#but we would struggle to pick apart without learning about them deeper and committing these to knowledge

[rxttenfish]

one of the things that particularly pisses me off about art discussions, either in how nowadays everything has to aim for more and more realism in art styles and even live action to be seen as "real art", and in dismissing more abstract styles of artwork as not "real art" and having no inherent worth, is that they explicitly do not consider realism an art style either. to them, realism is just a given of "good" art, not chosen but rather just default. which i hate, because you CAN pick realism as an intentional style and a purposeful choice to suit a narrative, and all this results in is no one noticing or understanding why you made that choice or why that choice works better than any other possible choice to tell the story you want to tell.

[teamfreewill2pointo]

Sam’s Emotional Arc 1/3

I hated the finale immediately, but I’ve spent some time with it and talked to friends who loved it. I can see now what it was about, and I’ve come to appreciate the story they were trying to tell, even if I think it didn’t land right.

I’ve been told that my meta on this has helped other people come to terms with the finale, so I thought I’d compile it in one place from across various discord channels and twitter posts. If you are struggling with the finale, I hope it helps you.

Part of this actually started with a shit post. I was making a joke about Sam being psychic since he was scared of clowns when Dean died by one. I realized that may have been deliberate. I dug into the story more and now I’m convinced it was. Then I came across some excellent meta that fit with the themes I was finding and opened up the series even more for me.

Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.

Cas said it. Dean accepted it. Sam lived it. First, Sam’s journey. 

Clowns pop up in s15 before the barn scene. In 15.01, which was written by Dabb, Sam is injured by a clown. Castiel is able to save Sam and heal his injury. The clown keeps coming after Sam, with Sam having fight scenes with the clown, while others attack the other ghosts. The clown is kicking the shit out of Sam again, and Castiel saves him once more. Sam is unable to fight off the clown on his own both times.

They run until they are able to escape outside a magical barrier. Sam turns to the clown and says, “shut up”. 

This is literally Sam running from his fears. On top of that, this isn’t just any clown, but the ghost of John Wayne Gacy, from an episode also written by Dabb.

Dean: A serial killer clown. I mean, this is, like, the best/worst thing that’s ever happened to you, you know, ‘cause you love serial killers, but – but you hate clowns.

Sam gets nervous and struggles with the lighter before he’s able to get rid of the clown, for now.

I believe this is a metaphor for hunting in general: it’s both the best of Sam’s life and also the worst. The clowns symbolize his relationship with Dean.

Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie was co-written by Dabb (see the pattern?). Sam’s fear of clowns was known since season 2. In season 7, Dabb explored where this fear came from.

On the surface, Sam’s fear is just because he found them creepy, but the episode explains that they actually come from Sam’s fear of being left behind by Dean.

This episode comes directly after an episode where Sam worried that Dean would get himself killed

Sam: Look... Dean, the thing is, tonight... It almost got you killed. Now, I don't care how you deal. I really, really don't. But just don't – don't get killed. Dean: I'll do what I can. Sam: Well, what's that supposed to mean? Dean: It means I'll do what I can. All right? You can shut up about it.

Sam is dealing with Hallucifer at this moment, but Hallucifer doesn’t really scare him. Losing Dean does.

Sam has a conversation with an employee about greatest fears.

Recognize the actress? She came back for s15 in 15.06. I don’t believe this was a coincidence. 15.06 featured Castiel helping a parent find their lost child in a season that features Castiel worried about losing Jack. Through his experience with her, Castiel confronts his fears and doubts and then returns to join in the fight against God. [I’ll touch on Castiel’s journey more in his chapter]

Sam’s greatest fear is losing Dean. There’s a lot in the series about how Sam felt lonely and abandoned for much of his childhood. A whole episode, Just My Imagination, centers around this. Sam hated when Dean went off on hunts without him.

source In The Chitters, Sam tells Dean how his fear of losing his family paralyzed him as child. It’s a story where an older brother dies and the younger brother never recovers from it until he’s able to lay him to rest (sound familiar???)

Sam: You know, whenever you and Dad used to leave me to go hunting, and I-and I wouldn’t hear from y’all for a while, I, um, I was always sure that some vamp or rugaru, or take your pick, I always figured one of them finally got ya. I tried to think what to do, you know, the next step to take. I was just lost. Dean: We came back, though, every time.

You might naturally think, “Wait a minute! Sam left Dean multiple times!” Honestly, this was something I had a huge issue with when watching through the show the first time. I didn’t understand Sam and hated him leaving Dean in s8. I was completely on Dean’s side at first. But, on multiple rewatches and talking to others, I’ve realized that when Sam left Dean, he was running from his fear. In this TV Guide interview, Jared perfectly sums up why Sam left in season 1; he couldn’t stand to see his family die. Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon along with a comic that explains why Sam left in detail. While the comic isn’t official canon, it shows Dabb’s thought process. In it, Sam sees his family as running towards a horrible end and can’t handle dealing with that.

Dean: So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it? Sam: No. Not normal. Safe.

There are many more points in the series where we learn about Sam’s fear of Dean dying. This would be 3948573945 pages long if I wrote them all out, so I’m going to focus on the key moments that loop back to this ending, but there’s so much more there.

If you are struggling with this and need more, please let me know and I can do a deeper dive into that subject. We first see Sam’s inability to let Dean go in season 1 when Sam refuses to let Dean die in Faith.

Dean: You're not gonna let me die in peace, are you? Sam: I'm not gonna let you die, period. We're going.

Sam’s whole arc in s3 is him being unable to handle Dean dying. He wants to save Dean, but Dean won’t let himself be saved. This was what Gabriel was trying to teach him in Mystery Spot.

Trickster: This obsession to save Dean? The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood and pain. Dean's your weakness. And the bad guys know it, too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam. Sometimes you just gotta let people go.

This is how Ruby gets under Sam’s skin and what gets him to start working with her. Everything Sam did was to save Dean. In s4, Sam’s arc is about him sacrificing himself in order to save Dean. He’s gutted from being unable to save Dean. In 4.12, Sam decides to drink demon blood in order to save Dean

Dean: [says that they will die early] Sam: Maybe we'll be different, Dean. Dean: What kind of Kool-Aid you drinking, man? Sammy, it ends bloody or sad. That's just the life. Sam: What if we could win?Dean: "Win"?Sam: If there was a way we could just...put an end to all of it.

When Sam breaks out of the panic room, he’s suicidal. He’s determined to save Dean with his life as the cost he’s willing to pay. He didn’t think he would survive killing Lilith. He was committing suicide in that moment. The reason why Sam is so willing to sacrifice himself in s5 is because he has low self esteem. He blames himself for everything that goes wrong. In Sam, Interrupted 5.11, also by Dabb, Sam has a breakdown under the weight of his guilt. He hates himself and he feels his rage is out of control. In season 6, we see soulless Sam and, unlike souled Sam, he has no rage. Yes, he’ll kill when necessary, but he’s not angry. It was Sam’s fear driving his rage. He felt out of control of his life and let it lead him down a dark path. In season 7, he sees Dean heading down a dark path and he feels helpless to stop it. He worries about dragging Dean down and tells Dean to let him go. But, at the same time, he’s developing coping techniques. He’s starting to face his fears. 

And then Dean disappears and Sam completely falls apart. Sam didn’t have a healthy relationship with Amelia. They were two broken people clinging to each other. Sam and Dean struggle to reconnect after their time apart. There’s a lot of text addressing the horror of a partner dying and people trying to escape from it.

Mrs Holmes: He could see the end of my days were at hand, and... He had lived centuries all alone, but I don't think he could bear the thought of life without me. That's why he drove off that bridge. You must think I'm a monster.

In Hunteri Heroica written by GUESS WHO!?!? Sam finally acknowledges that he was living in a dream world with Amelia. He was running from his past. We see a flash back with Sam pressing on his scar, which he did to help himself distinguish fantasy from reality.

The episode is about a man refusing to engage in reality and harming those around him. Sam has a big confrontation with him

Sam: Look, it can be nice living in a dream world. It can be great. I know that. And you can hide, and you can pretend... all the crap out there doesn't exist, but you can't do it forever because... eventually, whatever it is you're running from – it'll find you. [CASTIEL appears to be taking Sam’s words to heart.] It'll come along, and it'll punch you in the gut. And then... then you got to wake up, because if you don't, then trying to keep that dream alive will destroy you! It'll destroy everything!

Likewise, when Sam was with Jessica, he wasn’t honest about himself. He was hiding from his family and his past. Running to avoid pain. Sam is avoidant in general. Not just in his relationship with Dean. When he talks with Rowena in 13.12 Various & Sundry Villains about his fears of Lucifer, he admits that he could talk about it with Dean, but he can’t bring himself to.

Sam: I’ve seen it too. What he really looks like behind – behind whatever vessel. It… Yeah, still keeps me up at night. Rowena: How do you deal with it? Sam: I guess I don’t deal with it. Not really. I mean, I pushed it down and, um, the world kept almost ending, so I keep pushing it down, and I don’t know. [stammering] I really don’t talk about it, not even with Dean. I mean, I could. You know, he’d listen, but… That’s not something I really know how to share.

In 15.20, Sam’s past is front and center. Literally. I know a lot of people found the Winchester family portrait odd and upsetting, but it symbolizes something I’ll get to in a bit. Instead of trying to avoid his grief, Sam has moments where he lets it wash over him. He goes and sits in the car. He’s no longer avoidant. He’s no longer running away. He’s letting his grief move through him. He’s literally sitting with it.

Soulless Puppy pointed out that the characters emotional arcs is similar to DBT. Please look through their awesome meta here.

Personally, I see them as similar to the therapy I do called ACT. Both are forms of therapy where instead of fighting against them, you accept painful emotions and allow yourself to feel them. If you don’t do that work, then you can’t stop feeling them and your fears/ghosts will always haunt you.  In Swan Song, Chuck tells us that “Dean didn't want Cas to save him. Every part of him, every fiber he's got, wants to die, or find a way to bring Sam back. But he isn't gonna do either. Because he made a promise.”  In 15.20, Sam initially didn’t want to let Dean go. He’s been refusing to do this since season 1. When he’s separated from Dean he lives a fake life or destroys himself/the world trying to get Dean back. There’s a moment in 15.20 where Sam looks at Dean’s guns. He wants to commit suicide, but he makes the choice to live. For the time in Sam’s life, he let Dean go and lived with his pain. He no longer ran from it. After Swan Song, Dean was unable to let Sam go. He wanted him back. After Carry On, Sam is able to do what Dean couldn’t do. He lives a life outside of Dean. What’s more, Sam has reconciled himself with his past and his family. It’s clumsy and I wish it were better shown, but having the family portrait and their parents in heaven isn’t meant to excuse the way Sam and Dean were raised. In order to move past the trauma of his relationship with his parents, Sam fully integrates them into his life. In Lebanon, Sam was able to confront and forgive his father. In doing so, he can also forgive himself. Mary asks for forgiveness too, and he grants it to her. He doesn’t forget what happened, but he’s able to move forward and leave the intergenerational cycle of violence. He’s able to raise his son, Dean, the way his brother should have been raised.

Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.

Cas said it. Dean accepted it. Sam lived it.

I can see why people see Sam’s life after Dean as unhappy. I hated it so much because I saw it as horrible and sad the first time through. I had to sit with myself and my emotions first. I think it’s because we’ve been told by society that we have to get rid of our grief in order to be happy. The finale was showing us that it’s possible to do the opposite. [Personally I think it would’ve been better had they showed more overtly happy memories, but many of my friends saw this straight away] When I began therapy, one of the first things I learned was that there aren’t “negative” emotions. When working with our kids, we call them Big emotions. In DBT/ACT, all emotions are treated as normal and natural. Grief, anger, sadness, etc, these are all normal parts of the human existence. We don’t need to run from them in order to have happiness. We can live with them. As interstitial said in our chats, “you can't change the past, you can only change your relationship to it. To accept that your past contained both love and heartache, to miss it, but also know you can do better; that's actual recovery, as good as it gets.” As Soulless-Puppy explained to me, Sam lived in duality. Dean was dead, but Sam lived. Sam was happy, but he grieved. Dean was with him in the watch and the car and his son, but Dean also waited for him in heaven. I hated the finale the first time I saw it, then next watched it with my boyfriend who loved it. As we were watching together and discussing it, I realized that Dean’s death scene wasn’t just about him, but about the show itself. 

Dean promising Sam that he will be with Sam in Sam’s heart is also the show promising us that they will never leave it. That’s why Alex kept posting “The end has no end.” Just as Sam carried Dean with him in his heart, we will carry the show with us. I hope this helps. It’s a terrible thing to feel upset about an ending and thinking of the show this way, recognizing these patterns, is bringing me peace. I still have issues with how it was written, but now that I see what they were doing, I wish all the more that they had the chance to do it right. Please share your thoughts and experiences. I love hearing different opinions. Next up, Dean. Then Castiel.

[justasparkwritings]

Peace: Coming of Age

Pairing: Jungkook X Reader

Genre: Angst / Slice of Life

Rating: PG15

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: Swearing 

Summary: Jungkook takes his first steps in creating a life for himself. 

Listening: peace by Taylor Swift 

Peace Master List

         Jungkook paced the room, the grey walls agitating him as he searched for answers. He’d filmed the video five times. Three with a hoodie on, two without. He kept refilming to perfect his vocals, or at least that’s what he told himself. Perfectionism was easier to grapple with than baring his soul to millions. Was he ready to show the world what he’d done?

           Jungkook had spent the last third of his life in the spotlight. The articles, photos, videos, all captured him growing up. He went from a fresh-faced tween barely through puberty to a full-fledged man. He had grown in front of their eyes, finished high school, and debuted with a band that had captured the world’s attention. He had been taken under the wings of Jin and his five other hyungs. They had watched him struggle, both academically and professionally. They had guided him through the drastic changes in his life, from leaving his family to relentless dance practices and endless vocal lessons. They guided him when he was falling apart, and through their love he had grown into the man he could happily say he is. He’d taken little parts of their personalities and combined them into his own. It was hard to tell when JK ended and the six hyungs began.

            Jungkook hadn’t told the rest of BTS of his plans, of what he wanted to do in order to feel that he had completed his metamorphosis. He was cagey, dodging glances and prying questions. He was private, but there wasn’t anything he couldn’t tell them. Except this. It wasn’t until they had snuck up on him one day and caught him reading an article about the significance of tattoos in western culture that they grew concerned that he would taint his flawless skin.

           Hoseok sat him down first, tone damning, asking him what he intended to do, and why would he choose to ruin his body? Through the years Jungkook had become accustomed to Ho-Seok’s aversion to anything that would harm or change his physical form. Dying his hair was the closest thing he would do, and even that felt like he was desecrating a sacred temple. He didn’t pierce his ears, he certainly would not get tattoos, and though he had an unusually sunny disposition, body modification of any kind made Ho-Seok’s skin crawl. He respected his members decisions to pierce their ears, two, three, five times, but him? No thank you. He had thought that tattoos were always going to be off limits, even when years prior Jungkook had expressed his desire, on camera, to stain his skin. No member had committed to something so permanent. Piercings close, hair can be dyed back, but this?

          Hoseok couldn’t tell if he was mad at JK for recklessly ruining himself, or worried that his decision would endanger the rest of them.

           So, he pled his case, and a day or so later, Namjoon tried to talk any sense into JK. He knew it was no use, but as leader he was mandated to speak to him.

           “Why do you want to do this?” Namjoon asked. They were seated outside, beers in both their hands.

           “Do you feel like yourself, 100% of the time?” Jungkook countered, glancing at the fading sun.

           “90% of the time, yes, I do.” Namjoon responded.

           “And you feel comfortable in who you are?”

           “Why are you interrogating me?” Namjoon stared at his golden maknae. He had raised this boy, crafted and melded him into the man sitting in front of him. Had it been too much?  

           “You write most of our lyrics, you express your emotions.”

