#crazy behavior to go post on people’s blogs when you could just scroll

[aquarri]

It said MANY of the tattoos are nautical NOT all. Let's see if you can explain what a pyramid has to do with the sea and sailing. I'll wait.

where is you’re reading comprehension. the implications of picking those tattoo designs from a sheet that is HEAVILY focused and centered around the nautical theme. dumbass. please get off the internet and touch grass.

[sillymoonboi]

⚠️WARNING:VENT⚠️

⚠️:Whipping, insulting, and hurting

I don’t normally post things like this regarding my life or household but i needed to cry on somebody’s shoulder or talk to someone about this, and my parents aren’t really a good choice for me… let me explain, So i was in my room scrolling through the discord chats and i got called by my mom to come try a new dish she made, i politely saying im sorry but im full , and then i got called by my dad this time and i said fuck it and went to see what they wanted , my dad was pressuring me to at least try but i again declined saying i already eaten or im already full and I can’t eat no more, My dad kept and kept pressing my limits saying to just try it or he’ll get mad, and i said my answer is “NO” he didn’t really take a liking to that word, and i feel very scared to say what he did next…. Even i was scared…. So he grabbed a towel near by him and i think you guys know what happened next…twice… and i was crying in pain and i finally took a small bite out of the food, i felt sick… even my mom was there to witness it… and instead of defending me….she blamed me and my dad saying we were crazy and embarrassing herself because the neighbors could hear us… she was more focused on her getting embarrassed than me getting hit… my dad let me go to the bathroom so i can calm down and i was sitting down on the toilet when my mom came in also crying she said “why you crying? This is your fault” and I couldn’t believe the words that came out of her mouth .. after i came back i wanted to go to sleep but my dad said No your staying here with me until you calm down and he made he sat with for like idk how long, he kept saying i was spoiled like my cousin who thinks they can do anything they want, and i asked him so you think hitting your child is normal ? He knew it wasn’t but he said it was the only way i can teach my lesson, my mom took my phone away, and i kept telling him to let me go back into my room, and he kept denying, he saw my mom cry and said look what you did to your mother, idk if they were guilt tripping me into thinking this was my fault over a fucking dish… he kept trying to hug me afterwards while i was with my mom talking to my brother on the phone, i told him what happened and what he did, and my brother said you know how dad is, your a good kid , saying that maybe if i just tasted it and just said its bad it wouldn’t have happened…., and he also kept blaming my behavior on my phone, like what the fuck the phone have to do with any of this???? Anyways he kept trying to hug me and i kept looking away feeling uncomfortable until i finally snapped i said i was going to my room and he kept mocking me on the way , i went to my room and putting a chair to block the door, i went through the covers and started sobbing… i’ve been crying all night and haven’t managed to get any sleep, i kept getting headaches everytime i cried, and cried….. i wanted this to end, i kept wishing it to be a dream but it wasn’t…. I managed to get my phone back today and i decided to talk about this…. This really effected me and made me realize what kind of people my parents are���it effected on how i seem them.. how i see myself…. I can’t believe all of this over some fucking peppers….. I can’t even look at my male ocs the same again.

I’ve decided im gonna take a break so i can heal … so there won’t be a lot of updates here …. I appreciate a lot of you and your support throughout this blog…..but im tired and i need a mental health break….❤️

[lovemyromance]

I have a little rant lol.

In general, the entire acotar fandom is immature and toxic (I honestly think its gotten so bad since nesta's book came out). Most of these people are grown women and men arguing back and forth about characters and ships. It's bad enough that its been going on for years that its sad. "I'll laugh at the elriels or gwnyriels or the eluciens if their ship isnt endgame" Do the people who say that realize how embarrassing they are? Many people are going to have good and terrible theories but bashing people and harassing people over fictional characters is just immature. I also hate when they say "its that [insert ship] the one who is being the most toxic and weird" NO. its all of you. None of us know who is going to be endgame no matter the theories you have or anything. YOU DONT KNOW. So, please, can we stop this already? its getting annoying and weird. This fandom has made it incredibly difficult to know who the next book is going to be about when its right in front of their eyes. Sarah has not made it impossible to know who the next will be about and I think thats why shes been so quiet about because everyone is being so aggressive about this ship war. I just know the moment she announces the couple, she'll get a ton of hate when its not even her fault because people love to twist her words on paper and thinks she's probably doing that but it could mean a whole other thing. Yall have let theories get to your head and twisted words so much that I think it's incredibly unhealthy for all of you to be acting this way. Stick with who you ship or love and of course, you can have beautiful theories, but toxicity is not necessary. No need to go back and forth about who is the real "endgame".

I mean yeah this fandom is insane. Sometimes as I'm aggressively typing out a reply to an anon who calls me a delusional psychotic bitch bc I made an Elriel post they didn't like, I genuinely just blink and think what the fuck am I doing?

It's partly why I didn't want get involved. At all.

I still try to keep to myself. Only even entertain the antis if they come to my posts. I stick to my own tags.

But there are people - and you're right they are from both sides, as I have also said multiple times on my blog -that go out of their way to start a fight on posts they know aren't meant for them.

These are the people that are making this fandom so toxic. Like I understand, no one person can be responsible for a fandom's collective behavior, but you can be responsible for yourself at the very least.

I have always made it clear what i believe acceptable behavior for discourse in this fandom is and isn't. It's not something I can personally enforce for others, but I can follow myself.

It really is crazy how out of hand this fandom has gotten because other people can't control themselves. If I see an anti Elriel post I don't like (and I don't follow any tags, actually, so I see ALL the ships posting), I have the self control to ignore it and keep scrolling.

This fandom has been overrun by childish adults, intent on being louder than the rest. It's crazy how many disgusting things have been said over just fictional characters, it makes me wonder what these people are like in real life.

At the end of the day - there's going to be a book and one side is going to be proven right. It's not worth all these vitriol that's been spewed across all sides just to "be right". I at least, would be perfectly fine to read an Elucien book. If Elriel does happen, I'm certainly not going to lord it over anyone's head and laugh.

Not worth my time. Not worth my energy.

[blackbutlerfandomnerddomain]

Six years ago today my very first on Tumblr was uploaded!

And of course it was Black Butler related;

Honestly looking at this post in contrast of everything else I've done is kind of weird to look at. I actually remember my blog was going by a new name at the time as part of Tumblr's auto-selected names which I'm pretty sure if I remember it fully you could search it in the hashtags and find some old fan like behavior on my end to other blogs. Things have changed in the last six years with me having written a lot more, actually presented myself and my interests without judgements, and shockingly enough got some fans and friends on this little plateform!

Like, ISN'T THAT CRAZY?!

I remember when I made this blog I believe I did it in hopes to support my friends who had it and also hopefully spread the CielDoll propaganda since there were like zero posts at that timeline, and I specifically remember that was back in 2017 I think but in all honesty I don't count when I made my account as the page's "birthday/anniversary" so I count the first ever post as it since it's like giving air to it first hand lol.

I'm still shocked I managed to even have a Tumblr page for so long, but somehow over the years it became somewhat of a second personality and part of my routine of scrolling on it between school and work. So many people on Tumblr from people I've been fans for a while to friends I've made in pure chance really had helped me with a lot of confidence to do a lot of things I probably wouldn't have done back then. The fandoms I'm in. Being open about my mental health and autism. Coming out and being accepted. My journey of being an writer and artiest. I owe that growth to you guys!

I know for a fact some people are leaving Tumblr due to slight issues and changes happening, mostly the A.I. thing, but I'll admit I will probably cling to this site since I do love it, even it's funny little flaws and that one brief moment it hated my old Chromebook until it finally crashed.

I just wanted to say thanks for being here since then. It's weird looking at my oldest posts and stare in shock of my old ways of writing and question how the hell did people even like this. Thank you guys for the support with all that, dealing with my almost usually missing a few asks in my inbox, understanding when I leave, watching and helping me grow and mature better, and just being this little support system that defiantly helped me through the worst times.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Okay I don't do this normally but out of curiosity, I looked at that guys' posts and yeah they're going around sealioning anyone who likes Dimitri being all like "how can you say Dimitri/AM is your favorite when you didn't play all the routes". Buddy it's called having preferences, subjectivity and opinion. I'm sure if we twist their behavior around back at them, they'll be like stop bothering us for liking Edel cause double standards is their bread and butter.

Yeah, I had taken a brief scroll through their blog the first time I saw them argue with Random about Claude because I had a pretty strong feeling that they were just another stan running around around against Rhea and Dimitri fans because I knew that person didn't follow Random when they started pulling the bad faith Claude takes.

I scrolled through a few posts before I was like yeah I'm not even gonna bother looking further because I could see all they were doing was arguing with people whose names I recognized, and the only people who ever do that are the stans. They also have absolutely nothing else but discourse on their blog.

It's crazy to me too, because I've seen those same Dimitri fans try to talk about anything else FE related and yet they still get pulled back into discourse. Like, I'm at the point where I believe everyone in that immediate group is just actively being stalked by the stans (and I recall one of them mentioning they are being stalked by them, but my guess is if one of them is, all of them are).

Also, the stans tend to pull the "you didn't play xyz route" when I'm quite certain most if not all of the Dimitri fans on Tumblr have at the very bare minimum watched the full route on YouTube of anything they didn't play. All these people have the information they need to know where they stand opinion-wise, and like you said, it's just... having an opinion. The stans have their opinions, we don't agree with them, and we don't engage with them unless they engage with us first.

Something I've noticed about the group of Dimitri fans that gets stans going after them is that it's always the stans who start it. They always respond to asks sent to those people. In other words they go onto those people's blogs, look at their posts/their replies to their anons, and start arguing at them over literally anything they say in thsoe ask responses.

Every single time I see a post reach my dashboard from any of those people (you might know the Faerghus/Dimitri group I'm talking about), it's always a stan going after them when they were just answering one of their own anons and posting something on their own blog. I'm sure there are people who think they engage in discourse too much, but they don't even start it. They get harassed and can't just blog in peace.

Unfortunately those same stans have been targeting Random as of late (and I've noticed it's more and more different ones so they're probably going after someone as soon as they notice their buddies are doing so) so it's not that surprising that they've taken notice of me since she and I interact regularly. They basically go through the chain of who interacts with who and try to start shit.

Oh nonnie honey, you better believe if even a single Dimitri fan did to them what they do to us, they'd be all over that and whining about it and posting callouts and shit.

I just want to be able to post whatever my feelings are about Dimitri without worrying that people will try to tear it down because "it's not about Edel-chan and it portrays Dimitri in a good light".

I've blocked every Edelstan I've come across but more of them keep popping up, so... I guess the blocking never ends. My block list is basically just Edelstans and bots at this point with few exceptions.

Funny how the stans don't block Dimitri fans who hate Edelgard to avoid seeing them (it's because they don't actually want to, because they want to argue), even though we're all over here trying to block them, but some of them block evade to keep going. Literally like Dimitri fans have tried to block them and move on, but they persistently find ways to keep harassing. And like I said, they go down the line, so eventually they'll just find every active Dimitri lover who posts about him and whine at them.

[tigorrrr]

𝗗𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗯𝗹𝗲 || prompt::holding hands every chance they have

Ship(?): Nitara x Tomáš

Rated: fluff??

Warnings: slight Yandere behavior?, implied stalking, Skin-Deep AU

           Sareena had never expected her High School friend to be anything but a bitch of diva, neither does she believe in miraculous changes of people's personas overnight, but what the fuck is this?!

           Did someone hit Nitara over the head? Ever since Sareena invited her to come with her sister and other two friends out, she began to act differently, as if the world's sweetest girl in all of ever existing realms that may be out there.

           It started a month ago, and Sareena was already going crazy when it was just a week.

           Idly scrolling through a website while ignoring her father's newest messages - old man felt bothered enough today to see if his youngest child is still successful, it seems - was a surprising routine of waiting from an independent fashion designer while her top catwalk model was still saying her goodbyes to her fans at the backstage.

           What Sareena came unexpectedly across on the screen had her eyes widening comically. She got some new recommanded posts, liked by her bestie Nitara herself. Invested, she went over to the fashion model blog's liked posts. Aside from fashion and beauty there were a lot of tattoo pictures and videos from one of Ashrah's friend.

           The gorgeous tattooist. As Nitara once quoted.

           Sareena stopped her facial muscles from cringing, not risking any wrinkles. "Stalking much...?"

           She didn't think much of it at that time, thinking that her friend is finally getting a tattoo on her own after dream-talking about it for years. And she did had the right idea but it wasn't the whole truth.

           When the two girls were later picked up by a moss-colored pickup truck driven by Ashrah's boyfriend, Syzoth, and Tomáš was at the back to Sareena's complete suprise Nitara took a place next to him than inside the comfy car. Sareena greeted her older sister before taking a seat next to her inside.

           "Thank you, Tomas." the ginger oh-so-sweetly cooed, her emerald eyes sparkled like those of a school girl when the man in the trunk helped her limb in. She did it as elegantly as she could with her heels.

           Offering back a smile, Tomáš gave her his seat. It was warm and it's cold outside tonight, seeing her in a tight, knee-long dress with a light shrug - he wanted to be helful in some way. And the group was off on the road to their next destination; a club.

           Nitara was glad that with the layers of make-up no one could tell she was blushing all the way to her neck. His hand was big against hers, he would be able to hald both her dainty wrists in one hand if he so wished becasue she was more than eager for that to happen, his knuckles were veiny and something about those types of hands charmed her.

           But the woman made sure she was obviously looking at the strain and flex of his arms when he was pulling her up as if she was just a feather. If he saw it and it boosted his ego then the humble man kept it for himself.

           "Hey, Tom-aaa-sh?" Nitara tried her luck in pronouncing his name in his language, she did butcher it but it at least made him laugh.

           "You were pretty close, an A for effort. The S with caron is harder for anyone." Tomáš grinned, he's not mean-spirited but he enjoys seeing people fail when trying to speak Czech.

           She giggled when she was being praised, she raked her ginger lock behind her ear.

           "Will you have any slots available next month? I have been thinking a lot and I'd really love a tattoo. From you." she scooted closer on the blanket they used as a seat and looked at him with big, hopeful eyes, her manicured, ringed hands gently placed on his that was on his propped knee and he didn't shy away from that touch.

           Tomáš looked back at the road, then at the buildings they were passing by, thinking and Nitara took advantage of it by getting closer and enjoy his body heat.

           "I will have to check my notes back at the studio but I guess I will be free at the end of the next month." he finally replied, looking back at Nitara who was beaming with glee like an excited kid.

           "Splendid! Can't wait~" she cooed and it brough out a chuckle from him, he didn't mind Nitara's getle squeeze on his hand, it felt like a friendly-affectionate gesture.

[rptgossip]

You can do with this what you like but I highly suspect that the new rpc-home-truths is Nolan in disguise. Dude has been a problem in the tumblr rpc since 2015 stealing theme codes and original character ideas and plagiarizing other media sources for his “original rp” plots and claiming it all his own. On top of that he’s known for hella godmodding in threads, harassing and stalking his partners that he gloms onto because they have a male fc he’s super attracted to, blatantly ignores female characters because he’s not interested in m/f romance/smut, ignores rp lore, and has been kicked out of a few groups, like Empire and Corinth Bay to name a couple recent ones that I know of, for his behavior. He’s also been racist and misogynistic with the premade characters and lore he’s created in his own rps. And when he’s kicked out and called out for his shit? Gaslighting for days to paint himself as a victim. He’s still going on about drama from 2015 where he was 100% the aggressor and problem.

I know it sounds crazy and conspiratory. That rpc-home-truths talks a lot like how Nolan does, using “staff” as opposed to “admin” or “mod,” and I bet is about to rehash the whole shit he did from his perspective again. The blog just hid their likes but I saw a few pics of nearly naked buff dudes plus a photo set of Joshua Orpin, who is a fc Nolan has been using frequently since 2020.

Here is the link to his last-known rp blog from Corinth Bay: https://www.tumblr.com/callum-marcoh

His account where he continues rehashing his past problematic behavior from a victim narrative in novella format: https://zachnovak.tumblr.com/

And this thread has a pretty good breakdown of his behavior from a couple people in Corinth Bay: https://binxrps.tumblr.com/post/630553132533940224/wiscowrites-loganlcrmans-jayrpssometimes

Okay this is a lot. I have a lot of thoughts so i’m going to bullet point. But firstly do not send hate to this blog or any of the blogs mentioned above. That shit just keeps the fire going and responding to toxic behavior with toxic behavior gets no one anywhere. Moving on 

This guy has been called out many times over the years. I remember lurking and reading about him over and over again. In cases like these if you're the common denominator you're probably the problem. And you should probably start looking introspectively on what went wrong 

That 2nd link to his blog is wild…. I scrolled through a couple of pages and there's just straight up smut out there in the open? I know I just preached about being open to someone not knowing something but I think everyone should know what the read more button is and use it ? Like i’m all for smut but c’mon some of us rp at work and yes people should know the risks of doing that but the read more button is right there- and on a definitely more important note, it could be super triggering

At this point the proof is right there.  This isn’t a ‘witch hunt’ or ‘drama’ this is a person with some serious issues who should be avoided at all costs. And to have an rpc-home-truths defending them using that vocabulary is disgusting. The internet can 100% have an affect on people's mental health, and Nolan’s actions has affected many people .he should be named, shamed, and blocked

The last part is going under read more it because it discuss triggering topics which are all tagged below 

Speaking of rpc-home-truths its been really gross in their defense of Nolan. One of them posted a scenario that put out a scenario about s*uicide basically victim blaming the ‘mob’ or whoever is against Nolan, Except as an example she used her daughter. And to top it off put in the tags with no trigger warning or tags, and it is still up as of now. I find this disgusting, I am not a mother but why would you put that energy out into the world about your daughter?? Its gross and manipulative. And to not have it tagged? I feel like anyone rping who are decent humans know that has to be tagged. It should have never been posted in the first but at least tag it or warn people in some way so they can choose to ignore it. 

Call me a coward but I have blocked them already( and screenshotted the post in case they delete and act like that it never happened), they have a blog they can defend themselves on but how that was handled has given me enough information on who they are as people and I don’t want to see them or  interact with them.

