#i should start setting a timer for regular breaks

[crabsnpersimmons]

note to self that i will surely forget because this isn't the first time i've done this and it definitely won't be the last:

maybe don't do line art on an empty stomach

(don't worry, i ate)

(AFTER i finished the line art)

[jamsandsuch]

advice for first year uni students from a uni senior

the roommate(s) will always be more important than the room

+ for roommates, SET. CLEANING. EXPECTATIONS. EARLY. don't wait until you're uncomfortable with how much mess is in the kitchen for you to start thinking if you should bring it up or not. set standards and make them clear.

put your key on a lanyard and hang it from your doorknob when you’re at home so you don’t forget it on the way out

if your dorm has a shared laundry room, set your timer for when your laundry finishes ~5 mins early to give you time to walk from your room to the laundry - especially during weekends/evenings/finals people wont have the patience to wait for you - even if your load just finished

If you have noodle arms like me, buy yourself one of those collapsible grocery carts you drag behind you like a luggage - best purchase i've ever made

Or if you're lazy, order online - but order on a free day because even if you schedule a time they're always gonna come stupid early and you dont want any frozen items to get spoiled or have your groceries stolen

DONT BUY ANY TEXTBOOKS/MATERIALS UNTIL THE FIRST WEEK/CLASSES ARE OVER. sometimes you’ll have early access to the booklist or syllabus and go ahead and start buying textbooks, but increasingly often you’ll buy the materials and show up to class just to find your prof has uploaded scanned copies of everything. *save your money*, wait!

BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS - look at your class schedule and walk around campus to find each classroom. you will probably get lost on day 1 and so will many other students so this will save you a lot of walking around bumping into other lost first years

trust me after a few weeks you won’t be waking up for that 8am class. i know you did it 5 days a week in high school, but there’s a reason uni students are allergic to morning classes. know your natural energy/attention levels and take advantage of the freedom to build your schedule around your energy fluctuations

compress/stack your class schedule as much as possible. if you absolutely do need breaks, make them at least 1.5-2 hours long or you probably wont get anything productive done and minimize these long breaks as much as you can so you can just get your day over with sooner

work smarter, not harder - when school starts note each course’s assessment type by quizzes/finals/essays. if i ever have a course thats just essays, i only do lecture notes + write my own annotations about readings rather than taking notes on them which saves time i can dedicate to textbook notetaking for courses with frequent quizzes + finals

if your school has benefits/discounts/insurance - know what it is and USE IT.

most clubs wont be like high school where there are regular meetings you attend. unless youre in the exec team the membership fee you pay/when you sign up for membership it’s just for access to their events when they happen. if you want to be involved in a club in a way thats as involved as high school, look at their social media pages for hiring.

+ as someone who has had to hire before - if you’re nervous, literally just do it. i was in an exec position for our student union services and once only had like 3 applicants to pick from

if you want to be noticed by a professor, sit in the front row. and always answer/ask questions - it doesn’t matter if you said anything of substance or not, they will remember that you contributed

that and also always make the point to say hello and goodbye! eventually (in my experience) if you come early enough and are just waiting for class to start, a conversation will happen - make these regular enough and you could have an important connection!

disclaimer: of course, not all of this might be something that resonates with you/possible for your course or school, so in the words of my cousin - take what resonates

+ anyone else is free to add on!!

[milkoomi]

coming out of academic burn out. ᥫ᭡

burn out is so real, and unfortunately it affects too many of us. burn out feels like every fiber of your being just gave up on you; it feels like you’ve lost every single ounce of motivation and inspiration. it’s draining. you feel exhausted, bored, frustrated, and lost. but let’s take a deep dive into getting out of academic burn out and work on bringing back that spark you once had for your education.

୨ৎ — give yourself a break

this is, in my opinion, the most important thing to do when you start experiencing some kind of academic burn out.

while we’re in school, we feel so much overwhelming stress from the workload, the hours upon hours of studying we have to put in for big exams, the overthinking we do on a regular basis because we worry about maintaining our grades— just so much stress, and it feels suffocating.

let yourself breathe. take a moment to just focus your mind on something else that isn’t academic related. step away from your notes, papers, and textbooks and take a breather. go do something else and let your mind rest. even if it’s just for 10-20 minutes, just take a break! you need it more than you realize. you don’t have to over exert yourself, and honestly? you shouldn’t over exert yourself.

things to do during a break:

breathing exercises/meditation

watch an episode of your favorite show

watch an entertaining youtube video

read a chapter of your favorite book

go for a walk

grab yourself a snack/make yourself a meal

stretch/do a small workout/get your body moving

take a shower

take a nap (no longer than 30 minutes)

chat with a friend/loved one

journal

you can set a timer for yourself when you decide to take a break so that you can keep yourself on track, but i highly encourage you to just take a moment for yourself. do something that makes you happy, do something that relaxes your mind, just do something else. redirect your mind onto something else that isn’t related to studying or finishing an assignment.

you might also be a newly grad from high school or an undergrad program or whatever it may be, and you might feel like you need a semester off from school. or even a gap year. if you feel that way, then listen to yourself and listen to what your mind and body needs and take that semester off or go on a gap year.

i, personally, took two and a half years off from school. when i tell you that it was one of the best decisions i ever made for myself, i genuinely mean that. don’t get me wrong, i did have those thoughts of worrying that i’d fall behind my peers and friends, and it did really stress me out. but my mental health needed that break. i needed that break. i learned that school will always be an open opportunity for me and that this is my academic career and my own journey, not anyone else’s.

don’t focus on what everyone else is doing with their own lives, focus on your own. what other people are doing shouldn’t matter to you because your own journey and your own life should be your main focus.

take a break.

୨ৎ — ask for help

burn out might be coming from lack of support, and sometimes we forget to ask for support because we might feel like we have to do this whole thing on our own. let me reassure you that you don’t have to do everything on your own.

your teachers/professors/mentors are there to help you, so don’t hesitate to ask questions or reach out for guidance. if you feel like you can’t go to your professors for help, then search for a tutor! tutors are great to have because most times they might be fellow students who have had similar experiences as you in similar, or the same, classes/courses! it’s also nice to have someone who understands your frustrations and stress to help guide you or answer your questions.

reach out to your loved ones. your family, friends, or partner(s) are there to love, care, and support you in any way that you need. don’t be afraid to reach out to them if you need an extra boost. you might just need a shoulder to cry on or a listening ear, and that’s okay! your loved ones are there to support you, and even if they might not be able to help you with your studies, they can still offer you help and support mentally and emotionally.

you aren’t a burden or an annoyance to those who are there to help you, i promise. you are allowed to ask for help! don’t try and take on hard challenges on your own.

୨ৎ — work in portions

i mentioned this in a post on stopping procrastination, but it’s really important to work in sections rather than trying to finish everything all in one sitting.

the more you try to take on, the quicker you’ll feel that burn out. take it day by day, or even hour by hour. set a goal of completing one class’ assignments before you set another goal of completing another class’ assignments.

example:

let’s say it’s a wednesday night and you have two assignments that need to be completed for the next day in your biology class, an essay due next week on friday night at 11:59pm for your english class, an exam for your chemistry class this coming friday, and one packet of homework for your math class due monday morning next week.

start with your biology class! the assignments are due much sooner than the rest of your classes. focus on those two assignments first as they take priority.

after biology, take a 15-20 minute break and then work on that math homework packet and implement the pomodoro method and work on it for 25 minutes and take 5 minute breaks.

great! you finished those tasks, but dang, it’s already 7pm and you haven’t had dinner yet. take a break and go eat dinner. after dinner, for maybe another 25 minutes, work on that math packet. after those 25 minutes, stop working. go shower, do your skincare, and get ready for bed.

now that your wednesday night is coming to an end, focus your mind on relaxing. you’ve completed enough for today and your hard work has paid off! wait until the next day to continue more work.

୨ৎ — final notes

if there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s prioritize yourself. i say this all the time, but you are your top priority. always. you need to remember to take care of yourself before you go and take care of other tasks like schoolwork. you can’t do your best when you aren’t at your best.

if you are currently experiencing burn out, i promise you that you’ll get out of it. just be patient with yourself! i know burn out sucks. when i was experiencing it, i really struggled to find my love for learning again, but i can assure you that you’ll find it again. you’ll know when you’re ready!

don’t let burn out stop you from achieving your dreams. burn out is just your body telling you that you need a break, and it’s 100% okay to take a break. you’ll still succeed even if you take breaks. we all need one from time to time!

with lots of love, faustina 🌷

[binglebongle7]

Emerald Green

Pairing: Variant!Loki (MCU) x Avengers!Reader

Summary: Set in an alternative timeline where Thor didn't take Loki back to Asguard after the attack on New York. They decide to keep him in the Avengers tower, though they stay away from him as much as possible. You are the only one he talks to on a regular basis apart from his brother. Feelings come to the surface. Everything seemed perfect, until it wasn't. After protecting you from a certain death in a fight, Loki had been taken to a place called the TVA because you were supposed to die. He found out he was a variant and that he wasn't the only version of Loki. After what felt like months to him, he met other Loki's and they share stories about their lives. After all of them manage to get back to the TVA and overthrow it, they get to see what has become of their timelines. Your Loki sees you, a few years older now, with a little girl in your arms, calling you mom. His heart breaks, thinking you had found another, until the girl jumps out of your grasp and runs to his brother, calling him uncle.

Author's note: This is the first fanfic I've ever posted so if anyone could give me advice on how to improve my writing, vocabulary, ect and feedback I would really appreciate it!

--------------------------------------------------------

After the attack on New York, Thor offered to take his brother back to Asguard but the team refused, saying that they should keep him here. Since the god of thunder spent most of his time with the Avengers, he accepted the offer. The bindings preventing Loki from using his magic were to be kept on at all times but were removed after a few months.

After a month of being isolated on an entire floor of the tower, Loki had been authorized to wander around with the rest of the team. Although he spent most of his time in the library, away from the others. Mainly because he enjoyed reading but also because the Avengers avoided him like the plague.

Well, almost all the others. You were the exception. From the start, you had been nothing but kind to him, despite the destruction he had once brought upon your home. He once confronted you about it, you simply dismissed it and said that everyone deserved a second chance. Since then, you and the trickster god have been known to spend most of your time together.

Months went by and Loki had decided that, maybe, this wasn't as bad as he originally made it out to be. You had always been curious about his magic and asked him to teach you some since you knew you had magical abilities, you've just never been taught to control them. You remember vividly the day he showed you how to perform the very fist trick. Fireworks in the palm of your hand. Out of everything he's taught you, this one would always be your favorite, because it was the first.

(Time Skip)

This couldn't be real... You sat there, your knees scraping on the ground of the battlefield, frozen in place. The golden helm in you had in your shaky hands was the last thing you had of him now. Tears streamed down your face when Thor found you. The god of thunder took one look at the helm in your hands and understood, tears of his own falling to the ground. You held each other as you cried, having lost a lover and a brother.

The ride home in the Quinjet was silent. The air felt heavy with guilt and grief. After you landed, you left to barricade yourself in your room. As you entered your bedroom, everything you saw reminded you of him. You cried until all the tears in your body were gone. Then you felt empty, like someone had ripped out your heart from your chest.

Weeks after that, you began to feel sick. Every morning, you woke up and rushed to the bathroom to empty the contents of your stomach. That day, you left the tower for the first time in weeks. You bought a pregnancy test. You came back, ignoring the questions of the team and went straight back to your bathroom, sitting anxiously on the floor as you waited for the results. The timer you had set up rang. You turned the test and felt tears coming back to your eyes. Positive. You were pregnant.

You cried, both of sadness and joy. You were sad because this child would grow up without a father and Loki would never get to meet them. But you were also happy because this child was a little piece of him, so he would always be with you. The next day, you told Thor, who brought you into a bear hug, happy to be an uncle even in these circumstances. You then told the team, they told you that if you ever needed anything, you only had to say the word.

You decided to have a home birth, just in case the baby inherited Loki's Jotun appearance. The birth had been long but it was all worth it in the end. A healthy baby girl. You were proven correct, she had blue skin and red eyes, just like her father. But as soon as she was placed in your arms, her skin became like yours, her hair remained black and her eyes were an icy blue. A carbon copy of Loki. Tears fell from your eyes once more, but there was no sadness in this moment. You had decided to call her Figga, knowing Loki had always been close with his mother. Frigga Lokisdottir.

(Somewhere in time and space, The TVA)

How long had it been? Weeks? Months? Years? Loki didn't know. The only thing he knew was that it had been too long since he had seen you. But they had finally done it, the TVA was now free from "He who remains". The employees, being variants themselves, were free to return to their timelines. Loki and his variants decided to look at what had become of theirs before deciding if they wanted to go back or not. Your Loki, entered a password he had stolen from a higher up to have access to a visual image of his timeline, of you.

His heart soared in his chest as he saw you. How beautiful you were. You were wearing an emerald green loose shirt with black pants. His admired how his signature colors looked on you. You seemed to be a few years older now, he often forgot that time passed differently in the TVA. You were walking through the halls of the Avengers tower, seemingly searching for someone. You approached his brother, asking if he has seen "her". His brother answered that he hadn't. As you opened your mouth to say anything else, a high pitched scream came from the lab, you laughed and told Thor that you knew where "she" was. A little girl who appeared to be around 6 years old came running out of the lab, an annoyed Tony and a laughing Steve following suit. The girl jumped in your arms, giggling with a mischievous smile, her black hair covering her face as she hugged you.

You smiled and kissed the girl's head. Loki's heart broke for a moment, thinking you had found another lover. His heartbreak was cut shirt by the girl wiggling out of your arms and running towards his brother, calling him "uncle". The girl was his, his child. He could see the resemblance now. The little girl had his raven hair and blue eyes. Thor lifted the girl on his shoulders, making her squeal in delight as you waved off Steve and Tony.

You turned back to your daughter, a look that said "seriously?" in your eyes. Thor set down the girl and silently excused himself. The girl now seemed nervous, waiting for you to scold her. Instead you started laughing. You crouched down to her level and patted her head gently.