           “Yes, and I understand how you’re feeling,”

           “Do you? I am me trying to navigate this life that I somehow signed up for when I was a child. I have had to conform every day of my life. I have struggled to find my identity, to showcase who I am, without ever having the time to grow or discover myself. Now I’m a man, who doesn’t know any life outside of constant cameras and the six of you guarding me. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours, but what if there’s nothing of me? What if they’ve taken it all?”  

           “You signed up for this Jungkook,” Namjoon felt defensive. His moves, silent and unseen, had pushed Jungkook to this position. His invisible strings had carved him from a child to an adult, his guidance had constructed the golden boy. Namjoon had nurtured Jungkook to be strong in his convictions and fierce at heart. He encouraged his hobbies, to obsession at times, and pared space for him to study and learn, encouraging him to speak English. Didn’t Jungkook know himself better than any members did?

           “The devils in the details, Namjoon,” He countered.

           “So, what, to feel like yourself you need to permanently decorate your skin?” Namjoon felt the anger rising. Big Hit would surely blame him for this.  

           “It’s a part of me, a part of me that I am trying to hold onto. I don’t want to hide part of myself because I’m being told I’m supposed to. I want to be me, I want to make choices for myself,” Jungkook’s passion was evident in the grip he had placed on his glass.

           “And what if that part of you changes?” Namjoon wanted to know.

           “Are you still the same person you were when we started?” Jungkook asked.

           “No, I’ve grown, and I’ve learned a lot,” Namjoon sat back and thought about the challenges he’d overcome in the time BTS had been together.

           “Then give me the space to do the same, hyung, please,” Jungkook pleaded.

           Namjoon nodded, recognizing that molding Jungkook into the perfect band member had done more damage than he realized, the cracks were beginning to form. When Jungkook had joined, RM and Seokjin had been placed as his guardians. They were to protect him, keep him focused, help him grow. He was a child, a baby, compared to the older two. His insecurity and shyness had tried to swallow him, and would’ve if not for the doting care the members had given him. Namjoon had, in a word, overstepped. His grip on Jungkook’s life was impenetrable to the point that sometimes it was hard to know where Namjoon ended and Jungkook began. He wasn’t raising Jungkook, he was manipulating him. The devil had always been in the details, at the hands of Big Hit, that devil was Namjoon.

           “Jin’s supposed to try and knock some sense into you…” Namjoon said, standing.

           “What’s he going to say that you and Hosoek-hyung haven’t?” Jungkook asked.

           “I don’t know, but listen to him,” Namjoon reminded the maknae to respect his elder, something he had thrown away when speaking with Joon.

           Namjoon left, leaving JK to sit in his thoughts. He didn’t know when Jin was planning on showing up, and he wasn’t sure he could handle another confrontation and berating. Jungkook was lost in his thoughts, his glass slowly emptying when Jin strode in, keys in hand.

           “Let’s go eat,” He said. Jungkook nodded, following him.

           As they sat at their usual table, drinks on their way, Jin wasted no time diving in.

           “They’ve all been hard on you?” Seokjin asked.

           “Yes,” Jungkook responded.

           “Well, what do you want me to say?” Jin questioned.

           “That you support me,” Jungkook’s gaze never strayed from the empty spot in front of his glass.

           “What does management say?” Jin asked, ignoring Jungkook’s suggestion.

           “That they can’t technically stop me, but I’ll always be covered. No t-shirts on tour, music videos, anything. If everyone’s in a tank top, I have to be in a tank top with a jacket or long sleeves.”

           “Even in summer?” Jin questioned.

           “Even then,” Jungkook answered.

           “And you’re okay with that?” Jin wondered.

           “Yes,”

           “Alright, have you thought about ARMY?”

           “I can’t imagine they’d be mad at me,” Jungkook said, glancing at Jin. Jin was calm. Jin was always calm, particularly when it came to heady conversations about the direction Jungkook was taking.

           “Okay, if you’re sure,” Jin left it at that. He quickly moved to ask Jungkook what he wanted to order, their usual banter resuming.

           Jungkook sat in the tattoo artists main chair, arm exposed, hand at the ready. The artist asked if he was without a doubt positive he wanted ink decorating his dominate appendage, and he nodded, telling them that each item stood for something. As the artist began, he recounted why.

           “The inverted V is for Taehyung, that’s his nickname. He’s funny, and charismatic. The most indecisive person. He is one of the best dancers, and just makes me laugh all the time. He comforts me when I’m upset and is always making sure that I’m okay. RM is for Namjoon, he’s the eternal leader. He’s wise and thinks before he acts. But he’s clumsy. He always pushes me to think deeper, to find the emotion that a song needs, or to remind me to slow down when I’m pushing myself too hard. RM’s our guiding light. M is also for Yoongi, who understands the parts of me that I sometimes think no one does, but he also doesn’t understand the fundamental parts of me… The Y completes ARMY, I am nothing without them.”

           The phrase had become common place, BTS is nothing without ARMY. They eat, sleep and breathe ARMY. Who are they if ARMY doesn’t stand beside them, encouraging them on?

           ARMY was the reason for his success, but they were also the thorn on his rose. Army watched every move he made, every note he hit, every smile cracked. They’d glommed onto him immediately. Isn’t Jungkook so cute? Did you see how Jungkook dances to Boy in Luv? Have you seen his smile? They cheered when he succeeded and picked him up when he fell. As much as the members had raised JK, he recognized that ARMY was the reason he had to be raised by his hyungs in the first place.

           Being raised by people other than your parents is an odd experience. Leaving home and forging a new path without so much as a safety net below would be scary to anyone, but particularly for a child who hadn’t experienced much outside of his home. Jungkook had talent, anyone could see it. He had potential, because he had potential, Big Hit had taken a chance on him. They had molded him and groomed him into a superstar. So much so that by age 23, a song dedicated to him negotiating his stardom with quality of life would become a sexual anthem. Big Hit’s ownership of his existence had sent him into many a tailspin. He compensated the only way he could: working himself to extreme exhaustion and spending nights drunk in the dorms. The other members addressed it delicately, but when his back was turned, they spent countless hours discussing the “problem with Jungkook”.

          Perfectionism is often a sign of OCD, a way to control what feels uncontrollable, a way to manage anxiety and stress through precise and repetitive habits. If practice was four hours, Jungkook danced eight. If it took Jimin ten takes to nail an eight count of vocals, Jungkook took twice that. He practiced diligently, sweating through layers and layers, never satisfied until his body gave out. He worked out seven days a week, often hours long sessions not including time with trainers. He was obsessed with his physic and how he could make it stronger. BTS often worried and tried delicately to address their concerns. Jungkook wouldn’t listen, until he blew his heel out an needed stitches. What was meant to be a wake up call ended up giving him more focus and increasing his desire to be perfect.

          “Perfect for who?” Suga had asked during an intense discussion of Jungkook’s workaholic tendencies. Jungkook stared at him, Suga, who hates working out, hates other people, and would be content to sleep for days on end, was asking him a stupid question. He turned to Ho-Seok, who nodded.

          “Perfect for ARMY, perfect for him,” Ho-Seok had responded.

          Hoseok and Jimin both nodded. The three of them formed the dance line, the strongest dancers with Taehyung closing in at #4. Together they banked hundreds of practice hours, innumerable tapings and work ups by the medical team, and were responsible for BTS’ dance routines coming together. They bore the brunt of the work, and their bodies, though young, managed the wear and tear. Ho-Seok worked hard, but Jungkook worked harder.

          Namjoon listened to every conversation about Jungkook with ears peeled, writing down any information he needed. If there was a problem with Jungkook, it would soon fall to Namjoon to correct, though his perfectionism had been a drug Namjoon had heavily pushed.

          “What’s the J for?” The tattoo artist asked, pulling Jungkook out of his thoughts.

          “That’s for Jin, Jimin and J-Hope,” He responded, looking down at the work being done on his body.

          “They’re your elders?”

          “Yes, Namjoon and Seokjin raised me. They’re all my brothers, but Namjoon and Jin helped me study, they encouraged me, bought me food and made sure I was spending enough time on studies and training. Jin drove me everywhere before I could drive myself, and he spent years teaching me how to be a good person, and a good man. Jimin’s a terror, and Ho-Seok is the only one who understands my drive.”

          “The plus signs tie you together?”

          “Yes,”

          “The heart? And the symbol?”

          “ARMY will know.”

           Jungkook had waited a few days before displaying his ink to BTS. They were skeptical and unsure how they liked what he had done to his right arm. They were honored he had chosen his hand to honor them and concerned what it meant for him going forward.

           Jungkook wasn’t ready for the world to see, and neither was management. He spent the first few months with band aids on his hand until his ink was healed, then layers and layers of make-up.

           As he paced in the gray room, a cover of Never Not waiting to upload, he decided to honor himself, to honor his heart, and post the video where his tattoos were exposed. Management had said he could share them when he was ready, and it would be at that point that they stopped covering them in make-up, except in specific situations where his ink would be a detriment to the group. He took a deep breath, like his ink, this choice was permanent.

           Once the dust of his ink settled, through a few poor choices and copious empty liquor bottles, he found himself out in Echo Park. A stranger had commented on his ink, and Jungkook’s mind wound back to the conversation he’d had with the tattoo artist about them. His tattoos meant something to him, and their meaning intensified every day.

          This is why, on a chance encounter in a low-light restaurant in Echo Park, Jungkook had been so taken with yours. The delicate ink on the back of your arm, the art creeping up your calf sent a shock through him. Who were you, and what did these symbols mean? He cautiously went up to you at the bar, nodding at the bartender who asked for his ID immediately. He flushed. Should he abandon ship?

           You turned and smiled. It was blinding.

           “Hi, I noticed your tattoos,” He said, thankful he had spent the past few years working on his English.

           “Oh,” You were unsure how to respond.

           “They’re really beautiful,” He said, his cheeks flushing again. Having spent his youth in Big Hits control, flirting wasn’t a game he knew how to play.

           “Thank you,” You responded, your cheeks turning rosy.

           “Can I buy you a drink?” He asked, right eyebrow raising. You smiled at the quirk.

           “Yes, and you can tell me about yours,” You said, already making sense of the ink in front of you, and the man it belonged to.

           “I’m Jungkook,” He said, extending the same hand you had been admiring.

           “I’m Y/N,” You said, extending yours to shake.

           Jungkook swore the earth began to quake at that very second, your skin meeting his for the first time, your smiles blinding the patrons of the restaurant. Everything melted away as the heat from your bodies glued you together. It was in the moment after, when you had unwillingly returned his hand to him that he realized his coming of age had come and gone, he had transitioned into a man, ink and all.

Next: Wasting Your Honor

[synecdochereads]

Six of Crows – review

Someone said, “heist movie but it’s a fantasy setting,” and I’ve been on the lookout for this book ever since. I finally found it in the clearance section of Half Price Books, and then—couldn’t read it. I got through the first chapter, I started the second, I put it down, and I didn’t pick it up again. Not sure why, but frankly this has less to do with the book than with me. I’ve been erratic about reading for, oh, years now – either I can’t focus for more than a few pages at a time, or I spend every waking moment with my nose in the book. There’s no middle ground. There’s no telling which way the cards will fall.

All of this to say, it’s not the book’s fault that it took me so long. But then the show came out, I watched it gleefully with my mom, and somehow having seen the characters onscreen made it easier to slip into their heads on the page. Two days later, I’ve inhaled the entire book as fast as I could get away with, and I’m in love.

This isn’t a regular book review – I’m terrible at ranking things, and the five-star system gives me anxiety. It’s mostly just some Thoughts™ neatly sorted for clarity, and hopefully reading over them will help you decide if you should pick this book up and fall in love with it like I did.

Mind the cut!

Characters

I am in love with them.

It probably helps that I’ve been looking forward to this book for ages, I’ve seen lots of gifsets and the occasional meta post, and of course I did watch three out of six crows swan about being fantastic for an entire season of a show that’s not even about them. But it’s not just that. There are a lot of technical literary ways you can analyze characters – arcs, themes, etc – but quite apart from all of that there’s just…are they compelling? They don’t have to be, for a book to be good, but it sure does help. And these six characters are so compelling.

(Also really likeable, which is even less necessary for a good story but which I do personally value. And I like these kids, I really do. Even Kaz “I commit atrocities without shame or remorse” Brekker. Wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, or even a well-lit avenue! But I care about him and want him to succeed.)

It’s hard to devote equal time to six character arcs while also running a fantasy heist. Bardugo doesn’t try, but even the crows who get less screen time have complexity and depth. They’re all well fleshed-out, with full and distinct personalities and all that – on a technical level, these are really well-crafted characters. Top notch. Plus everyone struggles with different traumas and goals, and handles them in different ways, which gives us wonderfully varied arcs as they each move toward a deeper understanding of themselves, for better or for worse.

It also gives us really varied dynamics – some of them hate each other, some of them love each other, some manage to do both at once, some are just along for the ride. It’s as they pull at each other’s ragged edges that the story forms, in their different desperate needs and in what they can and cannot be for each other.

The show smoothed over a lot of the sharp edges and grey morality, most notably in Kaz. Kaz Brekker is a bad person. He does bad things for selfish reasons. His arc isn’t Learning To Be Good, it’s an ongoing question of whether he might, for the sake of the first person he has (quite accidentally) let himself love, consider maybe perhaps being slightly less of an amoral monster. I’ve seen this book described as “fantasy Leverage episode” but it’s really more Ocean’s Eleven, if Danny Ocean was a vicious bastard and everyone was seventeen.

And that’s great. I love that so much! Especially because the other crows run the gamut from shining idealism to casual self-interest (with a fun detour into “shining idealism but the ideal is violent bigotry”), so we really do get a morally complex story, without any easy black-and-white answers. One of the most kind-hearted people in the whole story has committed multiple murders and dreams of becoming a pirate. Kaz Brekker may do bad things for selfish reasons, but a lot of those selfish reasons boil down to “survive.” It’s complicated! It’s compelling!

Plot

It’s a fantasy heist, what more do you need?

Plots and counter-plots, double-crosses and last-minute improvisations. Magic, though it’s used as just another tool, as impressive and as prosaic as the gunslinger’s pistols. Dramatic climbs, elaborate disguises, cunning grifts, and some good old-fashioned sleight-of-hand. Six wildly competent teenagers, one impossible job, and four million fantasy dollars waiting for them if they can pull it off.

Well, okay, that’s just half of the story – maybe two thirds. The rest is flashbacks, showing us how these characters met and how they came to be the people they are; and stolen moments in between the action beats, where we see how they’re changing each other. It’s woven in really deftly. Our knowledge of the characters expands in time with the forward momentum of the plot, so that both parts of the story – the sorrows of the past and the edge-of-your-seat excitement of the present – get their hooks in you in tandem.

Worldbuilding

There are two settings in this book: Ketterdam, where we begin, and the Ice Court, where the bulk of the action takes place. The wider world outside these two cities is sketched in, alluded to in offhand comments and minor details of backstory. In theory, reading the Grisha trilogy would fill in those sketches, but I suspect it doesn’t matter. This is a heist story, after all: one entrance, one exit, and all the traps laid firmly between the two.

You know that thing authors do sometimes where they use the aesthetic of a real time and place, in the names and the architecture and so on, as a sort of worldbuilding shorthand? I’m a big fan of that. Ketterdam is clearly based on post-medieval Holland, perhaps in the late 17th century or so – a city of canals and commerce, with a ruling merchant class and a thriving criminal underworld, and a stock exchange at the heart of the wealthier district. The similarities feel like they’re just skin-deep – I don’t know that much about post-medieval Holland, but I’m pretty sure Bardugo has her own plans for the political situation in the wider world, which I assume is relevant in the Grisha trilogy. Here it’s not, and we have just enough detail to get a quick feel for the city, with extra importance granted to the politics of the various criminal gangs Kaz needs to worry about.

If I’m honest, I would have enjoyed a bit more detail in the worldbuilding. Ketterdam is vibrant and crowded, but it feels shallow; the only information we get is what relates directly to the characters’ actions. We’re told that it’s a big and complex city, but I don’t really have any idea what goes on there beyond, vaguely, “trade, gambling, and tourism.” But that’s probably just me. I’m unreasonably invested in worldbuilding. And anyway, we do get everything we need to understand the actual story.