[seoraksan]

hello! i hope ur having the best n most magical day <3

oh my gosh, hi! how’re you? i already know who this is just by the way you’re writing. hi tokki!! my magical friend❤️ i’ve missed you so very much! i’m sorry that i haven’t been talking to you or answering your messages. i went through a rough patch a few years ago, and i still haven’t completely gone back to my old social self. i have messages that i haven’t answered in 3 years and i feel so bad about it..

i have the habit of going silent when i’m going through a hard time. i don’t like throwing my emotions onto other people when i’m sad. so that’s one of the reasons why i haven’t been doing good when it comes to talking to people, and trying to be active on social media. i never want to be the reason for someone’s bad day.

you’ve always been on my mind, but i’ve been constantly thinking of you these past few weeks. i tried to find you on kakaotalk a while back, but i couldn’t log into my old account. i ended up messaging you on snapchat, and i was hoping that you still used it, even though i know you haven’t posted in a while. i didn’t want to lose contact with you, you mean too much to me. it’s so crazy how fate is! i’m so happy that you reached out, i thought i lost you❤️ i really appreciate you more then words can ever say. you’ve always been a very treasured person in my life. i’m beyond grateful for the fact that you still think of me, even when i’ve been terrible at communicating.

i know people probably look at the changes in my blog and think that i no longer love those 7 beautiful angels, but that’s not true. i’ve never stopped loving and supporting bts. actually, my love for them has only grown stronger over the years. i had to back away from the fandom because it wasn’t the best for my mental health. there were a lot of controlling people on here that started showing their true colors, and i had to take a step back. i saw so much of,” he’s mine’ or “he needs to do this with his body” so many people were starting to post really personal things about them. photographs that shouldn’t have been posted anywhere, privacy invasion, etc. i started to see people talking about the new houses they were buying, what district the homes are in, and even going as far as telling the address. it was crazy stuff that was making me feel uncomfortable. they are humans and they deserve privacy and respect. even if you know where they live, you shouldn’t be waving it around, because there are a lot of people out there that might want to do them harm, and if you love them, you should always want them to be protected. i can’t even imagine something bad like that happening to them. it makes my heart hurt with even the thought. and then you had the people who felt like they owned them just because they bought some albums and merchandise. ‘fans’ always being so concerned about their personal lives and what they were doing with their time. it became really gross. just because you gave every dollar in your back account to purchase their merch and see them live, that does not mean that you have claim on them. people couldn’t comprehend it. and this was doing a time when i would follow mostly bts blogs, so i would see it quite constantly. not everyone was like that, but it was hard to find the good apples when you’re digging in a barrel of a lot of bad ones. it was difficult to sit back and not say anything, so i would try and speak up as much as possible. i saw a few bigger blogs showing this behavior, and it scared me because they have a bigger platform to spew such things out to a willing audience that sometimes seemed really naive and would listen to anything these blogs were posting. when i would try and talk to them about the way that they were acting, they got defensive and tried to act like what they were doing was okay, and that it shouldn’t bother me that much because, “they’re public figures and they should be used to such treatment” it was just too stressful, so i bowed out of the fandom on tumblr. i still showed my love and support for bts, but i couldn’t do the fandom. i couldn’t argue with people all day long about the way that they were acting. especially at a time when i was already stressed and miserable. i know a lot of ex army would talk about how some people in the fandom made them stop being as active with bts, and in the end they stopped caring for them. i wasn’t going to allow people to take away the love and joy that i feel towards bts, so i had to make the decision to stop being as active on tumblr.

i love army so much. they’re so dedicated to the boys, and it’s a beautiful thing. army is kind, supportive of others, and compassionate. they respect boundaries. army knows that to love bts, you have to respect them. how can you say you love them if you aren’t respecting them? it doesn’t matter if you’ve been a fan for 8 years or 8 minutes, it’s all about the love and respect that you have for them. it’s about love, not about the merch, or how many of their concerts you’ve been to, it’s about love.

the boys have been one of the few things that i’ve had to keep me sane these past few years. so much has happened, and if it wasn’t for them and the love i feel for them, i don’t really think i could’ve made it. even when it came to simple things like finding the motivation to get out of bed, all i had to do was scroll through twitter and see them, and i would feel so much happiness. times when i felt like i didn’t have much to wake up for anymore, they were there to make me smile and feel loved. i get strength just knowing that they’re alive and well.

but i do really miss gushing about the boys, so i might make another blog. i’ve been saying that for a while, but i might actually do it. talking about them brings me such happiness, and i miss being apart of the community 🖤

only downside to leaving was that i missed out on a lot of my friends. like you, meariie, S(@seokjinshearts ), and a few others who hold a special place in my heart. i feel so terrible because i feel like i’ve neglected our friendship and let it wither by not feeding it. but please know that i’ve never once ceased to pour my love into it. i’ve always cared for our friendship and held it close to my heart. i wish i could’ve shown it more to you. i hope that there’s still time to make it up to you. to show you how much you mean to me, because you really are one of the best people to ever step foot into my life, and it would devastate me to see you walk away. i will try harder, i promise.

i pray that you’re doing well and staying safe!! i believe the last time we talked was before the pandemic. are you doing well? staying safe? drinking water and eating? have you been resting? and taking time for yourself? all the important things that i hope that you’ve been doing since the last time we’ve had a chance to talk. how’s your family? is everyone well? are you doing good mentally? there’s so much to catch up on🥺

i’m sorry for the novel that i just wrote. it’s hard for me to write in small paragraphs when i have so much in my heart that i want to get out. honestly, i could keep going on, but i don’t want you to have to sit here reading it for 3 hours. my inbox is always open, and if you want to talk on another social website, like kakaotalk or whatever, i’m so willing to do that. i want to have you in my life, tokki. my world is much more magnificent with you in it ❤️ my adoration for you goes beyond words, my magical friend. i hope that we can allow our friendship to blossom again and touch the heavens with its blooms.

sending you a basket full of love and adoration, always🥰

@tick-tokki

[saiilorstars]

Rise Up

Ch.11: Black Orchid

Previous Story: It Had To Be You || Current Masterlist

Pairings: Barry Allen x OFC

Chapter Summary: Following a tip from a time travelling friend, Belén starts the endeavor to find a way into the Green: a world for all botanist metahumans. She goes in search of a potential ally from another botanist metahuman, Black Orchid, who seems like she would rather work alone.

Pronunciation of OC: Bell-en. The last syllable has an emphasis so it’s not pronounced like ‘Helen’ would be.

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother​ @anotherunreadblog​​ @maaaaarveeeeel​​ @stareyedplanet​ @perfectlystiles​ [If you’d like to be part of this OC’s taglist, let me know!]

"So...Mom knows about you?" Maritza watched her sister's uncomfortable form on the other side of the glass. Belén gave a silent nod of her head. She'd told Maritza about her mother finding out, in the worst way possible, she was the Azalea. "Gosh, Belén...she didn't take it well, did she?"

Belén shook her head. "Nope. She's moved on from the 'I'm ignoring you' phase and she's onto full fledged anger."

"I think the word 'metahuman' is just tarnished for her after everything that's happened," Maritza said, though in no way did she mean to give their mother a pass on her behavior. "I'm sorry."

"No, this one's not on you. It's on me," Belén sighed. "I thought that maybe after telling her my secret, things between us might start getting better again, but…"

"I'm sorry," Maritza felt the need to say again. After everything Belén had told her, going from their mother's challenging personality to the metahumans hunting them down...Maritza could only say 'sorry'. She wished, wished, that she could do something to help Belén but her past choices have prohibited her from. "I really wish I could help you out there."

Belén found it in her to smile. She didn't know how, or when, but coming to see Maritza had stopped being a chore and more like...a way to relieve stress. She could tell Maritza everything that was going on and not be judged. She hadn't quite forgiven Maritza for everything she did last year, but...Belén could say she was getting there.

Feeling her phone buzz inside her pocket, Belén gave it a quick check and found a text from Iris. She had to say goodbye to Maritza in order to meet back at STAR Labs.

~ 0 ~

Iris had done her job as best as she could and when she wanted to, she could almost be like a spy the way she found information on people. She had pulled up a profile of a woman dressed in a black and magenta suit with an over-sized jacket. Soon as Cisco saw the picture he let out a wolf whistle, along with questions about her specific clothing choice.

"This is why I do the suits, just saying," he raised his hands to show he was just making a statement...a true statement.

"Who are we looking at, Iris?" Belén asked, brown eyes already scanning the woman's picture till it burned in her mind.

"She calls herself Black Orchid," Iris began. She rose from her seat and zoomed in on the picture of woman. "As far as anyone knows, she's a meta with - take a guess - plant-based powers who usually appears in the lower parts of the city."

"The slummy parts?" Barry figured that would be the best place to lay low and still make a name for themselves.

"She's not known for always appearing when needed, but she's still known enough to have search engine results," Iris scrolled through some of her pictures, stopping at a familiar tab. "This is actually from my old blog. People still send me stuff and take a look at the date for this post."

Belén walked up to the screen to find the date stamp. The picture was of Black Orchid holding up one, no doubt, petty thief in her arms in front of a crowd of people. "That's last month." She turned sideways, one finger pointed behind her at the picture. "She's an active meta, then."

"It's been weeks since her last appearance but do you know what's interesting about that too? It's right around the time Datura and you fought for the first time."

"Could it be that's she's scared of Datura, then?" Caitlin's theory made sense since pretty much everyone in the room feared the siphoner.

"It also means she's keeping up with the news and thus still very much in the city," Barry crossed his arms.

"So, why exactly are we looking for this girl?" Cisco made the question he'd been dying to ask ever since Iris made them gather in the cortex.

Belén walked back to the main desk and put her arms over them, nervous for some reason. It wasn't like her friends would call her crazy for what she wanted to do, after all. "Graciela mentioned a place to me - the Green - that I could use to contact other metahumans that are like me. It's a place like the Speedforce, if you will, where I could train and...meet metas like me. Meta who could help me get better so that I can fight Datura and actually stand a chance."

"And you think Black Orchid will be that meta?" Cisco languidly pointed at the picture on the screen.

"With any luck, she's got a better handle on her powers," Belén shrugged. "And I can pretty much use any help I can get."

"It's worth a shot," Barry agreed with her. "We just have to find her and bring her in."

"Like...here?" Caitlin blinked. She hadn't made that connection until now. "Do we think that'd be a good idea? Revealing where the Azalea and the Flash work?"

"She's obviously taking on crime already," Iris gestured to the pictures she'd collected. "She could be a good addition to the team."

"Black Orchid was a villain on my Earth before she disappeared," Harry startled the group from behind. He'd come in as quiet as usual and strode down the room with purpose. He came to a stop in front of the pictures on the screen and gazed at them for a few seconds. "You should be careful. She's as toxic as you, Belén."

"But she's not a villain here, clearly," Belén said. "And I actually need her to be toxic, okay?"

Harry turned sideways, giving them all a look that said 'you're all idiots and are going to get killed'. "Bringing in more metahumans into this is only going to blow up in your face. You want to take Datura down? You kill her already."

"Easier said than done," Belén folded her arms. "And I'm not exactly looking to kill her."

"She is with you."

"Okay," Barry cut in before Harry's imprudence got worse. "Thank you, Harry, for your input but this is something Belén wants to do. I support her and so does everyone else."

Harry scoffed lightly. "Course you do. Cos you're all idiots."

"Do you have a better idea?" Cisco called from behind. "No?" he let a few more seconds of silence pass by before saying, "Then hush!"

"Thanks guys," Belén sent her friends a warm smile. "And thanks Iris for searching. My head's been all over the place, so…"

Iris nodded at her. "Any time. I can keep looking if you want."

"I say we focus on Black Orchid right now," Belén glanced at the screen. "We need to find her, so...yeah. Let's focus on where she appears most."

As the group made plans to continue searching for Black Orchid, eventually dispersing from the room, Harry inched closer to the super suits left on display. He looked over his shoulder to make sure he was alone in the room then yanked off Belén's suit tracker. He then gingerly planted a decoy in its place. For Jessie.

~ 0 ~

Datura swiftly caught Belén's suit tracker with both her hands and squealed with genuine delight. "Finally!" She held the small device between her fingers and clicked her tongue. "Now the game can finally start!"

Harry stood across her in the alley, his face blank of any expression. "My daughter is safe, right?"

Datura lowered her hand and offered one sneaky smile. "Sure. I do remember to feed her once in a while." She waited for his reaction but he stood frigid. "Don't like my joke? Fine. So-" she tucked the suit tracker into her pocket, "-what's my dear Belén up to now?"

Harry stayed quiet for a few minutes. He hated this so much. A snitch. That's what he was reduced to by some 25 year old in a leather suit. Not just that but a thief and a traitor.

"Wells?" Datura's voice darkened, as did the part of her face Harry could see with her mask. "I need to know what Belén is up to. I might just forget to give Jesse some dinner today."

The mention of his daughter made the man finally move from his stance. "She's looking for the metahuman, Black Orchid."

Datura snorted. "Killed her off a while ago," she mumbled. Her dark eyes met his surprised gaze and caused another sneaky smile to spread across her face. "What? You didn't know that one? Offed her months ago."

"Why?" Harry asked wearily. He would love to finally know what she was planning, what Zoom was planning...but learning that would mean he'd die seconds later.

"She was in my way and I thought she would be the one," Datura's cryptic answer was almost like she hadn't answered at all. All Harry got from that was it just another fight between criminals. "Anyways," she played with one of her long curls, "Let Belén find the doppelganger. No matter how hard she trains she'll never be better than me. It's just impossible." She turned to leave but stopped to give Harry one more warning, "By the way, Zoom might be requiring something from you soon."

At that, Harry gulped.

~ 0 ~

"I think we got a pretty good location, don't you think?" Iris glanced back at Belén to see the woman staring down at the kitchen table that held all of their information on Black Orchid.

They were in Belén's apartment, scouring through every last detail they could find of their meta. Together, they'd found more pictures of Black Orchid, some even when she was in the middle of some pretty gruesome fights.

"She's pretty much all over the slummy streets but, if I counted right, she's appeared at this intersection more than the others," Belén picked up a picture of an intersection that happened to hold a pretty cruddy-looking bar. "I bet you that bar is where we'll find out more about her."

"You want to go there?" Iris made a face at the picture. It was only a picture and it already scared her.

"It's okay, I can go by myself," Belén's reassurance didn't exactly help Iris because she didn't want Belén going there by herself either.

But someone knocked on the door, preventing Iris from voicing these opinions out loud. Belén let the picture back on the table and went to go open the door.

"Mom?" she blinked in surprise to see Veronica. Of course, when the surprise faded she was pretty relieved - and perhaps partly excited - to see her. "Come in!"

Veronica, in her part, still looked pretty unsure of herself. She walked in and gave a brief, small smile at Iris. "You're busy…"

"Yeah, but, don't worry. You wanted to talk?" Belén's excitement did not go unnoticed by Veronica.

With a sigh, Veronica shrugged. "I would like to, but...I don't know if it'll change things." She walked towards the kitchen and noticed all the papers sprawled across the table. "Were you two working?"

Iris didn't know what to respond with. She looked to Belén for some help, or clues, as to what to say. Would Belén want to disclose what they were actually doing or keep it away from Veronica?

"Yeah, we're looking for someone," Belén came to stand beside her mother, looking pretty unsure herself.

"A meta?" the distaste in Veronica's tone was clear for anyone to pick up on. She picked up a photograph of Black Orchid and frowned. "So you're really deep into this metahuman world."

"I have to be, Mom. I'm one of them," Belén said quietly and with eyes boring onto her mother's face for a reaction.

"Don't…" Veronica seemed to shiver at the reminder of Belén's metahuman side. "I wish you wouldn't say that so openly."

"Why not? It's the truth."

"Yes, but…" Veronica stopped and glanced at Iris. Just as the reporter was about to announce her departure, Veronica caught her off guard with a question. "How do you let her do this? How can you just let Belén go into this dangerous world and be okay with it?"

"Mom!" Belén exclaimed disapprovingly, but Iris was good with quick responses thanks to her line of work.

"Because it's her choice and, to be honest, she's a perfect fit for the job," Iris crossed her arms. "She and Barry are the perfect people to protect us. And people like us-" she pointed at herself then Veronica, "-have a duty to help them wherever we can. That includes being supportive."

Veronica's face was indescribable. On some part, she seemed impressed with the response...but then another part was angry Iris wasn't taking her side. "Well...you would say that," she said in the end in a low mumble, "Barry's your brother...does Joe know about this?" Iris didn't have to say or do anything for Veronica to know. "Course he does because he's your father."

"Mom, I thought we were going to talk…" Belén inwardly sighed. She should've known that Veronica would not get over this so quickly. At least there was no shouting this time.

"Belén, I just don't understand why you are so fixated on this...this world!"

"Because it's my world, mom. And I can't abandon it when there's so many people that could get hurt if I do."

Veronica shook her head. "I-I think we need to continue this another day because…"

Belén didn't want to keep pausing this argument because every time they did, it just dragged on the feelings more. But she also feared that if they kept going in one go, they really would just end up shouting at each other like the other times. At least this case seemed to be so grave for Veronica that she wasn't shouting. She was thinking. She may be thinking the wrong things but at least she was thinking…

"I'm here...whenever you want to pick up on things…" she said quietly.

Iris sympathized for her friend while Veronica walked out. "Bells, I'm so sorry."

"No," Belén sniffed and turned back for the table, eyes flickering from one picture to the other. "I need to focus on this."

"Yeah, but-"

"-Iris, I have to focus on this first. Maybe my mom just needs some more days to process this." Belén wanted to believe this so badly.

~ 0 ~

The pictures of Central City's slum parts did no justice to its reality. There was a lot more graffiti on the walls, a lot more trash on the streets. A lot of people were ruder and definitely looking for something to pick-pocket. Belén kept her arms crossed over her chest as she walked down the street. She found the bar from the picture she and Iris were looking at and went directly inside.

There was a foul odor at the entrance that she wished she could forget.

"Take a seat with me sweetheart," she heard a man say as she walked in.

"Screw off," she spat without sparing him a glance. She came up to the bar counter, which was pretty empty save for two more customers at the end. She pulled her phone out and left it on the counter in front of her, just in case she needed to snap pictures or look at one of the ones she already have.

A tall Asian woman with long, dark hair came by a couple minutes later. "What can I get you?"

"Um…" Belén wasn't that big of a drinker, and much less during the day so she just asked for a mimosa. While she waited, she began to look around the bar with more searching eyes. She didn't see anyone that would necessarily stand out. Everyone seemed to be doing their own things, whether it was legal or not.

"Here you go," the bar tender returned with the bright orange drink in her hand. As she put the glass down, her eyes lingered on Belén for a few seconds. "You looking for someone?" her tough voice startled Belén. When the woman nearly fell off her stool, the bartender smiled. "You're not from around here."

"That easy to tell?" Belén bit her lower lip.

"Yeah. Don't walk alone in these parts."

"Is it really that bad here?"

The bartender nodded her head. She popped a bubble from her bubble gum and smirked. "Not if you know how to take care of yourself."

