#every now and then it's healthy (and fun) to complain about certain things

[crossingthedreams]

false hope — gregory house x f!reader

masterlist | day 15 (@angstober) — false hope 

summary:  a little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. what is true for revolutions, it’s also true for relationships. 

word count: 1k

warnings: angst, drug use, mentions of overdose, no use of y/n. 

“Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous”. 

Interesting how a quote said in a context about authoritarian governments can also apply to relationships, you thought.  

In a relationship, if your hopes are too high, the chances you’ll make an Icarus of yourself, fly too close to the sun and burn are considerable. It’s good, healthy to expect certain things — that he’ll remember your birthday, that you’ll go to a movie together, and so on and so forth. Too much of this, too much hope, is certain to doom not only the relationship, but it's bearer’s mental health. 

Every time one hopes too high, they are bound for disappointment or to have even higher hopes in the future, which will also inevitably lead to disappointment. 

You had come to this realization at a young age, and it made your life easier in many ways. Hope is a very dangerous feeling. 

You were older now, but not as old as your man. His graying hair and beard were so attractive, it made him look so mature. Too fucking bad he constantly acted like a child. You were able to laugh it off most times, like when he teased you for being younger. He enjoyed when you could tease and taunt him as well, such as the time when you put Barbie decorations on all of his canes.

You had fun. Until you hadn’t.

He always had a pill problem, ever since you met you saw him take the tiny bottle from his coat and pop a pill or two every other hour. 

It was fine, until it wasn’t. 

The first time he threw up on you, the first real crisis you had, was almost a year ago. You stood by his side through it all, even when everyone told you to leave. Even Wilson mentioned how hopeless this was for you. 

To hell with them all. You had done something you promised you wouldn’t: you chose to have hope. Not only a little bit, but a lot. Enough hope for you and the recovering pill addict man you loved so freaking much. 

Seeing only his potential for growth, and potential was there, it was easy to feed yourself false hopes. Hope is dangerous when it’s too much, but a false hope is always a tragedy. 

What a tragedy it was when you were cleaning the coatroom of your shared apartment and found a secret stash of his pills. And what a fucking tragedy it was when you drove yourself to the hospital where he worked to confront him.

You stormed through the reception so quickly, you didn’t hear or see Cuddy calling your name. You were sure you looked terrible. Still in your cleaning-mode clothing and a pair of ugg boots, you looked like a teenager going through a first break up. Your nose was stuffy and red from the tears you cried, and you had a gigantic frown on your face. 

When the elevator’s doors opened on his floor, you marched up to the glass doors and tried to walk in and yell at him in front of his fellows. You knew their names, but didn’t bother with it right now. You just stood there, waiting for him to see you. 

His gaze met yours, and your world stopped. He knew what you knew, and it was clear to both of you this would be an argument. 

He motioned towards his office, and said something to the three doctors. As he left, the tallest one complained about something and your man just flipped him off. Any other occasion, you would have laughed. 

Now, you couldn’t bring yourself to smile, let alone laugh. You walked into his office, and used your gray coat to hug yourself. It was cold in the street but, somehow, it was colder in here. 

“I found your pills”, you said in a normal tone, surprising even you. You were sure you’d scream and cry and throw something at him, but no. No screams came to you. This was too exhausting. 

You extended your arm and gave it to him. He took it, looked at the table and placed it at his desk like they were nothing. Like they didn’t almost destroy him, destroy you. You just shook your head as he called your name.

Tears began to flood your eyes, but you didn’t want him to see you cry.  

“I understand how this looks like”, he began, but stopped when you scoffed. 

“It looks ridiculous, that’s what it looks like, Greg!”, you exclaimed, frowning once more. You hoped you didn’t look as broken as you sounded at this moment. “You promised me it was over. Was all that you gave me false hope?”

“I also gave that cute handbag”. 

You scoffed again, motioning towards the exit. 

“C’mon, it was just a joke”, it was his turn to exclaim. You turned back to meet his distraught expression. 

You both stood in silence for a heartbeat before he continued: “It’s unbearable sometimes. It’s why I have that hidden out. That’s all”. 

“I don’t think I believe you”, you said, feeling the tears stream down your cheek. This was all too much. 

You hadn’t realized you reached your breaking point up until now. You saw the face of the man you knew you loved and you felt more exhausted than ever. The constant fear of him falling down the rabbit hole, of him not being the person you knew he could be — it was enough.

You refused to look at him again for now, because if you did, all you’d see is the drug addict who almost killed himself the year before. 

There was a reason why you only let yourself have so much hope. You were reminded of that fact on the drive home, when your heart felt like it would stop beating on your chest. 

[flodaya]

I personally was waiting for press tour so I can get Z fashion moments and to hear her talk basically for the first time in two years so I'm pretty happy with it so far, especially since we know fun interviews are coming. It's so painfully and pathetically obvious why some of stans so disappointed 😆

here is the thing: they always complain that we get sappy over tz content, cute moments of tom and Z being an adorable couple happy and in love, and for years they've acted like they only care about Z's career and not her personal life, yet now here we are, seeing Z working, doing a huge press tour and those same losers are complaining because Z isnt giving them new timdaya content to get off to :/

most people i talk to (and that includes non tz stans lol) really enjoy flodaya content, Z's fashion is always exciting, and we got to see her reglularly, i'm happy, i'm having a great time

so honestly it feels incredibly satisfying seeing certain stans become more miserable with every passing day because at least we can all drop the pretence now, it's never been about "i only care about Zendaya's career and not her personal life", it's literally always been about them hating the fact that Z is choosing to spend her life with a man they cant stand

bless them, i hope they find a way to move on with their lives because it cant be healthy being this miserable kind of a loser

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

I’m always sensitive to the ways internet culture pressures people to adopt certain performances of how to be a person. And it feels like the most aggressive of these pressures are about how to be a modern woman.

For example, there’s a well-meaning but casually destructive trend that’s prevalent on Instagram. These memes idealize a state of impossible self-regard in women, an unachievable narcissism that’s justified through a garbled kind of feminist empowerment. You are not merely to be a healthy and functional adult who rises above the depredations of everyday sexism. You have to be some sort of Amazon warrior queen mystic who “manifests” what she wants through sheer force of will. It’s not hard to see where such impulses might come from. Women are systematically robbed of confidence in essentially every human culture, unless it’s in the specific arena of physical attractiveness or motherhood. I don’t know how you’d go about denying that. [...]

Unfortunately, the way that meme culture has responded has been to produce images like the one at the top.

There’s an endorsement of absolutely deranged self-confidence, an impossible level of self-belief that I imagine is actually only achievable while high on PCP. The meme I’ve included is in fact a pretty tame example of the genre. The idea seems to be that because women often lack confidence for bullshit reasons, we should convince women to try and pump themselves up with confidence like a child overfilling a balloon. Ideas common to these memes include that you don’t care about what anyone thinks (you do and should care), and that normal emotions are beneath you (they’re not). The problems in your life, no matter how mundane, are all the product of sexism or haters or sexist haters, and there is no such thing as a legitimate conflict between two sincere people who both have defensible desires. Anything that obstructs your goals, including people with their own autonomy, is merely an obstacle to be stepped over without a second thought. The standards of self-love here are so lofty that they seem just as unreachable as all of the other social standards that woman can’t possibly meet.

I find the attempts to embody this trend pretty sad. You may get a pretty standard picture on a woman’s Instagram, completely innocuous, and the caption will be like “watch out bitches, I’m finally ascending to my final form.” It’s all a little… strange.

Sadder still, this stuff comingles with the batshit generalist mysticism that is so common on social media today. Horoscope stuff, obviously, but also Tarot and numerology and (let me calculate the necessary number of quotation marks) “““““““energy”””””””. The previously-mentioned notion of “manifestation” has endured as a zombie grift 15 years after the publication of the book that popularized it, The Secret. Manifestation or “the Law of Attraction” tells people that everything they get or don’t is the product of their desires and intentions, so stop complaining about your leukemia, thanks. How this fits alongside the Zodiac stuff, which asserts the exact opposite of you being solely in charge of the events of your life, is unclear. One way or another you end up with an incomprehensible set of beliefs about the world that are both exacting (if you don’t tend to your energy you deserve what you get) and opaque (who could actually follow all this shit?). As an atheist this concerns me. As a feminist it offends me: apparently now women need literal magic to escape oppression. For whatever reason, the popular conception of the paths to women’s liberation just gets more convoluted and inscrutable over time.

I don’t know, to me being a badass bitch doesn’t seem fun. It seems alienating and tiresome. Also I’m so sick of the constant modern insistence that we love ourselves. Stop telling me to love myself all the time. Mind your business.

Here’s what I suspect: mentally healthy people, if they still exist, aren’t healthy because of the constant presence of positive feelings of self. They are healthy because of the habitual absence of any feelings of self at all. (I guarantee you this is already a thing in psychology or some 19th century German philosophy but it’s proving stubbornly resistant to my Googling.) Where we’ve gone wrong as a civilization in terms of understanding confidence is in thinking of it as a presence, as an emotion. But I think what we perceive as confidence is simply not constantly thinking about yourself and your value. That’s more real and sustainable to me than thinking about yourself all the time and consistently feeling good about what you find. Unfortunately it seems like not thinking about yourself is what many modern people find hardest of all.

Bad folk wisdom about confidence is all over our culture. [...] Whatever the case…. I am not a woman and I have no idea what it’s like to experience the endless swings in society’s perception of not just What Women Need to Be Now but also Why Women Need to Reject What Society Thinks Women Need to Be Now. I don’t want to condescend, nor do I want to do the Good Male Ally routine. I just want to say as a typical dude that it’s not that men don’t feel much pressure to conform to gender stereotypes. We do. It’s that we don’t have to deal with the meta layers women seem to have to navigate, the sense that you can’t just resist societal pressures to act according to gender expectations but rather have to swing wildly between one conception of femininity to another, endlessly made to worry that you’re doing it wrong as you try to shake off one bogus caricature of your gender while leaping to another. [...]

There was a version of this post that included a bunch of the weird empowerment/yoga/girlboss/mysticism/juice cleanse memes I’m talking about and made fun of them. But I realized pretty quickly that it would be a shitty thing to publish. The women who are making and sharing those memes are just trying to navigate a bewildering array of choices about how to exist in a sexist world, and if they’ve arrived at a cartoonish version it’s only because all the more mundane approaches seem to have failed. It’s certainly possible that I overemphasize meme culture and that it’s all ephemera that nobody takes that seriously. But I suspect not. Memes are a language of the youth, and it appears that the youth are facing the same old challenge of forces that pressure women to be everything and nothing all at once.

[mandysimo13]

So. How we doin folks?

i ask because sometimes the unbearable weight of existence is getting to be too much. 

on paper, i don’t have a lot to complain about. i like the person i am, i have a wonderful spouse, i have a fantastic cat, i have a job i love where i get to geek out about history with people, i’m pretty healthy, we’re in a good enough position to hunt for a house.  

but. like. what’s the future going to look like? i live in the US and right now, it’s not looking like a fun future. 

every other week we have mass shootings. many of them at schools. this country claims to love children and want to protect children yet no one can agree on the big things that we know for certain will actually keep kids safe. 

there’s a mass campaign against censoring and limiting access to education. it’s even sponsored by corporations who claim to love and honor free speech! also, literal nazis get to teach their ideology to the homeschool kids and the state are just like “well, we can’t infringe on free speech” 

every day people are fighting for healthcare. whether it’s because they have cancer and treatments for that can literally bankrupt a whole family, or it’s a pregnant person fighting for their life because an ectopic pregnancy is threatening to kill them but politicians think that the pregnancy is still viable, or it’s people with chronic pain or illnesses being told “eh, sounds like a you problem”. 

anyone not white is terrified of increased violence against their person just for existing. native children keep getting used as political pawns in a genetic and cultural genocide. black people keep getting killed at an exponentially higher rate because of police and systemic violence. we’ve seen a rise in asian violence because of covid misinformation. 

queer people are begging every single day for the right to simply exist without fear of being told that their cries for freedom are “grooming” actions. the criminalization of things cisgender people take for granted like gender expression or gender affirmation is all part of a campaign to disenfranchise and eradicate an entire group of people. and politicians unashamedly came right out and said so themselves that genocide is their goal. 

this country likes to bill itself as a melting pot. a place where anyone can come and make their mark, improve their life, and be accepted for who and what they are. but that’s never really been the case, has it? rather, we’re a country that promotes itself as a diverse society and yet punishes any kind of diversity. 

it’s hypocritical. it’s disingenuous. and above all - it’s so goddamn tiring. 

i’m tired. we’re all tired. i’m tired of saying “there’s nothing we can do” because in same cases there’s really not. how do you change gun culture that’s existed since the birth of our constitution? how do you change the minds of people who are scared to analyze and be critical of what their parents and religious leaders taught them? how do you protect the things you hold dear when billionaires can swoop in and buy a politician who is supposed to be a representative of the well being of all, not just the few? 

it seems pointless. it seems futile. 

and yet...every day we get up, we keep ourselves informed, we try to do the right thing, we try to make our contributions for a better life, we vote, we harass our representatives, we march, we scream and cry

we get up. because we are stubborn and because we will not go quiet into that dark night. because we have no other option. 

today i rest, today i let it get to me. tomorrow i get back up and keep moving forward. 

