#i have more interactions with them planned if that will satiate the hunger

[anonauthorsworkshop]

✒️anon

-out of the 95, how many do you actually want to answer? And how many are cursed

-canon, the ones in the actual story

-baby❤️

some of them are just really old, i’ll probably look through them again as some are requests i never got around to answering lol

the main ones we’ve met in the fic so far are 035, 079, & 049. you can also count the lords of alagadda i guess but they’d be more of a side interest than anything and aren’t really a main focus

[tetzoro]

DEVILISH DESSERT — ༉‧₊˚.

ft. astarion !

꒰ SYNOPSIS ꒱ : your cramps have hit you especially hard this month and astarion has an idea that could be mutually beneficial

꒰ CONTENTS ꒱ : MDNI. f!reader, period sex, oral (f!receiving), mentions of blood, unprotected sex but astarion pulls out, multiple orgasms, blood sucking, praise, pet names (darling, my sweet, pet), — WC : 2.2k

reblogs and interactions are always appreciated ! (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ᰔ*.ﾟ

“believe me, pet, it would be a win-win.” astarion drawls, his hands following the flow of his speech. “you lay down and let me take care of you while i get my fill.”

the thought had crossed your mind before —fleetingly. the last time he fed from your neck the idea planted itself in your mind in a haze joined by many other ones, swirling together as your body tried to make sense of what was happening.

“but,” the argument you were about to make dies in your throat. but, what? astarion was asking you to let him indulge, a chance to satiate his hunger while also pleasuring his lover. his eyes plead with yours, giving away how eager he really is. “sure, why not.”

“that’s the spirit.” he claps his hands together before reaching out for your hand. “i promise i’ll take good care of you, my little treat.”

“what did i say about using that nickname?” you mumble as he takes your hand, quickly bringing it up against his lips for a quick peck, hiding the small smirk that was blossoming.

flashes of the last time he called you that floods your mind – the way it slipped off the tip of his tongue and lured you to his bed. the first night you let him feed off of your neck, taking the blood he needed while his cock was buried in your heat.

“what’s that? can’t hear you darling.” he teases, knowing exactly what was running through your mind right now. he finishes guiding you to his tent and he closes the curtain. “no matter, it’s just you and me now.”

suddenly, you feel a bit nervous under his stare. the reality of your moment coming into the forefront of your brain. you knew he has an affinity for blood, but what if it tasted bad — what if you tasted bad?

his lithe fingers gently cradle your face, adoration soaking his features. his dark red eyes trail all over your features, taking in every little piece of your face.

“gods, you’re beautiful.” he breathes out, slowly leaning in to kiss you. you meet him halfway, lips colliding against one another as his hand starts to trail down the curve of your waist. he pulls apart for a second, placing a quick peck before he speaks again. “i can’t wait to taste you, i know you’ll be as sweet as always.”

his words pour over you as warm reassurance, your body melting against him as he kisses you again. the small flame that had formed before was quickly simmering into a wildfire, lying just beneath the surface and ready to consume both of you in a spark of passion.

but for now, he takes his time with you. his lips trail down your neck, fangs barred as they lightly drag along your jugular. you hold back a gulp, ashamed at how much it makes you yearn for him even more.

he doesn’t bite, not when he’s so eager for what lies below. you lay all the way down the bedroll as he makes his descent, murmurs of praise slipping off his tongue and onto your skin.

he makes quick work of the pants you had on, tearing them down your thighs as his bloodlust starts to kick in. in seconds, his head is buried in between your thighs, nose pressed against your clit as he deeply inhales.

“darling-“ he breathes out, absolutely in awe of how delicious you’re going to taste. “this is…” he trails off, unsure if words could describe how much this means to him.

“never seen you so speechless before.” you tease, trying not to squirm under his gaze, his eyes locked onto the blood woven slick pooling at your entrance.

“what can i say?” he presses a kiss just above your clit, eyes darting up to yours. “this is a gift, and i plan on showing you just how appreciative i am for it. for you.”

you open your mouth to retort but his tongue catches your throbbing nub first, sending a jolt throughout your body. after that first taste, he’s gone. completely lost in you and the frenzy begins.

he tosses your leg over his shoulder, angling himself to get deeper. his tongue delves back into you and you feel him everywhere. it’s enough to arch your back, your fingers clawing in his hair. he grunts approvingly into your messy cunt, licking up every little speck of blood he can get his mouth on.

each precise stroke of his tongue has you unraveling in his hold, undoubtedly gushing more of your bloody essence on his eagerly awaiting mouth. he was practically moaning now, the vibrations shooting throughout your body. he breaks for air for a moment, licking his lips and looking up to you.

“no one could ever taste as sweet as you, darling.” a soft nibble to your inner thigh, his darkened, blown out eyes still locked onto you.

he goes back down on you, slowly pushing in his fingers to draw more out of you, wanting you to flood his vision with the small slice of heaven you’re granting him right now.

it’s all too much and you’d be lying if you said his enthusiasm wasn’t the driving force towards your release. you’d never been with a man so desperate for your taste, especially when you were in this state.

your back starts to arch off the bedroll, reeling in the pleasure that’s about to snap. the coil shatters into a thousand pieces as you dig your fingers into his curls once again. you don’t know if you were loud or not, you don’t know anything as a white veil had taken up your vision, pleasure coursing through your veins as your blood pounds within your ears.

the tent is silent, save for both of your heavy breathing. through half lidded eyes, you see him greedily lick around his lips, ensuring he didn’t waste a drop of the gift you’ve given him.

it takes a few moments for you to come back down to reality, your head swimming in the pleasure astarion hurtled you in. you watch as he places one last kiss against your cunt, slowly backing up on his haunches.

without breaking eye contact, he slips his still coated fingers in his mouth, eyes almost rolling to the back of his head as he savors the taste of you. a beat goes by and you think it’s over and time to head back to your own tent.

but he’s always been a selfish man.

“you know, i don’t think i’ve quite gotten my fill of you yet.” his voice sings in your ear. “i think i want a little more.”

“you might have to wait a bit.” the words flow out of you as you prop yourself up on your elbows, getting a better look at him. his eyes were still blown out — crazed. whenever he has that frenzied look in his eyes, his hunger is still strong and his sights are set on you.

“or, maybe not.” he tilts his head to the side. “let’s have sex so i can make a proper mess of you.”

“what? i-i’m not sure.” you frown slightly. the cramps had subsided, sure. but who’s to say that wouldn’t bring them back?

“think about it.” he drawls, taking off his shirt, showcasing his body. “coming a few times will be very beneficial. it’ll clear everything right out.”

“well.” you pause. realistically, there could be a truth in that. but who knew if your body would listen to logic anyway. and yet, “well i suppose it couldn’t hurt to try.”

“exactly, darling.” he smiles before a softer look falls onto you. “but if it does, you’ll let me know.”

it wasn’t a question. the underlying care he held for you was slipping through the cracks of the tantalizing facade he loved to put up. you nod your head in confirmation. you’d be lying if you said you weren’t excited to test this theory out, especially watching him slowly untie his breeches. lithe fingers that were just inside of you untwisting the knots woven in the string.

his cock springs out from being stuffed away, begging for some sort of relief judging by the amount of precum that was pooling on its head.

he hastily lines himself up to your slick entrance, rubbing his tip around it before it kisses your swollen clit. you gasp out as your body tingles with electricity. after a baited breath, he starts to slide in agonizingly slow, carefully watching your face as he does so.

but you look away, the eye contact feeling a bit much — even after everything. he was just too pretty, his expressions too raw. every moment you held his gaze, the fire inside of you threatens to take over.

“you need to look at me, my sweet.” his cold fingers grasp your chin lightly, tilting your head so you had no choice but to look at him.

before, when you had first slept with astarion, things hadn’t been so intimate. of course, it was all very rushed. it was the end of a gruesome battle and tensions were high, not to mention alcohol was swirling around in both of your systems.

but this was different. so much time had passed since then — or at least, that’s what it felt like. it’s all been so intense since you first met the pale elf that you hardly believe it’s only been less than a few months.

and in that time, you two had gotten so close, really close. slowly prying each other's heart open with gentle, reassuring hands. something that had forged itself out of forced trust, blooming into a beautiful and vulnerable partnership.

“i’m here.” you whisper, finally looking at him. his eyes soften and you realize at some point you started to caress his cheek. your finger smooths over his soft, smooth skin before his lips meet the palm of your hand, pressing a kiss onto it.

“and thank the gods for that.” he whispers back with a pleased look. his hips were flush with yours, moving in slow and short movements so he didn’t overwhelm you. but every second he filled you up, you could feel the pain subsiding in your lower abdomen.

you let out a soft whine, clenching around him as he starts to go a little faster. his eyes trail from yours and down your neck, looking at the twin marks he left the last time he had you in his embrace.

“astarion-.” you gasp out, savoring the way he continues to roll his hips into you, molding your cunt perfectly to take him and him alone.

“yes, my love?” he whispers, pressing a delicate kiss against your neck, taking every ounce of his self control to not sink his teeth into you. but he was making you feel so much better, one bite couldn’t hurt, right? you tilt your neck to the side to show it off for him. he hesitates. “are you sure?”

“please.” a simple request he wouldn’t leave unfulfilled as his fangs dig into your neck, the same spot he drank from before. he sucks lightly, your mind clouding and filling with nothing but stinging pleasure.

his starts to thrust again — faster this time as he gets lost in the overwhelming sweetness of your blood. it fuels through his body, giving him the strength he normally needs to help keep you safe. but instead, he’s only using it to drive into you harder.

he pulls back from your neck with a gasp like he’s been shocked, blood dripping down the sides of his mouth. his attention shifts, watching his cock disappearing into your cunt, feeling you already start to gush around him, blood starting to soak around his length.

“so sweet.” the words barely leave his lips, but enough for you to hear it. his fingers move down to swirl against your clit, trying to give you the same pleasure you were giving him. “make a mess for me, my sweet.”

words escape you as moans take its place, his name a mantra you can’t stop yourself from repeating. the sting from the bite he gave you was rushing through your veins now, every sense of your nerves being heightened to places it’s never been — overwhelming pleasure coursing through your whole body.

you clench around his cock, squeezing him so tightly he can’t control his hips anymore, rutting against you as the pleasure finally consumes you both.

astarion’s eyes flutter shut as you cum around him, coating his cock in your bloody essence. once you stop fluttering around him, he quickly pulls out and cums all over your lower abdomen.

your head lolls back, coming down from the high he just gave you, aftershocks running down your body. astarion lightly trails his hands along you, a surge of energy overcoming him as he breathes in your scent once again.

“there, now that that’s settled,” he pauses, immediately sliding down and tucking his head back in between your thighs. he licks his lips quickly, his tongue darting across as his feast lays before him. “i’d like to resume my meal.”

taglist : @boogiebooboo @niqhtfell @collin-thegreat @zorosdimples @oikawabi-sabi @mammon-s (happy bday!) @moss-is-a-tasty-snack

[hotnbloodied]

Yan!Loser X Reader

!Warning! This post contains yandere themes and topics that may be uncomfortable to people who are sensitive to the topic, read at your own discretion.

TW: kidnapping, drugging, non-con kissing and touching, stalking, mentions of axe body spray.

!!READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION!! MINORS DNI!!

Pt. 2

It was around lunch time and you were on your way to your university’s canteen. You normally had lunch a little later to avoid the crowds but today you couldn’t hold your hunger in at all and you needed to get something to eat. In doing so the canteen was packed and by the time you had gotten some food all the tables seemed full. You scanned around for a little bit before noticing a small table that only had one person sitting at it. A guy with a small frame and black baggy clothes with messy unkempt hair. Without thinking too much about it you walked over. “Hey sorry to bother, would you mind if I could just sit here and eat?” You asked.

He looked like he jolted a little and looked at you like he'd seen a ghost. “Y-yeah…” Not much of a response, but that didn’t stop you from going ahead and sitting down to start devouring your food. After you were finally satiated you looked over cause you felt like someone was watching you and needless to say, his eyes were glued on you.

“Uh, do I have something on my face?” You asked him. His face whipped away. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.” You laughed and told him it wasn’t a big deal. “What’s your name anyway? I’m (y/n), majoring in (major).” He raised his head to look at you again. “I’m Lester, I’m a biology major…” “That’s awesome!” You look at the time. “I should probably head out, my next class starts soon. See you around though!” Little did you know that your small act of kindness would come back to haunt you.

A couple of weeks pass and you seem to be seeing Lester more and more around campus. (Totally not because he’s trying to learn your schedule at all.) You don’t pay too much mind to it though considering a new friend is always nice. (As if he’d allow you to just be friends with him.) The two of you exchanged social messaging information which turned into an easy way for Lester to keep tabs on you. (You really should be careful about how you share your information.) You didn’t notice the increase of interaction from Lester, you were too sleep deprived and worried about school to notice which he’s grateful for since it’ll make it easier to make plans. Lester was a patient man, he knows how to make a pay off extra sweet.

You learn a bit more about Lester, even though he has a messy appearance he actually is a relatively neat person. He seemed to shower regularly and his clothes weren’t being reworn, but he only chooses to use axe body spray at his age for some reason. He doesn’t seem to have many friends cause, shocker, he’s an extreme introvert; Which makes you pity him which he fully knows and uses to play into to get your trust. With that trust he invites you over to his house, apparently his parents are in the science field as well and as long as Lester keeps his grades up they’d let him do whatever. The two of you would hang out and study at his place.

Six months had passed in a blink of an eye and the two of you were watching a movie together, it wasn’t that late but you felt extremely sleepy for some reason. The two of you just ate dinner that Lester cooked. “Hm? What’s wrong (y/n)? Are you tired?” “Haha, yeah I don’t know why. Maybe I was more tuckered out with finals than I thought.” “Why don’t you stay over? You’re more than welcome to spend the night.” You didn’t reply to Lester, it was because the sleeping pills he slipped into your drink worked like wonders and you were out like a light. Lester slowly dragged your body to his room and laid you on his bed. Chains were ready for you as he securely bound you to them. He loomed over your sleeping body in his bed, he couldn’t keep the excitement in his pants at bay. He took advantage of your lips and dry humped your leg, imagining what it would be like to finally be able to become one with you. Oh if only you knew how love sickness ran in his family. How that’s how his mom ensnared his dad and how having his ground and alibi covered was a learned family skill. No one will find you and you two will live happily together, forever. <3

Pt. 2

Lester <3

[ghffr-s]

About Women Deserving Better

“Half a drink will not quench your thirst, Half a meal will not satiate your hunger” - Khalil Gibran

The thing about women deserving better is that they haven't really had the experience, but they are the most deserving of love because of the way they give love. You wonder, "Why wouldn't a person this dedicated to love ever experience love that was healthy?," as you watch them love persistently and patiently. “They want affection, isn't that it? How come it couldn't be better for them?”

Humans are energy vampires. Sometimes we take life from others for our own gain. Take the exchange of affection, transaction in a relationship as an example. We must reciprocate with as much affection as we desire to receive it. What transpires, however, when you don't have to offer much in order to receive a lot of love? You begin to feel at ease. When you are aware that the person who loves you has plenty of it to spare, it provides comfort. But expressing too much love can drain their vitality. When you take too much of someone's love, you also take too much of the life they have in them. What happens when love and energy are transferred to you? You will feel at your best. Everything feels good and this affection gives you self-assurance. Knowing that someone will always love you, no matter what the cost, gives you a sense of security. You are protected. More than you realise, someone loves you. And because we are flawed as humans, this almost always works out to be unhealthy. The life a person have in them will perish if there is no balance with reciprocation. 

Can you fathom how this would have hurt you if you were the one doing the giving? It fucks with your mental. If you have enough willpower, it wouldn't take you long to realise that you deserve better and leave. However, what if you crave affection and are only willing to tolerate the barest minimum from others? You stay. By staying, you ride an emotional roller coaster where your person serves as the rail track and you as the coaster. The direction is determined by your partner, but the moving motion represents love. He controls the upward and downward slopes, swirls, and 360-degree turns on his rail track, and you follow the planned rail track. You experience many spirals in a non-reciprocal partnership. Once the roller coaster stops, your mind buffers and you are able to gather yourself after being exhausted by the wind and the pace of the spirals. Sometimes you exit the relationship feeling depleted of love and emptiness. Sometimes there is no more affection to share. 

Do men realise that the women they don't deserve are typically the ones who deserve better? Do men acknowledge the unconditional nature of a woman's love? As delicate beings, we are compelled to release our masculine energy when we are pushed past the point where our strength barrier is broken, and this is almost always unhealthy. However, many men who may have taken this love for granted don't realise the value of reciprocity until the relationship has ended and they realise that the love is irreversible. And once they see that love is gone, it will be clear, particularly in the little things.

Then, women will understand that they actually deserve better. In an effort to have the world provide us with the love we deserve, we begin to manifest it. We begin searching for a body that will house a soul that will love us sufficiently and appropriately. But even on this voyage, there are numerous challenges we must overcome. Those challenges are always the result of our past traumas, grievances, and suffering brought on by our excessive love for the wrong person. These challenges act as roadblocks in our lives, preventing us from pursuing romantic partnerships. In terms of who I choose to interact with, even on a casual basis, I became more reserved and selective. Let alone romantically. Therefore, after exhausting all options, we on the giving end usually find ourselves on our own for a while. For me personally, being alone would be preferable to taking another chance at it all. I'll hold out for the right person. But what happens if they don't show up? The loneliness begins to consume me. When I don't have a special someone to experience most of life and the moments with, my life starts to get quiet. Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months, and months turn into years. We eventually become mentally numb after a while. 