Belén saw some odd marks on the side of the woman's neck. She was sure there were some stitches poking up from her blouse. "Are you okay?" she pointed at the injuries, startling the bartender for a moment.

"Yeah. Just got into it with someone, no big deal." The bartender seemed to shift from friendly to brief. "My name's Shivhan if you want to leave a tip," she said before walking away.

Belén picked up her mimosa and had a couple sips from it. As she was putting it down, she heard a familiar voice behind her that nearly made her spill the glass.

"You are beautiful but crazy," Barry stood behind her and not too pleased.

Belén turned her stool sideways so she could see him. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"Iris told me you were coming here! Belén!" he whisper-hissed as he sat down next to her. "This is a shady place to be at on your own, Bells. How could you come here alone?"

"Um, because I'm a big girl who can take care of herself?"

Barry deadpanned her. That's not what he meant and she knew it. "It never hurts to have backup. Besides, do you even know what you'd say to Black Orchid if you found her?"

"No, but...I'm a reporter. I'd wing it," Belén picked up her mimosa again and smiled.

Barry shook his head at her. "Alright, so what do have? Any clues?"

"Not really. I was just kind of scoping the area out," Belén shrugged and briefly looked back at the room. "But there's barely any people here and those who are, are definitely not Black Orchid."

Barry could agree with that since almost every customer in the building were men. "Maybe we should try later."

"I'm hoping something will happen that would make Black Orchid appear."

"Bit cynical," remarked Barry.

"Desperate." Belén sighed and forgot about her glass as she turned her stool to face the room. "I don't know, maybe we could speed things up or something."

"Like how?"

"Well...Black Orchid seems to appear whenever there's trouble, so…"

Barry was giving her a strange look. "You want us to stage a fight?"

"Something like that."

"I don't know about that Belén...I think we need to come up with a good plan and then-"

Belén was about to cut him off with the fact they didn't - or rather she didn't - have time to sit down and plan, when they heard a loud crash from outside. At once Belén jumped off her stool and tried to peer out into the street from her spot.

"Fight! Fight!" a crowd sitting near the door started to chant, prompting some delirious laughter from the room. It was only a matter of seconds before they rushed out into the streets.

"Creeps," Shivhan, the bartender, spat while she continued to wipe down the counter.

Barry got up as well and sprinted up to the window to see what was going on. Belén soon followed and saw with him that there were a couple of masked thieves making out of a shop with some valuables. Two of them had guns.

"We gotta do something," Barry rushed out the door but just as he was about to leave the sidewalk, Belén yanked him to her side.

"This is our chance!"

"Belén, someone could get hurt!"

"They won't because you'll intervene if she's not here in 1 minute," Belén promised then faced the street.

The thieves were trying to make an escape but there were being confronted with another group intending on taking the stolen valuables. Just as they were about to fire, something purple swooped down and punched the two gunmen from the first thief band.

"I told you…" Belén sounded breathless as she gazed at none other than Black Orchid. Barry had to hand it to her and her precise thinking.

Black Orchid was a feared presence by most of the people outside, judging how they stepped back. From what they could see, the meta had long, dark hair and dark eyes hidden behind a black mask that covered half her face. She wore a one-suit in the colors of black and violet. It was the same one Iris had shown them earlier.

Black tendrils sprouted from the woman's back and captured three of the men. She threw them halfway down the street without regards of where they hit or how hard they hit. She then ducked to avoid being hit by one of the men behind her. She jumped back up and kicked a leg up to knock the man down. As bullets fired towards her, she used her vines to create a shield where the bullets embedded themselves. Once she disbanded the shield, she sent the bullets right back and injured two more men. The last two remaining were from each of band and they both looked equally terrified.

"Drop it and go," she ordered in a rough voice.

The two instantly dropped their stolen things and made a run for it. Black Orchid raised three fingers and when she'd pulled them down, her arm did a boomerang action and released two different black masses that attached themselves to the men.

"Barry, we gotta get her alone," Belén spoke quietly to the speedster next to her.

"But how?" Barry looked around and saw that while the thieves had been taken down - killed, really - the crowd around them was still watching Black Orchid like hawks.

"I brought something with me," Belén admitted. Barry looked down at her and saw her reaching into her purse. She showed him the tip of a syringe. His eyes widened at it but before he could say something she said, "It's a sedative."

"Belén, we can't really do-"

"-I need her, Barry," she told him like this was already decided with or without him. "Datura is going to kill me if I don't up my game. Black Orchid can help me do that."

There was some questionable tactics Barry saw Black Orchid far too comfortable with, but he knew that he could stand there and argue with Belén without making a difference. "Fine." He took the syringe from her and disappeared. A minute later, so did Black Orchid.

When Belén felt a set of arms pull her as well, she smiled. She found herself in an alley where Black Orchid was already down with sedation. "Thank you," she said to the speedster.

Barry gazed down at the unconscious metahuman. "I don't think she'll be thanking us for this."

~0~

Team STAR Labs was never one for kidnapping. So when Barry and Belén brought in a guest, kidnapped and unconscious, they had much to say over the matter.

"This is not legal," Caitlin was the first to say, or scold, at the two metas. Barry and Belén stood in the middle of the cortex, listening to everyone having their go at them. "You kidnapped someone!"

"Well, if I asked she wouldn't have come," Belén argued. "You guys didn't see her out there. She's tough."

"And you think you need to be the same?" Cisco's doubtful stare made her roll her eyes.

"I need to change something and she can help me figure out what."

"Least she's taking initiative," Harry inputted his own opinion, surprising Belén that he was actually siding with her since he originally didn't agree with the plan of finding Black Orchid. "You can't always be soft. Especially when someone's trying to kill you."

"Uh, thanks Harry," she offered the man a small smile before looking at Caitlin and Cisco. "I'm not hurting her. I just needed to get her here so I could talk to her."

"And if she doesn't want to help?" asked Cisco.

"Let's hope she does."

"Well…" Caitlin has looked up from a computer, "... now's your chance. She just woke up."

~0~

Black Orchid was a woman who could be scary. Her balled fists repeatedly pounded against the pipeline pod. "LET ME OUT!" She screamed and screamed the same thing.

Cisco honestly thought the pod wouldn't last if this kept going.

Black Orchid only stopped when she saw someone coming into the pipeline. She straightened up and raised her head to judge if this person was going to help or not. "Who are you?" She didn't have to wait for a verbal answer since she saw clear as day who was on the other side. "The Azalea? Hm. That's a shocker. Would you let me go? I didn't do nothing wrong."

"You did kill people…" Belén reminded, though not as a way to punish her.

"They're thugs! It's kill or be killed!"

"Look, I'm not here to talk about who you killed or how many you killed. I need your help."

Black Orchid dropped her arms to her sides. Her chin raised again and though she had a mask on, Belén swore she was being judged. "Why would the Azalea need my help?"

"Because Datura is a dangerous metahuman that I cannot stop if you don't teach me how to get into the Green."

Black Orchid lowered her head. "Excuse me? The Green? You know about that?" Belén nodded her head. "But you don't know how to get in?"

"Have you ever seen me in there?" Belén made a good point.

Black Orchid crossed her arms and looked around the pod she was trapped in. "And you thought the best way to get me to help you was to lock me up?"

"Not my best idea but I really needed to have a minute with you."

"Here's the thing, I don't trust you. And, let's be honest, you don't trust me." Black Orchid inched closer to the glass wall. "I'm not training anyone. In this world, it's all about yourself. I need to look out for myself."

"Well, that's a pretty way of looking at life," Belén remarked. "But look, I really need your help. Datura is coming back-"

"-then you fight her off. She's your fight, not mine. Why do you think I've hidden for a month now? I'm not looking to get killed."

"But if you don't help me a lot of people are going to die!"

"Better them than me," Black Orchid said so plainly, so flatly, that Belén's mouth almost fell to the floor.

"How could you...how could you say that?"

"Because it's the truth. Self preservation."

Belén was flabbergasted to hear such a thing.

~0~

"I cannot believe she said that!" Belén stormed into the cortex, looking ready to kill someone herself. "How rude! How...selfish!"

"Sorry it didn't work out, Bells," Cisco meant as a true apology but she scoffed at him.

"Are you, though? You weren't even on board with the idea in the first place!"

Cisco made a face but, knowing she was just upset, he kept his mouth shut. He, did, however, give a look at Barry and Caitlin. Someone else needed to step in.

"Belén, maybe we just need to give her some time," Barry's suggestion was also responded with a scoff.

"I don't have time!" She groaned and turned to leave.

"Where are you going?" Caitlin called after her.

"Out! Don't follow!"

"She's m-a-d mad," Cisco whistled then quickly looked back to see if Belén had heard.

"She's upset, and with good reason," Barry rubbed his forehead. "Let's just keep an eye on her. She took the suit so-"

"-she's really mad," Cisco blurted and received a disapproving look from Caitlin. Barry just sighed.

"She turned off the tracker in her suit," Caitlin informed a few minutes later.

"Not surprising," Barry mumbled and moved over to see the screen himself. "She couldn't have gotten far. I'll go get her. See if I can talk to her."

He zipped out of the cortex with his suit, intending on finding Belén and bringing her back. However, it turned out Belén was very good at hiding. It'd been at least an hour of him scouring through the city before he gave up and asked for some additional help. Caitlin and Cisco were monitoring as usual, but, like Barry, they didn't have a clue where Belén went. It was like she disappeared.

"I've gone through all the places she usually goes to, I'm starting to get worried," Barry admitted. He stood at the top of a rooftop overlooking the busy streets of the city. It was fine that Belén wanted to have some time alone but two hours of no contact felt wrong.

"Uh, we got something, Barry!" Cisco exclaimed.

"Did you find her?" Barry quickly asked, ready to go as soon as they gave him a place.

"Yeah, um…looks like some warehouse off on Third and Carson street."

"That's weird," remarked Caitlin. "That whole block is for warehouses. What could Belén be doing there?"

"Don't know but we're going to find out," Barry said before speeding down the building he was on. He followed the instructions from the two and didn't bother coming in cautiously. He skidded to a stop and looked around the empty warehouse. "Belén?" he called out and received no answer. "Belén!"

"What's going on, Barry?" Cisco asked after the third failed call for Belén.

"She's not here," Barry ripped the cowl off his head and started walking down the left. There was something making a light noise coming from that direction. "But I...I don't think this warehouse is empty…"

"Belén's tracker says she's there, dude," Cisco insisted, though he was going through the tracker's ping just to make sure.

"Well, I don't see her," Barry kept walking forwards, now spotting something silvery round the corner. "Belén?"

"Barry, be careful," Caitlin warned. She was beginning to think there was something wrong with this entire situation. As if the world was reading her mind, she got a different type of alert on her computer screen.

Barry reeled back when a redhead swung from the side. "Hi there pretty boy," Poison Ivy showed off a smug smirk before firing at the speedster with a high-tech gun.

"Barry!" Cisco shouted as the computer stopped getting readings from Barry's vitals, his entire suit's actually. "Everything's gone offline." Cisco leaned back against his chair and heaved a heavy breath.

"Caitlin!" they both heard Belén's voice shriek from the other end of the line.

The two in the cortex did a quick double-take at each other before calling out their friend's name.

"Where are you!?" Caitlin demanded while she worked to figure out how the meta alert was coming from one part while Belén's tracker was pinging from another.

"Downtown! And I'm -" Belén shrieked again.

As it turned out, she was nowhere near close Barry's location. She didn't know how it happened, to be honest. She'd been sulking on her own for a while when she started to see some familiar red energy from a distance. Trained or not, she was not planning on giving Datura a pass. She chased after the energy until it led her downtown…

Datura had sucker-punched her from behind. She seemed to be on a different plan because even though she had a clear, open path to hurt Belén again, she walked past the woman on the ground and moved towards a street pole. Her eyes glowed an orange before shooting lasers at the street pole.

As Belén turned on her stomach, she saw the bottom of the street pole begin to steam as the acid from the lasers melted it away.

"Better, run, run, run!" Datura sing-sang to the people around when the street pole started creaking and leaning on its side.

"Oh, dammit," Belén muttered and scrambled to her feet. She started throwing vines to pull away the people in danger of getting squashed.

Datura boredly rolled her eyes as if saving people was a waste of time, and to her it was. When Belén pulled the last person out of the way, Datura rubbed her hands together and created a sword from her red energy.

"Uh oh," Belén had the good sense to back away. "Caitlin!" she started to call but for some reason, no one answered her. "Caitlin!"

"Where are you!?" Caitlin demanded so suddenly that, if Belén had been more focused, she would've picked up on the fact something was wrong.

"Downtown! And I'm -" Belén shrieked and ducked when Datura threw her sword at her. "It's Datura! She's back!"

"And ready to win," Datura said with a proud smile. Her eyes glowed silver, as did her hands. She radiated in Lunar energy, something Belén hadn't quite seen before and was therefore a little scared. "The power of Eclipsa-" Datura's smile widened, but Belén once again noticed there was a different voice speaking with Datura's, -is mine. Here's a little taste of what I can do!" She drew her hands back and started firing consecutively with lunar bolts.

Belén whipped her hands in front of her and tried doing what she saw Black Orchid doing earlier. She created a makeshift shield in front of her but Datura was going nonstop. "Caitlin, I really need Barry right now!"

"I - we thought he was with you!" Cisco exclaimed. "We lost contact with him!"

That made Belén automatically drop her shield in shock. "What!?" A series of lunar bolts hit her square in the chest, knocking her back on the ground. She shook her head in an attempt to rid her ears of the warped sounds. "Caitlin...where's...Barry?"

"We're working on it!"

"Oooh, are you looking for your partner?" Datura started walking towards Belén who was sitting up. "Yay-high?" She made a gesture of Barry's height over her head, "Red suit? Admittedly good looking?" Belén openly glared at her, making the woman laugh. "Don't be jealous. But, I do know where your Flash is."

Belén paused and gave Datura a look. "What?" She quickly got up and, to Datura's surprise, she swung a vine to throw the Earth 2 meta into a bus stop bench. "If you hurt him-"

Datura raised a hand and delivered a shock of electricity Belén's way. The brunette screamed as her body convulsed with the electric shocks.

Datura slowly got up and felt something over her lip. She took a drip of blood off her skin and scowled at herself. "Great." She walked towards Belén, admittedly feeling wobbly on her feet. "Listen up Azalea, here's the deal. I've got your Flash all nice and unconscious thanks to a speed gun I swept from Earth 2-" she bent down in front of Belén, smirking at the weariness in the woman's face from being attacked, "-and if you want to see him again...you're gonna have to drop this. Poison Ivy doesn't do patience."

Belén blinked rapidly from the electricity still lingering in her body. "I...want to...see him."

Datura smirked. "Thought you would." She raised a hand, making it seem like she was going to wave goodbye when instead she fired one last energy beam to knock Belén out.

~ 0 ~

In the cortex gathered at the cortex after realizing their two leading metas had been taken right under their noses.

"It was a trap," Cisco said quietly, and defeatedly, at his chair. He had his hands put together to the bridge of his nose. "It was a trap and we didn't see it."

"But it doesn't make sense how Datura got Belén's suit tracker in the first place," Caitlin hated the fact she couldn't figure that mystery out. "We didn't even realize it was gone."

From the corner of the cortex stood Harry, still and silent. His jaw was clenched with guilt but he still could not say anything.

"We know where they are," Iris reminded them. She looked at the screen on the wall, displaying the last known whereabouts of Barry. "Let's just go get them."

"First of all, we don't even know if they're still going to be there," Cisco pointed out, dropping his hand to his lap. "Second of all, even if they are still there...what the hell are we supposed to do?" he made a quick gesture at their members. "They'd kill us."

Caitlin set a hand on Cisco's shoulder and gave a smile at the rest. "I think what Cisco's trying to say is that we do not have the...meta-skills to take on Datura and Poison Ivy at the same time."

"Well, we have to do something," Iris walked up to the desk and set her arms over the top. "Can we call in Nina?"

"Even then, taking on these two metas…" Caitlin gave a shake of her head. "She'll need back up."

"Where do we get that from?" Iris looked at the trio expectantly.

Cisco looked up at Caitlin, both apparently thinking of the same thing.

"Wait here," he pushed himself up from his chair. He exchanged a nod with Caitlin before the two walked out of the cortex.

~ 0 ~

After hours of screaming to be released, Black Orchid resigned herself to the fact she may never be getting out of the pipeline. She picked herself up as soon as she heard the pipeline door opening.

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded when she was face to face with Caitlin and Cisco.

"Manners," Cisco pointed at her. "We have a proposition for you."

"And why the hell would I care?"

"Because it involves your freedom, smartass," Cisco snapped. Caitlin inwardly sighed. This would definitely infuriate Belén but right now what mattered was bringing her and Barry back.

Black Orchid leaned on her hip. "I'm listening."

"The Azalea and the Flash have been kidnapped by Datura. We need you to help our friend, the Tempest, get them back."

Black Orchid unceremoniously snorted. "You want me to go up against the siphoner this entire city is talking about? She's the reason I stopped showing my face."

"What do you mean?" Caitlin's eyebrows knitted together.

Black Orchid didn't like the fact she'd unintentionally admitted that. "It's clear that this Datura wants to kill anyone in her path. I've seen what she's done to the Azalea. Imagine what she'd do if she found another botanist metahuman? No way!"

Cisco wasn't in a particular mood to remind the woman she was a human being. So, like Belén, he did first and would apologize later. "Fine, then I guess you'll stay here forever. Or at least until you die."

"You wouldn't let me die," scoffed the meta.

"Have you seen any other prisoners here?" Cisco's question made the metahuman pause. "Yeah. What do you think happened to the others in here?"

"You can't do that!"

"Then please help us," Caitlin pleaded. "C'mon. You're afraid and we get that, but if you don't do anything then Datura will kill the Azalea. And, if there's no one left to fight Datura...you're not going to be safe anywhere."

"If I go up against her I'll die right there and then," Black Orchid countered with.

"You said you were hiding from Datura so you didn't show your face," Caitlin reminded. "But the Azalea said you showed your face today after a store got robbed. That doesn't sound like self preservation to me."

"...that was my favorite store," Black Orchid rolled her eyes, attempting to make it all casual.

"Cut the crap, girl!" Cisco exclaimed. "Your freedom's on the table and you're gonna seriously waste it?"

"We can help you," Caitlin added. "We can make sure you're well prepared. We could even help you heal from your past fights." Black Orchid visibly stiffened. "The Azalea told us about some of the stitches she saw on you. And like my friend said, your freedom is on the table."

