter. You weren't the type to say stuff like that to older men, but you and him had a different relationship where it was just strictly playful words and nothing else. He had no feelings for you and vice versa, you both enjoyed each other's personality and company. He wasn't a creep either, so there were no red flags either. Plus, you had to admit you were kind of scared of his wife, Catherine. Though, she was rarely joined with her husband the moment you see her you don't know how to form sentences or know if you're doing your job right. She was just a customer but she definitely gave off heavy vibes of taking charge and just seemed like that even if she was in a very good mood.

He open his mouth about to speak before the door made a jingle sound and a girl with auburn hair that looked messy, but like in a fashionable way? She quickly fixes her shirt, brushing off the nonexistent fuzz on her shirt and looks around before spotting you. "Oh! You must be Y/N! Mr. Baldwin said to talk to you when I first get here-" she grabs your hand, shaking it while remaining an intense stare into your eyes. She was smaller than you but a bit scared of how someone could have energy like this it in the morning. "Did he? Well, I don't think I caught your name. " you said, not recalling your boss mentioning her name the night previous. "It's Kristine, nice to meet you." she smiles brightly and you couldn't help but return a smile as well. Damn, she's contagious.

"Right, well, let's show you the basics around here and I'm sure Mr. Baldwin will give you a uniform and start training you. " You said and excuse yourself from the conversation you and Mr. Saka were having.

It took roughly twenty minutes showing where equipment were at the store, briefly explaining their use, where to clock in, areas around the restaurant where she would most likely be, introducing her to the other workers (which honestly she mostly did herself before you could open your mouth) where the schedule was located and explaining the cut off date for paydays and such as well as the best time to request a day off if needed. "I can take it from here, Y/N. " Mr. Baldwin said, smiling softly and you nod, walking away and breathing out a sigh of relief. It wasn't much of a chore, but you were afraid of leaving out information as that was your first time having someone go to you first and having to take on a role, plus she was very bubbly for like 8:15 a.m....without coffee or some stimulant.

Reaching the front of the store, you turned on the coffee makers and look over at Mr. Saka who was looking outside as it began to rain even harder. You sigh through your nose, grabbing a mug and pour coffee into it and grab three packets of sugar, handing it over to him. "On the house." you say and he smiles slightly, nodding in 'thanks' before tilting the cup to his mouth.

The morning process was pretty tedious and you never really liked it as you had quickly caught on when your boss first trained you. Not much was expected from you, not in a bad way, just mostly people came here for the food and no one really came in during the mornings unless for coffee or light breakfast. As of right now, there was only Mr. Saka.

Yep. Today was definitely going to be slow. You walk towards the booths and tables, pulling chairs down and cleaning the tables off a bit, hearing the door open again and three men came in, wiping their faces from water droplets. They didn't look familiar at all, but one of them seem to have notice you as the man with brown hair that was long enough to cover some of his view from you if he didn't flip his bangs away from his eyes nudges the guy next to him. You had to admit, he was sort of buff looking and had great sideburns. He looks up at the other man, glaring daggers until the third man with a stubble and very short brown hair took notice of you.

You didn't like the vibe you got from them, but you just shook it off as they were just new and you didn't know what to expect from them. You look down, avoiding their eyes before they went up to the bar, sitting down on the stools across from Mr. Saka. You stopped your progress with the tables and walk over to them. "Anything I can get for you this morning?" you ask politely, eyeing the coffee pots as they finally fill up to the white line.

"Two black coffees and-"

"Caramel frappe, extra whip cream-" The two older men look at the one who ordered the frappe with a annoyed look. "Yeah, sure, coming up." you say and went over, grabbing two of the smaller mugs for nonspecial coffee and poured the coffee into it, giving it to the two men before walking over and started making the caramel frappe. "You guys new here? I didn't recognize you." you started the conversation, hoping to confirm why you felt off with them but try your best to keep your cool.

One of them had cleared their throat before speaking, "Yeah, we moved in last night." You nod, adding the whip cream onto the coffee and caramel drizzle.  Mr Saka took his chance to speak, taking in the rain and then at the men, "I hope you didn't have to go far to get here considering the type of weather we're having today." he sighs and takes another sip of his coffee.