I suddenly find that I no longer yearn for love when I wake up one day. I don't spend as much time thinking about it anymore, and I have fewer thoughts of affection. I only have thoughts of myself. What will I cook today, who among my good friends am I going to see this week, and what is my goal for this month? Life started to revolve around me once more, but this time I am sore.

The sad part is, I’m growing comfortable with this emotional numb. I can almost say that I love it. 

[headingalaxys-spicy]

Really loved the last requests I sent you. Can you do it again, but this time with Yandere Angel France and Yandere Angel Japan please.

Hope you love this one too!

Yandere Angel France

The succubus had just finished her last round of the night. She made quick work of the last three human souls she devoured at the club. Those human souls would now become lifeless husks of their former selves whenever it came to things like finding love and relationships. They’d be feeling the effects of your actions for at least the next six months. “Another night of scantly clad fun in the nightclubs. Prey really is a dime a dozen there.”

You felt refreshed but needed a respite from dealing with barely good-looking men in the club that clearly had addictions. You opened your portal back to hell to wait for the next night to feed. Unbeknownst to you, there was a pair of sparkling blue angelic eyes surveying you.

“Mon Dieu. A succubus …. That sings to my ‘eart. I’ve got to have ‘er.” He muses to himself as he tries his best to hold back his emotions for pouring out then and there.

The next night you’re out to a new nightclub titled 7 Mins in ‘Eaven. You couldn’t wait to find your next victims for you to be able to satiate you for the night. You waltz in eager to fill your soul and your belly with decent enough sex depending on the guy that you would woo into your feminine wiles.

Your sight was immediately guided to a blonde that was draped on a club VIP section alone tantalizing you. His luscious locks draped down to his broad shoulders. The sparkles that were near his visage were the final touch that drew you to him like a fly to the flame.

“How are you handsome?” You say in a sultry voice. You saunter up to him brimming over with confidence. You didn’t even question why someone as alluring as him didn’t have a flock of women around him. You just knew the payoff from devouring his sexual energy would be a major payoff. Som much so to where you wouldn’t have to feed for a Fortnight.

“How are you handsome?” You say in a sultry voice as you didn’t hesitate to draw yourself close to him so you’d be able to touch him. The hunger in your stomach and the heat between your legs have become as fierce as a forest fire in the midst of summer drought.

“I’m in heave now that your ‘ere.”

You giggle at his cute quip. You feel the heat suddenly rise in the room but pay no mind to it. France had you entranced and you weren’t going to stop the interaction you were having. You wanted to score big tonight.

However, France had you right where he wanted. As you brought your hand to his swelling neither region your head began to spin and you suddenly weren’t doing so great.

“My devilish Mon Chere hawt in ‘ere isn’t it? I’m sorry but this will be unpleasant for you.”

The moment you walked in you didn’t realize it was a heavenly facade that's normally used to exorcise demons and kill them. But France had other plans for you. He wanted you to become his new angel bride.

But he would have to fix you first.

Yandere Angel Japan

He was doing his usual painting session in the small cottage he created on earth. He liked being in the scenic and peaceful places on earth whenever he wasn’t busy with his duties as an angel. It was also in the area that he knew the demon known as Y/N wanted to target next. Y/N was a demon known for making the best wine in all of hell. Due to her ‘ethically’ sourced luxury ingredients that she would use to create her wines it caused a problem for angels and humans. More so Angels.

However Japan didn’t just want to stop her from harvesting the trees he wanted to reap her heart. He believed he could be the one to transform her into a being of light and life and Angel like him. Which is why he choose to stake out on this part of the countryside. He was sure that-

His thoughts were abruptly halted by a demonic disturbance within his vicinity.

‘Y/N it has to be.’

He paused and gently set down his painting tools. He grabbed his wand and cloaked himself with an invisibility spell. He felt the disturbance within the tall grassy area surrounding the wisteria trees that fortified the land and gave it protection against demons like y/n.

Unfortunately, y/n came prepared to take down ancient relics like wisteria trees. She had a cursed ax and tree poison with her to ensure that the land and all of its inhabitants would be rendered lifeless and dull all for the sake of demons being able to get drunk.

‘Of course, she wants to ruin this beautiful land …’His poker face stays as the rage inside of him begins to burn brighter.

He no longer tried to constrain his anger so he raised his wand and had vines shoot out to the demon to stop y/n in her tracks.

“It’s best you leave NOW demon. This is the only warning you will receive.” He gives you a stern glare unamused and about ready to kill you. Your gaze lingers on him and you size him up.

“I can take on a small Angel like you. Like are you a cherub? Because that’s cute. I should be the one giving you a harsh warning.” Mischief flashes in your eyes as you burn off the vines he had tried to imprison you in.

“You'll be fun to kill along with the rest of this land and these damned trees that will more more useful if I can harvest them for this fabulous demonic wine it can-“

You were cut off by Japan when he summoned a fireball to silence you and to get you within range of the trees flowers.

“Enough. You need to be taught a lesson on basic respect!”

The beautiful lavender flowers vines wrap themselves around your body. You struggle beneath the floral grip that squeeze you tighter and tighter the more you thrash about. The pollin seeped it’s way into your nostrils. The chemicals from it released into your bloodstream caused your body to feel heavy as if it was laced with lead. The grapple with the tree left you lifeless.

‘Flower shibari…I’ve got to paint out this scene in my mind later.’ Japan tries his best not to pop a boner right then and there from the enthralling sight of you weak and unable to retaliate.

[nastybuckybarnes]

Hoist the Colours  -  2/3

Pairing: Pirate!Bucky X SeaGoddess!Reader

Summary: An encounter with the man you used to love lands you and your new crew in peril, stuck on a ship with the people responsible for binding you. And what they have planned for you is far worse than what you’d first imagined.

Warnings: Language, Angst, Fluff, Kinda slow burn

Word Count: 4.3K

A/n: Second part of this mini series! inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 

~*~

“Alright lads, you know the drill. I expect you back on the ship by dusk tomorrow.” The men of the king are more than eager to head to the longboats, wanting nothing more than to satiate their hunger for ale and whores.

The door to the quarters that you and Wanda share gets slowly pushed open, and Tony smiles brightly at you.

“Are you going to be coming ashore with us?” He asks, eyes hopeful. You don’t have it in you to say no, and you also can’t fight the nagging feeling that there’s something waiting for you here.

“Yes, we will. We’re ready now,” You say, smiling at him. He leads you out to the longboat and helps you in. There are a few other cremates already in the boat, waiting to be lowered to the shallow waters below.

You and Wanda sit beside each other, across from the men as they row you to shore.

Wanda looks at you, her eyes asking a question. You incline your head the slightest and she leans forward.

“You’re looking for something,” she whispers. You sigh and shrug weakly. “Something is coming to find me. And I must meet it.” She nods thoughtfully, eyes flashing from you to the docks up ahead.

As soon as the longboat is tied off, men on the shore are hurrying over to you and Wanda to help you both.

You accept the outstretched hand and climb up onto the dock, turning and waiting for Wanda to join you. As she comes up, a man’s hand strays too far south, and she hisses.

You grab him by the wrist, thunder clapping above you as you glare at him.

“You lay another finger on a woman without permission, and you’ll lose your entire hand. That is a promise.” He opens his mouth to make some sort of snarky remark but snaps it closed when he sees the tip of his fingers starting to turn black with the mark of death. He nods quickly and you drop his hand, watching with a stone-cold look on your face as his fingers return to normal.

The group of men who were so willing to help you quickly disperse as they realize that they aren’t going to get what they want from you or from Wanda.

“You ladies feel free to roam. I have no doubt that you can take care of yourselves. If you want to rejoin us, we’ll be leaving at dusk tomorrow.” You’re surprised at the offer, having thought that you and Wanda would have been forced to rejoin them.

“Thank you, Tony. For all you’ve done and for your kindness.” He smiles warmly at you and nods. “It’s nowhere near what you deserve, but it’s the best I could manage.” He offers you a small bow then heads off to drink himself into a coma for the night.

“Well. Shall we explore all that Tortuga has to offer?” You ask, extending your arm to Wanda. She grins and takes your outstretched arm. “We shall.”

~*~

Bucky sits in the pub, eyes roaming around the place for the millionth time as he tries to pinpoint your face amongst those of the strangers in the crowd.

A man plops down beside him, a cup of ale held loosely in his fist and a poisonous grin on his face.

“Barnes, good to see you again.” Bucky hardly glances at him. “Rumlow,” he says with a nod.

“What are the odds of me seeing you here, huh?” Bucky shrugs, sighing heavily. “What is it you want, Rumlow?” “Where’s your captain? I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Over by the bar chattin’ up a dame. Go interrupt him, I dare ya.” Rumlow purses his lips and chuckles lightly. “A man of business, as usual.” Rumlow gets up from the table and heads over to the bar, giving the woman talking to Steve a smile before stepping between them, far too close for Steve’s comfort.

Bucky watches them, watches as Rumlow speaks and as Steve’s eyes widen. The eyes in question are suddenly on him, a chin raised up towards the ceiling, beckoning the dark-haired man to join the conversation.

Bucky gets up with a groan and heads over to the bar. Crossing his arms over his chest and looking at the two other men expectantly.

“There’s a ship of the King’s men here tonight, they leave tomorrow at dusk,” Steve starts, waiting for his friend to catch on. When he simply stares back at the blond, Steve sighs.

“We split the bounty down the middle if we help take the ship. Think about it, Buck. They’ve always got gold on those ships.” He shakes his head. Right as he’s about to open his mouth he hears a familiar note being played on the piano. It’s being played softly, so softly he has to strain to hear it, but he hears it no less.

Whipping around, his eyes search for the piano, and, more importantly, the person playing it.

“Buck?” Steve asks, concern lacing his voice. Bucky ignores him, pushing his way through the pub until he gets to the back corner.

His breath catches in his throat, heart racing in his chest as he sees the woman seated at the piano, playing the song that lulls him to sleep every night. His fingers instinctively find the locket around his neck, the one that plays that very same song, and he finds himself blinking back tears.

You can feel him behind you before he says anything, but when he whispers your name you can’t help the shiver that rolls down your spine. Your fingers continue playing but your posture stiffens slightly, the only indication that you heard him.

“Where have you been? We’ve been searching for you for so long.” This has your fingers freezing, and you slowly stand up.

You turn to him and he’s beyond confused and concerned at the betrayal and sadness in your eyes. Without speaking a word, you brush past him, ready to walk straight out of the pub and meet up with Wanda.

He grabs your wrist, urging you to stop, and you do, only to yank your arm out of his grip as if he scalded you. “Don’t you dare touch me,” you hiss, your eyes filled with rage.

His brows pull together in confusion, having absolutely no idea why you’re treating him this way. You turn away from him again and he runs after you, fighting the urge to grab you again.

“(Y/n) wait! Stop!” As soon as you’re out of the pub you feel better, the cool air doing wonders to clear your head.

“Where are you going?” You continue walking, grinding your teeth together as he follows you. His fingers just barely graze your shoulder and you whip around to face him, thunder crackling above you.

Clouds roll in, your emotions getting the better of you as a storm forms quickly overhead.

“You have no right to touch me. I should kill you for even looking at me after what you did!” He looks genuinely confused. “What I did? (Y/n) what are you talking about?” You chuckle once without humour, your eyes stinging with unshed tears.

“Don’t play dumb, James. It doesn’t suit you.” With that you turn and walk away just as the rain starts to fall around you, droplets splattering on your face as tears claw their way down your cheeks.

He stands there in the pouring rain, staring dumbfounded at your retreating figure while wondering what the Hell happened that you’re blaming him for.

“Buck? You okay?” He doesn’t look away from where you last were, his eyes having lost you in the downpour.

“She... I...” He looks over at his friend, eyes rimmed red. “What happened?” Rumlow asks, squinting against the harsh rainfall.

“I don’t know. She just... she hates me. I don’t even know what I did.” Steve pats the man on the shoulder. “After we lost you she went ballistic. Maybe she heard a rumour of something untrue and believes it? I’m sure she’ll come around.” Bucky shakes his head. The way you stared at him, utter betrayal in your eyes... he knows you far too well to believe that you’ll simply change your mind.

“Enough of that. Do we have a deal, Rogers?” Bucky looks over at the two men, confused about whatever deal is going down.

“The King’s ship is here. And they never travel without gold. The colours on this one lead me to believe that there’s an important man travelling for his Majesty. And you know what that means,” Rumlow explains, grinning at the metal-armed sailor. “Leverage,” he murmurs, mind still on you while he ponders the deal.

“The amount of Gold on a king’s ship, even if we split it halfway, would set us over for months,” Steve whispers. Bucky sighs then nods.

“Alright fine. Now which ship are you wanting?”

~*~

“Ladies! It’s good to see you. I’ll be honest, I was unsure if you’d be joining us again. But I’m glad you did.” You smile warmly at Tony then look back out across the open water, eyes flittering towards Tortuga in the distance.

“What did you expect to happen if not that?” Wanda asks softly, stepping beside you and keeping her eyes focused on the horizon.

“I thought he would be surprised to see me. And he was. But he acted as if he didn’t know it was he who caused this in the first place,” you whisper. She frowns but says nothing more, giving you the silence to think over your interaction with the man you used to love.

“Captain! We.. we’ve got some trouble it looks like,” Peter says hurriedly. Tony steps away from where he was listening to your conversation and glances to where the young man is pointing. Sure enough, coming up on the stern are two ships, each with dark flags waving.

Clouds roll in overhead quickly and Wanda’s eyes glow red.

“Pirates,” she whispers. The wind comes in strong, sending a few crew-mates stumbling as they run across the deck.

“They aim to plunder, they want nothing to do with us, unless they deem us of value,” you inform, gathering your skirts in your hands and marching over to Tony.

“We have no chance of outrunning them. And outgunning them... not even a hope.” He looks at you then up to the skies. “Can you not conjure something?” You shake your head. “Nothing more than a storm. But what aids us will aid them. We’ve lost.” He sighs heavily then nods, looking over at his men.

“What will they do?” Your eyes travel to the two pirate ships that are quickly gaining, trying to focus on the flags and determine which ships they are.

You incline your head slightly to the right and a gust of wind comes in, pushing their flags to the side. With wide eyes, you stumble back, the sight of the flags making your heart roar in your ears.

“What is it?”

You shake your head, the wind picking up as the rain starts to fall harder.

“We’ve got no chance,” you whisper, chest rising and falling rapidly as the ships grow nearer.

Wanda is by your side in an instant. “It’s them, isn’t it?” She asks, staring at the ships. You nod, grinding your teeth together.

“There is nothing we can do now,” she says firmly, taking hold of your arm to grab your attention. “Do not let them think they’ve won. They have not.” You take a few deep breaths, reigning in your emotions and clearing the rain. The skies stay grey, but the winds die down and the rain ceases.

“We’re going to be boarded, men. And when that happens we are to remain calm. They are pirates. They will take our gold, they may take our lives, but they will not ever take our pride! They will not strip us of the very thing that makes us men! We are strong and we stand for the King!” The men on the ship all shout their agreements, readying themselves for whatever fate awaits with the coming of the pirates.

Quickly, far quicker than you would’ve expected, you’re being flanked on either side by massive ships. One of them far too familiar. A home long forgotten.

You can see the pirates on either side, shouting profanities and grinning wickedly.

“Prepare to be boarded!” A man shouts at you. You look around at the men surrounding you and take a step closer to the back, burying yourself in the crowd as much as you can.

Pirates swing onto the ship, swords and pistols drawn and prepared for a fight. When they receive none they seem far too happy.

“Imagine my surprise when I see a ship of the King floating idly in the waters of Tortuga. Seemed too good an opportunity to be missed, right boys?” That voice... it sends a shudder ripping down your spine and darkness taints the sky.

You look up, eyes burning with anger, and you stare directly at the man who’s speaking. His murky eyes meet yours and he smiles a sickly grin, stepping down onto the main deck and pushing his way through the crowd.

“Ah, but you are not all men of the King, are you? No, some of you are much more valuable.” He stops when he’s in front of you, eyes raking over your figure.

“Yes. Some of you are far more valuable than mere men of the King.” He raises his fingers up to stroke your cheek and a clap of thunder shatters the silence. You glare at him in warning but he only chuckles, grubby fingers tracing dirty paths down your cheek.

“What are you going to do, witch?” He asks softly, stepping even closer to you. You say nothing, glaring up into his eyes with pure hate. He chuckles and right as he leans down to say something more you spit in his face. He flinches back then glares at you. He raises his hand to strike you but before it can come down, long fingers are wrapped around his wrist.

“No harm is to come to her.” You look over at the man, clenching your jaw shut so tightly you fear you may break it.

“Fine,” Rumlow spits, yanking his hand free from the blond man’s grip. “But we’re going to be changing course,” he shouts, pushing through the crowd to the poop deck.