"You're... not mad?" The girl asked shyly. "Mad? How could I be mad?" You asked her, she shrugged, looking at the floor. You smiled gently and said "You know, me and your dad used to do way worse than this.." The girl's eyes seemed to light up at the mention of her father. "Really?" She asked, mischievous smile coming back to her adorable face. Loki could see himself through her, a carbon copy.

You nodded, a nostalgic look in your eyes. You sighed softly as you looked at your daughter. "You look exactly like him, you know? Like this and when you're blue." You booped her nose, making her giggle as her eyes widen. "Daddy was blue too??" She asked, the excitement in her voice making you laugh as you nodded once more. You waved your hand over her, making the spell of her human appearance fade, revealing blue skin with intricate markings and ruby red eyes.

Loki's eyes were now filled with tears, she was just like him. He himself had never fully accepted his Jotun nature, but you've helped him accept it a little more, saying he was beautiful in any form. The girl's expression did not change as she looked at her own appearance in a nearby mirror with you crouched next to her. She seemed so happy to resemble him this much. Of course you must have spoken well of him, but he didn't expect to be a person his daughter looked up to that much.

Her expression changed for a moment, looking back at the lab. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" You asked softly. Your daughter looked at the floor and mumbled "Tony said that I looked like a monster..." You could see her ruby eyes fill with tears and her bottom lip tremble. You brought her in your arms, kissing the top of her head.

"You're not a monster, baby." You pulled away from the hug, your hands resting on her small shoulders, looking straight into her teary eyes. "You, Frigga Lokisdottir, are a gift. A gift I haven't always deserved and that I never thought I would have the pleasure of receiving. You are not a monster, and never let anyone tell you otherwise." By this point, Loki was full on sobbing in front of the TVA screen. You had named her after his mother and given her his name as a family name. You had truly honored him.

Frigga wiped away her tears with a yawn, you cooed at her sleepy state. "How about you go take a nap, sweetheart?" She nodded as you took her small form in your arms, turning her appearance back. You tucked her in comfortably as she stared at you with her big blue eyes. "Wanna see something cool?" You whispered. Frigga nodded, smile on her face.

You raised your hand up, palm open as small fireworks seemed to appear from your hand. Frigga looked in awe as you softly explained "This is the first thing your dad showed me how to do." Your daughter smiled as she asked "Could you teach me?" You smiled, tears threatening to spill from your eyes. "Tomorrow." You kissed her head as she snuggled into her bed "Goodnight, sweetheart."

[reallypleasanttree]

Do you take requests? if so, could you write a fic about Obanai getting sick and Mitsuri stops by to find him passed out on the couch. He’s out of it and confesses he loves her. I want a Obamitsu sick fic with fluff.

I don't take requests unless I think I can do them well or feel inspired. In this case, yes, here's a short Obamitsu sick fic. : 3

Obanai glared at the positive COVID test. He knew the minute he started having chills, runny nose, and dry cough he had COVID. Only he had been in denial, hoping it was only a regular cold. He only had it one other time. The first time, he shivered under his sheets, had terrible fever dreams, and lost his sense of taste and smell. He’d have to order some jugs of pedialyte or another electrolyte mixture, medicine, tissues, cough drops, and whatever else the experts suggested. 

He took out his phone and ordered everything from DoorDash. It was expensive, but he knew if it was anything like last time in a few hours he’d be stuck in bed for the next three days. Setting down his phone on the coffee table, he leaned back against the couch cushion. He set a timer for an hour with the expectation the driver would leave everything on his front step. He could send a text to Mitsuri when he woke up to cancel their plans.

His eyelids closed and within seconds he was knocked out.

----

Mitsuri cocked her head to the side, seeing the plastic bags on Obanai’s front step. She knelt down and inspected the contents. Cold medicine, pedialyte, soup, tissues, cooling packs, and cough drops. Obanai didn’t mention anything about being sick. Maybe it was for Obanai’s roommate, Sanemi? No, Sanemi went on a camping trip with his boyfriend, Giyuu. 

She bit her lip and knocked on the door. There was no response. She sent him a text and then tried calling. Inside the house, the sound of “Electric Touch” by Taylor Swift could be heard. Obanai set it as her ringtone when she admitted it was her favorite song when they first started hanging out. 

Just breathe, just relax, it'll be okay

Just an hour 'til your car's in the driveway

Just the first time ever hangin' out with you tonight

The song was muffled. Mitsuri put her phone inside her purse and drew out the key Obanai gave her when she looked after his house when Sanemi, Giyuu, and Obanai went out of town. Obanai must be sick if he wasn’t answering texts or phone calls. She grabbed the bags from the step and brought them in. 

She walked down the main hallway. The kitchen light was on, but everything else was dark. Mitsuri set the bags on the counter top and glanced at the couch to see Obanai sleeping. She walked over and knelt down in front of him. His cheeks were red. She set her hand over his forehead to feel his temperature rising and sweating.

“Obi,” she whispered as she ran hand over his dark hair. It was damp. Obanai nuzzled into his pillow, but didn’t open his eyes. “You didn’t answer your phone, so I let myself in,” Mitsuri said. “I hope you don’t mind.” He was a private person and liked his space. 

“Course not, I like you,” he murmured against the pillow. Her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat. She’s had a crush on him ever since they met two years ago. Over time she came to love him. Unfortunately, he had an on and off relationship with his girlfriend, so she never told him how she felt. After the last break up three months ago, Sanemi told Mitsuri they were over for good. She hoped it was true. Mitsuri set her hands in her lap and looked down. He didn’t mean it like that. 

“Umm,” Mitsuri started. “I’ll bring you a washcloth and some water,” she said and stood up. Hurriedly, she walked into the kitchen to grab a kitchen rag and cup. She returned with a cool washcloth to place on his forehead. she massaged his scalp. “That should make you feel better,” she said. Her heart warmed as he smiled. His eyes were still shut as he leaned into her touch. 

“You’re so sweet,” Obanai whispered, “I love you.” Her temperature rose and she brought her hand to her chest in hopes to stop her heart from leaping out. Obanai grumbled and she saw his eyelashes flutter, but his eyes were still closed. He was still sleeping. He probably thought she was his ex or something. 

“I love you too,” Mitsuri said before she could stop herself. It might be the only time she could without fear of rejection. His smile returned. He only seemed to smile around her and his close friends. She leaned her head against the cushion and watched him. 

—------

All he could see was pink and green in his dreams. All he could smell was honey and apple blossoms. All he could hear was Mitsuri’s bubbly voice gently reassuring him. All he could feel were her hands massaging his scalp. A fever dream no doubt. It was too good to be true to believe she would be taking care of him. He sent her a message earlier that he was sick and couldn’t hang out tonight. 

Obanai rubbed his face into his pillow before opening his eyes to see Mitsuri’s face inches from him. She faced him with her head resting on the couch. Her green eyes shining in the low light coming from the kitchen. 

“Hey,” he greeted her. She reached up to push back a strand of hair from his face. Before she could take her hand back, he grasped it. Her cheeks turned pink as Obanai kissed her fingertips. What did he have to lose in a dream? A fog clouded his decision making processes. He lifted his head before he pressed his lips to Mitsuri’s. She tasted as sweet as honey. Another sign it was a dream. They parted. Mitsuri’s entire face was as bright as a cherry. 

“You’re adorable when you’re flustered,” Obanai said and lowered his head back to the pillow. “I love you so much, Mitsuri.” He shut his eyes again waiting for the dream to drift elsewhere. Heart beats later, Mitsuri caressed his cheek and he heard her scoot closer. 

“I love you too,” she confessed. It was a nice dream to believe she could. “I’ve loved you for a while,” she added. It was too good to be true. Time seemed to stop as their eyes met. He felt light, airy, and ultimately happy to have Mitsuri telling him what he longed to hear even if it were only a dream.

“I’ve loved you since I met you,” he replied. He denied loving her since he was in a relationship. Daki and him had been together since high school. They always fought, but it took her pointing out Obanai’s clear devotion to Mitsuri to force him to realize he loved the pink haired woman. It was their breaking point. There was no way they would get back together after that. “I just didn’t realize it.”

He felt her breath on his face as she planted a chaste kiss on his chapped lips. Her nose bumped into his as she tilted her head to deepen the kiss. She felt safe and comfortable. With Daki he was on edge most of the time, never knowing when or what would cause her to throw a fit. Mitsuri was soft and loving like a spring morning. 

“I’m going to get sick,” Mitsuri laughed as they parted. 

“Doubtful. This dream won’t last long enough for you to get sick. It’s too bad, I’d like taking care of you,” Obanai said. Mitsuri stared at him with wide eyes and shook her head. 

“You’re not dreaming,” Mitsuri said. His eyes widened and he pushed himself up. He looked wildly around the house to see the kitchen counter littered with CVS bags and the positive COVID test sitting on the kitchen table. Slowly, his attention returned to Mitsuri. He felt his forehead and palms sweating more than before. 

“Mitsuri, I am so sorry. I thought it was a dream,” Obanai tried to apologize before he recalled her words, I love you too. That wasn’t a dream either. 

“If it was a dream, it’d be a nice one, wouldn’t it?” Mitsuri beamed. He swallowed and nodded in agreement. She sat down beside him. Obanai brought his hand over hers. 

“But it’s not,” he said. 

“No, it’s better,” Mitsuri said. Obanai couldn’t agree more. 

[omo-queer]

hi! tysm for your answer 🥺 i looked up "rapid desperation" online and based on my own understanding, this is how it works:

1. drink the same specific amount of water every 15 mins within an hour (you can pee within that 1 hour).

2. after that first hour, you should continue doing it but this time, the hold starts. bathrooms are not allowed.

after this, what shall i do next? do i just keep drinking until i can't hold it anymore? or should i set a goal (for example, wait for 2 hours until i can finally pee)?

thank you so much for helping a beginner out! 💗 also looking forward to more of your blogs

- 🩰

the rapid desperation approach i've seen and used a variant on myself is:

drink at least a glass (350ml/12oz or about that) every hour. this works best if you start this at least an hour or two before the hold, and pee as normal. this part basically gives your kidneys the heads-up that they're gonna be moving water fast bc you keep drinking it.

then do what you're implying—drink a glass every 15 minutes for a hour during which you can pee regularly

after that, you're holding. continue drinking at 15 minute intervals, and keep going until you lose control—the idea behind rapid desperation is that it makes this part go quickly because you've told your body to make pee faster, essentially.

this takes more planning than just like. not peeing for a long time. but it can get some interesting results. i would honestly recommend you try a couple regular holds before you go for rapid desperation, making sure not to go past the point of pain (discomfort is fine but pain you have to be careful about), because rapid desperation is one of the easier ways to have to worry about electrolyte balance (salt/potassium stuff) if you do it way too hard or way too fast. that said, i mentioned it because you were asking for specific challenges and it's a very fun one, just as long as you listen to your body.

remember, your safety comes before anything else—holding is good fun but it's important to learn what your body can and can't do, and to listen when it gives you signs to stop. you're very unlikely to hold so long you seriously hurt yourself, because the body usually gives up trying to hold it in before that's likely. but in rare cases you can experience water toxicity or overwork the muscles around your bladder if you go way too hard right out of the gate and don't listen to your body. try not to hold two days in a row when you're first starting out, and give yourself longer breaks of at least a few days between intense holds (where you actually lose control or get really close) to give your bladder and your muscles time to recover.

ok. that's the safety lecture over. it's not really that risky a kink, i just really wanted to stress how important listening to your body is when holding.

if you haven't done any holds yet, my first recommendation would be to drink liquids as normal, maybe slightly more than normal, and wait until they catch up to your bladder—eventually, if you keep drinking normally, you won't be able to hold any longer and will begin leaking or even wet yourself. even getting close to this is really thrilling. coffee/tea and other diuretics help get you more desperate, too. i typically wait until i'm right on the edge of wetting and then either go to the bathroom or (if i have the situation to) keep holding until i lose control. setting a timer that's a little overambitious usually also works for me because i tend to have a bit more bladder strength than i assume... but i've also been recreationally holding it for a pretty long time, all things considered.

thank you for reaching out! i hope my answers are helpful. i'm glad you enjoy my posts—might do a hold tomorrow or the next day or something, and it seems folks have been submitting anons for bladder control (which i love!!) so there will no doubt be more posts on the way.

i'll be asleep for a while once i post this, but feel free to send in any other questions you have via ask or dm! and of course, i always welcome talking about holds/experiences in my inbox!

[fcntasmas-archive]

This is a different anon, and I'm sorry if this isn't supposed to be writing advice hour 😁 I've been pretty much only writing academically for about 6 years now. I'm almost done with my higher degrees now, so I really want to get back into creative writing. I've sat down with a few ideas that I love, but when I start writing them, it's almost like my brain refuses to get out of that academic mindset. I don't think anybody wants to read a Buddie fick fit for the Journal of Accountancy. Is there anything you do that helps you not feel blocked or stuck, whatever the apt comparison would be?

hello, different anon!!! first of all congrats on being (almost) done with your higher degrees that's such an amazing feat i'm so excited for you!!!! BIG MWAH <3

as for your question, i'd say the advice i gave the other anon can work pretty well for this issue, too, but another piece of advice i can offer to get out of the kind of analytical, practical approach of academic language is to just,,, practice.

freewriting is a great exercise for this. set a timer for like five-ten mins and turn your brain off and just write. don't edit, don't backspace, don't dwell on it or think about it. just write. after that, look back over it and try and pinpoint the things you like about what you wrote, and what you didn't. then try it again, and this time try to focus on expanding on what you liked. rinse and repeat. eventually, you might have, like, even a couple of sentences that feel like they flow a lot more naturally than what you're used to.