[gaperezmakes]

A Reintroduction

Hi! I’m Gabe!

I bet you thought this was dead! (It was.)

Well, idk what to tell you, but it’s been a while.

So what’s changed in the last…5 years? So many things.

The last time I was here I was working a crappy, go-nowhere retail job and complaining that the U.S. minimum wage needed to be raised. Now I have a boring office job that lets me enjoy a decent standard of living. I still believe the minimum wage needs to be increased.

I was also stuck in a bad relationship of many years. I left that relationship, suffered through the fun that is modern dating as an adult for a few months, and then met someone new. Now we’re married and I have a beautiful wife!

My ex and I had two dogs together. Because I’m the responsible one, I kept both dogs. My wife had three cats with her ex. We both gained pets when we moved in together.

From left to right, we have Sweetums (the Sheriff and Mayor of the house, elected because she’s the only one who voted in the most recent elections), Adelaide (who likes playing fetch and and getting attention, but hates being perceived), Marble (resident gremlin and alarm clock), Kody (professional toy destroyer), and Sadie (excellent child, vicious criminal). The pets live separate lives because Sadie is cat-aggressive, but they’re all happy and healthy.

Also, thanks to my boring office job, I managed to beat the odds and buy a house! No more jumping from one crappy apartment to another! I can paint the walls (we did)! I can renovate it when I’m dissatisfied with how it looks (we are)! I can let the dogs out in the back yard and they can just have their space (I do)! This is really nice and I’m continually disappointed that the government is cool with people lucking their way up the social ladder instead of, idk, doing things to help people afford better (or any) housing. Thanks, Capitalism.

Anyway, where does that leave me? Well, I still write. Last time I was here I had just finished my books Era of the Iblan Light: Rebirth and Age of the Black Empire: Insurrection. It’s been a long almost six years, but I’ve released part 1 of the next books in both series, and I’m working on the next parts. I’m hoping these don’t take another six years.

I also have a third series called Shadows of Sur Posta. It’s a western mystery series set in Colorado. The main characters are Sheriff Flint Waters and Dr. C.A. Daver. They solve crimes. This series is gonna be my NaNo cheat project. Instead of a full novel, they’re just going to be fun little novellas.

I also still draw things. I got myself an iPad recently because apparently I can just afford that, and I’ve been doing a lot of drawing recently. I’ve really been feeling my art and getting a hang of my own style finally.

One day I’ll figure out what “highlights” and “shadows” are.

Anyway, I like doing other things too. Baking, gardening, cooking, sleeping, idk. So I’ll probably pop in here every once in a while to show what I’m doing, talk about things, throw out a random thought. Feel free to swing by, say hi, ask questions.

And if you see me lurking around certain dark corners, no you didn’t 🙂

[fndawerness]

Let’s talk about it - After being diagnosed

Most of us have experienced grief of some form by the time we reach adulthood. The loss of a friend, family member, or pet can be devastating and difficult to move through. The kind of grief I’d like to talk about is the kind brought on by chronic illness.

It is similar in many ways to traditional grief. We go through some or all of the stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Yet some how it’s different. Only a person going through chronic illness can understand the type of grief that it brings on, and what that encompasses.

Denial: FND is often a misunderstood illness. Some medical professionals are convinced that it’s “just a mental illness.” When receiving a diagnosis of FND, you may go through a form of denial. I sure did. I saw the words “conversion disorder” and thought, “I’m not making this $%^^ up! I don’t walk around acting stoned and losing my balance for fun…WTF?” I was certain that it must be something else, something that can be fixed, cured, medicated away…ANYTHING! I continued to go to work through the worst symptoms, trying to maintain the same level of productivity and normalcy I’d had before getting sick. Trying to continue the same level effort only made the symptoms worse. Of course It wasn’t until a neurologist explained it as a problem with the functioning of the wiring of the brain/CNS that I was able to come to terms with this diagnosis and move through the denial.

Anger: Then came the anger. Anger that an illness can take away all the things I used to be able to do. I was embarrassed to speak to people due to losing my train of thought, being unable to find words, or slurring words. I was embarrassed by my unbalanced gait, and frequent stumbles. I began to avoid socializing to save myself the humiliation. That burned into an ember of resentment. “How could this have happened? I do everything right; I don’t smoke, or do drugs, I eat healthy, I don’t drink often, I exercise regularly. This is ridiculous.” I became impatient with myself, and at times with others. I was beginning to lose my independence, and therefore my identity. Perhaps you’ve felt the same way?

Anger is a very slippery slope, so don’t lose your footing and let it get the better of you. When we suffer from an illness that takes away our independence anger can become a way of hiding what’s really going on: frustration at feeling no sense of control. Asking for help is so difficult at times. Especially if you’re known as being a fiercely independent person. But truly, it’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of courage. It takes immense courage to allow people to see you when you’re vulnerable. The people that love us are feeling helpless and at a loss of what to do. When we ask for help, we are offering them an opportunity to show their love for us. It can enable them and us to work through the anger that comes with grief. So, when someone comes to you and says “What do you need? Can I do anything for you?” Tell them what you need and be specific. “I need help vacuuming, walking the dog, getting groceries, etc.” Tell them what you need, and thank them for their help. It is healing for both the giver and the receiver.

Bargaining: This one is tricky. When we get stuck on comparing ourselves now to the person we used to be, that's bargaining. The truth is chronic illness changes you, in every way possible. It's ok to think about the things we used to be able to do before FND. The problem arises when we begin to ruminate on those lost abilities, and look upon what we are capable of now of as "less than." Do we look at a person who is going through chemo and say, "What are you doing complaining about being tired? Just get up and go!" NO OF COURSE WE DON'T!!! Why then do we beat ourselves up for the things we can no longer do because of our illness?? Makes no sense at all does it? All of us with FND have a fear that the illness will get worse. We develop anxiety over losing our independence/job/career, etc. And yes, those things are a possibility, but so is recovery. There's always a chance that we will experience remission, or perhaps regain some of our lost function. Focusing on the things we CAN do is certainly going to help us progress better than focusing on what we've lost. Today maybe you can only walk to the front door, tomorrow maybe you can make it down to the sidewalk. Doesn't seem like much to some, but to a warrior it's the beginning of greater things to come.

Depression: This one is a nasty piece of work. I'm going to be honest here; DEPRESSION SUCKS. It not only sucks the energy out of you, but of everyone around you. It can be one of the most difficult areas of chronic illness to overcome. FND can take away from us our ability to walk, to speak, to work, to think clearly, independence, etc. FND brain fog can make even the smallest tasks feel overwhelming. Socializing in large groups or areas of loud noise with lots of activity can bring about the brain fog. So then we stop going out, and we begin isolating ourselves from others. We may stop visiting friends, or inviting people over because we don’t want them to see us on our bad days. We can become a shadow of the person we used to be. These are all signs of depression. When we only visit people on our “good days” we become unwitting endorsers of the idea that we are actually just fine. If you are suffering from depression, you are not alone. It can plague anyone, at any time, and for no reason at all. Please reach out to your doctor, call a friend, and seek support. Do it quickly. Do it now.

Acceptance: Accepting a diagnosis of FND looks different for each of us. It can happen at that moment, in the clinic when the doctor finally labels all of the symptoms you've been going through. It may happen later, after you've done a bit of research and realized you haven't been imagining the symptoms you've been experiencing all this time. Or it can be a slow realization that happens over time, as you begin the work to regain some of what you've lost. Acceptance involves self compassion; being kind to yourself, knowing that just because you can't do something today, it doesn't mean you can't try again tomorrow. It means celebrating the small things. By the way, we all get fooled into thinking life is about the BIG stuff. (Going to university, getting a job, getting married, having kids, buying a car, etc etc. ) Guess what? We're wrong. Life is about the little things. Life is about that amazing cup of coffee you are having this morning. It's the hug from your little one with the sloppy, drooly kisses on the cheek. It's your dog greeting you every time you walk in the door like you've been away for YEARS! It's the hug you give a friend when they're crying, or the lame dad jokes you share with your kids. FND can never take away the little things that matter. FND will knock you down, accept the diagnosis, brush the dirt off, and get to work doing the best you can do, no matter how small it may be. Remember, you are an FND warrior, surrounded by an army of people just like you. Together, we can conquer anything.

[manikrege]

If you turn 30 in 5 years or less, I need you to understand something.

My best friend, who's 26 and a self-started small business entrepreneur now, told me her deepest wish & biggest dream was being on the Forbes 30 under 30 List.

Like a best friend, I hyped her up & told her it was inevitable - she'd definitely get there.

But then we marinated on the truth that she only has a few years left (now even less) to make it happen ... It looked too difficult.

In response, I assured her there's enough time because I didn't know what else to say. I didn't have the words that I should've used at that time, until today when I came across a stupid LinkedIn post which brought back the memory.

The post was from your stock footage old HR recruiter complaining about Gen-Z's tendency to prioritise all the wrong things. Yes, cue the eye rolls already.

She talked about how buying an iPhone for 1L is okay for us but using that as capital to start our own business feels too risky.

How we always complain about salads being expensive but going on a dinner date is okay.

How enrolling for a 3L course to upskill feels too costly but we're cool with spending that amount on traveling/vacations.

I usually just scroll past by, because I can't take LinkedIn less seriously nowadays - it's become Facebook at this point - but in this case I wrote back in the comments.

See, I did go on a fancy dinner date last month! *wink wink*

Omg this was my first one EVER. I'm turning 25 soon and I've never done something like it because I was always studious in school & then prioritised my career right from day uno of my first job, so I always told my friends that I find getting into a relationship something bored people do - I said dating is for kids & I'll look out for someone once I'm well settled.

But I was lying to myself. Of course I wanted to know & be with someone - emotionally & physically, too. Of course my body understands attractions & has certain needs, and my mind craves companionship from time to time.

So I did follow through with my Bumble match & we had sat down at a fancy café named Poetry in Powai - and we talked for 3 goddamn hours nonstop. I've become very health conscious but that day, the person's presence loosened me up & I had fried junk food & TOTALLY LOVED IT.

In passing, they said the most beautiful thing anyone has ever told me - they said they could watch time passing by as the Sun set outside the window but they let it go because they were so lost in me (and so was I in them).

Someday I'll talk about my first kiss because writers gotta milk out every opportunity bwahaha but the point is that this goes against everything the God-fearing, traditional mindsetted, 20-year-old Manik believed in. If he saw the future, he'd curse me for wasting my time on irrelevant useless stuff and ask me to focus on myself.

Secondly, I've been taking myself out on solo dates on the weekends (still do now, and my partner totally understands). I fell in love with this gorgeous mall called Phoenix Palladium & I spent 3 hours walking every square meter it covers last weekend after office. In April, I'm saving up to go on a Goa trip with friends. But the agenda is the same - I no longer hustle on the weekends. I'll either sleep and do my gym sessions in between, or I'll get myself out of my room. I have fun.

Thirdly, I did buy a fancy phone too because it had a good camera. I'm very camera conscious but one of my new year resolutions was to push myself out of that awkwardness & click a selfie every day - I've maintained that streak so far.

I'm saying all of this because it feels great.

It's what I'm supposed to do when I'm 24. I'm supposed to fall in love, go on dates, be intimate & get my heart broken just to see how the hurt feels like (although dear partner if you're reading this, don't break up so soon please!).

I'm supposed to start loving & respecting my own body & realising that while being healthy & working on fitness is definitely so important, the composition of my body doesn't define how beautiful I am so it's totally ok if I give into my craving and have that pizza today.