“Tow the ship! And bring the prisoners aboard and shove ‘em in the brig. We set sail for Nassau.” Rumlow’s men are more than happy to start grabbing at people and chaining their wrists, stopping them from fighting and forcing them towards the edge of the ship where a plank is being laid down.

As men start crossing the gangplank to Rumlow’s ship, the man himself walks over to you and Wanda. Two men come behind him, each with thin metal cuffs in their hands.

“Hope you don’t mind, darling. Just a little precaution. Can’t have you using what little you have left to disturb my ocean.” The way he says it, with such smugness and certainty makes you want to pull his tongue right out of his mouth.

The cuffs are snapped into place and you nearly collapse. The remainder of your powers are stripped from you entirely, leaving you a mere mortal. Wanda inhales sharply at the sensation and you know she’s feeling just as terrible as you.

As the two of you are being pushed towards the plank, a hand lands on your shoulder.

“The witch will have my quarters. She has no place with the men of the king.” You wrench your shoulder out of his grasp and stumble away from him.

Rumlow watches in amusement as Bucky pleads with you with his eyes.

“As generous as an offer that is, I’d rather remain with the only crew who hasn’t betrayed or abandoned me,” you whisper harshly, glaring daggers at them. You cross the plank and are promptly shoved below decks, Wanda close behind.

You’re then locked in the brig with the rest of the crew, chest heaving at both the emotional strain and the physical one of having your powers drained.

Tony looks at you in complete and utter confusion, trying to piece together what he can, but he has little success.

You stay absolutely silent, back pressed against the damp wood of the ship.

Trapped and bound yet again by the hands of the same men.

~*~

“Once they reach Nassau they will look for the other ship of the King, try and find any leverage that they can. They are gathering far too many hostages, and we will be killed soon,” you whisper to Tony, a frown on your face as you peer through a crack in the wood. The ocean is rough, not by your doing, but you cannot help but feel as though the gods are on your side.

“Those men know you. Who are they?” Your bottom lip trembles and you take a few deep breaths. “One of the ships... used to be my home. The other is the reason why I am bound. Why I cannot access my powers fully. And there is only one man alive who knows how to strip me of my powers.”

He’s quiet for a very long moment.

“Why not just kill you? Why bind you?” He asks. You shrug, having asked yourself the same question. Because this, this fate that is now yours, is one worse than death.

“They mean to use you as a weapon,” Wanda says softly, her eyes closed as she tries to get used to not having her powers.

You and Tony both look over at her, waiting for her to continue.

She opens her eyes and looks between the two of you for a moment.

“By keeping you alive, your power remains on this earth. If they were to kill you, then your power would be lost, and that power is of great use to them. I anticipate that it will only be a matter of hours before you’re brought to the captain’s cabin and your purpose is discussed.”

Wanda is correct.

It’s only after the sun has set and night has taken hold that anyone descends the stairs.

“Cap’n wants you in his cabin, Witch,” a man sneers, yanking the door open and grabbing you by the wrists.

He’s awfully rough with you, but you pay it little to no mind, trying instead to focus on figuring out Rumlow’s game plan.

You’re forced into his cabin, nearly tripping over yourself in the process, but you regain your footing just in time and your eyes find those of your captor.

“I thought you would put up more of a fight if I’m honest,” he says, arms crossed over his chest as he looks you up and down.

You say nothing, mouth shut tightly and eyes focused on a scratch in the wall.

“Nothing to say? Really? I thought you would have some choice words considering your current predicament. Or are those words reserved for someone else?” A muscle in your jaw ticks and he grins, realizing he struck a nerve.

“It was he who told me how to bind you, how to strip you of your powers. He was there when we did it too. And yet he acts so innocent.” He stands up and walks over to you, circling you slowly, like a vulture.

“How does that make you feel? Does that... anger you? Does it make you hungry for revenge?” He stops when he’s in front of you, two fingers brushing gently across your jaw.

“Your wrath is something I’ve only ever dreamed of harnessing. And I can bring it back. You only need swear alliance to me, and you’ll be free from your bonds. You need only tie yourself to me, and your power will return.”

You look at him, face stoic and cold.

“I will not trade one set of bonds for another. Find someone else to do your bidding.” With that you turn on your heel, only to be yanked back to his chest.

“You will watch your tongue, woman, or I will cut it out. Do you understand?” You say nothing, but for the first time in a long time, you feel truly helpless.

“I am your captain now, and you will listen to me. Unless you would like to join all those that you have sent to the depths. And this time, you won’t have your powers to save you.”

You clench your jaw and tug out of his grip, glaring at him for a moment longer before turning and leaving his cabin.

“You will do my bidding one way or another, Wench! It is only a matter of time before you realize it!”

You’re ushered back below decks and shoved into a separate cell than before, successfully isolating you from the rest of the crew.

“That was brief,” Tony says cautiously, eyes on the retreating crew-mate before returning to your figure.

You say nothing, only close your eyes and pray for something as sweet as death to take you.

~*~

It’s hours later that you’re woken from your sleep, metal clanking together and hushed voices speaking quickly.

“Hurry now, before they wake up.” You push yourself into a seated position, watching in curious confusion as Steve and Bucky hold the cell door open, helping the prisoners out and up the stairs.

Only after they have the permission of Tony do they leave, and even then, the Captain and Wanda stay behind, each of them looking at you.

Upon realizing where you are, Bucky yanks your cell door open, holding his hand out to you.

“We must hasten, it won’t be long before they realize what we’ve done.” You shake your head, crossing your arms over your chest. Tony and Wanda leave their cell, lingering on the stairs and watching as you refuse help.

“Why would I exchange one traitorous pirate for another?” You ask rhetorically, your words like a slap across Bucky’s face.

“Buck, we need to leave. We don’t have time for this,” Steve whispers, gently pushing Wanda and Tony up the stairs.

You stare at the brunet in front of you, daring him to make a move.

When he doesn’t, you take matters into your own hands.

“What are you waiting for? Leave. It’s what you’re good at.” He doesn’t have time to argue, but your words cut him deep.

Against his better judgement, he turns and runs up the stairs, hating himself for abandoning you, but knowing that there are far more lives at stake.

The ship branches away from Rumlow's, heading West to escape him.

“We’ll drop you off at the nearest trade stop, but that is all we can do,” Steve says, looking across the table to where Wanda and Tony sit, each eyeing the goblets of rum in front of them.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Tony asks, looking at Bucky. The pirate furrows his brows in confusion.

“You’re the one who got her trapped.” He’s beyond confused now.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He demands, metal hand clenching into a fist.

“Don’t act so innocent. You’re the only person alive with the knowledge of how to bind her to her human form, how to cut her off from the sea. And you act as though you’ve done nothing.” Wanda’s eyes glow red with her anger but Bucky is still confused.

“I-I never told anyone... She trusted me and I kept it to myself. Why...” He trails off, horror colouring his features.

“Steve, when Rumlow found me after I fell overboard, what did he say happened?” Steve ponders this for a moment then shakes his head.

“Just that they found you in the water. Nothing else.” The red slowly fades from Wanda’s eyes as she realizes what must’ve happened.

“Rumlow’s the one who wanted power all along. And he’s stopped at nothing to get it. He means to use her as a weapon to control and conquer the seas. He’s the one who bound her. He must’ve used your knowledge to bind her without you knowing.” The three men in the room are confused by her suggestion.

“Consider it. He has no recollection of the time spent away from the ship, and he is also the only one with the knowledge.” She rises slowly to her feet, red glowing from her fingertips.

“If you let me, I could bring forth the memories, show you what your mind is trying to forget.” He looks at her hesitantly for a moment.

“(Y/n) is a dear friend of mine. If what you are saying is the truth then I promise I will not harm you.” His gaze travels from her to Steve then back to her, a new determination in them. He nods once and then her fingers are hovering right by his temple, a red hue flowing from them.

His eyes slowly take on the same colour before rolling back into his head, his hidden memories finally being brought to the surface, the truth being revealed.

It takes a few minutes, but he finally reopens his eyes, anguish written on his face.

“She... Steve, we must free her.” Steve sighs, not knowing what to say.

“Buck, how are we supposed to do that? We need to free the crew before we do anything. We cannot risk all of their lives.”

“Rumlow’s knowledge may be enough to bind her powers to his ship, his command. The only way to keep the seas safe is to release her, and soon,” Wanda pipes in.

“My crew can wait. And any man who wishes to leave may take a longboat and find their own way.” The Pirates look at the King’s man for a moment before nodding.

“Very well,” Steve says, turning back to his friend. “How do we free her from her bonds?”

“The same way they trapped her in the first place. And to do that we must go to the island where she was born.”

[one-boring-person]

i love your works sm!! do you still take terminator requests? if so, i had in mind one where the reader had like, a bad day and the T-800 comforts them c:

Thank you! I'm really glad you like my stuff!And I do take Terminator requests; you're my first!😅 I hope you like this!

No Problemo.

T-800 x reader

Warnings: none

Masterlist

The door slams loudly behind me as I enter the house, my bag colliding violently with the wall as I throw it there, a scowl etched into my features. My coat soon joins the bag, left behind as I stalk further into the house, heading towards the kitchen, intent on grabbing something to eat or drink before going upstairs to wallow in my room, shoulders aching from my tense posture, clenched jaw equally as painful from the hours of biting back sharp replies. There are low noises coming from the lounge, but I ignore them, not quite in the mood to interact with the other members of the household. 

Entering the kitchen, I flick on the light and go over to the fridge, yanking it open to check its contents. A groan of frustration leaves me as I realise we're low on food (again), the cool shelves deserted after a week of feeding the four of us living here. Mentally, I make a note in my head to go to the store tomorrow and pick up some more stuff, knowing full well neither Sarah nor John will go, and Bob is unlikely to take the initiative by himself. Sighing, I close the fridge again and go to the cupboard, opening it to find the shelves yet again void of any edible substance. In their place, I find a few loose scraps of metal and some empty containers, some old spices pushed to the back of the space, the sight of which makes me roll my eyes.

"You have returned." 

The monotone voice behind me makes me jump, the owner of said baritone having managed to sneak up on me despite his generally massive size. Spinning on my heel, I come to face Uncle Bob, the T-800 regarding me quietly, expression mostly blank. Swallowing to calm myself again, I reach for a cup and go to the tap, filling it with cool water as I go to reply.

"Yeah. Finally." I respond dryly, downing the glass of water with a sharp jerk of my head.

The cyborg's brow creases a little, the terminator still learning to express human emotion as others do, his head cocking to the side, evidently scanning me.

"Your stress levels are very high and your muscles are unnaturally tensed. What is wrong?" Bob questions, coming further into the room, watching as I refill the glass.

Pulling a face at his automated observance, I shoot him a look from my position by the sink.

"Bad day." I eventually answer, pushing off the counter and going to move past him, heading up to my room.

I frown as I hear him follow after me, his heavy boots thudding on the stairs behind me. Paying him no mind, I simply walk to my room, pushing open the door and going in, starting to pull at the smarter clothes I'm forced to wear for my job. My fingers fumble with the buttons of my shirt, frustration clouding my mind as I struggle to undo them. From the corner of my eye, I can see Bob loitering in the doorway, watching me carefully, before he suddenly pushes into the room, coming over to me. Confused, I stare at him, backing up a little until his eyes meet mine, somehow managing to reassure me with his carefully crafted mimicry of human reassurance.

Hesitantly, I let him come closer, tensing when he instantly goes to start unbuttoning my shirt, his passive gaze staying focused on the task, even as he starts to speak, his large frame hunched over me.

"What has solicited your negative assessment of the day?" The cyborg queries, easily loosening each button in turn.

Clenching my jaw again, I watch him work, feeling somewhat soothed by his calm actions, enjoying his closeness and unwavering stociness. 

"It's just been a long, difficult day. Nothing went right, my boss is making things harder for me, and none of the things I needed to get done actually got done." I sigh, trying to relax, "I have a ridiculous amount of work due tomorrow, and I've had no way of doing it today. I didn't eat lunch because I had no time, so now I'm hungry, and tired, and just want to go to bed."

Having told him these things, I start to feel a little better, but not by much, having been reminded of the exact reasons why I'm like this in the first place.

"I see." The T-800 recites one of his newly-learned phrases, glancing up at me, "It is recommended that you obtain food and take rest for optimum recovery."

His diagnostic advice comes quickly, a hard contrast to the more human way of speaking we've been trying to teach him, the sound of which almost brings a small smile to my face.

"I plan to do that." I mutter, batting his hands away as he finally finishes his task, turning away from him as I strip myself of my shirt and trousers, pulling on some more comfortable clothes.

"Good." He nods in approval, moving over to me again as I go to sit on my bed.

Quietly, he eyes me, seemingly running through some line of data on his HUD, before he leans down and easily scoops me into his arms. Squeaking in surprise, I wrap my arms around his neck, only to let go when he places me down against my pillows, taking care to make sure I'm comfortable, removing everything that may be considered uncomfortable from the bed.

"What are you doing?" I ask him, curiously, watching as he neatly folds a shirt and places it on my desk.

"Helping you recover." He states simply, glancing at me, "Stay where you are."

Frowning at his command, I stare after him as he leaves the room, unsure of what he is doing but not adverse to it. It feels nice to be looked after, for a change, instead of looking after others, even if it is by the surly cyborg sent to protect my best friend. He's always been stumped as to how John and I came to be friends, given the large age gap between us, somehow not quite understanding the concept that I had worked at the arcade the teen used to frequent and had come to know he and his friend very well. Eventually, I got roped into a situation that changed my life, and now here I am, living with the Connors, doing a terrible job to keep myself busy, trying to forget that the life I now lead is far from normal.

After a moment, the T-800 walks in again, a plate in one hand a mug in the other. As he comes closer, I realise there are a couple of slices of pizza on the plate, which confuses me.

"Where'd you get the pizza from? The fridge is empty." I ask him, sitting up to take the plate and mug from him as he offers them to me.

"Sarah and John ordered takeout. There was some spare." He fills me in, handing me the items.

Nodding, I place the plate in my lap, cupping the mug between my palms as I sniff it, glad to recognise a tea of some sorts, unaware that we had any. In doing so, I don't quite register that the T-800 has slipped onto the bed with me until his hands are suddenly on my waist, lifting me into his lap. Eyes widening in shock, I tense up, unused to the feeling of his huge, muscular body against mine, though he says nothing, only starting to rub my arms and legs gently.

"What're you doing?" I ask him again, still unsure, though I can slowly feel myself give in to his touch, the gentle sensations highly comforting to me.

"My files state that physical contact between two people can induce relaxation and a lessening of stress." Bob replies, pulling me back to lean against his chest, sitting back against the headboard as he does so.

"Right. Well, thank you." I say to him, hesitantly starting to relax into him, enjoying the feeling of his hands tracing my arms, the scent of motorcycle fuel, metal and the cheap cologne John bought him flooding my nostrils as I start to eat.

"No problemo." He replies, holding my mug still as I continue to eat.

Instantly, I feel my tensions starting to drain away, my hunger soon satiated, my exhaustion taking over as I settle back into Bob's chest, my eyelids starting to droop closed.

"It is recommended now that you sleep to regain your energy." The T-800 states, much quieter than usual, his arms wrapping around me properly after removing the plate and mug from the bed, keeping me against him as he gently manoeuvres himself to lie down with me on his chest.

Turning in his arms, I look up at him, smiling contentedly as I rest my head on his collarbone, nodding at the cyborg.

"Yeah, I will. Thank you." I murmur, closing my eyes properly, totally relaxed in his hold.

He doesn't reply, only tightening his grip on me, a kiss suddenly pressed to my forehead, leaving me smiling like an idiot in my sleep.

[plaguedprincesss]

Ending Loneliness - Sirius Black X Snape |Smut|

After he was cleared of all charges Sirius had been allowed to teach at Hogwarts under the condition that Snape monitor him. Sirius was obviously not happy about this, however he wanted to be closer to Harry and to give Harry the family he had long since been deprived. So, he dealt with the bat watching him watching, however he began to notice things as he was forced to see snape more and more.

For starters, the bat seemed to constantly disappear during the day, unless Sirius were to see him lurking in the shadows. Watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake so he could report him to Dumbledore and get him fired or better yet sent to Azkaban. Sirius would notice that Snape never seemed to eat during the meals in the Great Hall. The delectable feast in front of him yet he didn’t so much as touch a morsel. Meanwhile Sirius would try to shovel in as much as possible, making up for the terrible scraps he was served in Azkaban. The only thing Snape seemed to do at the table was stare, at Sirius. It made him feel so uncomfortable, the way Snape looked at him hungrily as if he was a steak. He felt the coolness of Snapes gaze, it was how he learnt to sense if Snape was watching him. Those cold dark eyes staring, but never saying anything.

Snape would always hurry out of the Great Hall after Dinners, a pained angry look gracing his features. His cloak flying out behind him as he left the hall wafting a strange smell that only keen noses and a trained Animagus could smell. A mix of vanilla, lavender and warmth. Just a taste of the smell was intoxicating. Sirius would never admit that it made him crave Snapes presence more, he would never admit that he was beginning to enjoy being watched. The fact that he was never really alone anymore. The fact that the sheer presence of Snape took him back to his youth, to the marauders to the times where James was alive.