The same is true in the Ice Court, the frozen capital of the Fjerdans. It’s a beautiful place, white and gleaming, and the parts that we see are incredibly vivid. We get scant glimpses of history and religion, the faintest suggestion of politics, and exactly enough of the city layout to understand the heist. We do, however, get a much deeper understanding of Fjerdan culture than we did of Ketterdam’s, because one of the crows defines himself utterly by the Fjerdan worldview, and his arc is largely about the difficulty of losing his place in that world and not knowing if or how he can ever get it back.

So yeah, we really do get everything we need to appreciate the story and the characters. I would have liked more, because I like worldbuilding, but what we do get is varied and satisfying.

Themes

I can’t really go in depth here without spoilers, so this’ll be a pretty vague section. I haven’t gone full lit-major on this book and I don’t especially plan to, but at a glance, the central theme is the tension between, in short, love and vengeance.

In long, several of the crows have the choice to embrace love as a force for healing and joy, or instead hold onto the (often violent) goals that have driven and defined them for so long. If they embrace love, it’ll mean letting go of the driving purpose that has kept them alive, and risking their whole identity (and possibly their lives) on a new purpose. It’s scary! It might ruin them! And it’s really not as easy as “love conquers all.”

(Big advantage of an ensemble cast: you can explore the same theme in different ways, with different outcomes, without having to settle for a single “answer” to the question posed by the theme. I really love it when that happens, honestly.)

It’s also not just romantic love! I mean it mostly is, but one of the crows has an arc that’s really about self-love, about learning to trust and prioritize not just your survival, but your happiness, your goals, and your ideals. About putting yourself first, not in a selfish way, but in a healthy, loving way. It’s really lovely, and although it has no bearing on the plot (it’s an internal moment of revelation), it’s one of my favorite things about the whole story.

[marveloussupernerd]

mirrorball - Saeran Choi

I did SO MUCH research because I didn’t want to represent Saeran or his DID incorrectly, but I’m still learning! I haven’t done Another Story yet so this is likely not accurate to the plot. Also my sister is a huge Saeran fan, so if you’re here Hi :) I’ve been thinking of this one since I started this one shot series so I’m v excited to write it

Summary: you plan an over-the-top movie night to celebrate you and Saeran’s six month anniversary. However, the movie he picks out ends out having some dark scenes. You get to comfort him though

You had planned a very exciting night in for Saeran and you, so long as he was feeling up to it. He had seemed to be excited enough over text, so you were feeling good about it. He was still struggling to adjust; sometimes he had dark thoughts... but you tried your best to help him through it. Since distancing from Mint Eye, though, and moving in with his brother, he seemed to be feeling a lot better lately.

You wanted to plan the best date night ever. You had been dating for six months already and wanted to celebrate it in an extra special way. You had strung fairy lights all around your living room, making a fort out of as many pillows and blankets you could find. You made chocolate chip cookies, fresh (they had just gotten out of the oven fifteen minutes ago) so that your apartment smelled cozy (and so you could eat them; Saeran really liked them).

There was a knock on your door. He was ten minutes early; he was always early. You opened the door for him, a bright smile on your face. He was wearing an oversized sweater and holding a giant hand-tired bouquet of flowers. “Happy six months,” he greeted, walking in and placing a kiss on your cheek, handing you the flowers.

You couldn’t wipe the stupid smile off your face, leaning in to smell them, enjoying the wonderful aroma they gave off. You turned to the cupboards to grab a vase to stick them in, filling it with water, your back still turned to Saeran.

“These are absolutely beautiful. Thank you!” You gently put the flowers in the vase then turned back to face him. He took the opportunity to pull you into a hug. You wrapped your arms around him tighter in return.

“Smells like cookies,” he murmured in your ear.

“Mhm, I made your favorite,” you smiled proudly. You liked doing these sorts of things for him. “What do you want me to call you tonight?” You asked gently, leaving kisses across his cheek.

After particularly bad nightmares he liked to be called Ray. He didn’t want to acknowledge that other part of him, the dark and twisted part of his mind. More often than not, though, he wished to be called Saeran. You had played a large role in helping him accept himself, and he no longer felt such a distinct shift between his personalities. He didn’t resent the dark part of him as much as he had in the past.

“Hmmm...” he murmured. He was most certainly feeling playful today. No nightmares last night; he was okay with being called Saeran. “I’d like if you called me ‘My Love’.”

“Agh,” you giggled, faking disdain. “Too cute. Too cheesy. I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it.” You pulled out of his embrace and he whined, missing the contact with you. You laughed again, grabbing his wrist gently and pulling him towards the living room. “I didn’t really know what to get you for our anniversary, so I hope this’ll do.” You motioned towards the giant pillow fort, the fairy lights wrapped around the room, and the glow in the dark star stickers pressed onto the ceiling. “Happy six months My Love.”

He walked carefully around the room, committing each part of it to memory: this fallen blanket, the stuffed bear he had gotten you at Target, the plate of chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the pile of blankets. “Did you... did you take your mattress off your bed to put in here?” He asked. He was too observant.

“And boy was it tough to move on my own,” you sighed, putting your hands on your hips, proud of such an achievement. It was a slow process but you were sure it would help with the overall coziness of the setting.

He tackled you in another hug, but this time you almost lost your balance, stepping back until the mattress saved you from your fall, pulling him down with you. He chuckled and you joined him soon after, pulling him in for a gentle kiss on the lips.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He asked, taking your hand and kissing each of your knuckles.

“Nope. This fort is extremely well made if I do say so myself.”

You let him pick what movie you’d watch. He picked the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Admittedly, you hadn’t seen it in a very long time, and he hadn’t ever seen it before. He just liked the art style and felt like maybe he could relate to the story.

You propped up some pillows and pulled a few dozen blankets over the two of you until your nice and warm. You pulled Saeran into your arms gently, wrapping your arms around his middle and letting him lay back against you, his head somewhere between your shoulder and your neck. He liked when you held him like this; it made him feel safe and loved. The first few times you had held him he was frightened. Nobody had ever treated him like this, but the more you did it the more he liked it.

And then the song Hellfire came on. Uh... you didn’t remember this scene from when you watched as a kid. His nose scrunched up in distaste at the dark (visually and metaphorically) scene. He turned towards you, hiding his face in your shoulder. “What the hell,” he groaned. “I thought this was a Disney movie.”

“Older Disney movies are kind of dark sometimes, My Love,” you teased. But then you realized he wasn’t just playing around with you. You could tell by the way he balled the hem of your shirt up in his hands, his mouth moving against your shoulder, saying some sort of silent prayer you couldn’t here.

“Oh!” You blurted out in shock. You cupped his cheek very lightly in your hand. “Honey, look at me.” He was still focused on mouthing the same mantra. “Saeran. Look at me.” Surprised from you breaking your vow and calling him by his name, he looked up. His eyes were clouded and stormy. You couldn’t tell what was going on behind them. You just knew you needed to help ground him in this moment.

“Saeran, I’m right here with you,” you focused on stroking his cheek. You could see now. He was whispering the word ‘no’ over and over again. “Hey hey,” you whispered again, causing his eyes to lock with yours. “We’ve been dating for six months now. Six months. You and I.”

He nodded carefully. That was helping. “You know where we are right now?” You asked, not expecting an answer. “I made us a pillow fort. And look. I made constellations in the sky with these little glow in the dark star stickers. Cool huh?”

He nodded again. “I remember you said you liked looking at the sky. Do you know any constellations?” You asked, hoping he was ready to give an answer.

He was silent at first. He was shaking in your arms. Finally he spoke: “I only know the Big Dipper.”

“Do you see it in the sky?”

“Mhmm,” he leaned his head next to yours, closing one of his eyes to make sure he pointed at it just perfect. “Right there.”

“You’re so smart,” you complimented, reaching up to stroke his hair gently. “Are you okay?”

He sighed. He shook his head very very slightly.

“That’s okay,” you reassured him. “We’re getting there. Look back up at me again.” He did immediately, his gaze softening.

“See! It’s just me,” you stuck you tongue out at him, trying to make him laugh. He was able to let out a small giggle, the crinkling around his eyes proving to you that he wasn’t faking it just to make you feel better.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have to do this. This should be a fun night.” He was still shaking slightly, focusing on his breath to calm down and clear his mind.

“It is a fun night. I’m with you, silly.” You turned off the movie, slumping down onto the mattress and pulling Saeran with you, his head now resting on your chest. “Let me show you where the Little Dipper is now.”

This probably would have been a more entertaining activity if either of you could make out any constellations other than the Dippers in the cheap little glow in the dark stickers, but you found your own way to have fun. You spent your time making up your own constellations, seeing who could come up with a more ridiculous one. You were fueled by Saeran’s laughs, until he laughed no longer.

His chest was rising up and down evenly. He had fallen asleep just from the sound of your voice. It made you feel so soft and warm and fuzzy. You took a small breath, not wanting to disturb his sleep. One hand running through his hair slowly, pulling him deeper and deeper into sleep, the other holding him tight against you. You wanted every night to end like this one, sleeping with him in your arms, his gentle breathing lulling you to sleep as well. Of course you didn’t want the earlier part of the night to happen again, but you would be with him when it did... because it would. Still, you were so proud of the progress he had made. You had only been together six months, but you couldn’t imagine the rest of your lifetime without him by your side. Now all you had to do was hope you’d meet in the field of dreams.

[la-fille-en-aiguilles]

His Father’s Son

Young!Sirius Black x Female Reader & NotSoYoung!Sirius Black x Female Reader

Request: Idk if requests are open or anything but can you write Sirius has a Slytherin son that's the twins age and hates him because Sirius likes Harry better

A/N: This awesome anon has sent me this mind-blowing request about Sirius. When I read it this morning I went Holy cow, how do I write THAT?! And honestly I even considered dropping it because I had no idea what to do with it. But then I went on a run, and it just came to me. I typed away, and this is what came out. Dear Anon, I’m not quite sure if this is what you had in mind. I hope the story doesn’t disappoint you. 

Synopsis: After the tragic events in the Hall of Prophecy in the Ministry of Magic, Alastair Black, Sirius’ only son, comes banging on the doors of his father’s ancestral home. What awaits for him there is his father’s friend Y/N, and her version of the past events might just make him question everything he thought he knew. 

WARNINGS: mentions of death, suffering, ANGSTY AF (I don’t know what happened to me there).

I hope you enjoy!  

The Beautiful & Damned will be back with a new chapter tomorrow! 

The night is solemnly silent, save for the roaring of the rain, assaulting the roof of the old, moaning house. Fists and jaw clenched tight, his eyes are fixed on the only glowing window, yellowed by time. Wet strands of hair cling to his burning front, and cold water is a blessing, hitting every inch of his skin, hammering the pain deeper and deeper inside of him, so no one sees. 

He’s weightless as his feet take him to the heavy doors - the doors he thought he’d never enter again. Inhaling frantically, he crashes both of his fists against the polished wood, the loud bang awakening something he long since locked in his rattling cage of a chest. 

The moment the sound reaches his ears, there’s is no stopping the rage that’s finally set free, painting his vision red. He hits the door again and again, bashing his fists in, until his hands go black and blue. The rambling in his head is getting louder, the shaking in his bones grows stronger, and the only way to stop it is to finally do it - blow the bloody doors of that piece of shit of a house, where he has never felt at home. 

He barely realises it when the doors slam open in his face, bright yellow light blinding him. Falling on his knees, his maimed hands covering his swollen eyes, he lets someone soft and warm wrap their hands around him. They don’t speak, and he doesn’t either, contenting himself with relishing the comfort of their touch. 

When his sensitive eyes adjust to light, he sees the empty corridors ahead, bathing in the welcoming glow. Dust floats in the musk-scented air, its playful light-stained thin whirls inviting him in. 

Hot tears welling up in his eyes, he tangles his sore fingers in Y/N hair, clinging to her fragile frame. She smells like Neroli and always, and her smell, coupled with the sight before his eyes, is enough for him to finally let go. 

“He’s dead!” the cry tears his insides apart, popping his veins open. “He’s dead! Sirius is dead!…”

She rocks him softly in place, littering his raven-black hair with chaotic kisses, her own cheeks glistening in the light of a full yellow moon. 

---

“Would you like something to drink, Alastair?” 

He blinks rapidly, his eyes sore and dry, his stare completely vacant. Y/N’s heart clenches, and she forces herself to go on:

“I still have a bit of coffee left… It’s either that or firewhiskey”, she drops into the chair across from the young Black, slamming a half-empty bottle of amber liquid against the table’s surface. “Pick your poison.”

Rubbing his nose with the back of a hand, Alastair quickly motions towards the bottle, and folds his hands in front of him. In booming silence, Y/N serves him a splash of the burning liquid and pushes the glass in his direction. His bleeding long fingers wrap around it as he downs the alcohol in one go, throwing his head back. 

Y/N watches him closely, as spider-web cracks on her porcelain heart become more and more prominent. In the dim lights of the Grimmauld place, Alastair looks so much like Sirius: he’s all bruises and blood, his beautiful stormy eyes dark grey, almost black, his jaw tense and his cheekbones sharp enough to cut her skin and bleed her dry. She crashes an unwanted whimper in its wake, as Sirius’ son raises his foggy orbs to look at her with a desperation of a man catching at straws, drowning in a bottomless river. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, his pale lips barely moving. “I didn’t want to wake you…”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Y/N interrupts, gazing at him, her eyelids each weighting a ton. “I was waiting for you. I was hoping you’d show”. 

Alastair nods, avoiding her gentle eyes. Fetching the bottle, he serves himself another drink, and noticing an empty glass a little further away, splashes a generous amount of alcohol inside, wetting its walls. Leaning over the table, he puts the glass in front of Y/N, still refusing to look her in the eyes. 

“It’s not like everything changed or anything”, he lets out, his fingers fidgeting with the rim of his glass. “He was long dead to me before that bitch actually Avada Kedavra’d him”, his nonchalance is a thought out act. Whiskey wets his lips. “He never loved me. He never loved anybody but his precious Harry fucking Potter.”

“Alastair…” Y/N gives her dissent a muffled try. “You know it isn’t…”

“Oh it is the truth, Y/N, so don’t waste your breath”, he chuckles bitterly, missing the rage already. Bitterness is worse than anger, because it lasts. “From the moment I was born, he didn’t want me. He blamed me for my mother’s death. All I wanted,” his voice trembled, but Alastair quickly got a hold of himself. “All I wanted was a fucking chance. I wasn’t given any. He abandoned me. He preferred to surrender and go to Azkaban for the crime he didn’t commit, than stay and fight and be a fucking father. And when he came out, he wanted nothing to do with me. Doesn’t come as a surprise, really - I am not a Potter, after all!” thunder flashed in his tempestuous irises. “I made peace with my orphanage, a very long time ago. I’m glad the Weasleys were able to see past my green and silver uniform…”

The lights in the room went out with a loud shattering sound, the glass from overhead lamps clattering on the floor. Alastair froze mid-sentence, Y/N rugged breathing echoing in the dark space. 

“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, Alastair”, Y/N’s struggles through the sentence, her last effort spent on controlling her temper. “I’m going to fetch a candle and we are going to talk”, young Black hears the shuffling as she gets on her feet. “Well, I am going to talk, and you are going to listen, because I’ve got plenty to say”, having said that, she makes her way to the kitchen counter. 

Minutes later, a bright yellow-and-orange flame flickers in the dark, casting long shadows on the walls of the room. Darkness clusters around the two of them, and the whole world is put on hold. 

---

“…What you have to understand, Alastair, is that those were dark, hopeless times. With those who made it through alive, we prayed that no witch or wizard had to go what we went through. 

The war makes you think differently; the constant state of fear and knowing that each minute could be your last changes the way you look at things; it turns your entire world upside down. 

At first, just like you’re doing right now in regards to your father’s behaviour, we were looking for reasons. It took us thousands of lost lives to finally learn the truth - not everything had a reason - a rational commonsensical cause that comes from the faculty of the mind to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. Merlin knows, Death Eaters had no reason to act like monsters. Merlin knows, Death Eaters had no reason to line up into a battalion, to aim their wands at other wizards’ chests and to yell an unforgivable curse at the top of their lungs. What they did have was command, and enough fear to obey.