ALSO, take a break and read some fiction. YA and NA particularly are two genres i suggest the most, if only because they focus so much on the emotion of it all, which is what you want to achieve when writing your own fiction. tap into the emotions you've either studied in fiction or felt yourself. a great writing exercise that i've done in the past is to just kind of like. write out the basic emotions you may feel on a regular basis -- sad, mad, happy, anxious, etc -- and then write a sentence or two of what they might look like in you or in a certain character. expanding from there should come easier, then.

and just overall GO EASY ON YOURSELF. your brain's been trained to write a certain way, ofc it's gonna take you a minute to find your voice again!! that's totally okay. be patient, embrace the editing process (even though it's arguably the woooorst) and try and try again. talk it out with someone you know/love/trust. send them some snippets and ask them where they think you could be less practical. then try and try again.

i hope this is helpful in any way!! ily lots babe and i am ROOTING for you <333

[donamasu]

I'm so sorry to get cognitive behavioral in this thread of creative commiseration. however. you do not need to be beholden to your brain's whims of expressive drive (yes, even with other complicating conditions like depression or chronic pain, assuming those have some treatment or control. if not, this might help, but other pressing issues make themselves known for a reason!)

"responsive desire" is when your friend invites you to a party/gathering, and you think "ugh I'm tired should I really go? I have fun once I'm there but UGH, actually going there is so hard." and once you've been there a while, you realize "hey, this is fun! it's not perfect and I am tired, but I like how it turned out and it was pretty rewarding!"

you gotta start before you want to. lots of people struggle with the inverse of responsive desire, which is spontaneous desire. the one where we are (supposed to just be) overcome with passion or outgoing urge to create, hang out, do something challenging, etc. if you have executive dysfunction or mood-related disorder, then spontaneous may not be the route for you! it's just not reliable enough. it's not fair that other people just want to do the thing and do it, but we're not up a creek yet! there are options still.

I can't force you to do anything, and I don't expect you to materialize willpower out of nothing. but knowledge about how creative drive is empowering and that might start to create the something out of nothing. the next time you think, "I really wanna do my creative thing but I just don't want to," maybe you won't beat yourself up for not being good enough or creative enough, etc etc, and so continue to teach yourself to feel bad about your creativity. maybe you'll remember this paradigm about drive. then this time or maybe another time, you set a 5-minute timer and just do the thing the entire 5 (or 3, or 1 even!) minutes and stop if you hate it but keep going if it's nice. either way you'll have at least 5 minutes of work in, which is all the more practice for habit-setting.

this isn't a linear process, it's not unidimensional. but it breaks my heart to see people hating on themselves so much! it's not your fault. you're just a person who can't perform perfectly in a system and world that demands too much. you're tired, and yet you're just supposed to become an artist or writer out of passion and spontaneous desire, as if you aren't stretched paper-thin? it's not right. you are a perfectly good person and deserve to be treated kindly, which includes you treating yourself. habits are hard to form, and no one gets taught these things in daily life!

learning to foster time to cultivate creative desire and reinforce regular joyful (not self-punishing) creative habit is such an important skill! there's nothing wrong with you for not being born knowing how to do something. I believe in you! start small, use reminders, and most of all be gentle and kind with yourself! you have plenty of time to grow.

[topscoree]

Cracking NEET: Common Questions and Expert Tips

Q1. How should I start my NEET preparation?

A: Start by understanding the NEET syllabus thoroughly. Divide it into manageable portions for Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Familiarize yourself with the NCERT textbooks, as they form the foundation for NEET questions. Create a realistic study plan that allocates time for each subject daily, focusing more on your weaker areas.

Pro Tip: Begin early, set small goals, and gradually increase your study hours to avoid burnout.

NEET Training in Coimbatore

Q2. Which study materials are best for NEET preparation? A: For Biology, NCERT is indispensable. For Physics and Chemistry, supplement NCERT with reference books like:

Physics: Concepts of Physics by H.C. Verma, DC Pandey’s series

Chemistry: Physical Chemistry by O.P. Tandon, Organic Chemistry by Morrison and Boyd

Pro Tip: Stick to a limited number of books to avoid confusion. Focus on solving a variety of questions rather than hoarding study materials.

Q3. How do I improve my time management during the NEET exam? A: Practice mock tests regularly to simulate the actual exam environment. Learn to manage time by attempting easier sections first (usually Biology) and saving tougher sections like Physics for later. Use a timer while solving practice papers to understand your speed.

Pro Tip: Divide the 3-hour exam wisely:

Biology: 50–60 minutes

Chemistry: 50 minutes

Physics: 60 minutes

NEET Coaching Centres in Coimbatore

Q4. What is the best way to revise for NEET? A: Begin your revision well in advance, preferably 2–3 months prior to the exam. Use concise notes and mind maps for quick reference. Solve previous years’ question papers to identify frequently asked topics. Prioritize revisiting weak topics and formulas regularly.

Pro Tip: Dedicate the last month solely to revision and mock tests. Avoid learning new concepts during this time.

Q5. How do I maintain motivation while preparing for NEET? A: Establish specific, attainable objectives and celebrate your progress along the way. Engage with supportive friends or join study groups to stay inspired through mutual encouragement. Incorporate regular breaks, practice mindfulness techniques, and prioritize a balanced, healthy lifestyle to keep burnout at bay.

Pro Tip: Visualize your success and remind yourself why you’re working hard. Positivity goes a long way!

Q6. Are mock tests and practice papers really important? A: Absolutely! Mock tests help you familiarize yourself with the NEET pattern, improve accuracy, and identify weak areas. They also reduce exam-day anxiety by building confidence. Aim to take at least 2–3 mock tests every week as the exam approaches.

Pro Tip: Analyze your mistakes after every test and focus on improving them.

NEET Training in Coimbatore

Q7. What are the common mistakes to avoid during NEET preparation? A:

Ignoring NCERT content, especially in Biology.

Skipping regular mock tests.

Relying too much on shortcuts without understanding concepts.

Studying for long hours without breaks, leading to burnout.

Neglecting time management during the exam.

Pro Tip: Learn from others’ mistakes and adopt a balanced approach to study, practice, and rest.

Q8. Is it possible to crack NEET in the first attempt? A: Yes, with consistent effort, a strategic study plan, and discipline, cracking NEET on the first attempt is achievable. Many toppers do it by sticking to the basics, solving ample practice papers, and staying motivated.

Pro Tip: Believe in your abilities and focus on giving your 100%. Seek help when needed and stay confident.

NEET Coaching Centres in Coimbatore

Conclusion

Cracking NEET requires smart work, consistency, and focus. Follow these expert tips, and don’t forget to stay positive and resilient throughout your preparation journey. Remember, every step you take brings you closer to your dream medical college!

[atomicfesttiger]

Tackling Trouble Spots in Your Home - The Hardest Areas To Keep Clean

https://goldenbroomcleaning.com/locations/cleaning-services-in-beaverton-oregon/

# Tackling Trouble Spots in Your Home - The Hardest Areas To Keep Clean Cleaning a home is a task that many homeowners can find daunting. From the kitchen to the living room, every corner seems to require attention, but some areas pose more of a challenge than others. **Tackling Trouble Spots in Your Home - The Hardest Areas To Keep Clean** provides you with expert insights and practical tips to conquer these cleaning challenges with ease. # Are Deep Cleanings Worth It? Absolutely! While regular cleaning maintains surface cleanliness, deep cleaning removes accumulated dirt, allergens, and bacteria that can affect your health. A deep clean ensures that your home not only looks good but also feels fresh and safe. - **Benefits of Deep Cleaning** - **Healthier Environment**: Reduces allergens and pollutants. - **Longer Lasting Surfaces**: Maintains the integrity of carpets and upholstery. - **Improved Air Quality**: Removes dust particles from hard-to-reach areas. Preparing for a Deep House Cleaning Before embarking on a deep house cleaning journey, preparation is key. Here’s what you should do: # How Long Does It Take to Clean a 3 Bedroom House? The time taken can vary greatly based on several factors: - **Size of Bedrooms** - **Level of Mess** - **Number of Helpers** On average, it can take anywhere from 4 to 8 hours for one person to deep clean a standard three-bedroom house thoroughly. # How Do You Deep Clean a House When Overwhelmed? Here are some tips to tackle this situation: - **Break It Down**: Focus on one room at a time. - **Use Checklists**: Create tasks for each area to stay organized. - **Set Timers**: Work in short bursts (e.g., 25 minutes) followed by breaks. # What Room Should I Deep Clean First? Start with areas that get the most use: 1. **Kitchen** 2. **Living Room** 3. **Bathroom** These rooms tend to accumulate dirt more quickly due to high traffic and usage. code1/pre1/##

[lotusloveslotus]

as someone who's not Jerma-sized and has been streaming primarily full-time for almost five years I gotta dispute this and add some additional information — especially because I used to preach it constantly (more on that later)

it's true that for the majority of Twitch's life cycle ad revenue has meant nothing unless you have hundreds or even thousands of viewers. that's because the ad share across creators was a fixed rate per 1,000 views. although it was a fixed rate, it naturally varied throughout the year, as ad providers generally spend more money at some times of year (like Christmas) than others. but, a pretty massive change was made for all earning creators in August of 2022 with the Ads Incentive Program, which OP alluded to. it was an okay option at launch but has since been improved to the current version, which is basically:

if a streamer runs 3 minutes of ads every 60 minutes (1 hour), their revenue share on ads goes from the fixed rate per 1,000 views to 55% on all ads watched on their channel, less fees. additionally, keeping up the 3/60 ratio of ads removes all pre-roll ads on the stream for an hour. so, if you keep at this pace, you never get pre-roll ads again

here are some real-life numbers, directly from me: I am statistically a much, much larger than average streamer, but I am not a big streamer by any means. despite streaming for a long time, trying hard, and imo putting on some pretty good shows, I cap out at around 20 average viewers, more often sitting in the 13-15 range. on good days, like when I'm doing charity streams as part of a big team, I can easily eclipse that and hit 30-40. there has never been a time where my stream could pay more than a small fraction of rent in any city; I might be able to afford groceries for just me. that gets worse when you consider the amount I have had and still have to spend on video games and equipment. I'm extremely lucky that I've never needed my stream to cover these expenses, and I stream primarily because I love to. based on every conversation I've ever had with my fellow creators, stream team members, and random data I see on occasion, I understand my earnings to be pretty average — even on the higher side — for someone of my size

SO it's really important to note that when the Ads Incentive Program hit in August of 2022 I hopped on board because I had just lost my job, and ads immediately grew to make up about 20% of my total earnings on Twitch for six months straight. that's not a small number. that's the difference between $160 and $200, for example

there's a huge "ymmv" sign to tack on here because I think that my community is extremely generous, and always has been because I'm a relatively niche creator. I told them I had just lost my job, explained the changes to ad revenue, and kindly asked them to leave the stream on while ads were running if they could. I set a timer so I could warn everyone a minute or two before ads started, and stop the action of whatever game I was playing accordingly. I started taking more breaks, which I'd never really been incentivized to do. the lack of pre-rolls made raids much more effective and exciting, since I didn't have to awkwardly sit around until they get let out of their ad. overall, I found the revenue increase to be worth it, and a few of the changes it brought were positive

obviously Twitch could've just... done this at any time for any reason. it didn't have to be 3/60, it could've just been a sweeping change, I don't wanna act like Twitch is being so nice here. but I do think it's a pretty positive change even for smaller streamers, if their community is willing to deal with it. which they should be, because...

it's free. that's the main one. you can go get a drink or use the restroom just like the streamer should be. you can mute the stream and play on your phone. you can listen to a song. you can stare at the wall. it's 3 minutes. personally, the majority of my regular viewers actually don't have the money to spare to give me that $1-5 tip every month (and for some of them, ever). part of the draw of sites like Twitch and YouTube is that they provide effectively limitless free entertainment for anyone with a half-decent internet connection

look, like, I'm not out of touch with reality here. I know all these companies want to make as much money as possible, I know they're chasing the number going up forever and ever and ever. I know. but there's a reason the internet is famously free, and it's in large part because of ads. you either pay for a subscription or you watch ads; maybe I'm becoming a boomer at the decrepit age of 24, but to me, that seems like a pretty fair deal. I have an ad blocker and an automatic cookie deleter and all that, but I disable them when visiting smaller websites and streamers, especially if I know they're part of the Ads Incentive Program. now I know from firsthand experience that it adds up — it really, really adds up, and it's worth the mild annoyance to me to support them

that won't be true of many viewers — maybe even most of them — but personally I think that's on the viewers, not the streamers. it's an annoying system to work in because ads are annoying, but I genuinely hate that this is where we are. there's a huge stigma nowadays on ads and I don't think creators should get this weird tacit shame for running them or asking people to watch them. I think it's probably true that no one would run ads if they didn't have to, but frankly I don't like that that's where we are. I'd rather live in an ecosystem where I can watch an ad for Doritos or get banners for Etsy or whatever and know that my eyeballs directly contribute to the livelihoods of my favorite people on the internet, instead of where we are, where I either have to spend quite a lot of money every month across the many creators I watch to hope they can scrape by, or they work for free, forever. I no longer find it righteous to use adblockers as I once did

I understand where OP or anyone else saying this is coming from, but I do think we need to shift our collective mindset a bit and recognize that labor and entertainment is not and should not be free, especially from small, grassroots creators — even if they're working on or with the biggest websites in the world

For the record, im pretty sure I speak for 90% of twitch streamlettes when I say: always use an ad blocker. No matter what.

Like, you’re not stealing from the creator if you do. Unless a streamer is Jerma Sized, ads will provide about five cents a month; twitch has routinely attempted to push ads with “incentive programs” that go nowhere and alienate audiences.

If you want to support a creator, find out where they can be supported- a single 5 dollar donation when you can afford it will literally do more for them than anything twitch or YouTube “provides” via ads ✅

[storiesofsvu]

Sunshowers

Amelia Shepherd x reader Warnings: language, minor talk of medical stuff/death. Covers the "dancing in the rain" square for @adarafaelbarba 's bingo! My first lil Amelia fic!! Here's hoping for more in the future! this one's just a wee little one, but we'll get there!