The man with sideburns answers him, "We live just around the corner." Your body grew goosebumps and you nearly let out a gasp, replaying the scene in your head from last night. Were they aware of what happened last night? But nonetheless, you had a feeling that a question like that shouldn't be the one you need to focus on.

Three men last night had chased you from around the corner,

three men came in and said they moved in last night and live around the corner!

You swallowed thickly, grabbing the cup and hand it over to the other man who took it almost instantly and started slurping the coffee. His eyes widen at the taste and he smiles. "This is pretty good." he says and you smile a bit more at the comment. "How convenient." Mr. Saka said to the side-burn man. You snorted at what you had named him and the four men look at you and you wave it off, "It's nothing, just thinking."

Mr. Saka chuckles, nodding his head and continues to talk to the other men. You went back to the tables and make sure everything looks good before hearing your name being called. "Y/N!" you groan, walking to the back room. "Yes, Mr. Baldwin?" you peek your head in, groaning as you had seen what he wanted from you. Piles upon piles of empty boxes needed to be taken out, luckily they were already broken down, but you didn't exactly want to get wet and cold from going outside.

But either, you walk over and mutter to yourself and took as many boxes you could with one hand, using the other to push open the back door immediately your hair blocks your few and is soaked. You ran to the dumpster, quickly throwing the boxes but something caught your attention.

You walk over to it, kneeling down and grab it, minding the needle at the end. It was the syringe from last night with a purple liquid dripping out, making you drop it. You hadn't touched whatever was inside, but the thought that you probably had touched the edge of the broken pieces made you think that that was bad enough. You swallow, staring down at it for a moment and noted your foot placement. You stood in the same spot a man had died last night.

Speaking of which; Where is the body? Did someone call 911 and they took care of it?  More disturbing thoughts came in roll as your way of thinking changed, Did stray dogs or cats start get a head-start? No, there was no way. Did...did the men come back after chasing you and hide his body? "Y/N I'm not paying you to just look down at the ground, C'mon. " your boss said and you sigh, walking away from the syringe and back instead. The apron had protected most of your clothes and just seems like your hair had been the victim of the rain as you got back inside. "I'll get the boxes later, Y/N you just go back to the front. " he says and you nod, not wanting to argue with him as you were still disturbed from what you found.  When you came back, the three men were gone but a small note was left.

"What's this?" you ask out loud and Mr. Saka shrugs with a smile on his face, "Maybe one of the gentlemen's number, aye? A social life wouldn't hurt." he says and you reach from the folded note, expecting what the old man said, but what you saw on it confused you until you caught on.

402

3rd up

5th left

[aal-archaeology]

Summary of my first term of my Ph.D. at Stanford during a global pandemic and an extremely controversial election year (Anthropology, yr. 1, she/they, 25y/o) with some toggl data analysis

Well this year was a doozy if I don’t say so myself. But we survived it, and its okay if that’s all you were able to do this year because that’s enough.  As an offical 18th grader, I feel like I can speak pretty well to the toxicity of the academic environment. There is always a pressure to be working all of the time, people compete with each other with how few hours of sleep they got, every conversation with fellow students is just listing off all of the different assignemnts you have to do by the end of the week. On top of all of this, this is 2020. So, I decided that this year I’m going to give myself some mental slack. 

I decided that this is the year that I’m not going to try to impress anyone. I’m just going to survive and do what I have to do to move onto the next term. I think I did a pretty good job at that for the first term, so I’ll share a bit about what I observed in myself and those in my cohort. Coming into term one having to choose classes, many of my peers were packing their schedules full of 5 Unit seminars. For those who don’t know, theoretically, a 5 Unit course is supposed to take about 5-6 hours of work outside of class hours. For Stanford Anthropology, most PhD students take as close as they can to 18 credits, and anything over that you have to pay extra for the courses. Taking more courses doesn’t really put you any further ahead in terms of completing your degree, and you’re expected to complete about 45 Units each year for the first two years of the program. 