Fear was living among us, following us everywhere we went. Fear turned some of the best of us into cold-blooded murderers, and it was hard to always focus on that fateful yet blurry line that separated us from Voldemort’s sidekicks. What I want you to understand is that fear pushed us towards choices we would have never otherwise made. Fear was what pushed James and Lily into the Godric’s Hollow, far away from their friends and family - I keep asking myself what would have happened if they’d stayed. Would we have stood a chance against Voldemort, as a strong, united front, together? Would they have still been alive?… Maybe, fear was what truly killed them both. 

Sirius always wanted to do what was right. But at some point, fear changed your father’s perception of right, and we - I - was in no position to argue, because I didn’t know what right was anymore, either. 

We were mourning your mother, Marlene, each in our own way. Voldemort wiped out her entire family, and if he didn’t touch you, it surely wasn’t out of the fucking goodness of his heart. Riddle did not know you existed, Alastair. Only a handful of wizards knew Sirius and Marlene were so in love, they wanted a kid, a ray of light amidst all that darkness. I knew. So did Molly. James and Lily knew too, of course. Remus and Peter - thank Merlin, Peter did not know!… Thinking about it now, I still can’t believe we didn’t see it coming, we didn’t kill him while we still had a chance, while the damage still hadn’t been done!…

You were four years old when wizards from the Ministry came for your father. I remember it clear as day, but what price wouldn’t I pay to forget. Sirius was tired of running. His thoughts were eating him alive. What kind of start in life was he offering you, his son? Days prior to his arrest, he told me, “You know what to do, Y/N”, and he squeezed my hand, ever so lightly… 

A notorious runaway murderer, he couldn’t send you to Hogwarts without surrendering. Upon learning that you, Alastair Black, were Sirius’ son, the Ministry would have kept you hostage to lure him out. He refused to drag you down with him, no matter how much it’d cost him… 

I left our hiding place with you under my robes hours before the Ministry came. I saw them burning the place to the ground, and every last memory of your mother with it… 

I was a mess by the time I arrived at the Burrow. Molly and Arthur kept asking me what happened, what was wrong… I couldn’t form words. I choked on them. You have to understand, Alastair, I watched as my best friend, the man I respected and loved more than anything in the world, was taken to Azkaban for the crime he didn’t commit. I finally had him, and I lost him, because I made a mistake. I should have never agreed to put my trust in Peter, I had a gut feeling about him, even back when we were at school!… I was disappointed in the entire world and I blamed myself. 

Molly and Arthur took you in as if you were one of their own. I watched you grow, and I was proud of the young man you were becoming, taking so much after your father! Watching you become  your father’s son was killing me slowly, while I still mourned the person who wasn’t even dead. A brilliant young wizard, be it a little on the troublemaker side, you, Fred and George might as well have been the new Marauders, carrying on your father’s legacy unbeknownst to you. 

Each time I came over to Molly’s over the holidays, I cried my eyes out upon returning here, in this very kitchen - Merlin, you were just like him!… At war with his true family. Just like Sirius before you, you hated everything that the Black family represented, and you weren’t shy to express your feelings - a very rebel-like move for a Slytherin, some said. Dressed in greens and silvers, you were the spitting image of the man I loved in every little line littering your face, too early for your age.

Why didn’t you take me in, then, you probably wonder. With me loving your father so much and all, I should have been the first in line to take care of you. The truth was, I couldn’t. The day your father had been taken, I swore to myself I’d find Peter Pettigrew, and I’ll make him confess,  before he takes Sirius’ place in Azkaban. I spent years on the move, blinded by my desire for revenge, while Peter….He was always right there, right in front of our noses. 

Every time I saw you at the Burrow, your smile never reached your eyes. So many questions were swimming in their stormy oceans, unanswered. You wanted the truth, and I was the only person who was able to give it to you. Yet I couldn’t. As much as it killed me, you were better off hating you father. Should I have told you the truth - just how much he loved you, and that he was innocent - it could backfire in the most unpredictable way. So I remained silent, and there were desperate times when I thought I’d carry Padfoot’s secrets to my grave. 

When Sirius got out, and the truth broke free with him, it took a while for it to settle in, even among the members of the Order. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like, learning that your father was innocent this entire time, that you were never the son of a murderer, but of a man wrongfully committed to Azkaban. When the news finally reached me, I dropped everything and set out for the Burrow: this time, I was going to give you all the answers you needed to hear, before you were to reunite with your father. 

I apparated at Grimmauld’s place at quarter past midnight, I remember very well. Not a single window was alight. I entered the house I almost learned to hate, for everything reminded me of you father here, cutting me open. I made my way to the kitchen. Something didn’t feel right, the atmosphere had shifted, it was almost like the house could breathe again. 

The moment I saw your father sitting in the very chair you are occupying, my legs failed me. I broke down on my knees, sobbing uncontrollably, like a little girl. Your father put your arms around me, placing feverish kisses all over my face, telling me that it was going to be okay now. He was back. 

We talked the night away, until the dawn coloured the sky light pink. He wanted to know everything about you - what kind of person you’d become, what you loved, what made you tick, what subjects at Hogwarts were your favourite… I watched a mischievous smile bloom on his chapped lips as I mentioned that your animagus form was a husky. He laughed out loud when I told him you were exceptionally good at blowing up school toilets. He cleared his throat, hiding his tears of joy when he learned you were proud to be a Slytherin, because it “came to show that not all Slytherins were Death Eaters in the making”. I swear I saw Padfoot come back to life that night, familiar fire melting the deadly coldness in his eyes away. 

We arranged for the old members of the Order to come to the Grimmauld place in the evening; I asked Molly to tell you to come too. Sirius was anxious the entire day. He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t eat, threatening to go see you, claiming he had waited enough. Coming out there, even as a dog, was still dangerous, so I talked him down, time and again. 

I will never forget the tears rolling down his cheeks when he saw you, after all these years… When he held you in his arms… My heart stopped at the sight. Having seen his eyes, having felt his chest against your own that night, how dare you say your father never loved you, Alastair?… You were the only thing that mattered to him, the only thing that kept him going… Even if he was forced not to show it. 

That’s right, you heard me. The moment the members of the Order sat down at this table that night, we knew: many more meetings would follow. I’d been places and I’d seen things - there was no doubt left in my mind that Voldemort was planning his big return, his servants and all these creatures who worshipped him restless. We all knew the danger was coming, but we didn’t know from where exactly.  

Dumbledore and Sirius stepped into the hall after the meeting; they talked long enough for me to start to worry. When Sirius returned to the kitchen, we were still sitting at this table, do you remember?… A bright smile lit up your features as you asked your father if you could stay with him for the remainder of the summer. His answer was short and cold, and shook me to the core. He didn’t even say goodbye when you left for Burrow with Molly and Arthur. 

I was furious. I waited till we were left alone in the house to confront him. I came off a little stronger than I intended, reminding him that you were his son, for Merlin’s sake, and calling him heartless. Tears glimmered in his bloodshot eyes as he told me he was doing what was best for you. It was too dangerous for you to be close to him - he was still considered a murderer by the Ministry, only now the other side of the looming war wanted him dead as well. Being his son alone had already put you in danger; being a devoted, loving son would have surely killed you. I tried to talk some sense into him - he was making the same damn mistake we let James and Lily commit back in the day - he was yielding to fear. 

Please understand, Alastair, this wasn’t my decision to make. I wasn’t your mother. I was nobody really, and that’s exactly what your father told me, point blank. I stared at him in disbelief for what felt like an eternity, before I disappeared into thin air, apparating back to my place in London.  

I watched you grow bitter, while the skies above our heads grew darker with every single day. I tried to talk to you, to justify your father’s behaviour in your eyes, but you wouldn’t listen. I forced Remus, the only close friend I had left, to try and open your father’s eyes, Merlin knows, he’d been good at it when we were back at Hogwarts. Sirius wouldn’t budge, either. Like father, like son. 

I know you were jealous of Harry, I could see it just by looking at your face, don’t try to deny it. All because Sirius was treating him like a friend. What he saw, looking at Harry, was James. An equal, capable of fighting - not the most valuable thing in the world that needed to be protected at all costs. You were the quintessential reason he survived Azkaban. You were the only force that made him go out and fight, every single day. You weren’t just you in his eyes - you were the promise of the happy future he had to deserve by avenging your poor mother. I think he punished himself in a way all this time, he blamed himself for not having been there for the mother of his child when she needed him most. He blamed himself for leaving you. Under the weight of all this guilt and fear, your father got lost… And I wasn’t there to fight for him, to show him the way.

He came to see me… He came to see me a week ago, right before that night at the Ministry”. 

Y/N no longer looks at Alastair - her gaze is lost in the darkness of the hall, as tears roll down her cheeks. 

“…And I didn’t let him in.”

With his vision blurry, Alastair bites on his lips, his chest heaving. He is drowning in all-consuming pain, and no one’s here to save him. This must be what his father felt like. In agony and all alone. 

“There’s not a minute that goes by that I don’t think about him,” Y/N rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I know I could have saved him,” her voice cracks, and her entire body shudders. “Had I loved him a little less, just a tad less to forgive him for the hurt he had caused me, I could have saved him. I could have gone to the Ministry that night instead of him, I could have convinced him to stay here, with you, for he had so much to lose…” Alastair’s eyes meet hers - not a flicker of the flame is reflecting in their irises. He gets the feeling his are the same, void and dark, like his name. 

“I could have saved him,” he says, covering Y/N’s hand with his, squeezing it ever so lightly. “Had I loved him at his worse, when he needed me most”. 

Silence is a scary sound as it closes in on them - on a heartbroken woman with tear-stained cheeks who loved too much, and on the orphan with blood-shot, thunderous grey eyes who did not love enough. 

[celticdoggo]

Gelfling skeksis au fic three

“So you felt like you were Mira for a while,” Bree asked from where she was sitting nearby notebook in hand. A sulking Rian was forcibly reclined on a bed in his childhood room. Deet had a podlings treat his wound that had turned out deeper than he thought meaning his father had banned him from hunting until it was healed. “Yes,” he answered, “it was like she was me for a little while until I shredded my thigh to ground myself.” Bree mumbled about it being fascinating as she scribbled some more in her book. Deet was the only one sympathetic as she patted his hair.

He leaned against her in response causing her to laugh. Bree eventually joined the cuddling and Rian found himself sandwhiched between them but he didn’t really care as they gently carded through his hair. Every once and a while someone would find leaves or sticks in a knot in his hair and make a comment about him never washing his hair. It was nice to sit like this. “Ri your hair is super gross,” Bree said as she and Deet has to work together to pull a matt apart as gently as possible, “when was your last bath? Tell the truth.” Rian shrugged, “I rinsed the blood off earlier.” “You rinsed,” she said and Rian could feel the eye brow raising, “you didn’t wash.”

Rian could tell where this was going and started to wiggle to slide down the bed. “Oh no you don’t,” Bree said holding him with all her weight. Deet ran to the door to call for a podlings to run a bath and grab a guard. Rian stood with Bree still hanging on and tried to book it. “Aaaaa,” Bree yelled hanging on for dear life as Rian ran down the halls. He didn’t stop until he was grabbed by the captain of the guard. A rather nice gelfling named Ordon. Rian tried to struggle as he was held in a tight headlock by Ordon as Bree picked herself up. “Thank you,” she said, “could you help us get him into the bathing room? He’s staying in the castle due to injury and he needs to not smell like a day old swamp while he does.”

Ordon let out a surprised snort of laughter. “No I wouldn’t mind Lady Skekbree,” he said as he followed her Rian still struggling though not being quite as formidable of an opponent without his armor and many weapons in reach. When they reached the bathhouse, Rian struggled even more. With a quick nod to him, Ordon tossed him into the bath clothes and all. Rian sputtered rising out of the water. It took all three of the gelfling and a few podlings to bathe him because of several escape attempts.

“There now your looking very fresh and clean,” Deet said patting Rian’s now fluffy hair as he sat trying to gather the remains of his dignity. He was wearing some borrowed casual clothes from a guard named Gurjin that were entirely too big on him. Rian grumbled causing the girls to laugh. Ordon smiles at the group of them as Deet began braiding his long hair back. Bree could see something in his smile as he looked at Rian. Something unbelievably sad and full of longing but she didn’t know what it was.

“If that’s all my lord and ladies,” he said bowing slightly, “I need to go back to work. One of my guards has gone missing and I need to go back to looking for her.” As he left Rian stiffened and gripped his stomach tightly. “Ri,” Bree said quietly laying a hand on him. He flinched a little. They knew why he was upset. “Come on Ri,” Deet said putting on a smile, “come help me catch fluffy. I think they have been hunting down mmmm for the past couple of hours.” Rian seemed to perk up at the idea of getting to mess with Chamberlin.

They had just had a grand time watching chamberlain attempt to fend off attacks from Fluffy the fizgig when they heard the yelling of an old woman. “What have you skeksis done?!” Rian stopped dead in his tracks. A haggard old woman with one eye stomped past them not even seeing the three of them. As Rian silently padded after her he thanked that the girls wore such soft slippers so they made no noise. He’s heard them try to sneak up on him in normal shoes and they were like elephants, though he would never tell them that even under threat of death.

She hobbled past the room for the Crystal then stopped in her tracks and backed up to stare at the crystal. “Oh my crystal my heart what has happened to you,” she said sounding so anguished Deet wanted to hug the old woman. Rian and Bree covered her as the crystal shower once again Mira’s tragic death. What they learned however horrified them. Mira would never be at rest with such a death. Her essence would be in a limbo with who ever drank it, trapping her forever. Rian felt his stomach writhe in response to that. He was trapping her. He…

Rian didn’t get anymore time to think about it as the old woman turned to see them. “Who are you three,” she said, brandishing her walking stick at them, “some more gelfling to doubt Mother Augrha?!” She stared them down with her one eye. “Mother Augrha,” Bree asked looking excited, “like the stories?” She raised the eyebrow over her good eye and began to stalk around the three of them. Rian whirled in place to constantly have her in his field of vision. She walked closer sniffing them. She reached out and touched Deet’s wing, Bree’s hair, and tried to touch Rian but pulled her hand back as he made to bite her.

“Hm,” she said sounding slightly mystified, “you look like gelfling, smell like gelfling, but you are not gelfling.” Augrha rapped a snarling Rian with her cane. “You especially,” she said, “you feral thing. Your no honorably warrior like the rest of your clan.” “We aren’t gelfling,” Bree explained, “we are skeksis. Deet is the daughter of the emperor. I am daughter of lord scrollkeeper. Rian is the son of the hunter.” Augrha laughed, “so even so corrupted they have soft spots for children.”

“What do you mean corrupted,” Deet asked confused. “Your parents,” she spoke the word as if it tasted vile on her tongue, “have committed a grave act against Thra itself, you yourselves have partaken in it.” She jabbed Rian’s stomach and he took a swipe at her forgetting they had taken his gauntlets to he cleaned. “You are not gelfling,” she said, “you are not skeksi. At this point you are so out of place I hesitate to call you part of Thra’s song even if I can no longer hear it.” Deet and Bree looked stricken at the idea that they were nothing in Thra. “That’s not true,” Rian snarled, “we are skeksi. They have raised and cared for us.”

Augrha huffed a laugh. “Did they tell you that,” she asked, “or do you know it?” Rian blinked again the strange question and the old woman hobbled off. “We are skeksi aren’t we,” Deet asked quietly. Rian was quiet before looking determined. “We can find out for sure,” he said, “pack in secret the both of you and meet me here when the three suns are all down.” The girls nodded and Rian went to plan. They would know the truth soon. Were they truly skeksi, gelfling, or had Thra abandoned them for not belonging anywhere?

————

I apologize for churning out so much. I’m on vacation with nothing much to do.

@fangirlingpuggle

[theforgottenpress]

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

I have as of late been plagued by an overwhelming sense of guilt. It is perhaps my return to the very city, I had turned my back on that has stirred up memories of times gone by.