I'm supposed to be doing goofy things. I AM SUPPOSED TO BE WASTING THIS TIME OF MY LIFE PRECISELY BECAUSE I CAN AFFORD IT. Silly shit. I'm supposed to be failing & making silly mistakes so I can learn from them & pass the lessons to the next generation.

Why. The. Fuck. Should I feel guilty about having fun & doing things that made me happy? Why should I always take life so seriously? Where has that gotten me so far?

I lost my childhood because I was always focused on growing up. My parents first, my teachers next & my friends afterward - everyone has had these unsaid expectations from me that I'll become successful in life. And I'm grateful that they believe in me. But I was talking to one of my interns & was telling her I had a wild Friday. She said that she couldn't imagine me partying & dancing because Im always so focused & serious at work.

And she wasn't exactly complimenting me. It hurt that people can't imagine Manik Rege being a party person. And I don't like that.

All my hard work has always been steamrolled with obstacles politics & failures. Life has always pushed me down on the floor & laughed as I mustered the strength to stand up again, and start from scratch. I have rebuilt myself a thousand times but now I'm done with the hustle.

I'm not giving up on my dreams & ambitions.

I'm just throwing away the sand glass that emptied itself at the mark of turning 30 years old.

Because I didn't confess this to my best friend back then but being in Forbes was my biggest dream too and not reaching there in time to qualify was my darkest fear.

I personally know people who've been featured in the Forbes list. I'm happy for them. But I felt so jealous because that was my idea of being successful too.

My idea of success, as fed to me by others, was having a well paying job and a wife and a kid and a house by 30. My idea of success was fame and money and stability and career growth.

So every time someone asked me to do something that didn't directly contribute to those holy goals, I used to back out. I didn't realise how much I was missing out on. Because I thought it was all pointless.

Almost every fourth Reel I see on IG is about some entrepreneur repeating my uncle's wisdom about how I shouldn't waste this time of my life in anything else apart from building my career.

And i respect that but I've also secretly just wanted to be a goddamn teenager for once. And do teenagey stuff.

Why did I always feel guilty about it? Why did I regret having junk food once in a while. Or trying to find someone good on dating apps. Or just not working & exploring the city. Because it didn't make me successful?

Ok you know what I'm going to list down shit that I think makes me very successful. These are my achievements in the past few years:

1. I battled a severe health crisis & basically came back from the dead. I was 108kgs, now 84kgs and the transformation gave me so much confidence. I now love the gym, look forward to trekking in the monsoon, and feel good about my own body.

2. I made peace with my parents. They're lovely & have always loved me but like any parents, they're flawed & sometimes irritating too. But we talked about our differences in opinions & perspectives & agreed to co-exist. We worked on our past trauma - stuff we never had the courage to discuss because I felt it would make me look like an ungrateful kid. But we apologised for what we know was wrong & we're slowly healing.

3. I had sex.

4. I made a few new best friends who have become the strongest support system I've ever had. We have so many beautiful mature conversations & always hype each other up so much that it looks cringey & overdramatic but we love each other painfully to shreds.

5. I lost my well-paying job abroad because of COVID & had an year long gap but I fearlessly fought my way back into the industry. I'm 3 years behind if I consider my original timeline that I used to believe in when I was 20. I don't even earn half of what my friends do. But I now have a job & am figuring out my career all over again despite have faced such a deadly blowback years back.

There are so many others but my point is that I never stopped to congratulate myself on these achievements. AND THEY ARE ACHIEVEMENTS.

Finding so much body confidence & having the courage to fall in love with yourself is an achievement. Because I know so many people who struggle with it.

Healing difficult relationships is an achievement. And being able to talk about such mature themes so openly is achievement.

Experiencing real intimacy is an achievement.

Failing in your career but not giving up is an achievement. Regardless of whether your attempts are showing results or regardless of how slow the progress is. Changing professions and following your passion or simply surviving in a job until you have a better one. It all takes balls.

Gathering the strength to make your bed in the morning when you're so sore & hurt. Or just keeping the pillows correctly. Or making yourself breakfast or cleaning your room. Or just bloody smiling when everything is going wrong in your life. Or facing your anxiety by placing your own order at Subway in person.

These look trivial but I promise you, they're very difficult for a lot of people. And for once, I just wanted to tell YOU specifically that I'm so proud of you. You're doing amazing sweety.

HAVING THE COURAGE TO LIVE & BREATHE & EXIST IS AN ACHIEVEMENT.

I want my friend to know that she'll always be the most awesome entrepreneur I know. Because she's the first friend of mine who had the balls to step out on her own.

While I hope she does get into the Forbes list, it's nowhere in my list of priorities or expectations for her or myself now.

Because I know her. I've seen her struggle. And the fact that she carried on is reason enough to say she's awesome.

I also want her to know that she was the first one to take me clubbing. And I don't want all this hustle to take that special part away from her. She's a party person. Now so am I.

And I wish for both of us to continue finding happiness in that totally unproductive space.

I want us to be happy about doing something without calculating how better it makes our lives in the future.

If watching Netflix, for example, is your sin, please do enjoy it. Reading books isn't the only way to learn. Nor should learning every day be a norm. YES, it's okay to not grow & just experience normal fun stuff.

Pursue your ambitions with all your grit but do not let anyone guilt trip, gaslight or shame you into thinking that you must constantly be at it every single day.

I have been through multiple burnouts. I have seen others burn out too. It's not pretty trust me. It's not at all worth it.

Sure your job is your survival but please treat it only as that. It is what you do to afford the life you like or want to build. It is not the definition of your worth & talent because baby that is infinite.

So you know what, screw this, I no longer care about competing. I want everyone to be successful & I'll be successful in my own way. And we'll celebrate each other.

I am done with this bullshit tutorial tution class mentality where they used to separate us into the class of smart kids & the less smart kids. I was in the smart ones but now I realise how toxic that distinction was. And those adults do it because they love watching us fight with each other. They've always made us all compete against time because they don't understand the repercussions of running too fast.

I am now realising how powerful I become when I stop trying to win myself & reach out to help others from the bottom of my heart. Let me lift you up, and I'll tell you when I need you too. Let's support each other. Let's communicate our needs & figure out how we can work together rather than fighting to one-up each other.

And let's work together on the Forbes list. If we make it, great. If one of us does, great. If we don't, great because then we can accept it means absolutely nothing.

If you're going to turn 30 in 5 years or less, understand that 30 is not the cutoff.

You are on time. You have a shitload of time left.

You are on track.

And you deserve to have fun.

30 is actually when you start growing. 30 is when you set the foundation. And so is 60 - there is no such thing as being late.

30 is only the beginning. Are you excited for it?

[rwby-redux]

Back in V2 I was thinking Remnant Cyber Security sucks. They just had a major infiltration of one of their major tech centers (I apologize if I misuse the term) and they don’t think to check it for possible cyber infections? While it’s true they don’t know exactly what happened there you would think given it’s technological importance that it would be a major target for both data theft and cyber infections from the outside. So if someone goes to the trouble of infiltrating DIRECTLY you’d think these would be the first two things they would check.

And I am not really a major computer expert, just someone who knows enough to keep themselves safe online. And when that scene had ME questioning their competence, you know you have problems.

P.S. I am someone who genuinely loves the show, but I am a in spite of the flaws guy. Capable of taking it for what it is, enjoying it, but still capable of calling out the b.s. when I see it. I think that’s why I am glad to have found you. Normally I talk to other people about stuff I like in RWBY, it’s good to occasionally talk about my complaints with it.

P.P.S. On a more positive note, do you want me to link you to a video that notes some of the foreshadowing in the series?

My takeaway was that Remnant’s cybersecurity sucks because the writers had no idea what they were talking about. And I say that as someone who is painfully tech-illiterate.

That’s to say nothing of how woefully inadequate the CCT’s physical defenses are. Like, if the CCTs make long-range communication possible, then why does Weiss need to go there in-person, in order to contact the SDC rep? Couldn’t she have just texted, or skyped, or sent an e-mail from her scroll? Wouldn’t making the CCTs open to the public be a huge security risk?

Out of curiosity, I decided to rewatch the scene where Cinder infiltrated the tower. After a quick headcount, I realized there were only seven people guarding it (1 perimeter guard, 4 first floor guards, and 2 elevator guards). You would think—given how important these towers are for global communication—that the security measures in place would be slightly more aggressive. Like, if even one of these bloody towers falls, the entire internet gets taken out with it. We see political pundits talking all the time about how big of a deal it is when a country’s government deliberately shuts down its citizens’ internet. It foreshadows imminent civil rights breaches and genocide. It’s why activists constantly bring it up.

But we’re talking about a system that doesn’t isolate to one region, or one country. It affects all internet across the globe. Remnant’s communication system is structurally fragile because of its dependency on four separate broadcast towers.

Realistically, the CCTs should be more armed than the fucking Pentagon.

Why aren’t there more security personnel? Or motion sensors? Or external cameras? Why isn’t the central control room like Austin Powers, where it’s behind a tank full of laser sharks?

For that matter, why aren’t there Huntsmen employed to guard the site? As powerful as Cinder is, there’s no way she could dispatch a dozen licensed Huntsmen without alerting someone else, who could then call for backup. Like, that tower is where Ozpin’s office is, and you’re telling me that anyone can waltz in there just by muscling their way through the door?

Also, I’d like to state for the record—Amber’s fucking body is several floors under Cinder’s shoes. As far as we know, the access to the basement is restricted. You’re expecting me to believe that when Cinder boarded the elevator, she didn’t look at the buttons on the control panel, and think, “Huh. That’s weird. One of these floors is marked off-limits. I BETTER BLAST MY WAY DOWN THERE AND SEE WHAT OZPIN DOESN���T WANT PEOPLE TO FIND.”

If it wasn’t for massive contrivance and oversight, Cinder should have found and killed Amber then and there.

There’s no in-lore justification for why [1] the CCTs are accessible to the public, [2] they’re so poorly defended, [3] the security system doesn’t have several redundancies in place that make hacking it slightly more inconvenient.

I get that Watts is a skilled engineer. I get that Cinder is a prodigious saboteur. It still shouldn’t have been that easy.

[ambiguousdisorderken]