You knew Amelia was having a bad day, it started shortly after you’d stopped in to join her for lunch, a regular occurrence during the week, you worked from home and it was just nice to see your girlfriend more often. Things were fine, she greeted you with a smile and a kiss, not quite bragging, but praising herself for the surgery she’d finished that morning. You did your best to understand the medical mumbo-jumbo, you were able to pick up enough from the time you’d been dating and the tiny knowledge you did have and congratulated her on the big win. It was only halfway through lunch when her pager went off and you watched the colour drain from her face before she quickly pressed a chaste kiss to the side of your head and darted off. You shared a knowing look and mutual sigh with Meredith, finishing up lunch with her and Maggie before saying good bye to the team and making your way back home.

You tidied up around the house, did a little bit more work of your own and sent a couple of texts off to Amelia just in case whatever happened hadn’t kept her in the O.R. for hours. Just as you had decided to start on dinner you heard the crack of thunder, followed by a flash of light breaking through the sky, a pitter patter of droplets beginning to hit the kitchen window. Rain was no stranger to Seattle, and you were no stranger to it, honestly, you enjoyed the rain. If it was a big storm it was nice to watch from the comfort of a burrito blanket on the couch, if it was on a warmer day, one like today, it was fun to play in. Your lips curved up into a small smile, watching the storm pick up as you continued on with dinner, you weren’t sure when Amelia would be home, but you wanted to at least make sure she had food waiting for her when she did.

You’d just slid the pan into the oven, making sure the timer was set when you heard the door open and swing shut, the sound of Amelia letting out a heavy sigh echoing through the room. You wiped your hands on a towel before popping out of the kitchen into the hallway,

“Hey.” You greeted softly.

“Hey….” She replied with a small grumble, “looks like the weather’s reflecting my day.”

“Baby I’m sorry.” You stepped toward her, wrapping her in your arms and tightly hugging her, pressing a kiss to the side of her head.

“I just feel fucking stupid.” She mumbled, voice muffled by your shirt, “I should know better than to brag about successful surgeries before they’re out of the woods.”

“You’ve said it yourself before, sometimes things just come way outta left field, there’s no way to predict them.”

“I guess.” She sighed heavily, gently squeezing at your body, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” You pressed a kiss to the side of her head, your gaze drifting out the front window at the sun sparkling through the crowds. The storm had let up a little bit, thunder and lightning no more, rain drops still steadily coming down and it sparked an idea as Amelia shifted to take off her shoes, “wait!” You pulled away from the hug, your hand trailing down her arm to interlock with hers, “leave ‘em on, c’mon.”

“Aren’t you in the middle of cooking?” She asked with a small laugh as you tugged her through the house and you knew you were already headed in the right direction.

“There’s a timer on it!”

You didn’t even bother to stop for your own shoes, opting to just dart out the back door into the yard, dragging Amelia behind you. She let out a shriek as rain drops began to hit her, attempting to shield herself with her arms and you tugged her to you, pulling her arms back down to her side.

“No hiding from it! C’mon Amelia, remember when playing in the rain used to be the most fun a kid ever had?” You raised a brow with a grin and she let out a little huff of a laugh, shaking her head at your antics but when you pulled her toward the middle of the yard and jumped in an obnoxiously large puddle she still joined you.

The laughter was infectious, as soon as one of you started, the other couldn’t stop, chasing each other through the yard as the rain continued to come down. Your prediction was right, Amelia’s terrible day was very quickly forgotten, large smile etched onto her cheeks as she watched you skip from puddle to puddle, efficiently soaking both of you. She pulled you to her, arms looping around your neck and kissing you gently, a happy hum echoing from your lips as she did so.

“Thank you.” She murmured and you smiled across at her, smoothing back her now very wet hair from her face.

“Anything for you.” You replied, stealing another kiss and the two of you began to sway together in an easily found rhythm.

The sun started to get brighter as the clouds cleared, beaming down on the two of you while you continued to dance and the rain began to actually let up. It finally slowed to a faint drizzle, the sun warming the air and you heard the timer go off from back in the kitchen and you let out a little sigh. Leaning in to kiss Amelia tenderly you stroked at her cheek before taking her hand once more.

“Dinner’s ready, guess we should get changed.”

“Probably a good idea.” She stole one last kiss before following you back into the house.

You quickly pulled the pan from the oven before darting off upstairs to change, tossing the wet clothes into the washing machine and pulling on a cozy sweater and leggings. You plated up dinner while Amelia warmed up a couple glasses of apple cider to help warm the two of you up and you curled up on the couch together to eat.

There was no surprise that there was a marathon of fall and Halloween movies on the tv, and you let that play through while you caught each other up on the week. Plates found their way to the coffee table once they were scaped clean, Amelia thanking you for dinner, leaving a sweet kiss on your cheek. You assured her it was no issue, you loved getting to cook for her all the time, the easiest way to show your love for her. She felt a warmth trickle its way through her chest at you words, knowing just how incredibly lucky she was to have found you, to have been accepted into your life and into your love. She curled up against your chest with a happy sigh and there really was no other place she’d rather be. In your arms she felt safe, loved, happy and content, coming home to you made her forget all the bullshit and grief she had to deal with on a daily basis, because she was coming home to the love of her life who knew just exactly what she needed.

_____________________

@svulife-rl @ms-calhoun @hbkpop @melindawarnersgf @itisdoctortoyousir @emilyprentiss4life @andreasvu @softgamerking @thatesqcrush @swimmingstudentchaos891

[modx-reborn]

The first prefromance

Something I spoke of in a discord I'm in.

So here have Simpbur and CamGirl/Camboy reader doing a show with them after working his way into their close circle.

(Yes this plays off of the two cam asks I have gotten recently)

Also please know that real cam girls/boys aren't actually going to do this, this is purely fictional in its makeup.

SMUT UNDERCUT! MINOR DNI!

"That's it j-just like that, all the way like you should be taking me. S-shouldn't be here fucking my hand w-when I could be fucking you, such a pretty thing so good for me, but such a slut t-to let others watch you like this..."

That was the last thing he had said to you on your last private call, since then he had wormed his way further and further into your shows and even into a bit of your personal life, or well your on-screen personal life, as he had the phone number you kept aside for work, from your days as a more in-person performer.

And boy did he ever make use of the number, sending you little messages and photos whenever the thought struck him, peppering you in small doses of affection and savouring the way you called him sometimes when you skipped a stream, offering him to listen to you get off instead letting him hear when you spoke about the toy he had sent you. Sometimes even getting him to call and ask for you to listen to him, getting you to mutter things to him and work him that little bit closer to his end.

But now what you're calling for may just break your dear simp, having had all the fun you could with the silicon imitation he had made for you, that now your mind was thinking about how he would feel rather than the toy. 'S-shouldn't be here fucking my hand w-when I could be fucking you' his own words playing on repeat in your head after you close down your last stream, sending little thank yous to the top donators before moving to the call ping that was coming through.

It was him. Perfect.

"Ahh, there he is, my pretty top boy Simpbur!"

"That was quite the s-show, but what did you mean by you're w-working on something big with someone else?"

"Well, that's good that you asked my dear. You are always so good for me, sending those little messages and all those donations, I was thinking you may want to help me with the next stream..."

"Y-you want me to-"

"Mmhmm, didn't you say yourself that it should be you fucking me, or was it that you should be here in me rather than fucking your hand?"

It's easy to finish your sentence with a tilt of your head, tapping one of your fingers against your bottom lip as if you were actually trying to remember when truly you were just teasing the curly-haired boy staring at you wide-eyed through your screen.

"I. Yes. I-I mean I would love to if you want me to..."

With his agreement the rest of the call was spent hashing out the rough details and leaving him open to suggest what he wanted to do for the show, leaving him with a wink and a reminder to 'Keep it simple' before you logged out and started to pack up and clean down the space you had been working in.

There would be a few weeks between your last show and the next one, having all the platforms you used teasing the next stream with images of the silicone toy being front and centre in all the images, a tease for all your viewers but a reminder for your dear simpbur that he would be more real in your world in a few days. Even when he made up his mind on what he wanted it was still so very hard for him to not scroll back through the recorded calls and streams, take himself in hand and work through the building need.

But he managed to keep his hands off, having worked himself up even before the actual day of the stream.

When you call him, he picks up on the first ring as always chipper and shaky in the same breath as he says your stage name.

"There's my good boy! You ready for tomorrow? Your first time in the red light after all, just want to make sure you're still down and want to do this."

"I-I am. I'm good and... and ready for tomorrow."

With a laugh and a quick goodbye, you hang up, heading off to the regular place you booked for longer shows needing to set up lights and the cams now, otherwise you would likely not have time when your co-star finally made his way to you. And how right you were, the moment the time for the stream rolled around he was there at your door, hands fiddling with the bottom of his button-up, mask and beanie on as if you hadn't seen his face a million times before.

Welcoming him in is easy, but getting him to calm down just enough to have him read back what the two of you had planned took slightly longer. You had him keep his mask and beanie on, using them as a way to keep him from having his real-world life ruined from doing this one little show with you, the suggestion also seems to put some of his nerves to rest.

When the cameras do start rolling, the stream on a start-up timer for switching on to a live stage, your chat on a large screen hanging over your laptop that was actually hosting the show, messages flying past as people are lured in at the promise of a different kind of show and the tagline mentioning a guest star. When the cam starts showing the room you're seated on Simpburs lap, thighs spread wide over his with his hands holding you close while you do your intro, his masked face pressed into your shoulder as he mutters something under his breath.

Your form rocking back into him once you're were done, slipping a hand under his beanie and tangling in his curls, making him groan just loud enough that one of the many mics would be able to hear him, laughing and cooing at him as you reach down with your free hand to wrap around his cock, slowly running your fingers across the heated flesh.

"You'll be good for me won't you? So pretty and brave being here on cam with me, getting a treat that so many would die for..."

His voice falters when you shift your grip, tugging on his hair just as you start to actually move your hand to jerk him off, slipping your hand out of his hair you reach for a little remote, making the camera zoom in as you close your thighs around him, burying his cock between your thighs. Cooing at him once again as his hands are braced on your hips, using this to bounce you on him, head tilted back and panting as he fucks your thighs.

The exposed skin of his neck calling for you to leave a few marks across, a little gift for him to remember this day by, or well more than the stream recording of course, pink and purple marks blooming across his neck as he changes the pace moving you more and more until you can feel him throbbing between your thighs.

"Oh, sweet thing you're cumming already? Are my thighs that good? Can't even hold on for the main performance, or are you that eager for more that you would cum now and still keep going? Hmm, what is it, pretty boy?"

The only answer you receive is a deep groan and the warm feeling of his cum seeping from between your thighs, spreading your legs to show off the mess to your cam, letting everyone who was watching see the mess that he had made. Reading your chat gave you a wonderful idea, they wanted more and you wanted to see just how far you could push your dear simp till he broke and lived up to his wants to actually fuck you.

Flicking across the remote once again the camera angle changes, showing a side view of the bed perfect for what you were planning to do, the angle giving your audience the best show as you move off his lap and kneel on the floor. Holding his cock with one hand as you lean forward to lick a stripe up his shaft, cleaning his mess off with your mouth, taking him fully once most of him was clean looking up at him through your lashes once you have taken him into your throat.

Watching how his eyes go wide, hands shaking when they reach for your head, his eyes flicking up to the chat screen reading over some of the words telling him to fuck your face, to make you cry and drool all over him, and other wanting to be where he was, whining over text that they should have been the one there with you. The majority calling for him to do something, building a need to move in him, slowly he is moving his hips, still sensitive after having cum not moments before but the feeling of your mouth wrapped around him was spurring him on.

Before long his hips are moving properly, holding your head steady as he fucks your mouth watching how you look up at him every time he pushes into your throat, tears building and falling with how harsh some of his thrusts are, but the image just makes him groan. Throwing his head back once again as he works himself back up, trying to hold out and enjoy this feeling for a little while longer, only you had other plans pulling away panting as you take in the way he looks.

Flicking your hands cross the remote once again to switch cameras for the final time settling on one that would let your audience watch how good your dear simp was for you, let them watch how full he makes you feel and how pretty he looks when he cums, when he finally gets what he wanted.

"You ready pretty boy, ready to finally get what you want? What you told me about on all your calls? Take you all the way like I should be taking you?"

"P-please, fuck just please le-let me fuck you..."

In his rush to reach for you, his beanie had come off, brown curls falling out in a mess that you tried to cover again only to have your hands smacked away in favour of him pulling you up onto the bed with him. Throwing your thighs over his own reaching for the bottle of lube you had left waiting to be used, coating his fingers before pressing them into you working you open with one hand as the other is pressed to your shoulder keeping you from moving away from his probing fingers.

"G-God look at you, do-don't even need to work my way up to two fingers, already so r-ready for them... Ready for me."

To quick are his fingers gone replaced by the head of his cock, easing his way in as he moans, hands grabbing your hips to steady himself as he finally gets to feel what it's like to be buried in you just like his toy replica had been so many times before. There is little time between him being fully hilted in you and him starting to move, his hands moving from your hips to under your thighs ignoring the sticky cum still staining them, pushing them back and using the new angle to fuck into you as hard as he liked.

Wanting to have you drooling into the mattress and calling his name, making you remember him and him alone so that if you ever did another show like this, it would be his number you called. That if he did this good enough, fucked you good enough that it wouldn't be on camera the next time he got to fuck you, it would be at your home in your bed, him calling your real name not this stage name you work under.

He comes back from his thoughts when your voice cuts through them, high pitched and whining for him to let you cum, for him to keep going to let you have what you had given him earlier, to feel him cum in you this time.

"F-fuck you w-want me to cum in you? P-paint your inside with me..."

The chat if either of you could see it was still it was running a mile a minute, calling for him to do it, to cum and let them see how it will drip out of you. Others call for him to deny you, keep you begging for your release while he took his own, but neither of you could see those words and so your ends draw near.

"T-that's it, god feels so. So good around me, j-just like I thought you would..."

The rough pace he set becomes almost brutal when he cums, there will be bruises in the shape of his hands come the next few days but that thought paired with the sight of your dear simp losing himself in you was what tipped you over.