In an ironic twist of fate even Anne Lamott would be challenged to put a positive spin on, I find myself back in my old bedroom. Enclosed within the same four walls, I had been so desperate to escape from just a year ago.

The wooden floor is new, in fact everything around me is. The windows, the drawers and even the door knob. The cupboards are empty, just like the drawers and the bookshelf. It is a strange feeling. Nothing in the room appears to be the same except for the faint scent of “Motiya” that wafts around, ever so faint. I feel calm. 

This room is a stark contrast to the dorm room I had spent the last few months in. While I struggled with space for clothes and shoes in my overcrowded room in Hillside, I was hard pressed to fill up these empty drawers and cabinets.

Fresh off the plane, I can’t help but envision how much everything has changed within my room. I fail trying to picture my childhood upon the scantily adorned walls and yet I cannot shake a sense of belonging. 

It is an odd predicament. As one of thousands of college kids who return home earlier than expected, I join millions more in this wave of “self-isolation”. Overnight, my world has turned upside down. 

A week in quarantine feels like a lifetime. Colby now feels like a distant memory with networking and summer internships being a thing of the past. My mornings no longer start with a cup of coffee after a short run on Main Street. They begin with a quick Insta-scroll to keep up with the timezones I have left parts of myself in. 

The new windows are a welcome addition-they show me greener pastures, quite literally. The sounds of angsty college students running late for their 8ams are replaced by the incredibly serene melodies of sparrows chirping. I can’t help but remember my childhood dream of being a bird and thinking how it might be a better choice than finance at this point. 

Not all is bad in this new world. Things are slow, in fact there is not much happening apart from reruns of COVID-19 stats, zoom memes and quarantine challenges. 

The empty drawers irritate me. They seem to be a physical manifestation of the hollow feeling that's been around lately. Maybe its the emptiness, maybe its the despair or maybe its my own helplessness in the face of everything that seems to have boarded alongside me at Logan International Airport.

Time has been slow. For those of us who have been in the habit of going out and actively seeking social interaction-it is slower still. A five day lockdown became a 14 day curfew which is rumored to extend into a 21 day house arrest.  Yet despite these grim conditions, there is a silver lining. Although, I cannot go out and admire it as I want, the view from my new windows is enough.

This endless cycle of sleep, self isolation and social networking has forced me to think. It gives me the chance to get to know myself. The pass/fail policy instituted by colleges means that my GPA was no longer a concern. I will continue to learn, on my own terms-free to explore the facets of computer science Hannah Wolfe would deem as unnecessary or outside the scope of the course.

Before I know it, my room becomes a sanctuary. The four walls don’t seem to suffocate me, they make me feel safe. Being back to where it all began, I can reflect and I can remember. The increased usage of social media helps of course. I see more and more old faces pop up. Names that once held pieces of my heart but had since sunk deeper and deeper in a flurry of new contacts, new texts. Each name brings with it memories, moments of time that force tears or smiles-sometimes both. It is odd. I enjoy this feeling of “feeling” those memories once again. 

Maybe its the nostalgia, maybe the circumstances permit but I feel unafraid. Safe, within these four walls I drop one text, and another and another. Before I know it, I am reaching out to old friends and acquaintances, people who I regret having lost touch with. I do so without any qualms about their response, the sheer awkwardness I would otherwise have felt is absent for some reason. Maybe it has gone out for its once-a-day government allowed walk and is yet to return. 

I reflect. Beyond texts, I am engaged more than ever with my family. We talk about the weather, about the country but more importantly we talk about us and how we feel. It is a refreshing change of pace from the usual discussions of politics and the mundaneness of work. 

I open up. The undercurrent of emotion going around catches me by surprise as I own up to my mistakes and my past. It is not pretty, but I am starting to learn to live with it. In a first, I would even say that I accept my share of responsibility and commit to changing the future, for the better.

I create. There are so many things that have been weighing me down for months. Assignments, clout, and the inability to share my thoughts in an unfiltered manner amongst other things. I start small. I fix the broken wooden desk that has been tanned an enviable brown in the garden. I start looking up bread making videos. I pick up my rusty old guitar and give it a good strum. I find an empty quarry and dig up some weeds. I make small victories throughout the day. I find ways to remember them and explore the things that interest me further. I collect trophies. Pens, Shrubs, Clovers or guitar picks- I find these help me fill the hollowness within and my drawers.  

I think more so than before. I read more finding myself appreciating the feel of paper against my finger tips. Like an old flame, rekindled-this time around this deep dive into literature is sweeter than ever.

I breathe. More than anything, I pause. I try to see this moment in history for what it is and try to change it for myself. I do not force myself to achieve a fluency in French, learn Python, complete a data analytics course or even apply to every internship under the sun. I simply try to breathe and evaluate what matters to me. I try to replace this idea of forced isolation in my mind with the idea of forced introspection.There is much to take advantage of. There is much to be afraid for but there is also much to be thankful for. 

There is one thing I know, the city outside has changed and perhaps in tandem, so have I.

[bangtanxfics-blog]

A Long Time Coming | PT 5.

Word Count: 2571

Genre: Fluff, romance, some funny things here and there I hope!

Summary: Y/N gets a job and Jungkook keeps trying to find ways to get closer to her. This time, though, he might just succeed.

Walking across the streets of Busan was always one of my favorite things to do, especially around the areas closer to the beach. Those were my favorite parts of the city and the fact that there was even the slightest actual chance of working near the beach seemed surreal in a way. But here I was, walking around with the stupidest smile on my face, the smell of the ocean filling my nostrils, the soft breeze hitting my face and tinting the tip of my nose a deeper shade of red like it usually did whenever it got colder. I kept checking the GPS on my phone to see if I was going the right way, knowing that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me right now was for me to be late to the job interview because I had gotten lost within the vicinity of the restaurant.

Five minutes later I'm standing outside the place, checking my phone again for the time, only to find that I was ten minutes early, which I guessed was a good thing and would help me make a good first impression on my employers. Fixing my shirt and taking a deep breath, I told myself I could do it, that I just needed to believe in myself, and that even if something went wrong, it wouldn't be the end of the world. So, with a positive mindset, I entered through the main doors, a smile on my face as I made my way towards the counter, where a girl around my age was standing against the marble surface, a smile that resembled my own plastered across her features.

“Good morning, I was wondering if I could speak to a manager? I was called in for a job interview yesterday.” I said, politely bowing to the other girl whose face lit up at my words.

“Oh! Yes! They told me you'd be coming, give me a second, I’ll tell Sumin you're here.” she said excitedly before turning around and disappearing into a set of doors behind her.

A minute later a woman in her mid-thirties came out of the same set of doors, a polite smile on her face once her eyes settled on me, although I noticed her eyes traveling up and down my body, and I already knew how important appearances were, especially in a field of work where you’d be in constant contact with other people. You just had to look kind, helpful and dependable, otherwise, how were people going to rely on you to serve them? For that reason, I had tried harder than usual to look professional and presentable, wearing black jeans and a black button down blouse, and still, I was worried. Because professional and presentable were two very subjective concepts, and so were appearances, and I didn’t know what exactly my possible employer was expecting of me other than the fact that I was supposed to show up in all black clothes.

My heart was beating a million miles an hour, racing with all sorts of thoughts clouding my mind, and the uncertainty of not knowing whether I was going to get a job to finally jumpstart my life as an adult or not was making me more nervous than I’d initially expected to be when I first walked into the restaurant.

“Hello, are you y/n?” who I assumed was the manager asked politely, standing in front of me. I recognized her voice as the one who spoke to me on the phone the previous day, and I immediately bowed with respect, nodding my head afterwards and cleaning up my suddenly clammy hands against the sides of my jeans. Get it the fuck together, y/n.

“Yes, that’s me. It’s a pleasure to meet you, miss.” I said, bowing again out of habit, I was really trying my hardest to get this job. It was my only chance for now, and while working in a restaurant wasn’t necessarily something I’d be passionate about, it was better than nothing.

After being on my own for six months, I didn’t think I’d be able to go back to living with my parents without feeling restricted. They are amazing and I cherish my relationship with them, but I’m 23, and I’m beginning to crave independence. After having had a taste of that independence, I didn’t want to lose it. So, while I knew that living with my parents until I was able to save up some money to get an apartment was my only option, this job could give me the certainty that I was on a path somewhere, I wasn’t completely lost, I had a goal and it was achievable. All I had to do was make a good first impression here and get the job.

“Please, follow me here, this will be very quick, I just have to ask you a few mandatory questions and that will be it.” she said, kindly pointing at one of the tables that was further to the left of the restaurant, away from the few customers eating close to the windows that overlooked the street. I did as she asked of me and followed with a smile, taking a seat after she did and crossing one leg over the other as a reflex. “Firstly, I have to tell you that we have contacted several of the places you cited as your work experience, and they haven’t given us any complaints, so that’s always a good sign. Now, do you have any restraints when it comes to schedules? Our work hours can get a little crazy especially on the weekends, and we need someone who is committed enough to adapt to a short-notice schedule.” the manager, who I had previously learned was called Sumin, questioned calmly.

“I am absolutely free, I have just returned from my trip and I have no other occupations as of right now. I’d be entirely dedicated to the job if I were to get it.” I said, nodding my head in agreement to my own words, if anything, to further prove that I meant them.

“That’s definitely good to know. What is your desired career path, if you don’t mind me asking? You mentioned that you got your college degree in May, but we didn’t get a chance to speak about it during our phone call.”

“Acting, that has always been my dream. Sure, when I was younger I thought I’d somehow be picked up by an Entertainment company and I’d magically become famous and I’d get to act in dramas and things like that. And while that would be great, of course, for now I’m aiming towards starting a teaching career. I want to give acting lessons, help someone truly find a passion in the art just like my acting teachers did for me.” I explained to the best of my ability, being honest was all I could do, especially since the passion I had for acting was very much obvious any time I spoke about it.

“Well, believe it or not, that might come in handy here too. A lot of the times, as you may know because you’ve worked in the field, we work under pressure, and customers are often not so polite. It might come in handy to be able to control your emotions and put on a smile regardless of the situation. It sucks that we have to do that, but you know… sometimes it’s our only option.”

“Oh, I know, I more than understand. It has definitely worked out in my favor plenty of times, don’t worry.” I tell her, a soft chuckle escaping my lips while I reminisce on some not-so-great experiences I had while working as a waitress in different parts of the world.

Sumin was seemingly impressed, because she joined me in laughter as she ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back while she tapped a finger against the table lightly. We discussed the salary, what my schedule would be if I took the job and what exactly my duties would be, and before I even knew it, I was being taken behind the counter to begin my training. It turns out that the girl who had greeted me when I first came in was going to be in charge of that, and I ended up learning that her name was Youngmin, and that she was just as nice as she seemed upon first glance. We had a lot in common in terms of music interests and things of the sort, so I could already tell we’d be getting along just fine if things went as planned.

And just like that, my day of training was over and by the end of it, I signed a contract and retrieved my uniform before heading back home. On my way back to the metro station, I felt my phone vibrating inside the back pocket of my jeans, reminding me that I had put it on silent before coming into work and forgotten about its existence. So I took it out only to find a text message from an unknown number.

From: unknown number

Noona, it’s Jungkookie :) I asked hyung for your number because I wanted to ask how your job interview went hehehe. I hope it went well!!

I wish I could say what happened next didn’t happen, but an instant smile formed on my face and my cheeks were tinted red with the memories of yesterday in his kitchen. He had always been a sweet kid, Jungkook. But he was a handsome young man now, and I was struggling to remember he was still my best friend’s little brother. Every time I saw him he looked more and more like a man two years younger than me. Just that, a man. A gentleman at that.  And it was a struggle, because despite how much his physical appearance might distract me from the facts, he wasn’t just Jungkook, not any more. He hadn’t been for a long time now. He was an idol, and he was gone all the time. In fact, he’d be gone in two months. I had to snap out of it, this was just me being stupid and letting my hormones take over because God, did he look different with his chiseled jawline and his defined and muscular arms. I’d noticed, trust me, far more than I should have. And yet, even though  I knew I had to keep my distance, I didn’t have the heart to just ignore his text because I also didn’t think he deserved that. I cared about him, I always had, he had a soft spot in my heart since I had use of reason. So, I texted back.

From: me

Jungkook-ah! It went great, I got the job!! Thanks for checking in, that’s very nice of you :)

Not even a minute later, he texted again. And it was as if the smile was permanently etched onto my face. How was I ever going to say no to this adorable boy?

From: kookie :)

Yes!! I’m happy for you, noona! I knew you could do it!! We should definitely celebrate. Jiminie-hyung is throwing a party in his house, you should definitely come.

I read over his proposal a few dozen times before even processing what he was asking. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew what he was trying to do. Because despite being a sweet boy, Jungkook wasn’t a little kid any more. He knew what he was trying to do as well. And I knew I couldn’t play along with him, it just wasn’t right.

From: me

It’s nice of you to ask, Kookie. But I’m going to have to decline, I don’t know anyone there, I wouldn’t feel comfortable just crashing a party like that. You have fun, though!

From: kookie :)

You know me, though. I’m not going to ditch you in the middle of a party. Plus, you’ve met Jimin-ssi already, and he said you could come, you wouldn’t be crashing it!

He was persistent and I knew it was because he knew what he wanted, and because he was used to getting what he wants. Jungkook had always been spoiled, by his family, by his friends, and he did have a tendency to be selfish for that same reason. I didn’t know the kind of man he had turned into, he could have changed, but I doubted he had a very good grasp of the world around him, living surrounded by luxury like he did now. I wasn’t going to judge him for it, though, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn’t mention any of it.

From: me

I have work in the morning…

From: kookie :)

I’ll drive you home early-ish, I promise!

From: me

You can drive??? Lol

From: kookie :)

I’m not a kid any more, noona :(( I can drive very well!

From: me

Sighhh, okay, then. If you promise you won’t leave me alone with a bunch of strangers, and you’re going to drive me home early.... I guess I can’t say no.

From: kookie :)

Well… you can say no, I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to do just because you feel like you have to…

A smile formed on my lips again, he’s going to be the death of me one of these days, and the worst part is that I didn’t even know how to stop it at this point, he’s just too adorable. I needed to get a grip before I end up regretting every second of this. How come I can’t just bring myself to say no?

From: me

I want to, I need to have a little fun. It’s been a while since I haven’t been to a party :)

From: kookie :)

Great!!! Okay, hehe, I’ll see you soon, then? I’ll stop by at 10 if that’s okay?

From: me

Yes, that sounds great. I’ll see you then, Kook-ah! :)

From: kookie :)

See you then, noona.

I knew I should’ve done better, I should’ve been more responsible. I was aware of it. I should’ve asked if his brother was going to the party, I should’ve asked what he’d think of me going to a party alone with his no-longer-a-child little brother. But then again, I knew Jungkook was smarter than that. He could talk the talk when he needed to, and I knew he’d brush it off if I asked. And Junghyun wouldn’t really think much of it, he was pretty damn oblivious to everything going on around him for the most part.

So, I decided that I was going to stop overthinking this. Nothing was going on. We were grownups now. Jungkook had definitely gotten over his middle school crush on me, and I was just a little shaken because he’s attractive. That’s all there is to it and I needed to stop letting my thoughts consume me like this. I deserved to have fun, and so did he. He must be exhausted physically and mentally from his tour. We deserved a night out, as friends, to catch up and have fun.

Yes. With a smile, I entered my house, said hi to my parents, updated them on my day at work, and then excused myself to go upstairs and start very slowly getting ready for the party. I was going to have fun, and so was he, I was determined.

[mst3kproject]

504: Secret Agent Super Dragon

Let’s move on to another oft-overlooked subset of MST3K – the Budget Bond films.  These are always very bad, but often a lot of fun if you’re in the right kind of mood.