I decided to take 2 seminars (typical), a language course, and a couple filler credits that we are given the option to use if we need 1-3 units to hit 18 total. I,  fortunately, tracked every hour spent outside of the classroom working on each course using toggl (i highly reccomend): 

In a typical week, I spent about 5-6 hours/week outside of class on my Anthro seminars, and about 6-7 hours on Japanese. Japanese was a “for-fun” class so I would usually study more of that when I didn’t feel like reading dense archaeological theory. 

Toggl was a really cool way to see where I was spending too much, or not enough, time on my classwork. If it was taking me more than 1.5 hours to get through a single article, I knew I was probably spending too much time on it and should move on to the next thing. My goal for the term was to stay true to the 5 Unit idea of 5-6 hours, and not over-work myself. 

Toggl was also useful in tracking my mental health throughout the term, as it is very obvious to see when I just was not physically capable of ingesting 400 pages of reading. For example, election week:

Election week was really hard for me, and everyone else in the world honestly. I had various family things I was dealing with, typical existential dread, plus it was week 8-ish of the term when everything was already on fire in terms of workload. For one of my seminars (purple), we had to read a book for the following week which I was able to do the sundar after election day. However, for the days leading up to and surrounding the 4th, the only thing I could mentally handle was mindless Japanese vocab studying. One of my seminars really sufferend this week, and I straight up just didnt show up to the smaller Anth 310G class because I had only read the title of the pdf. Fortunately, I emailed my professor of my Theory class and was like “yo dude I cannot” and he replied that he understood and wouldnt call on me during that day of class. 

I didn’t do a whole lot of journalling at all this term, but for this week I just wrote “pain” on most days and then YAY BIDEN at the end of it. 

Weekly Schedule

Above is what a typical week looked like, some were a lot lot lot more dense, others not so much, but this was pretty average. Not all things on the calendar are work related, some are extra lectures from visiting professors that sounded interesting, or “Free Boba & Snacks Pick Up” put on by my residence. Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday were my big work days last term, where I didn’t have a whole lot of classes so I would do most of my reading then. On Tues and Thurs I had one 3-hour seminar, and M-F I had a 50 min Japanese class. 

I woke up every day around 7am-ish, made a green tea, and sat at the computer to work, filter through emails, etc. On particularily open days I would go grocery shopping, go for bike rides/walks around campus, go buy food/boba. 

On class-heavy days, I wouldn’t leave my computer for 8-12 hours, which is extremely ridiculous but that’s the new norm in school in 2020. This kind of stunk because all of the socializing was also on the computer, so even if I wasn’t working I was doing screen related things. 

EVERY day I stopped working at 6pm. Rarely did I do readings past 6pm unless I was really slacking somewhere. From 6pm onwards I would do things like play Among Us or League of Legends with my discord friends, eat, watch movies with my partner, etc. And then most nights I would try to be in bed by 12am at the latest. 

Social Life

Despite the online nature of things this term, I was suprisingly able to meet a lot of great people on campus. We were all being tested at least once a week, which made in person gatherings with 1-4 people a little less scary, especially when half of the people lived together in one household. 

In the first week of school, some of the grad programs put on a “speed friending” zoom event, where I was able to connect with two people really well. We ended up doing a “slow-friending” zoom event afterwards and then created a FB group chat and added all of the people we had met into it. The group ended up being about 15 people, and we would message the group for park hangouts, going to get food, or going on walks on campus. We also had a huge get together in a park for Mid-Autumn Festival, where we sat in a socially distanced circle, chatted, and ate mooncakes. 

Most of my socializing came from my online friends, and amongus was a huge savior to my mental health this term wher emy group would play literally every night. I also made a really good friend off of Bumble BFF this term, who I’ve hung out with a good amount for plant shopping and board games. 

I’m very fortunate to be in a situation where I can get tested for COVID on a days notice, and very grateful that I could use that to stay a little sane.  My Biggest Accomplishment this term, was not school related. but instead I hit my 365 DAY STREAK on duolingo. This was celebrated with cake. This streak has lived through literal hell and for that I am very proud. 

Overall reflection:

This term was super rough, there were a lot of days where I just napped through it and a lot of days where I couldn’t bring myself to do any work. However, I think the courseload that I took was very manageable and I’m going to continue to go light on myself in that regard. 