The end of the stream was much like the beginning, albeit with a mess of brown curls keeping the camera from seeing how the mask had been pulled down and soft kisses were being placed along your shoulders, the moment you had given the final thanks and turned off all the gear the hands that were wrapped around your waist were pulling you back onto the bed, keeping you as close as possible.

After all the pressure of performing for people falls away, it's easy to give comfort to the man curled around you, wanting him to be comfortable with what you had just done. Once again tangling your hands in his hair only this time to give comfort rather than tease, cooing soft praise until the grip around you eases slightly.

"You did so well, such a good boy for me..."

[samueldays]

Part 2: Bad ideas, well implemented

In the grim darkness of the apocalyptic future, there are still gains from trade.

There are 3 main resources: food supplies, construction materials, technological components. There are 3 haven factions to do diplomacy and trade with: the Disciples of Anu (xenophile cult), New Jericho (texas faction) and Synedrion (anarcho-terraformers). Each has a competitive advantage in producing one of the resources (Anu:food, NJ:mats, Syn:tech) and selling it cheaper, and you can set up a triangle trade at a profit. What prevents this from being infinite resource generation is that the haven outposts only offer a small surplus to trade at each visit, it takes time to fly out to them, and the game is on a timer with alien invasion, so you can't afford to have your squad+plane flying back and forth between outposts all the time.

Which is why you should get a second plane ASAP, for example by stealing it from a haven. Put Rookie McExpendable on it, and set that plane to indefinite rotation between outposts for resources. :^) The factions don't like each other, but you, the neutral protagonist, can befriend them all and profit.

It's funny, Synedrion has a socialist streak and blames capitalism for the world collapsing to the Pandoravirus, and here I am getting the resources I need to save the world by being a middleman merchant, buying low and selling high, profiting off other people's comparative advantage.

Trade 8 Food to Synedrion for 2 Tech (x48 lots) trade 2 Tech to New Jericho for 12 Materials, trade 8 Materials to Anu for 12 Food, profit!

(Or: 8 Materials to Synedrion for 2 Tech, 2 Tech to Anu for 12 Food, 8 Food to New Jericho for 12 Materials.)

Phoenix Point diverges from the usual XCOM formula in that there's almost no regular income of resources. Trading, exploring, scavenging battlefields, and rewards for rescuing havens from monster attacks are important to support your operations. It's one of the parts of the game I like most.

Another good thing is that unlike previous XCOM (but like first generation X-COM) a character can carry more than two grenades! Grenades have been oddly nerfed in terms of direct damage, they're better for armor-removal than killing, but incendiary grenades are very good at crippling enemies because they deal repeated damage to each limb.

Timer-Based Design

The original X-COM:UFO had an issue of degenerate tactics: the optimal course of action in many tactical battles was to very slowly and patiently creep your way across the map with cover fire and overwatch, ensuring your soldiers were fresh and ready when you made contact with enemies. The battlemap was bounded and enemies had no option to escape or call in reinforcements if you dawdled too long. Terror missions were an exception, with civilians dying if you didn't run out there to shoot aliens faster.

The 2012 XCOM reboot tried to fix this by sprinkling timer incentives on missions. You might have to disarm a bomb before it blows up in X turns, or acquire some Meld canisters before they shut down.

Phoenix Point, IMO, overcompensates. There are timer incentives in tactical battles, and the enemy does get reinforcements entering from map edge if you dawdle, and the enemy has tower installations that spray steadily larger areas with monster mist until destroyed, and enemies can also escape and leave the battlefield, and there's doodads to protect, and soldiers to rescue before they get killed. (Incidentally very convenient that monsters are exactly the right distance away from rescuables when a battle starts, no matter how long you've waited to start that battle!)

Also the maps are smaller and more cramped, and there's more stuff going on, and there's some enemies who spawn smaller enemies, and there's stealth-sniper enemies who will break contact after a shot if you don't chase them down, and almost every map now feels frantic.

The strategic Geoscape also has a bunch of timers: the whole game is on a global doomclock until humanity goes extinct, you're on a softer timer until the NPC factions go to war, monsters attack your bases and allied bases more often and you have to fly to defend them before they're destroyed, monster lairs that you don't eradicate ASAP will tank your diplomacy.

The devs were probably aiming for tense gameplay, but it felt more like ADHD frustration that I was constantly being interrupted by different problems and popups demanding my attention. Tense turn-based is hard to do.

Inconsistent Realism

Some games abstract away your logistics to focus on the shooting. Some games have detailed tracking of where things are. Both of these can work fine. But Phoenix Point is not somewhere in the middle, it's both at once! Again, not exactly a bug, but the inconsistency grates on me.

On the one hand: All your bases around the globe share resources and manufacturing capacity. Items aren't made at a location, they're made and stored in the abstract Global Inventory. When your team has flown to a site and is about to deploy on a mission, there's a convenient opportunity for last-minute prep where items not only teleport between bases but teleport to the aircraft so you can equip new gear that hadn't yet been produced when the team set out. From the deploy screen, you can even craft medkits on the spot.

On the other hand: personnel have strictly tracked locations, either at a base or in an aircraft. Personnel need an aircraft to deploy to a mission site. Personnel also need an aircraft to move from one base to another, and player intervention on both ends. Aircraft are limited in number, and have specific locations. If you want to move Sniper Alice from one base to another, you have to 0) Free up an aircraft from other tasks, 1) send aircraft to first base, 2) assign Alice to aircraft, 3) send aircraft to second base, 4) wait through travel time during which an event will probably interrupt you and you might forget what this aircraft was doing, 5) assign Alice to second base.

Back on the first hand: if you capture a live alien on a mission, that doesn't need to be flown home or have its location tracked, it teleports to the abstract Global Containment Facility and can be interrogated and vivisected and researched on-base before the personnel fly home. 🙄 What clown came up with this?

Clown Design, various

Phoenix Point is excellent at the strictly technical side of the game like "not crashing", and pretty good at the usability features of showing relevant information to the player, like indicating LOS before you move, or this mouseover which displays the range-sphere of a Terror Sentinel. Also its stats.

But it strikes me as being often really good at implementing really dumb ideas, like peekaboo-shooting, abusing the AP system, being a fantasy CRPG, having weapon proficiencies like it's D&D, having critical fumbles like it's the urban legend version of D&D, and various systems that don't talk to each other and operate at different scales. My congratulations to the testing and bugfix teams; the design team should go join the circus.

In particular, whatever complete clown decided that Tobias West, allied hero unit and resistance leader, should carry a weapon that he's not proficient in.

Clowns have also gotten to the diplomacy system. If two of the haven factions are fighting, here screenshot showing Synedrion attacking a New Jericho outpost, I can intervene to defend it to get +10 relations with NJ and -9 relations with Synedrion, so far so good.

This defense also gets me -9 relations with Disciples of Anu, which is bullshit. Defending a human outpost from human destruction is overall negative on human diplomacy. (The fourth attitude change is "local outpost governor", not a faction.)

Broken shield icon: New Jericho. Outlined T-dot: Anu. Circle-S: Synedrion.

This feels designed to force hard choices on the player - do you worsen your relations with other factions, or protect outposts from destruction? but the choice makes no sense, Anu should not be equally pissed as Synedrion that I stopped a Synedrion kill-team.

It feels absurd that these kill-teams exist at all. Look, it's the apocalypse. WW3 happened, and starvation, and plague. Masses of people walked into the sea and died under the influence of virus-mindcontrol-mist. Some of them came back wrong as crab-zombies. The devs may have thought original X-COM had a wonky sense of scale. I feel Phoenix Point is trying to sell me on a vision of a world where my team of tactical operators is a significant part of humanity's remaining combat power, and can reasonably make a difference to the fate of the world. Given a context where known human population is seven digits and dropping...

There's me and three NPC factions who have gathered some survivors to fight back against the monster apocalypse. The NPC factions disagreeing bitterly and hating each other for conflicting visions of the future, fine. If they occasionally raided each other, OK. The NPC factions, all three of them, taking time and personnel away from fighting monster apocalypses to send invading armies across hundreds of kilometers, not to conquer a fellow human haven but to burn it to the ground, destroying all civilian infrastructure, is shockingly stupid both IC and OOC. Evidently the scriptwriter needed a conflict so the factions will hurr durr murder each other in the midgame, and scripted them to fight each other in the Clown War.

In addition to being pants-on-head retarded, it should be logistically impossible. The game's narrative tells me that Haven outposts are fortified structures holding off monster attacks, populated by thousands or ten-thousands of people, with a high degree of irregular militia and combat experience as a result of living through the monster apocalypse. The defender being already in place, highly motivated to defend, having placed walls and turrets, should have a major advantage over the attacker. Where the fuck is an attacker pulling guys from to get an army big enough to crack open and raze another Haven?

And how is this army being transported? The game insists that logistics is hard for me, the ground is monster-infested, soldiers need aircraft to move between locations, aircraft are slow and carry few people. (I'll get back to that later.) The game also tells me that the NPC factions use the same aircraft I do.

But the clown crown might go to the ballistics system. Previous XCOM games were mostly tile-based. Phoenix Point has a much more granular firing system that simulates where on the character model the bullets are coming from, and how they veer off to hit something else. There's even an option to spray-fire a weapon in an arc.

Since a sniper rifle and a sidearm pistol are located at different points on a sniper character model, I experienced a monster ceasing to be a valid target (no LOS) when swapping from pistol to rifle, and getting LOS back when swapping back to pistol.

Machineguns are held lower than most other weapons, making low cover more effective against them, and resulting in this bit of clownery:

That gun is being held at exactly the wrong height so that the bullets can hit the railing, and the four-inch beam adjacent to the soldier will provide the ten-foot monster with angular cover, as demonstrated if I switch to the muzzle-POV targeting mode:

(The way the targeting reticle works is that each bullet has a 50% chance to land somewhere in inner ring and a 50% chance to land in outer ring. The muzzle-POV reticle is a nice QOL feature, this whole setup is a very finely polished dumb idea.)

Sandbagging

A well made movie gives the impression of depicting something as you might have seen it; a poorly made movie may have wires and rollers and cameramen visible in such a way that the movie-ness is visible on screen and shouldn't be. There's something like "seeing the wires" for Phoenix Point where it is clear that it's a game, inside the game, that I don't know the name for. It's not breaking the fourth wall, the monsters don't talk to the player. It's that the monsters sometimes drop the pretense of trying to kill your characters, and show that they are game-pieces being moved by an opponent who is sandbagging to not overwhelm you.

Phoenix Point will deploy variants of a house-sized boss monster, the Scylla, which superficially looks very tough and intimidating. Scylla is too slow to chase down a running human. Scylla is easily locked down with my War Cry, which is absurdly powerful no-save crowd control. I killed my first Scylla with 0 damage taken and no savescumming. Nor was it a fluke, I took 0 damage from every Scylla in the rest of the campaign. Scylla spawns lesser monsters, but it is very polite about a) spawning only one monster a turn, b) spawning monsters only after it rolls for initiative.

Scylla is probably meant to make players feel accomplished that their 250hp soldiers took down a 6000hp monster, but I felt only contempt for the 6000hp punching bag. It wasn't threatening me, it was waving claws in the air and 'pretending' to threaten me. It could have killed a soldier who tried to melee it, but the melee weapons in this game are realistically useless and I wasn't stupid enough to have gun-carrying soldiers move into melee with a house-sized monster and its man-sized claws.

A Series of Choices

To Sid Meier is attributed the remark that "a game is a series of choices", and clown game designers have interpreted "choices" to mean something like mutually exclusive options, that cannot be strictly ranked, competing for the same role. This leads to what I think is one of the dumbest parts of Phoenix Point: unlike XCOM where you would usually upgrade to Plasma weapons because they were best, there's a hundred weapons in PP and almost none of them are ever upgrades because that wouldn't be a "choice" to use the better weapon, they're sidegrades and tactical alternatives and far too many fiddly options that I'm not enjoying because the micromanagement is not worth my time. I bought this game expecting a strategic-tactical mix of economy and combat, not a sub-tactical layer of deciding between seven models of assault rifle, six shotguns, ten sniper rifles, nine sidearm pistols, five golden rings, four calling birds, three silenced crossbows, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I want back the other "choice" of when do I spend resources, and how much do I spend, on equipping soldiers with objectively superior weapons, removing the "choice" of scrolling through a too-long weapons list. But no, Phoenix Point has put most of the game progression into character levels not gear upgrades. (RPG vibes!)

Aircraft suffer the same problem of being hamfistedly balanced into "no best option" through absurd tradeoffs where the game's mechanical design protrudes through the immersion layer in order to ensure that all options have a competitive niche.

In less fancy words: The 6-soldier aircraft is twice as fast as the 8-soldier aircraft. This enforces a choice, a very specific kind of choice, whether you want to take the tactical advantage of bringing more dudes to a fight, or the strategic advantage of getting to a fight faster. (Remember: the strategic view has a doom-clock, the game is on a timer.)

There's something I find deeply absurd about having the usual xcom-ish hyperspeed research&development progression where I can build an aircraft in mere days with a skeleton crew of polymath protagonists; but no amount of money and technology and factories will allow me to build an aircraft that is both fast and carries 8 people!

The last clown of this particular car is that aircraft improvement technology does exist in the game - but it improves a tertiary stat that I don't care about: Range. The globe is dotted with refueling stations.

I can hotfix the DNA of an organic jet-blimp, but I can't enlarge an aircraft design to fit 2 more people? What the fucking fuckety fuck?

Closing Remarks

In general, Phoenix Point seems to have a bad dev habit of pouring on too much competing Stuff everywhere. Too many weapons, too many armors, too many skills, too many stats, too many character classes, too many aircraft, too many within-category stat-trade-offs on the aircraft, nothing like the X-COM Avenger which is plain good at stats but its drawback is instead costing a lot of money.

Do you like lots of Stuff? This game has a lot of cool Stuff to choose between. It even has customizable soldier and armor appearances so you can play dress-up dolls with your soldiers if you like. I think that will be my verdict on the game: very good for the Stuff Likers. Not so good at what I consider the 'core' of an xcom genre game, the Stuff gets distracting and the interface for scrolling through it sucks. The interface has very big buttons that are newbie-friendly and veteran-unfriendly.