Brian Cooper is Super Dragon, pulled out of retirement to find out who’s distributing poisoned chewing gum to co-eds!  Boy, if that doesn’t sound like the setup for a thrilling spy caper, nothing does!  The plot seems to revolve around a Dutch student named Christine Bruder, so Cooper goes to Amsterdam looking for her.  There, in between fucking his female colleagues and flirting with every woman he sees, he learns that Bruder was part of a plot to smuggle deadly drugs into the United States, hidden in fake Ming vases.  An evil conspiracy is planning to dope the free world on a chemical that will cause us to violently attack one another, and then… uh, I don’t know what happens after that, but it’s probably safe to assume it’ll end in the bad guys ruling the world.  That’s always the goal.

What’s with that spy movie cliché about the glamorous secret agent who sleeps with every woman he meets?  Friends, enemies, co-workers, random waitresses… our suave hero loses no chance to insert Tab A into Slot B.  He can’t walk down the street without having women throw themselves at him.  This trope has been parodied to hell and back in everything from Austin Powers to The Million Eyes of Sumuru and it’s actually sort of weird to see it played straight, as it is here.  As a PSA to my readers: never sleep with a glamorous secret agent.  He probably has like nine venereal diseases.

The weirdest thing in the movie is a facet of this trope: it’s the bit where Cooper and Agent Farrell are busily smooching when a man breaks into her apartment and tries to kill them.  They fight him off, and he commits suicide so they can’t question him.  Cooper then throws his body out the window, turns the soundtrack back on, and the couple just pick up where they left off!  Maybe it’s because I’m not a glamorous secret agent but I gotta agree with Tom Servo on this one: I don’t think I could have sex in the same room where I just watched a guy kill himself. It wouldn’t be right, you know?

I will say that this indifference towards death bothers me less here than it did in Master Ninja I, but the characters in Secret Agent Super Dragon have presumably have years of both physical training to kill and psychological coaching to deal with the consequences. Even so, just getting right back to the makeout session before the body’s even had a chance to cool seems unnecessarily callous.

The other trope I notice a lot of in Secret Agent Super Dragon is the death trap. Our hero’s life is threatened repeatedly but always in some contrived way that allows him a chance to escape. The first time he’s tied to a rail so some machine can come along and roll over his head.  He gets out in the nick of time and it crushes a can of red paint instead.  The second time he’s nailed into a coffin and thrown into the river.  He holds his breath and inflates a flotation device. The third time, he’s trapped in a building rigged to explode.  His buddy flies in with a helicopter.  Why doesn’t anybody just shoot this guy? Villains that stupid don’t deserve to take over the world!

Yet another thing that stands out as remarkably dumb is the cause the charity auction is supposed to support – ‘an International Hospital for Babies with Malnutrition’.  Okay, so, imagine you’re somebody whose child is starving, which probably means you’re dirt poor.  Instead of sending food to you, these people expect you to bring the baby to a hospital, which may be in another country, so that they can feed the kid there. Is the complete impracticality of this supposed to be our clue that it’s a scam?  The script never references that, though.  Did somebody just pick a bunch of charitable-sounding words?  Was it a bad translation of something that actually made sense in the original language?  Are the writers just that stupid?  We’ll probably never know.

Beyond that… it’s honestly really hard to say anything deeper about Secret Agent Super Dragon, because this is another movie that’s not very ambitious. It has some vague themes about drugs as the downfall of western civilization, but its characters don’t have appreciable arcs and there’s not much by way of symbolism for me to analyze. All it wants is to keep us mindlessly entertained for an hour and a half – and there’s nothing wrong with that, honestly, but Super Dragon isn’t even any good at it.  Trying to watch without Joel and the bots I found myself drifting repeatedly.  There’s the charming super-spy, the parade of blandly beautiful women, the evil mastermind with a vague plan to take over the world, the easily-escaped death traps… we’ve done this all before, and Super Dragon doesn’t even use the stereotypes in skillful or interesting ways.

The thing about spy movie tropes is they’re so easy to parody, and have been parodied so many times, that even somebody who doesn’t actually watch spy movies can spot them because we all absorb them through pop-culture osmosis.  Playing them straight therefore runs a very serious risk of boring the audience.  Of course Agent Farrell is working for the bad guys, because in a story like this, a character like her does – and of course she falls in love with Cooper and betrays her bosses for him.  None of this stuff is even really foreshadowed (except that Farrell dyes her hair – can’t trust those unnatural redheads!) but we still know it’s coming because we’ve seen the same shit in fifty other movies. The bad guy wants to cleanse the world so it can be made anew?  Been there. The movie wallows in misogyny but in all the same old ways, so I’ve got nothing new to say about it.

Throughout the film people talk about the ‘legendary Super Dragon’ but I don’t think we ever get a reason why Cooper’s so great.  Bond films begin with a breathtaking action setpiece to show us that our hero has nifty gadgets and balls of steel – Secret Agent Super Dragon begins with Cooper playing dead by the pool.  His most remarkable ability seems to be holding his breath for a really long time, and his gadgeteer, the kleptomaniacal Babyface, makes most of his gadgets out of literal toys.  I think this might be a joke about the obvious miniatures some of these movies use… but I’m not sure.  All I’m sure of is when that dinosaur waddled into the room I was halfway expecting it to demand the return of the Golden Ninja Warrior.

About the only place where the movie seems to accidentally brush by a real statement is in a moment that resembles a historical reference.  Cooper has infiltrated a conspiracy meeting (by wearing a half-mask that leaves his rather distinctive chin fully visible) at which the Big Bad, Mr. Lamas, is delivering an expository monologue: their factory in India is in full production of the drug, which will be shipped to America in phony Ming vases and bring the world to its knees!  If you’re going to talk about drugs making and breaking empires, China and India are where it happened.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the East India Company fostered opium addiction in China because they wanted cheap tea and because the British government had vague plans, which never came anywhere close to fruition, to add China to their empire.  The opium to feed this addiction was grown in India, often by farmers who would rather have been growing actual food but owed too much money to the EIC. This all led to the Opium Wars and a lot of other unpleasantness in which the British Empire came out looking even more like assholes than they usually did.  In a story about conquering the world through drug addiction, then, having the drugs created in India and slipped into something Chinese looks like a reference to history repeating itself.

It may also mean something else.  Secret Agent Super Dragon is relentlessly white, set mostly in a city in northwestern Europe, where conspiracies of middle-aged white guys drink booze and decide the fate of nations.  The actual work that makes this possible, however, is being done by people of colour in the east.  Not only does this seem to reference how western nations use other countries as battlegrounds and bargaining chips in their own power struggles, it can also serve as a reminder of something we frequently forget: a lot of what makes our comfortable lives possible comes from other countries, made by people who could never afford to buy it.  My eyeglasses, the sweater I’m wearing, and the chair I’m sitting on were all made in China.  Our entire economy depends on cheap foreign labor, and I wonder sometimes how much longer that can last before the whole thing falls apart.

Is any of this the movie’s intentional theme or message?  I doubt it. The historical reference seems to be just a ‘hey, look how clever we are!’ moment and the rest probably goes no deeper than ‘oh, no, our children are doing drugs!’, which has been on the verge of ending civilization since at least the thirties.  Secret Agent Super Dragon is just a dumb trashy Eurospy movie, and not even a very good one.  I don’t hate it, but mostly because it’s not worth that kind of effort.  The MST3K treatment renders it infinitely more enjoyable, especially when Tom and Crow do Jazz.

Agent Cooper was played by actor Ray Danton, who died in 1992, a year before the episode aired.  Probably all for the best.  I doubt he’d have been into all those jokes about how his character is perfectly smooth.

[kaylahill94]

Save A Sexless Marriage Fabulous Diy Ideas

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[shaizstern]

Article from NYT: To Build Emotional Strength, Expand Your Brain

The quest to understand something new is a key factor to building the resilience necessary to weather setbacks and navigate life’s volatility.

Monika Aichele

By Kerry Hannon

This article is part of a series on resilience in troubled times — what we can learn about it from history and personal experiences.

Eight years ago, while working as an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor in Cleveland, Gayle Williams-Byers was in the throes of a serial killer case when she decided to take horseback-riding lessons.

This summer, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Williams-Byers, 46, now a South Euclid Municipal Court judge, started free online classes in American Sign Language offered by Gallaudet University in Washington. She also took a webinar in labor trafficking. In recent years, she has enrolled in a variety of classes and workshops, including one on how to get a commercial driver’s license — not something she plans to act on any time soon.

“I don’t have a reason to use these things in my professional life, but learning helps me to focus better,” Ms. Williams-Byers said. “It’s also something that I have some control over. I take classes in subjects I am just wildly interested in learning about it. When I expand my brain, my wingspan is greater. It lets you get a little higher, to get above the headwinds.”

Ms. Williams-Byers’ quest to understand something new is an example of what many career coaches, authors and experts view as a key factor to building the resilience necessary to weather setbacks and navigate life’s volatility.

The theory: To deal effectively with change, it helps to be engaged in changing yourself. “One of the things that makes us resilient is that when we see a challenge, and when we face a struggle, we engage with it, rather than shut down,” said Simon Sinek, author of “The Infinite Game” and “Start With Why.”

“What I have learned from my career is that something I learned over here helps me over there,” he said. “Even if I don’t know that is happening, any kind of learning benefits all aspects of life.”

Embrace Your Passions

Mr. Sinek, for instance, is a dance lover. “My dancer friends kept telling me I should take classes, and it would help me and my love of the medium. I begrudgingly agreed, and I took some basic ballet classes.”

Even though it was for personal enrichment, those classes helped his developing work as a public speaker. “My posture is much better,” he said. “I move more effortlessly across the stage from my hips, instead of my shoulders.”

When you’re in the process of learning, your viewpoint changes, and you spot connections that you never noticed before. “Resilience is about being adaptable in a variety of different circumstances,” said Dorie Clark, who teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and is the author of “Reinventing You.”

“It is a combination of being able to pick yourself up when there are setbacks, but also it is about having the kind of cross-training necessary to be flexible in an uncertain world where we don’t know what is around the corner,” Ms. Clark said.

Learning Requires Determination

This all may require pushing yourself — not the easiest of tasks in times of crisis. “If they are relatively senior professionals, it has been years, or decades, since they have not been good at something, and it can be enormously psychologically stressful to have to face that,” Ms. Clark said. “Inevitably, when you are in the early stages of learning something you haven’t done before, you are probably going to be bad at it — at least not very good.”

Two years ago, Ms. Clark entered a program to train as a musical theater lyricist. “People in this program have master’s degrees in musical theater writing,” she said. “At first, having to surround myself with people who truly had exponentially more expertise was humiliating on a regular basis, but it was invigorating and inspiring.”

Stay Curious

Being resilient has a lot to do with perspective. “People who commit themselves to a life of learning show up with curiosity,” Mr. Sinek said. “They show up with interest. They show up with a student’s mind-set. You don’t have to be curious about everything. You have to be curious about some things.”

Those who routinely and consciously engage in learning become more confident about their ability to figure things out once a crisis hits, according to Beverly Jones, an executive career coach and author of “Think Like an Entrepreneur, Act Like A CEO.” “Each time they hit a bump, they spend less time lamenting and quickly turn to determining what they must learn in order to climb out of the hole,” she said.

Moreover, learners develop a more optimistic mind-set, which helps them jump into action, according to Ms. Jones. “In part, this is because each time you become aware of learning something new it feels like a victory,” Ms. Jones said. “You maintain the positivity that is a key to resilience.”

Tailor Your Learning

An important element to remember is that people learn in different ways, Mr. Sinek said. “I can’t read a book a week. I learn by having conversations. I like talking to people who know more than me about any particular subject. I love peppering them with questions. And I love trying to say back in my own words what I think they are telling me to see if I understand it.”

Right now, with his speaking engagements on hold, Mr. Sinek is studying kintsugi, the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with epoxy and a painted gold solution, which highlights the breaks. The concept: By accepting blemishes and flaws, you can produce an even sturdier, more striking, piece of art. On a deeper level, it functions as a symbol of the human experience.

For one thing, it requires patience. “It turns out the epoxy dries slowly,” Mr. Sinek said. “If you do all the pieces at once, it all just falls apart again. I want to be done with my project and move on to the next. I can’t. I have to stick one piece and hold it for an uncomfortable amount of time and then let sit for 24 hours.”

There are myriad paths to learning from taking part in a free online class to reading a nonfiction book to watching a documentary to a complete immersion in a grade-free educational experience.

Chip Conley, 59, for example, founded the Modern Elder Academy, in Baja, Mexico, a group dedicated to midlife learning.

The academy’s core curriculum is based on helping people move from a fixed to a growth mind-set in midlife and beyond, according to Mr. Conley. “Those with a fixed mind-set define success as winning, which becomes problematic when they face difficult circumstances,” he said. “Those with a growth mind-set define success as learning. They’re not trying to prove themselves, but instead improve themselves, so they get less focused on the results and more focused on the journey.”

At the academy, options include collaborative bread baking, improv comedy, learning how to surf or do yoga for the first time and penning a poem to offer to your cohort.

Academic and Online Options

There are also educational opportunities for nontraditional students at some top universities through academic or yearlong programs for executives and other professionals. Students can audit classes, attend lectures, and work on projects with graduate and undergraduate students.

These include the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute, Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, the University of Notre Dame’s Inspired Leadership Initiative, the University of Minnesota’s Advanced Careers Initiative, and the University of Texas at Austin, which offers the Tower Fellows Program.

Three years ago, Glenn Lowenstein, 60, was ready for a new challenge. The Houston resident had sold Lionstone Investments, the real estate investment company he founded in 2001, to Ameriprise. “It was a hard decision,” he said. “The business had been my dream, and then I lived the reality of it for 20 years, and all of a sudden there was a void. It was scary. When there is nothing in front of you, that’s where the resiliency has to come in.”

His solution was to return to campus. Two years ago, he was a Towers fellow. “You have to put yourself out there in an environment you have not been in before,” he said. “It’s a combination of confidence in yourself, enjoyment in exploration and going toward your fear.”

As a fellow, Mr. Lowenstein, for example, enrolled in an advanced graduate philosophy seminar. “It was way above my head,” he said. “I would try my hardest to follow every single word of the conversation. It was fascinating to me the way the graduate students articulated their arguments. It was super esoteric stuff, but I would walk out and be ‘wow, I am learning a new way to communicate here.’”

The best part, though, was his time on campus: “It was so cool to be in an environment where I wasn’t the expert,” he said. “I wasn’t the person relied on to know everything, so I could sit back and enjoy the process of learning, and that’s positive energy. My aim is to keep my mind and body and spirit healthy. I don’t think you can do that without learning.”

For those who can’t afford the time or money required for a high-level fellowship or university program, there are myriad paths to learning. Free or reasonably priced online classes are available through sites like Coursera, EdX, The Great Courses, LinkedIn Learning, MasterClass, Skillshare, TED Talks and Udemy.

Other options (online these days) include adult education centers, local libraries, community colleges and universities, and Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes. One Day University, a subscription service ($7.95 a month), offers five livestreaming lectures a week and recorded talks.

For Ms. Williams-Byers, learning is “that extra oomph to turn off the crazy in life and pour yourself into something that is fantastic that you can benefit from,” she said.

That explains her decision to take up a new sport during a particularly difficult case. “I had dealt with murder cases before, but this was unsettling,” she said. “I could feel myself disconnecting from the case because of the emotional drain. The hourlong lessons refocused my mind, so I could bounce back when I returned to the office.”