no you know what i still have not fully processed that dean and cas are in love. they smile when they think about each other, and they miss each other when they're apart, and they make corny jokes when they have sex, and dean blushes when cas compliments him but cas kisses the embarrassment away, and they get angry at each other and tongues get sharp but they will always have each other’s back, and they do domestic chores to pop songs cas adores and dean no-so secretly jams to, and cas strokes dean's hair when he falls asleep on the couch, face tucked against cas' stomach, and sometimes they shower together, and they wear subtle matching t-shirts and not so subtle ones too, and dean feeds cas spoonfuls of whatever he's cooking as taste tests, and their legs intertwine when they watch tv, and they cuddle, and their chats include a considerable amount of heart emojis, and dean wakes up wrapped up in cas' warmth, head on his chest, then finger tracing mindless shapes over bare skin, and they listen to each other's rants intently or tune out completely distracted by the endearingly aggravated face, and fuck how did they get this lucky, and they share clothes, and the wardrobe is fuller now, and they bicker a lot, dean complains about cas not being tidy and cas complains about dean not actually letting him help and always wanting things done his very particular way anyway, and sometimes dean gets very annoying and cas rolls his eyes and is so done with him, but then dean pokes his side and offers an apology that is without a doubt not an apology except it is in the dean winchester dictionary, and cas caves in because every second spent 'mad' at dean is a second wasted, and cas stands in the vee of dean's legs when he's perched up on the counter, and they have lazy sundays sprawled in bed, and they take selfies together, and they slow-dance when they're alone and the right song plays, and sometimes they dance without music because they can and they want to and it's right because it's them, and they are vulnerable with one another, and dean helped cas with figuring out sex at the start because it was intimidating so when dean's body fails to get on with the program and dean gets all red in the face frustrated and whatnot cas reassures him and because he knows dean's feeling bad they watch scooby-doo which has dean chuckling, little spoon in cas' embrace, and they go on dates, they go on dates, they go on dates, and they send each other memes, and they talk about banalities as well as their deepest darkest insecurities and fears, and dean is sure cas' phone is filled with pictures of him doing stupid shit or doing nothing at all, but that's fine because his own phone is packed with candids of cas simply being cas, and cas slaps dean's ass when he wears his short shorts, and he also steals a couple of bites off of dean's pie when they're at diners and dean lets him, and they call each other's bullshit for what it is, and dean gets to dress up his boyfriend husband and definitely checks him out when he's trying on different outfits, and they have inside jokes that make them giggle, make they cackle, and they go on drives together with no destination in mind just the road ahead and their mixtape blaring in the wind, and when cas is upset dean's right there, and when dean is angry everyone knows it's cas they gotta call to make it better, and they celebrate anniversaires and buy each other little gifts that they give out feeling bashful and a bit ridiculous, and they have pillow talks, and dean cooks for cas and cas is dean's #1 sous-chef, and they have coffee together every morning, and dean sits on cas' lap and mumbles sleepy against his temple, and they finish each other's, yes, sentences (and sandwiches), and they get jealous when other people check them out, and cas glares when dean leads on a poor soul but it's not like dean can turn off his innate charm, so he eagerly makes it up to cas later, and they hold hands, and they fight like couples do and there are tears and misunderstandings and painful silences and eventually apologies that are often wordless, a peace offering, but sometimes there's a sincere 'sorry' as well, and cas talks about dean endlessly with other people and dean literally can't shut up about cas, and they whisper things in each other's ears that no one else is privy to, it's just for them to know, and they go on long walks, and everyone knows they're together, they're each other's +1 by default, if anyone tells dean anything cas will know it before the day ends, and if anyone does anything to cas their name will be immediately added to dean's kill list, and they go grocery-shopping together, and they fight over which brand is better, and they get excited about 2x1 promos, and late at night they browse amazon to buy unnecessary crap, and they go on holidays together because they deserve it and the beach has always been dean's sunny dream, and they rub sunscreen on each other's back and dean orders them fruity colorful cocktail drinks and they nap on deck chairs after a quick swim, and they gossip, they talk about other people but keep their judging and criticisms between them, and they touch each other, they touch each other freely, that's dean's hand on cas' cheek, and that's cas' hand on the small of dean's back, and those are dean's arms wrapped around cas' neck and those are cas' hands on dean's waist, and they sit together for hours each doing their own thing, and dean calls out 'hey babe' and cas automatically responds 'yes love?', and cas nurtures both the child and the man in his arms, and cas memorized dean's system for doing laundry and dean is grateful and alleviated, and they eat terrible food together and gain a few pounds, and they try to do the healthy active couple thing but end up quitting because it doesn't really matter so dean eats that extra slice of pizza and cas keeps buying dean's favorite pie from the local bakery, and their bedroom is a safe space for dean's repressed kinks and cas' newly-found fantasies, their bedroom is also where they binge-watch netflix like the couch potatoes they are, and when cas brushes his teeth dean barges in just to take a leak, and they talk casually as they get ready, and they are frequently naked around each other and it's not sexual but it's very intimate and comfortable, and cas winks at dean from across the room, and dean pulls cas by his tie as he says 'gonna steal this handsome fella for a while' and dean cries sometimes but that's okay, and cas cries too but that's also okay, and dean sings to cas, and they have morning breath kisses and toothpaste kisses and coffee kisses and whiskey kisses and hungry kisses, and there are two pairs of shoes by the door and two glasses left in the sink and two towels hanging on the rack and both bedside tables are occupied and their mattress remembers two shapes, and dean worries because cas doesn't take enough care of himself, and dean nurses cas when he gets a cold, snuggling under blankets and checking the clock to make sure the medicine is taken timely, and cas gives dean massages to ease the tension accumulated in his shoulders, and often those massages have a happy ending as they should, and blowjobs are a regular prescription for fatigue and negative moods, and they can be downright insufferable towards one another, but it's a friendly banter, a loving poking fun at each other but it’s only allowed for dean to make fun of cas’ awkwardness and only cas can taunt dean for being so nerdy and dorky, it’s a game of pushing just the right buttons to get a certain reaction, and they also have a routine these days, being retired and all that, and they bask in each other’s company, their favorite pastime is just being together, they are each other’s home, and they care for one another in every way there is to care about someone. dean and cas are in love.

[plush-rabbit]

Asmodeus Comforting A Chubby Partner

Request: i was wondering if you could do hc's maybe for an insecure/chubby!reader x asmo? (both n/sfw are fine. whatever you're more comfy with) he's my favourite/comfort character but he very clearly loves beautiful things... as someone who isn't "traditionally/stereotypically beautiful" it makes me feel very insecure that he probably wouldn't be attracted to me. cellulite, stretch marks and scars riddle my body from years of extreme weight loss and gain from various eating disorders and harmful, unhealthy coping mechanisms. it's a lot of projection but ig i'm just worried he'd see like my loose tummy skin and be repulsed by it or the stretch marks on not just the "typical" places like thighs, stomach, bum, etc. etc. but places like my arms, shoulders and sides too.

Warnings: eating disorders + scaring briefly mentioned, allusion to self harm

A/N: Don’t ever worry about what I write for!! I’m willing to write a lot (also babes, i obvs don’t know you but please believe that you’re gorgeous, beauty standards fuck us all over and i need you to understand that your marks are all kisses from your body and marks to kiss. I’m sure you’re lovely and i hope you find love within yourself xoxo)

-

Absorbed with his beauty in the first few weeks that you’ve stayed with at the House of Lamentation, Asmodeus hadn’t noticed your lack of self-love. It’s only until later that he can see your forlorn glances at a mirror, the way you try to hide yourself under baggy clothing or long sleeved shirts. Of course, it’s a bit chilly in Devildom, but it doesn’t sit right with him. He brings you to his room that smells like lilies and strawberries, letting you sit down beside him as he grabs your hand, painting it a matching set as himself. With you in hand, he’ll ask you about yourself, slowly prying into your view about yourself. A deep frown will tug against the corners of his mouth and he’ll furrow his brows. He’s been aware of beauty standards in the Human Realm but he had never thought it was so dire to affect your own perception of yourself.

As the love and relationship between the both of you progresses, he’s focused on trying to make you feel better about yourself but in doing so he has to open some wounds. He knows that it hurts, and he’s pained to see you cry, looking nervously at you and fiddling with the ends of his hair but he means well. He tries to understand you, to feel a deeper connection with you and he’ll hold you as you cry onto his shirt. Once you’re done, he’ll let you calm down for a few minutes, offer you some water and dry your eyes, his fingertips grazing against your skin ever so slightly. With every word that you spewed with hate, he’ll counter it with adoration. He’ll hold your hands and comment about how they fit into his perfectly, the soft plush cheeks that you have, your lips that taste of sweet nectar and the marks against your skin that are perfect kissing spots.

He adores your cellulite. You may not think much of it and see it as a hindrance but to him, it reminds him just how soft you are. While demons and the alike are fun and he enjoys the time that he has spent with them he adores you. You’re a human, you’re soft and always changing. He likes to see your body, the way that it has changed, the pale lines marking over your skin like lightning bolts against the night sky. You’ll often find him tracing over it, his fingers walking over your skin and letting the stretch marks take him where they need to be. The stretch marks that lace over your stomach, the ones that pull and wrinkle your skin are something that he enjoys to look at. The groves trace under his fingertips and he’s reminded that you’re human, that you trust him with your plump body despite the mannerisms that he shows at times. Your worth is not put onto your body, it’s put against who you are and he loves everything sweet about you.

The Avatar of Lust is many things and loves many things, and one of those happens to be you. His charm doesn’t work on you and while it was a disappointment at first, it was also a grace hidden by it. You grew to care for him, for him. You loved the sweet nature of him that is hidden by childish jealousy, you adore the way that he tries not to cry at movies, less it ruins his makeup. You adore the small things about him. He fell for your beauty and soon fell for you. He loves beautiful things and his past partners might share a similar type but it doesn’t dictate his only standard of beauty. Beauty comes late at night when the moon is bright, beauty comes at seeing a lover wrapped in a silky bathrobe that’s matched with the other. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and he beholds many things that are beautiful. He seeks you out because you care for him in a way that he hasn’t realized he wanted- you hold his hand and you seek him out for pure enjoyment rather than lustful reasons.

His lips will trace against your body, his hands held tight in yours and he reminds you in all the ways that matter that he loves your body. You’re human, you change and that’s all right by him. Your loose skin is soft, plush and squishing under his slender fingers. If you allow him to, he’ll kiss your skin, let his pink lips pepper against your burning body and he can feel his sin tug at him. He wants to care for your body, to let you feel the pleasure that roams throughout him. His hand will curve over your tummy, his lips close to yours as he tells how delightful you look under him.

Perhaps it's because a few of his past lovers have looked a certain way, but he truly does love your scars. He likes to see your scars of tales from the time before. He might not know how you got them, but from the way you become nervous, he can only guess. He sees your scars as growth, you are in a different place, you are healing both physically and mentally. The scars are from someone long ago, from some cruel and uncaring, and now he’ll kiss them with a cheeky smile, merely telling you that he enjoys kissing your skin. In a desperate attempt to change the subject, he’ll pull you to another part of the house, commenting how he needs help with a class.

While he does love your body, your own happiness comes before his own pleasure. He wants to know that you truly do love yourself and if you don’t, he’ll pout but your happiness means much more. If you really do feel so bad about your scars, he’s willing to go and buy whatever cream is necessary to help aid in fading your marks. He’ll rub the cool cream against your belly, his smile melancholic as he tells you a story. He isn’t fond of changing you, but if it makes you happy and helps erase the scars that you try so desperately to hide, then who is he to complain about your body? He will remind you throughout the process that he does love your body, that whatever you do, is for your happiness because no matter what, he’ll be happy with you.

When he learns of your rather unhealthy coping mechanisms, he heart aches. He becomes rather dependent during this time, wanting to stay close to you for fear of hurting yourself in some type of way. He trusts in you but knowing that you would have harmed yourself makes him rather jittery. He’ll use the title that he has to find someone to talk to because while he would love nothing more than to listen to you, he is not qualified to be the one giving you advice. He’ll still spend hours scouring the internet looking for a way to help you- different medians, alternative ways to feel the sort of satisfaction that you might derive from it and anything else he can understand and see it fitting for you.

He rather have you do things in a healthy way that won’t ruin your body and mind. If you are keen to lose weight, you’re going to do it carefully. As the relationship unfurls into a blossoming flower, he becomes bolder in his actions. He won’t assume what you want to look like, but he wants to help so he’ll find a plan perfect for you and work alongside you. He loves beautiful things and he finds you to be beautiful and if you want to alter a few things about yourself, he’ll support you. Whatever disorders you had in the past, he knows how to care for them and you, he’ll make sure you eat well and treat yourself. You’re his and he isn’t going to let human standards take you away from him. Body image is something that he tries to keep perfect as much as he can and the clothes that you wear are an important factor in how you feel. He’ll change your wardrobe- steadily, of course- and allow you to feel better with what you wear. The clothes will be there to help frame your body in a more flattering way than anything baggy could ever, and he’ll have you model for him, taking pictures and uploading them to Devilgram just to show off how cute you look.

Asmodeus is the Avatar of Lust. He’s the narcissistic fifth born who loves himself and everything beautiful second to only himself. He values how he looks and takes great care of his body. He can be catty and whip out insults in less than a second. But, he is a caring lover, someone soft and sweet, attentive to the needs of his lover. Human beauty standards are something that he understands but he is a demon. He is monstrous and ugly, blood pouring from his hands and forever fretting over how he looks. You, however, are none of those things. You are soft, caring and sweet. You care for him, not the lustful part of him, but for the demon that he is. He’s sorry that he let you believe that he wouldn’t love you, that your marks are blemishes that stain your beauty, but you have to understand that they aren’t. He'd never reject your body, he’d hold you close and let his hands soothe over the parts you dislike while he tells you how gorgeous you are, muttering his praise until your heart beats against your chest and he’s giggling at your reactions. Until you’re gone, he’ll lay in his bed, arms spread wide that his fingertips can barely reach the edge of the bed and he’ll smile to himself, his heart fluttering and chest feeling light, knowing that he made you smile.

[a-supernatural-writer]

Painting Their Nails

Poly Lost Boys, Michael and Star x Gender neutral reader

You want to paint all their nails because why not? An imagine where the reader is doing their nails and decides to get everybody involved.

Warnings: swearing? cursing? (not really?)

Masterlist

Every few weeks, sometimes twice a month, you would break out your collection of nail polish and paint your nails whatever color you wanted. Whether or not the previous nail polish was still fully on, or even chipping away, you always had a habit of changing it no matter what.