If for example I want to make AP Sniper Rifle, I go to the manufacturing tab, the gear sub-tab, filter for sniper gear, and get this:

This is not ordered alphabetically, it's not ordered by item type (Hera and Hephaestus are both sidearm pistols, Pythagoras is a sniper rifle), it's not ordered by anything that I can recognize. The "Zeus" EMP Grenade is not next to the "Odin" Frag Grenade when I scroll down. At least weapons are listed adjacent to their ammo, but that's a low bar.

X-COM:UFO came out in 1994. Phoenix Point came out in 2019, twenty-five years later. This production interface capable of showing a whole seven options on screen at one time does not strike me as the result of twenty-five years improvement. Ironic that a game of not getting better equipment has not gotten a better interface, merely a sidegrade.

I beat the game. The last mission was reasonably interesting. It was also an exercise in cheesing the AP system: a giant Scylla and 15 retinue monsters show up together, and your 9 soldiers have to figure out how not to be overwhelmed. (Heavy WarCry the Scylla, chain combo the mooks with Rapid Clearance Assault.) The very definitely final boss has some interesting mechanics, and you get to drop a nuke on it. :D

Finally, the subtitles for the victory slides had a typo.

And that petty complaint, in a way, sums up my experience. I had won, I thought I was done, and the game finds a new way to beclown itself at the very last second. 🙄 Very much a $10 game. Doesn't crash, but does have lots of ill-considered parts and petty nuisances. Was comparable entertainment to $10 ticket for a mid movie.

Sam Reviews: Phoenix Point, part 1

Phoenix Point is down to ten bucks on GOG, DLC included!

I bought it, figuring even a half-decent XCOM clone is worth it for ten bucks. So far it feels like a $10 game indeed. I'm probably not going to finish it before the sale ends, I have a job, so here's my initial impressions for those interested and I'll come back with part 2 later.

Tutorial missions, fine. First regular mission against crab monsters, fine. Second regular mission pits me against gun-happy human bandits, and I am unpleasantly surprised that they return fire whenever they're shot at, getting 4 counter-attacks in a turn if 4 people shoot at them, they even "return fire" upon having a grenade thrown at them.

Solution: run up and bash them in the head with the butt of a gun repeatedly, they don't get to return fire from that. I grumbled about that, and the game feels like 'that' repeatedly.

I didn't like the puzzle boss nature of infinite return fire. One return fire per turn would have been cool, and enabled tactical counterplay options. Unlimited return fire breaks the action economy, breaks my immersion for the game abstraction of "action points", and makes me feel this is going to be a game about cheesing AP limits and ruleslawyer combos. Also, the infinite return fire ability was on multiple nameless minions in that mission, not even reserved for a boss. Bash bash bash bash!

I didn't like the lack of game hints in this context. I had Hints turned on for a first run at low difficulty. The Hints make suggestions for what to research, how game mechanics work, and provide informative popups the first time a new strain of crab monster appears. But there was no Hint popup about the first encounter with an enemy having the Return Fire ability, no tooltip on mouseover of enemy, nor was there any indication of what actions trigger Return Fire, despite this being significantly more impactful than "this crab monster regenerates".

I didn't like the solution, which felt like a rules loophole rather than a sensible way to approach rapid-firing enemies. Oh yeah here's a guy who can interrupt your turn to shoot multiple times per turn, you should all walk up to him and punch him and he'll politely submit to the beatings.

I really didn't like that compared to recent XCOM games, Phoenix Point added a micromanagement tracker for Weapon Durability, and bashing the return-fire-goons in the head damages your weapon! Also they brought back ammo management, so now your weapon has two stats that can run out during combat.

But I also recognize that these things aren't bugs or crashes or typos or other objectively wrong things about the game, they're design decisions that I disagree with. The game runs fine. I have a series of grumbles and no dealbreakers.

Moving on from the Return Fire-associated crap...

This is an XCOM-genre game, definitely. It has base building, squad management, research and production, capturing crab monsters for research, psychic mind control, a strategic "Geoscape" layer and numerous tactical battle missions. The one thing that's oddly missing is gear upgrades. New gear is mostly sidegrades and tactical options, on the other hand it offers far stronger character upgrades than in most XCOM games, to the point of looking partly like a CRPG with classes, levels and skill points.

The Geoscape has more content than the waiting game that was some previous xcoms. There are other factions moving on the map, there's some trade and diplomacy with them, there are unknown sites to explore, you reactivate old bases instead of building them from scratch. Sometimes this means clearing them of crab monsters.

The Phoenix Point interface inherits a lot of XCOM 2's cutscenery that I dislike. It is very beautiful, very zoomed in, and wants to make sure you see it. There's frequent waiting to watch stuff resolve, and the game insists on having the camera follow unimportant actions like the run animation of every soldier's every move, and locking the interface during this. Move orders (particularly out of sight of enemies) should not hog control, I should be able to tab to the next soldier and begin giving a new move order immediately after the previous! Each individual animation is short, but multiply it by several soldiers, on each of several turns, on each of several missions, and my frustration at an unresponsive interface accumulates.

The zoom-out is limited. Soldiers will frequently be so far away from each other that I can't see them on the same screen, and have to pan back and forth. Bleh.

The gun system is quite detailed with damage types, damage values, accuracy modifiers, weapon ranges, armor, armor-shredding weapons, body part targeting and hit location, disabled limbs, bleeding, cover, et cetera. The game then offers options to skip a lot of this gunnery where enemies get to resist, and instead go for special abilities that Just Work, like War Cry:

AOE, autohit, no save, renders most enemies unable to attack for a turn.

About that limbs stuff, Phoenix Point has tried hard to make hit locations relevant. Crab monsters have game-relevant organs and limbs that can be disabled for far less damage than it takes to kill the whole monster. It's neat, but feels a little underwhelming. I don't blame the devs much for this, balance is hard when there's hefty player optionality plus RNG, and there's a fine line between making targeting relevant and making a monster the Shootmeinthegland monster where shooting it in the gland simply becomes the new default target instead of shooting it in the head/center mass.

Guns are weak, and armor is powerful as part of making limb targeting relevant. Also, armor-shredding weapons. This feels related to the CRPG class-and-level stuff: with the smaller squad and the more personalized characters and the more important individuals, the game has to give more leeway for characters to survive being hit to avoid player frustration. We've moved a long way from X-COM:UFO where casualties were routine and replacements were cheap.

I don't know if it's good or bad that the game plays "fair" about the least relevant nameless NPCs being similarly padded, but I know one of my mutuals will hate this combination of health padding and detailed targeting:

I have caught this thief at close range (2 tiles). I am about to launch a six-round burst from my character's assault rifle into his head. The targeting reticle, the highlighted yellow outline, and the info popup all agree that these bullets will go into his head if I fire here and now. The segmented bar at the top indicates that the result of close-range burst fire to the head through the front of the face is that the thief will lose about half his hitpoints.

To underscore that I've gotten a head hit, not a glancing blow off the helmet, the game displays the thief with a bloody face and blood-splattered clothes after the shot. But he lives. Somehow.

There's also a plot to Phoenix Point. I don't play xcoms for the plot, but there's definitely been some work on the plot beyond "kill and loot aliums :)". After the second world war, blah blah secret organization, moonbase, something something precursor civilization. It looks like good lore, I'll re-read the accumulated notes when I have more notes and fewer darkly hinting clue-scraps bereft of context.

[compassionatereminders]

Dealing With Executive Dysfunction - A Summary

(The full post with elaborate explanations can be found here.)

Being a responsible adult doesn’t have to mean doing things perfectly - it means doing what you realistically can. Can’t eat 7 fresh veggies and fruits a day? Buy some veggie juice or a smoothie and chug that. Can’t make a proper, healthy meal? Add some extra protein to your instant noodles. Can’t do the dishes? Buy some paper plates. Don’t worry about doing things “the right way”, just do what works.

It’s not cheating to do something the easy way. If there’s an easy or more manageable solution available, use it. Even if some people think it’s lazy. Don’t worry about that. Just focus on finding the methods of doing things which make life easier for you.

Fuck what you’re “supposed” to do. Yes, ideally you shouldn’t run the dishwasher twice, but if cleansing the dishes by hand is not an option and that’s the only way you can get clean dishes, do it anyways! When you’re in a really bad place mentally, fuck the rules. Do what you need to do to get shit done, even if it’s not how you’re supposed to do it.

Do stuff while you’re waiting to do other stuff. We spend a lot of time waiting, so spend the time you’d normally just waste getting some chores done. Collect the trash while your roommate is in the bathroom or wipe down the kitchen counters while you’re making coffee. You can even turn it into a game! How many dishes can you clean before the potatoes are boiling? How much trash can you collect and throw out before your load of laundry is done?

You don’t have to do everything at once. Don’t wait for the day where you’re up for cleaning the entire house cause then you’ll be waiting for ages. You can wipe down one counter and call it a day. You can put away a couple things and leave the rest. You can do one small chore and let that be it. You don’t have to choose between doing everything and doing nothing. Any progress is worthwhile.

Let go of the idea that something has to become a permanent habit to have any value. Doing a certain sport for a month is still healthy even if you then move on to something else. Exploring a new hobby for a while and then moving on to other stuff will always teach you something. What’s good for you today will not necessarily be what’s good for you tomorrow.

Don’t worry about the entire task. Just focus on the first step. Don’t worry about brushing your teeth - just get your toothbrush wet and put tooth paste on it. Don’t worry about writing the essay - just look at the assignment and open a document. Don’t worry about going to the store - just put on your coat and your shoes. Starting a task is a lot easier if you only focus on the step right in front of you.

Imagine that your body is a pet/animal you have to care for. Feed and hydrate yourself, keep yourself and your environment clean, make sure you don’t get under or overstimulated, allow yourself time to rest and relax, find ways to enrich your life (like socializing, media or hobbies) - and do your best to make sure you’re healthy and happy, even though you never actually signed up for being your own zookeeper.

Just because you can’t do it perfectly doesn’t mean you should stop trying. Packing lunch a couple times a week is better than never packing lunches. Journaling or making art once a month is better than never doing anything creative. Exercising every once in a while when you have the energy is better than never exercising. You don’t have to do something every single day for it to be important and helpful.

Put on a professional persona when it’s necessary. Try to separate the anxious and dysfunctional you from the Student You who’s sending that important email or the Client You who’s making that phone call or the Customer You who isn’t afraid to ask for help. It might feel like you’re performing a role, but to be honest, most of us do at times.

When you’re doing chores, act like you’re filming a tutorial. Narrate what you’re doing like someone’s watching. That might make it easier to maintain focus and to keep track of the various steps.

You don’t have to do anything perfectly. Wiping yourself off with some baby wipes beats not doing anything about your personal hygiene. Eating a protein bar beats not eating. Using mouthwash beats neglecting dental hygiene completely. Going for a quick walk beats not moving. It doesn’t have to be perfect to count and make a difference.

Make something you know you have to do the trigger for you to start doing something else. Tell yourself “next time I get up to pee I’ll take out the trash” or “when I get up to get something to drink next I’ll make lunch.” If you HAVE to get up anyways, you might as well.

Assign yourself a deadline. Tell yourself “once this video is over, I’ll do the dishes” or “once this alarm rings, I’ll do my laundry.” 

If you struggle to be compassionate towards yourself, try visualizing your future self as a separate person who you like and want to do favors for. Try to think of your future self as a friend who is separate from your current self and do what you can to make their life easier by doing things like preparing that lunch, doing those chores, taking that shower or making fun plans. I know they’ll be grateful.

Make putting stuff back where it belongs so easy that you “might as well.” Organize your home so that placing stuff where it belongs becomes so easy that you might as well just place it there. For many people that means several laundry baskets, many trash cans and easily accessible and very visible storage options. So if you keep finding things in annoying places, make sure they get an easily accessible home!

Look into why you can’t do something. Is something about the chores you’re struggling to do actually causing you sensory distress and is there something you can do to make it more comfortable? If you hate mint toothpaste, get one that tastes like bubble gum. If old food grosses you out, do the dishes with thick gloves on. If showering makes you feel bad about your body, shower with the lights off. The problem isn’t always about self discipline, and in those cases it’s worth looking into why you’re struggling so much to get certain chores done.

Take care of yourself in order to take care of others ( whether pets or people.) Outside motivation is necessary for many people who struggle with executive dysfunction. For many people getting out of bed is easier when you know someone else is relying on you being somewhat functional. So don’t be afraid to find the motivation to take care of yourself in wanting to take care of others.

Make keeping your place clean as easy as possible. Make sure there’s easy one step access to the things you need often. Make sure that the place where a thing is supposed to be is actually within reach of where you use the thing. Make sure everything has a an easily accessible place to go, even if that means several laundry baskets and several trash cans. Examine what’s messing up your place and find a home for it where you’re likely to actually place it on a regular basis.

Choose one very specific thing to work on - like the bathroom sink or the oven or your desk. If you suffer from executive dysfunction you’ll likely be distracted, but having one specific focus point you can keep returning to will mean that in between getting distracted, you can return to your chosen project and get some shit done.

When something feels overwhelming, tell yourself to “just show up” and that you “won’t have to stay the whole time if it’s horrible.” Cause odds are that once you’ve pushed past your initial mental block, you’re likely to stay and finish what you started.

If you really can’t do something, accept your limits and find a different method. Don’t keep trying to push through via willpower alone. If you need outside accountability to get your shit done, find someone who can hold you accountable. If you know you can’t remember the stuff you’re supposed to remember, make sure to always write things down. If you keep forgetting your meds, set a daily alarm. Don’t keep expecting yourself to be able to do things you always struggle with.

Make your chores into a game. Assign certain chores certain points and make a list of fun rewards you can have once you’ve earned a certain amount of points through doing chores.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly. Any amount of effort is better than none, so on days where you can’t do something well, do it anyways! Any amount of progress beats not getting started.

Find a momentum and use it to do that thing you’ve been struggling to start doing. You can’t get yourself together to shower? Well, find something you CAN do - and once you’re already doing something, you might be able to channel said energy into showering.