Original Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/health/resilience-learning-building-skills.html

[thewrosper]

Netflix's popular reality show Too Hot to Handle is strangely relevant in the times of COVID-19

It’s not very often that you can draw parallels between what you are watching and what’s happening around you in real life. You can expect to find a rare thought-provoking film and at times even a series that reflects the spirit of the times but you’d never expect trashcan reality TV to offer a glimpse into the soul of humanity. But we are not living the ‘normal’ times and Netflix’s Too Hot To Handle perhaps coincidentally says a lot about our current quarantined lives. Ten undeniably hot young women and men, isolated on a beautiful tropical island for ‘what they think is the most exotic summer of their lives’ is hardly a groundbreaking premise for a reality show. The men all sport a minimum of six packs while the women’s wardrobe almost exclusively features only string bikinis. Introductory interviews have the men boasting about their sexual prowess. Brawny Sharron, from New Jersey, US, introduced himself as a feminist studying ‘Woman and Gender Studies at college’ which gives him the ‘blueprint to how to pick up women’ while the women seem to go out of their way to label themselves as airheads. “I’m not the brightest spark in the book,” Chloe, from London, happily shares. But just when you start thinking this is just another dating show, Too Hot To Handle throws a curve ball. It’s only about 12-hours after their arrival that Lana, a humourless, omnipresent AI, informs the contestants that sex is off the menu for this group of ‘hottest, horniest commitment-phobic swipesters’. Not only is sex forbidden, they are also banned from kissing, fondling or any other heavy petting and even masturbating. If they abstain, they stand to win a $100,000 prize and any rule breaking would lead to deductions. Expectantly, they are not pleased. “Sorry that we’re hot as f**k and we want to tear each other apart like a roast chicken,” exclaims the 22-year-old Australian Harry. The show presents itself as a sociological experiment. “The question is,” says the disembodied narrator (voiced by American comedian Desiree Burch), “in a world without sex, will they form deeper and more meaningful connections?” Hearing this, a single girlfriend who I was watching this show with over a Zoom hangout (don’t judge!) exclaimed dramatically, “I feel personally attacked.” She, along with singles around the world, has had to give up sexual contact of any kind much like the contestants on Too Hot To Handle. Just days before the lockdown, my friend (let’s call her Priyanka) had right-swiped someone. They were supposed to be meeting for a drink on the day that the janta curfew was announced. “That never happened and now we chat every other day. Even before we meet for the first time I am getting to know him better than I could have in the past,” Priyanka admitted. There is no way that Netflix could have known that we’d be watching the show under these circumstances but I can’t think of a more relatable show on any platform right now. Even if you are self-isolating with your significant other or family right now, Too Hot To Handle still feels very real. While our circumstances are very different from the contestants isolating at a plush Mexican resort, the frustration of being denied things we considered ‘normal’ in our everyday lives is common to both. For the contestants, the struggle is to ‘keep it in their pants’, while some of us are craving hot wings with a blue cheese dip on the side and a gigantic margarita. Po-tay-to Po-tah-to. Freud saw 'deprivation’ as a motivating force for ‘transference’ or redirecting your feelings from one thing to another. While Too Hot To Handle doesn’t posture as something cerebral, the contestants are put through a series of New Age-y workshops that theoretically lead to personal growth and divert their attention from what they are being denied. In one session, the men transform themselves into ‘heart warriors’ by rubbing mud onto each other that ends with them talking about their toxic traits and bear hugs. The women participate in ‘yoni puja’ that entailed inspecting their vaginas with handheld mirrors and then painting their interpretation of them. The artistic proficiency that Canadian hottie Francesca displayed with her Pussy Cat painting is the same level I am at currently. But I have decided that by the end of this lockdown, I will grow an artistic bone. And, I am not the only one distracting myself from thoughts of impending doom by learning a new skill and bettering myself. Then there is the rule breaking. All of us are staying in isolation to help flatten the curve, so hospitals in our cities don’t get overwhelmed. How effectively we contain the virus’ spread is hugely dependent on how we as a society think of the larger good rather than the singular. We have to look out for each other at this time. The singles on the show aren’t living in the fear of a deadly virus but they have to work as a cohesive unit if they want to win that pot of money at the end of this month-long non-orgy. While the stakes might seemingly be lower on the show, it is still quite amusing to watch this fantasy reality created for television, more so because of the intersect with our current reality. I didn’t set out to watch this show for lessons in sociology or psychology because it should be entertaining enough to just watch a bunch of Greek gods and goddesses throw tantrums on camera when they are deprived of the one thing they’ve always gotten so easily before. It’s perhaps a sign of the times that nothing captures the cultural zeitgeist of 2020 better than what’s meant to be a piece of trashy television. Read the full article

[lauraramargosian]

How the FRIENDS TV show influenced our friendship choices and more!

How the FRIENDS tv show influenced our friendship choices and more!

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Don’t you wish you had a masseuse like @ikeausa?

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Jun 20, 2018 at 9:32am PDT

FRIENDS TV SHOW – MORE THAN JUST A SHOW

Memories are captured by our brains and stored for a lifetime, good and bad. For example, the Friends tv-series gave us so many positive episodes and episodes with hardships.

Isn’t it true, it’s better to have positive memories than negative flashbacks into our past life?

The Friends tv-series taught us that memories are made up of time, the one thing we don’t get back in life is time, so, make the best of your time.

Despite the fact life throws some pretty intense trials our way, we should always use our time to help others.

In doing so, there is no room for failure in being your happiest. It’s proven when you surround yourself with good people your values are set.

In short, this means you know what you deserve and those types of friends will also be around for you when times are hard.

The quote “I would rather have a handful of best friends than just one,” is true. Why put all your eggs in one basket?

Having a handful of wonderful friends reminds me of the show FRIENDS but isn’t that the ideal group right there?

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Joey makes it too easy for thieves.

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Jul 22, 2019 at 3:53pm PDT

What’s the connection in specific?

Despite Ross and Rachels falling in love, out of love or “taking a break.”

Despite Joey and Chandler’s fighting of girls or a bracelet, they still talked about the problem, even if it was through a box.

Despite Chandler and Monica falling in love regardless of Chandler’s relationship fears with commitment, they still talked about the problem. They didn’t rush their marriage and even met in the middle when it came to spending money on their wedding (although, we all know it was totally Monica’s thunderous day).

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This is not good for his rage, Joey!

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Jun 14, 2019 at 9:44am PDT

Despite Joey and Rachel having a fling of confusion. Ross was upset but again, they still talked out the problem.

Despite Phoebe’s pagan like persona, they still loved her for who she was because she was tough, yet she would give the shirt off her back in a heartbeat (I mean, she even made Monica a whole new frame, lol).

In turn, we learned to lean on one another and hopefully how to love new people who come into our lives.

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Unforgettable.

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Sep 5, 2018 at 9:08am PDT

Let’s take a deeper dive into a specific memorable episode

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When you can’t keep it together! #bloopers

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Jun 12, 2018 at 9:55am PDT

Remember the episode where Pheobeand Monica “cut out,” friends as they began to go through college?

It was called ‘The One with Ross’s Tan’ which is the third episode of the tenth season of Friends (which aired on October 9, 2003).

Further, Phoebe and Monica’s old roommate, Amanda, who is hands down a “New Yorker,” from Yonkers but this time, she’s picked up a British accent and very ego-centric. Both Monica and Phoebe attempt to avoid Amanda without hurting her feelings.

With this in mind, it’s safe to say the two friends didn’t want toxic in their life. Even so, they were respectful and loving merely by trying not to hurt her feelings.

Honestly, those two (if it was reality) would be the best people in the world to have as a friend.

Unfortunately, Amanda’s visit also sparked a backstory for Phoebe and Monica.

In an older episode that is flashed back too, Phoebe was becoming annoyed with how “controlling and compulsive” she behaved.

Next, the episode expanded on other problems they went through while living together in Monica’s apartment.

Phoebe explains to Monica that even though she was a little compulsive, she realized that Monica was truly a nice person and she is glad she changed her mind about cutting Monica out of her life.

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Tag your nap partner!

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Apr 20, 2018 at 9:07am PDT

What does that teach us exactly?

This teaches us not to judge too harshly and too soon. It means that we give people the benefit of the doubt until we have a real mature reason to move on in life.

FRIENDS is a tv show that has endless relatable episodes but each of them shows values, love, struggle, lust, pain, and of course, comedy.

Christina Grimmie continues to change the world from heaven!

The writers and creators David Crane, Marta Kauffman, Scott Silveri, Andrew Reich, Alexa Junge, Jeff Greenstein, and Jeff Strauss are to thank. The talent they put into their writing translated to the television like magic.

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That’s a wrap on our preview of the #FRIENDS25 Boston Pop-Up. Head to the link in our bio to get tickets now through Jan 5. NOTE: No lobsters were harmed in the creation of this adorable photo. This lobster is our lobster.

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Nov 21, 2019 at 1:00pm PST

Although, and I can’t believe this, there are still people out there who have not watched the show.

For the love of all things living, do it.

Just as important, laughter is the best medicine when you’re feeling down. The show truly gives a lot of comedy and relatable content.

Most of all, it gives a pretty good picture of life, having to work, make ends meet and still maintain relationships with others.

Todays Generation and their phones

They aren’t tied to their phones all day every day (yes times have changed).

But that doesn’t change the fact that we spend more time with our phones than actually hanging out with our own family and friends.

Did you know FRIENDS tv show now has a LIVE musical that can be seen in Las Vegas, NV?

Friends tv series live musical

Yes, you read that right, Friends tv-series does have a LIVE musical!

Now, this is your chance to get out, put your phone away and create some new memories with your family.

First, make sure you watch the show, you’ll feel the emotions of the actors more so during the musical.

90 Day fiancé: Happily Ever after is real talk.

Second, enjoy yourself, life is too short to spend worrying over little issues.

Be thankful for the small things and celebrate them, yes including your big 30!

Lastly, believe in yourself as well as others, love endlessly and never give up.

Memories are forever, the flashbacks in episodes are a testament to that truth.

Oh, and here’s a fan favorite moment!

Be sure to sound off in the comments, let us know what your favorite scene was in the whole Friends tv-series and be sure to subscribe to our PCG magazine newsletter.

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When you take the lie too far.

A post shared by Friends (@friends) on Mar 14, 2018 at 9:23am PDT

Blessed be!

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Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

Laurara Monique is known by various celebrities as the youngest and kindest celebrity blogger. PCG has been described as a "celebrity safe zone."

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What an amazing time at Wentworth Con! Super thankful to have covered the event! Stay tuned for our exclusive! These videos and pics are sure to make you smile and laugh. #WentworthCon

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Truth!!!!

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Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

Ellen DeGeneres, you are a wonderful soul. Deserved!!!! #EllenDeGeneres #TheCarolBurnettAward #Charities #positive #celebritynews

Ellen DeGeneres to receive The Carol Burnett Award in 2020!

Ellen DeGeneres to receive The Carol Burnett Award in 2020! ELLEN’S GAME OF GAMES — “Say Whaat Women Want” Episode 209 — Pictured: Ellen DeGeneres — (Photo by: M…

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Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique was live.

Fortnite with this girl who has a little gamer...rage... cough..

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Fortnite grind time.

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Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

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Haha, RIP 3.2% beer.

Budweiser Clydesdales are coming to Utah to hold ‘funeral’ for 3.2% beer

SALT LAKE CITY — Budweiser is making a special trip to Utah with its iconic Clydesdale horses this week to celebrate the upcoming change in beer laws. The company is hosting a "spooky Halloween funeral" for 3.2 percent beer Wednesday night as the state prepares to start selling 5 percent alcohol-b...

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[lavalamplana]

Power Plays

I don’t feel as angry anymore. I am still upset but I am more disappointed than anything. 

On a self-assessment for my therapy packet I had to write down my worst fear. I had put failure, but I don’t really think that’s the case. I think failure is one of my many valid fears, but not the worst one. 

I believe my worst fear is to lose control of myself. 

It’s different when I do it to myself, because I understand going into it that it would be part of the trade off. One bad decision leads to a bad consequence. I know this and I consciously made the decision to choose to do the bad choice. This simply put, is a classic example of my self destructive behavior.

That isn’t what I mean though. 

When I talk about fear of losing control of myself, I’m talking about someone else taking my autonomy, my independence. My freedom as a woman and a human being. To have all of your options stripped from you and to then be told there is only one singular path left to go. That is what I am terrified of. When someone else strips away my power and control over my life and my own goals, it kills me. Especially when these displays of power have stagnant stipulations and conditions, that if not met, will earn only consequence, punishment, and abandonment. 

Power plays in close relationships confuse me. I am trying to do all of the right things, in fact I have. But it’s not enough, it never is. I know I am not normal, I understand that but I refuse to let other people’s opinion and grand plans for my life shape my life. My life is my own and everyone seems to think they can control it better than I. If they could only get inside my head, they could finally understand. 

I feel betrayed and I feel like I lost my hope. 

At this point I understand my mental health is not where it needs to be. I am working hard at a mental institution to better my mental health that I voluntarily committed myself to. They must all think I’m so weak. I am not weak. I am very strong. Do I have weak moments, absolutely, I understand that I am not perfect. They think I’m a ticking time bomb, their eyes all filled with apologetic looks of pity. I want none of it. I said I needed help and I got it. I expected there to be more celebration, but it seems that people want me to be sicker than I actually am. 

They want THEIR way for me or THEY just simply don’t want to deal with me. I never asked anyone to carry my problems. My problems are mine and mine alone and I am dealing with them by myself one step at a time. I am unsuccessful because I am running on everyone else’s plan for my life. I know they love me, they want to pick what they think is best for me. 

Interestingly enough, absolutely nobody has yet to ask me what I would like to do with my life. 

I’m sick of being under my parents thumb, I love my dad and yes they provide enormously for me financially, without them I would have nothing. But to yank it all out from under me so I pick your path.... 

You take my power. 

You take my control. 

You have no idea the myriad of emotions you make me feel. You put me in my deepest place in my soul and sink me deeper. Love me all you want, but your love is beginning to feel conditional and suffocating. 

I feel betrayed by my friends. I knew they would speak to my parents but they were to do so to help me. They saw me when I was there, everything I did they did too, yet now I’m blackballed out because I asked for help. They couldn’t even give me a heads up. They don’t want me back and it pains me. It hurts really bad. We are all friends and here I am the outlier. They don’t want me to come back. 

I went away to work hard on myself so I could come back and be better. They won’t even give me the chance, no one will give me the chance. 

How was I supposed to know I would have a relapse in depression. How was I supposed to know my rapist would approach me on two separate occasions. How am I supposed to work so hard, take my medicine, see my doctor, pass the classes, and still not get into business school. How was I supposed to know these things would set me off. I am still learning my illness but I cannot sit aside and let life pass me by. 

My mental illness is winning and everyone who I thought was supposed to be in my support group is just sitting back and letting it happen. They are taking away my power to choose how I want to live my life and in effect letting my mental illness beat me. 

Only I can beat this. 

None of them can live in my head and face my battles. All they're doing is making the mental illness stronger and an even bigger bully than it was before. I do not know what to say to any of them. I was very hurt before and so angry. Now I just feel confused because I don’t know who I want on my team and I can’t tell who actually wants to be a team player. Right now they all seem self righteous. I’m older, I'm wiser, I've struggled like you before and I know what you need to do. 

Yeah well I already tried that and it got me right back to square one if not worse. 

I made the decision to help myself no one else did. I made the decision to let people in who I trusted, hoping they would support me and my decision, not derail them. I did their way, it worked until it didn’t. 

I want my autonomy back. I haven't had it in more than a year and it’s driven me to death. Only I can save myself so only I will save myself. I’m so sick and tired of everyone thinking they know what’s best for me..how? 

I am strong. 

I am intelligent. 

I will be the captain of my own ship. 

This is my life and my journey, my mental illness. I will decide how I want to fight it. The one thing I need in my life to get better is to take back my power, take back my control over my own life. They just want to take it away from me. They are making me worse. They are driving me apart from them. I have done all of what was asked of me and they still want more. 

I will stop this now. This is MY life. 

[kpopreactionstoruinyourlife]

Song Girl - Part 12 - Sungjin Fan Fiction

Song Girl Masterlist

Part 12 - March 2014

Summary: White Day in South Korea.

“Someone explain to me why I have to be involved in this.” Jae said standing in the corner of the kitchen. In front of him Sungjin was standing over the oven, desperately looking at a recipe while Brian looked through the shopping bags on the table. Wonpil and Junhyeok were the lucky ones if you asked Jae - they were both out.

“She gave you chocolates on Valentines day, now we return the favor.” Sungjin explained, throwing a marshmellow at Jae’s head.

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” Jae said, crossing his arms to resist pelting Sungjin with more marshmallows.

“White Day.” Sungjin said, more than slightly frazzled and stressed.

“What the hell is White Day?” Jae said looking at Brian.