As the year passed by Sirius and Snape barely exchanged but a few words. But they were always together even when Sirius didn’t know it. Neither would admit that they had grown close. Whilst never actually interacting with one another. But that would all soon change.

It all happened that one night, The Yule Ball. Sirius and Snape were chaperones to hordes of teenagers, their hormones dancing around the hall. The air thick with tension. Dumbledore assigned the two of them to monitor the carriages. That’s usually where most of the students try to get away from the watchful eyes of the Hogwarts staff and have some fun in the moment. They stood near one another, Snape glaring at the students as they walked past as if daring them to make a move out of line. Sirius however indulged the students laughing at them and whistling as they walked by. He loved young love it reminded him of James and Lilly.

Eventually it grew to cold outside, and the two grown men were stood alone, the air was thick with unsaid words and tension. Sirius wished Snape would just talk to him, just call him out on nonsense but he just stood there. Eventually Sirius had enough.

“Sniv… Snape why don’t you ever say anything.”

Snape took a deep breath and slowly turned to look at Sirius, a pained expression gracing his features.

“I have no idea what you mean Black” replied Snape.

“You always stand there Snape; you never speak you just stand their glaring at me.do you hate me?” Sirius asked turning to Snape.

It was only then Sirius noticed how the moon shone of Snapes eyes, how they appeared dark and hungry almost. As if Snape hungered for something.

“Listen Black” Growled Snape, “I’m watching you as I was assigned to, I don’t talk to you because I don’t want to, I don’t watch you by choice …. I despise your presence” his voice wavered at the end.

Sirius knew that Snape was lying, he could tell that there was something that he wasn’t tell him. He wanted answers, Snape owed him that much at least. He broke the distance between him and Snape and got his wand out his jacket.

“Listen Snape, I just want an answer, what is up with you” Asked Sirius in an angered tone.

Snape just glared at him, coldly replying “I don’t owe you anything Black.”

Sirius had enough, and pointed his wand to snapes throat, Snape looked down at the wand intended to cut off his breathing. Sirius then spoke …… “tell me or, I’ll make you tell me… I’m not the man I was before Azkaban Snape. I learned things from the Ministry, from Azkaban. I can make you talk; I just don’t want to have to do it.”

Snape slowly looked up from Sirius’ wand to his eyes and deeply inhaled. God the smell was intoxicating. He needed to do something, He quickly grabbed Sirius and Apparated the two of them to his chambers, where he quickly pinned Sirius to the wall.

“Wh…what are you doing” Asked Sirius, his breath racing, he was so close to getting his answer, what went wrong.

“I’m showing you rather than telling you Black” replied Snape as he knocked Sirius wand away and leaned in closer. He inhaled and groaned. “Black you don’t know how much restraint I’ve been having to show, you smell so good.”

Sirius gasped and took a deep breath, unfortunately breathing in the sweet scent that he kept only just getting a taste of this time getting a mouthful and then it hit him where he had smelt that kind of smell before. He gazed up at Snape with glazed eyes.

“When….”

“After protecting Harry and Hermione from Lupin, I went through the dark woods and was attacked. When I woke up, I realized what had happened” replied Snape.

“does Dumbledore know?” asked Sirius.

“No, he just thinks the stress has got to me or at least that’s what he wants me to think, you know how the old fool behaves” replied Snape.

Sirius laughed and accidentally leaned forwards, brushing his body against Snape. His face flushing as he realized what he’d just done. Snape groaned.

“Sirius, every sense in my body is heightened do you know what that does to me? what I want to do. It’s so bloody hard to fight this when you want something that you can’t have.”

Sirius looked down and his eyes widened.

“You…. you want me?” asked Sirius.

“Why do you think I have been watching you, making sure nothing happens to you Sirius, Dumbledore may have asked me to watch you, but you and me both know I don’t do anything I don’t want to do” Replied Snape “you call to me Sirius, your blood sings to me. The pain I feel being within an inch of you and yet I can’t do anything.”

Snape gripped Sirius’ arms and leaned in, inhaling “I want to drink you black; I want to fuck you I want to take you all in and break you.”

Sirius looked up at Snape and leaned inwards looking into Snapes eyes,

“What if I want you to break me Snape, what if I’m tired of being alone, what if I’ve realized that this is something that we both want.”

“you know that if I do this, I won’t be able to stop. I haven’t fed on a person in months. I’ve been brewing a potion like I did for lupin to satiate my cravings, but it only does so much” moaned Snape.

“Break me and Mate me Snape, I want this, “cried Sirius.

Without hesitation Snape crushed his lips against Sirius, a dance of wills and tongues fighting for dominance. Sirius despite his charade of dominancy, submitting to Snapes dominance and will. His lips being crushed against the Man’s dry chapped lips, as if his only source of hydration was from Sirius himself.

Snape bit down on Sirius lip, Sirius yelping in surprise as Snape gripped his arms tighter, whilst Sirius rubbed his arms up and down Snapes back trying to ground himself in the moment. The men moaned in passion their kissing lasting what felt like a lifetime, because for them they had waited so long to feel the comfort and passion of another individual appreciating their darkness and loneliness.

The two men broke apart drool parting from their mouths as Snape loosened his grip on Sirius, Sirius’ body sagged against the wall slightly his arousal growing by the minute. In moment it was if the world stood still nothing mattered between the two of them apart from each other. Sirius looked at Snape with hooded eyes as snape eyed him hungrily planning, no anticipating what he could do next.

Sirius suddenly gripped Sirius’ dress robes and smirked ripping them away from the man’s body as if they were paper. Sirius gasped as the cold air from the potion masters’ quarters hit his chest, he was exposed. His scars, his weaknesses, his soul. He would bare them to this man for he was the man who had chosen to end his loneliness. Snape leaned forwards and began to plan kisses along Sirius’ chest gentle at first until he reached Sirius’ nipples. He then began to tease him by biting them soft at first but progressively getting harder and more animalistic.

Sirius began to yelp; he couldn’t take it. He moaned in pleasure and pain. He began clawing at Snape desperate to ground himself, yet he found he couldn’t. Sirius grabbed onto snapes robes but all he that did was tear the robes away from the man. He felt his hands shifting, losing control of the animal side of himself. his nails extending into claws. He took advantage of this newfound grip however and began to claw at Snapes back. Snape threw his head back in pleasure and pain. Sirius’ claws bringing him his much-needed fix. He knew he was getting close however and he knew he needed more.

He leaned forward and whispered into Sirius’ ear “blow me mutt.”

Sirius gasped as Snape suddenly let go of him and pushed him onto his knees. He eagerly undid Snap’s belt and smirked. No boxers because he wasn’t surprised, however he was surprised at Snapes length. 9 inches, he hoped …. No, he knew he could take it. Snape was done waiting, “what are you waiting for mutt SPIT”. Sirius spat onto Snapes penis, took a deep breath, lowered his head and wrapped his mouth over Snapes tip. A low groan could be heard from Snapes lips as he dug his hands into Sirius’ curly hair.

Sirius smirked knowing how hard Snape was for him and how in that one moment he had all of the control, he began to suck on Snapes length slowly, bobbing his head down teasing him, caressing and appreciating every inch of Snape. Taking him in, but not enough for Snape to be satisfied. Just enough to tease him. Sirius knew what he was doing and how he was driving Snape crazy, and he loved it. Snape was desperate for more, desperate for Sirius to take more of him and in an act of desperation thrust forwards. Sirius had hoped he would do this, his gag reflex came into play and as each length inched downwards, he felt himself grow fuller and fuller until finally Snapes dick was buried to the hilt in Sirius’ throat.

Sirius looked up at Snape and in that moment, Snape looked at him with a look he had never seen before. Pure adoration

“you… were made for me. Look at you my little mutt. your perfectly made to take all of me in” said Snape as he gripped Sirius’ hair tighter. The image purely pornographic. Sirius moaned onto Snapes dick which only drove him crazier. Sirius contained to slowly suck on Snapes dick. Occasionally applying gentle kisses which earned delicate mewls from Snape.

Snape suddenly yanked his hair and pulled him away.

“Stop, I want to cum in you.”

Sirius almost came just hearing those words.

“Strip Mutt” ordered Sirius.

Sirius got up off the floor and hastily removed what was left of his clothing. He was now stood exposed in front of Snape.

“you have no idea how much I want to bite you Sirius, you look delicious. I have wanted this for so long” exclaimed snape.

“Then take what you want Snape, take me and take my blood. Take all of me. I am yours.”

Snape nearly creamed right there,

“Hands on the wall NOW”, Sirius quickly placed his hands on the wall. Whilst Snape quickly slipped out of his trousers. Himself now naked too.

“you will not touch yourself Sirius, I will make you come. No one else”

“Yes Snape “replied Sirius.

Snape didn’t want to hurt Sirius, but he couldn’t wait any longer, he grabbed some Lubes Mortencia from the shelf next to him and poured it onto his hand and he worked it into his fingers. He wanted to distract Sirius from the pain to come so he began to pepper kisses up Sirius neck. Sirius began to moan and lean into Snapes kisses. Snape then slowly pressed a finger into Sirius’ hole, Sirius moaned in pleasure as Snape worked him open, the feeling of discomfort slowly departing. Snape could not wait any more and removed his finger, he then applied some more lubes onto his erect member and lined it up with Sirius’ Hole.

Slowly sliding his penis onto Sirius hole, until he was buried to the hilt. Sirius moaned in both pleasure and pain.

“Merlin that hurts Snape” cried Sirius nearly in tears.

“Don’t worry mutt, ill make you soon cry in pleasure.”

Snape then began to thrust into Sirius, slowly at first which only saw Sirius begin to claw at the wall.

“Snape please,” cried Sirius.

Snape listened and began to thrust faster, his balls slapping against Sirius ass. Sirius moaned as Snape began to lose control. Snape began to lightly suck on Sirius’ neck peppering him with hickeys, he couldn’t take it much longer.

He was so close,

“Snape I’m so close,” cried Sirius.

Sirius breaths became more ragged as Snape continued to pump him; Snape was on the edge of coming.

“Sirius please tell me to stop otherwise I’ll bite you, there’s no going back if I do” cried snape.

Sirius craned his head around to meet Snapes hungry eyes.

“Bite me, Sirius I want this I want you.”

That was all Snape needed to hear, his thrusts got more ragged as he was getting closer and closer to the edge. He ran his nails down Sirius’ back leaving marks, he noted he would have to heal those later to avoid questions.

Snape then brought his mouth up towards Sirius’ neck and allowed his fangs to appear, his warm tongue licking a long strip across Sirius’ neck. Sirius shivered in pleasure as he anticipated what was to come. Snape continued to thrust as he opened his mouth. Then he bit down on Sirius’ neck.

Sirius felt the prick of the fangs against the soft tissue of his jugular, at first, he gasped in pain. But then the pain subsided and all that was left was pleasure. He groaned against Snapes mouth.

Hearing that groan reassured Snape that this was the right thing and so he slowly began to drink Sirius’ blood. One of his hangs cupping Sirius neck in order to keep him in one position. Snape groaned against Sirius’ neck, the feeling was euphoric and incomparable to anything he had ever felt in his life. Whereas from Sirius’ side he felt full to the brim. He had Snapes member and his fangs inside of him. He felt so warm and so pleasured. In this moment he felt pure bliss. He thought to himself.

“are this what true happiness feels like?”

Snape then reached his hand forwards to stroke Sirius’ face. Snape did not expect Sirius to remove one his supporting hands from against the wall and grab his arm, slowly licking it.

Snape chuckled and thought to himself “So Sirius’ knows enough about vampires to know how they mate, this makes it a lot easier.”

Sirius then sunk his teeth into snapes arm drawing blood and began to suck. Moaning against Snapes arm as he took in Snapes essence. The two of them becoming one.

It let like they were on fire, every gulp Snape took creating a feeling of pure pleasure deep down inside the both of them, it was maddening. Snape took one last deep gulp.  the both of them coming unhinged at the sheer pressure and pleasure. Sirius shouted as he began to cum all over the wall. Whilst Snape gave one last thrust and came inside Sirius, Sirius’ perfect hole milking him dry. Snape held onto Sirius’ shoulders whilst they rode out the pleasure.

Then slowly when they were spent detached his fangs from Sirius neck, he slowly eased Sirius’ teeth from his arm and allowed the two of them to sag to the floor.

Snape sat against the wall, whilst Sirius rested his head on his shoulder and giggled in his pleasured delirium.

“does this mean we are mated now Snape?” asked Sirius.

Snape sighed, coming down from his pleasure and looked the Animagus in the eyes.

“yes, it does Sirius, we are now together forever”. Sirius smiled to himself, he would no longer be alone and no matter how much him and Snape annoyed one another. He knew that they would always have one another, until the end of their days.

[flowesona]

The Hermit - Yandere! Seokjin x reader

The Tarot Series

Warning: Mentions of Suicide, Explicit Content

Seokjin could not find real love for the life of him. Everyone around him was too vain, too obsessed with themselves to care about him. Everyone was hungry for money, or attention, and it made him sick. In his desperation for romance he turned to the previously taboo area for relationships - the internet.

He could find someone that shared his passions. He was even prepared to pretend to like something, just to find that special someone. But luckily he didn’t have to seek out anyone as desperate as he was. She just stumbled into his lap incidentally.

He’d found that Discord was the easiest way to find friendly, chatty people to satiate his hunger for love. That was how he’d found her, on some server about a video game he’d played casually a few times. He’d been pleasantly surprised when she sent him a message individually, asking if he was down to play a few rounds with her.

He’d instantly asked his friend to borrow his console, since this girl didn’t use PC. Jungkook had been persuaded to hand over his console with enough bribery and guilt tripping, and Jin was set to win the game and her heart.

“What do you do for a living then?” (Y/N) was relaxed enough, sat back in her chair with her knees to her chest and eyes on the screen.

“I’m a model. You?” Her teammate answered simply. Sure, he was only beginning his career, but what harm could a little white lie do?

“A model? That’s really cool. Guess I’m going to be the ugly friend, huh?” She laughed, before going silent to focus on the game.

“You didn’t answer me. What do you do?” Jin didn’t seem content to let silence take over.

“I’m stuck in a permanent limbo buddy. I don’t really know what I want to do once I’ve graduated. If I graduate that is.” 

(Y/N) sighed, shifting in her seat slightly.

“I can help you. I’m successful enough to-” She laughed, cutting off his wheedling statement.

“Not happening. You can kill me before I let you become my sugar daddy, buddy.”

“Seokjin.” He responded quietly. “My name’s Seokjin, but you can just call me Jin.”

“Well, Jin if you want to help me out maybe take care of these people behind me?”

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

He’d finally convinced her to skype him, to allow him to see her face after weeks of asking. Jin’s fingers trembled as he typed in the username and sent the request, an odd feeling in his stomach. Anticipation but also a slight fear - what if she didn’t look how he imagined his ideal woman to be? What if he’d wasted all his energy on a catfish?

But the face that appeared on his screen was nothing less than that of a goddess. It was as if his fantasy had been projected before him, as if his Galatea had been breathed into life.

“Hey Jin? You okay?” Her words shook him out of his trance and he nodded eagerly.

“It’s nice to put a face to the voice.” He said light-heartedly, flashing her a charming grin.

“You catch the lea- oh hold on a second.” (Y/N) left briefly, leaving Jin to stare at his own reflection in pity, to see the sad man he had become doting endlessly after a girl who couldn’t talk to him for a full minute without being interrupted.

Luckily, he only had to suffer for a few minutes as she re-entered the view of the webcam with a decently sized package in her hands.

“Sorry about that buddy. I forgot that my shoes were being delivered today.” It was that repeated use of the casual nickname that was starting to make his heart ache. As if she saw him as a friend and nothing more.

“Hey, (Y/N)?” He called her attention away from her parcel, revelling in her ethereal face. “Do you have a boyfriend you’ve never told me about?”

“Nope.” She responded. “And don’t you even think about trying to weasel your way into that role.”

“Why? Would I not be the perfect boyfriend?” His tone was teasing but his heart was thumping in his chest at the conversation.

“You are the perfect friend, Jin. I would happily hook you up with one of my close friends some time if you’re looking for love.”

“Yeah….” Throughout the rest of their conversation there was a notable absence of Jin’s normal self. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t convince himself to be happy when she could never be his.

Yet he couldn’t stop himself. No matter how much she talked about him being a friend he was constantly pulled further into his obsession with her.

He hadn’t even realised that he’d gone too far when he contacted the leader of their discord (a personal friend of hers) to ask her last name. He wasn’t even aware of how fucked up it was when he solicited a professional to dig up as much personal information as possible on her. There wasn’t a sliver of sanity left when he ‘casually’ took a stroll through her neighbourhood, waiting for her to bump into him and invite him back to her place.

Jin had gone crazy for her, and she didn’t even know.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

“(Y/N), you could do a lot better.” The older man said sternly, taking off his glasses. She stayed silent, hands on her knees to keep them from bouncing.

“I know, I might have rushed it since I was so busy with-” As the pair spoke, they were unaware of the third party spying on them. Jin had found a peephole in the storage room next to the professor’s office, and was watching the whole interaction with a second hand anxiety for her situation. 

“Well, there’s a few ways that you could make it better. I haven’t logged the grade in the system yet, so you could try again. Or, you can do me a little favour and I’ll log it as a B plus.” Jin watched in horror as (Y/N) cautiously nodded and got down on her knees, her hands unbuckling the older man’s belt.