Black Orchid's dark eyes flickered from one scientist to the next. She knew what her position was and how far she could actually get. It wasn't good. "Fine," she huffed and reached a hand to the back of her head where her mask's tie was. "But I need some stitches to be re-done. So, who's the medical doctor here?" she tore the mask off to reveal a familiar face, though not familiar to Caitlin or Cisco.

Bartender Shivhan Jang stared at the scientists.

Author's Note:

So, first of all, this is a disclaimer for the fact that while I am writing in the character of Black Orchid, I am doing a different VERSION of the character. Black Orchid belongs to the DC world.

Now, the reason I decided to write this character in was because I felt it genuinely wrong she was written and barely got recognition. I never heard of Black Orchid until I started doing research on botanical metahumans for this precise arc. It amazed me she was such a complex character that I just had to write my version of hers.

And a visual reference of Black Orchid, aka Shivhan, would be the Korean singer Sunmi.

[onisiondrama]

PART 14 - videos #26 & 27

(Click here for video mirrors) - These are not my words or thoughts, I’m just summarizing what Greg / James is saying in his videos. Apologies for any offensive language or comments that may appear. - I am not repeating stories anymore and will replace these stories with brackets describing what he’s talking about. If you don’t know these stories you’re going to have to go back and read previous parts or watch his previous videos.

the known

- He was just read some texts from Sarah. In them, Sarah said she would know if she was groomed because she was groomed when she was 11 and put that person in prison. He says she also said in texts that Ayalla tried to sleep with her when she was 16 and Ayalla encouraged her to starve herself. He says it’s interesting Ayalla would attempt to take the moral high ground when she tried to sleep with Sarah when Sarah was 16. He would love to show you the texts, but last time he showed texts you guys got his Patreon deleted. He learned his lesson and if it goes to court he’ll have to drop that text bomb. - [He gets a phone call. It cuts to after the call and he says he can get a free beyond burger at Carl’s Jr.] - He says Sarah had a piece of paper that said they had the ability to take her to the hospital or to make life changing decisions for her if they needed. This was because she was going to live with them, but it didn’t work out. Kai remembers Sarah lived around them when she was 16. Nothing happened between them. Billie knew how much Greg hated Sarah at the time. - The texts Sarah sent them are now concrete because they uploaded them to the iCloud. - He says he doesn’t remember Sarah coming and going very well because he didn’t care. He didn’t let himself care about her and he wasn’t interested in her life. She was there to be Kai’s friend. He didn’t show any interest in Sarah besides when they played the game Deadliest Warriors where he would crap talk her when he slashed her up in the game. - Sarah was there 5 months, then three. She went home again after she confessed she loved Greg to another person. That caught him off guard and he didn’t want to deal with it. She got creepy, weird, and crazy in response to his “dat booty doe” joke. Nobody says that, it’s not a real thing unless you’re R&B or Hip Hop, which he’s not. He’s a comedian. - The texts they have go back to 2014. He doesn’t know if Kai was talking to Sarah in 2014. Greg didn’t meet her until 2016 when she was 16. It’s hard to say someone has a parental role when the person isn’t living with you. She was there 5 months, then three, then she came back to visit for an Easter egg hunting party or a Christmas party. He guesses no one wanted to hang out with her for the holidays back home or she wasn’t interested in hanging out back home. He didn’t give a shit about Sarah and she was only around maybe 9 months total. She didn’t visit before she turned 18, especially since they moved into this house and it’s too small to fit another person. People think she lived with them from 16 to forever and he agrees that would be weird. He speculates since Sarah left, the medical piece of paper they signed would no longer be relevant. There was no consistency or parental behavior. The most parental thing he did was drop her off at Target because she worked there. She was home schooled so he didn’t drive her to school. - Says there’s text after text of Sarah telling Kai she knew he wasn’t interested in her and she knows Greg isn’t grooming her. He treated her as shitty as he humanly possibly could. He compares her to the person in a friend group you don’t like. She was a dumb teenager and socially weird. She was always glaring at Billie. She wanted to be Billie and dyed her hair blue to be like Billie. She tried to be cutesy when she was 17, but they wouldn’t bite. It wasn’t interesting and he wasn’t attracted. He’s an asshole and mean. He called her Meg Griffin to her face and laughed. - You guys only believe him when he says something you want to hear. That’s how you know you’re not honest. Reality is harsh truth. - What happened to Kai was a crime. If he decided to press charges Greg would stand by him. but he doesn’t think Kai wants to. Kai doesn’t want to talk about it, like a real victim would do because it’s humiliating.  - Sarah was with Kai two times and Kai just layed there. Sarah put her mouth on him. Kai was not comfortable. [Greg only pushed the relationship to help Sarah.] - Sarah later said she was only joking about blackmailing them. He says it’s hard to tell when someone tells a joke in a non-joking context. [NDA/blackmail story] - He recently learned Sarah kept a little book about them the whole time, like she was plotting. She admitted nothing happened until she was 18 so that blows her whole story up. You shouldn’t trust people that change their stories. Only in some instances, like when you realize someone isn’t who you thought they were. - Greg says after he broke up with Shiloh for cheating, she would say she always loved him, she treasured the moments they had together, and one day they’ll meet up again. She was talking about how great he was on her public blog, which you can still access, Draculoh. After she realized she’s not going to get him back she said he was actually terrible. Typical psychotic ex bullshit. - [Sarah kissed Kai and scared Kai story.] Says he told Sarah if she really liked Kai to just kiss him. He was the one that gave her the right to do it. He and Sarah pressured Kai and made him uncomfortable. You can’t call Greg a rapist because Kai wanted to be with him. Out of everything that’s happened, that was the closest thing he did to a crime. If Kai wanted to press charges against Greg for aiding Sarah in what she did to Kai, Greg wold probably be compliant because he was there and it didn’t feel good. The first time it seems ok, the second time seemed a little weird, the third time seemed straight up not good. Seemed like they were trying to trick Kai into sleeping with them. They put Kai through hell. He and Sarah are probably terrible people. If you want to be mad at him, be mad at him for what he and Sarah did to Kai. He only did it because he has a hero complex and wanted to help Sarah. He wasn’t thinking about Kai. That’s why Kai is still silent. You guys still put him through the ringer. If a victim was sobbing hysterically and suffering right in front of you, you wouldn’t see it. All you guys only see people who viciously go after other people and you want to joining the outrage culture bandwagon. The real bad guys are Sarah and possibly himself.

quite a bit

- Someone who actually listened to Greg wrote him. They say Anonymous Gene DM’d them on twitter. Gene thought they were a sock puppet account because they were defending Greg. This person got 9 out of 10 of Gene’s accounts suspended for spamming, harassment, and doxing. Gene claimed to be working with Chris Hansen and Hansen follows his account. Greg says he’s seen no proof of this, he’s only been told. He’s seen screen shots of Gene’s alleged IP address and they connected him to Vince, then it wasn’t Vince. People keep saying Hasen is paying Gene to dox Greg and his family members. His family members have nothing to do with this, he barely talks to any of them. - Person says Gene posted on reddit, he was the first person to leak photos and videos of Hansen knocking on Greg’s door. Greg asks how this person would have access to that before anyone unless they were working with Hansen. - Person says they found out Gene’s real name. They googled it and saw he was arrested and went to court. Greg says Hansen works with a lot of people who have been to court and Hansen was also arrested. A lot of corruption. - Person said if you google “Lance and Chris Hansen” a page came up saying Chris is working with criminals. Greg says criminals stick together. You can look up Chris Hansen’s mugshot. - He searches for texts from a girl who tells him everything people are saying about them. [He scrolls through the texts.] He says people knew not cropping the top of the Billie text was an accident, but people got him suspended anyway. That’s integrity for you. - [He reads a quote from December that said there’s officially an FBI investigation looking into him.] [Laptop story, chain of ownership.] He says it was an old shitty laptop Sarah bought for $200. - [He responds to quotes from the texts.] Says he hasn’t broken rules. [Lists and responds to Chris Hansen’s financial issues.]  - Greg says someone took a picture of him holding a toddler in Dairy Queen. Apparently he can’t go to Dairy Queen without people taking pictures of him and posting it to the web. Very irritating, especially when you take picture of kids. - Reads someone wanted to put wanted posters with his and Kai’s face around where they live. He says that’s slander and posing as law enforcement, a crime. People commit crimes because they think they’re a hero. That’s because they don’t die a hero. They live long enough to become the villain. - He says Real Stream News is upset at Vince. - He says there’s Regina going on twitter rants about seeking plastic surgery. - [He called the cops on Chris Hansen, Hansen released the 9-1-1 call.] That’s not what an innocent person does, that’s what a criminal does. It’s creepy. - He reads officials can’t release recordings without a court order. He says maybe that’s true. - He reads Shiloh got her tattoo covered up and gave the rest of the money to the other victims. Greg says he doubts that. He says covering up a tattoo is $50 and he was told she already had it covered up before the gofundme. He asks where the money went. He says people should step up and publicly admit if they got money from Shiloh. That would prove she did was she said she did, but he has a theory that she did what she did to him. Take the money and run.[Shiloh took his money while she was in Canada story.] She later apologized and said she would pay him back. He wanted the $3,000 or $4,000 back. She gave him a confirmation code. He went to the Fred Meyer in Tacoma to the money tree and they said it wasn’t a real number. He thinks that’s fraud. He tells Shiloh if she still wants to give back the money she promised him, that would be great. [Shiloh took his money story again.] She told lies to get money from him. That’s fraud. - He reads an angry tweet from someone asking Shiloh for receipts. He says “yikes.” - [Lists things Gene doxed.] Greg says if Hansen is funding that, it could be a real legal problem. Hansen is already in legal trouble with trespassing past Greg’s signs. - Says the next part is people being hateful about toddlers in videos. It’s crazy anyone can see tragedy, something horrible that happened to a child and think money. That’s what a lot of Youtubers think. If you want to look like the good guy, you should donate all the money you made off those videos about a toddler getting hurt to a good cause. Profiting off of that is horribly evil. Hansen should donate month off of interviewing “victims” [hand quotes] to a charity or a good cause instead of paying off his debts. If he cared about these people that’s what he would do. - [He reads the leaked texts from Gene of Vince calling Wes the N-word.] He says he can’t show these or he’ll get in trouble. - [Greg reads about the person who tried to get him SWATted, but the 9-1-1 operator knew it was fake because it happens so much they have Greg’s info.] Greg says this is the 19 cases people say there are. There are actually 19 calls. A long time ago someone said Sarah was murdered. When the cops came, Sarah answered the door. Says most of the times the cops don’t show up because it’s so ridiculous. The cops are probably sick of you guys and your false things. - He says when someone sent him powder in an envelope, it didn’t even make it to him. The post office almost shut down. They tested it and it turned out to be food product. They tried to make it appear like they mailed something that would end his life or the life of his family. Everybody thinks they’re a good guy if they do evil things to people they think are bad. Heroes confirm someone is guilty before they hurt them. The people that do these things are the real criminals. If someone gets shot when you get them SWATted, that’s on you. People are doing horrible things and there’s no accountability. The post office told him they were looking into the person that sent the powder because it may have been a federal crime. They told him because it wasn’t a distinguished threat, they are not sure if they are going to pursue it.

[thenoodlesadventures]

Got some good pictures of the Noodle a couple days ago! It was the first sunny and dry day we have had in a while so we spent a few hours at the park and he found a ball!

I have really been thinking about how I am training and the techniques I WANT to use versus the ones I have been PUSHED to use by people I have been training with. So naturally I started testing. What does my dog really know in the absence of pressure? How does my value hold up under distraction without the threat of correction for a wrong choice? I am not happy with the answers that I have and have decided to largely put aside any sort of sport/trick training (aside from what he needs to get his mental energy out) and really focus on my relationship with my dog and getting some focus back without pressure. Most competitions require nothing more than a flat collar collar to be worn so it is useless if my dog can only focus under threat of pressure and my heel position has no value. I absolutely hate that some of my foundation with this dog is built on the overuse of tools that are made for very specific purposes. This overuse means that a lot of his behaviors crumble when these tools are absent. I do know that some of his intense distraction is from being a puppy/teenager (and not really knowing how to regulate his feelings yet) and I need to be careful to not put him in situations that are so intense he cannot learn from them as I move forward in relationship building and focusing exercises. The first things I will be working on are heeling on a flat collar and refocusing with distractions.

UPDATE: i was scrolling through the early posts on this blog and wow guys. Just wow. I remember i felt so disheartened when i posted this. Like i had failed my dog. Just really let him down and damaged him beyond belief. It was at the point where he would growl at me if i had to lean over him because he was so concerned because of the shit they had me doing. To some extent i did fail my dog. He had to go through all of that bullshit for me to learn how to advocate for him (and myself) and i will spend the rest of my life making that up to him. Every dog i own after him will be trained and raised differently because of him. However i did not completely fail my dog. Because i did stand up for him and his well-being, to myself and to the people i trained with. I will never do something another trainer told me to with my dog ever again without fully evaluating the impact that it might have on him. I will also do my utmost to approach training with him 1) in the most considerate way possible and 2) as a partnership. I owe him far more than that but this is what i can give him since i cannot take back anything that has already been done and i can only work with the dog that i have in front of me. Could i have had a drastically different dog in terms of confidence and reactivity/adjustment if i had supported him the way he clearly needed when he was younger? Yes. Is that the dog i have now? No.

So it has been a while since I posted this and let me tell you, we have come a long way. I still loose my patience/temper ever now and then because it is such an ingrained reaction at this point, but it is a rare occurance. My dog will actually wrestle with me now without getting so aroused that he bites me too hard. He has not growled (always because I walked towards him too quickly or something equally scary) at me in I do not know how long. His resilience to frustration is higher and we have actually had a few shaping sessions because he is willing to just offer behaviors now (i think he was too afraid of being wrong before to try anything new)! He actually is enjoying mimicry now which used to stress him out. He can informal heel without pressure in a variety of environments and on any flat collar. He is able to re-engage in a variety of environments too! We still have a ways to go before i call this one done but we sure as hell are getting there.

My list of things to do is smaller and in the absence of pressure I can actually see some things he was having issues with that I previously could not see because he was stressing low so often. Like he has a reactivity issue (which fluctuates wildly but with a strong relation to how much exercise he gets). He has a confidence issue. His relationship with me had been crumbling but is now strong enough that if he is nervous or suddenly frightened he comes over to me and stays there until he is calm and then goes back to investigating. Other things we have made progress with are dremeling with his consent, getting calm baths (he flips a shit over running water so he now gets legitimate baths lol), blow drying with consent, tooth brushing with AND without consent (cause some things still need to be done lol), ear cleaning without consent (we are working on the WITH consent part but that is going to take a long time), and touching him with consent and with descriptive signals (so i will tell him "face" before i pet his face and if he moves away then i do not pet his face and i do not ask again).

It is incredibly clear that he feels a hell of a lot more comfortable with me and that this has generalized to other people as well. He has always been a social dog but he is very sensitive so he used to not know what to do with his feelings about that. Now he just gets crazy excited to see people he knows and i love that for him. I have also found that i have a passion for training cooperative care behaviors and working with consent-based training! It really has been a journey to this point but i am excited to continue it with him!

Happy training!

[indieks]

What’s wrong with us?

© To its owner

Pairing : Min Yoongi x Reader

Genre : Angst, Fluff, Supernatural-ish

Word count : 12.4k

Synopsis : According to a legend, a second chance would be given to couples if they ask the question “what’s wrong with us?” out loud during the ultimate fight that would lead to their breakup, meaning they want to figure it out but ignore how and when everything between them started to fall apart… The two partners would have the chance to travel to the past and watch when they hurt the most each other in the relationship. When you’re finally able to experiment it with your boyfriend Yoongi, will you be able to put everything back together?

A/N : Hmmmm hello, Tumblr world! Following this short presentation, you’ll be able to read the first scenario and first post on this blog, lucky you (well maybe not)

But beforehand, I just wanted to introduce myself to you quickly : my name is Katia, I’m 21 and I’m a French girl (so sorry if there are any mistakes…)

Also, I really wanted to thank you if you ever stop in your scrolling to read this. I hope you’ll enjoy it, it is based on one of the weirdest (and one of the best) dreams I had with Min Yoongi a few nights ago (that bias wrecker I swear, well I’m not even sure who’s wrecking who between Jungkook and him now…)

Don’t know why I decided that I should publish this one, I’ve always liked to write but never dared to go further than saving my creations to my computer so… Here it is! Thank you again for reading! Any comments, good or bad, are welcomed, I love feedback!

      “What did you just say?” His raspy voice pierced through your ears and mind, making your headache grow as your eyes burned from the tears you’d been trying to swallow.

“I said fuck you, Min Yoongi. Fuck you, fuck your music, fuck this relationship!” Your voice started to crack as you couldn’t handle it anymore, you didn’t want to scream anymore, you didn’t want to fight with him anymore.

“You’re going to take that back Y/N, right now. Take that back.” He said with a tone that scared you, enough for you to flinch when he turned around to face you in your shared living room and started to close the distance between you.

“No I’m not! FUCK YOU! FUCK THIS RELATIONSHIP!” You started to burst out and to push him away with your hands on his torso before punching him, and he let you, his eyes staring at yours as if he was trying to get a hold of your mind this way. “I don’t even recognize you! I don’t recognize myself anymore! So fuck everything! Goddamnit would you look at us for once and not your computer or your sheets?!’”

He caught your wrists to make you stop hitting him as you got more furious second by second and he steadied himself. His eyes were as dark as the night that surrounded your apartment building, but there was no sign of a spark that would have reminded you of the stars up there, no ; it had become dark holes that would have swallowed your soul and your will to fight against him if you looked at them longer, so you shut your eyes and let your tears finally spill on your face, your sobs replacing your curse words. 

You freed yourself from his hold after a few tries and hung your head low while your heating ears caught his sigh, his breath brushing your face, reminding you of how close he stood. His absence of answer or reaction finally took the best of you and you darted your angry eyes towards his face one more time, and it was as unreadable as usual. And if you had wanted to sound aggressive or disgusted, your throat and tongue decided otherwise as only a weakening voice was left to be heard as you asked :

”What’s wrong with us, Yoongi, huh? What’s wrong with you?“

"You tell me, because you’re always the one pointing at problems that don’t exist in this shitty relationship. Or maybe you should tell me which one of your colleagues you were fucking with just before coming home tonight?” His tone was sharp as he took a step back with a smile on his face, like he was laughing at your current state, not even considering the fact that you were heartbroken.

These words, were the last straw. You had taken all you could have, you had given him one last chance to explain himself and his behavior for the past months, but he didn’t care. You shook your head in disbelief as more and more tears fell on your cheeks that were hot as hell, this hell you fell into at one point but didn’t know when, and you stormed to the front door after telling him these last few words :

“I’m fucking done with you.”