Take it one step at a time. I know a shower sounds overwhelming, but can you take your clothes off? If yes, can you turn on the shower? If yes, can you stand under the stream? Look who just tricked themselves into doing the thing by breaking it down into manageable chunks!

Don’t just break a task into smaller steps - break it into steps so small you can’t possible get overwhelmed and fuck up. “Clean my room” is far too vague - but “set a timer and collect all the trash you can in 10 minutes” is actually manageable and so is “move all dirty dishes to the kitchen” or “remove and/or sort all clothes laying on the floor.”

Don’t worry about how most people do things - worry about what works for YOU. You constantly lose your key? Make ten copies. You overlook your post it notes? Put something with the important reminder on it in front of the door. Got laundry and trash all over the floor? Get more laundry baskets/trash cans. Coping with executive dysfunction is not about learning to do things the neurotypical way, it’s about finding strategies which actually work for you.

When you’re overwhelmed and struggling, find the easiest and fastest way to get rid of some of the distress. Eat if you’re hungry, sleep if you’re tired, pee if you have to, get that thing you’ve been postponing done if you can. The more stressors you can remove, the better - and it’s okay to start with the smaller ones!

Don’t worry about aesthetics. When you struggle with executive dysfunction, maintaining a picture perfect home is probably unrealistic. So drop that dream and focus on making your space practical and functional. Remove the doors of your kitchen cabinets and closets if that will actually make you put stuff away. Get a paper shredder and a mail sorting station if you got mail and advertisements everywhere. Buy all your socks in one color if you struggle to pair them. There are many ways to make your environment more functional. Explore them instead of just trying and failing to make your home look nice.

Get started on your next task before you take your break. Write that first sentence, make that first sketch, get the vacuum cleaner out of the closet or collect the dishes for washing and THEN have your break. Many people with executive dysfunction struggle to start tasks, so for most of us it’s easier to continue something we’ve already started working on than to begin from scratch.

[streetlight11]

Strawberry Lattes

Summary: He always needs his morning caffeine to wake him up for his morning classes. He never knew what it feels like wanting to come back to a particular place again and again solely for one reason, until he met you. You were a full time barista and a part time university student. Despite the stress you get almost every week, your two friends have always been there to support you. What happens when your friends come to visit you at your workplace one day, only to find out that they were friends with the same boy who not only is your eye candy, but also your regular customer?

Genre: Super fluffy

Pairing: Kim Sunwoo x GN Reader

Word count: 5.5k

It was another dreadful morning after only 2 hours of sleep due to staying up all night hoping to finish at least 50% of the assignment. But this wasn’t an excuse for you to call in to work sick or unable to come for your shift. Hence, the reason why you were now forcing yourself out of bed to freshen up and get ready for work. You were a full time barista at a local café downtown just around the corner from your apartment, and also a part time student at Yonsei University.

The reason why you chose this path was because you wanted to further your studies but also earn a monthly allowance in order to pay for your school and house bills since you were living alone and didn't have the time to search for a roommate.

Despite the stress load you get every once in a while, you managed to cope and tried your best to pass each module. Today was no different, as you got ready for work and was out the door by 0730. You arrived at the café only to find your manager already preparing the coffee machines and restocking the cakes in the fridge beside the cashier. You greeted him good morning before he smiled at you.

You went into the back room to put your bag down and took your apron. Proceeding to head to the front where the cashier and coffee machines were.

“Did you get enough sleep yesterday?” Kihyun asked.

Before you could reply, a yawn left your lips as you used the back of your hand to cover your mouth slightly.

“Nope. But I’ll be fine.” You said. You could hear the heavy sigh that left his lips when he closed the fridge door and soon turned to you with a frown.

“(Y/N), you know you have to get some rest. It’s not good for your health.” Kihyun said, but you nodded.

“I know Ki, but I can’t fail this module.”

“Just… know when to take a break okay?”

“Okay.”

With that, he went to the back room to settle some paperwork while you stayed by the counter, refilling the powders into the containers. After you were done, a few customers had entered to buy their morning caffeine doses. 4 orders and 5 minutes of silence later, you leaned over the counter top with one knee resting on the stool in front of you that was hidden from any customer in plain sight.

You supported your head on your palm, slowly finding yourself drifting to sleep when the doorbell chimed, catching your attention. You looked up to see a guy walking into the café looking just as tired as you were but he had more life in him.

“Dang he’s cute.” You thought to yourself as you quickly wiped the pout off your face and soon replaced it with a warm smile.

“Good morning, may I take your order?” you greeted him.

He flashed you a soft smile before glancing up at the menu boards hanging above your head.

“Do you have any recommendations? I feel like trying something new.” He finally looked back down at you, only for you to feel as though your airflow got sucked out of your lungs.

“Personally I really like the Iced Matcha Latte with soy milk if I want a non-caffeinated drink. But if I want that espresso kick to start my mornings, I really love the Strawberry Latte, with two pumps of syrup and a light dash of strawberry sprinkles. It’s not too strong and it definitely gives you a sweet tangy balance to the bitter coffee taste.” You ended your speech with a light giggle after you realized how long it was.

The male only smiled fondly at you during that whole minute explanation but it was worth it. “Great, can I get the exact order for the second one then?” He said. You looked quite surprised but nonetheless smiled as you began to key in the order

“Choice of size?”

“Regular please.”

After you were done, you took the regular size takeaway cup and a marker, looking at him to ask for his name or initials.

“Sunwoo.”

The corner of your lips tugged upwards, writing down his name before setting the cup to your left beside the coffee machine and soon charged him for his order. After he was done paying, you returned him his change and gave the receipt before telling him to wait at the collection point. You made the drink exactly how you would make it for yourself. Smiling happily upon seeing your creation being prepared for not yourself, but this time for a customer.

After you had sprinkled the strawberry powder on top of the foam surface, you took the lid and secured it close before you went to the collection point and called out softly.

“Strawberry Latte for Sunwoo.” 

He walked forwards as he took the cup, not forgetting to give you a smile. 

“Thank you-” His eyes darted towards your name tag pinned to your apron before he looked back at you. “...(Y/N)”

You bowed to him slightly as you watched him leave the café. After he left, he didn’t forget to spare a quick glance into the café, only to see your smile soon disappeared. Replacing it with a small pout when you let out a sigh. Sunwoo chuckled as he continued walking to campus that was just 2 blocks away.

For some reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about you even after he made it to his first lecture. The small smile gracing on his lips didn’t go unnoticed by his friends as Kevin began to nudge Sunwoo’s elbow the minute he came to sit beside the former.

“Aye, why are you smiling like an idiot huh?” Kevin asked.

“Maybe he just sniffed a smiling gas.” Younghoon said.

“What the hell is that?” Jacob asked.

“I was being sarcastic you nimrod.” Younghoon said, making the former one growl.

“I’ll tell you guys later.” Sunwoo said as he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. 

2 hours passed and they were now heading to the food hall in the main building, when Hyunjae slings his arm over Sunwoo’s shoulder.

“So? Why were you smiling all morning today?” He asked, causing the rest to focus their gazes on him as Sunwoo sighed knowing he couldn’t run away now.

“Ahh, it’s nothing… I went to get my morning coffee and there was this really cute barista who attended to me. That’s all.”

A series of “ooh”s were heard as the boys got noisier by the second.

“Jeez, can y’all shut up? You’re embarrassing me.” Sunwoo said as he quickened his pace, only for Younghoon to grab hold of his backpack and pulled him back.

“Oh please, you should be thankful we even gave reactions to what you say.” Younghoon said, making Sunwoo scoff. 

A few weeks later, you were just handing a customer her plate of pasta and a cappuccino at one of the tables when you heard the doorbell chime. The customer you were attending to, thanked you for bringing her orders to her, smiling and replied to her.

“Your welcome. Enjoy your food.”

With that, you began to walk back to the front counter when you saw a group of guys gathered in front of the cashier. Right when you were just about to walk past them to head behind the counter, one of them glanced towards his right only to lock eyes with you. It was Sunwoo. The same regular customer that came every morning before his classes. The same guy who you may or may not have a tiny crush on.

The moment you locked eyes, you could feel your heartbeat stop for just a millisecond later as he flashed you a soft smile. This was enough to make you blush as you smiled back to him shyly before quickly making your way behind the counter.

“Oh great, you’re back. Help me take their order will you? I have to prepare the delivery ones.” Kihyun said simply. You were about to protest but you had no choice since the other part timer was on his lunch break.

So you nodded defeatedly before you returned the tray back at the collection point before you went back to the cashier, only to see Sunwoo standing there alone.

“Hey.” Sunwoo said as his lips began to tug upwards.

“Hey. What can I get you today?” You asked with a shy smile. Your voice sounded much softer than usual. You didn’t miss the little chuckle that left his lips before he spoke up.

“There’s gonna be a bit more than one order today.”

“I can see that.” You joked.

“Can I get one regular iced mocha, two regular double chocolate frappe, one small iced americano, one regular iced vanilla latte, and my usual please.”

You keyed in his orders as he spoke, only for you to look back up at him to confirm if that was all he wanted. Sunwoo gave you a firm nod, proceeding to charge him for the orders and soon told him to have a seat, you will call out to him once the drinks are ready. Sunwoo nodded as he left, not forgetting to smile at you for the umpteenth time that day.

You soon came beside Kihyun and started to make the drinks. Sunwoo on the other hand, immediately got dragged down into his seat by Kevin when they began to make comments about you.

“You were right, they’re hella cute!” Kevin said.

“Do you think they’re attached?” Younghoon asked.

“I don’t know. I mean, they’re quite cute. It’s impossible they’re single.” Sangyeon shrugged.

“Not all good looking people are attached. Even some normal looking ones are attached. We can’t just judge from their looks.” Sunwoo said defensively, only for Changmin and Haknyeon to smirk.

“Or are you just saying that because you want them to be single?” Changmin said, causing the rest of them to agree teasingly.

“Whatever, they wouldn’t date someone like me anyway.” Sunwoo said.

Not long after he finished his sentence, your voice echoes around the café walls as you called his name.

“Drinks for Sunwoo.”

With that, Sunwoo got up and soon jogged his way to the collection point, only to find you standing behind the counter with the tray in hand. You smiled as you pushed the tray gently towards him.

“Be careful. It’s heavy.” You warned.

“Don’t worry.” Sunwoo said, couldn’t help but smile at him.

He soon came back to their table and distributed the drinks. Almost half an hour had passed, they were just talking about random topics when Sunwoo happened to glance towards the counter. Seeing you laugh at something your manager said.

He didn’t realize he was smiling until Sangyeon spoke up. “Sunwoo yah, if they make your heart flutter that much, why don’t you just go there and ask them out?”

Sunwoo whips his head to Sangyeon, almost pulling a muscle while doing that.

“What?! N-No!”

“Why not?”

“The last time I asked someone out, I got turned down harshly in front of everyone. I couldn’t sleep for days!”

“Sunwoo yah, you’re just thinking too much. Just try and ask them out. Who knows they’ll accept?” Haknyeon asked.

“I don’t wanna risk it.” Sunwoo said. Glancing back to the front counter.

“Why must I have a crush on the cutest barista working just two blocks away from campus?” Sunwoo thought to himself as he gently shook his head and went back into the conversation with the guys.

A few minutes passed, some of them were discussing their project work while some were doing their own stuff when Sunwoo saw you left the counter only to walk towards an empty table near the back of the café. Since the café was not so packed, Kihyun told you to eat at one of the tables. So as to not feel cramped in the back room.

You had a transparent cup filled with what seems to be strawberry latte and a plate of sandwich. Sunwoo was caught staring by his friends as Younghoon nudged his arm to gain his attention.

“This is your chance to talk to them.”

Sunwoo saw some of them nod in agreement as he glanced back at you who was just taking a bite of the sandwich while scrolling through your phone.

With much motivation, he finally got up and made his way towards your table. You were just looking at your Instagram feed when you saw a figure come to a stop on the opposite side of your table.

You looked up to see Sunwoo standing there with a nervous smile as he spoke up. “Do you need some company?” He asked. You giggled, locking your phone screen and soon placed it face down on the table.

“Sure, that would be great.” You said. He pulled the chair out and soon took a seat.

“You’re just having that for lunch?” He asked curiously as he looked at the plate in front of you.

“Mmm.”

“Is that enough to fill you for the rest of your shift?” He asks, genuinely concerned at how little you ate.

“Yeap! Don’t worry. I always get something heavy to eat before my night classes.”

Sunwoo paused only to raise his eyebrows in confusion.

“Night classes?”

“I’m a part time student at Yonsei U. That’s why I’m a full timer here.”

“Wow… Are you able to cope with work and study at the same time?”

“It can be tiring and mentally exhausting sometimes but I persevere.”

Sunwoo was shocked at this new information but nonetheless gave you some comforting words to help cheer you on. “That’s… a lot to take in. I hope you don’t stress yourself out too much. Please get some rest and don’t overwork yourself.”

You hadn't seen this side of him before but it was very sweet of him to even say all those things to you. You ended up chatting for a bit, only for you both to find out that he was a student at Hankuk U, you were the same age, you both loved sushi and many more.

Your lunch break was ending soon but you were dreading to say goodbye. “Well, it was really nice talking to you Sunwoo, but I’m afraid my break time’s almost over.” 

You pouted sadly, only for him to chuckle.

“Do you have class tonight?”

You nodded.

“Hmm, don’t worry okay? I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” Sunwoo said, making you giggle at his disclaimer.

The both of you got up only for him to speak up.

“My friends and I are leaving soon too. I’ll see you tomorrow. Take care, don’t forget to eat before you head to class!” He reminded you. Not forgetting to give him a nod.

A few days later, you had just ended your night class and you were almost burned out for the day, you could barely keep your eyes open. Only for your phone to ring. It was Eric.

“Hello?” You said into the line.

“Hey! Are you finished with class?”

“Yeah. I’m heading down now. Where are you?”

“At the parking lot. Me and Chanhee hyung decided to wait for you today.”