He felt like he was going to be sick seeing (Y/N) being so intimate with another man, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to look away. He started to imagine himself in her professor’s position, thinking about how it would feel to have her mouth on him, her mischievous eyes looking up at him, and before he knew it he had one hand in his pants and another covering his mouth, hoping the walls weren’t too thin and they wouldn’t be able to hear their voyeuristic partner. But it was over too soon, (Y/N) standing up to wipe at her lips and muttering some kind of thank you as she left, trying to fix her appearance.

Jin started to make himself presentable as well, wiping his hand on his jeans. He checked back on the professor, seeing that he was packing away his laptop, ready to go home for the night.

‘Shit’.

Jin had to do something to stop this monster plaguing his (Y/N)’s life, and fast. 

He slunk out of the janitor’s closet, hoping to fit in as he walked to the parking lot. There, after checking that there weren’t any security cameras watching, he waited. Only half paying attention to his phone, some music blaring through his headphones so that he was camouflaged into the university setting, no one was even aware that he could possibly have the means to kill tucked away the back of his jeans.

Finally, the professor walked out, a tower of books in his hands. Jin approached him with a charming smile.

“Need any help there, professor? You seem to be struggling with that!” He offered, his hand outstretched to take some of the weight off his shoulders.

“Oh, thank you young man. My car is just over here.” The man smiled gratefully, bending to let Jin take the highest books on the stack before leading him to his vehicle.

“Just put them in the trunk for me. Thanks so much for your help.” Once all the books were loaded, the professor went to enter his car only to be stopped by the feeling of a gun being pressed to his back.

“Unless you want to die, get in the car. Act natural.” Jin muttered in his ear, easing the pressure off his hostage’s back for a second. “Don’t even fucking think about running or you’ll be dead before you know it.”

The professor gave a shaky nod, climbing into the driver’s seat as Jin sat in the passenger’s seat directly behind him.

“I want you to go to your home. Don’t think about acting up to get pulled over, got it?” He hissed. 

“Why are you doing this? I swear, if it’s money you want I’ll give you whatever you need, no questions ask-”

“I thought you were smarter than to question the man holding a gun to your back. Drive.” Jin snarled, his victim jumping into action once he felt a jab through his seat.

Jin didn’t even feel bad. In his mind, it was all just, punishing the man who was coercing his perfect (Y/N) into such gross, indecent acts.

Pulling up at his residence, the professor felt slightly more at ease, thinking he could just give this maniac money or his valuables and just be free. But Jin had other plans.

“Your laptop. Bring it with you into the house. You’ll need it.” He snapped, keeping the gun low enough that it wasn’t obvious to passersby but high enough that it was still a threat. His hostage nodded sullenly, pulling out his briefcase and laptop bag.

“Now, we’re going inside your house. I don’t want any funny business, got it?” Jin said quietly, following the professor as he unlocked his front door and entered, disabling the security alarm.

“What do you want no-”

“Where do you normally sit when you’re thinking?” Jin interrupted.

“My study, why? Please, whatever you want just tell me-”

“Go there. Sit in your chair or whatever.” Jin held the gun up higher. “I’m getting impatient.”

Once he was seated, Jin finally said what he wanted.

“Get out your laptop. You’re going to write a confession about everything you’ve done wrong, the young girls you’ve abused and apologise for it all.” His victim turned as pale as a ghost.

“I-I didn’t do anything, what are you on about-”

“I’ve seen it.” Jin snarled. “Getting those girls to do you 'favours’ for passing grades? You’re sick.”

He pointed the gun right at the professor’s forehead, pressing the cool metal into his skull.

“Get writing already. If you miss anything out then I’ll know.”

It was silent for a while, the professor’s pages slowly creeping on and on, detailing every incident from the start of his career onwards until that very day, all of which had been pushed aside for so long by loyal colleagues. But his crimes were not to be ignored for much longer.

He finished typing, having left his name at the bottom of the account.

“Send it to the university board, your colleagues, your family and the Gazette. Everyone. They deserve to know who you truly are.” Jin commanded lowly. 

“Why are you involved in this? Who told you?” The scholar questioned as he started to type out the names of his colleagues, giving occasional glances up.

“You fucked my girl, (Y/N), this afternoon. I saw the whole thing, and I’m not happy about it.” Jin answered, his hands shaking slightly. “What gave you the right to ask that of her, to make her some common whore for you when she’s so much more? You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Okay, I sent it. Now what?” 

“Thank you. Now, you die.” The bullet was lodged in his victim’s brain before the man even had the chance to react, slumping forward onto his desk. Jin smirked, wiping the gun down before easing it into the corpse’s hand.

“I told you would get what was coming to you.” He taunted the corpse before leaving, praying that he hadn’t left a trace.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

“(Y/N), you seem different.” Jin commented, only half concentrating on his gameplay. Most of his attention had been drawn by how stunning (Y/N) looked through her webcam. She was practically glowing, and Jin was honoured to have a front row seat to her euphoria.

“Oh. It’s kind of fucked up that I’m happy about this, but my professor shot himself yesterday apparently. He was a real creep and it’s weirdly liberating to be able to talk about what he did.” She sighed.

“Really?” Jin answered, heart thumping.

“He made me… well, at least he’s gone. He confessed to everything, so at least his victims are at peace knowing his crimes have been exposed.” (Y/N) said uneasily.

“Well, at least he can’t hurt you anymore.” She gave him a warm smile, only for it to fade in a few seconds.

“Jin! Concentrate! If we lose this round I’ll gut you like a fish.”

He laughed, finally satisfied to see how (Y/N) was happy once again with her troubles gone no sooner than they’d arrived.

He’d found his true happiness was making (Y/N)’s life better from the shadows, being her ‘buddy’ to her face but her knight in shining armour behind her back. He didn’t care who it was, he’d cut anyone who was being toxic out of her life. All for his idea of love.

[miccatepoztli]

XIMENA’S RP PLOTTING CHEAT-SHEET

Want new-and-exciting plots for your character? Long to reach out to more of your followers, but don’t know where to start? Fear not! Fill out this form and give your RP partners both present and future all the of juicy jumping off points they need to help you get your characters acquainted.

Be sure to tag the players whose characters YOU want more cues to interact with, and repost, don’t reblog! Feel free to add or remove sections as you see fit. Template here.

Mun name: mónika OOC Contact: DMs or discord (available upon request!)

who the heck is my muse anyway:

Ximena is a young brujeria practicing witch who was ~*mysteriously*~ spirited away from her home at age 5 with no memory of her past or self. Raised in the restricted environment of an abbey among sympathetic but uncaring sisters, she’s quite prim and proper to the public eye, but cares very little about the rules of society or her place in it.

She is also a ridiculously smart little girl. She will grow into a terrifyingly smart woman. With secrets sewn into her skin and a powerful network of magical creatures at her fingertips.

points of interest:

She’s very willing to learn and perform “dark” magicks, and can often be found reading questionable books and tomes of various subjects regarding the art. If you came at her with the offer to summon a demon together, she would be hooked almost immediately (though cautious, of course)

Near the middle of her adolescence, she begins to dabble in potioneering and finds herself very skilled at it. Through a questionable network of fellow witches, creatures, jealous ex-wives, and the like, she develops a steady stream of loyal customers and builds upon her craft.

Once reunited with her family, she is a part of a long reaching, long lasting network of witches and brujas that have lived in their forest for centuries. Perhaps millennia. The forest in which their home resides is an inter-dimentional one where time doesn’t always work properly (whatever ‘properly’ is).

Like her, her current living family is cursed with painful and involuntary immortality, alongside a few other choice effects. Ximena can die from just about anything, but she will always return after a brief visit with death: her body will take time to rebuild itself. She can stall her return to her living body if she wishes, but she can never permanently rest unless the curse is broken.

A by-product of her curse is her unending ache to know. To learn about everything she can possibly get her hands on: magic, languages, plants, mathematics, space, everything. Her hunger for knowledge cannot be satiated until she learns enough about a certain branch of magic...

Ximena literally does not care about the problem of people outside of herself and her loved ones. She’ll spare a moment of sympathy for the sake of her humanity, but she will not go out of her way to help unless she can get something out of it such as personal vindication or some rare item. Occasionally she will help others out of sheer curiosity, but it’s rare.

what they’ve been up to recently:

Making friends with demons of other cultures! From India @marakama​ to China @fwm-gsm​ to Korea @roanarch​ --She’s gatherin up them demonic business cards and seeing what she can trade for information or rare items.

Learning how to communicate with the dead successfully and without accidentally summoning a legion of the undead. Whoops! No necromancy here, she just wants to talk to her ancestors to see why the fuck she’s cursed and who she is!

Training her corvid friends to send messages and retrieve items using whistles and tongue clicks.

Forgetting her place around adults she doesn’t trust and asking suspicious questions about black magic that could set off some red flags--But her interest is purely academic! She swears! And lies.

where to find them:

Croydon - If in her early stages of life (5-13 ish), Ximena can be found wandering around the abbey where she grew up in, or around the streets of London. She has a reputation for being a wallflower and very meek and polite.

Mexico - At age 14, Ximena is unofficially adopted by local Vampire Dad, Salazar @deoscuridad​ and taken with the rest of his misfit family to Mexico, where her magic has never been stronger, and her search for her family has never been closer. Find her at the library, markets, docks, and museums taking in her culture.

Forests - The aforementioned inter-dimentional forest leads to every forest in the world (and in others). So if one is talking a walk or run among the woods, it’s entirely plausible to find Ximena (ages 14 and up) on your journey. She’ll be picking mushrooms, documenting flora, performing dangerous summoning seances, and taking naps.

Other Locations - Hogwarts is a plausible place to locate her (in the proper HP aus where she has British citizenship and is thus allowed to attend) from ages 12-16, as that is when she is withdrawn by her father. Bookshops of all sorts are another, as she quite enjoys traveling.

current plans:

Eat some fish

Find her family, if she has one

Learn about herself and her past

Become a fourth level mage (highest tier)

Collect information and knowledge from every possible source.

desired interactions:

Ximena asking [muse] to watch over her body as she performs some dark summoning shit, allowing a demon/spirit/etc. to possess her body

[Muse] accidentally witnesses or just straight up accidentally (or purposefully!) murders Ximena in a really stupid and/or violent way, freaks out, cleans up/hides the body or runs away. They, of course, find Ximena just fine the next day/week. [Muse] can publicly freak out or demand answers, and Ximena just “yeah man, that happens sometimes, no hard feelings, jaja” and tries to brush it off.

Ximena being in a stiff upper lip environment while at a big fancy party and trying desperately to both appear normal/well adapted and also not attract any attention–but of course she’s asked to dance or give a speech.

Her fully exploring why it is that dark magic resonates so nicely with her. is it her nature? heritage? genetics? idk, but let’s test it out by trying some old school hardcore black magicks. Preferably! With a mentor muse.

On a fluffier (or more dramatic, if you’re like me) note: Ximena teaching someone how to dance.

A Coraline AU

Any sort of AU taking place in a dystopia like The Giver or The Hunger Games.

Offered interactions:

Uhh, gestures above?

As stated in my rules, I do not ship unless I know you personally OCC because it just makes it easier to establish relationship dynamics, but that doesn’t mean nothing can naturally develop or a muse can’t develop feelings for Ximena. It just means I have trust issues with people fetishizing the color of my characters’ skin! And if I know you OOC, there’s less of a chance of that happening!!

Honestly, just kill her, it’s fine. If the thread is going that way, it’s ok. She’ll be back. Very angry or scared or frustrated, but she will be fine! Don’t be weird about it though.

She’s a good tutor in all verses, even the ones where she plays dumb! Have her help out one of your muses in any subject!

She’s a very naturally curious person who, if allowed, will plow someone with questions til exhaustion. Have her ask your muse some things to help sort something out!

On that same vein, they could be penpals! Ximena is always writing to other peoples across the globe for knowledge!

current open post/s:

Anything under the /prompt tag and /ic tag!

anything else?:

my discord is open to mutuals if you wanna talk about ideas/concerns/questions!! arróz con babe #8991

tagging: ...u

tagged by: lol i stole it from a random blog

[sims2shrine]

“This soulless game isn’t really ‘The Sims’ for me”

I am starting off this blog with a review for The Sims 3 from Amazon.com user Valentinegirl. Why The Sims 3 on a blog dedicated to The Sims 2, you ask? Because this review details just about everything about The Sims 2 that makes it so special and endearing. Whenever I come back to playing The Sims 2 after a long break, I like to re-read this review because it always excites and inspires me to play this game that I am so passionate about. Note that the opinions expressed in this review do not necessarily correlate with my own -- I do enjoy all of PC versions for the most part. I just believe that The Sims 2 is far superior to the others, hence why this blog was born.