I really liked the boundaries that I set for myself this term, not working after 6pm and making time to do some fun things in the midst of chaos. I never felt like I was too far behind on work, or that I wasn’t doing enough, because I had a literal reminder in front of me that I had already put x amount of hours into something with toggl. 

Sometimes in class I would feel like I didn’t know how to productively contribute to conversation, but I think thats a skill that will get better over time and not being so great at it should especially be expected in the first term of a program.

Socially I met a lot of wonderful people who also made me feel more comfortable will myself. I started using She/They pronouns which feel really comforting to me. I made a lot of little origami cranes every time I was feeling sad. I drank a lot of boba. Watched a lot of She Ra. Played a lot of games. It all ended up being okay despite the weight of everything around me. 

I’m proud of all of you for making it through this year, I know it was really difficult for a lot of people in more ways than it was for me, but we’re still here! Sometimes all you can do it make it to the next day and thats such a big accomplishment on its own.  Please feel free to reach out with any questions about time-management, toggl, phd stuff in general, archaeology, etc! Always happy to help out. :’) Thanks for reading! Lyss

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen X’s Gacha Rules for a ‘Good’ Gacha Game (Featuring Arknights)

Hey look, that Arknights essay came quicker than I thought.

Continuing on my goal of finishing up all my years-old drafts by the end of February, I think it’s pretty damn convenient that I glanced over this half-finished opinion piece just in time for the next limited banner for Arknight’s CN server to be announced. This is a topic I’ve been wanting to cover for awhile now. If there was anything that was a decent marker for Allen X’s gaming experience these past 4-ish years it was the fact that he got real into Gacha Games. I’ve dipped my toe into quite a few different Gacha phone games over the years. AFK Arena, Granblue Fantasy, Girls Frontline, and even an Ikkitousen gacha game at one point. And of course Arknights, which is my current main gacha game at the moment.  

Honestly, the only thing I didn’t play was Fate/Grand Order, and for damn good reason, but one thing at a time.

Anyway, with all that time I spent playing these games I’ve slowly given myself a ruleset and mindset for how I handle these gacha games. And I figured I’d talk about how I go about playing some of them, some of the experiences I’ve gained, and what I look into when it comes to the money portion of playing a ‘free-to-play’ game. I’ll mostly be talking about Arknights since it’s the main gacha game I’ve been playing for the past year and I don’t play two of these at once for damn good reason. 

So, with that all said, let’s start off with... 

Point 1: Methods of Ten-Pulls

For those new, the typical loop for most gacha games is to roll for rare characters and use them to complete segments of the game, whether for their looks, stats, or playstyle (but mostly looks). The characters themselves are usually drawn in an attractive and appealing way, along with having abilities and statistics that are desirable from a gameplay perspective, at least those of a higher rarity. The more you pull and buy into the gacha, the higher the chance you get for a rare character. Some games have deals where you pull can pull for free with some in-game resource like Girls Frontline, and more commonly the game encourages you to pull 10 at a time to increase your chances. 

For any good gacha game, I feel you should be able to pull for free at a fair rate. That varies a lot depending the game mechanics at play, how the game handles duplicate pulls, the rarity rate of gacha pulls, and so on, but in general if you can pull 10 times every two weeks I’ll consider the game fair, at least on that front. 

Arknights is actually a pretty good example of this. Headhunting aside, you can pull 4 times a day using in-game resources in the recruitment section of the menu, but those pulls tend to be a lot more common and not viable in the endgame like some of the ones you get in headhunting. And even without the recruitment section you can usually ten-pull about twice a month if you do the daily and weekly missions plus the weekly Annihilation missions. When I first discussed Arknights in this regard I had some confusion about how Annihilation worked and assumed it reset monthly. I apologize if I misled people with that statement. 

Anyway, by doing all the activities and missions that give you Orundum, the gacha currency, you should be able to collection about 10,000 Orundum every month, which is one guaranteed ten-pull a month. This is a little under what I would had preferred for Arknights and there’s a good chance I’m missing a free source of Orundum somewhere (and I’m rounding down to play it safe), but... it’s fair enough. 

But onto my second point.

Point 2: Premium Currency in Relation to Real-World Currency.