This time you decided to go with your favorite color, and as you were painting them, your partners sneak a peek as they pass by your area of the cave. They’ve seen you do your nails many times before and know that disturbing you during this task could end badly. Marko still can’t the green nail polish that you threw at him off of one of his crop tops, nor will he ever.

When you finished letting your nails dry, you still had the desire to continue painting and that's when it hit you. You had six other hands in the cave just waiting for your attack. First on your list was surprisingly Michael. You always caught him staring at your hands and would even sometimes help you pick colors when you needed new ones, so you thought he would be the best to start with.

You dragged him over to your nest, everyone watching as you pick the simplest color that you could start Michael off with; black. Hey, it’s the 80's and the majority of the bands and singers nowadays, despite gender, wear black nail polish. Or any color really.

Michael just chuckles at your excitement when he gives you the okay to actually paint them. Again, the boy likes trying new things. You have to remember that Michael literally pierced his ear and got a leather jacket to fit in with the others. He’s not above changing his look or doing things that aren’t normal for a guy.

He followed your instructions, trying to be as still as possible as you applied the layers of black paint on his nails. You didn’t bother with any glitter or designs as this was the first time doing his nails and you wanted to ease him into it.

When you were done, you shooed him off to let his nails dry, telling him to be careful and not to really touch anything. Poor boy took it seriously and didn’t touch ANYTHING. He just sat down and moved his hands away if any of the others tried to grab his hands.

Dwayne was next, walking up to you, wordlessly taking a seat next to you and putting out his hands for you. With a giddy smile, you painted his nails too. You knew black was going to be the color for all your boys and you were thankful that you bought two bottles of black nail polish.

Dwayne was silent the entire time, watching your hands work, not only painting his nails, but also cleaning them up a bit to make them look nicer. When you finish his nails, he walks off, looking down at them with a small smile. He even went over to Michael to show how well you did.

The second that Dwayne left, BOTH Marko and Paul bounded over to you. Marko took off his gloves so you could easily paint his nails while Paul actually pulled out a bottle of transparent black glitter nail polish.

You went with Marko first because he just wanted plain black. Getting him to not express himself through hand movements as he conversed with you and Paul was tough. You had to keep a firm grip on his fingers, occasionally telling him to stay still.

Not only did you have to deal with Marko’s fidgeting but Paul was much worse, you had to slap his hand away from opening up nail polish bottles when you were trying you damn hardest to do Marko’s.

With a little bit of hard work, you were able to finish Marko’s nails. He was very happy with them, kissing you as a thanks and swapping places with Paul, waiting for his nails to dry while Paul got his done. Plus, you wanted Marko to stay close to stop him from biting his nail out of habit.

Paul was probably the hardest to do out of all of them. Not in the sense of wanting a couple of his black nails to have glitter on them, but because this boy cannot sit still for shit. You thought doing his makeup was hard, this is much worse.

He’s a very fidgety boy so you had to keep an iron grip on his hands so you wouldn’t slip up. Which was easier said than done.

Once you started putting the glitter on a few of his nails, he smiled so brightly that your heart felt like it was gonna melt. He looked so happy with the way it was looking. Again, for some odd reason I feel like this boy loves glitter for some odd reason. It excites him to no end.

You finished his nails and told both him and Marko to be careful because you were not gonna do them again if they fucked them up. That got them to be somewhat careful about whatever they were doing around the cave.

Second to last was David. He pulled off his leather gloves and somehow he has like the best natural nails out of all of them? They’re not too long or short, the cuticles are healthy and dear lord they were smooth as hell. You just chalked it up to him wearing gloves all the time so no dirt or anything could actually damage them.

Of course you went with black, it was probably the only color that David would ever do, but you weren’t complaining. You were just happy that he was allowing it. But you reminded yourself that he only let you because he could easily hide them in public with his gloves.

Despite that, you continued to paint his nails. He was like Dwayne and Michael. He was patient and just watched you work. He was still and when you occasionally looked up to look at his face, you would become a little flustered when you saw that he soon started staring at your face instead of your hands.

After you finished his nails, you held onto his leather gloves so he wouldn’t put them back on out of habit and told him that if wanted to smoke, he just had to be careful. Let’s just say the image of David sitting on his wheelchair with black painted nails and smoking was a sight to see and it had your insides turning in a very good way.

Last but not least was Star. You and her had the most fun with her own nails because she didn’t want black, she wanted colors. So, the two of you spent around ten minutes picking out what color or colors that she wanted.

She went with a simple red that matched her lipstick. She promised that next time she’ll do a different color but for now she just wanted it simple. Who were you to argue?

The two of you conversed about different color combinations that you could do in the future or even designs that you could try out.

Star’s nails were very easy to paint. Her nails were just as nice as David’s and that was from taking care of her nails in her free time by herself. There were a few times that her long hair did get in her face so you had to pause and push it behind her ears. In return, she would kiss your cheeks every single time.

You finished her nails and she happily showed them to Michael, who’s nails were finally dry and complimented them. All of them looked really good with painted nails and you hoped that you could do them again once they’ve all fully chipped off or if they asked you to do them.

When all was said and done, they did keep on coming back for you to do their nails. Paul always added a little bit of glitter in his nails, trying out some new colors here and there.

Marko let you try colors that would fit with his jacket, sometimes theming them after a certain tapestry that was on his clothing. Both Marko and Paul were the ones that would ask you the most to change their designs.

Both Dwayne and David kept it black. Dwayne would usually ask you to redo his nails if they were mostly chipped away. He didn’t want you using all your black that quickly.

On the other hand, David actually kept up with his nails. Asking if you could fix them even if only one nail had chipped away. He did surprise you some nights on the boardwalk and didn’t wear his leather gloves to show his nails to the world. It was rare but it made you very happy when he did. But other than that, when you two are alone, those nails are only shown for you to see.

Michael and Star were the ones that redid them once a month. Star would usually try new colors with you, but most of the time she kept her bright red. Michael sort of stayed with the black as well. Though there were a few times that he asked for color or a little bit of glitter.

Overall, it was a new thing that they all didn’t know that they would enjoy, especially if you were the one that always did it for them. If you aren’t doing their nails, nobody is.

[babbushka]

hi, hope you’re doing alright! just want to pick your brain about this because i’d love to know your thoughts - a fic writer that i love in a different fandom and actively interact with described how she felt discouraged by the few amounts of comments and reblogs she got on her fics and basically set out some pretty strict guidelines about the amount of notes with comments she required to put out the next chapter of her fics. i thought that was perfectly reasonable but she got so much backlash for it! a lot of fic readers told her that she was ruining the creativity of fics by ‘demanding’ a certain number of notes and running her blog like a business instead of just being something for fun. it shocked me because im not a writer but i could totally understand it being discouraging to feel like your putting out fics and not hearing anything about them, especially when fandoms are so community based! what do you think, i’m very curious!! hope the universe is treating you kindly <3

Hello my dear anon! I've got to be honest, things aren't so great right now in my personal life (lots of very tiring health and family situations going on all at once lol, ya know when it rains it pours) but I think this is a VERY interesting subject.

If you had asked me a couple years ago, I would have probably agreed with some of the readers saying that doing something like that feels transactional. But honestly, now? I'm at a place with fandom (and honestly on the precipice of quitting entirely like every 2 weeks lol) where it IS a transaction.

Fandom only exists when there is a healthy ecosystem of "producer" and "consumer", if you will. The people creating the content are doing so, so that the fandom can read the fic or appreciate the art/memes. Fandom thrives when there is an equal exchange of appreciation. If no one reads someone's fic, authors stop writing. And then we get out of balance, where authors feel unappreciated or ignored and they leave.

Fanfiction should be fun. But the fun part of fanfiction is sharing it. The fun part of being in a community is interacting with it. The actual writing process is a nightmare -- it's a lot of work mentally, and it's very time consuming. So to work so hard on something like that and sharing it -- to absolute crickets is so so so so disheartening.

I wish I had the balls to say "listen if no one interacts with this chapter fic i'm not finishing it." I give MAJOR kudos to that author for sticking up for themselves and their efforts. My personal philosophy is if you want to complain about something just do it yourself. People forget that this stuff is FREE. We try to escape into this fandom and create spaces of insane amounts of FREE literature, artwork, memes, it's a social space that is intrinsically built on the idea that collaboration and community are the driving forces of innovation.

I feel this way especially when it comes to things like prompt requests or submissions. I'm sorry, but if you're asking someone to spend the time to make you something for free, the least you can do is comment on it, or reblog it, or hell, even like it. The demanding seriously has got to stop. When an author is only ever getting demands or backlash or hate, and no appreciation, how can you blame them for quitting? I certainly don't.

We need to do more than simply respect our fandom creators, we need to appreciate them openly where they can see it. Because you can gush to your friends all you want about this writing, but if no one is showing the actual author any love, they're going to feel like no one cares about them. And when that happens, it's no longer a community, it's a bunch of people complaining.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the subject. I hope that you're doing well and I'm sending you all my love! :)

[meanwaffle]

Kill me Romantically (Adachi x Reader fic)

Broken Toy (Chapter 1)

☆ Tags/warnings: Violence, noncon, blood / injuries, kidnapping

☆ Chapter two is here: Fifteen.

-

You wish you weren’t a moron.

You were the oldest in the investigation team. The senpai of all of them! You were supposed to be the reliable third year, when things got hairy it was intended for you to give some kind of motivational speech to motivate the others to work even harder and beat up all the scary monsters that hid inside the secret world inside the TV. Well, maybe you weren’t exactly supposed to, but you sure as hell wanted to. It was pretty discouraging that Yu had always taken that role. However, you honestly can't complain. You relied on him just as much as the others.

Going to his house was fun. It was nice to see Nanako. She was sorta like everyone’s little sister. And even though Dojima was rather strict and fussed at you all for getting involved in things that didn’t concern any of you, he treated you all well. There was never a dull moment at Yu’s.

You may have had other reasons for going.

Dojima’s partner would show up every now and then for dinner. Adachi, the rookie detective who always had a freshly awkward grin on his face. His grey eyes always flickering with a relaxing, fun vibe which made you comfortable around him even with a serial killer on the loose. He was unreliable, Dojima was always scolding him, he’d blurt out things he shouldn’t with that big mouth of his, even so he would reassure us all that the police were on the case and not to worry! It was cute; knowing that the police case would never be able to know the actual cause of the deaths.

Yeah. That’s how it was supposed to go. The police shouldn’t know about the TV world, so it was up to you and your friends to save the town. Adachi was meant to just be this ditsy man who you had a tiny, tiny crush on. You’d get to know him and he’d fall for your womanly charms, you anticipate you had some, then both of you would get married someday. Like a fairy tale.

It was a spur of the moment. You had a craving for snacks and Junes was on your way home. Stepping through the automatic door with no caution that anything bad would happen, you spotted Adachi slacking off in the corner of the entrance. Yu had told you he had been hanging around there lately when you not-so-subtly asked about the older man you had an attraction to, yet this was the first time you’d seen him! This was a sign from the gods right? It had to be. They were telling you to go up to him and make yourself known! Bat your eyelashes all pretty and make him think of you for the rest of the night.

No, that was embarrassing, you couldn’t do that. Talking to him shouldn’t be an issue though.

So that’s what you did. Approached him and said hello. Made some light conversation before he told you he had to go pick up dinner before his take out place closed. In only a few minutes he left and you were too shy to offer to walk with him. It was a perfect chance too. You could’ve pulled the “Can you walk me home? I’m scared of that killer on the loose.” card, which wasn’t a card that any girl in love could use often.

He isn’t the type to cook. You bet he was eating take-out for dinner more than what was considered healthy. That’s when an innocent idea popped into your head, a cliche that anyone could guess you’d try and do if they knew about your crush on the cute detective.

You mean… you were an okay cook.

It was just in the spur of the moment. Do something nice to gain his favor. And you were certain Adachi appreciated you for it just like you wanted, because when you showed up at his apartment door with tupperware full of food for dinner, he eagerly invited you inside.

Yet, when you stepped inside his home, suddenly there was a warm, wet feeling on your face, a taste of copper in your mouth. A sharp pain was stinging you from between your eyes and the pain was so much you accidentally dropped the food, which spilled all over the floor. Oh, it fell on the carpet. Hopefully it won’t stain. That’d be bad.

Ow… huh?

Adachi was above you somehow. You could see him even with your hazy vision glaring down at you, getting farther and farther away, ah, because you were falling. Why were you falling? What was this ringing in your head?