“Like many of the other reviewers here, I have been a HUGE fan of The Sims franchises, losing many pleasant hours to The Sims 1 and its wonderful sequel The Sims 2. Even before The Sims came out I was a Maxis fan, playing games like Sim City and Sim Tower with pleasure. I can't say that The Sims 3 has ‘disappointed’ me because the more I heard about the new game over its development period the more I thought to myself ‘why are they including this feature or dropping that feature? It sounds like they are tampering with the heart of the things I enjoy about The Sims’. But I bought the game anyway in good faith. Needless to say I am now back to playing The Sims 2. The Sims 3 has no interest for me at all in comparison. Despite all the ‘improvements’ - and I admit there are some surface ones - the heart and soul of what The Sims means to me is absent from this game. Unlike other reviewers here, my negative review of this game is not due to any technical difficulties. Perhaps I haven't played long enough to experience any, and at any rate - every hard-core Sims fan has learned to live with the bugs shipped with the game and love it anyway. The modding community has always done a sterling job of cleaning up our games and making them more playable and enjoyable. So my negative rating is not due to bugs or crashes - it is purely based on my perception of the game's enjoyment factor, especially when compared to The Sims 2. To be fair, I will sum up what to me are improvements to the game compared to The Sims 2: - the ‘open neighbourhood’ - the ability to go from one place to the other without a loading screen is a fine idea and works well in principal. But I found that it really didn't impact my playing habits as much as you might think at first. While playing a large, busy family there would be very little time to go rushing off to the park or elsewhere and I found I was ‘household’ focussed in my game playing just as much as in The Sims 2. I actually prefer in some ways the way community lots worked in The Sims 2. If you could organise your sims enough to go off to a community lot, time would actually stand still in the meantime, taking the pressure off your enjoyment of this change in pace for your sims. - No doubt about it, the ‘Create a Style’ colour wheel/pattern maker is the one thing that is far superior to recolouring in The Sims 2. It's great fun and so easy to go through and match up clothing, furniture, wallpaper, etc in an obsessive fashion that suits my type of playing down to the ground. But even here is a caveat - there is no Body Shop type program to truly customise textures. You can recolour only which is hardly satisfying in a creative way compared to being able to extract a texture and import it into Photoshop, thereby putting your own personal stamp on the texture. For example, in The Sims 2 you could export a dress texture and by pasting on a texture of your own you could make the outfit appear to be a cardigan and skirt instead. I am sure custom content creators in time will come up with ways of importing new meshes/textures into The Sims 3, but it is obvious that EA is trying to limit this type of thing to the ‘regular’ user right from the beginning by eliminating a ‘Bodyshop’ program from their development tools. - The ease of angle rotation is an unmixed blessing in this game - something that I wish had happened in The Sims 2 - The outdoor scenery in The Sims 3 is gorgeous from the beach, the shimmering water, to the parks, rolling hills etc. But the limitations put on being able to make this neighbourhood your own again shows up the inflexibility built into this game. Whereas in The Sims 2 you could completely customise your neighbourhood, building it up from a terrain created in Sim City, to decorating it and laying out your lots etc, in this game, EA gives you this beautiful scenery and then severely limits your ability to customise it. You cannot create your own terrain, the community lot buildings are the same everywhere and are not even properly functional, and there are a limited number of lots for your houses. It feels like a ‘dumbed down’ version of a neighbourhood to me that even the ‘open plan’ of the game cannot make up for. - There are a lot more surface details to gameplay in The Sims 3 by the way of person and object interactions and the little missions/opportunities that pop up. I do appreciate the amount of thought that has gone into a lot of these things, like adding depth to the career paths and making such things as painting a picture personal to every different type of sim. But again, when playing a busy family (six kids!) I found that I would just click the opportunities away as an annoyance without even reading them. There was no way my busy mother or father could go running off to the town park for a chess tournament when they were caring for screaming toddlers at home! - The lighting of the new game is a nice update and beautiful. It is also flexible if you have the time or inclination to mess around with the many options provided So even the improvements included in The Sims 3 are mostly mixed blessings for me! Here are the things that have decided me against the game: - The sims themselves. Try as I might, I cannot bond with these weird looking people and that bond between the player and their ‘Simmies’ is the major factor that holds many Sims fans in thrall. For a start, these creations just don't look like sims to me. It is laughable that the creators of this game are claiming that the sculpting tools given to create a sim are more flexible and customisable than in The Sims 2! In fact the sliders are very limited in their scope and have less points of difference than those provided in ‘Bodyshop’. That round-faced, chinless look that we all noticed and wondered at in preview pictures of this game is there for the very specific reason that you can't provide your sim with a proper chin and all of them look blobby and quite fat in the face. The noses look like they are just stuck on anyhow and look very unfortunate in profile. And the empty-looking eyes roll in a very disconcerting and unappealing alien manner. The sims toddlers and children - one of my prime delights in The Sims 2 - all look very ugly and all look exactly the same. One couple I played had six children, just to check out the genetics and all of them looked like peas in a pod until they got to their adult years, and even then the differences were minimal. It was very unsatisfying spending so much time and energy raising these unappealing little clones! - Obviously, I have had trouble creating sims I like to look at. That wouldn't matter as much if I could love the way these sims act and interact. If you think back to The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 what charmed fans of these games was how cute, quirky, funny, unexpected and unique all these characters seemed to the player. I don't accept the criticism the developers of this new game kept stating that ‘all previous sims games had sims who were all the same and all they wanted to do all the time was go to the toilet!’ Well really - do they think The Sims 1 and 2 would have been such world-wide successes if this were actually true?? Of course not! Our sims charmed us, made us laugh, surprised us and often took their own little lives in their own hands and pulled the game in a direction all their own. The two things promised by The Sims 3 creators about how the new sims would behave were 1) There would be a lot more time to attend to the sims' lives and less need to run around after them caring for their basic ‘needs’ - such as sending them to the toilet or to bed; and 2) the new ‘traits’ system would ensure truly unique behaviour from the sims and open up entirely new vistas of personalities and interactions for sims fans to enjoy. I'm sorry to say, but I have to rebut both of these stated improvements. 1)I think every Sims 3 player, no matter how dedicated a fan they are will admit that you spend more time waiting for your sims to fulfil needs than ever before. You spend ages just watching them sleep every night. They seem to have bladder and hunger needs that are never satiated, and you spend more boring time staring at their work building while they are off at work. So between taking them to work, watching them sleep, fulfilling their needs and trying to skill up, there is actually zero time left in a sims' busy day to take them to the park, the beach or visit a neighbour! How is this the ‘new balance’ of life over needs that the developers were so proudly proclaiming?? 2) As for the ‘traits’ system - that has to be the biggest disappointment of all. Sure, picking different traits for your sims will give them some very superficial differences, such as different interaction possibilities with other sims, or different animations. but at a deeper level, each and every sim seems the same over and over again. I think the main reason I say this is if you watch a household full of sims who all supposedly have a unique set of traits, you don't see them acting differently unless you tell them to. In fact they barely interact with one another at all if you don't tell them to. They ignore one another and spend their time being boring - fulfilling the endless needs or perhaps using a skill object. They don't care to interact with one another at all! It is quite possible to have two sims living in the same house forever and they remain total strangers to one another. You have to force them to interact which I find really annoying - I had hoped that they might work out their own relationships as they did in The Sims 2. Another annoying thing is the lack of familial affection between sims. Unlike The Sims 2, you never see a parent hug, kiss or play with a child unless you tell them to. You just don't feel that these sims love/care about one another at all, and I remember that feeling that ‘love is real’ between sims being the primary and most striking point that charmed me when The Sims 2 came out. I am sorry to say, if I compare the depth of personality of a houseful of Sims 2 and 3 sims, the Sims 2 sims would win hands down. In Sims 2, they would take one another in like or dislike, be attracted to some and repulsed by others. The parents would hug their kids when they got home from work, and kiss them goodnight. Husbands and wives would find a quiet corner and canoodle in a very romantic way. In Sims 3 they all coldly ignore one another and act in boring and one-dimensional ways, totally uninfluenced by their so-called ‘unique traits’. This lack of true feeling for my sims and between the sims themselves is my primary reason for calling this latest instalment ‘soulless’. How can you feel attached to these ugly, alien-like people who all look and act the same? - I do not care for one of the key selling points of The Sims 3 - the so-called ‘story progression’. Which sim fan really wants to leave their playable family for a little while only to come back and find they've moved out of the neighbourhood, or had a family while you're not looking with kids you didn't get to name? Where is the appeal in that? Most sims fans love to micro-manage their sim's lives - who they love, marry, have kids with, what they name their kids, where they choose to live, etc. Even more frustrating, the ability to turn story progression off is broken!! Good one, EA!! Another one of my criticisms is that EA has written out some of the most enjoyable and endearing elements of The Sims 2. Eliminating these things really proves to me how little the developers of the game understood the things that true Sims fans love about their games. Here are some as an example: - Story mode is gone. Yes I know there is a camera and yes I know they have all this fancy equipment that enables you to easily upload stories and movies onto the web to share. But I bet 90% of Sims players are not all that interested in sharing stories on the world wide web. The Sims has always been a highly personal game - a fantasy world unique to each sims player, and making up and sharing sims stories is not the driving reason to play the game for most. It is to get lost in your own little self-created kingdom and fall in love with the little pixels that people it. In Sims 1 & 2, using the camera as I played and building up an album for each little family became a mainstay of my playing style over the years. Most of the time I would not even add text to the pictures. They would be safely stored in each family's little album and every once in a while I would choose to browse through this visual record of my sims' little lives and enjoy again the sentimental, surprising, funny little incidents that marked the passage of that family's life. I would record the unexpected or charming little things that made my sims seem unique, like when my prim little sim teenager fell in love with the neighbourhood ‘bad boy’ all on her own and against any of my expectations. Or when my shy, nerdy sim who lived with a party animal room-mate spent all her time in her room reading on the bed or, of all things - washing the windows! whenever her room-mate threw one of her wild parties! Not having this record at hand of the family's little story in Sims 3 is definitely a contributing factor to the feeling of the game having little forward progression - every day seems like the one before. - Eliminating memories from the Sims is another way EA has wiped out the sense you might have of the family's story and history. I know memories caused all sorts of trouble in The Sims 2 if you moved sims indiscriminately from one neighbourhood to the next, but I think for many of us, having that sim's little milestones recorded in their memories really gave the sim a feel of individuality and personal growth. After not playing a particular family for a long time the first thing I would do would be to flip through the family's album and check their memories. This would put me back in touch with where the family was in their own particular life story. - Another charming Sims 2 feature that was wiped out was the attraction system. I know the original Sims 2 game did not ship with this, but it was added early on in one of the expansion packs and I am sure every Sims 2 fan absolutely loved it. It was another way to differentiate sims from one another. You could create down to the finest detail two sims who you thought would be ‘perfect’ for each other, only to find they couldn't stand each other! Then two of the unlikeliest sims would get together all of their own accord, making you feel that these little people had minds and hearts of their own. I loved this feature so much that my playing style was to resolutely let each sim choose his or her own mate with no help from me. There are other reasons for me not to like this highly polished, highly superficial instalment of The Sims franchise. But in the end, it came down to these basic feelings about the game - I don't care how gorgeous it is to look at if the gameplay is shallow and boring - I feel like EA is really dumbing down long-time sims fans by trying to eliminate custom content, charging like a wounded bull for their sub-standard stuff and doing their best to stifle the creativity of the custom content community - The sims are cookie-cutter clones of one another, and have no charm either of physical appearance or personality. The life and soul has been sucked out of these pixel-people - There is no sense of story, no unexpected interactions, no story mode or memories to record the sims lives. They no longer care about one another at all - parents, children, lovers, room-mates, friends - it doesn't matter what relationship the sims have to one another, there is no desire for these people to interact or develop their relationships unless you force it. I am mad at EA for ‘missing the boat’ on this franchise upgrade. In fact, it no longer feels like The Sims at all to me. All the charm and spontaneity has gone out of the game. I suppose it's not surprising I feel this way - Will Wright and his unique Maxis team of developers are long gone and EA has taken over. EA have no idea, and do not care what made The Sims beloved of fans the world over and instead are forcing something on them that has only a surface relationship to previous games. Much in the same way they ‘improved’ Sim City out of all recognition of the original game (’Sim City Societies’), they have done this to The Sims and that, I think is unforgivable. Fortunately, The Sims 2 will always be here and I am gladly getting back to my cute, funny, irreverent, surprising little sims with the huge added bonus of all the expansion packs and custom content I have built up over the years. I doubt if I will ever come back to The Sims 3 even if they bring out boatloads of expansion packs. If the game has no soul, it cannot be loved.

This review was written on July 27th, 2009. Source: Amazon.com. Link to original review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RCEHMW5QIIA7B/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00166N6SA

[savantv]

Eat Slow, Eat Small, Eat Smart

How can our knowledge of the human brain help us to eat better and be more fit? Can cognitive neuroscience help you to stick to a healthy eating plan? In this lecture, I’ll seek to answer these questions based on a variety of studies about how the human appetite and drive system interact with reasoning and decision-making systems. Your brain and body contains an impressively robust system for seeking out the proper calories and nutrient that it need to survive, and thrive. However most developed countries and environments are places in which food is plentiful, very easy to get. Meanwhile, our biological systems have a few quirks that lead to over consumption and weight problems. Here’s a familiar tip that overcomes one of these quirks.

Tip: If your trying to cut down on the amount you eat, slow down during meals.

Eat a moderate amount, and than take a break, maybe for 20 minutes. If your still hungry after those 20 minutes, you can certainly have more but many people find that they just aren’t as hungry as they thought they were after that pause.

Let’s review some of the brain mechanism involved in regulating hunger and satiation. I say some, because there are about a dozen different mechanisms that have been identified in the human nervous system that contribute to this process. They all consist of negatived feedback loops, however, with very similar information processing structure. So once you understand one or two of them, you’ll have a pretty good working knowledge of how the whole system functions.

Let’s start with two hormones- - leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin is produced by the fat cells in our body. Ghrelin is produced by cells that live in our intestines. The amount of these hormones that get released are strongly influenced by our eating behaviors. Fat, remember, is this amazing energy storage mechanism that our body uses. Excess energy is converted into fat. When we run low on energy, fat is converted back into a form that can be used to power any cell in our body. Whenever our body starts storing energy,  when it starts converting excess energy to increase the content of fat cells, leptin is released by the fat cells into the bloodstream. The leptin travels through your bloodstream and eventually passes into the brain. Some of the leptin reaches the hypothalamus in a region called the ventral medial nucleus. From there, leptin binds with neuronal receptors and boosts activation of certain neural circuits. When the circuits are active, you feel full, and typically stop eating. Ghrelin does the opposite. When your intestines finish processing food they start making Ghrelin. As time passes, they continue making more and more Ghrelin. Like leptin, Ghrelin makes its way to the brain and causes you to start feeling hungry again. Together, these systems regulate food intake. If you feel hungry or full, your eating behaviors will tend to behave accordingly. I should know that this is the system that drive your inner two year old. These are mechanisms that drive your unconscious eating behaviors. We often decide to eat for reasons other than hunger. If you’re at a dinner party, and toshe puts out food for everyone, they are conscious, social, propriety reasons to eat at least a little bit. But most of our eating, particularly our sense of how much to eat and when to stop eating, are regulated by this leptin and Ghrelin system.

Disruptions of these systems can have dire consequences. The hormones were initially discovered in a strain of mutant mice, who would just eat and eat and eat. They would get very fat in the process. Without that leptin to tell the mice that they were full, they just kept consuming more and more calories. Several companies market leptin supplements that will create an artificial sense of fullness by introducing extra leptin into the bloodstream. This work in the short term, but the leptin system, like most others in the body, is adaptive. Coffee drinkers know all about how the body adapts. The first few times you drink coffee, The caffeine travels to the brain and produces a strong boost in arousal. But especially if you tend to drink coffee at about the same time, in about the same place, everyday, your brain learns that and compensate for it. As the time for coffee approaches, as you smell the coffee brewing in the pot, your brain knows that the stimulant is coming. The brain then down regulates activity just enough that, when the coffee arrives, it boosts you right back up to where you would have otherwise been. Eventually, you need that coffee, not a boost above normal levels of arousal, but just to maintain your typical level. If your a heavy coffee drinker, skipping the coffee will sometimes produce a headache, as the brain inhabits it’s activity and you don’t boost it back up with coffee. The same thing happens with leptin supplements. They’ll work for awhile but they’ll quickly lose their effectiveness. And if you stop taking them, you will be subject to a very strong hunger sensation.

Leptin and Ghrelin do a good job of telling your brain about what’s going on in your gut. If the digestive process is done, and if your fat cells are releasing energy into the bloodstream just to keep things going, there’ll be very little leptin and lot of Ghrelin, and your stomach may be growling. You will feel hungry. Conversely, if there’s not so much Ghrelin, but a lot of leptin that means you still have food left in your digestive tract, and will likely not be thinking of food. If someone offers you a snack, you are more likely to say that you are full. How does this relate to the tip to eat slowly? Why would a 20 minute break in a middle of a meal reduce your food intake? The leptin and Ghrelin system is great, but the system is slow. From the time you start eating, the full impact of the food on Ghrelin and leptin can take up to 20 minutes. If you give your body time to finish that process, you might find yourself quite satisfied with much less food than you’d otherwise realize. In fact, that 20 minute break in the middle of the meal may not turn out to be the middle of the meal at all. After the break, you might frequently come to realize that it was actually the end of your eating.  when you don’t take this 20 minute break, when you instead eat continuously until you feel full, you’ll continue to feel more full for 20 full minutes after you stop eating. I’ve had this experience a lot where I feel very, very hungry. Maybe I missed lunch, and I’ve been doing some work that consumes a lot of calories, maybe running or walking around the lecture hall for serval hours waving my hands around. I finally get to hetable and start to eat. I’m so hungry that I wolf down a lot of food. After about 20 minutes of eating, I feel full and stop. Over the next 20 minutes, however, I realize what I’ve done. I feel more and more full, uncomfortably full. Eventually, I’m sitting somewhere groaning, fegelin, bloated, wishing I’d remembered this 20 minute break tip after the first few minutes of eating. Most people presume that, if you’re receiving a strong hunger signal from your body, that it means you are in dire need of a lot of food. It turns out that just isn’t true. If you’re truly starving, if you’ve cut from food for 48 hours or more, you’ll feel periodic hunger but most of the time, the hunger signals stop all together. When you receive that strong hunger signal from your body, when the Ghrelin and lack of leptin are stimulating the hunger centers in your brain, those signals are telling you that your body has some strong need for some food, not a strong need for a lot of food. There’s an important difference there. The next time you feel really hungry, thinking that through might help you eat a more healthy amount. If you’re eating with other people, this is a good time to have a conversation. Revisit the events of the day, maybe discuss plans for the future. This 20 minute break can actually be a really pleasant and valuable thing. The tradition of having a meal divided into a first course, then a second course, and so on, can have a similar effect.

Researchers have identified a lot of things that might be responsible for our modern obesity epidemic. There are a lots of studies that point to the dramatic increase in our use of corn-based sweeteners, for instance things like high fructose corn syrup. Corn-based sweeteners are cheaper than the cane-based sugars that were more typically used in the past. Manufacturers like the lower cost, of course, since lower cost means greater profit. And corn-based sweeteners taste very sweet. A typical consumer either likes or doesn’t even notice, the difference in taste. The evidence of this is a little mixed, but some studies suggest that, when you consume high fructose corn syrup, it reduces your brain’s normal response to leptin. You consume the calories, but you body doesn’t signal an appropriate stop eating signal. If you have a resistance to leptin, over time this leptin resistance can, in principle, lead to substantial weight gain. Similarly the obesity epidemic might be caused by the rise of processed sugary fatty foods. And we spend more time insectary activities, things like working in front of computer screens, been playing in front of all sorts of video screens, more than we have in the past. The reduction in physical activity, especially during childhood seems particularly responsible. There’s another culture change in our eating behaviors, however that doesn’t get discussed very often. Modern eating has became less and less of a social event over the past several decades & people tend to go towards the direction of eating on the go which causes to miss out on the social event itself & eating more. So if your eating, make sure you stop for 20 minutes to let your body catch up at some point early in the meal, or make the meal a slower social occasion in general. Either way you will eat less without having to suffer through any additional hunger.

Tip: To reduce your calorie intake, eat with men.

Molly Allen-O’Donnell and her colleagues recently performed a set of studies in which they watched people ordering food in restaurants. When women order food in all female groups, they tend to order and consume an average of about 833 calories worth of food. When women ate with a man in the group, they ordered less is, only about 721 calories. When there’s a man around, women seem to eat less around 13% less out of traditional speculations & the effect was the same for the men . When a man ordered food with only women around, in the studies, he tend to eat about 1162 calories. If there was other men in the group, The men consumed about 952 calpries. Whatever the reason that’s about 18% less. If you eat with a male companion you tend to eat less. 

A more recent growth of work, however, has focused on studying positive aspects of psychological well-being rather than only focusing on the negatives. This school of thought has come to be as “Positive Psychology” and it’s revolutionized on how researchers think about a variety of different aspects of human perception, cognition, and behavior. The general goal is to identify people who are thriving, and then study what factors are associated with that well-being.