In short, I should have a clear idea how much it cost to pull a character if I was going to whale. Typically, in most gacha games you can purchase a premium currency in order to pull characters with real world money. The amount can vary from game to game, but there should be a clear idea of how much it cost to pull for a character. 

As a free-to-play game, most gacha games do need some kind of reliable income. Let’s be real here, this game doesn’t run on happiness and sunshine and I don’t mind giving money to products I want to see succeed and continue, but if it takes 20 bucks to ten-pull I’m going to find that ridiculous unless the gacha rate is in highly my favor.

Arknights uses Originium Prime as it’s premium currency, an item that can be transferred into 180 Orundum per unit. One Originium Prime costs one dollar. You need about 33 Originium Prime to get the 6,000 Orundum needed to pull ten times, or a little over 3 Originium Prime to pull once using 600 Orundum. This means on average it costs around $33 to pull on command.

This is absurd for a tower defense game.

Now, Originium Prime does a lot more than let you engage with the gacha, but the brass tacks of this is that for every ten-pull you do you could just as easily get 3 games off a Steam sale, maybe more. I also think I should note that Arknight’s store lets you buy 40 Originium Prime for $30 as a bundle, cutting that cost to about 75 cents per Originium Prime. There’s also an option for 66 Originium Prime for $50, but that for just a little over 75 cents per Originium Prime if my math is correct. Either way, Arknights is asking for quite the price to engage in one of its main mechanics. 

And yes, you can gain Originium Prime in game by perfect-clearing stages and clearing the challenge modes, but there’s a finite a moment of those stages and events maps are pretty scarce in Arknights, coming around once every two-ish months with about 15-20 chances for Originium Prime. As a casual player this is... fine, but for folks that rush the endgame this is... a tad much. 

Now, I’m a casual player. I don’t rush to the latest content and I don’t try and min-max a gacha game of all things. As much I mostly just buy a monthly pack that grants me about 300 Orundum for free daily for 30 days and 6 Originium Prime upon purchase. This makes the grind a little easier and it’s a cheap way to show monetary support to the development team. However, I do recognize there are people that do these min-max and rush content and my opinion of these folks aside I think those folks probably spend the most money as well, undeservedly so. But this is more a discussion of the individual person and not the gacha community as a whole.

So... moving on...

Point 3: Late Game Viability as a Free-to-Play

To me, it should never feel like you need the gacha to finish the game or get to the endgame content. For a free to play game, you should be able to at least finish the initial pre-update content without needing to try and a pull a rare character to get you through a hard segment of the game. Events and Post-Launch stuff have a bit of wiggle room, but overall I don’t think you should need a team of the rarest characters to just beat the game, at least not a meta-team. That doesn’t mean the desire to pull can’t be there, but at least for the launch-content, you should be able to finish it out as a free-to-play player. Thankfully, most games (most good games) will give you a pretty decent team to work with if you truly have bad luck with rolls. Girls Frontline is a good example of this.

Arknights... isn’t as generous as I’d like it to be.

In Arknights, by the end of Chapter 4, with limited engagement of the Gacha, you’ll have handful of 4-Stars that can be leveled to the late game with decent stats, Amiya, and an assortment of 3 stars that can technically get you through those first four chapters if used and placed wisely. But some four stars like Gavial, Courier, and Dur-nar are time-limited if I remember correctly, so as of me typing this there’s no reliable way to get some of those characters.

Meanwhile, in Girls Frontline you got most of team Anti-Rain by the mid-game pre-updates, a group of 4-star guns that had already great utility and with half of their members being in the meta of the pre-update endgame content, and are still viable to this day if I remember correctly. 

This is a major point of contention I have with Arknights. I think they’re fairer than most gacha games, but I’ll admit they don’t like giving handouts, not as many as I’d prefer anyway. Even the stingy AFK Arena gave you more stuff after maintenance updates and the like, and I hate the fact that I complimented AFK Arena on anything.

But onto my last point.

Point 4: 5-Star/SSR Rates Must be Around 4% or Higher.

This is the main reason I’ll never touch F/GO (along with other reasons). Every gacha game should, statistically, guarantee a five-star/SSR/highest-tier rarity after 30 pulls. Any more than that and you’re playing with a rigged slot machine by my standards. Like I said, the main goal of most gacha games is to get you pulling for these are fancily drawn jpegs and pngs, and while those characters technically have gameplay function and even limited animation in certain non-gameplay settings, they’re still pictures nonetheless. And if I have to dip more than 30 times to get something good then what’s the point.