Oh. Oh… it was because Adachi had punched you.

The sheer force of his blow made you fall over. Once was enough. You already collapsed to the ground, but he didn’t stop. He just kept hitting you and hitting you and oh god, it hurt so bad. You can’t think, you can’t see, your vision was so blurry and red, was that blood? Your blood? With just his fist he could make you bleed so much? Holy shit, he’s gonna break your nose. It was agonizing. Please stop. Just stop, you're already losing consciousness, please just make it stop, you’ll die at the rate, god, is he gonna kill you? No, you were gonna die. It hurt so bad.

It only stopped when the world went black.

-

The loud clacking of footsteps woke you up. The ripped mattress you had been laying on for however many days had gone by since you were thrown down here with no means of escape wasn’t exactly doing a great job at giving you a comfortable rest, though the pounding in your head wouldn’t let your fear subside either. Your fear, huh? That’s right. Every time you saw the detective who used to be so charming, you were struck with genuine terror that would make your adrenaline pump. The worst part of it all was he enjoyed watching you squirm and get mad if you acted too confident. It was a lose lose situation for poor old you.

The creaky wooden door opened and your kidnapper stepped inside. His presence alone had you sit up and push yourself hard against the corner of the wall, trying to get as much distance away from the crazed man who you swore left a dent in your skull. It’s been days since you were taken and your head still hurts.

From the stairs he was already leering at you. A warm glint to his expression as he rubbed the back of his head with his usual freshly awkward demeanor, “I haven’t even entered the room yet and you're already running? I’m hurt.” A boyish chuckle fell off his lips and it felt so real that if you didn’t know any better you’d be sinking into his charm like you did before you had become his prisoner. Part of you thought maybe that would be for the best. If you just… gave up. Become putty in his palm to play with until he no longer wanted you. It’d be easy, but you were too stubborn to just give up. It’d be like admitting you didn’t have faith that your friends would find you.

You didn’t say anything.

“Giving me the silent treatment?” He clicked his tongue, annoyed. Shutting, and more importantly, locking the door behind him. “And I’m being so nice to come down to my dark, cold basement to visit you. I can’t even get a simple thank you? Girls are so difficult.” He continued to descend upon the stairs until he planted both feet onto the hard cement floor. His eyes never left you and the soft grin disappeared when he realized you really weren’t going to say anything. He enjoyed your distressed wailing and was not happy he didn’t get to hear it.

He marched over to you, kneeling down right in front of you. The distance between you and him was nothing more than a mere inch and you absolutely hated it, ugh, you can physically feel his eyes glaring a hole into you. Your entire body tensed up as you squeezed your eyes shut in fear that he was going to hit you again. It was an easy solution to make you sob.

The impact never came.

You slowly opened your eyes to see Adachi half-lidded staring at you. He lips pressed together in a thin, disapproving line. He was just… waiting. Lazily blinking in a bored manner. It was so intimidating and strange considering the fact he’d been slapping you upside the head whenever you frustrated him the past few days, that you physically couldn’t look at him. You turned your head with a huff, even so, Adachi’s cold fingers seized you by the chin, forcing you back to look at him.

Something was different about today. That was dreadful. Unpredictable Adachi was horrifying. You had to bubble up every bit of courage you had in you just to speak. “W-what?”

He sneered at you. “You think ignoring me is going to change the situation you’re in? Get the fuck over yourself.” His fingers left your face, thank god, and he sat up to pull over a wooden chair that he had brought down here the first night you were held captive. He spun the back to face you and sat on it, crossing his arms against the top of the backboard and resting his chin on his arms.

You whimpered silently to yourself. He wanted you to argue, defend yourself, you could tell he was trying to provoke you to say something. “My friends are gonna be looking for me.” You wrapped your arms around yourself to give yourself some form of comfort. You were your only supporter down here after all. “They won’t stop and the police will find me and you’re gonna r-regret this.”

“Pretty big talk for someone with a black eye.”

…he’s so insufferable.

You couldn’t tell what he was thinking. And he seemed so bored. It was dangerous if he got bored. He would want to hurt you again. He liked it when you were crying in pain and begging him to let you go. That adorkable detective you had come to cherish so much wasn’t real. It was a facade this whole time. You don’t know this Adachi. No matter how hard you close your eyes and chant Persona in your brain, nothing comes to save you. In this world you were just a weak, bruised girl standing against a man with the strength to break any bone in your body if wanted. You couldn’t do anything about him, who wanted nothing more than to ruin you and break you and oh god why is he looking at you like that!?

“Ah, yes, that’s how I like it. You’re just a scared girl, so act like it.” His lips curled into a big cocky grin. His sadistic side was gleaming.

You were crying. Tears were dripping down your cheeks and splashing against the sorry excuse of a mattress you were on. You shook your head violently.

“Terrified? Gonna have a breakdown?” He mocked you more, leaning down towards you as his chair lifted itself up to balance on two legs. “Maybe if you ask nicely I’ll let you go. C’mon, beg, entertain me.”

That was a lie. A cold shiver crawled up your spine, everything felt gross and your body was still hurting from the beating you had got. He was lying with a goofy laugh and you knew it. You could beg and cry and lick his fucking feet and he’ll just get off too it and then leave you down here. Starving and cold. You didn’t know if you could put up with this any longer. You thought you were strong. You were just fighting monsters with your awesome super powers the other day. Yet, every minute you stayed trapped in this god forbidden place you felt like you were losing your sanity. Were you gonna go insane? It sure felt like it.

With your big, wet eyes you glanced up at the psychopath. “Are you gonna kill me?”

A spark of emotion glowed on his dull face. Unfortunately, you were too agitated to realize. Maybe if you did, you would’ve stopped talking. “What did I even do to anger you so bad… I don’t understand, was it annoying I always tried to talk to you, or that I invited you to hang out with everyone?” your voice was cracking from the sheer horror of everything. “I-i don’t get it, I was so nice, why, if you wanna kill me, just do it already! I can’t take anymore!”

“Yes, that’s it!!” Adachi threw himself out of his chair, his voice booming through the room. In seconds he had a fist full of your hair and pulled you up to his face, your foreheads touching as he pushed your back hard against the wall. You felt like he was going to rip the hair out from the roots, he was holding you up so high that you were standing on your toes, which gave you almost no support so you had no choice but to rely on Adachi to hold you up in such a painful manner. “That’s just what I wanted, no, needed, to see.”

You squirmed in his grasp, but he either ignored you or was too busy with his own arousal to pay any mind. “You’re just a little whore, kissing up on an older man like you’re some kind of hot lil thing? I wanted to pound some true terror in you for fucking ever, so you’d stop with that annoying happy go lucky bullshit of yours and finally, you’re making the face I needed to see you make.”

Your ass hit the ground. Because he dropped you. Your face was inches away from his pelvis, making you blush which you found insane you were able to get flustered in a situation like this. His breathing was out of whack, his huffing and puffing filling your ears.

His stare was empty. You were petrified and all you could do was stare as Adachi’s hand brushed up against his own crotch, sloppily grabbing the buckle of his belt and undoing it. Slipping the leather out of the loops and tossing it to the side. It finally hit you what he was exactly doing. “No, no!” His pants sunk down, revealing the navy blue boxers he was wearing.

“Don’t move or I will break your fucking neck.” He hissed. His free hand pinching your chin between his thumb and pointer finger, while the other one was pulling out his hardened erection. Disgusting, you thought, he was getting off to your pain, so much to the point his long cock was leaking precum. “What a pretty mouth you have. You better not bite.” turning his hand, he stuck his thumb into your mouth. Pushing up roughly against your tongue, going back so far that you could feel part of his palm against your tongue. You tried to ask him to stop, even though you knew it was useless, and it really was no use with the man’s hand muffling your words. He kept on muttering different things to himself, ‘you’re a slut, I’ll ruin you, don’t stop shaking’, with his other hand he nonchalantly stroked his length. His thumb started to rub against the top of your teeth and it took everything in you not to bite down and run to the door.

That’d be nice. If you were able to just get past the detective. Get to the door and run to freedom. Find the front, see the blue sky you have come to miss so much, run and run and run back to your friends and jump into the safety of your arms. Chie and Yukiko would grab you and hug you so tight, Rise would warmly hold your cold hand, Kanji and Yosuke would be fighting back tears as they demanded to know what had happened to you, angry in your place, Naoto would be so grateful you came back alive and let you know she’d get you justice, and Yu… oh, Yu would pat your head. Tell you everything is okay. That they’ll protect you and never let anything bad happen to you again.

Adachi said not to bite him though and you knew he locked the door behind him. No point in angering him.

He was in a dazed state. He was just… feeling around your mouth while stroking himself. Occasional groans escaped his lips and his entire being was getting closer to you-

Wait, he was getting closer. With his dick out! His cockhead pushed into the skin of your cheek, right against the stream of tears, and after what felt like ages, he pulled his fingers out of your mouth.

“Adachi…” you weakly cried.

“Innocent girls are so fun to toy with.” He moaned. “Open, open girly, if I feel teeth I’ll fuck you until your belly is bulging with my cum” He rolled his hips effortlessly against your moist cheek and it was revolting. His delicates were touching your bare skin and you could even feel the slick of his love juices spreading against your face. You couldn’t even raise your hand to wipe it because he his legs were keeping you tightly in place

“I don’t want this!” You cried. “Please, please, stop, please I’ll be good, I’ll be so good, don’t do this, this isn’t you!”

Those words struck a nerve. Suddenly, his hand was tangled up in your hair again, crouching down so instead of his cock in your face it was his chest, which was better for you, but with his crazed eyes loured at you with a twisted glare, so obviously triggered by what you had said, maybe it’d have been better if you sucked him off without a complaint. You mean, he looked straight up ungodly, like he was seconds away from brutally murdering you for just speaking out of tone.“This isn’t me?” He was violating you by his immoral stare alone. “Then tell me sweetheart? Who is this Tohru Adachi you seem to know oh so well?”

Fuck.

Fuck, oh fuck, you really shouldn’t have said anything.

“I… I-i, you’re…!” The words were getting stuck in your throat. You were panicking too much, just calm down and talk, or he really might hurt you to a point you can’t recover!

“Speak clearly before I lose my temper.”

“Well, um, you..” your voice was hoarse. Think. Think fast. Who was the Adachi you loved so much? Out of everyone you’ve ever met, why was he special to you? The Tohru Adachi only you know.

Oh, of course, that.

“O-one time when you got drunk over at Yu’s house, when you came home with Dojima early, a-and so everyone was hanging out, because we were already over.” You gulped, praying in your mind he wouldn’t get impatient with your story. “Everyone was so busy chatting up everyone else and you were just off to the side, alone, drinking, so I sat next to you and we were talking a little.”

Adachi's manic face only worsened due to the fact your story seemed to have no end. You could tell in a few seconds he was going to shut you up and hold true to his promise. You spoke faster, more panicked. “After some time you smiled at me and I was just like, what is it? A-and you said I make rooms nice. That it was nice to just sit next to me, that I was the type of person that many don’t come across, so you thought I was unique and that’s when I fell in love with you.”

Silence filled the air. Adachi’s expression shifted to a more disappointed, disgusted look, and maybe if you had killed his boner with your not so romantic love confession, he’d leave you free to stay in the cold room untainted another night.

“I said that so I could get off on imagining destroying your pathetic naive face later that night. And I did.” Smirking at the utter despair consuming you, he used the hand still gripped into your hair to shove your face up against his crotch again. “I remember how it felt good, thanks for that.” The hand creeped down to the back of your neck, the tiny hairs on your flesh standing up.

His erection was spread against the bridge of your nose, the strong scent of his manhood filling your nostrils and your face scrunched up from reflex alone. Did all men have this mind numbing stench? The most intimate you have gotten with a man was a simple hug. Right here and now Adachi was crossing the boundaries of intimacy because he was literally violating you and for some reason your body was betraying you. The sight of his pulsating cock was sending bolts of dangerous curiosity to your core. It was making you mad. How could your nerves be on the side of the man about to use you as nothing more than a toy? The same body which was black and blue thanks to his beating was getting aroused at the sight of his cock.