“Yeah I’ll see you tomorrow because you’ll come back for me like you always do!”

        At first, people had only heard or talked about it like it was a legend, a fairytale that had been made up by some to get interest or to boast about how bright their couple was after they made it through a hardship. But soon, with the development of medias and the increase of their impact on our actual society, the rumor that had been spreading gained more and more credibility as people got to testify on TV or on the internet, or as live experiments were relayed to try catching the thing on the act. According to this so well-known tale, a second chance was given to every couple who was on the verge of breaking up, during the ultimate fight that would torn the relationship into pieces, bury it and reduce it to past memories in the partners’ minds. In what consisted this second chance and how to take it? 

Everything started with these four simple words, words that would come out during the virulent fight : “What’s wrong with us?”.

If those words could be heard easily in the everyday life or arguments, thanks to this second chance system, they could have more weight than the world when the relationship was at stake, when they uncovered a hidden will of the partners, the will to truly understand what happened to the non-stopping flow of happiness and growth of their couple, and to figure it out.

This hidden desperation would then lead to the main thing that was hard to believe, this sort of magical happening that gave you the chills when you used to watch the documentaries over the phenomenon. It was said that the partners of the couple lost consciousness and were transported in another dimension where they could walk back through their past and shared story, and they would watch like an invisible stranger the very moment when they participated to tear everything apart, as known as when they started to hurt their boyfriend or girlfriend without understanding each other. 

It was as if they were witnesses of those scenes, each partner with its own to watch, seeing themselves at this right instant but not being able to change anything, a kind of Back to The Future but in a more lesson-learning way. And after reviewing their own mistake and misbehavior, it only depended on them when they woke up ; either they understood what they had done wrong and fixed it then got back together, either they decided they couldn’t handle it anyway and would go on separate ways. In the end, this second chance happened to be a way to reinforce the couple, or for the ex-lovebirds to learn from their past misbehavior and enter another relationship with a better mindset.

But this magic spell that depended on a few words didn’t work every time it was said like a Harry Potter formula ; it was a one-time chance that could only be experimented when the couple was one step away from a true breakup,  when whatever supernatural force that was at its origin considered it was worth the shot. Without great surprise, couples started to go crazy over it when it was discovered to be true, saying the phrase every time they fought only to be disappointed by not being able to travel in time, their words falling into the ordinary. 

Some of them broke up without even trying to experiment it, saving the words in their mouths in order to bury the hurtful memories they would see or not caring about what they did in the past, only concentrating on the fact that they couldn’t stand living with the other anymore. But still, to the more romantic ones, it served them right and could help them go back to zero to build their love on a better basis, or soothed the violence of the fight to make them breakup “in good terms”, acknowledging each other’s fault before moving on.

You were from the people that had chosen to live without thinking about it, to love your significant other with all you had, convinced that the power of love could sort things out on its own, without the help of this witchy thing. The few times you had had to go through a breakup, you had never traveled to the past as you had proudly tried to understand what had happened by yourself without having to ask the question that unraveled everything, or because you had lacked this desire as you both hadn’t shared any feelings towards the other one anymore, only wanting to go separate ways from now on and to move on as quickly as possible.

And when you met Min Yoongi, your vision of things didn’t change even if, for the first time in your whole life, you fell in love really hard ; it wasn’t those gentle feelings that everyone experiments before finding the one they picture next to them for their life, because for you, Yoongi immediately happened to be that exact love of your life.

You both met in your second year of college ; he was studying musicology and you psychology and criminology as you had always dreamed of being a psychologist that would help the police and justice to understand better the acts of the people called before the courts, or to prevent crimes from happening by taking the problem to its source and sort it out. Maybe that was why you had had  the capacity to deal with your relationship problems up til now, focusing on understanding each other’s wants and needs and work on the problem on your own after having found what could have been its origin  – and that, without the help of your friends, even less the one from some supernatural process that you couldn’t explain rationally.

You had noticed Yoongi since the first year of college, because as curious as you were when it came to individuals, he intrigued you with his unreadable face and the dark but deep world he seemed to live in, with his all black outfits he wore better than anyone, his raven hair that was always covered by his headphones, and his calm and secret nature, that made him undeniably attractive overall. He was the sexy and talented musician a lot of girls talked about, even if your campus wasn’t poor when it came to pleasing boys, but he had this cliché of the “mysterious and dark man” that gave him this little something more, at least in your eyes.

He could raise questions in your mind that would overwork your imagination when you tried to come up with answers to them, because the more you had felt like you started to grab a hold of his personality when you overheard his conversations or stories about him, the more it had been like you were getting so far from it. Like, when in parties he would become a total thirsty and extrovert guy that would use his popularity to take a girl to his dorm, while in daylight he barely looked at them. But even if you hated him when he wore that player mask, you couldn’t thank the sky enough for the one night he decided to wear it and make you his next target, that night he came through the crowd to talk to you, his breath hot and smelling like alcohol, that night when you were wasted as hell because you had decided to forget about your poor exams results by drinking like there’s no tomorrow.

Just like every other girl he had landed his hands on, you had felt your skin sparkling and lost yourself in his dim eyes that were like galaxies you craved to fly to, and you both had started to dance without caring how your bodies collided against each other, feeling only the need to be closer and closer. You had always known you had a crush on him, a crush that combined with your drunken state made you follow him through the campus and to his dorm room where plenty of other girls just as blind as you had gone. Until he closed the door behind him, making you well aware of his presence and of the situation that would have been your first one night stand, ever. But for someone that was learning how to read minds to apprehend behaviors better, your skills couldn’t have been poorer than with Min Yoongi, as you never doubted that he, too, had developed a crush on you.

His quiet and complex nature had helped him get through your highly alerted senses when it came to him, ready to analyze each one of his gestures or words, as he had been watching you without you knowing, observing you without you realizing, curious about this girl that asked a lot of questions during your common classes or that talked brightly, as if she was always happy or excited about everything and everyone. You were his opposite, and even if he hardly admitted it, you really did attract him like a magnet. You, were different. And you, were the one he decided to turn around with and go for a walk instead of moving under the blankets. That exact night, your drunken selves talked and talked, learning about and teasing each other like many people do when they’re flirting, while you were laying on the grass looking at the stars. That night, Min Yoongi started to talk about himself before he could prevent his tongue from forming words that, put altogether, led you on the path to his heart.

And starting with this white night you spent talking, Min Yoongi and yourself hung out together, got closer, and you became the first person who had the chance to get to know him personally, without his façade and barriers surrounding him. With your capacity to decipher people’s minds and to solve their worries with the best you could give, Yoongi felt at ease when he talked to you about his concerns, and, little by little, he began to depend on you like you were his pillar ; his crush became love without limits to it, without measure. 

You were the one who picked up his broken pieces, who helped him moving on from a difficult past with what you knew from it, who supported him when he left the university as he got casted to enter a boy group who was now famously known as BTS. But most importantly to him, you were the first one he made love to and not had sex with to satisfy his human needs ; and never sharing intimacy with someone had been that good to both of you, never had he moaned the name of his partner because he loved how they made him feel, never had he whispered an “I love you” before falling asleep in her arms and woken up by her side, not having to leave like a thief.

You had realized your feelings way before he did, love hitting you hard as you couldn’t compare it to anything you had felt before, needing him the minute he left out the door, being as anxious as ever every time you fought because of the fear that he would leave or that you would hurt him as much as he had been hurt in his past, feeling complete only once you made up through passionate sex or love confessions and hot tears. You were the sun in the sky that finally warmed him and lit up his grey world, and he was the moon that calmed your hot temper and balanced your fiery emotions.

So, where did it go wrong? How come this time you weren’t able to ease the fire of anger burning through you? Or how come Yoongi couldn’t stop himself from being a cold bastard towards you? If you had thought you could handle everything in this intense relationship like you had always tried with your previous ones, that you would be able to read through the lines of Yoongi’s messy mind and understand the way he acted, you realized how wrong you had been the moment you slammed the door of your apartment.

Yet, you were not met with the darkness of your building’s deserted hallway at 2 a.m. in the morning, but with the cold water of rain that immediately soaked your clothes, as your feet touched the ground of a sidewalk and not the velvet of a deep red carpet. You panicked for a moment, looking around you while letting the downpour wet you as if you had just jumped into a chilly lake, your breath shaking as your heart was ready to pierce your ribcage because of how strong it was beating, and then it hit you. The second chance. You were now experimenting yourself what everyone talked about, and what a part of you still hadn’t believed in. Had you said those words? Was it him? You couldn’t even remember, your head and body numb from the fight ; you didn’t even recall why it had started in the first place. Was it something he said? Something you did?

               Judging from the environment surrounding you, you were in Seoul for sure. The night had already fallen and it was cold outside, making the water icy and starting to cause you pain every time a drop touched you. It felt like you were constantly receiving bullets, but you were dealing with it as you were dedicated to finding out where you were and what you were going to watch and go through a second time in your life. You were standing on the sidewalk of a big avenue, cars riding fast on your left and passengers around you that walked quickly to escape the storm, their coats placed over their heads or for the more ready ones, their big umbrellas trying to cover them as much as they could. On your right, buildings with lights that could be seen through their windows were aligned and that's when you recognized the frame of one of your favorite restaurants, a korean barbecue Yoongi and you often went to when you planned a date, and you started to search through your memory as you grew anxious, waiting for him or yourself to show up.

The seconds went by slowly and people still moved across you, not noticing your trembling and soaked figure with your eyes going all over the place to the point your head started to turn. But the worst was yet to happen and you knew it, as when you started to walk in hopes to finally see something, someone suddenly went through you, through your body, as if you were a ghost. The weirdest thing was that you felt like throwing up, still human with all your reason, feelings and senses in your bubble, but this bubble was constantly exploding as strangers walked straight into you without knowing you were there.

And then, as your feet stumbled to find a place under a tree where no one would disturb you or kill you anymore, you finally saw yourself. Your old self, drunk as hell, walking with difficult steps while a man that you didn't recognize was holding her close to him and was helping her getting out of that very restaurant. Every sound around you seemed to lower in volume as you could only hear your own laugh that was echoing in your ears, and you felt your flesh and bones shiver at the view of a triumphant Y/L/N Y/N walking – if you could call her far from assured steps walking – straight in direction of the sidewalk you were looking the scene from. You didn't feel your heartbeat anymore, nor your entire body that froze under the leaves of the tree, and you almost forgot to blink while your mouth was agape. Once your old self steadied not far from you – too close to you you'd say –, her phone rang and you recognized the designate melody that you had registered for Yoongi's incoming calls years ago.

You cleared your vision by freeing your forehead and cheeks from all the wet hair that had glued to them ; if it was self-reflection time, you had to pay attention to every detail and as a behavior analyst, you felt thrilled at the idea of decrypting your very self. Your actions, your expressions, your words ; you needed to observe everything, as you slowly remembered what you were going to witness, but maybe with a sober mind you'd be able to realize what you had done to the love of your life. "Hello?" Your nosy voice spoke, the man still grabbing your side and even permitting himself to put his head in the crook of your neck. "Y/N! Are you still at the restaurant babe? I've been trying to call you like 20 times!" You could hear his voice as clearly as if you had the phone next to your ear, and it immediately brought tears to your eyelids and pulled at the strings of your heart. This voice you loved so much. That was like a lullaby to you. "No I'm LEAVING! I've been waiting for you for like 40 min Min Yoongi, you know? Our date was at 8pm!" Silence perforated your eardrums and you saw your past self mirroring the expression you had just now, a hurt one. "I tried to tell you I'd be late Y/N I-" "Save it, you bastard. Don't worry about me like you always do, I'm spending the night drunk and on my own. Don't know when I'll be home though."

With that being said, your old self hung up and softly touched the cheek of the man that looked as enlightened by the alcohol as her. You now remembered how angry you were at Yoongi that night. It was a few months ago, and the wish to make him pay and suffer had struck you. It wasn't the first time he was late or forgot one of your dates, and you had dealt with it as you knew how busy he was with the group activities, and because every time he had excused himself and postponed it, doing everything so that the replacing date was wonderful in order to make you forgive him. And every time, you did, because you were understanding, you were patient, you loved him and admired his devotion for music.

But the last few weeks before this rainy night, Yoongi hadn't been himself, always grumpy, coming late at night, barely kissing or touching you, not eating the food you made for him and when you would ask him to talk to you about what's wrong like he used to, he brushed you off, telling you not to treat him as one of your subject of study, or a criminal or a victim to apprehend. But when he had been the one to offer to go on a date before he left for tour the next morning, all your anger and disappointment at him disappeared as you had hoped he would take this chance to get close to you again, you who waited every night for him to come home and almost grew white hair doing so.

But he was late again, and that was the one time, out of the numerous others, that you lost it. You had lost faith on the twentieth minute he didn't show up, so you had emptied up a bottle and half of soju in no time, pretty sure he would never come and deciding that you wouldn't care like he didn't seem to about you. Even if it killed your brain to think that he was going to fly away from you for never ending weeks the next day, and that you may not have the opportunity to kiss him goodbye properly, or to feel reassured about his feelings for you.

However, the more you watched your past self walking in the stranger's steps to take a cab, the more you felt uneasy with her choices. Didn't you overreact? Yoongi was late, but he didn't forget, wasn't it better...? But your old self seemed pretty done with making him excuses, with being sympathetic as she trailed her feet on the ground and came closer to the road.

But was it worth sleeping with another and ruining the relationship forever? Was it what you had wanted?

          Your attention was drawn to a familiar silhouette that appeared at the end of the sidewalk, running as fast as it could, and you felt your heart squeeze painfully in your chest. You weren't ready to see him again, but you couldn't stop yourself from watching as the Yoongi from the past urged himself under the pouring rain, with his black rain coat on, a cap lying on his hair and a face mask hiding his beautiful face from the world, and he got close to both your past and witnessing-self faster than you thought. Your body craved to feel his touch ; you wanted to hold his frame tightly in your arms and make up with him already, as the present Yoongi had predicted before you slammed the door in his face earlier. That's what he had done to you, you needed him and he could weaken you in an instant, just by standing in front of you and speaking like he suddenly did : "Who the fuck are you? Get off my girlfriend!" His tone was louder than what he had planned but Yoongi hadn't been able to control himself as soon as he had seen the hands of another man on your body.

He pushed the guy with strength and, in your drunk state, all your past self could do was scream at him to stop and go away but it was too late, the guy had provoked him by saying he couldn't keep his said-girlfriend as she was ready to "go on a ride in his car and then on his d-", and Yoongi was now punching him hard with his fists while dragging him down on the wet pavement.

Passengers finally intervened and separated them, and your boyfriend grabbed your wrist, starting to walk away from the now raging guy. Automatically, your legs moved forward as you watched this scene in silence, tears now confusing themselves with the drops of rain that went down your face. You followed your couple that was going to a quieter street crossing the avenue, but Yoongi couldn't take you as far as he wished to because your past-self was fighting really hard to make him let go of her. "What the actual hell Y/N? What were you going to do with him?! Were you planning to cheat on me?" He asked, finally revealing his entire face by lowering his black face mask under his chin with a brutal movement. You stood closer to the two frames, placing yourself right next to them so that you could see that beautiful face of his contort in pain, while yours was clearly expressing how mad at him you had been. "I don't know, looks like you don't give a shit about me or our relationship anymore but that guy was there when I was crying my heart out at the restaurant, THAT GUY!" You caught a confused look on Yoongi's face, some wrinkles appearing on his forehead that could be seen as he also took off his cap to brush his hair, parting it in two. "So every time I'm not right here you go to someone else?" He inquired, killing the drunk women facing him with his eyes. "And where were you?! What's your excuse this time?!" She almost screamed at him, her now wet mascara darkening her under-eyes as she started to cry and looked as devastated as you currently were. "I tried to call you, Y/N! I even texted you to tell you I was going to be late and that I was sorry! And now here I am and I almost caught my girlfriend cheating on me!" He yelled back. "So CHILL, because YOU are the one that's going to explain yourself right now! Why didn't you call me back when you saw I was late?" "Because I always do! And I'm tired! I'm tired of you being late and forgiving you because you always find a way to make yourself excused! I've had enough, Yoongi!" He sighed and tried to grab your hands but you took a step back before agitating them in front of yourself, in a gesture that was meant to tell him to go away. Your body had started to quiver as you remembered having been freezing cold that night, and you noticed the worried look on Yoongi's face that you hadn't noticed that time as you were now sobbing hard and weren't looking somewhere precisely. Your heart skipped a beat when you saw his eyes soften even if you had rejected him, and he put his hands back into the pockets of his coat drenched in water.

"Y/N, baby, please let's talk this out at home you're freezing right now… I need you I need to spend time with you tonight before I go please let's go home I'm sure we can sort it out like we always do…" He offered shyly before reaching out again and grabbing your arm gently, while he had his bottom lip eaten by his small teeth.

Despite his glistening face and the darkness of the night, you still happened to distinguish the bags under his eyes and how pale he looked. Back then, you hadn't heard or didn't want to hear the sorrow and despair in his voice, the sincerity of his words laced with regret as he looked at you like you were going to break or disappear in front of him ; you hadn't felt how needy the grasp of his hand was, because you were blinded by your own anger and pain so much that you couldn't catch what he felt on his side.

"You need me? You, need me? You gotta be kidding me Yoongi. How dare you show up and act like you care when you didn't even look at me, didn't talk to me, didn't touch or kiss me, didn't sleep next to me for the past weeks! How dare you play that card with me!"

"And what about you, Y/N?! At least I'm not cheating on you!" His voice rose again but he gave quick looks to his sides to make sure you were alone or that passers weren't looking.

"How can I be cheating on you when I feel like I don't have a boyfriend anymore!" You answered right back, throwing your hands up in frustration before using them to wipe your eyes, adding even more black from your makeup to your cheeks.

"What bullshit are you spilling right now, do your hear yourself?" He sounded even more frustrated and rolled his eyes back so hard that he almost feared they would be stuck in there and that he could have seen the inside of his head that was burning with fury and confusion.

"It's not bullshit Yoongi, that's the wonderful truth, your girlfriend is your fucking music, your studio, your laptop, your headphones, your practice room..." You had counted out, even using your fingers to accentuate your comment.

But you didn't have a chance to finish as the man in front of you caught your hand and put it down, clearly getting annoyed the more you were listing nouns with a glimpse of a smile on your face.

"Stop it would you! I love you, Y/N! Stop making assumptions when you're not in my head! Please!"

"If you did love me, Yoongi, you would've been there on time tonight, you would've talked to me about what's wrong instead of taking me for granted and think I would put up with your cold behavior forever. But nevermind, now I do know what's wrong because I had to guess myself, so I believe I just have to deal with it like you expect me to do, right?"