Again, using Arknights, their 5-Stars are at a rather generous 8%, but their 6-Stars being at a tad crueler 2%. By all accounts, I shouldn’t be touching Arknights because of this, but due to the nature of how busted Six-Stars are and a few other details like base functions, potential levels, and some other factors in Arknights gameplay, I let this slide for the moment.

Regardless, I shouldn’t take more than 20 pulls to get a highly rated unit of some sort. The details of the specific unit can be discussed at a later date, but my point remains.

Also, any gacha game that mixes accessories and characters in the same pull pool is equally unplayable. Characters have utility and gameplay functions that can be used for multiple strategies and methods, along with out-of-game benefits ala the base mechanics of Arknights depending on the game. Accessories and items are stat buffs in game where grinding levels is already purposely tedious. Anything making that act more of a hinderance is honestly trying to rob you blind and should be avoided like the plague.

Now... one more thing to talk about. 

About Arknights Specifically

You know... between me bitching about Chapter 7, bitching about Chapter 6, bitching about 7-18, and bitching about Code of Brawl I get the feeling you all think I hate Arknights. 

Trust me, I only whine and moan because I love this game and the people who made it, I wouldn’t waste my breath or keystrokes otherwise. 

That said, I would like to see some things change about Arknights on a foundational level. I’ll try and keep this short, but no promises.

Endgame Team for Free

This is the team you have to work with for 6-7 because of story reasons and I think this team should gained for free to by the end of chapter 6, everyone in this squad should be in your rooster by the end. Even Blaze, her kit is good, but not as busted as Silverash so she wouldn’t shatter the game’s difficulty. This team overall is very well balanced for end game content and has all the essentials to get through it. E2 medics and guards, cheap vanguards and defenders for last minute placements to stall, a good sniper that can do solid burst damage, some specialists just in case you need to manipulate enemy movement and path detection. I believe you can get Rope, FEater, and Myrrh free, but Blaze and Greythroat for reliable lategame damage feels like a must. And I see nothing wrong with giving out those two for free anyway, especially for what was near endgame content at the time and how pivotal Blaze and Greythroat were to the storyline of Chapter 6. And yes I feel the same way about Rosmontis in Chapter 7 too. She’s actually a pretty niche unit and a 6-Star that’s expensive to upgrade, just having her in your pocket wouldn’t shatter the game like it would be if you gave us, again, Silverash.

Gacha Rates

I think arguing for cheaper prices with the Originium Prime is a fools errand because corporations will never listen, but I’ll at least say this. The rules of the gacha that followed the WWE Banner should be for all future banner. You should get a banner-specific currency that lets you outright buy the rare units on said banner if you have bad enough luck. You needed to pull 300 times to get W or Weedy and about 50 times to get  Elysium. I feel like both of these should be cut in half. Going by the math I previously did counting that requirement in half would mean only doing 15 ten-pulls, about 495 Originium Prime (89,100 Orundum) or a little over $370 for a limited operator.

This is still absurd for a tower defense game, but it is a far more fair than the original system.

Other Small Quality of Life Changes

A quick pull for recruitment operators so we don’t have to see the bag animation 4 times over. Girls Frontline had something similar by the time I left and it was all the better for it. 

A similar form of auto-play to Girls Frontline where you can send in one of your 4 squads to auto play a map off screen a number of times and come back later when they’re down for materials at the cost of extra sanity. 

Have a Orundum be a log-in reward. Again, something Girls Frontline did and I think coughing out 1,000 Orundum once a week wouldn’t kill anyone.

Buff Amiya goddammit. Either remove/shorten the stun on her S2 to make her have reliable (if random) magical burst damage or remove the instant retreat on her S3 so she can become a hard-hitting damage unit at the cost of a high SP cost and cooldown timer. Don’t give major drawbacks to your only non-event free 5-Star when Silverash exists. When Click and Haze has more viability than your main character you have a problem.

Anyway, that’ll be it for me. Next time... I talk about something that isn’t me bitching.