“You know, it’s surprising you don’t know since you’ve lived here for years.” Brian said looking up from the shopping bags.

“So what is White Day?” Jae asked again.

“So on Valentine’s Day, girls give guys candy and chocolates, etc. On White Day, guys return the favor, usually upping the value two fold.”

“Is that like you look super stressed? You’re making chocolate?” Jae asked, turning back to Sungjin.

“I want to do something special for her.” Sungjin said in a low voice, a blush creeping into his cheeks.

“Aya, you’re impossible.” Jae said shaking his head.

“Please tell me you’re not tempering it.” Brian said, his brow furrowed with worry.

“I thought I would?” Sungjin said.

“Ok Google says guys usually give girls cookies and marshmallows.” Jae said, after checking his phone.

“Is that Japan or Korea?” Sungjin asked, biting his lip. Cookies would be easier.

“Doesn’t say, can’t we do cookies? I know how to do cookies.” Jae said.

“Me too, but we don’t have the stuff for cookies.” Brian sighed.

“There’s a convenience store a block away.” Jae said.

“I don’t know if we have time to go to the store,” Sungjin replied.

“Ok if we don’t have time to go to a store, you don’t have time to temper chocolate.” Jae said getting his jacket. “What about rice krispie treats? I saw a recipe for pink ones with chocolate and heart sprinkles.”

“Does she like Rice Krispie treats?” Sungjin asked. Jae gave him a surprised look.

“I’ve seen her eat half a pan of them in an hour.” Jae said and Sungjin sighed. He wasn’t thrilled that in some ways Jae still knew El better than he did.

“Fine, just come back soon.” Sungjin said, working with Brian to pick up his unsuccessful attempt at chocolate.

“Wasn’t El unable to make chocolate, too?” Brian said pulling out the sprinkles and red sugar and food dye they’d gotten earlier.

“Yes, but I had the two of you to help me.” Sungjin said dejectedly.

“Why are you getting so beat up over this?” Brian asked, sitting at the table.

“El’s research has shifted to discuss the honeymoon phase.” Sungjin said sitting across from Brian, who was just looking at him steadily.

“Ok,” Brian replied evenly.

“Apparently the honeymoon phase only lasts about three months. We’ve been together for four months.” Sungjin said staring at his hands.

“And what? Do you feel any differently about her?” Brian asked.

“No, but things are going to be different since the honeymoon phase is over, right?”

“Yeah, well, the honeymoon phase has always seemed so shallow to me.” Brian said with a shrug.

“Huh?”

“That’s when you’re just in bliss but so ignorant, after it, sure sometimes all the flaws come out and a couple breaks up, or, if you’re lucky, you get into a more committed and deeper relationship. The way to stay together is to not break up.”

“What if she finds flaws in me?” He whispered. He couldn’t even temper chocolate for her on White Day. As training was picking up, he could barely see her once a week. He wasn’t even half as smart as she was. She was getting more stressed and testy with the approaching end of the semester and there wasn’t anything he could do about that. That was why he had been so desperate to do White Day right.

“Have you found flaws in her?”

She’s smarter than me, but she’s helped me learn more because of it. She’s not completely Korean, but only my parents will really care about that. She’ll have to go back to the US, but that’s not a flaw with her as a person. She struggles with sex, but that’s not her fault and we’re working on it.

“Nothing deal-breaking.” Sungjin finally answered.

“Are you still happy with her?”

“Yes,”

“Is she still happy with you?”

“I think so?” “Ok, I know she is.” Brian said with a small smile.

“Why?”

“Ask her, she’ll tell you.”

“Why did she tell you and not me?”

“She didn’t tell me, I saw it. Then I told her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” “It’ll be better coming from her.” He said standing up as Jae returned.

“Ok let’s Krispie this bitch.” Jae said dropping more bags onto the table.

Ninety minutes later, they had made a passable batch of treats, and Sungjin had wrapped up another mix CD and was heading to her apartment.

She let him in and immediately wrapped her arms around his waist, sinking against him.

“Hey El, you ok?” He asked, reaching over to put the treats down before he wrapped his own arms over her shoulders.

“You didn’t bring chocolate ice cream per chance, did you?” She asked.

“No, what’s going on?” He asked, but she hadn’t moved and was still holding him.

“Just...it’s...I’m just...just let me stay like this.” She said, holding him tighter.

“You can tell me what’s going on.” He said, combing his fingers through her hair.

“Just a lot of stuff happening at once…” She sighed, pressing her face into his chest.

“Just tell me and maybe I can help.” He said.

She let him go. “You can’t help, you are completely unable to help. I’m even completely unable to help or do anything.” She said stepping away and moving through her apartment restlessly.

“Come on, how do you know that?” He said watching her move through her space without moving himself. That was the closest she’d ever come to rejecting him. The most inadequate she’d ever made him feel.

“You’re not a neurosurgeon, nor are you in the US, and neither am I, and I can’t even go back to be there, you know? And I hate hospitals, so I don’t completely want to go either, and I hate myself for that.” She said, talking quickly, English words slipping into her rapid Korean.

“I’m lost, and please speak Korean if you want me to keep up with this.” He said and she stopped, taking a breath. And he finally saw how defeated, deflated she looked. Her eyes were sunken with dark circles, puffy and red, and her clothes weren’t fitting properly. Her hair was in a fishtail braid that was coming apart.

“My godmother, my mom’s closest friend from graduate school, went to the hospital with an aneurysm the size of a grape in her frontal lobe.” She said and she shook with tears she was determined not to let fall, not with him, not during their precious time together.

“What is that?” He asked and she sighed, sinking into the couch.

“One of the blood vessels in her brain is enlarged, and not functioning, and she’s gone into emergency surgery. Most people just die from this, before it’s found, so that’s a good thing but her frontal lobe is her personality. So even if she survives, it’s unlikely she’ll be the same. And she half raised me and this is stuff I know about, stuff I can’t be ignorant about.” She said putting her face in her hands.

“If you want to go to be with everyone, I’ll take you to the airport.” He said and she sighed, shaking her head vehemently.

“No, we’re running trials this week and I’m still the only one of the research team besides my professors that’s fluent in Korean.” She said as tears trickled out. She cursed herself for crying and ruining their white day.

“It’s going to be ok.” He said sitting next to her.

“I wish I could be so sure.” She sighed while he rubbed her back.

“At least they found it, right?” He said in the heavy, strained silence.

“Yeah, but she’s already been in surgery for hours…” She said reaching and checking her phone again. She turned back to him, rolling her shoulder to get him to stop touching her. Her eyes were dark, more feral and restless, frustrated than he’d known them to be.

He’d been about to snap at her for rejecting him, even just his just his touch, when she took a breath and turned around, closing her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m wrongfully taking my frustration and stress out on you, and it’s completely unfair but I almost can’t help it, which is a crap excuse and I hate myself for it, but I think I’m just in a push people away kind of mood. And the last thing I want to do is push you away and I just... I’m sorry I’m in such a bitchy mood.”

He had to marvel at her self-awareness. He all too often felt like he could only communicate his feelings with his hands or with music, not with words while she relied on words more than anything else.

“At least now I know it’s not personal.” He said and she gave a wry laugh.

“I’m going to wash my face and change, maybe that will snap me out of this…” She said getting up and letting her hair down, redoing the braid. Before she went into the bathroom she turned back and kissed his forehead.

“So I’m thinking you’d rather just order take out than go out, huh?” He called as she went into the bathroom.

“Yeah, do you mind? If we go out I might just snap at some poor grandma.” “Really?”

“Oh yeah, you haven’t seed my pissy DC native side yet.”

“But you’ll snap at me if I’m the only one around.” “No, not really. I like you too much for that.” She replied. When she returned, she looked refreshed and handed him some take out menus while she took off her hoodie and put on her favorite pink sweater and leggings that made her butt look good.

She let out a breath, feeling clearer.

“Ok, I would like to apologize again for being bitchy.” She said when she returned to the couch with him. She felt a lot more like herself, less likely to lash out.

“You know you can tell me when stuff is going on.” He said as she leaned against him to study the menus.

“You were busy training and I was also busy in work, and I didn’t want to distract you from that and I didn’t know everything that was going on with Gabriella.” She said without moving.

“This isn’t something you have to do alone, you know. I’m here for you. Did you tell Jae or Brian?” He said, hating how petty he sounded.

“Oh no, I did tell Amanda.” She said wrapping her arms in his. “Are you ok?”

“I just, I want you to rely on me, with anything and everything.” He said and she moved to look into his eyes. She studied him for a moment. He was touchier than normal, just like she was. Part of her wanted to attribute it to the weather. It had a been a dull and gloomy day in the city.

“What’s really going on?” She asked, keeping her eyes locked on his.

“Isn't our honeymoon phase over?” He asked and she pressed her nose into his shoulder.

“It was bound to end, are you planning on leaving just because things aren't blissful anymore?” She asked, a teasing glint in her eyes.

“No, are you?” He asked and she shook her head.

“But I think I might take my first break to go to the US, see my parents and Gabriella.” She said as his hand found hers, interlocking their fingers.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“I think, with everything that's happened, it’s best if you stay here and work on your training.”

“What about seeing where you grew up and meeting your parents?” He asked, not wanting to admit he was pouting.

“I'd prefer you meet my parents for the first time in person.” She whispered.

“Then let me come with you.”

“I want you to put your training first.” She said firmly. He was startled.

“Call me whenever you want while you're over there.” He said and she nodded.

“Would FaceTime be ok? So I don't have to make a real international call?”

“Yeah, that's fine. But if your parents ever come here, I want to meet them.” He said poking her arm.

“Deal, so what do you want to order?” She asked turning back to the menus.

“White Day so your pick.” He said and she got a mischievous smile.

“Pizza?” She asked and he groaned.

“Yeah fine, if that's what you want.” He said nudging her shoulder with his.

“Would you prefer Chinese?” She asked and he nodded so they set to work ordering the food before settling back into her couch.

“Hey? What's this?” He asked picking up a notebook off her coffee table.

“Oh that's a journal and planner that I’ve been doing to de-stress. You can flip through it.” She said curling up against it while he opened it up.

She'd started it back in December, so many of the entries featured Sungjin.

“It's in English.” He said showing it to her.

“Do you need me to translate?”

“You're overestimating my English.”

“Ok, lay back then.” She said standing up to let him lay back against one of the arms of the couch. He obliged and she settled in with her back against his chest between his legs.

“I'm not hurting the family jewels or anything, right?” She asked, leaning back to look him in the eye. He shook his head and pressed a kiss into her cheek.

“I'm good, now what is this journal? I just recognize my name.” He said handing the book back to her. His hands fell to her arm, his fingers tracing circles onto her skin.

“Do you want me to translate every word?” She asked and he nodded, resting his cheek against her hair. They stayed like that until the food came but once they finished eating they returned to that position and continued.

“January 2014, Sungjin turned 21 and I met Got7! Unexpected benefits of this relationship. More importantly, I think I love him...but I don’t want to scare him away by telling him. This feel different, better, and I don’t want it to end.”

“You know I feel like there’s more words on the page than what you’re saying.” He whispered ducking his face into her neck. Lazily, he pressed gentle kisses against her skin.

“But it’s embarrassing.” Her voice was soft, like cashmere. She tilted her head, enticing him to keep kissing her neck.

He hummed pulling her closer. “Pretty please?”

“You’re distracting me.” She said and he hummed again, pressing his lips into her neck over and over.

“So should I stop?” He murmured.

“No, please don’t stop.” She said, her eyes fluttering closed as he kissed her most sensitive spot.

“If I don’t stop, you can’t stop.” He whispered  and she dropped her head back onto his shoulder, angling her neck for him.

“So mean…” She sighed reaching her hand back to tangle her fingers in his hair.

“Idle hands,” He whispered.

“Sungjin, no fair.” She sighed and he chuckled. He reached for the journal and moved it off her lap, pulling her ever closer.

“So what else would you like to do this white day?” He asked, his thumb tracing circles on her hip.

“Spend the rest of the evening with you.” She said twisting to kiss his cheek.

“Did you see what I made you?” He asked abruptly, remembering the Krispie treats that he’d stashed in the kitchen.

But before she could respond, her phone loudly vibrated on the table. She dived for it and he moved to get out of the way of her limbs.

“An update?” He said, rubbing her shoulder while she read the text.

“Yeah, uh, just let me call my mom.” She said getting off the couch and moving to pace in front of the time.

“Hey Ella, so you got the message. Gabby is out of surgery and I’m working on being able to go and visit her. Her daughter has gone out to be with her, the doctor said it’s looking good but she’s not going to wake up for a few hours.” Her mom said when she picked up.

Ella let out a long and low breath, steadying herself before she answered. “That’s really good, at least she made it through the surgery.”

“One of the top neurosurgeons in the country.” Her mom said, her voice shaking on the other end of the line.

“How are you holding up?”

“Oh honey I’m fine. Your father’s been really good through all of this.”

“I know, he loves you.”

“It’s White Day there, right?” Her mom said after a moment of silence between them.

“Yeah, it is there, too.” El replied.

“I know, but does that mean you’re with that boyfriend?” Her mom asked, her voice raising in pitch.

“Oh mom, now is so not the time for this.” Ella groaned, glancing at Sungjin, who was looking at her steadily. He was waiting for some kind of sign that she might need his support.

“Well forgive me, you haven’t told me much about him.”

“He’s very handsome, and he’s from Busan, he’s in a band.” Ella started and her mom clicked her tongue. Sungjin’s ears picked up at the mention of his hometown.

He pointed at himself when Ella glanced over at him again and she nodded.

“That’s what you told me before, but what’s he like?” Her mom asked. A blush swept over El’s face.

“He’s the best boyfriend.” She whispered.

“Oh that’s good, and he’s Korean.”

“Really...don’t be like that.” Ella sighed.

“We want to meet him.” Her mom said.

“What do you want me to do? I can’t drag him to the other side of the world.”

“Just...we want to meet him, but you can back to him now, I’ll keep you updated. I love you Ella.” She said and Ella found herself nodding.

“Love you, too, Mom.” Ella said before she hung up.

“Everything good?” Sungjin asked and she nodded, with a small smile.

“Gabby is out of surgery, and it looks good.” She said nodding again.

“Why were you talking about me?”

“Oh she was just looking for a distraction, I think. They do know about you so they are curious since they haven’t met you.” She said and he nodded.

“I would like to meet them.” He said standing up and taking her hand.

“I’m not making you go to the US with your training, so I’ll start trying to convince them to come here.” She said with a smile.

“Ok, thank you. Now can I show you what we made?” He said guiding her toward the kitchen.

“We?”

“I might have needed Jae and Brian’s help.” He confessed and she laughed.

“I got Amanda to help with the clean up after making the chocolate didn’t work out.”

“And Jae used some of his stashed puffed rice.”

“Yeah, I got a text from him saying that he better get a thank you for this.” She said laughing as he pulled out the tin-foil covered pan.

“Uh huh, he kind of saved the situation.” Sungjin said as he unwrapped them and revealed the chocolate topped puffed rice treats.

“I am impressed, thank you.” She said kissing his cheek.

“Well taste them first.” He said cutting into them and showing their pink insides.

“Oh wow! Really impressed!” She said as he cut one out and handed it to her.

“Taste.” He said and she did. Her eyes grew big as she smiled with a full mouth.

He started laughing as she eagerly swallowed.

“There really good!” She said before swallowing.

“Good, I was nervous. I’ve never had them.” He said as he cut himself a piece and bit into it. “Holy crap, they’re so sweet!” He said with a slightly disgusted expression.

“Do you not like sweet things?” She asked, laughing.

“I’ve never had stuff this sweet.” He said as he finished.

“I love Rice Krispie treats.” She said laughing, and he sighed.

“So sweet though!” He groaned, and she laughed.

“Don’t worry, I can finish a whole pan of them without any problem.” She said patting his shoulder.

“At least you like them.” He said and she laughed, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

“Thank you,” She said kissing his cheek one more time.

“At least we have a whole year until we have to attempt chocolate again.” He said  and she nodded, smiling.

Spending a year with him was one of the best things she’d ever heard of.