"No you don't know what's wrong, because there's nothing wrong with me! I didn't do anything you accused me of doing, I'm just busy but sorry, it's my fucking JOB! Don't even start with your psychologist therapy that doesn't even apply here! I know you need to find explanations to everything I do because otherwise you feel frustrated that you can't read my mind, but you should stop it goddamnit, it only helps you think nonsense and make assumptions that are completely wrong! I've already told you to stop worrying about me and that if I had problems I'd come to talk to you about them when I feel like it! So please, stop!"

The downpour had started to calm down contrary to your boyfriend who was about to lose his temper. And then, after listening to his speech a second time, you knew what you had done to hurt him that night. You understood why you were the one watching this heartbreaking memory. Even if the origin of your anger was legitimate and Yoongi had been difficult to live with the weeks before, he still didn't deserve the venom your past-self was about to spill at him and that was in total discordance with what you were actually thinking.

"So after four years of dating you still think I don't know you?" she asked without really expecting an answer. "You're feeling down because you feel like you can't make any good music lately, because you're persuaded you're never perfect enough on stage or in the studio, but because you're a stubborn jerk, you've decided to blame yourself for everything and to be self-centered, thinking you can go through this shit alone and making you the worst asshole I've ever met in my life! But you know what Yoongi? Nobody's perfect, this is impossible and you are no exception! Oh no believe me, you're far from being perfect! There will always be people to criticize you and to hate on you to remind you that and you know what? I don't blame them, no, I understand them, if they saw how much of a jerk you are with me, how a shitty boyfriend you are, how much of a dramatic and pitiful tortured musician you truly are, how your love for music is insane so that it barely makes you human anymore, they'd be even more legitimate to hate you! He's not a boyfriend material, people!" She finally shouted out loud to anyone who would hear her, wrapping her hatred-full speech with the most sarcastic and shaming ending she could have done. "He's just a desperate boy hiding behind his music because when it comes to relationships and people, he only knows how to suck, not how to love! But here am I, still loving him like the dumb girl I am! But don't worry, I'm really asking myself why right now!"

Yoongi's face fell into something that cut your heart really deep while your other self looked at him with disgust, her curled lips even joking at him right now after humiliating him. If you had felt satisfied at this instant by seeing him break right in front of your eyes, making your revenge perfect, the bittersweet taste it always had had finally come to you. Revenge couldn't be glorious, it couldn't make you completely happy, and you understood just now how bad you had hurt your significant other, if not more than what he had done to you.

Like you had told him, you were well aware of how terrible he was feeling because of his job, but you still chose to bury him deeper into the ground, not even caring anymore. It was, without a doubt, the result of you losing your patience and of the emptiness of your gauge of understanding, but now that you caught the tears flowing from your boyfriend's eyes and tracing their way between the raindrops that were more and more rare as the storm had passed, you were suffocated by the hands of regret, while your past-self didn't acknowledge them or didn't mind.

The balance between the suffering you were both enduring had been considered as stabilized at an equal height from your point of view back then, when you had felt the satisfaction of giving him what you thought he deserved, but now that the second chance was making you undergo the same situation, you found yourself totally disagreeing with your words and thoughts. If it could rationally be explained by the fact that you were exhausted by the tensed and loveless situation you'd been living in for a while, if it could be justified by the hurt Yoongi had really put you through this entire time, the words you had pronounced to his attention couldn't have sounded more wrong to your witnessing-self. You loved him, you had always loved how passionate he was about music, you loved his introverted personality, you loved every damn aspect of him, and the more you thought about it, the more the reality hit you, the one reminding you that, except for this hellish period, Min Yoongi had always made you happy and showed his love to you, contrary to what you had just told him.

"So this is what you really think of me…?" Yoongi weakly asked, before falling into silence for a few more seconds – probably the time to register and digest everything you had said to him. "You KNOW it's my job, you KNOW what it meant and I warned you before I signed in, and you agreed to it. You told me you'd be with me no matter what and you'd support me. That you loved me and understood. Now what? You want to take that back?" he spoke up again calmly, his voice deep and trembling while his eyes were searching yours for any sign of any type, because your past-self was too busy looking away from him now that she was knocked out after expressing herself with that much vigor.

You couldn't stop yourself from mumbling things they couldn't hear, wanting desperately to possess your drunk body to prevent you from saying any more wounding words, and when you reached out your hand to swipe the lonely tear that had fallen along the cheek of the man you loved so dearly, your fingers only went through his flesh and he didn't bulge, not feeling anything or how much you wanted to show him you were still here for him.

"I don't know, Yoongi. I'm just tired of everything, I don’t know what to think anymore." She whispered.

And that's how the fight ended. And now that you were looking back at this, you really wondered how you two got to stay together after that, how your boyfriend didn't break up with you after you had been that mean. Still, you followed them to your shared apartment and watched them go to bed without a word being said since your last confused statement, their hair still wet and eyes puffy. Suddenly, you felt like vomiting again when your boyfriend was the first one to make a move while your past self was focused on sobering, turning around and around in the bed and moaning quietly as her body was still shaking.

Even after hearing everything you had spilled at him that had made him sob that time and you months later, he was the one to apologize and you had to endure the vision of him crying his heart out while he was begging you not to leave him, calling himself a shitty boyfriend like you had and telling you that everything you had said about him was true and that he was nothing without you. He engulfed your curled frame in his arms and you didn't give any response for a moment, still surfing on your wave of anger and despise, but soon enough you broke into tears too and held him back, telling him the few words your present-self had been muttering since a moment, long enough ago to make it torturing : "I'm sorry too. I love you."

After that, Yoongi had went away on tour, and the distance helped to forget what had happened – so did the fact that you had drank that night, making you remember only what you wanted to remember and forget how sharp your words had been, and with Yoongi burying it as if nothing ever happened too. You wondered, as you watched them fall asleep, if you ever had said the magic words that night, would have it worked as your couple had been in danger?

Nevertheless, while rummaging through your memory, you came to the conclusion it probably wouldn't have as you were pretty sure that before that very night, you hadn't hurt Yoongi that badly in your whole relationship. And now, you were just dying to go back to the present and fix everything, even ready to take back the words and insults you had thrown at his face during the fight you had earlier, which you now remembered had started because he was overreacting about you coming late at night after a dinner with your colleagues – including male ones –, talking to you really bad for the third time in the month.

Indeed, if after this huge rainy argument, Yoongi had made some efforts about getting close to you again and letting go of his studio or the unfinished work he was on in order to go back to you, another problem had started to sprout in your relationship like thorns on a rose, making you unable to hold onto your love as tightly as before. Your boyfriend had been turning paranoid about you going out, scared you might cheat on him or find better than him as you had made him feel insecure. He had begun to lose his trust in you, being more and more intrusive in your private life, making assumptions like you used to do, accusing you of things you didn't do and talking to you like shit or almost insulting you every time you would stand your ground and still go out despite his disagreement.

On the other hand, you had grown more distant with him, afraid to oppress him like he had told you you were. You then chose not to care about him feeling bad about his job anymore ; you had done too much of that and nothing had ever come from it anyway. So you had started to go out with friends or colleagues instead of staying awake in your apartment to wait for him to come home, definitely determined to not let yourself get hurt because of his stubborn personality. And as you seemed so far away and so indifferent about his inner concerns contrary to how you used to always let your door open for him, Yoongi didn't plan on confessing to you about it anytime soon, letting himself deal with his demons again as the stress never really left him.

But tonight, when all the unsaid slipped out of your mouths once he had asked you again where you had been the second you passed the door, looking anxious with lost eyes before he stood up from the couch to almost jump at you, you couldn't take it nor reassure him anymore. And that's where it led you after you had finally asked the magic question out loud, going in the past that showed up to your face what you had done to destroy your love life.

You were now understanding why Yoongi had been acting that way after all you had spat at him that rainy night, realizing that your "sorry" hadn't closed the wound and that he surely had been feeling self-conscious because of how you had made him believe he looked like in your eyes, and because you weren't here for him anymore.

As the memory came to an end with the both of you sleeping, you began to lose the sensation in your legs, then in your arms and torso, feeling as numb as ever. Just before everything went black for a short time, you caught a glimpse of Yoongi's face still wet with his tears and of how tight he was holding you, making you want to hug him even stronger, as strong as you still loved him.

               When you slammed the front door, almost making the walls tremble, Yoongi still had that sarcastic smile of his on his face, proudly thinking you'd come back anyway and still persuaded he was right about you hiding things to him this time. But when silence met his eardrums and he finally got out of his trance, his heartbeat increased to a crazy rhythm because of the anxiety that suddenly rose in his chest. However when he began to trail his feet to your bedroom, he saw the apartment complex turn one time around him, slowly, before it stopped. He almost fell down after this delirious vision and feeling, his stomach taking roller coasters and creating bile at the back of his throat, but soon his attention was drawn to the open kitchen, as on the island wasn't standing the lonely beer he was sure he had left here, but instead your turned on computer with a half emptied glass of water next to it.

Like yourself under the rain at the same time, he started to panic, not getting why the landscape had changed or why had he seen his own living room turning around as if it was Earth itself ; he hadn't drank that much to be seeing things or feeling that dizzy, so what was happening?

Unexpectedly, he perceived the track of feet shuffling against the wooden floor as well as a sigh he could recognize quickly, and he turned his head to the hallway on his left leading to where he had originally planned to go. Then, the vision of you walking straight to where he was but without acknowledging his presence made him freeze in his place. And as you had experimented in your own time travel, your past-self walked through him, adding more to his urge to puke, so Yoongi bent down to put his hands on his knees, requiring to find his balance or else he was going to pass out. What the hell was happening? Was he dreaming? Was he dead?

Finally, the mechanics in his brain functioned and after rolling a few times, Yoongi recalled the well-known phenomenon, guessing he had to get ready to see a memory where he had hurt you the most. He straightened himself while he watched you sitting behind the kitchen counter, a tired expression on your face as you lazily looked at your laptop's screen. His heart started to hurt him every time it hammered his chest, and tears naturally pricked under his eyelids as he grew nervous in front of your worn-out looking figure.

Suddenly, the front door opened and his past-self appeared, making you leave your chair in a jump and storm to the main entrance to welcome him, and he caught the small light in your eyes when you saw him finally coming home to you.

"Hey babe", you softly said, but he barely looked at you, too busy getting his coat and shoes off.

"Why are you not sleeping?" he mumbled and finally shot you an angry look, that squeezed Yoongi's heart because he saw how weak and small you were feeling in front of him, taking a little step back but not letting go of our smile.

"I was waiting for you, I was worried, you didn't reply to my texts so-"

"I was working, Y/N, you know that, if I don't answer that's because you're disturbing. And please don't stay up for me, there's no use", he cut you, pinching his nose bridge and closing his eyes, clearly annoyed to see you.

But the present Yoongi weren't irritated at your sight, no. He wanted to surround you with his arms and thank you for worrying for him even when he asked you not to ; to take you by the hand and go to bed with you close to his body as you still were the only source of energy in his robot-like life ; to pass out under your touch after feeling your soft and plum lips on his. What was he doing right now? Couldn't he see how lucky he was to have someone waiting for him and loving him every day on the other side of this door?

His heart hopped when he saw you approaching him again, slowly, while he directed himself towards the kitchen, grabbing a glass and pouring water from the sink in it. Yoongi, for the first time in forever, finally realized how devastated he had been. The bags under his eyes almost looked like black-eyes, the tint of his skin wasn't white as it always had but grey like a vampire, his hair he freed from his beanie was messy and his back was bent as if the weight of the world was on it. He could finally understand what got you awake all this time, as he was scaring himself too, losing his human appearance to get close to a living-dead one. And if the company and the boys had already told him to take a break because he looked "like a zombie from The Walking Dead" according to the youngest of the team, he had categorically refused to and worked, worked, worked on songs until music notes sounded like cutlery rasping plates in his ears.

After the non-stopping increase of popularity BTS had been going under, Yoongi had become more and more hard with himself, wishing to achieve something even more perfect than what they had accomplished until then, scared to disappoint the fans and listeners if they didn't offer them what would sound to him as a masterpiece. So his studio and practice room became his second homes, and he rejected any form of support from anyone, taking this as a challenge for him as a composer, a rapper and a performer. And until he would be satisfied, he put everyone aside, including you, as he couldn't dare to look at the people counting on him to write good music when he only felt like a miserable human being they would only be disappointed of.

Every night that he'd come home with you waiting for him, he had hated it and himself. He couldn't stop blaming himself even more for worrying you and tiring you as much as he was, for making you cook for him when he couldn't swallow anything because of how tight his throat was from the anxiety and the hours spent in the studio rapping, for turning away from you so you didn't see him break down when deep inside he was feeling the urge to cry in your arms and tell you everything that was piling on his mind.

And with tiredness came irritation, and because he knew you loved each other too damn much, he let himself be with you and take his frustration at you, but secretly asking you to wait for him a little more. And by letting himself be, he was being unbearable, because once he was home, he felt free from all the eyes watching him and waiting for his work. He had granted himself the right to take off his mask and let you witness him at his worse without telling you why, hoping you'd understand him and read his mind like you always had.

Still, you didn't catch on what he wanted you to do : step aside and wait for him. The more time passed by, the less the answers you had come to find on your own satisfied you and you couldn't bear being that helpless to your boyfriend, getting more and more anxious and, regretfully, somewhere near clingy. You knew he was going to work even if it meant he would almost die, so the more he pushed you away, the more you came in charge. But Yoongi didn't have the answer you asked him for and that he wanted to give to you yet, the one he would tell you with a bright smile on his face while he'd be assuring you that everything's fine and that he had finally overcome his concerns.

He was quicker than you to catch on why he was the one watching this memory, because if at that time he couldn't help but be mad at you like he was mad at the rest of the world, right now, he was cursing at himself for taking you for granted and thinking you'd always put up with his moods every damn day until he was better with himself. Because as the days turned into weeks, as his state worsened, he had regretfully started to acknowledge that he needed you to go on with his life. That's why he had planned a date later before going on tour ; this, had been him finally letting go of his toxic determination in order to go back to you.

And even if you had made up after this fight, Yoongi was now realizing – maybe a little late – that he had pushed you so far away during all this time, that you weren't coming back to him now ; he had dug the hole between you two too deep for it to be perfectly covered up. You hadn't been asking him how he was doing anymore even if he knew you saw how tired he was ; you hadn't been here welcoming him home every night but went out in the bars ; but moreover, you weren't conscious of how much he loved you anymore as he had been constantly annoying you with your whereabouts instead of spending his whole time proving it to you in a gentle way.

"Is it wrong for me to want to kiss my boyfriend good night and worry because I love him?" you suddenly asked in a sweet voice as you came closer and closer to him, before wrapping your arms around his waist and slowly putting your head on his back. "What's wrong, Yoongi? I can see you're not yourself lately, talk to me babe, please…"

Yoongi snapped out of his thoughts and bit his lip nervously as he watched his past-self tensing and closing his eyes with a look of anger on his face. He anticipated his next move, his heart at the verge of breaking.

"You're not my mother, Y/N! Stop asking questions all the time, I'm fine! I would just like you to leave me alone, you know?" he burst out, taking your arms in his hands and freeing himself from your hug with more fierceness he'd wanted to.

"Should I say sorry for being worried about you, Yoongi? You're my boyfriend, I can't help but get concerned okay? That's what people do when they care about someone! Being here! Why don't you tell me what's wrong so I can help!" You protested, your brows knitting in confusion.

"Because I don't need you, Y/N! I can live by myself! When I come home, I want to feel at ease because I have never-ending days, so I don't need you being clingy, I'm tired! I'm looking for something quiet where I can rest, don't you understand?" He asked as he turned to face you, his tired eyes wide open as to avert you not to do this ever again.

The present Yoongi shook his head crazily from the left to the right, showing how much he disagreed with the way he had been acting, while he saw the face of his lover twist in sadness as she was fighting the tears he could see forming at the corner of her pretty eyes. Oh god he loved those eyes. Yoongi tried to scream at himself to stop but his words hit the walls of the world separating him from them, where he couldn't be heard or seen. He walked to you as you sat frailly on the chair you had been waiting for him on, the life and spark of love dying in your pupils that were now looking at the ground as you hung your head low.

He tried to hold your hand, while his past-self was ready to leave the kitchen without checking on you nor realizing how hurtful his words had been. However, his ghost body went through the skin he wanted so bad to feel under his touch, this soft skin that smelled like flowers and summer, and that he would never kiss enough in his lifetime. Yoongi was almost crying while your past-self already did, sobbing really hard and he clearly saw her break down, letting her cries and moans echo in all the apartment, not even caring if her boyfriend could hear them or not.

"I'm sorry Y/N-ah, I'm sorry I didn't want that, I'm sorry baby really…" he still whispered, as his past-self was grabbing his stuff and going back to the front door, probably planning to sleep at the dorms or who knows, maybe on his studio chair, he couldn't even remember.

But if Yoongi had hoped it would have been the only thing he got to see, he was completely wrong and the following memories he had to live all over again, from a point of view where he really took your presence into account this time, scattered his being so much. He wanted to kill the Yoongi from the past every time he came through the front door, in order to save you from someone as awful as him. The days were skipped but night by night, he had to stand up in this goddamn living room to watch him come home and you waiting for him, sometimes passed out on the couch but never failing to wake up as soon as you could hear the noise of his keys.

As if it was a never ending evening, he was forced to admire himself pushing you further and further away from him, rejecting your affection as you were forgiving him every time he was talking to you like you were a burden in his life, cutting you off in your questions and shutting you up the second you opened your mouth to tell him how much you missed him and reminded him that you were here for him, "just in case". Memory after memory, he could see what he had done to you, finally looking at your beautiful face properly and acknowledging how worn-out it was, how hurt it was, how sad it was but how your eyes couldn't stop looking at him like he was the most precious gem on this Earth.

Every flashback was like a sharper, thicker knife planting itself in his weak heart, and Yoongi began to plead on his knees any superior force to wake him up, unable to take it anymore and wanting so bad to go back to the reality where he could touch you and where you would hear him begging for forgiveness and reminding you each and every thing he loved about you. No, you weren't a burden ; no, you weren't clingy ; no, you didn't disturb him ; yes, he appreciated how much you cared about him. He needed you, of course he did, and he despised himself for making you think the contrary when he had been acting like you didn't even exist.