With that being said, you gasped lightly, unable to digest this information.

“Wha- Eric are you serious? You didn’t have to- omg.”

“No, it’s fine! Besides, me and hyung needed to discuss something anyway. Meet us at the parking lot okay?”

Before you could reply, he already hung up the call, making you sigh. You felt bad for making them wait for you since it was already half past 10 at night. But then again, they did it out of their own will. You arrived at the parking lot, only to see Chanhee and Eric leaning against the side of Chanhee’s car amongst a few other vehicles left just chatting away while waiting for you.

Just then, Eric glanced towards the entrance, only to see a very tired you dragging your feet towards them. You could barely open your eyes as you held onto your bag strap for your dear life. Right when you had just arrived in front of them, your vision blacked out, feeling your head pound against your skull. You let out a soft groan, falling forwards, just in time for Eric to catch you.

“Woah, are you okay?” He asked worriedly as Chanhee and him exchanged glances to one another.

“Mmm, y-yeah… I just blacked out for a bit.” You said, only to hear Chanhee sigh.

“How many times must we tell you not to overwork yourself and get some sleep?” Chanhee said.

“I did sleep...” You tried to defend yourself, but they knew you better than you know yourself. 

“How many hours did you sleep last night?” Eric asked as he narrowed his eyes at you questioningly. You avoided their piercing gazes by answering their question in a hushed tone. 

“An hour and a half.” 

With that, your two friends let out a heavy sigh as Eric looked disappointed in his friend. It wasn’t because he was mad at you, it was because he was growing more and more concerned over your sleeping patterns and your health. You weren't just schooling, you were working as well so it would only be right if you maintained a healthy sleeping pattern and a balanced work/study time.

“That’s it. You’re coming home with me. I’m gonna make sure you get that sleep you so well deserved.” Chanhee said as Eric nodded in agreement.

“What? No, I’m fine. Okay, I promise I’ll sleep tonight.” You said.

“Yeah right.”

“You don’t trust me?” You asked with a pout.

“On this? No, I don’t.” With that, you scoffed as you knew you couldn’t fight back with them. So with that being said, you ended up following Chanhee to his apartment since he lived alone. Once you were back at Chanhee’s place, he told you to wash up. He let you borrow a loose shirt and sleeping shorts.

He told you to sleep in his bed and that he could take the couch. At first you rejected it, saying you could sleep on the couch but he refused. 

Chanhee purposely placed your bag in the living room so that you couldn’t sneakily stay up all night and worked on your assignment. Chanhee’s body clock was never normal to begin with but to him, your sleeping pattern was more important than his.

Hence, the reason why he was still awake at 3am, watching the live broadcast of the World Cup. He was trying so hard to keep quiet to avoid waking you up as he eagerly watched the tournament. Just then, he thought he heard soft whimpers in his head.

“What the-” He mumbled to himself as he continued watching the game.

Just then, the whimper sounded again and it was a lot more distinct this time. With that, he lowered down the volume just to see if that sound would appear again. Not long after, he heard the whimper again and it seemed to have come from his hallway.

Chanhee got up immediately as he went to his bedroom, opening the door gently.

That’s when he saw you shifting uncomfortably in your sleep. He approached you in a rush as he saw you clutching onto the blanket against your chest as you had a frown on your face.

You were mumbling something in your sleep but he couldn’t really catch what you said.

“(Y/N)? Hey wake up.” Chanhee said softly as he placed a hand on your shoulder and lightly shook it. It took him 3 tries to finally get you awake when you jolted forward. Your breathing was heavy as you sat there with cold sweat running down the side of your face.

“It’s okay (Y/N), you’re okay. I’m here. It’s just a nightmare.” He comforted you while grabbing a handful of his shirt.

He pulled you into a hug, feeling your body shiver. They stayed like that for a while, only for him to tuck you back in bed. He pushed your hair away from your face as he looked down at you gently with a soft smile.

“Goodnight (Y/N).”

“Goodnight Chanhee.”

He was about to walk away when you grabbed his hand.

“Thank you… for everything.”

Chanhee could only smile, gently caressing the back of your hand with his thumb and soon spoke up.

“Get some rest, (Y/N).” You nodded only to let go of his hand. You fell back asleep a few seconds after as he went back to the living room, only to turn off the television and went to sleep himself.

It has been 4 months since Sunwoo first came to the café and you've gotten a lot closer than before. 

However, Sunwoo still has yet to ask you out on a date.

It was a chilly Wednesday afternoon and both Chanhee and Eric promised to visit you after their lecture. The time was 35 minutes past 2 and the two guys had just entered the café, settling themselves into one of the empty tables beside the glass window after they ordered their drinks.

After making their drinks, you made your own drink and took one of the sandwiches from the fridge. Making your way to them for your lunch break.

“Hey guys, one iced mocha and one iced matcha latte for the two sweetest guys I’m lucky to have as friends.” You said, causing the two boys to smirk.

“Just friends?” Eric teased.

“Best friends.” You corrected yourself, only for Chanhee to laugh at Eric’s pained reaction.

“Ouch, never thought I’d be friend zoned this quick.”

You found yourself giggling as you spoke up to comfort your friend while you took a seat beside him.

“I love you, Eric ah.”

He couldn’t find himself being angry at you as he immediately melted and soon became a giggling mess. You were just chatting away, gossiping about the same stuck up girl in their class who keeps acting as if everyone was head over heels for when they’re actually not.

Just then, a familiar voice calls out to Chanhee and Eric from a distance behind you making your heart skip a beat.

“Hey! Hyung! Eric ah!”

Chanhee glanced past your shoulder while Eric turned to look over his own shoulder before they smiled widely and waved eagerly to whoever was behind you.

“That voice…” You whispered under your breath, only to slowly turn around. That’s when you saw Sunwoo walking up to your table along with his usual group of friends. However, you didn’t miss the look on Sunwoo’s face when he locked eyes with you. He was definitely surprised but also confused as to why you were seated with his friends.

“Oh? It’s the cute barista!” Juyeon said innocently. Flashing them a bashful smile. Just then, both Chanhee and Eric turned to look at each other simultaneously only for them to look at you and spoke up in unison.

“You’re the cute barista Sunwoo’s been talking about?!”

With that, Sunwoo gestured a punch to them signalling them to keep quiet. Only for him to look at you and ask.

“You know them?” 

You could only nod as you told him the truth.

“I’ve known them since college.”

The rest of the boys gasped at the newly profound information. They couldn’t believe you were mutual friends with Chanhee and Eric. The 12 of you ended up sitting in two separate tables side by side whilst Chanhee and Eric began to spill the tea about Sunwoo.

“I can’t believe he’s been talking about you all these while.” Eric said.

“If I had known sooner, I would have set you two up on a date.” Chanhee said, causing you to glance at Sunwoo who was sitting opposite you. You cleared your throat and glanced down at your wrist watch before you got up abruptly to avoid any more awkward conversations.

“Oh look, my break time is ending. Nice talking to you guys. Thanks for visiting me today, my babies. More cakes for you? Yes? Okay.” You said in a rush. Quickly leaving the table, earning a laugh from the guys. Thinking that your actions are cute.

“Sunwoo, you really have a good taste don’t you?” Eric teased, making Sunwoo throw a tissue paper packet to Eric’s face, catching the poor boy by surprise.

You were in the back room, having a short break when your co-worker, Mingi called for you from the door.

“(Y/N), somebody wants to talk to you. He said he’s a friend of yours?” Mingi said, making you hum in confusion but nonetheless left the back room.

Only to be met with Sunwoo standing at the collection point.

“Sunwoo?”

“Hey, umm, I was wondering… Are you… free, this weekend?” You found yourself blushing as you tried to come up with a quick response.

“Uhh yeah. Yeah, I’m free.” Sunwoo didn’t expect you to say yes so quickly but it definitely made him feel slightly happy that he didn’t get rejected.

“Great. Umm, I’ll pick you up at 8?”

“Okay.” You smiled genuinely.

“Okay… Well, I uhh, better get going. Bye (Y/N). See you.” He said shyly, his ears starting to burn red.

“See you Sunwoo.” You said, only for him to quickly leave before his whole tomato head explodes.

Weekends finally came and it was already 30 minutes past 7 and you were struggling to find a nice outfit to wear. You didn’t know exactly where he was taking you, all he said was to wear nicely. You were nervous to say the least. You haven't been on a date in like what? 2 years?

Ever since your last date where you got stood up, you decided not to go on any more blind dates. You would rather stay single for the rest of your life than being played with and getting your heart broken again and again.

Sunwoo texted you a few minutes later saying he was downstairs so you replied by saying you’ll be down in a minute. You soon left your apartment and locked the doors before heading down the corridor towards the lift lobby. Once you were at ground level, you made your way out, only to see Sunwoo leaning against his car door.

The minute he noticed your figure walking towards him, he looked up only to give you a one over. You stopped a few feet in front of him with a shy smile as he spoke up.

“Wow, you look really stunning.”

“Thank you. You look dashing.” You giggled.

Sunwoo was wearing a dark blue button down shirt tucked into his black denim skinny jeans, a pair of black sneakers and a few stainless steel accessories. He recently dyed his hair to a deep berry colour. He soon opened the door for you. Getting in before he walked over to the driver seat. Once he was in, he buckled his seatbelt and started his car engine.

“Where are we going?” You asked.

“It’s a surprise.” Sunwoo said with a cheeky smile as you could feel your heartstrings pull.

The drive to the destination wasn’t as long as you thought, maybe because the journey was filled with jokes and laughter every now and then. Before you knew it, he finally pulled into a parking lot at what seems to be an outdoor movie theatre.

“Sunwoo yah… This is…” You paused as you got out of the car while he reached over to the back seat to take the blanket he brought to lay it down on the grass. He came back to your side after locking his car, only for you to continue from where you left off.

“So cute. How did you even find out about this outdoor movie?”

He smiled as you both began to walk towards the open space where quite a lot of couples were already seated down on their own blankets.

“My friend told me about this when he went on a date with his girlfriend the other day. So I figured why not give it a try.” Sunwoo said, making you blush.

You managed to find an empty space so he laid down the blanket and soon sat down. While waiting for the movie, you talked about almost anything. The movie soon started as everyone was starting to get excited. Halfway through the beginning of the movie, you were sitting beside Sunwoo with your legs extended out in front of you.

The night slowly got breezy, feeling the cool air blowing on you softly. Just then, he saw you straightening your posture, rubbing your arms to keep yourself warm. He felt bad that he couldn’t give you his jacket since he didn’t wear any.

However, an idea flashed across his mind, making him turn to you to speak.

“Hey, are you cold?” He asked. You turned to him with a small smile before you answered.

“Yeah, but it’s fine. It’s just a little chilly, that’s all.” Sunwoo wasn’t convinced as he saw your teeth clattering, making him chuckle softly.

“You know, I heard from somewhere that close body contact can keep us warm.” Sunwoo suggests indirectly to you, turning your head to him to see a playful smile on his lips.

You giggled as you looked at him with your brows raised.

“Are you okay with it?”

“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t suggest it would I?” He asked, causing you to mentally facepalm at your ridiculous self.

“Right. You have a point.”

You heard him chuckle when he pat the empty spot in between his legs, gesturing for you to come over.

“C’mere.” He said.

Once you have settled down between his legs, you feel him wrap his arms around your body, trapping your arms. Gently pressing your back against his chest. Warmth immediately engulfing you both as you snuggled deeper into his chest.

“Warm enough?” He asked, only for you to nod.

You stayed like that for the rest of the movie. Sacrificing his back if it meant keeping you warm throughout the 1 and a half hours of the movie. 

After the movie ended, you went to get supper before he sent you home. You agreed to let him walk you all the way to your door. Hence, the reason why you were now standing outside your apartment door. You unlocked the door but then turned around to face him.

“Thank you for today Sunwoo. It was a fun experience watching a movie outdoors for the first time under the starry night.” You said as he smiled.

“I’m glad you liked it…”

“I hope we can do something like this again soon.” At that being said, his ears perked up, staring at you in awe.

“A-Again? Does that mean…?” He paused, causing you to giggle.

“Yes. I’d love to go on a date with you again.” 

Sunwoo couldn’t contain his excitement as he smiled from ear to ear, his adorable toothy grin made your heart skip a few beats. He elicited a soft giggle, biting his lip to stop himself from smiling too much.

Just then, you decided to take it upon yourself by pressing a soft kiss onto his cheek. Sunwoo was frozen in place as you smiled up to him endearingly before you bid him goodbye. You quickly entered your apartment to hide your flushed face when you could feel the embarrassment starting to creep up on you. You leaned against the door. Trying to steady your heartbeat.

After what felt like forever, you finally pushed yourself off the door and was about to walk deeper into your apartment when there was a knock.

You turned around to open it and you were greeted by Sunwoo again, seeming he finally came into senses.

Without any words exchanged, he took one quick step forward, reaching up to cup your face with one hand before he gently pressed his lips against yours. You melted almost immediately when you felt him smile into the kiss. Sunwoo could feel his heart get weaker, snaking one hand around your waist while pulling you closer to him.

Your hands rested on his chest as he pulled away with a soft sound, only for you to keep your gaze on his collarbone. Too shy to look at him in the eye.

Sunwoo gently took your chin in between his thumb and index finger. Tilting your head up, making you lock eyes with him.

“I’m pretty sure that just proves to you how I feel about you, but I still wanna tell you in words. I really, really like you. And I would love to take you out on more dates and be able to call you mine.”

With his cute confession, you couldn’t help but giggle. Wrapping your arms around his neck before you spoke up.

“I like you too Sunwoo. And yes, I would love to go on dates with you, and for you to call me yours.” With that being said, Sunwoo smiled in victory. Kissing you again sweetly.

The next day, you broke the news to your friends as you got happy cheers and excited screams in the group chat. Sunwoo never thought he would date anyone after being rejected multiple times but maybe he was fated to meet you and be the person who orders the same drink every time at the café you worked in. Maybe now he could finally live his love life with more cuddles and Strawberry Lattes.