So from this positive perspective, how should we solve the problem of obesity? How can we best help people to lose weight when they want to? For many decades, researchers have experimented with people who are overweight, with the goal of changing their behavior so that they can lose excess weight. From the positive perspective, researchers spend their time studying people who are not overweight. When people with healthy weight select foods to eat, how do they do so? When someone with healthy weight is eating, what makes him or her decide to stop?  when you ask someone with a weight problem why they eat and what they choose to eat, you will get a lot of different answers like I eat when I’m depressed or anxious or bored & the list goes on. When you ask someone that does not have a weight problem, their answer is much shorter such as they are not Hungry. If your hungry your body is sending you a message, a message that it’s changed from a mode of processing incoming energy to one of needing more. If you ever tried a calorie-restricted eating plan, sometimes called a diet, you know this feeling well. The eating plan says you can eat a certain prescribed list of items for breakfast and than, when that’s done, your not allowed to eat anything else until lunch. Your inner two-year-old might want more, but your explicit conscious mind can prevent him from taking control and having more to eat which is a short term solution. There’s another problem with ignoring this hunger signal. The leptin and Ghrelin influence the hypothalamus, which regulates your internal sense of hunger & influence your body metabolism. Your body seeks to maintain its weight, to store some fat incase there is a famine in the future. And the way your body can tell when food is growing scarce, too much Ghrelin and not enough leptin. The hunger hormones will actually reduce the rate at which your body burns energy. For instance, they can make you feel sluggish, which causes you to move around less. Too much Ghrelin will also activate the mechanism that stores energy in fat cells. So if your feeling hungry you will use fewer calories that you eat, store more of them by enlarging fat cells. You can fight this process with physical activity. But unless you’re going to go to extremes with that, it can often prove to be a losing battle. There’s a lot of great reasons to exercise, your brain even produces extra new neurons if you exercise regularly. But for weight loss, exercise alone rarely seems to be effective. If you start a new exercise program, you’ll burn more calories but the hunger system in your brain will be future stimulated. If you don’t also regulate food intake, a number of studies have found that the eating rises to meet the amount of extra calories burned. If you burn more calories than you consume, the hunger system gets turned on, and stays on, until you get those extra calories back. A number of neuroscientists have proposed that the human brain regulate ms it’s weight, based on an internal set point like a thermostat that regulates the temperature by turning the heat or air conditioning on & off to keep the temperature relatively constant. Only this thermostat regulates your weight and it uses the hunger to maintain that weight. Your body seems built to do this but there are ways to hack the system, to get around this internal regulation system. My tip for this section was to eat when you’re hungry because if your don’t your unconscious regulator systems will just compensate and wait until you aren’t paying attention. I said you should eat but I didn’t say what. When your hungry eat a small snack, one that is rich in protein, or high in fiber, or ideally both. Avoid eating foods high in sugars and fats & even if you consume the same calories of foods, those foods influence that Leptin-Ghrelin system less, resulting in less change in your perception of how hungry you are.

Lean Turkey, beans, raw fruits, a smoothie with some tofu mixed in, are thousands of examples of foods that will, with only a small amount of caloric value, turn off that hunger response, as well as the resulting responses that your body makes. It might be that you’ll need to have lots of these snacks. Even if you have, say 150 calories snack to turn off that hunger two, three times a day in between meals, it’s a benefit in the long run, when compared to gorging yourself on a high fat, high calorie binges at times. Some reachers suggest preparing these snacks well in advance of when you need them. As you alter your eating plan, several parts of the human brain will come to the rescue. The most notable of those— most notable of those brain areas is the orbitofrontal cortex. It’s located near the front of the brain, just above your eyeballs. This area is activated by many types of decision-making behaviors, but especially decisions about food. There are strong connections between the orbitofrontal region and areas of the brain associated with hunger. In facts, when your hungry, this area of the brain, it’s primed for activation. When a food related stimulates appears, the orbitofrontal cortex responds a little at any time. But if your hungry, it response a lot. This area of the brain seems to be a major player in your decisions about what looks good to eat. It should be said that humans are impressively omnivores that will eat an amazing range of different things. Every time we eat our body does a little data collection. It encodes the flavors, the texture, the smells, even the social context in which the meal occurred. Then, after the food goes into the digestive tract, it waits to find what happens. If you happen to feel nauseous afterwards, than your brain, in cooperation with your orbitofrontal cortex, concludes that those flavors, texture, smell, and social contexts, those are things to be avoided in the future. If, on the other hand there’s a good outcome, if the body gets a boost of energy and feels satisfied than a positive association is made to the food. As you eat something repeatedly, your brain forms associations with it, just like to any other experience. If your reinforced for doing any behavior, then you’ll be more likely to perform it again in the future. If your punished, then you’ll be less likely to do that thing in the future. This flavor preference learning system is always at work. Every time you eat.

The flexibility of the system to learn to like, essentially, anything has been responsible for humans spread across the globe, and responsible for them finding good foods wherever they went. Not all animals have this system. Such as Pandas are born with a strong preference for bamboo shoots. If you take them away, they won’t learn to eat other things. Not so with humans. If for some reason, you were to eat a pencil and some mad scientist could sneak good things into your stomach shortly after you did, you would learn to crave pencils when your hungry. The mad scientist would have to take out the chewed up pencil, so that it wouldn’t make you sick afterwards. After eating a few pencils when you were hungry, your orbitofrontal cortex would be primed for action. When you glanced over and saw someone writing with a pencil, you would unconsciously be drawn to that pencil. Your mouth would begin to salivate & crave having a bite of the pencil. There’s a tip here, but it’s a subtle one. I’m not suggesting that you do something, rather you think about this system, the unconscious flavor preference system, and give it enough time to work. Now I don’t think you want to teach yourself to crave pencils, but there are a lot of healthy foods out there, and not just carrots, that you can teach your brain to crave.

[jayxscripta]

The Mahaigner - Chapter Four

She woke up, like her body was on autopilot. She groaned softly and flung off the covers of the bed, reaching for her phone on the nightstand. Maybe it would have been the right time to wake up, if she had been in London. But she wasn’t in London, and it wasn’t almost eight in the morning—rather, she was in New York, and the clock on her phone read 2:50 a.m.

Carefully, she set her feet on the floor on the floor, blinking sleep from her eyes. She didn’t feel like turning on the main lights, or the lamp, in case she managed to convince herself to go back to sleep, but her stomach was grumbling, demanding satiation. Maybe she should have stuck around earlier and eaten some pizza. With any luck, there might be some leftover. Assuming they saved leftovers. Nobody would dare throw away pizza.

She threw on her jeans and left the room, tiptoeing down the dark hallway in search of the lounge, using the flashlight on her phone as guidance. Now if only she could remember how Vision had brought them back to their rooms—

Eventually, she crossed the lounge—grateful for the flashlight when she nearly tripped over the coffee table—and entered the kitchen, feet tapping against the cold tile floor. Madeline immediately went to the refrigerator, finding herself blinking yet again at the light streaming from inside the fridge. Lo and behold lay the pizza box, second shelf from the bottom. There wasn’t much else inside, though, save for some hot sauce, bottled water, and a jug of orange juice on the door. “Do they even eat around here?” she muttered to herself, removing the whole box from the fridge.

She grabbed a slice and shut the box, leaving it out just in case she wanted a second piece later. Madeline crossed the lounge again, planning on going back to her room, but stopped in her tracks when she noticed a faint glow coming from another off-shooting hallway. Changing course, she crept down the hallway and peeked into the room where the light was coming from. It was lit by the soft glow of a rather large, pale blue computer screen, with a design of some sort rotating across the monitor. They looked like a set of armored gloves, and she could barely make out the title of the file—something along the lines of “energy gauntlets, power transferring containment cuffs for Rosie”.

Madeline couldn’t restrain a small, albeit somewhat begrudging smile at the site before her. Beneath the glowing screen, Tony Stark lay with his face flat on the desk in front of him, leaned forwards in his chair far too much for it to be comfortable. It was evident he was stressed, and probably didn’t get much sleep if he spent most of his nights tinkering on stuff like this. Still, he looked oddly peaceful, much different than when she had seen him earlier, so she slipped away down the hall, unwilling to risk waking him from a restful slumber.

Her curiosity satisfied, and her hunger dissipating as she munched away at the pizza—it was pretty good—but she was far from tired now. With nothing else to do, she decided to explore a bit more, seeing as the whole compound was sleep and nobody was around to shadow or stop her.

She had been meandering for about a half of a minute, all the while wondering how long the hallway was,when she heard voices murmuring close by. There was a room just ahead, door half open and leaking moonlight onto the floor. Stopping, she was suddenly aware of just how loud she was probably being. But the voices continued talking, so they obviously didn’t know she was there.

By all accounts, she should have turned around and went back to her room. And normally, she probably would have; but the logic in the decision-making part of her brain seemed to have shut off anyways, no matter how awake she was.

As she kept listening, she realized the two voices belonged to Thor and Loki. Apparently, the whole compound wasn’t asleep, as she had presumed. They must have been having problems settling in as well. How long had they been out here?

“They’re tolerating you, which is better than I had initially hoped for.” Thor’s voice.

“Give it time, their welcome wagon will roll away eventually.” Loki. Was she imagining it, or did he sound just a little bitter?

“Midgardian slang?” Madeline could practically hear the eyebrow raise through Thor’s voice. “You continue to surprise me, brother.”

There was a mirror on the wall to her left, somehow reflecting part of the room’s interior. She could see the window, where the light was coming from—and where Loki was resting in the alcove, back to the wall, legs extended—but that was all. She watched as he tried and failed to suppress a tiny chuckle. “I surprise myself, too.” There was a beat before he said, “I’m sorry about your friend. Out of all of them she seemed most… reasonable.”

“I’m afraid you’ve been fooled by the small interactions the two of you had,” Thor responded, snorting. His tone turned regretful once again. “But I could use her help right now. She understood people. If she were here, she probably wouldn’t like you, but she would understand our position.”

“If she were here, she would be yelling at Stark.”

Thor laughed, like he was remembering something. “You’re probably right.” Then his voice turned sober. “I think I may have been too harsh on him. He feels guilty enough already. Anyone can see that much.”

“And now he tries to make up for his mistake by granting grace to other people he puts under arrest,” Loki mused. She had to agree—from what she had gathered, Stark was fueled by guilt.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m familiar with the concept,” he returned, “but I wouldn’t have pegged him for the type.”

“Guilt makes you do strange things,” Thor agreed, and by the tone of his voice Madeline got the impression he was studying his brother. “The way Vision explained it, it seems that was the reason Stark signed the Accords in the first place. I don’t see why he would, otherwise.”

“Not if he valued his team as much as you say.”

There was a long pause. “What would you have done?” Thor posed, curious.

Loki looked down, hands fidgeting. “No one should be controlled by another person. Or fear for their life because they’re different.”

Madeline was jolted by the feeling that she was listening to a conversation that had drifted into private waters. She had eavesdropped before, yes, but this instance felt particularly intrusive. Turning to leave, she managed to hear Thor’s teasing response, “See? We’ll make a hero of you yet.”

Embarrassed, she darted back to the kitchen, passing a still sleeping Stark. She snagged another slice of pizza, put the box back in the fridge, and returned to her temporary bedroom. Tried to act like she hadn’t just glimpsed a conversation between two brothers discussing something that clearly wasn’t just about Stark. A conversation that, quite honestly, left her unsure of how to perceive either of them.

[welcometojapha-blog]

Worms!

It is August in Japha.  The leaves are starting to turn, school is about to start back up, you know the drill. There’s even a 50’s themed party on campus to welcome the returning students; how fun!

Chris was wearing a black leather jacket; it isn’t exactly the right style, but Chris didn’t exactly want to go to this party in the first place, but some friends were pressuring him so...it's fine, whatever. To prepare for a night of forced social interaction he didn’t want in the first place, Chris knew just what he needed: bong and video games!

Chris had just gotten to the part of Earthbound here Jeff is crossing the lake on the Loch Ness Monster-inspired sea monster (you know the part), when suddenly there was a knock at his front door. Seeing no one through the peephole, Chris opened the door to find an unfamiliar child at his door (not that Chris is super familiar with any children...just, like, he doesn’t know this kid from anywhere). Before Chris could figure out whose kid this is or where he came from, the kid asked, “Does it bother you that the dreams call you a girl?”

Chris was shaken by this.  This boy was entirely unfamiliar to him, yet somehow knew A LOT about Chris that Chris had yet to share with ANYBODY. How did he know about the dreams? And the misgendering bitch that came with the dreams?

Before Chris got a chance to engage in some banter that would have no doubt been lively and productive, another new person appeared in the hall and scooped the boy up.  The man quickly explained that his name was Josh and that the boy was his son, Jordan, and that they had just moved into Chris’ apartment complex, just down the hall (no judgement, I mean, Chris lives there and all, but it isn’t a great place for a kid to have to grow up, even a freaky, weird kid like Jordan).  As the pair leave for their apartment, Jordan turned around and whispered at Chris, “The Diner.” Chris knew exactly what he meant….pancakes would be amazing before the party. And with that, Chris found the nearest save point in his game and set off for the local diner.

The scene at the diner was...well, it was weird.  There were cops all over (which Chris didn’t love, given his current state of inebriation), and the owner was shouting loudly through a megaphone.

Oh and there was a MASSIVE sinkhole directly outside the diner….that was also new. Being reassured that the restaurant was still open by the yelling owner, however, Chris was undeterred and continued on his quest to satiate the great hunger growing inside him.

Though the food at the diner was fantastic as always (at least a massive sinkhole can’t change that), however Chris could not shake the conversation he had had with Jordan in his doorway earlier. He needed answers, and there was only one place to get them. So Chris set off to meet with Antigone Jameson, a local drag queen who was basically like a second mother to Chris and always seemed to know a little about a lot of different shit. On the walk over, Chris heroically set up a Twitter account (@SinkPit) in an effort to bravely snark about any further weird shit that might happen as a result of the diner’s new sinkhole. That completed, Chris refocused his energy on getting some much needed information out of Antigone.

Chris got no information out of Antigone. The most she had to offer was that kids are weird (which is true, but Chris already knew that). When the sinkhole came up in conversation, however, Antigone bolted into a secret backroom of her shop (which Chris until this point had assumed was more an urban legend than anything real), and remained there for 10-15 minutes before returning just to tell Chris he should be careful and sending him on his way.  Feeling the weird interruption in their conversation deserved no follow up, Chris left without fuss. It was nearly time for him to make an appearance at this party on campus, anyway.

As Chris approached the frat house where the party was being held, things suddenly started to look better: people were already leaving in droves! Unfortunately, before Chris could text his friends that the party was dead and they should just have a drunk movie night back at his place, the people fleeing the house got closer, and Chris realized that maybe something more was going on; they all seemed pretty freaked out.

Luckily, it was around this time Chris noticed Caleb, another guy from around town, headed into the frat house with the single biggest axe Chris had ever seen in person.  The ratio of axe-to-man wasn’t totally stupid or anything, either, as Caleb was probably one of the single biggest guys Chris had ever seen in person. Emboldened by the assistance of a real-life giant, Chris headed inside to investigate what was scaring all these drunk college kids away.

Once inside, it quickly became apparent to both that the real danger was in the kitchen. Caleb wanted to just scavenge leftover party booze and play Goldeneye on the N64, but Chris knew that if they didn’t take care of whatever this was, nobody would, so he convinced Caleb that they should investigate what is going on elsewhere in the house first, then they could return to alcohol and nostalgic multiplayer action later (SPOILER ALERT: They never returned to play Goldeneye).

Once they got to the kitchen, the boys found a trapped party-goer; some girl Chris didn’t know was trapped in the far corner of the kitchen by a worm.  A big worm.  A really big worm. Think of like one of the worms from Dune or Tremors, only instead of those-sized, it was about the size of a medium dog (so I guess it could’ve been a worse situation). A quick Jack Daniels bottle to the back of the thing’s (probably) head redirected its aggression from the girl, and from there it proved little match for Caleb’s axe.

While making her exit, the girl informed Chris and Caleb of two very important things: these worms don’t like light and there is another worm in a nearby bedroom. Regrettably, when they opened the bedroom door, they found they were too late; the damned worms had gotten Chad! Why, of all the people at this stupid party, did Chad have to die? He had always been so awesome!

In a blind rage, the two immediately dispatched the worm that had gotten Chad and hurried on, leaving Chad to finally rest with a little dignity (a much dignity as a body can have after having a hole chewed through it by a giant worm).

While sweeping the house for others in need of assistance, Chris and Caleb encountered another brave party-goer, some rando Chris also did not know, who was in the process of tenderizing what appeared to be an already dead worm with a baseball bat.  After some brief discussion, the new guy proudly proclaimed that there were only two remaining worms and they were both in the backyard and valiantly volunteered to lead the trio into battle. However, Chris knew the true order of things, and took front and center himself.

Once in the backyard, Chris quickly surmised that in addition to light, these worms didn’t seem so keen on water.  Armed with this knowledge, Chris managed to used his cell phone flashlight to wrangle the worms into a position where they were pinned between the light and a large puddle that had formed in the backyard.  From there, Caleb took out a worm out handily, as they had also proven to be not wild about being hit with axes.  The third guy, however succumbed to his worm, but not before getting in several good blows with his baseball bat. Seeing his new comrade fall in glorious battle, Chris launched himself forward and delivered the final blow to the the worm, quipping “Welcome to Earf!” Everyone really appreciated the timely topical reference (at least Caleb did...since he was the only one left alive here).