Soon enough though, he started to lose senses at the edges of his body, notifying him this hell was coming to an end. He lastly saw your lifeless stare as his past-self ignored you again when he came back from work at an hour he didn't even want to know, and he swore to himself before passing out that he would crawl in front of you for you to forgive him if he had to. He had seen how much you loved him, like no one would ever do because no one would have put up with him that long. And because now he couldn't deny how much you cared about him, he felt sorrier for doubting you and being suspicious lately, even after the huge fight under the rain when you were right about to cheat on him.

               You opened your eyes and your face was met with a soft material, that you quickly recognized as the red carpet from your hallway. You weren't drenched in rain water anymore, but your body felt as weak as it had been while you were watching your past. Your head hurt as you must have fell hard after losing consciousness, but you quickly forgot about it as you pressed yourself to get back on your feet. You were dying to see Yoongi, feeling guiltier than ever and desperately wanting to put everything back together. The second chance had definitely helped you open your eyes on what was the source of the brambles that had started to invade your love and made it rot, at least on your side, and you were determined to kill it in order to build your relationship on a new and clean basis all over again.

You were preparing yourself to knock on the painted pannel, taking as much air as you could in your lugs one last time because you still felt apprehension at seeing him again, scared of what he saw on his own and how he would react. But before your knuckles could gently meet the wood, the door swung open and you faced your boyfriend, his eyes filled with the same desolation as yours while he stared at your figure for a few seconds, his breathing loud as if he had ran a marathon. 

And before you could even say something, Yoongi moved forward and took you in his arms, enveloping your back and shoulders as he placed his face in the crook of your neck. You felt how shaken he had also been as his arms were strong around you, and you mirrored his action by grabbing his waist, your hands even going under his black shirt to caress his skin. He started to move back to enter the apartment, not letting go of you in the process, and you slammed the door with your feet before closing your eyes and landing your head on his.

You sensed his lips tracing wet kisses along the base of your neck to your shoulder, but you were sure it wasn't saliva that was moistening you that much, finally hearing a weak sob coming from his lips. At the listening of your boyfriend crying, you broke down yourself and hot tears spilled on your face, dampening you even more than the rain in your time travel. You stood like this for a couple minutes before you were the first one to decide to part away from him, and Yoongi hung his head low, his eyes looking at the ground as he let his hands on your hips.

"Yoongi. Baby." You called him, inviting him to look at you in the eyes but he didn't, drowning in his sobs and teardrops that wouldn't stop from appearing, as his nose was reddening and his already small eyes looked even tinier.

You raised your hand to grab his chin and turned his head so that it was facing yours, and when your eyes met his, you sighed, relieved to be reunited with him in real life this time, to have a hold of the situation and being able to say what you really wanted to say, not having to endure something you wouldn't want to happen anymore. Yoongi closed his eyes and leaned his head to put his forehead against yours, and you felt his hot breath on your lips, making them crave to feel his once again, those lips you loved more than anything, those lips that melted so well against yours, those lips you couldn't imagine never being able to kiss again. So you allowed yourself to move your face forward a bit to have a better access, and then your boyfriend kissed you.

It was soft at first, full of love and sorrow, a long kiss planted on your mouth screaming how sorry he was. But soon, it became desperate, passionate, and your teeth clashed against each other ; you lost your breath but you didn't care as you couldn't get enough of him, pulling him close to you with your hand still under his shirt while the other one found its way through his soft black hair. He could have torn your sweatshirt with how strong his grasp on it was but you couldn't care less, already wishing to feel his touch without these clothes on. Only your moans and your gasps could be heard in the deep silence of the night, yours growing louder as he tightened his grip around your frame. He was the first one to pull apart this time, the traits of his face drawn by the rays of the moon seeping in through the big windows of the living room, and you could see how swollen his lips were after this more than ardent kiss.

"I'm so sorry, Y/N. I didn't know I had hurt you that bad" he spoke up softly, lifting his left hand to comb your hair before letting it rest on your skull.

He was looking at nothing else but your eyes, making sure you were listening to him.

"I know we already talked about me being distant a few months ago, but I saw it all over again and I didn't realize how awful I really was with you, so let me talk this out properly, please. With work I just felt so down and like shit and I didn't want you to see me about to give up when you believed so much in me, so I tried to go through it myself, but I can't, my love, I just can't. I lied to you when I told you I don't need you. I really need you, Y/N, it's insane."

His voice weakened with these last few words, and he approached his lips to kiss your nose quickly before going down to your mouth again, making sure you'd get how sincere he was.

"I wanted to overcome all the stress of the group and the music by myself and I selfishly wanted you to wait for me until I solved everything but I didn't realize that you're not at my disposition and that I can't simply choose to push and pull you in and out of my life when you're such an important part of it. I was so wrong to call you clingy and disturbing when all you had done was worrying about me. I should have said thank you. I should have talked to you like we used to do before, because damn, you help me feel so much better and be at ease with myself. I hate to admit it, you know me, but I swear I don't know what I'd do without you. I'm sorry that I made you think you're nothing in my life, that I made you feel unloved when I love you with all my heart and soul, babe. I love you, I've always had and I always will."

His raspy voice, trembling because of how much he had cried, was the exact lullaby you needed to feel better in an instant. And hearing it while confessing those meaningful words, made your skin shiver and your blood boil, the fire of love burning each part of you. All you could hear was his voice, all you could see was his face, and all you could do was loving him without boundaries. His thumb came down to caress your cheekbone as a lone tear had rolled down on it, his monologue moving you like nothing ever did.

"I'm so sorry for being such a dick lately with you, for not trusting you when you go out but I am so scared that you might leave me because I'm such a loser… I don't want you to leave me, I know I'm being selfish, but I need you so bad Y/N, I want to start over with you… Don't leave me, please don't leave me-"

"I'm not going anywhere, Yoongi." You cut him off as you traveled the hand that was in his hair down his skull, to place it above his on your cheek. "That's what I've been trying to make you understand ever since you're down, I'm here for you. And I'm sorry for what I said the last time we fought, I'm so sorry for having said such horrible words when I don't even mean them, and even more for having thought of cheating on you. So let me remind you how much you're wonderful in my eyes."

He shook his head before interfering :

"No I deserved it, there was a lot to question about me I was being the #1 bastard of the universe, Y/N. I'm not good to you, you deserve better than me and I know it after all you've done for me despite my behavior towards you. But I'm ready to beg you not to leave because I can't imagine myself without you by my side."

You hushed him with a quick peck on his lips as a small smile was creeping on yours, and the need to stop him from saying that much crap rushed you to talk before he did again :

"You're not a shitty boyfriend, Yoongi. You couldn't be more perfect, you never made me sad or hurt me before that, and even if I was mad at you for not telling me and being all moody when you were with me, I knew well you had your reasons and I should have at least tried to respect your choice to keep it to yourself. How am I a good girlfriend to you when I use your weaknesses and concerns to turn them around against you? That was so awful of me to do! You're not a pitiful musician, you're the most passionate one I met and I'll ever know ; how you talk about music, how you live it, how you express yourself through it, I've always found it wonderful, and I still do. I was so angry at you that time that I wanted to hurt you so bad, and I'm sorry I did, but I swear Yoongi I didn't mean it…" Your voice cracked as you started to cry again, your brain still playing the scene on a loop in your head even if you wished it hadn't happened at all. "You make me happy, Yoongi, and I love you with all your imperfections and even when you're being your natural grumpy self with me, because I now realize that means you trust and love me enough not to wear a mask in front of me. But please… Stop overworking yourself, eat your meals, sleep well, and if you don't want to talk to me about it, then I won't ask but I won't stop worrying except if you take care of yourself. Stop being so rude with yourself, nobody's perfect Yoongi, but you're perfect for me, you're perfect for BTS and your family, you're perfect for your fans, and that's all that counts, isn't it?"

You felt a weight lifting from your chest as you watched the face of your boyfriend relaxing and he closed his eyes, a sigh leaving his mouth before he got closer to you one more time, his lips hungry for yours again. He had told you how much he loved you but wording it wasn't enough for him, so he kissed you again fervently, pouring every one of his emotions in it, his small nose brushing against yours while his hand on your head had found its place on your neck.

"I love you so fucking much, Y/N." He finally groaned when he pulled his head back again, his eyes slowly recovering their usual spark, making them as rich as the night sky when it's full of stars. "I'm so sorry."

"I know. I am too. We're so pitiful seriously…" You sighed, tired of this journey after all.

You let your forehead fall on his shoulder and he embraced you one more time, before you both exhaled in relief, sniffing each other's personal smell, which always tinted the air you breathed and the clothes you wore every day, making you think of the other even when you weren't together.

"You wanted to know what's wrong with us, huh?" he asked as his hands slowly went under your sweatshirt, his pianist' fingers melting every cell of your skin. "I think we love each other so much that we don't know what to do with it, so we end up doing some shit, am I wrong?"

You enjoyed hearing his playful tone lacing his voice that had been stern for so long. You laughed for the first time that night, and it felt so good, as if at every one of your chuckle, your heart was gaining strength and earning a bandage on its deep wounds.

Everything in the prophecy laid in the word "chance". As you were Yoongi's sun and he was your moon, you finally had the chance to meet again in the same sky after having been separated from the other for so long, forming the beautiful eclipse you were now as you held each other in your arms. And, from now on, you could live next to each other peacefully in your own universe, well aware of how necessary the presence of the other was for it to turn round and of what not to do to dim its light.

[williamexchange]

How to Identify Your Target Audience for Better Marketing?

What is the target audience? And why does your specific target audience matter? That’s what we’re going to cover today.

When you’re in business, you serve a specific segment of the population. Too often, when an entrepreneur gets asked who the target audience is, they answer, “Everyone.” That’s almost never the case.

Instead, you have to narrow down “everyone” to a smaller group of people who both want and have the means to get your product or service.

For instance, if a consumer lives in an area to which you don’t ship products, he or she doesn’t belong in your target audience. Similarly, a consumer who can’t afford what you sell isn’t part of your audience.

We’ll break this down in more detail later, but for now, understand that the target audience is the group of people to whom you direct your marketing and advertising efforts. They’re the ones who might actually convert into customers.

Let’s explore the target audience in more detail break down the process of defining your target audience into easily manageable steps.

What Is Target Audience Segmentation?

Imagine for a moment that you’re designing a Facebook Ad campaign. You don’t want everyone to see your Facebook Ads because you’ll just want money. Instead, you want to serve up your ads to your target audience.

Facebook allows you to narrow down your audience based on demographics and other qualities. You might set an income range, target males or females, eliminate anyone who doesn’t have children, and so on, depending on your marketing agenda.

However, you also know that your product or service might appeal to different segments of your target audience.

Let’s say you sell sporting goods. Part of your audience might consist of teenage boys and girls who play sports. Another could incorporate professional athletes. Yet another segment might encompass middle-aged men and women who want to get back in shape.

Target audience segmentation allows you to create buyer personas. Each of these groups represents a different part of your target audience, so you serve them different ad creative and marketing assets.

What is the difference between the target market and target audience?

Many people mix up the target market and target audience or use them interchangeably. They’re actually different marketing terms.

A target market is anyone who might be interested in your products or services. Your target audience is the group of people—one of the groups described above, for example—to whom you direct a specific marketing asset or ad.

What is the target audience in marketing?

It’s people who might respond to your marketing asset by converting. A marketing asset might be a landing page, Facebook post, squeeze page, or the product page. It might be an email you’ve written to an audience segment or a direct mailer you’re sending out.

Your target audience is a part of your target market. You want to use segmentation so you send the right message to the right consumer at the exact right time. Just as you segment your email list, you must also segment your entire audience for marketing.

Why Is Defining Your Target Audience So Important?

Imagine visiting a car dealership. You partner up with a salesperson, but he doesn’t ask you any questions about your specific needs and wants. Over the next hour, he shows you sports cars and sedans, waxing poetic about the fine leather seats and gorgeous beltlines.

Finally, exasperated, you say, “I’m a mother of four. I need a minivan my kids can’t destroy.”

That should tell you how much defining your target audience matters. Trying to sell a two-seater sports car to a mother of four won’t win you any sales.

Sometimes, the segments are less dramatic, but you must treat them as important.

Consider the landing pages on your website. If a consumer visits one of your landing pages, you want to create an instant connection. The imagery, headline, body, and CTA should all appeal to what this particular consumer wants. If it doesn’t, the consumer will click away.

You master this by defining your target audience and sending prospective customers to marketing assets that will resonate with them. You don’t just throw landing pages and emails against the proverbial wall, hoping at least a few of them stick.

How To Define Your Target Audience in 6 Steps

Ann Handley of Marketing Profs once said, “Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time.”

It’s great advice for any entrepreneur who is gradually coming to terms with what a target market or audience is.

Handley’s making a good case for narrowing down your audience as far as possible. If you’re just speaking to a single human being — the person on the other side of the computer screen — you need to know everything you can about that consumer.

What are his or her pain points? Fears? Insecurities? Objections? If you know this information, you can deliver a message that’s both resonant and persuasive.

If you’re struggling to define your target audience, you’re not alone. Let’s break it down into six easy steps.

Step 1: Survey your current customer base

Surveys are highly underrated. They give you tons of pieces of data you can use to define your target audience as long as you prepare effective questions.

According to a SurveyMonkey study, the average market research survey is about 13 questions long, while all surveys range from four to 14 questions.

Just remember that your customers lead busy lives. If you give them a survey that takes too long to complete, they’ll give up.

Consider erring on the side of brevity while asking more probing questions. Fill-in-the-blank questions tend to offer more insight than true/false or scale-style questions because the survey taker has to put more thought into his or her answers.

To get you started, you might ask questions like these:

What is your main frustration when it comes to [your niche]?

How much are you willing to pay for [product] with [list of features]?

What social media sites do you spend the most time on?

Do you have any pressing questions related to [niche]?

Use the answers to your survey questions to build buyer personas, then to create landing pages, emails, and other marketing assets. For instance, the last question might be used to generate blog post ideas with a related CTA for a landing page at the ends of each.

Step 2: Interact with your audience

There’s a reason content marketing has become so essential to every entrepreneur in every industry. Not only does it drive website traffic, but it also opens up topics for conversation.

For instance, do you answer comments on your blog? Neil Patel, the co-founder of Crazy Egg, answers every question. He doesn’t always give detailed answers, but he lets his readers know he’s listening.

Step 3: Turn frustration into motivation

Now that you’ve surveyed your audience and begun participating in conversations, mine your notes for pain points and objections. Figure out what problems your existing customers and followers have.

Maybe you’re in the SAAS industry with a CRM tool. You figure out what your prospective customers are unimpressed with their ability to connect with their own customers via multiple channels. That’s a frustration.

Turn it into motivation. If your SAAS product offers a better way to deal with cross-channel customer service, use it as a selling point as you communicate with your target audience. You understand the frustration, so reverse the equation and give your customers a useful alternative.

Keep a running list of frustrations and motivations. That way, you can keep returning to them as your business evolves.

Step 4: Know who your target audience

You’re getting a better idea of how to define your target audience now, but you also need to know who to exclude. This comes in handy when you’re advertising via search or social, in particular.

Weed out potential customers who don’t fall within your target audience description. Determine who doesn’t deserve your time and attention.

For instance, maybe you’re marketing exclusively to women. That cuts out roughly half the population right there.

Or maybe it’s less dramatic. If you’re not catering to consumers over age 50, you need to know that.

Step 5: Check out the competition

You never want to copy the competition. That’s a recipe for disaster.

However, if you keep tabs on your direct competitors, you can further refine your target audience.

Check out their homepages, landing pages, squeeze pages, and product descriptions. Figure out what they’re not doing so you can give your target audience something they want.

Step 6: See how your audience navigates your website

Above, we talked about using your website as a way to communicate directly with your visitors. However, your website can provide far more data and insights.

Use a tool like Crazy Egg to monitor audience behavior. User behavior reports tell you where visitors click, how far down each page they scroll, what percentage of visitors click on a particular link, whether your signup forms are receiving sufficient attention, and more.

Crazy Egg also offers Recordings, which allow you to monitor a website visitor’s precise navigation through your site. You’ll see when the mouse pauses over an interesting testimonial, for instance, or where a signup form looks confusing to the visitor.

You’ll get tons of relevant data and insights to help you further narrow down your target audience and address their needs directly. If they’re not paying attention to your CTA, for instance, consider moving it higher up on the page or redesigning it to have more visual impact. There are Best SEO services in Frisco from where you can find out all the services related to SEO and digital marketing which will help you to enhance your business online and generate more and more customers.

[poppunkdee]

3-5, 28-30, 35-40

whoa okay everyone sorry for the long post someone decided to give me a million in one ask. 

3. okay so this person idk what to even say about them anymore I hardly know who or what they are like now but I guess ill talk about them when I was irrationally in love with them. They had a way to make me feel at home no matter how far from home I was. That person was super smart (to me) they had a charisma that allowed them to creep into your life and later your heart, and had you liking them even if at first you thought they were just another fake person trying super hard to be “cool” they had a way to get under your skin, to make you laugh until you’re crying and hold your attention in a way that you never really thought they might be able to. Honestly this person made me feel so many things and not all of them were good, in fact looking back now I realized that I excused so much shitty behavior towards me because of a fancy dinner, or a cute poem, or a dozen roses. God i was so in love with them and its sad really how now its just a faded memory of a person who never apologized for the hell they put me through. 

4. the thing I regret most so far is not going to the ivy league school I was accepted into bc it meant I would be far from the person mentioned above. 

5. Oh fuck. Honestly I have not had any like “amazing” birthdays. My most memorable birthdays are seared into my memory bc I was either in a funeral home, in a hospital watching my cousin fight cancer, or I myself was in the hospital bc a car almost killed me(yay 24th birthday!) really I have most fun when I celebrate my birthday alone at disneyland, which I do every year although not on my actual birthday bc it seems that on my actual birthday I’m always caught up in some kind of hospital, or receiving bad news. 

28. honestly idk if i have any like crazy out there fetishes, like dirty talk and rough sex is cool but like idk if i really have like one odd thing. I mean one of my exes and I got hella drunk one night and decided to do all the shit we had wanted to do and lemmi tell you that was a full weekend of endless orgasms and take out food. It was amazing. I had rope burn on my thighs and was sore for a week after and he had like a million hickies from his neck to his dick. 

29. okay turn ons so like these depend on the person im seeing, like for one person their voice as they whisper in my ear might end me while for another the way they bite their lip and run their fingers through their hair might have me thinking of how those fingers might feel on me. so really I don’t have like one singular set of turn ons they just vary depending on the person. 

30.OHHH TURN OFFS THO. so these will literally dry me up like the Sahara desert and make me grab my shit and leave kyle’s house. If I say "men are trash” and the guy replies with “well not all men.... “ yeah ya cancelled. okay this one is shallow I know but its there and i really cant get past it, bad dental hygiene. the white ppl who try to have dreadlocks but really they haven’t washed their hair. ANY NON BLACK PERSON SAYING THE N WORD. I can go on really bc I’m super picky with the people I sleep with and i have actually mid thrust have told a guy to stop, got dressed, left and blocked him. 