Adachi licked his lips. “If you love me so much, open that slutty mouth of yours. I’m going to face fuck you one way or the other.” He was a predator looking down at his meek prey. Hesitantly, you parted your lips to make room for him. You tried to open as wide as you possibly could, he did say no teeth. “Good…” he groaned, his cockhead sliding against your tongue and deeper into your mouth. A sense of relief overcame you with how gentle he appeared to be. Even if he was just trying to ride out the high of your inner cheeks lubricating his shaft, it was a nice break from the aggressive, violent Adachi who was threatening to break you in every other sentence.

With a single buck of his hips, his heavy balls slapped against your chin and your throat clenched around the foreign meat hitting the back of your throat merciless. Your forehead was literally against his pelvis and for the love of god, you can’t breathe. You were gagging, choking, and Adachi didn’t care in the slightest. He held you in place, his nails digging into the bright, red flushed skin that were your cheeks. He loved how red your face was from all the crying, he couldn’t keep his eyes off it.

Adachi wasn’t going to go slow. Pulling out to the very tip of his dick, before slamming it back into your wet throat. He said he was going to face fuck you and he meant it. Keeping up the rough pace, he continued to ruthlessly thrust making your tummy squeeze and turn in circles. Thoughts weren’t couldn’t even form anymore, your mind was mush. All that you could focus on was Adachi. Everything he was doing from fucking your face, his nails digging into your flesh, his balls slapping against your chin full of cum that you knew you were going to have to drink. Would that be bad? Does cum taste bad? The taste of his cock was somewhat bitter, yet you didn’t hate it. The saltiness filling your mouth could be addicting if Adachi did this to you every day.

“Cock whore.” He spat out, he was huffing and you could tell he was overwhelmed with pleasure. “You always wanted my cock. You wanted me to fuck you like this.” His pace slowed down, giving you time to properly breathe again. “What kind of girl comes to an adult man's house alone in the middle of the night? Yeah, mmm, you wanted this disgusting bitch.”

Ouch. He was calling you disgusting. You didn’t even do anything wrong.

You rolled your tongue against the base of him, taking Adachi by surprise. He practically howled as you slurped the love juices off out of the slit of his cockhead, rotating your tongue around his sensitive glands. Why were you doing this…? You yourself weren’t really sure. You weren’t thinking properly and somehow it was like an instinct to try and please him. The faster he came the faster this whole ordeal was over. Your head was spinning, you felt a heat pool up, and all you wanted was to just lay down and sleep. Get rid of this disgraceful feeling inside you, because there is no way it feels good to have your mouth assaulted.

“Fuck, fuck, good, you cumbucket, that’s right.” With a final buck of his hips, his cock pushed deep inside you and a hot, thick liquid started to pour down your throat. Dear god, it was so bitter. The metallic taste filled your throat and all you could do was sit there while Adachi made you swallow every drop, because there was no way he was going to pull his cock out of your mouth until he was sure you did.

You were grateful for the oxygen filling your lungs again. Adachi was pulling up his black dress pants and fixing his belt back around the loops. You eventually were able to get yourself together, then tucking yourself back against the corner of the wall, looking at him meekly wondering what his next move was. After that stunt you pulled you were scared he was going to scream more degrading insults at you and get physically violent.

Hunching down, Adachi’s hands wrapped themselves around the back of your neck again, pulling you into him so quickly you couldn’t even get a word out before his lips smashed into your own. Your mind was numb, so when he forced his tongue deeper, you let him, his tongue spinning against his own. Ugh, his saliva was mixing with your own.

With a pop he pulled back. For someone who just came in your mouth, then feverishly kissed you, you didn’t expect such a…. Dead expression. “Gross. I can taste myself.” He stuck out his tongue, exaggeratedly gagging to mock you. You yelped loudly from the sudden feeling of his fingers against your thighs, lifting them slightly to see up your skirt.

No… how embarrassing. Your panties were soaked. He raised his eyebrows curiously for a quick moment, before returning to the deadpan face, letting your skirt fall back down against your thighs.

“A.. Adachi?” It wasn’t like you wanted his attention, but you were questioning what he was about to do. You couldn’t read him at all. He had already fixed his pants, so you were pretty sure he wasn’t going to take it farther, yet he so obviously had something more to say.

“Shut up.” Harshly, his palms slapped against your cheeks. It stung badly, your face had already gone through so much that every little touch seemed to hurt at this point. “Listen. You aren’t ever getting out of here, okay? You’re going to stay in this room until you fucking die.”

His tone was so strident. Every word he spoke he genuinely believed was the truth. “Even if I put on that stupid facade, I’m still a police officer. And you came to my house alone, without telling anyone, and I know that for a fact because when you were reported missing your parents said you told them you were just ‘going to see a friend.’. There are no witnesses either. No one in this entire world knows you're here, except me.”

He was right. You told your mom that you were going to a friend’s house. It was late too, so no one was out walking the streets.

Finally, a spark of emotion appeared on his face. “Oh, of course I mentioned how you confided in me about running away. So the missing case you think you have, doesn’t exist. They wrote it off that you ran away.”

...oh. It hurt. Your heart felt like it was just ripped in half. Then crushed, blended up, and disposed of in hot lava.

“M-my… my frien-” you started to argue back, yet he didn’t let you have a chance. “Your little friend group isn’t all mighty, you dumbass, even with a detective on their side have they found you? No. They haven’t. And they are too busy trying to play savior of the town to even care about you. You are going to be my plaything down here until I get tired of you and kill you myself, understand? Your life revolves around me now.”

With that off his chest, he let you go. You sunk into the mattress hugging yourself. That couldn’t be true. Your last hope, your friends, they would find you, yeah you should be fine, they’ll find you. So why is your body trembling so much? No, stop, don’t have a panic attack, that’s what he wants. It’s so cold, this room is always cold. If you’re going to be here forever, does that mean you’ll just freeze for the rest of your life? You’ll never feel the warm sun against your bare skin again? You wanted to go to the beach this summer. You had so many things you wanted to do and now you’re going to die in this shithole! You can’t handle it. You want water, your throat is uncomfortably dry, can’t someone bring you water? Only Adachi is here. He won’t bring you any. God, no, you’ll only see Adachi for the rest of your life. This evil, devil of a man was going to be your life now… he’s going to control every aspect, even your own body.

No, shush. You can’t be thinking about these things. You’ll be okay. He wants you to freak out, that’s why he’s saying these… these lies! You can’t give into him like earlier. If you continue to fall into his trap, you really will be here forever.

So stop shaking! Please!

“Now, my precious girl.” He was back on the chair, his legs crossed politely, a sickening grin filled his twisted face. The detective’s eyes gleamed with an eager to see you squirm even more after violating you. The lustful aura still around him, ready to bend you over and pound your stomach full of cum any moment he pleased. “Cry for me again.”

Adachi was somewhat childish with his desires. No matter what, he did whatever he wanted, and got whatever he wanted.

That’s why he got you. And he wants to break his new favorite toy.

[thevirgodoll]

hi, im 16! I worry way too much about others opinions. This is clearly stopping me from doing what i really want. I need advice for self love, self confidence... What would you say to your younger self ? ☺️

Hey love, 

1. Get to know yourself authentically.

Getting to know yourself is a lifelong experience, and it starts to take shape from the age you’re at. Begin to visualize what you want for yourself. Begin to connect with yourself - via past times/hobbies (writing, dancing, painting, singing, etc). If you have hobbies, you’ll be so busy with yourself that you won’t really think about others.

Ask yourself: “What does being me look like? What do I love to do? Where do I see my life going?” 

Journaling helps you think this through, I always recommend this to people. You can reflect on where you are in life, and where you want to go. You can set your intentions and it helps you tremendously. The universe will reward you once you begin setting your intentions with yourself. You can physically journal in a cute lil’ notebook, or digitally on journaling apps - such as Day One app. Day One can go on your Macbook and your phone. I use both physical and digital.

You can also make vision boards of the type of life you want to have - a YOU vision board, print out what the best life and your future looks like to you! Add high value women on the board that you would emulate, such as Beyoncé or Rihanna. Make it cute. Or if you are more digital, make one on Google Slides and get pictures from Pinterest, or create a private board on Pinterest. 

2. Create boundaries.

Once you get to know yourself, you will realize what you will tolerate as far as people you encounter. When you don’t have healthy boundaries, you are susceptible to always thinking about what people think, and you get taken for granted. The advantages of boundaries are stable mental and emotional health, developing autonomy, growing an identity with yourself, and nurturing self love.

You have to always ask yourself:

“Is this person adding value to my life? Do they respect my boundaries?”

You cannot allow your boundaries to be violated. There are no exceptions to this rule, because if you do make any, it violates the relationship you are building with yourself, and that is a lifelong relationship. I say don’t give people second chances, because they will use it to take advantage of you. 

Be clear about YOUR boundaries and don’t ACCEPT disrespect.  Core Personal Boundaries I Live By:

-Valuing your own feelings. You do not owe anyone an apology for how you feel. It is your own job to monitor how you feel and how others make you feel. You don’t owe anyone anything, but you owe yourself validation. I will not value other opinions over my own. i will not anticipate what other people are thinking or needing.

-Never oversharing with someone. Maintaining a semblance of privacy, because your life is your own and people can plot on your goals. Do not share too much of everything.

I will not overshare my goals and desires with someone. I will not speak about my personal problems with everyone.

I will not share every detail of my life.

-Knowing your personal needs and communicating them. If you need to defend yourself, communicate such. If someone is hurting you and they’re supposed to be your friend, be direct. Protect your emotional space ALWAYS. Never compromise this for other people.

I will take responsibility for my own emotions and needs, always.

I will protect myself.

-Not wasting time on social media when you’re bored. Instead, work on your hobbies, journaling, etcetera. When developing your self love and confidence, wasting so much time on Instagram for example is not going to help you. You have to focus on yourself.

I will put more time into myself everyday, rather than social media.

I will not waste time on social media.

-Never accepting less than mutual friendships and relationships. Once someone has proven themselves to be fake, do not accept this. Once someone has proven that they don’t care about you, do not accept this. Only tolerate what you deserve. If they give any less, remove yourself quietly from the situation and move on. 

I will not tolerate toxic friendships or relationships. I will always remove myself from any situation that is not good for me. 

I will know and understand what I deserve, and I will not accept less than what I deserve.

-Avoid people who are negative. If you are hanging out with negative individuals, they will infiltrate your life and wreck your mindset. If someone is always complaining, always jealous of you, always criticizing, and isn’t going the direction you’re going, again, no remorse. Don’t allow it.

I will not have a friend circle of negative, jealous people.

I will always put energy into people who put positive energy into me.

The reason why I am so sure of myself and sure of my dynamics in my life is because I have strong boundaries with myself and others. Setting them may feel weird or wrong at first, but this is so important and it saves you so much heartache. 

3. Reinvent yourself.

Ask yourself: What does the new me look like?

Confidence is all about how you command yourself. I have already said the following things on my blog on my posts about confidence, which you can find here: confidence.

Start thinking like you are the most important thing in the world, because you are. Begin working on your posture when you walk in a room. Wear outfits that make YOU feel good. They don’t have to be what anyone else says but you! 

If not, you need to make sure you have routines dedicated to yourself. A routine day and night including your skincare/hygiene, saying 3 things you know to be true about yourself in the mirror (I am beautiful, I am blessed, I am blossoming) say those every single day, meditation and yoga, some tea, and your journaling like I said. Every. Day. Do not slack.

Have a pampering/self love routine: hair is on point, nails are on point, makeup is on point. Body is on point: bubble baths/relaxing showers, lathered in cocoa/shea butter after, and perfume. At night, have a cute robe, cute slippers, cute pajamas. Go to the gym some days, or just do workouts at home, or stick to the yoga, as it does make you sweat with certain poses.

4. Foster independence and don’t look back. 

Being your own best friend is the most important lesson to learn in life. You have to begin to develop your autonomy from now to the rest of your life. Be more independent, make sure you are fixing your own problems and not involving everybody and their mama, learn to rely on you, and manifest opportunities and goals on your own time without involving everyone so heavily. In a generation where everyone is so interconnected via cell phones, you will stand out because you are confident, independent, and focused on you. You can have fun with other people, but the difference will show when you only engage with high value individuals. Make sure you’re productive: studying or working, and make sure you understand the days where you need to relax and resort to serious pampering. 

This will begin your journey to self love and confidence, and not worrying about everybody else!

[princeescaluswords]

For the fanfic meme: C and Z

C: What character do you identify with most?