Following the battle, as Chris was helping Caleb load one of the worm carcasses into Caleb’s trunk to take to an alcoholic friend of Caleb’s at a nearby bar, Chris realized what he needed more than anything. The whip! His whip! That whip from the dreams and then it turned up in real life and he freaked out and buried it in the graveyard because he didn’t think monsters were real but now he needed it because apparently monsters are real. After a little convincing, Caleb agreed the whip is too useful, and they should halt further investigation until they acquired it.

On the way to the cemetery, the pair met up with Dave, a friend of Chris’ from work at the library, and Denise and Padma, whom Chris knew from her research work in the library and from just generally being hot around campus, respectively. They all seemed just as on board with the “get the whip” plan as Caleb had been, so the crew continued on toward the cemetery.

Once they all arrived at the local Catholic cemetery (the others were in a golf cart; did I mention that Dave also drives a golf cart? He does.), Chris borrowed a shovel Caleb had been keeping in his trunk for just such an occasion and headed on in.  Chris made his way to the back corner of the graveyard, to the lone Jewish person buried there (Jewish grave in a Catholic cemetery...pretty memorable marker for a buried treasure, huh?).  Five paces from the back of the headstone, and Chris started digging.

And digging.

And digging (should be to it any minute now).

And then Chris heard the others seemingly talking amongst themselves, but he couldn’t make out any particular conversation because he was still digging.

And digging (okay, we have got to be at least a foot too deep at this point).

And nothing. No whip. No trace of a whip. No note saying where the whip had gone. It just wasn’t there anymore.

From up on the surface, someone said something to Chris about a humanoid monster, pallid grey, with dripping fangs, nasty talons, and a loping gait, but he wasn’t really in a place to absorb information anymore. The whip was gone and he was all alone with monsters in the world.

Some time later, Chris found himself in the golf cart with Dave and Denise, headed to the police station to fix some issue or other that had come up while he was out of it (something about Padma teleporting the dead worm and leaving it on the police station’s doorstep).

When they got to the police station, however, they found the dead worm had already been dealt with by someone else.  The team immediately agreed that they needed to make sure the body wasn’t getting into the wrong hands, but while they were discussing the best way to locate the current whereabouts of the worm, Officer Elaine Bullock emerged from the station.  While Elaine was a friend of Chris’ and generally pretty cool about most things, Chris figured the less police involvement at the moment, the better, so through distraction on the part of Dave and Denise, as well as a bit of cunning on Chris’ part, Chris was able to extract himself from the impromptu interrogation and make his way around to the back of the station to poke around.

Around back, Chris was able to pull himself up enough to see in through a small slit window.  From there, he was able to see that the police had in fact acquired the dead worm and appeared to be performing experiments of some sort on it. Just as he was taking all this in, Chris received a telepathic message from Denise that Officer Bullock was coming back around his way, so Chris courageously played possum so that Elaine would just think he had wandered off and passed out, because everyone knows, you can’t arrest a passed out person.

The ruse worked! As soon as he was discovered, Chris almost immediately heard a sigh of defeat, followed by footsteps headed back away from him. Once he was sure he was alone again, Chris headed for the nearby river to lay low until the heat was off.

Eventually, Padma and Caleb turned back up from wherever they had gone off to following the failed whip-retrieval mission at the cemetery, and then Denise and Dave reemerged from the police station, having had the entire worm adventure dismissed by officials as a one-off strange creature escaped from the campus lab, with “drug use” filling in the gaps in that explanation.

After a bit more discussion, the group retired to Caleb’s back yard to burn some duffle bag that Caleb and Padma said needed destroying.  Upon lighting the bag, it quickly became apparent that there had been a body inside (the smell wasn’t the best).

In an effort to speed things up to get rid of the smell, Denise used some weird magic thing she can do to make the fire heat up to the point of incinerating the body and duffle bag, after telekinetically throwing a lawn chair around in order to break up a fight brewing between Padma and Dave (Padma isn’t a very nice person).

Almost as soon as the body was dealt with, Denise suddenly freaked the fuck out like she had a really loud noise going in her ears, and with some difficulty, was able to explain that an alarm she had placed back at the sinkhole to make sure no one else messed with it while it was unattended had just gone off, but also wasn’t functioning properly so it was WAY too loud for her. The team quickly got the magic alarm dispelled and hurried over to the sinkhole to make sure everything was okay.

Once at the sinkhole, the gang found that nothing was out of the ordinary, but through the use of more magic the Chris didn’t fully understand, Padma and Denise joined forces to see that someone had recently entered the sinkhole, and then exited again shortly thereafter.

Seeing no more immediate danger to deal with, but plenty of new weird shit to still figure out, the newly formed Monster Mashers vowed to solve all the supernatural shit that needs solving around Japha and the surrounding region, and with that, they dispersed for the evening to get some sleep.

P.s.: Monster Mashers?! No...no, that’s not what they’re going to be called. Sorry about that, but we’ll do better with it next time!

[jessieclements8]

A Few Do's And Don'ts For Building Your Fashion Wardrobe

In the field of today, are able to clearly discovered that the teenagers have their very fashion statements and attitude, and they each follow newest fashion trends. The definition of being trendy and chic differs individual to person, but in case teenagers just about every day that most of the teenagers no matter what class they belong to, they like to follow similar trends. Teenagers are browsing a phase of life when they need to look unique from the rest of their peers, thus most analysts come i'll carry on with their personal and individual fashion arguments. Here I will discuss some on-going trendy clothes among the teenagers.

Hebrew tee shirts make excellent gifts. A person can gift these t-shirts to someone without any reason, there are t shirts that can be gifted during special opportunities. There are t shirts are usually especially designed for festivals like Rosh Hashanah or Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah. or other jewish breaks. There are a lot of other shirts that are so funny. They can only contain words or phrases or they become accompanied by cartoons on top of that.

Gender Studies - You must take note the associated with target audience you suffer from. Will they be generally woman or man? You might Women Printed T-shirts desire to choose story of clothing that would suit both sexes.

If you need to provide shirts for several sizes you need to shirt lines that carry "companion" shirts for men, women and kids that are included in a vary from youth to plus and tall. Don't mix brands if possible, choose shirts in issue brand using a wide selection of sizes enable keep colors ongoing. Look at the available sizes as well as any additional costs for sizing when choosing your pair of shoes.

When thinking about T shirts people get them with out giving much attention. T- Shirts are not remain same good old costume possess grown access to the and taken a new meaning.There are T shirts which are full of tech features known of geek tee shirts. They are designed to satiate your tech hunger. Are list of some of very popular interactive geek t shits. wi-fi T shirt: For everybody who is real surfer and plan to get pertaining to net at all times where you are then extremely important for to know if the place you are in has wi-fi or not solely. This can easily be done using a T shirts yes, wi-fi geek t-shirts sends and receives signals if however any active wi-fi. Its signal sets out to glow higher and higher as density of wi fi signal grows.

Skirts to be able to in fashion for in the past many decades. Weight reduction . worn by girls and women of ages young and old and body shapes. There actually number of several styles and fashions when referring to skirts; some in the are while some are short. Can be a skirts for instance miniskirts, pencil skirts, stretch skirts, high waist skirts, front pleated skirts, frilled skirts as well as a wide associated with others. Found different styles and sizes, these can be found in the number quite a few colors and patterns. Teenage girls love miniskirts and pencil skirts the extremely. Pencil skirts are ideal for college and school use.

Quality: The quantity a material is important if you think about about wedding dresses. The material using for making t-shirts are good cotton really. It gives more relaxed and comfortable feeling those who wear t-shirts.

Another great item to giveaway is often a shirt. Custom T-shirts are rather affordable when bought in large. Typically, the larger quantity you order, greater deal you'll get. Shirts are a great way to promote events if you propose one in order to just stimulate your name available in the market.

[thejustinmarshall]

A Psychologist Rates The Strategies I Use To Deal With Stress And Anxiety

Like you, I am trying to get better at dealing with stress and anxiety. I am aware that I suck at it, and that the methods I have used to try to deal with it, along with not being created or recommended by any mental health professional, also suck. But I thought I would get a professional opinion on how those methods suck, and even maybe how much they suck, so I asked my friend and psychologist Dr. Trevor Davis for his professional opinion. He rated each strategy from one to five stars, one being bad and five being good, and wrote some notes in response to each one:

Strategy: Thinking “Everything Will Be Fine Once I Get [Thing] Done”

In this strategy, I do nothing to mitigate feelings of anxiety and stress when things are piling up on me and it feels as if it’s all very out of control. Instead of actually changing the way I look at things, or do things, or even stopping every once in a while to do some calming breathing exercises, I just keep going, for hours or days at a time, telling myself that once I finish a creative project, or meet a deadline, or get moved into a new house, or get through a public speaking event, I will feel better and things will be OK.

Rating: 2 Stars

Dr. Davis’ notes: Man, this one seems all about context and the big picture. Do this for a few hours, not a big deal. Do this for a few days? That is a recipe for some stomach ulcers. Like a hamster on a wheel, there’s always something to be done. Sounds tiring. While this strategy is probably better than procrastinating, the long-term consequences are what will get you eventually. Limited balance today means limited balance tomorrow.

  Strategy: Saying Yes To Everything That Scares Me

The idea behind this strategy is, theoretically, personal growth—saying yes to a thing that is outside of my comfort zone, in order to push myself to rise to the occasion and therefore improve, or prove to myself that I was better/stronger/more capable than I assumed I was. And eventually, be scared of nothing, which will decrease or eliminate anxiety (I guess?) Examples: ultramarathons, mountaineering objectives, creative projects, contract gigs I am not qualified for on paper, writing a book on a subject I don’t know that much about, any sort of professional interaction that will cause me to have impostor syndrome (all of them), etc.

Rating: 3 stars

Dr. Davis’s notes: This one has a lot of potential. If you would change the “everything” to “some things,” you have a winner. The problem with saying yes to too many scary things is that you’re always scared, which I generally don’t recommend. But, with balance (there’s that word again) I think this is a great example of pursuing your values, like pushing yourself. Just remember to keep this in check with remembering your own worthiness without having to “do it all.”

  Strategy: Thinking Of Every Single Thing That Could Go Wrong In Advance, In The Belief That If I Have Thought Of Something That Could Go Wrong, It Won’t Actually Happen

Example: In advance of a complicated travel itinerary, if I go over in my head all the ways I could fuck it up (or it could get fucked up without any input from me), everything will go smoothly—i.e. I could hit traffic on the way to the airport and be late for my flight, check-in could take forever, TSA could take forever, they could change my gate at the last minute, my flight could be delayed and I could miss my connection, at the other end my bag could not arrive and I could be late for the last train, and so on.

Rating: 1 star

Dr. Davis’s notes: This one actually makes me anxious just reading it, but  a lot of people use this strategy, even me. This might be less of a strategy but more an example of anxiety. Tolerating uncertainty is something most people struggle with in one way or another. What’s interesting is that while you may not like uncertainty, you do a lot of things that have a good amount of it – climbing, ultramarathons, traveling. For those of us who can get loaded down by uncertainty I find that it helps to first acknowledge the unknowns of the situation we are facing. But don’t stop there. Actively pull your mind to times where you accomplished something in a similar situation, or another time that things went well even when there was an unexpected setback or challenge. Remind yourself that you’re capable of managing changes and challenges, even when you cannot control all of the variables.

  Strategy: Eating A Whole Pizza

Even if it’s not a whole pizza, it is an amount of pizza higher than my caloric needs for the day, or two days, and I am not eating it to satiate hunger, but moreso to “feed my emotions.”

Rating: How big is the pizza? 1-5 stars

Dr. Davis’s notes: The usefulness of this one depends on a number of things. Sometimes emotions are hungry and it’s OK to feed them. Is it a treat, or is it a regular occurrence? Are you going to hurt yourself by doing this? I also know that if you tell yourself “No” you’re probably going to want to do this even more. That’s why restriction based diets don’t really work. I’d recommend improving this strategy by examining how much benefit versus harm it brings. Once the scale tips to more harm than good it’s worth finding a way to balance it out. It’s probably not a great strategy long term, but next time just invite me over and we can finish it together.

  Strategy: Eating A Whole Pizza, But Instead Of Pizza, An Unreasonable Quantity Of Ice Cream

Rating: 1 star

Dr. Davis’s notes:  I’d say go for it sometimes, but again, keep track of the risks involved. I’m “dairy sensitive,” so for me (and those around me) the risks are just too high.

  Strategy: Working Late At Night To Get Just A Couple More Things Done So I Can Go To Bed Not Having To Think About Those Things

Working, of course, involving a glowing screen of a laptop or iPad.

Rating: 2 stars

Dr. Davis’s notes: This one isn’t necessarily horrible, but it is going to vary case by case. How late are you staying up? How often are you doing this? Is it harmful to your relationships? I’d encourage a review of time management and how many things you’re taking on at once. Give yourself time to pre-plan the next day, before it gets late. Prioritize. Try to give your eyes (and brain) and break from the screen at least 30 minutes (if not more) before bed. It’s also good sleep hygiene to try and keep a consistent sleep/wake routine. Of course, life happens. There’s always a need for flexibility.

  Strategy: Running Long Distances To The Point Of Extreme Discomfort

A twofold strategy, in that running until the point of extreme discomfort allows me to forget all my worries for the period of minutes or hours that my legs and body hurt so much that I can’t think about anything else, and also in that the hours and even days following a long run provide a flush of endorphins that make me feel calm for a while.

Rating: 2 stars

Dr. Davis’s notes: You know, a lot of these strategies could be improved if they were less . . . extreme. Exercise is great for the bodymind and health, but too much can just be too much. Personally I’d worry about that extreme discomfort turning into an injury and then you’re left without running at all.

  Strategy: Watching Crappy Action Movies

This is a way of escaping reality for two to three hours, through watching a movie, but not just any movie—a movie with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 55% or lower. I don’t know why I do this, or why so many people have to die violent deaths on screen, or why I can’t just watch documentaries, or even just good movies instead.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Dr. Davis’ notes: This could be 5 stars if you were more accepting of how much this helps you. It is OK to take a break. Ever heard of it? Invite me over for this, and I’ll bring the pizza.

  Strategy: Treating Everything In Life Like A To-Do List, In Order To Be So Busy I Don’t Have To Be Present, Check In With Myself, Or Even Think About How I’m Feeling

With enough to-do lists, and enough action toward completing items on those to-do lists, and continually adding to those to-do lists, I can go entire days or weeks without ever realizing I don’t feel that great!

Rating: 1 Star

Dr. Davis’s notes: I suppose this is better than the alternative of not doing anything, but this strategy you’ve described is a perfect recipe for burnout. The good – making lists, taking action on goals, reviewing goals and accomplishments. The bad – ignoring your other needs and not checking in with yourself. The ugly – not noticing the other emotional needs. Again, the best thing to do is strive for some balance and make some space for checking in with how you are doing. Consider something like a daily check-in, asking yourself how you are physically, emotionally, in your relationships, and how is your progress on some of these important goals/tasks.

  Strategy: Taking A Nice Relaxing Stroll, But Instead Of Being Alone With My Thoughts, Listening To An Audiobook Or Finding Something Else To Distract Me

Could just take the dog for his evening walk and relax, but no, let’s plug in some ear buds and listen to a harrowing survival story, or, even better, a story of a shipwreck tragedy with no survivors. Or scroll through social media apps, real estate listings, weather apps, bank accounts, then repeat, ad nauseam.

Rating: 4 Stars

Dr. Davis’s notes: A relaxing stroll sounds like a great strategy for anxiety management. Do those “distractions” help you relax? If so, great! Nothing is inherently wrong with any of the things you listed, as long as they’re done intentionally. Entertain yourself sometimes, but sometimes practice saying no. When you say no your mind will kick and scream for a little while but eventually it will calm down and that urge to distract will settle.

  Strategy: Same As Above, But Replace “A Nice Relaxing Stroll” With Just About Any Situation In Which I Would Be Alone With My Thoughts

Rating: 2 Stars

Dr. Davis’s notes: Wherever you go, there you are. It’s totally OK to take some time away from thinking. Distraction is not always bad, but learning to be alone with your thoughts is important in managing anxiety in the long run.

  Strategy: Trying A Meditation App For 1-3 Sessions, Then Failing To Establish A Regular Practice Of It, Then Quitting

In this strategy, I think to myself several times a day for several weeks, “Maybe I should try meditating,” and then I download a meditation app, and two or three days later, I give it a shot. I may do only the first session, I may do a couple sessions, or even a session every day for three days in a row. Sometimes, I’ll even do a few sessions, fail to do any more sessions for a week or so, and then start over. No matter what way I start, I never manage to keep it up.

Rating: 4 Stars

Dr. Davis’s notes: This is very good. It’ll take multiple starts to find the right fit and the right habit sequence. Keep trying, and pay attention to the specific things that work or don’t work. And, practice not putting yourself down for not keeping it up. It’s supposed to be a good thing, let it be.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to help keep Semi-Rad going, forward this piece to someone who’d like it, consider making a Patreon contribution, check out the Semi-Rad Shop for posters and other fun stuff, or buy one of my books.

—Brendan

The post A Psychologist Rates The Strategies I Use To Deal With Stress And Anxiety appeared first on semi-rad.com.

from Explore https://semi-rad.com/2020/07/a-psychologist-rates-the-strategies-i-use-to-deal-with-stress-and-anxiety/ via http://www.rssmix.com/