35. Things i wish I could stop doing, okay so like as yall know my anxiety gets the best of me sometimes and I wish I could stop the nail biting. Also I need to stop expecting my body to go back to how it was before my car accident, like my spine is forever hurt and i really have to learn to accept that there are somethings i just cant do anymore and its not my fault there are limitations on my body so i should stop expecting to be able to go back to the gym like i used to, or do all the adventurous activities i used to do, also I wish I could go back to driving like i used to without the PTSD fear running through me every time a big rig is next to me on the freeway. 

36, okay so as of rn my guilty pleasure is that I read the twilight books bc my roommates got me into it and like holy shit i went through the whole saga in less than a weekend and I now need to rewatch the movies. honestly thank god for this gay twilight renaissance I’m living. But really tumblr is full of my guilty pleasures so like just scroll through my blog bc its all there, half of this shit is not on any of my public social media,.... or wait actually i think it is, i don’t really hide who i am so like it definitely has affected the way people judge me before they really know me but i know the people that are my friends after seeing the shit i post kinda really like me.  

37. Damn okay so this is kinda, ugh, okay so im sure my best friend is tired of me running back to this person but like i like ppl who ruin me i guess. So this person and I started dating after i had gone through like a horrible breakup, AND I got the news that my uterus is like a war zone for new cells(make of that what you will). Anyways here I am five months into a depressive episode i cut off all the people that i had thought were friends but who turned out to abandon me when i needed them the most. so here enters this person with their puppy dog love and gives me wonderful dirty kinky sex along with the hugs, cuddles, after care and takes me to these cool experiences in the city I thought I knew. They support my dreams and help me work towards them, honestly it was a great three months, but this person told me they loved me one night while at a night club and i thought hey youre drunk pls don’t do this and honestly it was mostly cowardliness that drove me to end it bc i didn’t feel the same way and i felt like i didnt deserve this new pure love i was receiving.  Anyways we hooked up a bit after we broke up and then they started dating someone else and we just kinda saw other people but would come back to each other after our different flings ended, until they got into like a real relationship with some one else and like I was cool like they deserve it, could have used a heads up but like i keep my space like the respectful person that i am, although lately this person has told me they are not into the person they are with and has been hitting me up and like the part of me that thinks im in love with them is really pushing for me to go for it but also they ARE STILL IN A RELATIONSHIP AND ITS NOT OKAY THAT THEY ARE SENDING ME MESSAGES LIKE THIS!! so anyways i think im more in love with the feeling they brought me those few months we were together bc i was just so fucking depressed and they helped pull me out of the hole i was in. So not really in love with the person but with the feeling i guess. 

38. songs that remind me of people. oh god, yall can i just make a spotify playlist and link it later bc theres so many. I have a few songs for like everyone that I know that i can make playlists for individual people so like i’ll just link a playlist when get around to it pls remind me later. 

39. OHHHH BOYYY. things i wish i had known earlier. i wish i had known men are trash earlier in life so that i would have been somewhat prepared for the men that caused trauma in my life. I also wish i had known how little time i had with certain people. (people i regret not making more time with) Also wish I had known about the accident that had me in a hospital on my birthday bc a year later im still plagued by nightmares, PTSD, and anxiety on the road. I also wish I had known about my cousin’s accident. GOd if there’s one thing i’ve had to learn the hard way this past year is that we never know when it will be the last time we see our loved ones and that we have GOT to tell them we love them bc we NEVER know when it will be the last time.  

40.okay last one, the end of something in my life. I wanna talk about a good ending bc i feel like yall got some insight on bad shit so like good endings i’d say is when i left socal for norcal. I come back literally anytime im homesick but like it was a huge step for me to take to leave, I was given a full scholarship to the wilderness and an apartment thats a ten min walk to the beach. It was definitely hard leaving all my friends and family behind but it was also kind of refreshing to be able to go out on my own to make my own path and do something i love. im back in socal for the summer and although im so happy to be back in the warmth of LA im definitely looking forward to my small apartment that constantly smells like a mix of sea breeze and damp forest. 

[abnormal-angel]

To Anon:

List of important factual information given to me by multiple confidential sources regarding dk’s behavior and nr connections in recent months: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

My concise why fans are upset with the dk situation: [x]

These posts address:

dk/nr, dk & pr regarding preggo rumor and pap setups, dk and daily mail connections (along with ok magazine and general look into the tabloid industry), truth about cheating on jj while filming sky.

Some things might have got lost in the shuffle, I try to tag everything but I know I have missed some, especially at the beginning of all of this. So I apologize if anything got lost in the shuffle.

----

Now, onto what you were talking about. Okay so this anon was basically upset about certain cast members being pulled into this drama. How I knew amc and the cast were upset. As you can see from the factual posts above from anon inside sources non of these says such a thing. 

I went through the past few days worth of posts and didn’t see myself mentioning this (feel free to point out if I am wrong, sometimes I have way too much info in my head). But, going through this tag I did see maybe 1 or 2 asks from anons that I published who mentioned that certain people in the cast (they named them not me) were vocally against this situation with her nr is going through. 

I see in one answer to an ask I used this (non-sourced) anon information to answer and I did use the wording publically (you’re right) because I was going off the other anon asks who were telling me this. MY BAD! You are right anon that I should not perpetuate that. It was only one answer to an ask that I can see, from scrolling through, but still.

I have tried to be very careful about not publishing asks with cast member speculation. But i know this was before or right around the time when I got hit hard with certain trolling blogs and before I started realizing I was getting some obvi trolling asks on here trying to spin it either pro dk, anti nr, or just general pot stirrers (these ones confuse me the most, the other two are easier to decipher). So who knows if this info was sent by someone with an agenda This is why this post exists, where I address anon asks and trolling. I realized that I had to buckle down on my asks and decided from here on out I can’t post things like that without proof, for the very reasons you are upset anon. I agree and I apologize if I let this slip a few times when I was a much more naive person about this fandom. Every day I learn more and more about how rumors spread through this fandom, it is craziness!

Long story short, nothing official or public has ever been said by ANY cast member that I know of about this situation. This was anon speculation. To set the record straight.

Also, since then I have begun to lock down my ask answers for those several reasons listed in the above post link. I apologize if I perpetuated this rumor in any way. Even though I believe in my OPINION that his friends see what she is doing to him and his career. If I were close to him I’d be worried. I think people chose those certain cast members to mention because they are the closest to Norman and if anyone sees what she is doing to him it is them. But, again opinion, unless anons can send proof. I deleted said asks, just for future viewers. If you see anymore please let me know.

As for the amc thing all I can say on here is that again, anyone who understands that P.R. industry and Hollywood knows that these actors have a rep to protect and one thing they definitely wouldn’t want is Norman being spotted in tabloid fodder and that entire Spain fiasco costed him a lot of fans after his p.r. lied, also not good at all for his image, which is directly tied to the show and the network. So this is a logical thought to have. Then that fucking video happened, the paps walk, apartment paps setup, and preggo rumors. Not far fetched to believe amc or its people don’t like the situation happening rn with her. It is just plain and simple bad p.r. and that is a very bad thing to have in that industry, especially being so high profile as he is right now.

I hope this sets the record straight anon. Like I said I have tried really hard to not spread rumors about anyone else in the cast I have ignored several asks for this very reason (especially ones mentioning certain names, I have even gone so far as to omit said names out of asks for this very reason), I apologize one or two got through. That anon information should be verified first and that is the approached I have tried to take since realizing and being told that my blog was being watched and attacked from all sides of this. 

I apologize for any part I had in spreading anything, it is surely not my intention to spread falsity and I try very hard not to. I am assuming any anons who have come to me saying certain cast members are upset might be getting this from cdan? (anyone know?) But, again that depends on how trustworthy you think they are or their comments are. Because I have not been sent anything from cdan themselves publically mentioning anyone in a blind connected to this except that poor, innocent one a few months back. But I could be wrong, I don’t go on there much. You guys keep me way to busy here lately and always send me them anyway.

Whew! That was a long answer! But, I hope it makes you feel a little better anon. I am human, sorry if anything I said perpetuated things, I certainly don’t want the other cast members to get drug into all this public dk wank going on right now and I will be much more conscious of this in the future. Thank you for drawing my attention to this and I promise to be better about this in the future! If there is a specific thing I said that particularly bothered you please let me know so I can think on it. I do not want anyone thinking I am trying to spread anything but truth on dk and this whole situation. I allow anon’s to post opinions, when they aren’t hating on Norman, to allow them a voice. But things like this will no longer be getting through without multiple sources of proof. I have tried to crack down a lot on anon asks that seem to be speculative or trollish in nature. 

Again I appreciate you coming to me and I hope you can forgive my slight indiscretion here. I promise to do and be better about this from now on.

Thanks Anon! <3

[pratktcven]

love in a time of social media

love in a time of social media part one. shance. eventual nc-17. alternate universe. lance is the king of shitposts and selfies. shiro is an artist who loves his dog and fatalistic humor. somehow, they fall in love. warning! underage drinking and casual use of marijuana

.

They meet online.

Specifically, they meet on tumblr. Shiro is an artist of middling popularity and Lance is a shitposter of the highest caliber. Shiro follows Lance months before Lance follows him; indeed, Lance is unaware of Shiro's work until Shiro @'s him in a small comic.

'I couldn't resist,' Shiro types below the image. 'Thank you for the inspiration, @lances-a-lot.'

Shiro—@white_iron—has a simple art style and a sharp sense of humor that makes Lance laugh out loud. He reblogs the comic, telling his followers to check it out, and proceeds to creep on Shiro's blog. Lance's first stop is Shiro's small about section.

Hello! My name is Shiro. I am a post-grad history student and I spend my limited free time walking my dog or doodling. art tag doodles photography

Shiro's blog consists mainly of his artwork. Occasionally, Shiro will also post real-life pictures of his dog, a beautiful black and white akita with bright eyes and a dopey smile. There aren't any pictures of Shiro himself. Lance—who takes roughly a thousand selfies every day—comments on this oddity to Blue, his enormous gray long-hair.

Blue blinks at him.

"My curiosity has been piqued," Lance replies primly.

Blue blinks her big gold eyes at him again.

"Enough of your judgement!" Lance over-dramatizes. "I can follow who I want!"

Shiro's blog is twenty-four pages of self-produced content that Lance blazes through in less than an hour. There are no reblogs. Lance nearly twitches at the restraint and—after a moment—decides to check if Shiro's likes are public.

"Jackpot!" Lance crows when the page loads.

Shiro's likes are a riot of memes and shit-posts. Art references and how-to's. Nerdy history jokes. Links to academic articles. Male fitspo. Healthy recipes, juice cleanse tips, and over-indulgent foodie pics. NSFW gifs of twinks writhing open-mouthed on rumpled sheets. Pictures of space and nature. Lots of dogs. Several of Lance's selfies. More than one necromancy pun. If it is at all possible to fall in love with someone based on their likes, Lance does it.

Lance's infinite scrolling comes to a halt at half past one, when his one of his many phone alarms notifies him of the time. Lance groans, closes his browser, and hauls his butt out of his narrow bed. It takes him a couple minutes to find an acceptably clean pair of skinny jeans and an unwrinkled sweater; he hasn't done laundry for several weeks.

"After lab," Lance tells Blue as he wriggles out of his worn sweats into his socially acceptable denim. "I'll do a load tonight."

Blue flicks her tail at him, a rude gesture that Lance returns with one of his own. Blue sends him baleful glance.

"Don't look at me like that," Lance says even as he plants a kiss between Blue's mismatched ears. She lost half of her left ear in a fight before the shelter picked her off the street. "You started it."

Blue meows loudly and bats Lance's nose.

"Okay, okay, you're right. I started it." Lance presses one more kiss on his cat's skull. "Have fun bird-watching. I'll see you later."

Then—with his good-byes said—Lance grabs his notebook-laden satchel, and is out the door.

.

Lance's lab is as much of a challenge as it always is. Lance is good at math—numbers and variables are easy—but his brain refuses to wrap around the concepts of physics. It's a small miracle that Pidge is his lab partner; without her, Lance is certain he would fail.

"You're a lifesaver," Lance gushes as they leave the old building. "Let me buy you pizza to show my gratitude."

"I told Matt I'd have dinner with him," says Pidge. "His roommate is going through some sort of clean eating phase and it's driving him nuts."

"He can come," Lance says. Then, less magnanimously, "But he has to get his own slice."

Pidge rolls her eyes as she texts her older brother. Lance shoots a text to Hunk, who responds with a single thumbs up emoji. They all meet at less than ten minutes later at the off-campus pizzeria that sells by the slice. Lance gets three for himself and two for Pidge; Matt, who is the only person over the age of twenty-one, covertly buys a pitcher of beer that they pour into their small, plastic water cups.

"Sweet, sweet, processed goodness," Matt half-cries as he chews, his mouth filled with cheese, pepperoni, and grease. "How I missed you."

Lance would be more sympathetic to Matt's dilemma if the man hadn't embarrassed him in a game of beer pong at a sorority the week before. Lance can't prove it, but he knows in his heart of hearts that Matt cheated. Nobody beats Lance at beer pong, okay. Nobody.

"That bad?" Pidge grins.

"You have no idea," Matt bemoans. "Like—Takashi's a great dude, don't get me wrong—but when I found him on Craig's List I was more worried about being murdered in my sleep than I was about weird diet habits. Turns out I should have been more worried about the diet habits. Our fridge is filled with kale. Kale, Kit-Kat. From the farmer's market."

"Kale is really good for you," Hunk interjects.

"That's what Takashi said," Matt mutters. "I don't know how much longer I can go on like this."

"Hasn't it only been three days—"

"An eternity—"

Lance laughs at Matt's plight and, once dinner is finished and the four of them part ways, he takes out his phone to tweet about the roundabout retribution.

Lance @lancesalot #revenge is best served blanched. or in a smoothie. #kale #healthyliving #karma

.

It's a little past nine when Lance returns to his apartment. His roommate, Rolo, and his ambiguously defined girlfriend/partner-in-crime, Nyma, are sitting on the couch sharing a joint. A bag of popcorn is ready on the battered coffee table and the television is playing an old nineties buddy-cop flick.

"Hey," Rolo says, smoke curling upwards from his mouth. "Wanna join?"

"Nah." Lance turns down the proffered joint with a shrug. "Gotta take my laundry down. You feed Blue?"

"Like she'd let me forget."

Blue—who is perched on the windowsill—releases a single, plaintive meow. She has no problems letting anyone know what she wants and when she wants it, especially when it comes to being fed.

"Thanks man."

"De nada."

It doesn't take Lance long to gather his dirty clothing and stuff it into his hamper. He takes it all to the basement, throws a few loads in, and settles into one of the old armchairs that have accumulated in the corner. He knows that he should read ahead for his classes, but the siren song of social media grips him. An internal debate rages inside him for all of three seconds before he opens his tumblr account.

Lance barely feels the twinge of guilt.

There are several asks—all anonymous, as per usual—and one unread message. Lance is a little surprised by the latter; after a few weird encounters, he changed his setting so that he could only receive messages from people he followed. He clicks on the conversation first.

white_iron Thanks for the follow! I'm really flattered. You're one of my favorite blogs.

Lance smiles at the message.

lances-a-lot no problem!!! ur art was super funny i laughed at everything pretty sure my cat thinks i'm crazy now

After hitting send, Lance plugs in his chunky headphones into the audio jack. He has a new chillwave playlist that Pidge gave him, but he knows that if he doesn't give Tycho his full attention Pidge may murder him. So instead, Lance pulls up his trusted Rihanna compilation and double clicks on the first song. He bops his head in time with the beat and opens his asks, quickly answering his anons.

Several chart-toppers later, a small ping interrupts Rihanna's plea for the dj to turn the music up. Lance looks at the vertical line of icons on the side of the page and sees that he has another message from Shiro. Lance opens the conversation immediately and reads:

white_iron My dog already knows I'm crazy.

white_iron sent a photo post.

A small preview image has been loaded into the conversation. It is a cartoon version of Shiro's akita, her expression morphed into one of extreme judgement. Her eyebrows—twin dots of white on her dark face—are low over her big eyes and her ruff is fattened comically around her muzzle. Lance cannot help but laugh at the exaggerated accuracy and immediately reblog it.''

lances-a-lot OMG THATS FANTASTIC
 THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT BLUE DOES

white_iron Stare into the depths of your decrepit soul and find you wanting?

lances-a-lot haha, yes! blue acts like i dont spoil her rotten shes such a princess

white_iron I definitely know how that goes. Bee has three dog beds, but she insists on sleeping in my bed or in my roommate's.

lances-a-lot blue has peed in every. single. bed i bought for her i stopped trying after awhile it was getting to be an expensive exercise in futility

white_iron Two words. Dog toys.

Lance talks to Shiro for the next couple of hours while his laundry finishes. Mostly, they swap stories about their pets and commiserate about their less than desirable—if not inadvertently hilarious—behavior. Lance even tells Shiro about how he rescued Blue. In turn, Shiro talks about the process he had to go through to adopt Bee. Shiro mentions that Bee is a service dog; what for, he does not say.

Don't be that asshole, Lance reminds himself as the topic wanes. His comfort is more important than your curiosity.

Lance is having such a good time talking to Shiro that he barely notices midnight pass. In fact, if it weren't for the enormous, jaw-cracking yawn that his body produces, Lance would not have noticed at all.

lances-a-lot dude i just noticed what time it was like i could seriously talk about blue forever but laundry sleep ADULTING i have calc at 8 am, ugh kill me now

white_iron Tell me about it. I have to TA an 8 a.m. class.

There is a small pause. Lance gnaws on his bottom lip as he watches the ellipsis that indicates typing flicker in and out of existence.

white_iron Talk to you tomorrow?

Lance bites down harder on his lip. Normally, he would send back a quick affirmation before logging off, but his interaction with Shiro feels different than the interactions he's had in the past. Their chemistry is undeniable and their conversation never felt flat or stilted. Yet while Lance knows he's been lowkey flirting with Shiro, he cannot be sure if Shiro has been flirting back.

Fuck it, Lance thinks as he gathers all his courage and sets his fingers back on the keyboard. He can feel how warm his cheeks are. Just do it.

lances-a-lot its a date ;)

After he sends the message, Lance closes his laptop and jumps off the armchair. He feels jittery and unsure, yet also oddly hopeful that maybe this time—for the first time—his interest won't be a mistake.

.