This is going to shock a lot of people, but when I look back at my high school years, many millennia ago, I realize that the person in my fandoms with whom I identify the most is … Stiles Stilinski. Teenage Me shares a lot similarities with Stiles: absent mother (His is dead, while mine was simply not a part of my life); erratic, less-than-optimal father (The Sheriff is a lot less malevolent in his neglect than mine was); complex relationship with my own sexuality; feelings of isolation from peers; prone to outbursts of frustration and anger; and, most importantly, an attempt to use what I thought was an above-average intelligence as a way to justify my own existence.

Teenage Me wasn’t exactly the same as Stiles, of course. I wasn’t an only child, I didn’t bully anyone, I didn’t break the rules, I didn’t have an unattainable crush, and I wasn’t anywhere near as brave. But above all, I didn’t have a friend like Scott. I guess that’s part of the subjective nature of my relationship with the character. Stiles is written so internally consistent that there’s a point where memories of similar feelings are evoked by simply watching Dylan O’Brien’s facial expressions. This emotional response is part of the reason I’m hostile to both production’s position that Scott can only be a hero if he enables Stiles’s misbehavior and why I am hostile to fandom’s interpretation of the friendship.

I’ve experienced my own life and it taught me some lessons that are at odds with the production’s and the fandom’s point of view. One lesson is that Scott letting Stiles torture him and then endanger those upperclassmen’s lives in Heart Monitor (1x06) wasn’t harmless fun, wasn’t healthy for Scott, and definitely wasn’t healthy for Stiles. For Scott to turn around and apologize to Stiles and then listen while Stiles lectures him from a position of spite was … simply terrible. Another lessons is that people like Season 1-2 Derek never have any real use for people like Stiles other than an easy target to make themselves feel better. One of the most important lessons I ever learned is that people like Peter do use and discard people like Stiles every day, playing on their insecurities and making them feel that they deserve to be used. There’s no happy ending for those relationships.

I am one of Scott McCall’s biggest fans because I wanted one of him in my own life. Stiles will never be my favorite character because the way he treated Scott spoiled the friendship for me and the production/fandom simply doesn’t get why.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?

I will read it and I will write it, but I am finicky about it. The media properties about which I write and read are violent shows. My primary fandom is horror-themed. There are going to be deaths and some of them are going to be major characters. To be satisfying for me when I read them, and what I try to aim for when I write them, they have to satisfy several criteria.

The death in question has consequences. In the Teen Wolf fandom, there was a running gag about why anyone still lived in Beacon Hills. Nearly 200 people died throughout the story and it wasn’t until Season 6B that there were any serious reaction to them and even that was portrayed as a side effect of genocidal killers and a fear-mongering creature. Now, I believe we were supposed to assume certain things happened off screen (such as Allison’s funeral), but I did not find that consistently satisfying. For example, and I have complained about this a lot, there are a significant amount of S/teter and S/terek fictions where Stiles and angry white killer du jour murder Scott for the crime of not making them feel good about themselves, yet there’s seldom any concern about what’s going to happen when Sheriff Stilinski or Rafael McCall hears about it. Sheriff Stilinski may have had a crappy case resolution rate, but he wouldn’t ignore it, and even if Rafael was a terrible father he would investigate.

Some of those consequences have to be personal. Peter’s murder spree in Season 1 may have been something with which he was absolutely comfortable, but you felt his rage and his regret. (If you want to appreciate some really good acting, listen to Ian Bohen in Code Breaker (1x12) as Peter lists Kate’s crimes right before he kills her.) One thing the show did that fandom does not is allow Derek to ignore the fact that Laura is dead. He may have become reconciled with Peter being in his life, but he never forgot how his uncle became alpha. Someone you care about dying is hard. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read where Stiles is confronted with someone’s death but it’s simply used as a backdrop for romance or vengeance. If you’re going to kill a major character and want it to mean something, someone has to mourn or celebrate. It can't be a footnote.

I know exploitation when I see it. There’s a difference between black humor and a humiliating death. You can tell when a story is written as real-world vengeance because their favorite television show didn’t make the right person the lead or didn’t have the proper ship. The offending lead or relationship partner dies and two sentences later has vanished from the narrative. You can tell when someone is expressing misogyny or racism because, for example, a white sheriff doesn’t mind that the black veterinarian is brutally murdered by his teenage son’s adult millionaire serial-killer lover or when a teenage girl experiences a horrible death and the sheriff says “I thought she was smarter than that.” You know when some small-minded vicious author is experiencing degenerate pleasure in writing something like that. I’ll pass, thank you.

If it satisfies those requirements and isn't exploitation, there is no character whose death I won't appreciate, even if it makes me sad.

[krreader]

BTS scenario → dating an “average” girl.

pairing: bts x reader fandom: bts  warnings: / genre: angst ; fluff  word count: 1.6k+

a/n: let me start off by saying that I really don’t like to use the word average, because I think everyone is special in their own way. now, I wasn’t sure whether you wanted this to be angsty or not, but I decided to mix it up and throw a little bit of both in there, which I hope you enjoy :)

kim seokjin

“I don't think I'll be a good work-out-buddy, Jin,” you nervously looked around, “And besides, people are looking at me.”

“Hey,” he quickly grabbed your chin and made you look into his eyes, “You pay attention to nobody but me, okay? None of these people here matter, only you and I do. And you work out as much as you can and once it becomes too hard or you don't feel like it anymore, you'll stop.”

You had often complained to Jin about your body, but had been too afraid to go into a gym on your own. So he had offered to go with you to one of the private ones that a lot of idols often used and to help you with the exercising.

It was a good deal at first, but now that you were actually here, you began to realize that you knew jack-shit about working out and that you'd probably make a fool out of yourself.

However, the moment that you started, you forgot everything around you.

Jin made this day extremely fun and every time you 'messed up', your boyfriend turned it into a funny situation that had you laugh and not blush from embarrassment.

Others were probably judging you, but you didn't notice.

All you could see was this man in front of you, loving you unconditionally the way you were now, but wanting to help you on your journey to self-love in any way he could.

min yoongi

Yoongi had once been so worried about what would happen once the media would find out about you and him, especially because of your previous hatred for yourself.

But you've worked on those issues. You've worked hard to love yourself the way you were, to accept that you'd never have that flat stomach because – surprise – your organs had to find a place somewhere in your body. To accept that you'd forever have acne scarring, which now reminded you of the hard times and made you appreciate the current, good times.

So whenever there was yet another blog post of a jealous fan bashing one of the things that you used to hate about yourself, you just nodded to yourself and said: “They're probably going through their own struggles right now. One day, they will get over it.”

Jealousy was a bitch, you've experienced that first hand.

But as you've finally come to accept yourself, you've realized that you had no reason to be jealous of others anymore.

You were happy with yourself.

Yoongi leaned against the door frame and watched you put your phone down, then grab your cup of coffee and watch the rain pour outside.

And all he could think of was: “You're the most beautiful woman on this planet. Thank you for finally having realized that yourself.”

jung hoseok

Hoseok walked into the living room after having taken a shower and found you scrolling through your Instagram, liking pictures of several girls that he was sure you had never seen or met before.

All girls that looked a certain way. ‘Perfect’, as you used to call them.

With a heavy sigh, he sat down next to you and said: “We talked about this. You don't need to look like this, you're pretty the way you are, you know?”

“I do,” you smiled at him, “But I still think they're pretty. And I know how important it is to tell someone they're beautiful. You never know what they’re struggling with about themselves at the moment.”

You've come a long way.

Two years ago, you would have looked at these pictures and beaten yourself up over it. You would have gone on a diet the next day, the hairdresser the day after and the dermatologists soon thereafter.

But now? Now you could look at these pictures and leave compliments under them that the original owner of the photo always liked and thanked you for, because as you said, you never knew what somebody was struggling with about their appearance at that time and something as simple as a compliment from a stranger could mean the world.

“I'm so proud of you,” Hoseok whispered and pulled you against him.

“Me too,” you grinned happily.

jung hoseok

Once upon a time you had thought that if you wanted to date Kim Namjoon, you had to be some sort of prodigy.

But, newsflash, you weren't.

And while you had been more than upset about this years ago and thought that you were not worthy of being with him, you had now come to accept that you were normal.

And normal was good.

Normal, was what Namjoon loved the most about you, after your kindness and your warmth that you had for the people you loved and cared for. He didn't need you to be special by playing some instrument perfectly, because you were already special enough for him for just being you.

And as you were lying in bed and he was running his fingers through your hair, he whispered: “I love you more than I can say.. you know that right?”

It surprised you, but you still smiled, “I do. I love you too. And..-” you pushed yourself up a little to look him in the eyes and chuckled, “I love me too.”

It was a little inside joke. Something that Namjoon made you say over and over again when you had troubles accepting yourself once again. And now, you could say that sentence and honestly mean it.

And man, he was so proud of that.

park jimin

It really wasn't easy being with him when he was this perfect specimen of humanity and you were – in your eyes – the worst it could offer.

“You look gorgeous,” Jimin smiled happily when you walked out of the changing room, but you weren't quite as happy with yourself.

“It doesn't fit properly.”

“Hm, I think it does,” Jimin got up and took a closer look at it, “Zipper is up, straps aren't too tight.. I think it's good!”

“No, I mean.. this,” you pointed at your belly, “I told you I can't wear a dress as tight as this, I don't have your stomach,” it came out a lot more spiteful than you intended for it to.

But he didn’t take it to heart, thankfully 

“And thank god for that,” Jimin let out a laugh, then grabbed your chin and made you look at him, “My stomach reminds me of the nights in which I had to starve myself to look like people expect me to look. Your stomach reminds me of how healthy you are and how I don't have to worry about you.”

You looked into his eyes for a moment, then you let out a sigh, your shoulders dropping, “Sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up..-”

“Don't apologize. If anything, apologize to yourself for always being so hard on you and always finding an imperfection that isn't one,” he kissed your forehead, “You're so beautiful, angel,” he whispered, nearly making you cry.

kim taehyung

Taehyung could feel that there was something wrong today just from the way you texted him back. You didn't put any of your normally used emoji's after your texts, your answers were short and the amount of time it took you to even reply, was suspicious.

At first, he had thought that maybe something that he had done had upset you, but the more he thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that that couldn't be. When re-reading your goodnight message from last night, everything was normal.

So it must be something else.

Once his break started, he decided that he'd spend it at your place and see what it was that was troubling you. He hadn't told you that he'd be coming, so you were looking at him, not in surprise, but shock.

“What are you doing here?!” you immediately turned around and scurried back into your apartment, leaving Taehyung to close the door behind himself with furrowed eyebrows.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing, just.. I don't have a good day today, okay?”

Your boyfriend placed the bag of take-away on the floor and then walked over to you, gently turning you around by your shoulder to look at you, only to see that issue seemed to be something so trivial, that it made him let out a heavy sigh.

“Really, (Y/N)?”

“It's so ugly. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I just.. popped them. And now I look even worse than before and I hate it!”

You've been struggling with your skin for a while, had often gone to dermatologists that Taehyung had recommended to you, but while it did get a little better, you didn't have the skin that he had. And that is what you wanted. A journey that would take longer than four months, however. And... well, you were impatient. 

“How many times do I need to tell you that pimples are natural? That having acne is nothing to be ashamed about?”

“Easy for you to say, looking like your skin was made out of glass.”

“And you know how much I need to do for it. How many times I need to get treatments,” his hands slid down until he could hold yours, “You're still beautiful to me. Pimples won't change that. But popping them isn't good for your skin, it's only going to make it worse. You need to let it heal, as hard as it is.”

Again, this was easy for him to say and not so easy for you to do. You've had this conversation before and you were sure that you'd have it again and again.

But you were glad to hear these words. Because at that moment, it was what you needed to feel a little better.

jeon jeongguk

It wasn't hard to figure out that you never wanted to come to these dinners because you were uncomfortable around the other members' girlfriends. They were, what society would consider, 'the standard'. They were, what women were told to look like. They were, what people thought idols’ girlfriends should look like.

And every time you joined these dinners, you realized that you were none of these things.

You weren't the perfect woman, unlike the others.

Or so you believed.

“You're home early,” you stated as you closed the book in your hands, “Wasn't it fun?”

“It was,” Jeongguk nodded, taking off his shoes, before falling onto the couch and placing his head in your lap, smiling as you immediately began to brush your fingers through his hair, “But being here with you is better.”

He could spend his days trying to convince you that you were what he wanted, exactly the way you were now.

Or, he could simply show you.

And he opted for option number two.